Alan Hunter: Gently Does It

‘Chief Inspector Gently?’

‘That’s me.’

‘I’m Rod Leaming, Mr Huysmann’s manager. They told me you wanted to see me.’

He was a man of about forty, big, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with small well-set ears and features that were boldly handsome. His voice was rounded and pleasant. Gently said: ‘Ah yes. You were at the football match. How did the City get on?’

There was a moment’s silence, then Leaming said: ‘They won, three-one.’

‘It was a good match, they tell me.’

Leaming gave a little shrug. ‘There were a lot of missed chances. They might have won six-one without being flattered, though of course Cummings was a passenger most of the match. Are you interested in football?’

Gently smiled a far-away smile. ‘I watch the Pensioners when I get the chance. Is your car ZYX 169?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s got mud all over the rear number plate. I thought I’d mention it to you before you were stopped. It’s fresh mud.’

‘Thanks for the tip. I must have picked it up on the car park this afternoon.’

‘It’s a clay mud,’ mused Gently, ‘comes from a river bank, perhaps.’

‘The car park at Railway Road lies between the river and the ground.’

‘Ah,’ said Gently.

Leaming relaxed a little. He pulled out a gold cigarette case and offered it to Gently. Gently took a cigarette. They were hand-made and expensive. Leaming gave him a light and lighted one himself. ‘Look,’ he said, forcing smoke through his nostrils, ‘this is a bad business, Inspector, and it looks pretty black for young Huysmann. But if an outside opinion is any help, I’m one who doesn’t think he’s the man. I’ve seen a good deal of Peter at one time or another and he’s not the type to do a thing like this.’

Gently blew a neat little smoke-ring.

Leaming continued: ‘Of course, I realize there’s everything against him. He’s been in trouble before and the reason he was estranged from his father is well known.’

‘Not to me,’ said Gently.

‘You haven’t heard? But it’s bound to come out in the questioning and it’s not so very serious. You’ve got to remember that he was the only son; he was brought up to regard himself as the automatic heir to the business. Well, there’s no doubt that Mr Huysmann was a little hard on Peter when it came to pocket money and one day Peter decamped with a hundred pounds or more.’

Gently exhaled a stream of smoke towards the distant chandelier.

‘But that was merely youthful high spirits, Inspector. If Peter had had a proper allowance, it would never have happened. It wouldn’t have happened then if Peter hadn’t fallen in love with an office girl — she’s his wife now — and if Mr Huysmann had treated the affair with

… well, a little more feeling. But there it was, he wouldn’t hear of the idea of Peter getting married and though he might have forgiven the embezzlement, he treated the marriage as though it were a personal affront. Poor Peter had a rough time of it after he left home. He wrote to Mr Huysmann on several occasions asking for small sums, but he never received a penny. I’m afraid their relations were very embittered towards the end.’

Leaming paused for comment, but Gently contented himself with another smoke-ring.

‘It got so far that Mr Huysmann threatened to cut Peter out of his will and I believe he meant to do it, if he’d had time, though between you and me it would have been a gross injustice. Apart from his temper — and he inherited that from his father — there was nothing vicious in Peter at all. He’s a very likeable lad, with a lot of initiative and any amount of guts. He’d have made a very worthy successor in the firm.’

‘And you don’t think he did it?’ queried Gently dreamily.

‘I’m positive he didn’t! I’ve known him for ten years and intimately for eight — saw him every day, had him up to spend the evening, often. I’ll tell you something more. If you get this lad and try to pin the murder on him, I’ll brief the best counsel in England for his defence, cost what it may.’

‘It will cost several thousand,’ said Gently, helpfully.

Leaming ignored the remark. He breathed smoke through his nose under high pressure. ‘I take it that Peter is your guess as well as theirs?’ he demanded.

‘My guessing is still in the elementary stage.’

‘Well, I could see clearly enough what Inspector Hansom thought about it.’

‘Inspector Hansom is a simple soul.’

Leaming’s powerful brown eyes sought out Gently’s absent green ones. ‘Then you don’t think he did it — you’re on my side in this?’

Gently’s smile was as distant as the pyramids. ‘I’m not on anybody’s side,’ he said, ‘I’m just here on holiday.’

‘But you’re assisting on the case? Look here, Inspector, I’ve been thinking this thing over. There’s one thing that’s going to tell a lot in Peter’s favour. It’s the money.’

Gently nodded one of his slow mandarin nods.

‘There was forty-two thousand pounds in that safe, more or less, and they won’t find it with Peter.’

‘Why?’ asked Gently brightly.

‘Why? Because he didn’t do the murder, that’s why. And as soon as some of those notes that are listed start turning up, it’ll be proof positive that the real murderer is still at large.’

Gently surveyed the burnt-down stub of his cigarette thoughtfully, moved over to the chest and stubbed it against the massive iron clasp. Then he raised the lid and dropped the end inside. ‘It might work out if themurderer started on the right side of the forty-two thousand,’ he said, ‘but then again, he might start in the middle…’ And he let the lid fall back with a bang.

Leaming stood, feet apart, watching him closely. ‘At least it’s a good lead,’ he said.

Gently sighed. ‘Police work is full of leads. It’s the tragedy of routine… and ninety-nine per cent of them lead nowhere.’ He came back from the chest. ‘If you’re going back to the city I could use a lift,’ he said.

Leaming dropped him off at Castle Paddock. Gently shambled away, head bent, following the crescent wall at the foot of the Castle Hill, the patriarchal features of the Norman keep silent and peaceful in the dark sky above. From the other side of the Hill rose the glow and the feverish cacophony of the fair. Clark, the owner of the Wall of Death, had tempted back one of his ex-riders. The Greatest Show on Earth continued to do business…

In a quieter corner of the fairground Peter Huysmann’s young wife stood near the door of her tiny cosmos, biting her lips to keep back tears of humiliation and helplessness. Inside were the policemen. With religious thoroughness they were dismembering and examining her private, familiar things. ‘Look,’ said a constable, holding up a cheap little necklet that Peter had bought her on her twenty-first birthday, ‘wasn’t there something like this on the list of stolen properties today?’

Gently came to Orton Place, where a great sunken gap, used as a car park, still offered mute witness of the Baedeker Raids of ten years back. On two sides of the gap blazed the windows of large stores, risen phoenix-wise. But the gap remained a gap. The streets about it were thronged with Saturday-night crowds, gay, noisy, unconscious that somewhere amongst them was a man for whom they were terrible, who feared their slightest glance, who had the mortal horror on him of being seized and dragged to their machine of death. And amongst them too went the hunters, the takers, the accusers, those to whom the killing of Peter Huysmann meant preferment. But they were unconscious of this as of the gap. Habit had staled them both. And after all, someone had done for old Huysmann… hadn’t they?