Gently with the Innocents

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Yes, sir. Though I’m pretty sure there’s nothing known about it.’

  ‘Who’ll have the deeds?’

  Gissing thought. ‘I believe Howard and Patch are the lawyers.’

  He ignored the beleaguered front of the house and led Gently into the warehouse yard. The house apparently shared the yard because it was separated by no fence. A side-door opened directly into it, then came an outwork with grass-choked gutters, then an open-sided shed almost full of junk, and finally a high garden wall.

  ‘That’s the footway to Thingoe Road.’

  A dim passage led away past the wall of the warehouse. Half a dozen kids who’d been chasing in the passage now clustered at the entry, watching the two policemen.

  ‘A right of way?’

  ‘Yes. That fellow’s Colkett.’

  A hard-framed man wearing a baize apron stood at the warehouse door, also watching.

  ‘Did he see anything?’

  ‘No. He packs up there at half-past five.’

  ‘Did you talk to the kids?’

  ‘One or two of them. But by then they’d all gone home.’

  And that was that. By eight p.m. there would be nobody left in Frenze Street – perhaps not even a parked car farther down, at the town end. Just the old man living alone in his old, decaying house. With a door which, according to his nephew, didn’t even possess a bolt.

  And in one of his drawers, a fabulous medal. Why hadn’t the murderer made a search?

  ‘That door – the one that didn’t lock – has it been secured since?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We put a padlock on it.’

  ‘Which is it?’

  ‘This way, sir.’

  Gissing led him into the open-sided shed, skirting several piles of rubbish. It was dank inside, and ferns grew on the house wall where rain dripped on it from the shed roof. Gissing struck a match. It revealed a cottage-type door with a simple latch-handle, but now fitted with a sturdy padlock which looked some centuries out of place.

  Gissing unlocked it and pushed open the door. They went into a sort of hall or passage. At one end was a rusty gas-cooker and another door, which simply pushed open.

  ‘The kitchen . . . I’d say he mostly lived in here.’

  ‘What did he do about lights?’

  ‘This . . . I reckon.’

  Gissing pointed to a hurricane-lamp that stood on a concrete draining-slab near the door.

  ‘Well – light it.’

  The lamp made a squealing as Gissing hooked up the globe. A moment later its yellow light dimly showed them the low-ceilinged room.

  A table, two deal chairs, a grandfather chair by the old hobbed hearth. On the worn brick floor a strip of coconut matting. A brown-painted dresser with some bits of crockery. In one corner a door stood ajar to reveal twisty, naked backstairs. A third door led to an adjacent room. A fourth into a passage.

  ‘Not much comfort in here.’

  Only where the grandfather chair stood. The rest would be a wilderness of draughts, torturing the rheumatism in old bones.

  ‘I reckon you’d need to be cracked, sir.’

  Alone, with the winter nights passing. By a small fire with a dim light. The other one gone. Alone.

  ‘Had he any money?’

  ‘A few hundred quid, sir. All invested with a housing society.’

  ‘And the medal.’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t know its value.’

  Or perhaps he didn’t care. There was nothing left to buy.

  ‘Let’s see where you found him.’

  Gissing took him down the passage, past a back hall with a fourth outer door, then to a front hall which ran the depth of the house and had two sets of stairs leading from it.

  ‘Right there, sir. Where you’re standing.’

  They were at the foot of the inner stairs. A short set, they rose to a landing closed by a dark, panelled door.

  ‘He was lying with his legs still up the stairs and his head twisted under a bit. Brinded, that’s the milkman, came in for his money, looked up the passage and saw him there.’

  ‘Did he move him?’

  ‘Says he didn’t. Not much doubt the old boy was dead.’

  ‘Did you notice the expression on Peachment’s face?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Eyes open. Scared.’

  And on the grimy floorboards, the bare stairs, no intelligible marks or footprints: not even much blood. A little had leaked from a broken bruise on the old man’s cheek.

  ‘Presumably he was attacked up the stairs?’

  ‘Well, he did fall down them, sir.’

  Though this was inference again. The appearance of a fall might have been faked.

  ‘What’s up there?’

  ‘Just an empty room.’

  ‘What was his purpose in an empty room?’

  Gissing shook his head. ‘That’s a mystery, sir. Unless he went up there to hide.’

  They went up the stairs. All they led to was an L-shaped room with a small window. It was not much larger than a big cupboard and was fitted with wide shelves in the toe of the L. They were made of thin, scrubbed, knotless boards, and suggested an old country-house pantry. A small deal table and a kitchen chair occupied a position by the window.

  Gently pointed to the latter. ‘These were here?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Just where they are now.’

  ‘You examined the shelves?’

  ‘Yes, sir. No signs that anything had been removed.’

  A strange room! How had it come to be worth a separate flight of stairs? And why the chair and the table. What had old Peachment done up here?

  If he’d been a writer, now . . .

  Gently sat on the chair and rested his elbows on the table. Yes, that way round you could write at the table without your being in your own light. And then, on the table . . . He rubbed at a stain, held his finger to his nose, sniffed. Paraffin! The old man had stood his hurricane lamp on the table.

  Gissing was staring around in his stolid way.

  ‘I reckon he was hiding up here, sir,’ he said. ‘He could hear chummie moving around in the house, so he slid up here to be out of the way.’

  ‘He could have locked himself in.’

  Gently nodded to the door. It had an ancient lock framed into the panelling. Also it was fitted inside with a bolt, apparently of equal date with the rest. Lower down, a small panel was missing, leaving an aperture about the size of a postcard.

  ‘Maybe he was too scared.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘Maybe. Was the door open when you found him?’

  ‘Yes – and the key in the lock, the way it is now.’

  Was it a sort of prison, that room? The door, for instance, was extremely solid. The window, which was the shape of a letter-box, had sockets in the frame that would take a bar. The floorboards were massive planks twelve or fourteen inches wide. Through the window you looked into an overgrown garden shut in by walls on three sides.

  A prison . . . had there been a prisoner?

  ‘Come on. Let’s see the rest of the house.’

  Suddenly he was feeling the chill damp of the place, the skin of his back was beginning to prickle.

  ‘I tell you something, sir,’ Gissing said, as they went down the stairs again. ‘I wouldn’t live here if someone paid me. I reckon this place has got too old.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  A PANTECHNICON RUMBLED by in the street and bumped into the yard with rattles and a clanking. Through cobwebbed lace curtains Gently could see some of the kids, huddled like starlings on the rail of a cattle pen.

  Frenze Street.

  He and Gissing had arrived in the book-room, a narrow chamber with a rotting floor and a mean little glazed-tile fireplace.

  Not exactly a library! On the inner wall stood a black-painted bookcase about six feet high, shelves above and lockers below, and two drawers with brass ring-handles. A writing-table, a couple of chairs and a ragged carpet were the rest of the furniture. The floor had rotted through in a corner near
the hearth. Everywhere dust, cobwebs, rot-smell.

  No wonder Gissing hadn’t lingered there in his hopeful quest for a blunt instrument.

  ‘One of those drawers . . . ?’

  There were no others. They each took one and tipped its contents on the carpet. Old receipts, some twopenny almanacks, chalk, a thimble, a set of false teeth. In Gissing’s drawer, a couple of farthings, one bearing Queen Victoria’s head.

  Was it credible that the medal had turned up amongst this rubbish?

  The books, furry with dust, were sticking to the shelves and each other. They comprised a few cheap classics, books on horses and farriery, novels, a ten-volume county history. In the lockers below they found Peachment’s old account-books along with more receipts and a family Bible. A quaint wall-cupboard under a window contained nothing but dry rot.

  ‘I don’t know, sir . . . it’s hard to believe . . .’

  Gissing lit a fag with grimy fingers.

  From a long way off they could hear shouting and bumping as the pantechnicon discharged its load in the yard.

  ‘You think young Peachment is trying to work something?’

  ‘Well, sir, if he’d swiped that medal . . .’

  ‘But someone did kill the old man.’

  Gissing fanned smoke. Then slowly he shrugged his shoulders.

  They packed the trash back in the drawers and left the book-room to its rot. But wherever you went in that icy house you met neglect and decay. Rooms that were furnished had been left to frowst behind closed doors and jammed windows. Empty rooms, showing wormy floorboards, exhaled a doggy smell that was unmistakable.

  In a cheap wardrobe in one of the bedrooms they found a woman’s clothes hanging, below them a hand-bag and mouldy shoes. On the dressing-table, a prayer-book.

  ‘The lofts . . . they’re worth seeing.’

  Each loft was reached by a separate staircase. Three great halls under the high-pitched rafters, they suggested the carcases of long-dead whales. They were floored, and one possessed a huge hearth. The rafters caging them were rot-stained and peppered. A number had been replaced with poles of fir to which the bark was still clinging.

  Then there was the priest-hole, or something like one, which Gissing had discovered in a downstairs room. The drawers below an alcove in a wall pulled out, and lo! behind them was a small, dank cell.

  Where they’d hidden the gold?

  Gently knelt and pushed his head in. Light filtered down from a small, high window. But the alcove could have been of later construction, and was probably only intended to fill an awkward corner.

  And yet . . . one more odd thing about Harrisons.

  ‘Let’s go out into the garden.’

  Gissing led him to a cobwebbed door that clearly had not been used lately.

  From the rear, the house looked a planless jumble. The space between the wings had been filled carelessly. Grotesquely sloping auxiliary roofs made cradles for moss and even young saplings. Then, the west wing . . .

  ‘Look . . . that wing is different.’

  Standing out here, you could spot it at once. Besides being taller, the west wing was brick, while the rest of the house was timber-framed.

  ‘Older, would you say, sir?’

  No doubt of that: the stone-framed windows gave it away. And above, badly in need of pointing, reared the original chimneys Gently had noticed.

  ‘Listen . . . those curious features . . . they’re all in this corner of the house. The priest-hole, the rooms at different levels – including the one where Peachment was attacked.’

  ‘And now you see why. We’ve two different houses . . . the main part built on to something older. Sixteenth century – even fifteenth . . . perhaps going back to the Dissolution.’

  ‘You mean . . . ?’

  Gissing put on his blank look.

  Gently shrugged and shook his head. At least it was something of a coincidence that an Innocent III medal had turned up here.

  ‘Surely the house is on record somewhere.’

  Gissing’s blank look didn’t falter.

  ‘Isn’t it scheduled?’

  ‘Don’t think so, sir. We’ve got so many old drums round Cross.’

  Gently moved deeper into the grassy jungle. Every line of the house was telling the same story. Compare, for example, the firm outline of the west wing with the slight sag and tilt of its neighbour. And the stone-framed windows: three complete storeys, against only two elsewhere – with those at the lowest level bricked-up, turning a sunken room into a half-cellar.

  A house that silently seethed with history.

  And an old, muttering man shuffling about it.

  Under some rotting floorboard, behind a loose brick . . . wasn’t it possible . . . just possible?

  ‘Reckon that’s the window of the priest-hole, sir.’

  Gissing’s interest flickered for a moment.

  ‘And up there . . . that’ll be the little room. You can just see the back of the chair.’

  A tiny window with fixed, mullioned panes, and once a stout bar behind them. A punishment cell . . . a monkish prison? With an observation shutter in the door?

  The garden itself was entirely enclosed and accessible only from the house. A sizeable plot, it showed no sign that old Peachment had ever set foot there.

  ‘What’s the old brick place over by the wall?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir. But I can guess.’

  Gissing was right. It was a Northshire two-holer. In that county, they built their privies with two seats.

  When they came out of the house the pantechnicon had gone, leaving a raffle of tea-chests stacked in the yard. The warehouseman, Colkett, was busy with a trolley, but he rested the shafts as they came by.

  ‘Found any treasures?’

  ‘Should we have done?’

  Colkett was aged around forty. He had a leathery face with deep lines and smirking, inquisitive grey eyes.

  He wasn’t put out by Gently’s rebuff. He leant grinning against the trolley. Then he fetched a tab-end from behind his ear and lit it, grinning all the time.

  ‘If what they say is right. Where there’s muck there’s money, you know. And I reckon there’s plenty of muck in there. You two haven’t come out with clean hands.’

  True enough. The grime of Harrisons had a peculiarly clinging quality.

  ‘Have you a wash-place?’

  ‘There’s a sink.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to let us use it.’

  ‘Do what you like,’ Colkett said. ‘I reckon the police are always the guv’nors.’

  He led them through the open doors of the warehouse into a small but comfortable office. At one end was a sink equipped with a water-heater. Near it a kettle simmered on a gas-ring.

  ‘Home comforts.’

  Colkett squeezed aside to let the policemen go through.

  ‘I was just going to brew up with my sandwiches. Perhaps you gents would like a cuppa?’

  After the old house, a cheerful place. An oil convector stove was poppling in a corner. A girlie calendar hung on the wall above a table on which lay a thumbed, black stockbook.

  ‘You work here alone?’

  Gently lathered with carbolic under a stream of water that was stinging hot.

  ‘All alone. That’s the way I like it. Just one boss and his shadow.’

  ‘You knew Peachment?’

  ‘I knew him.’ Colkett puffed on his tab-end. ‘Not to talk to – nobody did. But I’d see him ambling across the yard. ‘‘Hallo, Dad,’’ I’d say. ‘‘How’s the screw-matics?’’ And he’d sort of laugh and mumble something. You know what I think? He was deaf. Got his ears all bunged up with wax.’

  ‘Laughed, did he?’

  Gently felt for a towel. Colkett shoved one into his hand.

  ‘Well . . . when I say laugh. Perhaps you’d call it a giggle. Miss him I do . . . old Peachey.’

  Gently handed the towel on to Gissing and took his pipe out of his pocket. Colkett sprawled easil
y on a corner of the table, watching, the smirk lingering in his eyes.

  Opposite the table a double window overlooked the yard and the wall behind it. Above the wall, the back of Harrisons, its dead windows staring blindly.

  ‘Do they keep you busy?’

  Colkett grinned again. ‘Busy enough. It comes in patches.’

  ‘Still . . . you’re comfortable here.’

  ‘I don’t grumble. When there’s nothing doing I can put my feet up.’

  ‘And enjoy the view.’

  Colkett was silent. He rubbed the tab-end out in a tin-lid.

  Gently carefully lit his pipe and laid the match in the same lid.

  ‘How much do you know about old Peachey?’

  ‘I’ve told you. I saw him around in the yard.’

  ‘How long have you worked here?’

  ‘Three, four years.’

  ‘Did you never ask him in for a cup of tea?’

  ‘No.’ Colkett stared hard. ‘Well, he just wasn’t like that. I can’t say no more. Mr Gissing here, he’ll tell you. The nevvy was the only one who could talk to him.’

  ‘That’s about the cut of it, sir,’ Gissing said, pausing in the act of lighting a fag.

  ‘Still, it seems strange . . .’

  Colkett’s smirk was gone. This wasn’t playing fair, his expression said. Here he’d been, offering them hospitality, and now Gently had decided to play the heavy!

  ‘Do you know the nephew?’

  ‘Of course I know him. Used to drop in here every fortnight. He’s all right. You can talk to Adrian. Had him in here many a time.’

  ‘Did he talk about his uncle?’

  ‘Well . . . yes.’

  Gently puffed. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Well – joked about him. That kind of thing. Dare say he didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘What sort of jokes.’

  ‘Just jokes. About the way he lived, what he wore. How he used to wash down in the kitchen. How he made tea in an old billy-can.’

  ‘And he’d tell you about the house?’

  ‘No. Why should he?’

  ‘About what you’d find behind those windows?’

  ‘I tell you—’

  ‘And the door that was never bolted?’

  ‘Look—’

  Gently puffed. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  Colkett was staring with real fear, his roughened hands grasping the edge of the table. He sent a scared little side-glance towards Gissing. The local man was watching with stolid attention.