Alan Hunter - Gently Does It

Gently shrugged. ‘I started with an advantage… I saw young Huysmann riding on the Wall. One doesn’t do that sort of thing straight after murdering one’s father.’

‘All the same… it was a top-grade job.’

Gently smiled wanly at them. ‘I’m glad you’re pleased with me, just this once,’ he said, ‘because you’re not going to be pleased with me for very long.’

‘What? How do you mean, Gently?’ The super glanced at him quickly.

‘I mean that unlike yourselves, I do not regard the death of Fisher as being suicide.’

‘What!’

‘On the contrary, I am as positive as my specialization and acquired instinct can make me that it’s murder.’

There was a pause, fraught and ominous. Three pairs of eyes stared at Gently as though he had suddenly touched their owners with three red-hot pokers.

‘You’re off your chump!’ bawled Hansom, finding his voice. ‘You — you’ve got murder on the brain!’

‘It’s utterly preposterous!’ snapped the police doctor.

‘Really, Gently, I completely fail to understand-!’

Gently bowed and let the storm pass over his head. ‘I don’t expect you to agree with me until you’ve heard my reasons… but that is my conviction.’

‘But there is nothing — nothing whatever to suggest an attack!’

‘It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard!’

Gently turned to the furious little police doctor. ‘Were you able to form an opinion as to the direction in which the cut was made?’ he enquired mildly.

‘Direction? What in the world has that got to do with it?’

‘I’d like to have your opinion.’

‘As far as I can say it was made upwards, from the base of the throat to the ear. But-!’

‘If the cut were self-inflicted, isn’t it more likely to have been made in the other direction… from the ear downwards?’

The little man fumed at him. ‘It could be made in either direction — it is only slightly more likely to have been made downwards.’

‘And wouldn’t you say it was still more likely to have been made on the left side of the throat… bearing in mind that the razor was ostensibly held in his right hand?’

‘I think this is all highly irrelevant, Gently!’ broke in the super. ‘It’s ridiculous to suppose that you can deduce murder from such trivial considerations.’

‘I’m not deducing murder from them… I’m simply demonstrating that the cut was made in the least likely of three ways.’

‘But there is no guarantee that a suicide will choose the likeliest way! If you had seen as many suicides as I have…!’ The medico, his professional skill called to question, fairly chattered with rage. ‘And how likely would it be for an attacker to make the cut upwards? You tell me that! How do you attack a man and cut his throat in that direction?’

Gently extended a disclaiming palm. ‘Suppose you had to cut Fisher’s throat… how would you do it?’

‘It is not a question of how I would do it!’

‘But suppose you did?’

The little man glared at him. ‘I should do it — like this!’ And he made a downward slash that whistled past Gently’s neck.

Gently shook his head gravely. ‘You’d be a very brave man to do that,’ he said, ‘much braver than I should be… also, you’d have to be lucky. Now if I wanted to cut Fisher’s throat… neatly, and without noise and personal danger… I should wait till he was bending over something… something like a bag containing forty thousand pounds, and then I’d do it — like this!’ And he spun the little doctor round, pushed him into a bending position, and drew his right hand smartly across his struggling victim’s throat.

‘I should also be in a good position to avoid the subsequent rush of blood,’ he added, thoughtfully.

‘All right, Gently, you’ve shown us that it could be done!’ snapped the super, ‘and where precisely do we go from there?’

‘That’s right,’ echoed Hansom, ‘who’s it going to be this time — the housekeeper?’

Gently said: ‘The person who killed Fisher was the same person whom Fisher saw killing Huysmann. He killed Fisher for three reasons. First, Fisher was blackmailing him. Second, there was a risk that the money he paid Fisher would be traced back to Fisher, and thus to himself. Third, he knew that I had discovered his motive for killing Huysmann, and that he would have to make some sort of move to draw the police off. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize he would make it quite so soon.’

‘And who is this mythical person, Gently?’

‘He is Leaming, Huysmann’s manager.’

Hansom set up a howl. ‘What — Leaming kill the old man? You’re bats — completely bats! Why, Leaming had the one alibi that stood the steam-test — he’s fire-proof!’

‘It was a good alibi,’ Gently admitted reluctantly, ‘but that’s all it was — an alibi. He probably parked his car at the ground, where no doubt it was known to the attendants. There was then nothing to prevent him from making his way through the crowd back to the yard. I am not certain of his exact movements, but I imagine that he watched the quarrel from the summer-house and emerged from it soon after Peter Huysmann left. With regard to the alibi, I questioned him about the football match on the Saturday evening before he had time to gen up on it. He had three things to tell me about it and they formed the three headlines in the pink’un, in exactly the same sequence. On the following day he had the match at his fingertips — he even knew the precise minutes when the scores were made, a detail which a man on the terrace is never aware of.

‘Also on Saturday evening — and later during the questioning — he introduced obliquely every point which would tell against Peter. Under cover of a pretended solicitude he suggested things which were absolutely damning — such things as Huysmann’s resolution to cut Peter out of his will, which he represented as being of recent origin. In addition to this…’

‘Hold hard!’ broke in the super, ‘you’re making my head spin, Gently. There doesn’t seem to be any end to you. When you made your report in the office an hour ago it was Fisher, Fisher, Fisher. So we go out, and find it was Fisher. And immediately you turn the record over and begin on Leaming. If this isn’t a sudden spasm of madness, would you mind telling me why you didn’t mention Leaming in the office, but only now when the case has cancelled itself out?’

Gently sighed deeply, and felt around for the support of a peppermint cream. ‘I was going to tell you about Leaming,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t get a chance. You’re all so impulsive round here. I’d just got through telling you what I knew about Fisher when Hansom came in with the note and you straightway jumped to the conclusion that Fisher was the man. I didn’t say he was… in fact, I was pretty certain that he wasn’t, and what we’ve found up there convinces me to the hilt. Fisher was an extrovert if ever there was one — he would no more have cut his throat than spoken English. But you got so sold on the idea, and I wanted Fisher picked up for questioning… so I let the rest of it ride till we’d laid hands on him.’

‘Then you’re not just hanging out this case for the fun of it?’

Gently looked shocked. ‘Really, superintendent!’

‘All right, all right! Now — you say Leaming killed Huysmann. Why?’

‘Because Huysmann had discovered how Leaming bought his cars and his houses and his hand-made cigarettes.’

‘And how did he do that?’

‘He was flogging timber on the side, about one-fifth of the entire intake… twelve thousand pounds’ worth a year. That was the leak which Peter said his father suspected, and it had been going on quite a few years. Mind you, Leaming didn’t scoop the entire twelve thousand. The tug-skipper and his mate were in it, though I don’t think they knew much, and there was a mysterious firm called “The Straight Grain Timber Merchants” who took the stuff away. I imagine they’re dissolved as from today, but we might get a line on them… the tug-men may talk, with a little persuasion. There’s another angle in the books. I went through the Huysmann books on Sunday, so I knew the “Straight Grain” outfit was not in the regular line of business with them. Leaming has got a very thin excuse that they kept separate books for the “Straight Grain” transactions and he’s prepared to produce them: I think an expert comparison between the two sets of books will give us an opening.’