Gently Instrumental

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Very briefly.’

  ‘You may have formed an opinion. Dotty Meares has a destructive personality.’ He took a clinical pull. ‘That’s what’s at the bottom of it, Leonard making himself an ass over Virtue. He’s thick with Laurel, but Laurel was too obvious. Dotty wouldn’t have any suspicions about Virtue.’

  ‘Meares not being a chronic homosexual.’

  ‘No more than I am,’ Capel said. ‘There’s a streak in most of us – repressed childhood experiences – but it only surfaces in rare cases. Leonard’s was one of them. He was emotionally obstructed and prepared to accept the female in Virtue. Realization was traumatic, of course. I would pronounce Leonard cured for life.’

  ‘Did he consult you about that?’

  Capel shook his head. ‘Too shamefaced. He told me about it first on Wednesday, to explain what he was doing at the cottage. I suppose it doesn’t matter now, but he was going to give Virtue his deserts, and then brazen it out. Lucky he didn’t – he might have damaged those precious hands.’

  ‘Instead, his nerves were damaged.’

  Capel laughed. ‘He’ll get over that. I’ll have a session with him this evening, and then he’ll be playing like a bird.’ With one hand he mimed the bowing of a cellist. ‘Leonard can play in his sleep, you know.’

  ‘Tell me what he told you,’ Gently said.

  Capel plucked imaginary strings. ‘Skipping the overture and first act, he told me he followed Virtue to the cottage. It was nearly dark and he met nobody. As he turned into the lane he heard voices – angry voices. He recognized Craggy’s citing Sodom and Gomorrah and calling down brimstone. Then he heard the stick whopping and, when he got closer, could see Craggy whacking at Virtue’s backside. That was all bunce as far as Leonard was concerned, so he stayed clear and let Craggy get on with it.’ Capel twanged a single note. ‘Virtue grabbed the flint and screamed that he’d smash in Craggy’s bald head. Craggy dodged a bit, then reversed the stick and let Virtue have it as he was coming in.’

  ‘And what was Meares doing just then?’

  Capel drank slowly, tasting the lager. ‘I should think it happened rather quickly, with old Leonard simply goggling. He’s not a man of violence, you know. It would take him a moment to weigh up what he was seeing.’

  ‘How many blows were struck with the knob-end?’

  ‘Just the one. It was enough. Either Virtue had a very thin skull, or there was more in the stick than met the eye.’

  Gently drank. ‘It was loaded.’

  ‘Ah, that accounts for it,’ Capel said, interestedly.

  ‘Was the skull much damaged?’

  ‘Left parietal. A medium depressed fracture.’

  Capel nodded. ‘Probably a thin skull anyway.’

  ‘That was noted in the report.’

  Capel caressed a few strings. ‘So that was it, then.

  One tap was enough to kill. Old Craggy stood thunderstruck when Virtue went down and never moved another muscle.’

  ‘What did Crag do?’

  ‘Oh, the usual. Crag isn’t a doctor’s gardener for nothing. He felt for his heart and pulse but found neither. Virtue was gone.’

  ‘And then Crag took off.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you have done?’ Capel stared squarely at Gently. ‘No – perhaps you wouldn’t. But you’re a policeman with authority and the law behind you.’ He drank. ‘Yes, Crag took off – and I, for one, don’t blame him. He hadn’t spotted Leonard, which is the reason why he shopped him yesterday without inhibition. Leonard was in shock. He pulled himself together sufficiently to check that the corpse was a corpse, then he departed as fast as old Crag – realizing, of course, that he was Number One suspect.’

  Gently nodded. ‘And later came and told you.’

  ‘Well, he could scarcely discuss it with his wife!’

  ‘He asked your advice.’

  Capel gestured with his glass. ‘I have known Leonard for a very long time. We talked it out. He was quite frank. It was plain that Crag hadn’t meant to kill Virtue. And it was plain that Leonard would be in big trouble if he reported what he’d seen, and had to account for being there. Meanwhile, I didn’t want to lose a good gardener or jeopardise the performance of the Quintet, so my advice to him was what you’d expect: clam up and keep a low profile. It was done and could not be undone. What he had to do was to limit the consequences.’

  Gently drank. ‘And the result of your advice is that Meares has been partly destroyed.’

  ‘Oh, come on now!’ Capel smiled. ‘Old Leonard knows how to take a punch.’

  Gently stared at the garden. ‘Meares has been interrogated. His will has been systematically broken. His personality has been disorientated. He will never be quite the same person again. And he will blame you. If you’d let him tell the truth he might have rolled with the punch and stayed intact.’

  ‘You don’t know Leonard,’ Capel smiled.

  ‘Better than you,’ Gently said.

  ‘Well, you don’t know something else,’ Capel smiled. ‘Today Leonard’s wife upped and left him.’

  Gently went still. ‘When was this . . . ?’

  ‘While you were still busy with his personality. The Virtue bit did the job. Dotty is suing for a divorce.’ His eyes glimmered. ‘That’s a counter-jolt. You knocked him one way, she’s knocked him another. His personality will be disorientated all right, but nothing I and my niece can’t handle.’

  Gently stared at his glass before drinking. ‘And you still think he’ll play for you tomorrow?’

  ‘Like a bird,’ Capel said. ‘Tanya’s had a word with him. The old boy is rocking, but he’s lucid. He’s in a whirl. He needs us, the performance, like a drowning man needs his straw. We’ve rehearsals right through, beginning tonight, and I’ll be talking to him by the yard.’ He checked. ‘You won’t need him tomorrow, will you?’

  ‘Naturally we shall need an amended statement.’

  ‘But not tomorrow!’ Capel rocked his shoulders. ‘We’ve got to keep him on a cloud till Sunday.’

  ‘After which he can go to pieces?’ Gently said.

  ‘Well, of course, there’s going to be a reaction.

  But it’ll be all the better for him if it’s delayed and he’s got the performance under his belt.’

  Gently nodded to his glass. He tipped and drained it. Somebody coughed in the other room; then came the squeak of the clarinet, followed by laughter from Tanya Capel.

  ‘It’s the performance that’s always mattered . . . isn’t it?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you that from the start?’ Capel hitched forward eagerly and brandished his empty glass at Gently. ‘When the chips are down we’re all expendable – Virtue, Craggy, even Walt. We have our entrances and exits but music is for ever. Music is life, and sanity. My goodness, we need it in our world. Music is hope. While we keep creating it civilization has a chance.’

  ‘And with those laudable principles in view you were prepared to keep me guessing.’

  Capel sat back, grinning. ‘Well, I was prepared to have a try!’

  ‘As for example last night.’

  ‘Yes – last night.’ He gave the glass a delicate ting. ‘What you don’t know is that Craggy suffered remorse after he’d blown the gaff to you about Leonard. He came to tell me, and incidentally made a clean breast while he was at it. So I had chapter and verse for my reconstruction. What Leonard didn’t tell me, Craggy did.’

  ‘And of course, you advised him to keep his mouth shut.’

  Capel made a face. ‘With my principles in view! And I have to admit it, I rather relished the prospect of playing a poker game with you.’

  ‘To the extent of slandering your charming wife?’

  ‘Hush!’ Capel mimed a guilty look over his shoulder. ‘There are some things one doesn’t tell the women – not even tolerant girls like Tanya.’

  Gently meditated on his glass, which had a sandblast frieze of dancing nymphs. Capel watched him with alert eyes; he was sitting drooped now, hands trail
ed.

  ‘With regard to Meares’s statement . . .’

  Capel said nothing. He kept his grey-hazel eyes on Gently.

  ‘I was assigned to the case by an assistant commissioner who likes his taste for the arts to be known. My unwritten brief was to lean over backwards to get Hozeley off the hook.’ Gently shrugged. ‘There’d be small point in that if by doing so I prevented his latest production. I daresay the assistant commissioner would give his approval to some little adjustment of routine.’

  ‘You beauty!’ Capel grinned. ‘Then Leonard can stay on his cloud?’

  ‘Tell him to call at the station on Monday. You may indicate to him that the pressure is off.’

  ‘Just leave it to me.’ Capel jumped up. ‘This means that you’ll be staying over the weekend?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Then here’s something for you that love may buy, but money can’t.’

  He went to a bureau and returned with a pink paste-board ticket. He handed it to Gently: it was a ticket for the morrow-night’s performance.

  ‘You’ll be next to Tanya if that’s all right – Leslie couldn’t get away.’ Capel frowned. ‘Ideally, of course, I ought to invite you to tonight’s rehearsal. But I’m afraid you are persona non grata with Leonard and one or two other people.’

  Gently grimaced. ‘A vocational hazard. And I’d sooner hear the Quintet in its proper setting.’

  ‘That will be best. Meanwhile I’ll harangue them on the impersonality of police interrogators.’

  Gently rose and went to the French doors. Scent of stocks and roses wafted to him. The sun was quite off the garden now and was reddening only the tops of the beeches. In the air was a definite softness, in the sky a definite blue. Capel, who’d come to stand by him, sniffed the air with expanded nostrils.

  ‘You know . . . at this stage of the game . . . one hardly likes to risk a forecast. But could it be?’

  Gently grunted. ‘Does the council know about your lawn?’

  And the rain came. First, as smoke-mist, whipped across the sky like dust. Then, as a pale nimbus, falling with no more weight than dew. Then, as darkness. Then, as drizzle, trying to wet the derisive earth. Then, as a Wagnerian voice and a flash of swords and a beating roar more loud than surf. Branches crashed; the pale earth blackened; streams appeared, drowning roads and streets. Cars crept to a halt to move no more and struggling figures vanished into doorways. Lights failed. Down at the harbour, not a yacht had a dry bunk. The telephone failed. A wall collapsed, blocking the road out to Saxton. And the rain flew and flew, the rain hissed on tile and tarmac, the rain bore down fences and trees and built up swashes of sand and mud. All evening it raged and into the night. In minutes it had done what armies could not. Black ash along the heath gushed plumes of white steam, fought on for moments, then died for ever. The fires were out, the funeral smoke banished, and in a corner of calm, the music played.

  So the drought was broken, though according to the experts it was due to return directly. It never did. An expert is a man who knows too much about too little.