Gently Instrumental

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Nobody liked him, just the same.’

  ‘He was tolerated because of Mr Hozeley.’

  She stubbed the hassock. ‘More or less. Though naturally, we tried to keep things smooth.’

  ‘I can imagine the doctor viewing him with detachment.’

  ‘Oh yes . . . Uncle Henry. Terry was a clinical case to him, he rather enjoyed having him around.’ She punished the hassock. ‘Tom couldn’t stand him, and I found it hard to be polite. Leonard did his best, but even he had to make a stand on Tuesday.’

  ‘Before that he’d tried to ingratiate Virtue?’

  She frowned and toyed with the prayer book. ‘Leonard’s a gentleman, of course, he’s nice to everyone. But sometimes I felt he went too far.’

  Gently said smoothly: ‘Virtue was homosexual. He probably needed an effusive approach. More as though he were a girl than a man. Isn’t that the sort of thing you mean?’

  ‘Yes – that’s precisely it! I expect that’s why it seemed overdone.’

  ‘Mr Meares may have judged more shrewdly than yourself.’

  ‘He saw Terry as a girl . . . yes, that would explain it.’ She sat prodding the hassock yet further, her eyes wide and suddenly absent. The prayer book, a limp-covered edition, was curled almost double in her grasp.

  ‘And Terry . . . he’d react like a girl with anyone.’

  ‘The doctor believes he was bisexual.’

  ‘I mean, if he met another young man he’d be attracted and might make a pass.’

  Gently paused. ‘Do you know such a person?’

  ‘No . . . I was thinking of a joke of Leonard’s. Once, when Terry and Walt weren’t hitting it off, Leonard said they must have quarrelled about the gardener. Everyone laughed, including me. But I didn’t really get the point at the time.’

  ‘The gardener – David Crag?’

  ‘Yes, young Dave. Oh, but Leonard wasn’t being serious! They were always joking about Terry and Walt – and waiters and choir boys. You know.’

  ‘A form of wit that appealed to Mr Meares.’

  ‘Well . . . Leonard does have a dry sense of humour.’ She reddened. ‘He – he can be whimsical. But there’s never any offence in it.’

  ‘And – on Tuesday – there was joking of this sort?’

  ‘Good lord no.’ Her chin came up. ‘Nobody was joking then, I can tell you. It was plain from the start that something was up.’

  ‘A tense atmosphere . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Brought at last to a head by Mr Meares.’

  ‘Yes – someone had to say something! And Uncle Henry wasn’t taking the lead.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Hazlewood.’

  She stared in surprise. ‘I can go now?’

  ‘You may go.’

  She hesitated, then rose clumsily, fumbling the prayer book back on its shelf. The loudspeakers chose that moment to boom and behind the memorial someone coughed.

  They picked their way down the cluttered church and emerged into the shade of the limes. While they were absent a banner had gone up: Moura Lympany plays Beethoven. Beyond the church stretched a park-like graveyard uniformly set with grey, pointed-topped gravestones. They stood in ranks like old grey men, facing east and the curtain of sea.

  ‘Wait,’ Gently said.

  They waited. Footsteps approached from the church. William Crag, his round face shining, angrily placed himself in front of them.

  ‘Now – my gentlemen!’

  Gently gazed at him. ‘Were you able to hear what was said . . . ?’

  ‘Never mind about that! I’m the verger here, I’ve a right to know what goes on in my church. I want a word with you two gentlemen.’

  ‘This seems as cool a spot as any.’

  ‘Yes, and with as many long ears wagging! My business is private, even if yours isn’t.’

  He jerked his head for them to follow and stumped off round the church. At the east end, now in shade, grew two hollies with ripening berries. Crag tramped on to peer round the corner, then returned to the shade of the hollies: a humpty, sturdy figure, clad in black trousers and a twill shirt.

  ‘Now there’s three things I’m going to tell you, and the first is this here.’

  The face turned towards them was oddly medieval with its deep upper lip and broad, round chin.

  ‘That was a lie about my boy – an evil lie by an evil mind! There’s been none of that sort of game with Dave, and I shall tell Mr Meares so to his face. And how do I know?’ His curved eyebrows wrinkled high over staring, flat-grey eyes. ‘I know because I used to work for Mr Hozeley, and I trusted him with Dave because I knew I could trust him!’

  Gently winnowed the air with his hat. ‘That doesn’t apply to Mr Hozeley’s late guest.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to apply to him. Dave scarcely clapped eyes on him, all the time he was there. That young devil never rose before noon, when Dave was away to his lunch, and after that they were either playing music or off out in the car, and that most of the time.’ He spat with feeling. ‘It’s a wicked lie, and that’s the first thing I have to say.’

  ‘What’s the second thing?’

  ‘I’m coming to it.’ He turned his moonish face on

  Leyston. ‘The second is this. I won’t have my boy being bullied and upset by any policemen.’

  Leyston’s face was hot. ‘Who says he was bullied?’

  ‘Me – I’m saying it.’ Crag’s chin jutted out. ‘He was well-nigh in tears when he came in to lunch, you calling him a liar and the rest.’

  ‘But I didn’t call him a liar.’

  ‘No – not you.’

  ‘Now you listen to me!’ Leyston snapped. ‘I don’t care if your boy’s the Archbishop, I’m going to find out if he’s telling me the truth.’

  ‘Dave isn’t a liar.’

  ‘That’s what you say!’

  ‘And aren’t I the one who knows?’ Crag demanded. ‘Wasn’t it me who brought him up from a shaver, after he lost his daddy at sea?’ His large mouth tightened for an instant. ‘So I know – I’m telling you,’ he said. ‘Dave is a decent, God-fearing boy, not like most of the young devils these days. He’s straight. If he tells you something you can rely on it for gospel-truth. And if he says he saw a man on Monday, then he saw him, and that’s that.’

  ‘So why couldn’t he pick out his picture?’ Leyston growled.

  ‘Because you never showed it to him – that’s why! And if you’d half the brains you were born with you’d be out now looking for someone else.’

  ‘Just on his word.’

  ‘That’s all you need.’

  Leyston snorted his disbelief. He stood staring hard-eyed at the obstinate face that stared so uncompromisingly into his.

  ‘And the third thing . . . ?’ Gently murmured.

  ‘Yes – the third thing,’ Crag said. He broke off his seance with Leyston to dart quick glances right and left. He drew closer to Gently. ‘Now me, I’m not a vindictive man,’ he said. ‘Strict I may be – I’m ready to admit it – but nobody ever called me vindictive.’ He paused to stare the point home. ‘But that was a wicked thing to say about Davey! I should never have thought it of Mr Meares, who always gives the impression of an upright man. He comes to service here – has a regular pew – always a pound note on the plate! But there you are. There’s whited sepulchres in Shinglebourne, like other places.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying this here.’ His eyes were staring like two grey pebbles. ‘Next time you see him, ask Mr Meares what he was doing down the shingle denes on Saturday.’

  Leyston grunted disgust. ‘We know what he’d be doing! He goes down there to watch the birds.’

  ‘And right you are – so just you ask him what birds he was watching on Saturday!’ Crag eased back, his eyes glinting. ‘About three o’clock time,’ he said. ‘I was walking my dog round the old tower, and you can see plenty from up there.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘I saw
him. He was strolling along under the denes – got his glasses round his neck, and upping them every so often. So then he comes to a standstill, and this time he isn’t upping his glasses – because why? Because he’s just met someone who’s stepped out from amongst the marrams.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The one you’re here about.’

  ‘Virtue?’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. Nor I didn’t need any glasses to see it was him. Wearing a poncy shirt he was, and a pair of drawers only halfway decent – he’d been lying down among the marrams, I reckon, and just got up when he saw Mr Meares.’

  ‘You’re making this up!’ Leyston snapped.

  Crag eyed him fiercely. ‘Don’t you come it – not with me, in my own churchyard. What I’m telling you is what I saw.’

  ‘Go on,’ Gently said.

  ‘Then they had a palaver,’ Crag said. ‘Mr Meares standing there like he’d taken root, and this limb of Satan prancing round him. Oh, I could see what he was up to, even a couple of hundred yards off. Then they went behind the marrams and didn’t come out. And I came away.’

  ‘Was nobody else there?’

  ‘Not that I saw. And I could see a fair distance.’

  ‘There’d be racing going on!’ Leyston fumed. ‘There’d be dozens of people down there.’

  ‘No there wasn’t. Not on the denes.’

  ‘You’re trying to make something out of nothing!’

  Crag took a step backwards and gazed at the local man with contempt that was monumental. ‘So you ask him, my gentleman,’ he said. ‘You state the time and the place, and ask him. Say you’ve got a witness who was up at the tower and saw what happened, and ask him. Never mind what you think of me, just you get Mr Meares – and ask him.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Gently said. ‘We’ll probably do that.’

  ‘And it better hadn’t be a fairy tale!’ Leyston snarled.

  Crag looked him up and down then spat into the hollies. He stumped away round the church.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LEYSTON’S EYES POPPED after the retreating figure.

  ‘That was all a con, sir!’ he burst out.

  Gently, stuffing his pipe with Erinmore, shrugged and looked round for a seat. He found one: an ancient tombstone from which the inscription had long been erased. Tiny blue butterflies danced near it, their colours seeming faded by the heat.

  ‘Weren’t you saying that Crag wouldn’t stoop to it?’

  ‘So I was wrong, sir. He’s as bad as the rest.’

  ‘Then it could have been he who inspired his grandson’s story.’

  Leyston glowered between his sideboards, his mouth small.

  Gently lit up and blew smoke at the butterflies, who gave ground but continued their waltzing. ‘I think perhaps you were right the first time. Crag may be a hypocrite, but I doubt if he’s a liar.’

  ‘But he was twisting it – it could all have been innocent.’

  ‘I thought his account was fairly objective.’

  ‘They might just have gone off to look at something – perhaps Virtue was showing him a nest.’

  ‘At the back end of August?’

  ‘Well . . . I don’t know, sir!’

  Leyston plumped down on the other end of the tombstone. He sat, forlorn in his waistcoat, gazing at the dust on his black shoes.

  Gently shaped a smoke-ring. ‘Our cello gives a twang whenever we touch him . . . he’s in tune. The rest of the ensemble are merely putting up a discord.’

  ‘Sir . . . ?’

  ‘It’s a matter of motive, of someone wanting Virtue dead. Not beaten up and run out of town, but dead and silent – like this tombstone.’ He rapped it with his knuckles. ‘Meares is our candidate. Every note from him rings true.’

  Leyston heeled the dust, ‘There’s still Hozeley. He had a personal motive too.’

  ‘Not for killing. Virtue’s talent would always protect him with Hozeley.’

  ‘The doctor, then.’

  ‘He’s too clever.’

  ‘He could have set on Friday, sir.’

  ‘He’d have been too clever for that too. And Friday would never have picked up a flint.’

  Leyston dug more dust. ‘Then . . . we get him?’

  Gently nodded through his smoke. ‘A chat in your office to begin with. We can take it from there.’

  ‘What shall I tell him, sir?’

  Gently puffed. ‘That I’ve got some queries about his statement.’ He slid Leyston a look. ‘And get some men on the ground looking for corroboration of Crag’s story. Was there racing on Saturday, by the way?’

  Leyston swallowed. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then you’ll know where to start. We want the full orchestra. There’s no room for a slip-up on this one.’

  Someone had dug up an old fan, an antique in its own right, and stood it on a filing cabinet to provide the office with an illusion of coolness. It clicked and creaked arthritically as it tilted on its axis and, perversely, seemed to accentuate the sooty smell in the room. In the corner, a WPC sat grinding pencils in a sharpener. Through the sash window, jammed up with a ruler, one could hear cars passing below. And one was conscious of footfalls in the passage, doors closing, muffled voices and, from the MT yard at the rear, sounds of an engine being revved. Familiar sounds in a familiar setting: and building up to a familiar moment.

  ‘This way, sir.’

  His elbows on the desk, Gently watched Meares come through the door. The entry was casual, perhaps too casual, and the glance round the office too-carefully controlled. But he advanced with confidence.

  ‘Chief Superintendent Gently . . . ?’

  He was a dark-haired man of forty-five, with brown eyes, a sallow complexion and shapely, square-cut features. About five feet ten, he wore a light worsted two-piece and a cream shirt, open at the neck.

  ‘You have some business with me?’

  ‘Please sit down.’

  His manner was pitched between friendly and curt. The moustache was a clipped toothbrush, exactly complementing his face.

  ‘I would take it as a favour if you could keep this short. Because of holidays I’m short of staff.’

  ‘Naturally, Mr Meares.’

  ‘It involves extra appointments . . . shall I sit here?’

  ‘Please do.’

  The chair had been placed in the centre of the floor, facing the desk and the window. Meares took no notice of its prominent position but sat readily, as though keen to get on. His eye strayed momentarily to the stenographer, who had turned over a leaf of her pad; then he folded his hands attentively. Over by the door, Leyston took a chair.

  ‘Just a few points of confirmation.’ Gently’s tone was studiedly neutral. ‘We’re trying to form a picture of the deceased . . . who he knew, how he spent his time.’

  Meares nodded shortly. ‘I understand.’

  ‘You were friends with him, I believe.’

  ‘I . . . wouldn’t put it as strongly as that. We had limited contact at rehearsals.’

  ‘But you were more friendly than most?’

  ‘No. I can’t accept that.’

  ‘You made a point of including him in conversation – buying him drinks, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well . . . !’ Meares flickered a smile. ‘He was never very popular with the Quartet. But Walt insisted on having him in, so we couldn’t very well send him to Coventry.’

  ‘You did your best with an awkward customer.’

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘Who – because of his inversion – needed special handling?’

  ‘It . . . wasn’t a factor one could overlook.’

  Gently gestured carelessly. ‘Though of course, with that sort, there’s always the danger of being misunderstood. They are used to being repulsed, so that any show of friendliness is likely to encourage them. It might also look suspicious to other people. But that was a risk you had to take.’

  Meares’s hands changed position slightly. ‘Has some
suggestion like that been made?’

  ‘No . . . nothing, really! It’s much the same wherever homosexuals are involved. They tend to arouse hostility and exaggerated suspicions. It’s enough to drink with one, to be seen in his company, to set a dozen tongues wagging.’

  Meares hesitated. ‘Then . . . that would account for any idle talk that’s gone about. Certainly I bought him an occasional drink and tried to treat him as a human being.’

  ‘In a way you’d feel sorry for him.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘He was not to blame for his nature.’

  Meares said carefully: ‘I believe it is accepted that such a condition is involuntary.’

  ‘And meanwhile, apart from that, Virtue was quite a likeable fellow. He was, for example, a well-favoured young man whom it was not displeasing to have around.’

  ‘In a way . . . that was true.’

  ‘He was slim, and graceful.’

  ‘There was nothing clumsy about him.’

  ‘A caressing, affectionate manner.’

  Meares moved his head in brief assent.

  ‘But . . . except at rehearsals . . . you saw little of him?’

  Meares considered the point politely. ‘Other than passing him in the street, I think I only saw him at Walt’s cottage.’

  ‘You saw him there?’

  ‘I could scarcely avoid it. The initial rehearsals took place at the cottage. Walt first showed the Quintet to Dr Capel and myself and then we rehearsed it while Walt made revisions.’

  ‘So you became a familiar visitor at the cottage?’

  ‘To a certain extent, yes.’

  ‘You would see Virtue there on a more social basis?’

  ‘The setting was less formal than the Music Room.’

  ‘But otherwise . . . only when passing.’

  Meares’s hands changed position again. ‘Actually, that was quite rarely, because of his special relationship with Walt. In so many words, Walt was jealous. He did his best to keep Terry to himself. It was a policy which Terry found irksome, and which I’m certain led to the trouble on Tuesday.’

  Gently nodded. ‘Terry was bidding for independence.’

  ‘Yes. He wanted to break free from Walt. As I read it he intended to leave the cottage and set up by himself somewhere else.’