Gently Does It

by Alan Hunter

  ‘There’s nothing to prove it, yet. Fisher’s got an alibi that’ll take a lot of breaking and you’ve seen what luck I’ve had trying to establish that there was someone else in the house.’

  ‘He was lying. He was lying himself black in the face. I’ll have him down at headquarters and see what I can get out of him there.’

  Gently nodded a pensive nod.

  ‘Not that I can see how it’ll help young Huysmann,’ added Hansom suspiciously. ‘If Fisher is shielding him and we make him talk, that’ll put the kybosh on you, good and proper.’

  Gently smiled agreeably. ‘Always supposing that Peter is your man.’

  ‘You know he’s our man!’ snorted Hansom. ‘Good grief, why not admit it? Apart from anything else, who else would want to rub the old man out?’

  ‘Well, there was forty thousand pounds lying about.’

  ‘That’s all my eye! That could have been sprung without deliberately knocking him off first. They’d only to wait till he wasn’t there. And whoever did it didn’t come armed – they did it on impulse, after they got there, after they’d chewed the rag with the old man – which means it was somebody he knew. I tell you, the jury’ll be solid.’

  Gently’s smile grew further and further away. ‘There’s one thing that puzzles me about our friend Fisher,’ he mused.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘He didn’t seem to me the type who would shield anybody … especially with his own neck sticking out as far as it does.’

  There was something virginal and nun-like about Gretchen Huysmann, not altogether accounted for by the large silver cross that depended on her bosom. She was not a pretty woman. Her face was pale and a little long, and she wore her straight black hair divided in the middle and caught up in a flat bun. She had small, close-set ears and dark, but not black eyes, now a little reddened and fearful. There was a waxenness about her complexion. She was above medium height. Her figure, which should have been good, was neglected and bundled anyhow into a long, full dress of dark blue. She wore coarse stockings and flat-heeled shoes. She was twenty-seven.

  Hansom said: ‘Sit down, Miss Huysmann, and make yourself comfortable.’ Gretchen sat down, but she did not make herself comfortable. She sat forward on the edge of the chair, her knees together and her feet apart. Her pale face turned from one to another of them quick, frightened glances; her small mouth grew smaller still. She reminded Gently of a plant that had grown in the dark, at once protected and neglected. In this room of three serious men with its alien smell of tobacco smoke she seemed shrunk right back into herself.

  Gently motioned to the constable. ‘It’s getting thick in here. Open that top window.’ The constable manipulated the cords that let fall a pane high up in the big window, letting in a nearer sound of rain with a welcome current of new-washed air. Gently beamed encouragingly at Miss Huysmann.

  Hansom cleared his throat and said: ‘I’d like you to understand, Miss Huysmann, that we fully appreciate the tragic circumstances in which you find yourself. We shall keep you here the shortest possible time and ask you only those questions which it is absolutely necessary for us to have answered.’

  Miss Huysmann said: ‘I’ll … tell you all I can to help.’ She spoke in a low tone with a slight accent.

  Hansom continued: ‘Can you remember if your father was expecting any visitors yesterday?’

  ‘I do not know, he would not tell me that.’

  ‘Was it usual for him to receive visitors on a Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘Oh no, practically never. The yard is closed, everyone has gone home.’

  ‘Did you notice anything unusual in his manner at lunch yesterday?’

  ‘I do not think so. He did not speak to me very much at meal-times. Yesterday he said, “Your brother is in town. Take care I do not hear you have been seeing him,” but that was all.’

  ‘Were you in the habit of seeing your brother when he was in Norchester?’

  ‘Oh yes, I see him sometimes. But my father, he did not like that.’

  ‘Did you see your brother on this occasion?’

  ‘I see him on the Friday, when I go out to pay some bills.’

  ‘Did he speak of calling on your father?’

  ‘He said he must see him before he leave Norchester.’

  ‘What reason did he give for that?’

  ‘He said that the man for whom he worked had offered him to be partners, but he must have five hundred pounds. So he will ask my father to lend it to him.’

  ‘Did he say lend it?’

  ‘Oh yes, he know my father will not give it to him.’

  Hansom toyed with the little pearl-handled penknife that lay on his blotter and glanced towards his cigar case, but Gently clicked disapprovingly. Hansom proceeded:

  ‘What time did lunch finish yesterday?’

  ‘It was about two o’clock.’

  ‘And what did you do after lunch?’

  ‘First, I have a wash. Then I go and fetch my coffee from the kitchen, which I take up to my room. As I am drinking it, I get ready to go out to the pictures.’

  Gently said: ‘Your visits to the pictures were clandestine, I understand.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You were obliged to go secretly – your father did not approve.’

  Gretchen looked down at the two pale, plump hands twisted together in her lap. ‘It is true, I go without his permission. He think the pictures are … all bad. And so, I must not go.’

  ‘Did you feel that your father was being severe in forbidding you to go to the pictures?’

  ‘I think, perhaps … he did not know how they were. It was safer that I should not go.’

  ‘You thought, at least, that he was being unreasonable.’

  ‘I cannot say. No doubt it was very wrong of me. It may be that this is a judgment, because I do wrong.’

  ‘Did your father ever find out that you had been to the pictures?’

  ‘Once, he caught me.’

  ‘What steps did he take?’

  ‘I was not to leave my room for two days and must not go out of the house for a month.’

  ‘And after that, I take it, you were more cautious?’

  The pale hands knotted and pulled apart, but came together again immediately. ‘At first, I went only when he was away on business. Then, Susan helped me. I used to pretend I had a headache and go to bed, but I creep downstairs again and out through the kitchen. It was very wrong of me to do this.’

  ‘Miss Huysmann, when you planned to go to the pictures in the afternoon yesterday, you were surely taking an unusual risk?’

  ‘I do not know – my father is usually in the study all the afternoon.’

  ‘But he might easily have asked for you.’

  ‘Oh yes, it could be so. But if Susan came to my room and find me not there, she tell him I am not feeling well, I am lying down and asleep.’

  ‘Following the occasion on which you were caught, had you ever ventured out previously on a Saturday afternoon?’

  Her small mouth sealed close. She shook her head forlornly.

  ‘And yet yesterday you did so, without even taking the precaution of first warning Susan. Why was that?’

  ‘I do not know. There is a film I very much want to see … all at once, I think I will go.’

  ‘When did you decide that?’

  ‘Oh … during lunch.’

  ‘But after lunch you went to the kitchen to fetch your coffee. Why didn’t you tell Susan then?’

  She shook her head again. ‘Perhaps I do not really decide till later, till I take my coffee back to my room.’

  ‘At what time did you leave the house?’

  ‘I think it is twenty-five past two.’

  ‘And you left through the kitchen?’

  ‘It was the only way, if my father is not to know.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Susan when you passed through on your way out?’

  ‘I do not know … perhaps I did tell her.’

>   ‘Miss Huysmann, Susan was in the kitchen till half-past two, but she did not see you go out. She was surprised to find that you were out. Yet you claim to have left the house at twenty-five past two.’

  Gretchen’s dark swollen eyes fixed upon him, pleading and fearful. ‘Perhaps it was later when I left … perhaps it was after half-past two.’

  ‘How much later?’

  ‘One minute … two minutes …’

  ‘It was not as late, say, as four-fifteen?’

  ‘Oh no! I was not here, no, no!’

  ‘You were not in the house at all between, say, 2.35 and 5.10?’

  ‘During all that time I was at the pictures.’

  ‘Ah.’ Gently sighed, and directed her back to Hansom with an inclination of his head. Hansom picked up the questioning neatly where it had been taken away from him.

  ‘You dressed to go out while you were drinking your coffee. You left the house by the kitchen at a few minutes after 2.30. What did you do then?’

  ‘I went straight to the Carlton cinema.’

  ‘What were they showing there?’

  ‘The big film is called Scarlet Witness.’

  ‘Is that what was showing when you entered the cinema?’

  ‘Oh yes, but I came in at the end, I saw only the last twenty minutes. Then there was the interval and the news, and then the other film.’

  ‘What was that called?’

  ‘It was Meet Me in Rio, with Joan Seymour and Broderick Davis.’

  ‘When did that finish?’

  ‘At five o’clock. I wanted to stay and to see the big film through, but it was already late, I was afraid that my father had already begun tea. So I bought an evening paper in order to pretend I had been out for one and went in through the front door.’

  ‘This film, Scarlet Witness,’ murmured Gently, ‘is it the same one as I saw in London a fortnight ago? How does it end?’

  Gretchen turned towards him, her hands snatching at each other. ‘I did not see much of it … I do not remember. It was not very good.’

  ‘But you saw the end of it?’

  ‘It was … complicated.’

  ‘Was it the one where they get taken off the island in a helicopter just as the volcano erupts?’

  The two hands gripped till the knuckles whitened. ‘No! It wasn’t that one … I was worried about whether my father would find out, I did not see it properly.’

  ‘They made an appeal after the one I saw – some fund for the maintenance of an aerial rescue force. Did they make an appeal here?’

  ‘Yes – yes! There was an appeal for something. A man spoke from the stage and they sent round boxes. I put something in.’

  She bent her head away from him as though his eyes reacted upon her physically. Gently shrugged and felt in his pocket for a peppermint cream. She continued, without looking at him: ‘The big film came on at a quarter to two and finished at a quarter past three. The other film started at half-past three and finished at five.’

  Gently said: ‘Thank you, Miss Huysmann, for such precise information.’

  Hansom said: ‘When you re-entered the house, whom did you see?’

  ‘It was Susan. She was coming out of the passage from the kitchen.’

  ‘What did she say to you?’

  ‘She said, “Oh, I did not know that you had gone out,” and then she told me that something was wrong with my father.’

  ‘Did you go into the study?’

  ‘No, after I was told I did not feel that I could. I sat down in the kitchen and Mrs Turner gave me some brandy to drink.’

  ‘Then it wasn’t you who hid the knife in the trunk?’ demanded Gently suddenly. Gretchen writhed in her chair. ‘I know nothing, nothing about that!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘And you wouldn’t know if Fisher the chauffeur was in the house during the afternoon?’

  A shiver ran through her dark-clad form, her eyes widened and her mouth opened. For a moment she stared at Gently horror-struck. And then it was over, as quickly as it had begun: the eyes narrowed, the mouth closed, the lips were forced deliberately into a tight line. ‘I do not know, I was not here,’ she said.

  Gently sagged a little in his chair. He looked tired. ‘How long has Fisher been chauffeur here?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh … three or four years.’

  ‘Would you describe him as being honest and trustworthy?’

  ‘Otherwise, my father would have got rid of him.’

  ‘I am asking for your personal impression.’

  ‘He is honest … I think.’

  ‘What are your personal relations with Fisher, Miss Huysmann?’

  ‘I do not see him, very much. Sometimes he is in the house to move things about. One day, he drove me to service at the cathedral, because I has a poisoned foot and could not walk there.’

  ‘He is respectful and obedient?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Was he on good terms with your father?’

  ‘I do not know – my father was not … a condescending man.’

  ‘He had no reason to harbour a grudge against your father?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘The maid, Susan, is an attractive girl. Is there anything between her and Fisher?’

  ‘… No! Nothing whatever!’

  Gently’s eyebrow rose the merest trifle and he transferred his gaze to the top of the far window. ‘Would it be correct to say that you were in considerable fear of your father?’

  ‘I do not know … fear.’

  ‘You had observed how Peter was treated, how he was driven out and completely disowned. Did it not suggest to you that a similar fate might be yours on some other occasion?’

  ‘Peter took money … he got married.’

  ‘But you also disobeyed your father in the matter of going to the pictures.’

  ‘That was very wrong of me, very wrong.’

  ‘Miss Huysmann, were you deceiving your father in any other matters, perhaps more important ones?’

  ‘I do not know how you mean!’

  ‘You were very isolated here. You went out very rarely. You were denied all the usual facilities for meeting people and making friends. And you are twenty-seven. Did you propose to continue in this way of life indefinitely, or had you resolved to, shall we say … assert your rights, in some manner?’

  ‘I cannot understand!’

  ‘Your visits to the pictures, for instance, were they always made alone? Was it always to the pictures that you went?’

  ‘Always – to the pictures! – always!’

  ‘And always alone?’

  ‘Every time I was by myself!’

  ‘You were never accompanied by … Fisher, for example?’

  A hot blush sprang into the pale cheeks. ‘No! Never! Never!’

  ‘Your association with him has always been that of mistress and servant?’

  ‘How can you ask such things! How can you ask them!’ Tears welled up in the dark eyes and she covered her face with her hands.

  Gently said: ‘I don’t like asking these things, Miss Huysmann, any more than you like being asked them. But if justice is to be done, we must have a clear picture of all the events surrounding this crime. You may think that these questions are unnecessary, you may be tempted to answer them untruthfully; but remember that they are the steps by which a man may be brought to the gallows and that no personal feelings should be allowed to dictate what you will answer.’

  She cried: ‘It isn’t true … I cannot help him!’

  ‘You wish to answer that your association with Fisher is completely impersonal?’

  She raised her face from her hands, agonized and tear-wet. ‘Yes, that is my answer … O God! Please, let me go now, please!’

  Hansom said: ‘That stuff about the pictures – did it add up?’

  Gently leant a freshly filled pipe to his lighter. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it didn’t. She didn’t go to the pictures.’ He gave a few puffs and adjusted matters with his thumb.

  ‘Th
en you’re reckoning that she was in the house during the afternoon?’

  ‘It could be that.’

  ‘And Fisher was there with her and she set him on to get rid of the old man and they swiped the money just for a blind. It’s not a bad line at that!’ exclaimed Hansom admiringly.

  Gently smiled at the far-flung Pylades. ‘You’ve got a lurid imagination,’ he said.

  ‘And young Peter comes in and nearly messes things up. They watch him quarrelling through the transom lights, and see the old man give him a note which might be traced and realize it’s a pip. Fisher goes in and does the job, and then they slide out and collect alibis. Why, it’s a natural!’

  ‘And how about the knife in the trunk?’

  ‘Oh blast, you can surely think of something to cover that!’

  Gently’s smile widened to include the still-vexed Bermoothes. ‘It’s an interesting conjecture. There’s only one element lacking.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘Proof,’ said Gently simply, ‘there isn’t a grain of it.’ And he blew a playful little smoke-ring over his colleague’s close-cropped head.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LEAMING BY DAYLIGHT was as handsome as ever. When he came in he immediately produced his gold cigarette case and offered everybody one of his hand-made cigarettes. Hansom and the constable accepted. Gently had only just puffed his pipe into flavoursome maturity. Leaming took a cigarette himself, tapped it on the case, twisted it between his lips and lit it with a slim, gold-plated lighter. Then he sat down, and with a jet of smoke from each nostril indicated that he was alert and attentive.

  Gently said: ‘You’ll be able to tell me – who got the City’s first goal yesterday? Was it Robson?’

  Leaming glanced at him in surprise. ‘It was Smethick, actually,’ he said. ‘He scored from a free kick after a foul on Jones S.’

  Gently murmured: ‘Ah yes, in the twenty-second minute.’

  A correction seemed to hover on Leaming’s lips, but eventually he said nothing.

  ‘I don’t suppose we shall need to keep you very long, Mr Leaming,’ Hansom said. ‘We’d just like to know a few routine details.’

  ‘Glad to help you in any way.’

  ‘What time did you leave the yard yesterday?’

  Leaming thought and answered carefully: ‘At twenty past one.’