Alan Hunter - Gently Does It

‘What do you mean by that?’ growled Fisher.

‘Oh… it was just a passing thought. Aren’t you taking her out tonight?’

‘Suppose I am — what’s it got to do with you?’

‘It just set me wondering… that’s all.’

Fisher towered above the Chief Inspector in stupid rage. ‘And so you may bloody well wonder!’ he burst out, ‘you and all the other coppers with you… if I want to take her out, I take her out… and you can wonder till the bloody sky drops on you!’

Gently clicked his tongue disappointedly. ‘I thought you were going to say till a bit of wall dropped on me,’ he said.

Alan Hunter

Gently Does It

M RS TURNER ANSWERED the door when Gently knocked at the Huysmann house. She eyed him inimically with her small mean eyes — she had had her knife into him since the questioning. ‘So you’re here again,’ she said. Gently admitted it gracefully. ‘A fine one you are, coming and upsetting people with your silly questions — don’t even belong here, either. What do you want this time?’

‘I want to see Miss Gretchen again.’

‘Oh, you do? Well, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. Miss Gretchen’s gone out.’

‘Where’s she gone?’

‘How should I know where she’s gone?’

‘It’s rather important that I should see her just now.’

Mrs Turner snorted and tilted her chin. ‘Strikes me it’s always important when you want to see somebody — leastways, that’s your idea. And it’s on account of you she’s gone out… upsetting her like that!’

‘Have you any idea where she might be?’

‘I told you I hadn’t… might be the Castle, or Earton Park… she used to go there sometimes.’

‘Thank you,’ said Gently, and the door was promptly slammed. Shaking his head, he plodded off towards the city. The Castle… or Earton Park. Or anywhere else in a city of rising a hundred and fifty thou. He took the Castle first because it lay in his way. Stretching halfway round the base of the Castle’s prehistoric mound was the Garden, where once had been the ditch, a crescenting walk, deep-sunken, bisected by the slanting stone bridge which connected the Castle with the cattle market. Here were people enough, strolling amongst the long, sweet-scented beds of wallflowers and beneath the carnival blossom of the Japanese cherry-trees. But there was no Gretchen. Gently glanced up through the elms at the sleepy-faced Castle… but one didn’t seek consolation amongst stuffed birds and man-traps. He went out to the Paddock and sought a bus for Earton Park.

It was a nice park, but a very large one. Its extent and complexity brought a pout to Gently’s lips. But having come, he set about the matter methodically and plodded away across the rose parterre to the avenue of chestnuts, on either side of which old gentlemen were playing interminable games of bowls. Beyond these were the tennis-courts, on which Gently wasted no more than a passing glance. Coming to the Circus with its cupola’d bandstand he paused in indecision. North? South? Long, frequented vistas stretched to the four cardinal points. He took a chief inspectorial sniff and went south.

It was a good sniff. He found Gretchen huddled on a seat beside the great lily pond, staring large-eyed at the shallow water. Gently lifted his brown trilby politely and seated himself at a suitable distance.

Gretchen said: ‘I did not know that you would find me here.’

‘I didn’t know myself until I found you,’ Gently replied, feeling about for his pipe.

‘Please do not think that I came here specially to avoid you… it was just that I had to get away… I could not think in the house.’

‘I think you were wise… a change of venue is helpful.’

Gently went slowly and carefully through the business of filling and lighting his pipe, tamped it down with his thumb and took one or two inaugurating puffs. ‘Have you come to any decision?’ he asked.

Gretchen turned towards him pitifully. ‘It is very difficult… I do not know.’

‘Perhaps I can help you. I’ve just been having a very interesting chat with our friend Fisher.’

‘… Fisher?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he has said something?’

Gently nodded.

She studied him for a moment in silence, Gently puffing away unconcernedly. ‘I do not know…’ she said.

‘You’ll have to take my word for it, of course. He admitted that he spent the afternoon with you, that he was there when you discovered the murder, and that it was at his suggestion that you went out and got yourself alibis. Is that correct?’

‘He said all… that?’ Gretchen stared at him incredulously.

‘That was the gist of it, though I’m not quite satisfied.’

She looked away from him, her hands beginning to clutch together. ‘I cannot understand… why should he tell you that?’

‘Oh, there’s no mystery about why he told me. He’s rather thick with Susan these days and she told him how I’d been questioning you this morning… I gather she was listening at the door. This seems to have worried Mr Fisher and he hastened to put his story on record.’

‘… Susan?’

‘She seems to be Fisher’s latest acquisition.’

‘It is not true — you must not speak about him like that!’

Gently shrugged. ‘I think you foster a somewhat idealistic opinion of Fisher, Miss Gretchen… however, that’s why he told his story. Perhaps he will verify it if you ask him.’

‘No!’ She shook her head vigorously. ‘I do not want to speak to him… not ever again. Later, I will get a new chauffeur.’

Gently regarded his pipe-smoke rising tenuously in the still, warm air. ‘Were you ever really in love with him, Miss Gretchen?’ he asked.

Gretchen turned her head away. ‘I think that I was, once upon a time.’

‘You knew what sort of character he had — I mean, with women?’

‘Oh yes… I must have known that. It is as you say, I had an idealistic opinion. In my situation such things happen easily… we can believe when we want to.’

‘And yet now, when the way is clear, you have turned completely against him.’

Gretchen hung her head and said nothing.

‘Did you ever think of marrying him?’ Gently asked.

‘Oh yes, I used to think of that. I thought perhaps, when my father died… but that is a very terrible thing to say.’

‘And did Fisher know that?’

‘We used to talk about it.’

‘He knew, then, that once your father was out of the way he could expect to be your husband?’

Gretchen wrenched her hands viciously, one from the other. ‘But we did not think of this — we did not think of this!’

‘Are you quite certain in your own mind that Fisher did not think of this?’

‘No — no! he did not!’ A shudder ran through her body, and she crouched away from Gently, over the arm of the seat.

‘Miss Gretchen, I am asking you again: why is it that you have now turned against Fisher?’

‘I don’t know… I don’t believe in him any longer.’

‘Then what has shaken your faith in him so suddenly… precisely at this juncture?’

Gretchen moaned but made no answer.

‘Let me ask you another question. Whose finger-prints did you suppose you wiped from the handle of the knife — your brother’s, or Fisher’s?’

‘I have told you… my brother’s!’

Gently leaned away, shaking his head. ‘Miss Gretchen, I have still to learn the truth of your and Fisher’s actions on Saturday afternoon.’

There was a long pause, broken by nothing but the distant calls from the tennis-courts and the dull murmur of traffic from behind trees. Above the low hedge at the bottom moved a white triangle. It was the sail of a model yacht on the second pond, further down. The triangle shuddered, stopped, wagged a moment, then slowly sank from sight as the model slid away on its new course. Gently watched the little performance impassively. ‘They’ve opened the refreshment bar…’ he said. ‘Let’s go and have a cup of tea.’