Alan Hunter: Gently Does It

At eleven fifteen Leaming paid his bill with two five-pound notes, waiving the change. Gently made no move as he left his table and sauntered casually towards the foot of the stairs. There he paused to light a cigarette. The gold cigarette case opened and closed with a distant snap, and a waiter appeared from nowhere with a lighter. Leaming stood with his head bowed, apparently in thought. Then, as though remembering something, he raised his head with a smile and slipped across to the table where Gently was sitting.

‘You run to late hours in your business?’ he said brightly.

Gently eyed him without expression. ‘It depends on our clients… some of them never go to bed.’

Leaming took the seat opposite. ‘I thought you were down here on holiday… naturally, since our business was cleared up, I didn’t expect to find you engaged in something fresh.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Not on something fresh?’

‘No.’

Leaming looked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘But I thought this thing came to an end at the inquest… there doesn’t seem much left to explain.’

‘Some things come to an end at inquests, but this isn’t one of them.’

‘Well… if I can assist you in any way, don’t be afraid to ask. If it’s some silly little complication to do with the firm I dare say I can put you straight.’

Gently rocked a little in his chair. ‘It concerns the main issue,’ he said, ‘the person Fisher saw stabbing Huysmann… and the person who cut Fisher’s throat subsequently.’ His green eyes fixed on Leaming, still completely without expression.

Leaming remained silent, taut, cigarette angled from the corner of his mouth.

‘That doesn’t surprise you?’ enquired Gently, with a trace of sarcasm.

‘Yes… it does.’

‘You’d like to make a statement about it?’

Leaming’s eyes met his, brown and powerful, cautious as a wild animal’s: they broke into a smile. ‘Why should I make a statement about it?’

Gently shook his head, as though acknowledging the point. ‘Would you like to tell me how you spent yesterday afternoon?’

‘I’d love to… where do you want me to start?’

‘Start where you dropped me after lunch.’

‘Very well. I went to the office and looked through the afternoon mail… then I dictated some letters… then I took some specifications over to Sainty’s the contractors.’ Leaming paused, mockingly. ‘I was gone about an hour,’ he added.

‘And the time?’

‘Ah… the time. I felt that would be important. Well, I left the office at half-past three and re-entered it at twenty-six and a half minutes to five.’

‘And you were at Sainty’s during all that time?’

‘Dear me, no — only for about twenty minutes.’

‘Where were you during the remainder of that time?’

Leaming’s smile came back, strong, confident, almost reproving. ‘Oh, just driving around, you know. I’ve got a nice car. I get a kick out of negotiating the traffic with it.’

‘And that’s your official story?’

‘Yes, I think so… unless somebody can give me a reason for putting out a better one.’

Gently nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on Leaming’s. ‘Suppose I say that the little boy to whom you gave two shillings saw your car parked in Burgh Street… would that be reason enough?’

‘There’s a lot of cars get parked in Burgh Street.’

‘But this one was a red sports car… it had an aeroplane mascot. The little boy blew the propeller round. Also, it was parked near Mariner’s Lane.’

There was a pause, charged and vibrant. The smile still flickered in Leaming’s eyes. ‘No,’ he said at last, ‘I don’t think it is. Somehow, I’ve never relied very much on little boys as witnesses… have you? They forget things so easily… they rarely make a convincing impression. No, I’ll stick to my story.’

Gently said: ‘Then there’s the bag…’

Leaming made no response.

‘The gladstone bag that had the money in it, the bag that Fisher was bending over when his throat was cut.’ He leaned forward, his eyes boring at Leaming’s compellingly. But Leaming met them, hard and impenetrable. There was no give in him at all.

‘So it was a gladstone bag?’

‘Yes, a gladstone bag. And during the murder it got bloodied… so did some of the notes which were lying on top. The blood was wiped off the bag temporarily, but one can’t get rid of blood as easily as that — not so that it becomes undetectable in laboratory tests — so the bag had to be destroyed.’

‘Go on,’ said Leaming, ‘you’re interesting me.’

‘This evening, just before I came up here, I stepped into the timber-yard for a moment.’

‘Well… I hope everything was in order…’

‘I noticed a fire smouldering in a corner near the quays, so I went over and had a look at it. It was the remains of a large, sawdust-rubbish fire, apparently one that is kept burning there almost continuously…’

‘You make a good detective.’

‘… and after stirring it about a little I came across two interesting items. One of them was the handle-frame of a gladstone bag

… and the other was the key to Fisher’s flat. They were both together in one part of the fire, which suggested to me that the key had been in the bag at the time it was introduced into the fire. The murderer, it seems, had forgotten to take it out… which was certainly a mistake, don’t you think?’

The stare of Leaming’s eyes never wavered. ‘It could have been chucked in the river, I suppose.’

‘I think that would have been safer.’

‘At the same time, there’s nothing to connect it with any one person.’

‘Oh yes… there’s the maker’s name on the handle-frame, and what may be a serial number on the lock. A little routine work should indicate the owner to us.’

Leaming shook his head slowly. ‘It won’t do, you know, it isn’t a clincher. There’ve been dozens of those bags sold, and the number on the lock is merely a convenience, in case you lose the key. Nobody keeps a record correlating it with the purchaser.’

‘Nevertheless, it will be useful to show that a certain person was the owner of such a bag. It’s surprising how points like that increase in significance when taken with other points.’

The smile glided back into Leaming’s eyes. ‘They might, if you could arrange them convincingly… but you’ve first to convince the authorities that Fisher was murdered at all. At the moment their considered opinion is that he wasn’t… we mustn’t forget that, must we? If you go to them saying, “There’s a case against A for murdering Fisher,” they will simply look blank and say, “But Fisher wasn’t murdered.” And what have you got to say to that?’

Leaming leaned back in his chair, his eyes lit and triumphant. Gently sat still and unmoved, one stubby hand clasped in the other.

‘Of course, you could talk about finding the handle-frame and the key,’ continued Leaming, ‘you could tell them all about your imaginative idea of somebody taking Fisher the money in that bag, of how Fisher was murdered over it and how the bag would then have to be destroyed. But how would you set about proving it? And as for the key, they might want to know if there couldn’t have been two of them — there usually is, isn’t there? — and how can you be sure that the one you found was the one that a murderer locked the flat with? Well, I don’t know what you could say to that, but if they asked me…’

‘Yes,’ breathed Gently, ‘and if they asked you?’

‘… I should say that the key was most probably Fisher’s spare, and that the bag was an old one that I had given him at some time.’

Leaming broke off, pleasantly, as though intrigued by an interesting speculation.