Alan Hunter - Gently Does It

‘Mr Leaming,’ murmured Gently.

Leaming paused obediently.

‘I should like to look over the firm’s books.’

Leaming’s brown eyes flickered, perhaps in surprise. ‘I’ll bring them over for you,’ he said.

‘This afternoon,’ pursued Gently. ‘I’ll come back after lunch.’

‘This afternoon,’ repeated Leaming evenly. ‘I’ll have them here waiting for you.’ He turned towards the door again.

‘And Mr Leaming,’ added Gently.

Leaming stiffened.

‘I suppose you wouldn’t know where one can buy peppermint creams in Norchester on a Sunday?’

Hansom pushed his chair back from the table and stretched his long, beefy legs. The constable shut his notebook and found another stringy cigarette. Gently got up and wandered towards the little pierced window.

Hansom said: ‘Well, what do you know now?’

Gently shook his head slowly, still looking through the window.

‘I guess this Leaming’s the only lad with a pedigree alibi,’ Hansom mused. ‘Hit it where you like, it gives a musical note. What was that stuff about the books?’

‘It’s a wet day, I thought they’d be fun.’

‘You didn’t scare Leaming with it. I’ll bet they check to five per cent of a farthing.’ He dipped the long ash of his cigar into the ashtray. ‘I haven’t heard anything yet to make me think that young Huysmann isn’t our man,’ he said. ‘You’ve started something with Fisher and the girl, but I don’t think it’s going to hold up the case. Mind you, I’ll crack into Fisher. I’d like to know the ins and outs of that business myself. But I don’t think it’ll help you. I don’t think he did it myself and I don’t think you stand a dog’s chance of proving it.’

Gently smiled into the window. ‘There’s so much we don’t know,’ he said, ‘it’s like a picture out of focus.’

‘It focuses sharp enough for me and the super.’

‘It’s taking shape a little bit, but it’s full of blind spots and blurred outlines.’

Hansom said challengingly: ‘You’re pinning your faith on Fisher, aren’t you?’

Gently shrugged. ‘I’m not pinning it on anybody. I’m trying to find out things. I’m trying to find out what happened here yesterday and what led up to it, and how these people fit into it, and why they answered what they did answer this morning.’

Hansom said: ‘We’re not so ambitious. We’re just knocking up a case of murder so it keeps the daylight out.’

‘So am I…’ Gently said, ‘only I like walls round mine as well as a roof.’

Still it rained. A black twig sticking out of the grille over the drain by the Huysmann house cut a rainbow wedge from the descending torrent. Gently stood a moment looking at it as he came out. Hansom had departed in the police car, carrying with him the constable and his notebook. He had offered Gently a lift and lunch at the headquarters canteen, but Gently preferred to remain in Queen Street.

‘Looks like it’s set in for the day, sir,’ said the constable on the door. Gently nodded to him absently. He was looking now along the street towards Railway Bridge, sodden and empty, its higgledy-piggledy buildings rain-dark and forbidding. ‘Where’s Charlie’s?’ he asked.

‘What’s Charlie’s, sir?’

‘It’s a snack-bar.’

‘You mean that place down the road, sir?’

‘Could be.’

‘It’s that cream-painted building about a hundred yards down on the other side.’

‘Thanks.’

He plodded off towards Railway Bridge, his shoes paddling in the wet. They were good shoes, but he could feel a chill dampness slowly spreading underfoot. He shivered intuitively. The cream-painted building was a rather pleasant three-storey house of late Regency vintage. It had wide eaves and a wrought-iron veranda on the first floor, and had been redecorated probably as late as last autumn. It was only at ground level that the effect was spoiled. The sash windows had been replaced with plate glass and the door was a mixture of glass and chromium-plate. A sign over the windows said: CHARLIE’S SNAX. Another sign, a smaller one, advertised meals upstairs. Gently pressed in hopefully.

Inside was a snack-bar and several lino-topped tables, at which sat a sprinkling of customers. Gently approached the man behind the bar. He said: ‘Are you serving lunch today?’

The man looked him over doubtfully. ‘Might do you something hot, though we don’t do meals on a Sunday as a rule.’

‘Where do I go — upstairs?’

‘Nope — that’s closed.’

Gently took a seat at a vacant table by the door and the man behind the bar dived through a curtain behind him. It was not an impressive interior. The walls were painted half-cream and half-green, with a black line at high water mark. The floor was bare, swept, but not scrubbed. An odour of tired cooking-fat lingered in the atmosphere. The clientele, at the moment, consisted of two transport drivers, a soldier, a bus-conductor and an old man reading a newspaper. The bar-tender came back.

He said: ‘There’s sausage and chips and beans and fried egg.’

Gently sniffed. ‘I was hoping for roast pork and new potatoes, but never mind. Bring me what you’ve got.’

The bar-tender dived through the curtain again. Presently he came back with cutlery and a plate on which lay three scantly smeared triangles of thin bread, each slightly concave. ‘Will you have a cup of tea to go on with?’ he asked.

‘Yes. No sugar.’

The tea arrived in a thick, clumsy cup. But it was fresh tea. Gently sipped it reflectively, letting his eye wander over the snack-bar and its inmates. This was where Fisher went for lunch. Fortified by a pint of beer, the chauffeur had come in to face his plate of sausage, chips, beans and fried eggs. What had he done while he waited? Read a newspaper? Talked? There was talk now between the two transport drivers.

‘I got a late paper off the station… there’s a bit in the stop-press about Scotland Yard being called in.’

‘That’s because the son hopped it, you mark my words.’

‘D’you reckon he did it?’

‘Well, you see what it said…’

‘What did it say?’

‘It said the police thought he could assist them in their investigation. That’s what they always say before they charge them with it.’

‘They’re a rum lot, them Huysmanns… you don’t know where you are with foreigners.’

The bar-tender sallied out with Gently’s plate. Gently motioned to him to take the chair opposite. He hesitated suspiciously. ‘You knew this young Huysmann?’ enquired Gently blandly. The bar-tender sat down.

‘Yep, I used to know him,’ he said.

‘What sort of bloke was he?’

‘Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. You’d think he was English if you didn’t know.’

‘Used he to come in here?’

‘He did before he went away, but he’s been gone some time now. He had a quarrel with his old man before this lot happened.’

‘Do you think he did it?’

‘Well, I dunno. Might’ve done. He didn’t look the sort, but you can never tell with these foreigners.’

Gently essayed a piece of sausage and chip. ‘You know the chauffeur up there?’ he asked through a mouthful.

‘Who — Fisher?’

‘That’s his name, I believe.’

‘Oh, he’s often in here for something to eat. You know him?’

‘I’ve run across him somewhere.’

‘He’s another rum card, if you ask me. He lives for women, that bloke. Thinks he’s the gnat’s hind-leg.’

‘I heard he fancied the Huysmann girl.’

‘He fancies every bloody girl. He was after our Elsie here till I choked him off.’

‘Do you think there’s anything in it?’

‘I dunno. That girl Susan who works up there dropped something about it one night, but I don’t pay any attention.’