Alan Hunter - Gently Does It

‘Could be,’ said Gently.

Leaming laughed. ‘For all I know, of course, that’s what’s happened… maybe that’s why Peter wasn’t charged. Well, if that’s the case, you may well say you’ll have an answer shortly.’ He glanced at Gently interrogatively.

‘And if, in addition, someone cracked…’

‘You mean Fisher?’

‘Perhaps.’

Leaming went back to his eating.

Gently said: ‘There’s a time in every case that I’ve had anything to do with when you suddenly find yourself over the top of the hill… usually, there’s no good reason for it. You just keep pushing and pushing, never seeming to get anywhere, and then some time you find you don’t have to push any longer… the thing you’ve been pushing starts to carry you along with it. It’s odd, isn’t it?’

Leaming said: ‘And you’ve reached that stage in this case?’

Gently shrugged. ‘I’ve got that feeling…’

Leaming studied his plate without expression, making small, deliberate movements with his knife. Gently chewed a piece of roll and washed it down with beer. Across the lawn he could see a dinghy, a class-boat, tacking wistfully against the tide, long, painfully slow tacks amongst the trees, with scarcely enough breeze to give it headway. Back and forth it went, its helmsman, patient and determined, moving across with each new tack… it seemed like a machine which had lost its raison d’etre, still obstinately performing its functions but going nowhere. Gently returned his eyes to the table and found that Leaming was staring at him.

‘You do any sailing?’ asked Gently.

‘I’ve got a one-design in the boat-house.’

‘What do they fetch these days?’

‘You might pick one up for two-fifty.’

‘That lets me out… I’m only a policeman.’

The housekeeper took their plates and served the sweet, which was rhubarb pie and cream. Gently went to work with unabated gusto. ‘You’ve a good cook,’ he said, between mouthfuls. Leaming smiled and picked up his fork and spoon. ‘I have to do entertaining sometimes…’

The dinghy had made the next bend at last and Gently, outside the rhubarb and cream, was looking round for the coffee coming in. ‘By the way,’ he said, licking his lips, ‘I knew there was something I meant to ask you about…’ He got out his wallet and extracted the green card from it. ‘Know anything about these people?’ he asked.

Leaming took the card while Gently made room for his cup of coffee. ‘That’s Huysmann’s writing…’ said Leaming. Gently took three lumps of sugar and began stirring them. The housekeeper retired with her tray.

‘I found it in Huysmann’s desk this morning,’ said Gently helpfully. ‘I thought I’d heard the name before somewhere…’

Leaming looked from the card to Gently and back at the card again. Then he turned the card over and appeared to study the verso. Gently seemed not to watch him.

‘It’s one of his notes all right,’ said Leaming at length, ‘he was for ever scribbling things down…’

Gently took it back from him. ‘Miss Gretchen verified the handwriting… it is the firm I should like to know about.’

Leaming eyed him intently. ‘It’s a firm we do business with,’ he said evenly.

‘What sort of business?’

‘We supply them with sawn-out timber.’

‘And have you been connected with them very long?’

‘Oh… quite a few years.’

‘Ten years, say?’

‘Not so long as that.’

Gently reinserted the card in his wallet and tucked it into his pocket. ‘I wonder why Mr Huysmann made a note of the firm’s name… as though it were unfamiliar?’ he pondered.

Leaming shrugged slightly. ‘It may have been to jog his memory about a contract.’

‘But why write out the name in full?… Also, I don’t remember coming across it when I went through the books.’

Leaming stared straight ahead of him. ‘We keep separate books for that firm,’ he said.

‘Separate books? Why is that?’

‘We supply them with sawn-out stuff that hasn’t been through the mill… we simply act as middlemen. The stuff is processed at Starmouth and we bring it up for them. We take about fifteen per cent on it.’

‘Isn’t it unusual for a milling firm to supply timber which has been milled elsewhere? I should have thought it would have been more profitable to have supplied timber from one’s own mill.’

‘You have to do it sometimes, when the mill is working at capacity.’

‘But this has been going on over a number of years.’

Leaming bit his lip. ‘I imagine Huysmann is the only one who could give you an answer to that… and he won’t answer any more questions.’

‘I thought that perhaps his manager could have told me.’ Gently drank his coffee, looking at Leaming across the cup. ‘It’s an interesting problem… I should like to know more about it. Have you got these people’s address?’

‘Actually, I don’t think we have.’

Gently’s eyebrows lifted. ‘But surely you must have…?’

‘No.’ Leaming put down his cup and faced Gently. ‘You see, Inspector, they pay cash on delivery. We simply bring the wood up and they collect it and pay. And that’s all we know about them.’

Gently shook his head puzzledly. ‘I never did know much about business…’ he said. ‘All the same, I’d like to look over the books. Was it a very large turnover?’

‘About twelve thousand a year… but we only took fifteen per cent on that.’

Leaming rose, producing his gold cigarette case as he did so. Gently accepted a cigarette. ‘I shall have to be getting back,’ Leaming said, ‘sorry if I have to rush you.’ Gently followed him out to the Pashley and settled his bulky figure in the seat. ‘It was a very good lunch… you must ask me again some time.’ Leaming smiled automatically and sent the Pashley bounding down the drive. ‘I like having a chat over lunch,’ he said, ‘I think it helps to keep you in perspective… don’t you?’

Queen Street was somnolent in a warm afternoon. The mild, sun-in-cloud sky produced no shadows, only a pervading brightness, and the few vehicles making their way to and from the city seemed to move drowsily, as though the machines themselves were infected by the atmosphere. Even the sawmill seemed subdued, and the bundling and clanking noises from the breweries sounded sleepy and far away. Gently stood on the pavement feeling stupid. He had overeaten rather at lunch.

He pulled himself together and went into Charlie’s. Two of the inevitable transport drivers sat at a table eating rolls and drinking tea, one of them wearily turning the pages of a ragged Picture Post. The girl Elsie was at the counter. She sniffed as Gently entered and poked her head round the curtain, then disappeared through it. A moment later, Charlie himself came out.

‘I was hoping you’d look in,’ he said, a gleam of satisfaction in his eye.

‘You’ve got something to tell me?’

‘Something what happened about half an hour ago.’ He darted a quick glance at the two transport drivers and another at Gently. Gently leaned across the zinc-topped counter. ‘He was in here having his lunch,’ proceeded Charlie in a lowered tone, ‘and he’d got the girl Susan with him — right friendly they was together — having a long talk about something or other… they was over there in the corner.’

Gently leaned forward a little further.

‘I brought their stuff out for them, and I got to hear a little bit of what they was saying. It was about you asking Miss Gretchen questions, Inspector, how you’d been there a long time this morning, and how she’d listened to it and how it was all about Mr Fisher. And they was that friendly together, you’d hardly believe it. He give her some sort of trinket — a bracelet, I think it was, anyway it was something what pleased her — and when I take their tea over, I heard him arranging to take her out.’