Gently with the Innocents

by Alan Hunter

  ‘In this parifh,’ Gently read, ‘lived one Mr Harrifon, who was a curious collector of gold coins, from Pompey the Great to Honorius and Arcadius, and more modern times, up to VIIIth Henry; to which fome myftery is attached, they not being found in the houfe at his death. He was a very curious perfon, and lived in the houfe in which Robert Kent, fen., fince dwelt, which was adorned in a very odd manner: in the parlour ftood the effigy of a man, which had a speaking trumpet, put through the wall into the yard, fixed to his mouth, fo that upon one’s entering the room it ufed to bid him welcome, by a fervant’s fpeaking into the trumpet in the yard.

  ‘On the parlour door you may read the following diftich in brafs capitals, in-laid in the wood:

  ‘RECTA, PATENS, FELIX, JESUS, VIA, JANUA, VITA,

  ‘ALPHA, DOCET, VERBUM, DUCIT, OMEGA, BEAT.

  ‘And on the ftair-cafe door is a brafs plate, with a circle engraved thereon, equally divided by the twenty-four letters, and this diftich, in capitals of lead, in-laid in the wood:

  ‘DIFFICILIS, CELS – FERA, PORTA, OLYMPI,

  ‘FIT, FACILIS, FIDEI, CARDINE, CLAVE, MANU.’

  Behind Gently, Bressingham gave a little gasp, as though he still couldn’t quite believe what he was reading. Gently silently read the passage twice, then laid the book open on the table.

  ‘So that’s what we’re dealing with!’

  Bressingham nodded, puppet-like. ‘Oh Lord! Doesn’t it feel like meeting a ghost?’

  ‘You’re right . . . it’s fantastic.’

  ‘It just doesn’t happen. Yet there it is . . . tucked away in Armstrong.’

  Yes, there it was – and already a little legendary when Armstrong was writing in 1781. From the way it read Bressingham had probably been right when he’d placed his man in the seventeenth century. And subsequently the house had fallen into the hands of people who knew nothing of the significance of the door and its Latin, and then all that remained was the name and the fable – and an anecdote in Armstrong, which had lost its connection. Until . . .

  ‘Do you think old Peachment had wit enough?’

  ‘Gosh, yes. He had all his marbles.’

  ‘He was deaf,’ Ursula Bressingham put in. ‘That’s why people thought he was a little peculiar. But he was sharp. My father was a horse-dealer and he did business with Peachey in the old days. Peachey and Dadda used to play chess. I can remember him coming to the van.’

  ‘But even if he identified the house, that’s still a long way from finding the coins.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ Bressingham exclaimed. ‘What does it matter? We know he did find them.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Yes – it has to be! There’s that scrap of blue paper, remember? Oh my goodness, it was the very same paper that Harrison wrapped the angel in himself!’

  Gently shook his head. ‘Peachment wouldn’t have been the first searcher. Harrison’s heirs would have ransacked the house. Then there was this fellow – Robert Kent, senior – and the people who had the place when Armstrong knew it. Do you think they didn’t search?’

  ‘But they didn’t find!’ Bressingham jigged up and down with impatience. ‘Look – they didn’t know the first thing about it – that Harrison kept the collection in the storeroom.’

  ‘You mean the orgy-room?’

  ‘Oh, foof!’ Bressingham waggled his plump shoulders. That was before I read this – it wasn’t a bad guess, on the evidence. But now – look – it falls into place. Didn’t we reckon it might be a strong-room? And Armstrong’s brass plate is the final proof – because it’s missing, we know what it was.’

  Gently grinned. ‘Yes – a double security.’

  ‘You guessed that did you?’ Bressingham sounded disappointed.

  ‘If there’s a bolt inside with no obvious purpose, you naturally look for a way to work it from outside.’

  ‘Yes . . . well!’ Bressingham waved his hands. ‘The point is that Armstrong didn’t know this. When the plate was in position it simply looked like decoration, all of a piece with the moulding and the Latin. And not knowing that, he didn’t know what the room was, and ten to one nobody else did either. So they’d go pulling up the floors and ripping out wainscot, and never give the old linen-closet a thought.’

  ‘But Peachment did know?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  Gently shrugged. ‘Not so obvious as one thing! You and I both went over that room and found nothing suggestive, nor signs of interference.’

  ‘So we don’t know the secret!’

  ‘If there’s a secret.’

  ‘Oh, my dear man!’ Bressingham wrung his hands. ‘It simply has to be there. It’s in the logic of the house. It’s because it’s so tricky that the others didn’t find it.’

  Gently shook his head. It was academic anyway – the cache would be empty even if they found it. That fabulous collection, from Pompey to VIIIth Henry, had taken wing and flown from its ancient home. But was Peachment, beyond doubt, its liberator, or had it livanted at much earlier date – perhaps spirited away by some knee-breeched servant, before its eccentric collector was cold? Much more likely! The servants would know of it, would probably have watched Harrison manipulate the door. Then, when he died, a clean sweep, and some linen shoved on the shelves to confuse inquiry . . . the bolt on the door had never been forced, as it must have been if Harrison had died with its secret.

  ‘It comes back to this – a medal and a coin – your bit of blue paper notwithstanding. That’s all we’re certain about just now . . . apart from some doubtful evidence I know of. No doubt they were part of this old collection, and that accounts for their fine condition. But it doesn’t follow that Peachment found it, or that it was ever there for him to find.’

  ‘Oh, you terrible man!’ Bressingham groaned. ‘No, you’d never make a dealer.’

  ‘I’ve been spoiled,’ Gently grinned. ‘Too much homicide. It makes you an addict of hard fact.’

  ‘But the paper is a fact!’

  ‘Perhaps. Only you didn’t actually examine the paper. It could have been a scrap from a sugar-bag, or the wrapper from a package of matches. But even if it was what you think it was, it doesn’t prove that Peachment found the collection. Paper and all, the coin could have been lost, then found by Peachment in his poking around.’

  ‘And the medal too?’

  ‘Why not? Perhaps one rotting floorboard hid them both.’

  ‘I despair of this man,’ Bressingham said to his wife. ‘He doesn’t have a soul. What could you sell him?’

  Ursula Bressingham shrugged very slightly, her intense eyes watching Gently.

  ‘I think he is wrong,’ she said. ‘There is gold. And I think the Superintendent knows it.’

  ‘Then he’s an old fox,’ Bressingham said.

  ‘He doesn’t want to believe in it,’ Ursula Bressingham said. ‘It’s against himself he is arguing. But there is gold. And he knows it.’

  She wasn’t smiling; in fact, you got the impression she never smiled. Just with her eyes, sometimes. She had the features of a queen.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THEY WENT OVER the text again, Bressingham leaning on the table beside Gently. The effigy with the speaking-tube, Bressingham was positive, had some connection with the priest-hole. He mourned the loss of the parlour door, which had been tastelessly replaced in the nineteenth century, and tortured himself with the notion of the deeds being sent for pulping by the Diocesan Registry. Then he listed the coins: Pompey, Honorius, Arcadius and VIIIth Henry. A double-rose crown of the latter, he opined, would fetch over a hundred in EF. A Milanese solidus of Honorius would be worth around sixty, but the earlier Romans came higher – the Pompey might run to half a thou.

  ‘Just imagine a cabinet full of the stuff.’ His eyes went dreamy over the idea. ‘What a sale it would be . . . how the devils would flock there! A million quidsworth . . . could be more.’

  ‘A million quidsworth?’

  ‘Yes. Easily. The goods were around in
Harrison’s day. I’ll bet the old boy had filled all the gaps – unique pieces, oh, my gosh!’

  A sort of flat box thing full of coins . . . dully gleaming in the light of the hurricane. The kids had seen it . . . and who else? A million quid. And no bolt on the door.

  ‘How would they get rid of it, if they pinched it?’

  Bressingham’s pale eyebrows hooked up in anguish. ‘Don’t talk about that. It makes me shudder. If they didn’t know the value, the morons might melt it.’

  ‘But if they did know the value?’

  ‘They’d still need a connection. Unless they were specialists, I think they’d be stuck. My gosh, you’ve got to find it before the swine get desperate. It’s around, I know it is. For heaven’s sake don’t write it off.’

  ‘We’re searching.’

  Bressingham stared at him. ‘Please believe in it,’ he said. ‘Somehow I feel responsible. As though old Harrison were at my shoulder.’

  There was small point in fetching out the Sceptre, which in any case was snowbound in the George’s yard. Gently set off on foot for the warehouse, a freshly lit pipe in his mouth.

  They’d cleared Water Street, and a fussy bulldozer was shunting snow by the car-park. The wind had dropped. Above, the sky was glooming dull, but looked empty. A skein of geese was passing over, probably heading for the nearest estuary: twelve, with wings slow-going. Gently could just catch the ‘woo’ of their pinions.

  On the sale-ground yesterday’s slide was buried deep under new falls, but a plentiful scatter of prints showed where Dinno and his pals had passed. The bulldozer, no doubt at Gissing’s instance, had made a run down one side of Frenze Street, throwing up a flange of packed snow that overtopped the hedge at Harrisons. Wheel-tracks showed on the ploughed surface. The Wolseley was parked outside the warehouse. The bulldozer had also been in the yard, but towards the house stretched unmarked snow. Gently crossed to the warehouse and went in.

  ‘Hullo . . . how is it going?’

  Gissing showed at the office door. He looked dazed, and was vaguely wiping his hands on his coat.

  ‘We’ve found some tyres hidden away . . . there’s no doubt that Colkett was on the game.’

  ‘We knew that last night.’

  ‘But all the same . . .’ He shrugged, and got out a cigarette.

  Scoles and two other men were distantly ferreting among stacks of cases and dust-sheeted furniture. The warehouse was nominally lighted by half a dozen bulbs strung down the centre. It was cold as an ice-store, oddly churchlike, and smelt of paraffin and old newsprint. A depressing place. Just walking in there seemed to throw a shadow on life.

  A bit of theft, in a place like that, was probably needed to cheer a man up . . .

  ‘I’ve been on the phone . . . there’s nothing certain.’

  Gissing backed off into the office. Gently followed. Colkett’s stove was going. The office itself had a turned-over look.

  ‘They’ve got a road clear, but now it’s the trains. They reckon to have them running by teatime. Norchester rang. They’ve heard of a bloke who was trying for a lift at a transport café.’

  ‘A bloke like ours?’

  Gissing nodded blankly. ‘Looking for transport going towards London.’

  ‘Which is this way.’

  ‘Yes – but he needn’t have got off here.’

  Gently pondered. It was scarcely likely that Colkett had skipped to London. He wouldn’t have got there in any case, the roads being how they were. It was still odds on, if he’d got his lift, that he’d been stuck between Cross and Norchester – which being so, with a road now clear, he’d be arriving home at any moment.

  ‘You still have a man outside Hallet’s?’

  ‘Yes.’ Gissing rested his bottom on the table. ‘Only . . . well, I’ve checked on all the stranded vehicles. There’s no sign that he spent the night on the road.’

  ‘So what’s your theory?’

  Gissing shook his head. He hadn’t a theory – he just felt. Somehow, somewhere, the iniquitous Colkett was slipping past the well-laid snares of inquiry.

  Scoles came in.

  ‘Sir, we’ve found some batteries . . .’

  Gissing hoisted his butt-end from the table and went. The warehouse faintly echoed his dragging footsteps, alongside the brisker footing of Scoles.

  Gently stayed with them. There was something compulsive about the utter dreariness of the warehouse. The longer you remained there, the more you felt a reluctant sympathy for Colkett. Day in, day out, winter and summer, he maintained his lonely watch there, broken only occasionally by the routine of checking a load in or out. And some days would lack even that diversion. Then, he was solitary for nine hours – trying to kill the time with sporting papers, and moody wanderings round the soulless building. The kids cheeked him: he probably encouraged it. He would dearly have loved to make friends with old Peachment. A mug of tea would always be waiting for any casual he could pick up a chat with.

  And his stealing – was it really genuine, or just a defence against grinding boredom? All over the warehouse they were turning up his pitiful, magpie hoards. Nothing valuable. A box of batteries, a pair of cycle tyres, a set of wheel-trims. Perhaps he’d never even tried to flog it, wouldn’t know how. Just an escape . . .

  Glumly, Gently went over the office, where the weary Gissing had searched before him. It was all of a piece. Everywhere tokens of boredom without resource. Girlie mags, a thumbed Kama Sutra, football papers with marked forecasts. Nude pin-ups, with air-brushed vacancies heavily restored in black pencil. In the waste-bin he found a screw of blue paper which he eagerly unfolded. No luck. It contained salt, was obviously a discard from a packet of crisps.

  He wandered out into the warehouse, much as Colkett would have wandered out. It was probably the smell more than anything that made your heart sink out there. Not a strong smell, but sweetish, like a pile of old boots: sleazy, decaying. The smell of worn-out, forgotten things . . .

  ‘When do you think you’ll be through?’

  At his interruption, they all stopped. They’d been manhandling forty heavy steel cabinets stood, perversely, with doors facing doors. Along with Scoles was D.C. Abbotts and a ginger-haired man, Brewer, Gissing’s sergeant. The latter hadn’t been introduced to Gently; he stood stiffly, almost at attention.

  ‘I don’t know . . . we’re still finding things. We can’t afford a slip-up.’

  But some of the buck had gone out of Gissing – you felt he’d look twice at a good excuse.

  ‘You’ve got enough to do Colkett.’

  ‘Yes. But we have to be thorough.’

  ‘You could finish this job at your leisure.’

  Gissing wavered, then said, ‘There’s also the other thing . . .’

  The other thing! Was he still hoping to strike gold in one of those hoards? Working back now into deserts of furniture, which clearly had filled the deep recesses for years?

  ‘That’s probably pre-Colkett country, back there.’

  Gissing frowned, too tired to pick it up quickly.

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  He turned away from Gently: a gesture. He wasn’t done yet.

  And somehow, his obstinacy was infectious, like the blind belief of a religious fanatic. Wouldn’t a faith so strong find its object – or perhaps create one, if none existed?

  Gently watched a while, then returned to the office. He was just in time to catch the phone. It came from the desk: a routine call. Still, there wasn’t any sign of Colkett.

  He rang the desk when he went to lunch, then again after lunch. He came away frowning. Now, it was twenty-four hours since anyone had set eyes on Colkett. Had the stupid fellow really skipped, somehow sensing the net was laid for him – or was he in some other trouble, out there in the snows?

  Gently took his coffee into the lounge and smoked a pipe over the problem. If Colkett had skipped, it was because he was deeper in the business than Gently was allowing. Yet that was difficult to swallow. Gently was
sure he’d read Colkett’s character right. A furtive rogue, but not a true villain, and not a man to resort to violence. Also, if the collection of coins were involved, stealing them was outside Colkett’s scope. He wouldn’t dare: it was that simple. To pocket one would be the strength of him. How, then . . . ?

  Gently smoked and drank. If the collection of coins were involved . . . A million pounds’ worth of antique gold, almost begging to be walked off with. Spread that information in town and there’d be a traffic jam up the A.12, and enough hot Jaguars parked in Frenze Street to start a Monte-Carlo Rally. Was that the way of it? Had Colkett passed his information to a high-powered outfit – who now, with the advent of Gently, had decided to vanish Colkett for a while? Gently pondered, then shook his head. Even for this Colkett wasn’t man enough! What did he know of high-powered outfits, or of how to profit by tipping them off?

  Could he have been involved accidentally? That would square better with Colkett’s character – was, in fact, the supposition which Gently had been favouring all along. Colkett, hearing about the coins, would doubtless be eager to see them for himself, and going along there at the critical time, might well have been witness to the crime. But this presupposed that the criminals had been tipped off from some other quarter, which was even more improbable than Colkett tipping them off himself. Young Peachment? Hardly! He’d nothing to gain: if he knew of the coins he’d keep it dark. And a casual observer from Thingoe Road was as unlikely as Colkett to have connections. The kids? No . . . the more you looked at it, the less credible did it seem.

  Then Gently hesitated. Because . . . yes, there was one way that tip could have gone. He bit on his pipe scowlingly, trying to dispose of the treacherous thought. But it had to be dealt with. Slowly, unwillingly, he began checking off the score . . . Phil Bressingham was one of the kids: and Phil could have told his father.