Alan Hunter: Gently Does It

Hansom grunted. ‘I thought you were here to tell me that.’

‘Oh, I like to take local advice. It’s one of our first principles. What’s your impression of the case?’

Hansom seized his cigarettes bitterly, extracted one and returned the packet ostentatiously to his pocket. He lit up and blew a cloud of smoke into the already saturated atmosphere. ‘It’s too simple,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t appreciate it. We yokels can only see a thing that sticks out a mile. We aren’t as subtle as you blokes in the Central Office.’

‘I suppose he was murdered?’ enquired Gently with child-like innocence.

For a moment Hansom’s eyes blazed at him, then he jerked his thumb at the sheeted figure. ‘If you can tell me how an old geezer like that can stab himself where I can’t even scratch fleas, I’ll give up trying to be a detective and sell spinach for a living.’

Gently moved over to the oak settle on which the figure lay and turned back the sheet. Huysmann’s body lay on its back, stripped, looking tiny and inhuman. The jaw was dropped and the pointed face with its wisp of silver beard seemed to be snarling in unutterable rage. Impassively he turned it over. At the spot described so picturesquely by Hansom was a neat, small wound, with a vertical bruise extending about an inch in either direction. Gently covered up the body again.

‘Where’s the weapon?’ he asked.

‘We haven’t found it yet.’

Gently quizzed him in mild surprise. ‘You described it in your report,’ he said.

Hansom threw out his hands. ‘I thought we’d got it when I made the report, but apparently we hadn’t. I didn’t know there was a pair. The daughter told me that afterwards.’

‘Where’s the one you have got?’

Hansom made a sign to the uniformed man standing by. He delved into an attache case and brought out an object wrapped in cotton cloth. Gently unwrapped it. It was a beautifully ornamented throwing knife with a damascened blade and a serpent carved round the handle. It had a guard of a size and shape to have caused the bruise on Huysmann’s back.

‘Does it match the wound?’ Gently asked.

‘Ask the doc,’ returned Hansom.

The heavily jowled man who sat scribbling at a table turned his head. ‘I’ve only probed the wound so far,’ he said, ‘but as far as I can see it’s commensurate with having been caused by this or an identical weapon buried to the full extent of the blade.’

‘What do you make the time of death?’

The heavily jowled man bit his knuckle. ‘Not much later than four o’clock, I’d say.’

‘And that’s just after your Peter Huysmann was heard quarrelling with his papa,’ put in Hansom, with a note of triumph in his voice.

Gently shrugged and walked over to the wall. The room was of the same size as the sitting-room opposite, but differed in having a small outer door at the far side. Gently opened it and looked out. It gave access to a little walled garden with a tiny summer-house. There was another door in the garden wall.

‘That goes to the timber-yard next door,’ said Hansom, who had come over beside him. ‘We’ve been over the garden and the summer-house with a fine-tooth comb and it isn’t there. I’ll have some men in the timber-yard tomorrow.’

‘Is there a lock to that door in the wall?’

‘Nope.’

‘How about this door?’

‘Locked up at night.’

Gently came back in and looked along the wall. There was an ornamental bracket at a height of six feet. ‘Is that where you found the knife?’ he enquired, and on receiving an affirmative, reached up and slid the knife into the bracket. Then he stood there, his hand on the hilt, his eyes wandering dreamily over the room and furnishings. Near at hand, on his right, stood the open safe, a chalked outline slightly towards him representing the position of the body as found. Across the room was the inner door with its transom light. A pierced trefoil window on his left showed part of the summer-house.

He withdrew the knife and handed it back to the constable.

‘What has the mastermind deduced?’ asked Hansom, with a slight sneer.

Gently fumbled for a peppermint cream. ‘Which way did Peter Huysmann leave the house?’ he countered mildly.

‘Through the garden and the timber-yard.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘If he’d gone out through the front door the maid would have known — the old man had a warning bell fitted to it. It sounds in here and in the kitchen.’

‘An unusual step,’ mused Gently. He turned to the constable. ‘I want you to go to the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I want you to ask the maid if she heard any unusual noise whatever after the quarrel between Peter and his father this afternoon. And please shut all the doors after you. Oh, and Constable — there’s an old chest standing by the stairs in the hall. On your way back you might lift the lid and see what they keep in it.’

The constable saluted and went off on his errand.

‘We’re doing the regular questioning tomorrow,’ said Hansom tartly. Gently didn’t seem to notice. He stood quite still, with a far-away expression in his eyes, his lips moving in a noiseless chant. Then suddenly his mouth opened wide and the silence was split by such a spine-tingling scream that Hansom jumped nearly a foot and the police doctor jerked his notebook on to the floor.

‘What the devil do you think you’re doing!’ exclaimed Hansom wrathfully.

Gently smiled at him complacently. ‘I was being killed,’ he said.

‘Killed!’

‘Stabbed in the back. I think that’s how I’d scream, if I were being stabbed in the back…’

Hansom glared at him. ‘You might warn us when you’re going to do that sort of thing!’ he snapped.

‘Forgive me,’ said Gently apologetically.

‘Perhaps you break out that way at the Yard, but in the provinces we’re not used to it.’

Gently shrugged and moved over to watch the two finger-print men at work on the safe. Just then the constable burst in.

‘Ah!’ said Gently. ‘Did the maid hear anything?’

The constable shook his head.

‘How about you — did you hear anything just now?’

‘No sir, but-!’

‘Good. And did you remember to look in the old chest by the stairs?’

The impatient constable lifted to the common gaze something he held shrouded holily in a handkerchief. ‘That’s it, sir!’ he exploded. ‘It was there — right there in the chest!’

And he revealed the bloodied twin of the knife which had hung on the wall.

‘My God!’ exclaimed Hansom.

Gently raised his shoulders modestly. ‘I’m just lucky,’ he murmured, ‘things happen to me. That’s why they put me in the Central Office, to keep me out of mischief…’

The tableau in the study — constable and knife rampant, inspector passive, corpse couchant — was interrupted by the ringing of a concealed bell, followed by the entry of Superintendent Walker. ‘We’ve lost young Huysmann,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid he’s made a break. I should have had him pulled in for questioning right away.’

Hansom gave the cry of a police inspector who sees his prey reft from him. ‘He can’t be far — he’s probably still in the city.’

‘He went back to the fair after he’d been here,’ continued the superintendent. ‘He had tea with his wife in his caravan and did his stunt at 6.15. He was due to do it again at 6.45. I had men there at 6.35, but he’d disappeared. The last person to see him was the mechanic who looks after the machines.’

‘He was going to face it out,’ struck in Hansom.

‘It looks rather like it, but either his nerve went just then or it went when he saw my men. In either case we’ve lost him for the moment.’