Gently Between Tides

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Had she a car?’

  ‘No.’

  With a torch she must have come down that lonesome track, unlocking the little door across the footbridge to enter rooms probably unheated . . .

  The footbridge was closed by a padlocked gate, for which Leyston produced a key. When he had opened the door they went through the thickness of the wall into a short passage, then into a room. It was furnished as a lounge, with a tiny window piercing the wall towards the sea, and struck one at once with a chillness and a certain dank smell. Yet the furniture was bright and modern. On the walls were pictures, landscapes. A bookcase, standing awkwardly against the curvature of the wall, contained books on art and music along with paperback fiction. There was a music stand, and a violin lay with a bow on top of the bookcase. The room had gas lighting and a portable gas stove stood pushed into a corner.

  ‘Through here, there’s the bedroom.’

  It was a corner cut off by a dividing wall, a circular section with one straight side and a window even smaller than that in the lounge. A single bed had a bright, peasant-y bedspread, and a dressing-table and wardrobe huddled close together. Gently opened the latter: she’d gone in for print dresses and full skirts with embroidered hems.

  Other corners formed a kitchen, where she’d cooked on a pressure stove, and a toilet with a shower: at least the tower ran to plumbing.

  But everywhere was the dank chillness, reminiscent of a church. Steps led down to an empty basement, others to the flat roof.

  ‘Could you have lived here?’

  Gently shrugged and felt for his pipe. The silence of the rooms was tomb-like, the walls being at least six foot thick. Yet still there was a touch of gaiety about the place, bright covers, an amusing carpet: just a little exotic and un-English. Many of the books were in Czech.

  He picked up a framed photograph that stood on the bureau: it depicted the girl and, presumably, her father. He was slighter than she; had a bush of greying hair, but the same high cheekbones, though with a narrower jaw. His dark eyes were mischievous. He was wearing a summer shirt, she a print dress, showing off a fine figure.

  ‘Have you been through the bureau?’

  ‘She had some money tucked away, fifteen hundred in her current account. Then three thousand more in a building society. The letters are all from her father.’

  So she hadn’t been hard up.

  ‘What about the ex-husband?’

  ‘She was getting two hundred a month from him. I found his address in an address book, but all the other entries are London addresses.’

  ‘Show it to me.’

  Leyston produced it. In fact the entries were very few, and clearly belonging to an earlier period. Her father had a flat in Old Church Street.

  ‘Surely she had some friends about here.’

  Gently picked up the fiddle, and tried it. The sawing notes he produced sounded keenly in the vault-like stillness. Music on the stand was mazurkas, waltzes: you could imagine that room vibrant with music. And was it just for herself she had played, alone, evoking the gay rhythms of cafés and dance halls?

  A patient on Capel’s list . . . Capel, who ran the Shinglebourne Quartet . . .

  If she had had talent, wouldn’t Capel have welcomed her, drawing her into the musical society of the town?

  Leyston was staring about him gloomily, his eyes disapproving. He went to peer at a calendar, printed in Czechoslovakia and showing a street scene in Brno. She had been too foreign . . . And perhaps that was the nub of it. Or had Shinglebourne proved too English?

  ‘Let’s go. I want to talk to Capel.’

  Going out into the sun again was a relief, even though now it was wheeling low and preparing to slip into rising mist. Anglers were packing up and trailing over to their cars, but that was at the other end of the causeway. Here, the gulls had settled on the river, where they swam together as though holding a meeting.

  He dropped Leyston at the police station and drove on alone to Capel’s house. It was opposite the church, and three cars stood on the gravel sweep in front of it, beneath trees. Two had Doctor stickers; the third was Tanya Capel’s Rover. He parked beside them and rang the bell. Capel himself opened the door.

  ‘Come in, you old ruffian – I was afraid I was going to miss you!’

  Capel was a man who would stand out anywhere: six foot two, lean and angular, with a slanting forehead and a long straight nose. His bony hand gripped Gently’s numbingly, and his eyes creased with pleasure.

  ‘This is a social visit, of course.’

  He had known Gently in a different capacity: three years before he had played a game of bluff with him that Gently had won; but it had left no rancour.

  ‘I want to talk about an ex-patient.’

  ‘I might have guessed you’d come on business.’

  ‘Actually, I’m just lending a hand.’

  ‘Look, come and say hallo to Tanya.’

  Capel ushered him through to a drawing-room where Tanya Capel was seated beside a tea-tray. She rose smilingly to take Gently’s hand, then began pouring out the cups.

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t be very long. Henry’s been on pins since I gave him your message.’

  ‘I was called out to a snotty-nosed kid,’ Capel said. ‘His parents thought he had measles, but it was only a rash. That’s life as a sawbones.’

  ‘I saw another car . . .’

  ‘My son’s. We’ve become partners now, you know. I’ve shovelled off all the old ladies on to him, and all the pregnancies I can duck out of.’

  ‘He wants to meet your wife,’ Tanya Capel smiled. ‘And to tell the truth, so do I.’

  It was almost bewildering, this social warmth, after the sad chillness of the dead woman’s eyrie: two smiling people in a gracious room that during years had accepted the stamp of their personalities. The furniture was handsome but not new, ornaments had had time to settle into their groupings. In the background a gas fire, turned low, provided exactly the right touch of gentle comfort.

  ‘Gabrielle is in France but she will be down next weekend.’

  ‘Perhaps we could arrange – I don’t know! Does your wife like music, old lad?’

  ‘Music . . .?’

  ‘We could bring the quartet, which in point of fact is a quintet now. Leslie has taken up the clarinet, and even old Walt thinks he’s rather good. So we could give you Walt’s Beach Suite and Festival Quintet, and any amount of Mozart and Haydn. You’ve got a good room, have you?’

  ‘Yes, but—!’

  Gently had put at least one of that quartet through the mincer.

  ‘If you think our cello will baulk, forget it. Leonard tends to regard you more as a benefactor. His wife went through with that divorce, and last year he made Laurel Mrs Meares.’

  ‘Leonard is a different man,’ Tanya Capel said. ‘I think the shake-up was just what he needed. But do say yes. It could be a housewarming, then we could meet your wife and talk our heads off.’

  So it went on for twenty minutes, with cups emptied and recharged, until finally, with a long sigh, Capel said:

  ‘What was that about an ex-patient . . .?’

  He took Gently to his den, a room crowded with bookcases and looking out through french windows to the big garden. Briefly, Gently explained what had happened; Capel listened with grave eyes.

  ‘Hannah? Hannah Stoven?’

  ‘Did you know her well?’

  ‘Yes . . . sort of! Not very well, because nobody did. But heavens above . . . it’s a bit of a shocker.’ He folded his great frame into a chair. ‘You couldn’t be mistaken about the identity?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But who would do such a thing?’

  ‘Just before it, she had had intercourse.’

  ‘Oh, Lord!’

  Capel seemed much moved. He sat with arms dangling, gazing at nothing.

  ‘According to her father, she was a fine violinist.’

  ‘You have met him?’

  ‘I meet everyone. He came
to the Festival this year and had a chat with Walt and the rest of us. Hannah was with him. They worshipped each other. It’ll be a terrible blow for him. Does he know?’

  ‘He has been informed, but he’s in Edinburgh on an engagement.’

  ‘The poor devil, she was everything to him. Perhaps that was half the trouble.’

  ‘What trouble?’

  Capel shot him a look. ‘Nobody else could get close to her. At least, that was my impression.’

  ‘She came to you about her health?’

  ‘Oh, that was nothing, just a cessation in her periods – I suppose I can talk about it now without infringing confidentiality. I asked her flat out if she’d had intercourse and after a bit she admitted it. But don’t ask me who, that wasn’t the question. A false alarm, I may say.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘In the spring. But I had known her long before that. I met her and her ex-husband when they first came down here and bought the tower. It’s near the moorings. I pottered over to see what they were up to with it, then later on they bought the dinghy and became members of the club. I had a presentiment that they weren’t happy together. I wasn’t surprised to hear of the divorce.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘A dried-up sort of fellow, with nothing in him except his job – an architect, you know. Once the tower was completed, he lost interest in it. Hannah was different. You felt she had enthusiasm, even passion, but as though it were blocked. Though with her father she was another person – they babbled Czech together like a couple of songbirds.’

  ‘Would you describe her as friendly?’

  ‘I suppose so. She took on the club accounts for us. She was trained as a book-keeper and worked part-time for Stan Claydon, our local bookseller. But you could never get near her. After I’d talked to her father I invited her to join us as a third violin, thinking it would get her into the swim and take her out of herself a bit. She just smiled in a distant sort of way and said she wasn’t good enough for that, and nothing I could say would persuade her to have a go.’ Capel studied his hands. ‘Frankly, it amazed me to learn that she had a lover. I was eaten up with curiosity, but of course I couldn’t ask her who it was.’ He glanced at Gently. ‘Is it him you’re after?’

  Gently stared back. ‘Have you any suggestions?’

  Capel rocked his shoulders. ‘Not a suggestion exactly, just a shred of probably useless information. Two or three times when I’ve been sailing I’ve seen her dinghy moored at Harford, and always in the same place, alongside a black-painted yacht.’

  ‘Do you know who owns it?’

  Capel spread his hands. ‘But I’ve seen the fellow sailing it. A fair-haired type, a bit of a dude. Sails with a plump lady who looks formidable.’

  ‘What’s the name of the yacht?’

  ‘Ah. It’s either Jacqueline or Jacquinetta.’

  ‘Have you ever seen Mrs Stoven sailing with them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘May I use your phone?’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  Leyston didn’t know who the owner was either, but he promised to find out. And he had his own little titbit to add: according to the post office, the blurred postmark on the letter might also have originated at Harford.

  ‘Could it be the same man?’

  ‘That’s possible. Dig him up as fast as you can.’

  Gently hung up thoughtfully. A neat conjunction, but there could be no jumping to conclusions. Pottering around in her dinghy, Hannah Stoven might well have picked up an acquaintance with some innocent couple. But the handwriting? The nickname ‘Chick’? Well, some time he’d track that down . . .

  Capel, who’d sauntered down to stare through the window, now came back to his chair.

  ‘Look here! I hope I haven’t put the finger on some honest soul who barely knew her.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘We’ll be discreet! Tell me about her acquaintance at the yacht club.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know.’ Capel looked ruffled. ‘With you, I can see I must watch my step. Actually, you could say I shaped like a suspect, because I’ve bought her a drink there myself. But so have Leonard and Tom Friday, not to mention the gallant Groupie.’

  ‘Group Captain Riddlesworth?’

  ‘You’re on to him, are you? Then let me give you a small tip! Don’t mention Lancasters to him. He flew in Halifaxes, and thinks that Lancs have stolen all the glamour.’ Capel grimaced. ‘He steers clear of me, but there’s nothing personal in it. After all he must have gone through, he can’t feel cheerful in the company of doctors.’

  ‘What did he go through?’

  ‘You’ve seen his face? It was half blown-off by a cannon-shell. All the same he brought his kite back, shot to bits, with the crew dead or dying. Decorated, of course. It was nearly a year before they managed to rebuild his face.’

  ‘And he was friendly with Hannah . . .?’

  ‘I can see your nose twitching, but I’m pretty certain there was nothing in it. Perhaps just an exchange of mutual sympathy, since they were both casualties, in a sort of way. Injuries like Groupie’s are traumatic. He has to live with a face that people stare at. Luckily he was married before it happened, so his life has been fairly normal that way – three children, two of them married, the youngest still a student. His wife is a neat-faced little woman, one hundred per cent officer’s daughter.’ Capel paused. ‘Perhaps just because of that he would feel the abnormal side accentuated, that he was a man set aside by his face, a face that shocks and fails to express him. And behind that again his memories, recurrent nightmares that can’t be shared.’

  He massaged his bony hands and glanced sidelong at Gently. It was impossible to say if he felt sorry for Riddlesworth or was merely fascinated by him as a psychological type.

  ‘And you regard Hannah as a casualty too?’

  ‘A political victim, you could call her. She was twelve when her father defected and her life was torn up by the roots. Her mother was dead, she spoke no English, was alone with her father in a strange country. Stoven was around fifteen years older than her, and she probably chose him as a father-figure. But it didn’t work out. In the end, it stayed her father and her, and self-chosen isolation.’

  ‘Yet she was attractive.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Capel went on massaging his hands.

  ‘Was Mrs Riddlesworth friendly with her?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, because Sue Riddlesworth didn’t frequent the club.’

  ‘Riddlesworth bought Hannah drinks. What else?’

  ‘I believe she sailed with him a couple of times – just Sunday afternoons on the river. Nothing you can read into that.’

  ‘Had she sailed with other people?’

  Capel shrugged. ‘Anyway, it happened last summer.’

  ‘You never saw them together except at the club?’

  Capel merely spread his hands.

  And probably in fact it had gone no further: simply two lonely people recognizing each other. In a distant way, kindred spirits, but the way too distant to admit of development.

  ‘And he was her only special friend.’

  ‘I’m not sure I would put it even so high. No doubt if you ask him he will tell you much the same things about me. I tried to chat her up too, and to inveigle her into my clutches.’ Capel grinned. ‘Luckily, I have an alibi. Alibis are one thing a doctor is flush with.’

  ‘What about this bookseller, her employer?’

  ‘I’ve seen her out with him on one occasion. That was at the White Hart, during this year’s Festival, when she was waiting for her father. Stan was dining there, and joined her in the bar, doubtless to discuss some matter of business.’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘Oh, dear! Stan really is a most unlikely customer. He’s a little bespectacled man, about fifty, always worried about his business. Haven’t you talked to him?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘He’s a client, so I ought not to be discussing him. Yes, he’s
married, and his wife is an invalid who has a housekeeper-companion to look after her.’ Capel sighed. ‘Just between ourselves, she’s one of the patients I’ve unloaded on Leslie.’

  ‘An imaginary invalid?’

  Capel touched his large nose. ‘That has to remain between me and Hippocrates.’

  Was he really making progress, or merely going through the routine of stopping earths? The more Gently probed the imaginable prospects, the more improbable they seemed to get. Yet someone, somewhere, had pierced the reserve that Hannah Stoven had cast about herself: as early as that spring she had been worried enough to come to Capel for a test. And yesterday . . . by land or by water . . . that someone had joined her again: she had gone to meet him, he hadn’t come to the tower: he was obviously a secret that must be kept.

  Because of his reputation, or hers?

  Or just because her reserve insisted on complete discretion?

  The doorbell rang, and Capel was instantly on the alert. But a moment later it was Leyston’s long face that peered round the door.

  If I could speak to you . . . sir.’

  Gently rose.

  ‘Shall we be seeing you again?’ Capel asked. ‘How about a bite later on? Then I could introduce you to Leslie.’

  ‘I can’t promise.’

  ‘Give me a ring if you like the idea of a spot of music.’

  He accompanied them to the door, and winked at Gently behind Leyston’s back. Old Mutton-chops! At a window, Tanya Capel waved a goodbye.

  They got into Gently’s car.

  ‘Harford have identified the yacht,’ Leyston said. ‘The Jacquetta. It’s the only black yacht that moors at Harford. It belongs to the husband of a local licensee.’

  ‘The husband?’

  ‘She owns the Eel’s Foot. It’s a free house with a bit of a restaurant. The people’s name is Shavers.’

  ‘Shavers! Are you sure of that?’

  Leyston chose to look offended.

  ‘Is it a Donald Shavers?’

  ‘Harford didn’t say. He was out when I rang. His wife said he was probably at the boatyard putting the winter cover on his boat.’

  Shavers: it was the name Gently had been angling for ever since he had seen the note from the handbag. Donald ‘Chick’ Shavers was a minor villain who had come his way five years before. There had been a shooting in an Acton warehouse used by a cannabis-smuggling ring, as a result of which Narcotics had swooped and cleaned up the whole operation. Shavers had been a suspect for the shooting, but had come off with three years on a handling charge. Fair-haired and a bit of a dude: yes, that described Donald ‘Chick’ Shavers. And he had covered sheets of statement paper with that identical, swaggering handwriting . . .