Gently with the Innocents

by Alan Hunter

  Gissing grabbed at it. ‘Yes – that’s possible! We’d better start making inquiries.’

  Gently hesitated. ‘Surely – even Colkett! – has got a woman in his background, somewhere?’

  ‘A woman . . .’

  Gissing toyed with the notion as though it were a wonderful, a novel idea.

  And perhaps it was. Gently left the Police Station wondering if he hadn’t dropped a penny by accident. Suddenly he was seeing the photographs of those bruises – so many, so widespread, and yet so moderate. The deed of a woman, a woman with a cosh? Old Peachment plainly had not defended himself: he’d stood there taking it, blow after blow, till the last one sent him crashing down the stairs. A woman he knew and hadn’t feared, and yet who’d been armed and had sadistically beaten him. Who’d made that cosh, who knew Colkett . . . who might be hiding Colkett now.

  Only one snag – no obvious suspect! They knew of no woman who associated with Colkett; and judging from his knowledge of the man, Gently had to admit the hypothesis improbable. Colkett was a loner, fearful at the bottom of him; he’d shrink from associates of either sex. His commerce with women would be furtive and transient – likely, he’d never slept with one in his life.

  Yet was that necessary?

  Couldn’t the woman here predicated be dominating Colkett by sheer strength of character?

  After all, right under their noses, was one woman with whom he was in daily contact . . .

  Gently turned aside into Playford Road, where snow lay piled on the pavements in grimy heaps. Hallet’s was open, and in the doorway opposite Metcalfe’s relief stood easing his feet. Gently nodded to him: he saluted. Behind her vegetables, Mrs Hallet watched gnome-like. Gently drifted across to the shop. She rose slowly, keeping her hands in her pockets.

  ‘Got him yet?’

  Gently shook his head. Mrs Hallet stared at him with hard eyes.

  ‘Taking your time about it, aren’t you? Where do you reckon he’s got to, then?’

  Gently shrugged. ‘Perhaps you can tell us.’

  ‘Me!’ Immediately, the hard eyes sparked with aggression.

  ‘You know him as well as anyone, don’t you?’

  ‘Huh!’ She made a gesture with her head.

  ‘Well . . . doesn’t he meal with you?’

  ‘Breakfast and tea. Doesn’t mean to say I know his business.’

  ‘And the evenings, sometimes?’

  ‘Not Cokey. Always off to the boozer, he is.’

  ‘But – sometimes?’

  She stared at him spitefully. ‘I’m telling you – I don’t know his business! Just the bleeding lodger, that’s what he is, and I don’t have any other truck with him.’

  ‘He doesn’t bring his friends here?’

  ‘He ain’t got none.’

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘Huh – that’s a laugh! Screwing himself with a dirty book is all he knows about women.’

  There was a bitterness in the way she said it, as though Colkett might have been a disappointment. A comic scene of frustrated seduction suddenly suggested itself to Gently.

  ‘Like that, was he?’

  ‘Yeah – like that. So you can forget about his women.’

  Gently nodded.

  Mrs Hallet sniffed. ‘He’d run a bleeding mile,’ she said.

  Gently tramped away up Playford Road, kicking at occasional nuggets of snow. Not Mrs Hallet – but still, there might be a woman who fitted somewhere. A woman, probably, of small sex, who’d never made a pass at Colkett – not homosexual, but frigid . . . the presence of sex without its demand.

  From Thingoe Road? The finger pointed there, if the woman were known to old Peachment. And to Thingoe Road, not to the warehouse, might Colkett have gone on that snowy night . . .

  Pondering, he took his way to Frenze Street, back to the cockpit of the curious business. The front of Harrisons looked dirty and dead against the snow and the dull sky. Yesterday’s tracks were still hard-frozen, showing where Gissing and his men had gone: he’d been right about the snow drift against the warehouse: you could see where the opening door had swept up a pile. Around Harrisons the snow remained unprinted, sealing the old house in its shabbiness. Gently climbed a packing-case to look over the wall. Solid drifts, reaching the lower windows.

  He heard a whoop behind him, and climbed down. Dinno and his mates had charged out of the passage. Catching sight of Gently, they galloped swervingly away from him, then pulled up short, looking foolish. Gently walked over to them. This was a larger group than those he’d talked to before. In particular, he noticed a round-cheeked youngster who flushed rosily when he felt Gently’s eye on him.

  ‘Hullo . . . Phillip Bressingham?’

  The boy simply blushed. Dinno, with Moosh backing him, strutted forward to take command.

  ‘Course he’s Pills, mister . . . you going to pinch him?’

  They giggled nervously, eyes rolling at Gently. Phillip Bressingham drooped his head, tried to shrink away among the others.

  Dinno’s hands crept compulsively into his pockets. ‘You still looking for old Cokey, mister?’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen him round here no more. Reckon old Cokey’s gone away.’

  ‘You reckon that, do you?’ Gently said.

  ‘He’s gone away,’ Dinno repeated firmly. ‘He got the gold, didn’t he, mister? We shan’t see old Cokey no more.’

  He stared intently at Gently, challenging him. Moosh, just behind, had a glassy stare. The rest watched breathlessly, eyes helpless, catching at the words in a sort of stupor.

  ‘I think you’re kidding me,’ Gently smiled. ‘I don’t think there ever was any gold.’

  ‘Cooh – no gold!’ Dinno exclaimed, almost angrily. ‘We saw it, didn’t we? Didn’t we see it?’

  ‘Then where’s it gone? Colkett didn’t have it.’

  ‘But he did, mister! We know he did.’

  ‘How?’

  Dinno’s eyes flickered. ‘Saw him.’

  ‘Saw him?’

  Dinno nodded. ‘Time he came back here.’

  There was a strange, tight, electric stillness, everyone there holding his breath. You could almost touch it.

  Dinno’s face looked pinched. His eyes were large, straining at Gently’s. Gently’s face had gone blank.

  ‘When?’ he said. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Mister, it’s true—’

  ‘Yes – but when?’

  Dinno swallowed. ‘Night before last.’

  ‘The night before last!’

  ‘It’s true, mister! We see him here, didn’t we Moosh?’

  ‘Course we saw him,’ Moosh said. ‘He come out of the warehouse with a big old spanner.’

  ‘A sort of wrench-thing,’ Dinno said. ‘He come out there an’ locked the door. He was going over to the house to fetch the gold. Then he sees Moosh and me, and chases us.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘’Bout half-past seven. Moosh and me had been up the town.’

  ‘Just you two?’

  ‘Yes – we’d been up the town!’

  ‘Tha’s right, mister,’ Moosh said. ‘Up the town.’

  Gently hunched his shoulders, staring at them. Was it a fact, or a bit of fantasy? The spanner detail sounded factual, but always that ‘gold’ struck a note of fable . . .

  ‘Wasn’t it snowing hard the night before last?’

  ‘We don’t care about snow,’ Dinno said. ‘Anyway, mister, it left off for a bit. That’s why Moosh and me went out.’

  ‘Where were you when you saw Colkett?’

  ‘We was just coming through the gateway.’

  ‘Running?’

  ‘W . . . yes.’

  ‘And Colkett didn’t hear you?’

  ‘W . . . no, he’d just come out. He was closing the door.’

  ‘How did you know it was him?’

  ‘You could see it was Cokey. There’s that light in the passage, and he was flashing a torch.’

  Gently nodded. ‘Go on,’ he
said. ‘Tell me what happened after that.’

  ‘W . . . we hid up behind the gatepost, so we could see what old Cokey was up to. Then we see him go across the yard with this great old wrench-thing in his hand, an’ Moosh, he coont keep quiet, he hailer: ‘‘Old Peachey’s ghost’ll come after you.’’ Cooh, did he come for us! We didn’t half run – he’d got that thing in his hand, too.’

  ‘Did you come back again?’

  ‘No we never. Reckon old Cokey would have murdered us.’

  ‘He was suffn wild, he was,’ Moosh said. ‘Didn’t like us watching him go for the gold.’

  The ‘gold’ again! And that same odd tenseness – eyes, waiting to see how he’d take it. Did they know the difference between fact and fiction, or did the two merge, become real only in their effect? ‘It’s true, mister!’ And if Gently accepted it, then it was real beyond fact . . .

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Thanks for telling me. I’ll have to think about this.’

  ‘But we did see him, mister.’

  ‘I’ll believe you.’

  They moved off slowly, as though dissatisfied.

  Gently turned again to Harrisons, to the smooth witness of deep snow. But the snow, of course, was no longer a witness, if Colkett had been there the night before last. Plenty had fallen after half-past seven to cover the warehouseman’s prints . . . and one remembered that, earlier the same day, he’d made a previous attempt to get in the house.

  Gently crossed the snow with a few quick strides. Daylight was brightening the top end of the outhouse. The back door stood open – and lying on the ground near it were the wrenched-off padlock, hasp and staple.

  He went in. Dinno’s ‘wrench-thing’ stood against the wall, just inside. Along the passage, into the kitchen, were the wet traces of melted snow. They passed through the kitchen into the back corridor, and down the corridor to the stair. And there, where Peachment had lain, lay Colkett, his dead face grinning towards the kitchen.

  His neck was broken. He was tumbled against the wall, and snow-water showed on the stairs above him. He had a wound on his forehead which had bled over his nose and his eyes were open, staring in horror. The knuckles of one hand were bruised and bloody and bruising showed on a protruding leg. The body was ice-cold, like frozen meat. Nevertheless, it had a faint smell of carrion.

  Gently heard a sobbing gasp, and looked over his shoulder. Dinno had followed him into the house.

  Dinno stood pale, huge-eyed, staring, drinking in the corpse in excited terror.

  ‘Get out of here!’ Gently bawled.

  Dinno turned and ran without a word. Then, reaching the yard, he began shouting hysterically.

  ‘Old Peachey’s got Cokey . . . old Peachey’s got him!’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT WAS A theory – and four hours later it was still the only theory. Gissing and his men got nothing from the house that Gently hadn’t got in the first five minutes. Colkett had broken in: the snow-water showed he’d gone straight to the little storeroom: and there he’d been attacked by someone – or something – and hurled to his death down the stairs. Same bruising, same look of horror. In fact, a carbon-copy crime.

  And like it or not, it gave you a shiver, set you thinking of the supernatural. Peachment, Colkett, both had gone to that room and met something frightful, and died in horror. Some mindless thing. It had stupefied them. They couldn’t resist its demonic fury. And out, out of that room they had gone, flying down the stairs to their dooms . . .

  Were such things possible? Had Harrison’s spirit been chained to the room by his gold, a residual evil, that burst into violence when his secret hoard was threatened?

  Well – Gently and Bressingham had searched the room without arousing a vengeful poltergeist – and as for the gold, if it had ever been there, it was gone by the time Colkett paid his visit. But perhaps it was the gold being removed that had wakened the ghost in the first place?

  Nonsense, of course! And yet . . . That eery little shiver kept coming back.

  One thing was certain: they could no longer keep this case off the front page. Dinno had seen to that. He’d sounded a tocsin through Cross. A crowd had begun to gather in Frenze Street almost before Gissing’s men had got there, and Gissing had been obliged to call out more uniform men to clear the yard and seal-off the footway. And the crowd had remained there, freezing in the snow, watching the police comings and goings – their high-spot a glimpse of the shrouded stretcher on which the body was carried out to a van. Wemys, the stringer, was quickly there, and soon now would follow the vultures.

  By two p.m. the police were through, and there was nothing left to watch at Harrisons. A Panda car remained to guard it, and a little sleet was dredging Frenze Street.

  They held the conference in Gissing’s office, with the i/c, Boyland, sitting in: Gently, Gissing, Sergeant Brewer, and the two D.C.s, Scoles and Abbotts. Gently personally had rung Sir Daynes, but Sir Daynes was still marooned at Merely. He’d fumed helplessly about the County Council, and besought Gently to play it cool with the Press. Well . . . if that were possible! Boyland brought with him a report from the lab. It confirmed that the blood on the cosh was of Peachment’s group, and identified the hose as coming from Messrs Woolworths.

  ‘At least it connects Colkett with Peachment’s murder.’

  Gissing seemed to draw nourishment from the thought. The door had slammed, but – alive or dead – Colkett was still Gissing’s chummie.

  ‘Do we have any lead at all?’ Boyland asked. ‘I mean, the fact is, there’s a killer loose. When it comes to the crunch, I’m whipping-boy – I’ve got to know where I stand.’

  Gissing shook his head. Boyland looked at Gently. Gently took some draws from his pipe.

  ‘Just at the moment it’s square one . . . Colkett was the man who knew the answers.’

  ‘So what are we doing?’ Boyland sounded plaintive.

  ‘We’re beginning again,’ Gently shrugged. ‘The old routine. Checking round Colkett. Watching for the loot to turn up.’

  ‘But isn’t there . . . anyone?’

  Gently hesitated. ‘We’ll be checking the movements of a few people. The Hallets, young Peachment, perhaps some others. Plus a lot of leg-work in Thingoe Road.’

  ‘What about dabs?’

  ‘We don’t seem to be lucky.’

  ‘There’s only a few smears,’ Brewer said. ‘We did get some good ones, but they’re Mr Bressingham’s. The Super told us we’d find them there.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘That’s all, sir. Except the water on the floor.’

  ‘It’s bloody witchcraft,’ Boyland said. He pulled out a sudden, fat sigh.

  Colkett hadn’t been robbed. Lying on the desk were the pathetic gleanings from his pockets: coins, cigarettes, an old lighter, a comb, keys, and a wallet containing, inter alia, eight fivers. Either the murderer had been in too much of a hurry or else he didn’t stoop to such small game . . . or was there another angle? Had he tried deliberately to give an impression of something uncanny?

  Gently stuffed his pipe away.

  ‘Right – let’s try to make sense of it,’ he said. ‘Colkett was killed for some clear-cut motive. Peachment’s death may have been unpremeditated, but Colkett’s wasn’t. So why did he die?’

  Gissing stared heavily. ‘Because he knew too much?’

  Gently nodded. ‘A fair suggestion! He was in a position to watch Harrisons, to witness whatever was going on there. And he did witness something – Peachment’s killing – perhaps saw it through the window, from the perch by the wall. The youngsters had kidded him about Peachment’s gold, and the next night he went to see it for himself. So he saw the murder and – this is the point – he tried to cover up for the murderer. The murderer left his cosh on the scene, and Colkett found it and got rid of it. Motive?’

  They gazed at him.

  ‘Blackmail,’ Brewer said.

  Gently shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Simply, I can’t see
Colkett as a blackmailer – and I think he’d have died the sooner if he’d tried it.’

  ‘Perhaps the murderer was a friend, sir,’ Scoles said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Gently said. ‘It makes more sense. But we’ll leave that point for the moment and see what happened after Peachment’s death. The body is found – the weapon isn’t found, neither is a piece of gold lying by the body. The bruises are odd, but you’ve no other reason for supposing Peachment’s death wasn’t an accident. So the inquest goes off quietly, and for a month nothing happens. Then, surprisingly, I come on the scene, suggesting the police aren’t happy after all. Worse still, I begin leaning on Colkett, and you begin double-checking his movements – and Colkett is vulnerable: he’s already lied to you about his movements on the night of the killing. What does he do? First, something unexpected. He makes a tentative attempt to break into Harrisons. He knows we’ve gone over the house with several combs, yet still his first move is trying to break in there. Now why would that be?’

  He looked at Gissing. Gissing frowned and shifted his feet. ‘I don’t know . . . perhaps something he left there. Something we aren’t on to yet.’

  ‘You mean, that might incriminate him?’

  Gissing nodded cautiously. ‘Him or the murderer. That’s how it looks. Or could be just he was on the make . . . he wasn’t particular what he pinched.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘We’ll leave that too! But it led to an encounter between me and Colkett. As a result, he probably got the idea that we were ready to pounce on him. The cosh he didn’t think we’d find, but he couldn’t bear to chuck away the coin, so he caught the next bus into Norchester and turned the coin into cash.

  ‘Up till then, I don’t think Colkett had any settled notion of skipping. It takes a lot to shift a fellow like him, who has lived all his life in a small town. He was in trouble, but he had a ready tongue, and the coin was all that could’ve linked him with Peachment. Now he was clear of it: he could come back and flannel along as best he might. But then he turned the corner of Playford Road, and saw Metcalfe waiting there to grab him. Why? Only one reason – we’d found out about him selling the coin! Now he is scared. The coin is damning. He can’t spruce his way round that. Standing in the snow on the corner, Colkett realizes it must be flight.’