Gently Does It

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Were you the last person to leave?’

  ‘Yes. I usually lock up personally.’

  ‘Is the entire yard locked up, or only the office and buildings?’

  ‘The office and buildings. But there is a boom across the entrance to prevent unauthorized vehicles entering and parking.’

  ‘But that would not prevent persons from entering or leaving the yard?’

  ‘It would not – there is an unlocked side-gate in any case.’

  Gently asked: ‘Isn’t it tempting providence to allow free access to the yard in that manner?’

  Leaming shrugged and breathed smoke. ‘There’s nothing to steal but timber. Nobody would manhandle a load of that right across the yard to the gate – especially under the eye of Mr Huysmann. His bedroom windows look down on the yard.’

  Hansom continued: ‘When did you last see Mr Huysmann?’

  ‘He left the office at about ten past one. He looked into my office to say that he was going to London on Monday.’

  ‘Did he say what for?’

  ‘To pay Olsens’ for the last quarter’s shipments. Olsens’ are our agents at Wapping.’

  ‘Was it usual for Mr Huysmann to make payment in person?’

  ‘Oh yes, invariably. And always by cash – it was one of his eccentricities.’

  ‘About how much would the quarterly payment amount to?’

  Leaming thought unhurriedly. ‘This quarter’s was eleven thousand three hundred and twenty-seven pounds plus some odd shillings, less three per cent for cash.’

  ‘Did you notice anything unusual about Mr Huysmann yesterday morning?’

  ‘Nothing in particular. He was a little – ah – agitated because his son was in town. I believe he thought that Peter only came to Norchester to annoy him, but that’s by the way. He mentioned the will again and said that after Easter he proposed to call on his solicitors.’

  ‘Did he lead you to suppose that he expected a visit from his son?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he did say something of the sort, or at least something which might be construed that way. He said (he had a peculiar way of speaking): “He’ll find me ready for him, Leaming, ja, ja, he’ll find me ready.”’

  ‘And you think it might have referred to an expected visit?’

  ‘It might have referred to his intention to change his will, of course, but since then I’ve wondered.’

  ‘Would you say that he stood in any fear of his son?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that. He had acted, I think, a little unwisely towards Peter, and Peter had a temper, but to say he “stood in fear” is laying it on a bit.’

  ‘But you would say that he was apprehensive?’

  ‘He was always nervous when Peter was in Norchester.’

  ‘To your knowledge, had Peter ever visited him before since he left home?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘They had never met since Peter absconded with the money?’

  ‘Never.’

  Hansom stubbed the end of the hand-made cigarette into his ashtray and reached for his cigar case by way of afters. Leaming sat watching, handsome and unabashed, while the Inspector carved the tip off a Corona and lit it carefully all round. ‘Hah!’ said Hansom. Leaming smiled politely.

  ‘Where did you go after you’d locked up?’ continued Hansom.

  ‘I went home for lunch.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘I live at Monk’s Thatch, at Haswick.’

  ‘Do you live alone?’

  ‘I have a housekeeper, a Mrs Lambert, and a gardener who comes in daily.’

  ‘Were they there when you went home for lunch?’

  ‘The housekeeper was, of course, but the gardener had knocked off. He came back later and I gave him a lift to Railway Road.’

  ‘What time did you arrive home?’

  ‘About a quarter to two.’

  ‘What time did you leave again?’

  ‘It was just on twenty to three – I was rather late. It isn’t easy to get to the car park through the crowds.’

  ‘And what time did you get to Railway Road?’

  ‘It was just turned three. I dropped Rogers (that’s my gardener) off at the station end and went on to park my car. By the time I’d done that it was quarter past and I missed the kick-off.’

  Gently said: ‘Are you a keen City supporter, Mr Leaming?’

  Leaming gave a slight shrug. ‘I suppose I am, really. I never miss a home match if I can help it and I sometimes manage the near away fixtures.’

  ‘Then you will have a season ticket, of course?’

  Leaming hung on a moment. ‘Actually, no,’ he replied. ‘For me, half the excitement goes out of a match when I watch it from a seat in the stands. I love the hurly-burly and noise of the terraces. It sets the atmosphere of anticipation. To sit on a hard seat with my knees in someone’s back and someone’s knees in mine, to be detached from the drama taking place by a stooping roof of girders and galvanized sheet – no, I must have my terraces, or the game isn’t worth the candle.’

  ‘I like the terraces myself,’ said Gently dryly. ‘I wish I was as tall as you.’

  Leaming laughed, pleased, and Hansom proceeded: ‘At what time did the match finish?’

  ‘At five to five. I got away at about a quarter past and went home to tea. Shortly after six you people rang me up and asked me to put in an appearance, which I did, straight away.’

  Hansom said: ‘I understand, Mr Leaming, that you feel strongly convinced of Peter Huysmann’s innocence. Could you tell me what reasons you have for this?’

  A tiny frown appeared on Leaming’s handsome brow. ‘Well, I suppose I haven’t got what you’d call reasons. Not things like clues and evidence and that sort of thing. It’s mostly a matter of personal feeling – I just know Peter so well that to ask me to believe he’s done this seems ludicrous. I wish he were here now. I wish we could talk it over quietly with him. You’d soon see what I mean.’

  ‘Have you any reason, then, for supposing that some other person was responsible?’

  Leaming spread his hands, palms downwards, and placed them on his knees. ‘It could have been almost anybody, really,’ he said.

  ‘How about Fisher – does he suggest himself as a suspect?’

  ‘He would know that there was money in the safe.’

  ‘How would he know that?’

  ‘There’s not much that servants don’t know. He wouldn’t know the amount was so large, of course. That was due to payments from the City Treasury on timber contracts to their housing estates. But he could easily have discovered that payment was made on the first of this month.’

  ‘You do not think that Peter Huysmann belongs to the killer type. What would be your estimate of Fisher?’

  ‘I don’t know Fisher as well as I know Peter,’ replied Leaming cautiously. ‘It isn’t fair to ask my opinion.’

  ‘We should like to have it, all the same.’

  ‘Well, there’s a streak of brutality in the man. I wouldn’t put it past him.’

  ‘Can you tell us anything of his relations with the rest of the household?’

  ‘I don’t know that I can. He was an efficient chauffeur, knew his job, didn’t get drunk, was always punctual. May have chased the women a bit – but there you are.’

  ‘The maid Susan – did he chase her?’

  ‘He may have done, though I doubt whether he had any success. Susan is well aware of her market value.’

  ‘It is unlikely that Miss Huysmann had anything to do with him?’

  Leaming laughed. ‘You couldn’t know how Miss Huysmann has been brought up. She reads nothing but her Bible. She wouldn’t know what to do with a man if she had one.’

  Gently said: ‘How long have you been with the firm, Mr Leaming?’

  ‘It will be ten years in the autumn.’

  ‘Did you find Mr Huysmann a difficult man to work for?’

  Leaming shrugged. ‘You’ve probably been able t
o form an opinion of what he was like. When I first came, I thought I wouldn’t last a month, but the salary made me stick it out.’

  ‘It was a good salary?’

  ‘Oh yes. One must give the old man his due. He’s always paid the best wages in the trade – had to, I suppose, to get anybody to work for him. But that’s not quite fair, though. He had really first-class business principles. He wanted a lot for his money, but he always paid generously for it, and right on the nail. Whatever he was like at home, you could trust him in business to the last farthing. That’s how he built up a firm like this. Nobody was very fond of the man, but they all liked his way of doing business.’

  ‘And would that sum up your attitude towards him?’

  ‘I think it would.’

  ‘You bore him no grudge for his treatment of you?’

  ‘Good heavens, no! It was rather an honour to be manager of Huysmann’s.’

  Gently laid down his pipe and fumbled around for a peppermint cream. ‘I believe you are a bachelor,’ he said.

  Leaming nodded.

  ‘Would that be anything to do with Mr Huysmann?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose it would. He preferred his staff to be unmarried.’

  ‘Did that mean you would have lost your job if you had married?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that, though he was quite capable of going to such lengths. But I never ran the risk.’

  ‘It could be a very irksome situation, however.’

  Leaming smiled complacently. ‘There are ways of alleviating it.’

  Gently bit a peppermint cream in halves. ‘Such ways as Susan?’ he enquired.

  ‘One could go further and fare worse.’

  ‘Which makes you positive that Fisher was having nothing to do with her?’

  Leaming’s smile broadened. ‘I think you can discount Fisher in that respect,’ he said. ‘As I said before, Susan is well aware of her market value.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Gently, and ate the other half of the peppermint cream.

  Hansom took a deep breath. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t think we shall require you any more for the present, Mr Leaming. Thank you for being so co-operative. We’ll let you get away to lunch.’

  Leaming rose to his feet. ‘I’m only too glad to have been of any assistance. No doubt the Chief Inspector has told you that if you put Peter in the dock I shall be your number one adversary – but till then, call on me for any help I can give.’ He smiled at both of them in turn and moved towards the door.

  ‘Mr Leaming,’ murmured Gently.

  Leaming paused obediently.

  ‘I should like to look over the firm’s books.’

  Leaming’s brown eyes flickered, perhaps in surprise. ‘I’ll bring them over for you,’ he said.

  ‘This afternoon,’ pursued Gently. ‘I’ll come back after lunch.’

  ‘This afternoon,’ repeated Leaming evenly. ‘I’ll have them here waiting for you.’ He turned towards the door again.

  ‘And Mr Leaming,’ added Gently.

  Leaming stiffened.

  ‘I suppose you wouldn’t know where one can buy peppermint creams in Norchester on a Sunday?’

  Hansom pushed his chair back from the table and stretched his long, beefy legs. The constable shut his notebook and found another stringy cigarette. Gently got up and wandered towards the little pierced window.

  Hansom said: ‘Well, what do you know now?’

  Gently shook his head slowly, still looking through the window.

  ‘I guess this Leaming’s the only lad with a pedigree alibi,’ Hansom mused. ‘Hit it where you like, it gives a musical note. What was that stuff about the books?’

  ‘It’s a wet day, I thought they’d be fun.’

  ‘You didn’t scare Leaming with it. I’ll bet they check to five per cent of a farthing.’ He dipped the long ash of his cigar into the ashtray. ‘I haven’t heard anything yet to make me think that young Huysmann isn’t our man,’ he said. ‘You’ve started something with Fisher and the girl, but I don’t think it’s going to hold up the case. Mind you, I’ll crack into Fisher. I’d like to know the ins and outs of that business myself. But I don’t think it’ll help you. I don’t think he did it myself and I don’t think you stand a dog’s chance of proving it.’

  Gently smiled into the window. ‘There’s so much we don’t know,’ he said, ‘it’s like a picture out of focus.’

  ‘It focuses sharp enough for me and the super.’

  ‘It’s taking shape a little bit, but it’s full of blind spots and blurred outlines.’

  Hansom said challengingly: ‘You’re pinning your faith on Fisher, aren’t you?’

  Gently shrugged. ‘I’m not pinning it on anybody. I’m trying to find out things. I’m trying to find out what happened here yesterday and what led up to it, and how these people fit into it, and why they answered what they did answer this morning.’

  Hansom said: ‘We’re not so ambitious. We’re just knocking up a case of murder so it keeps the daylight out.’

  ‘So am I …’ Gently said, ‘only I like walls round mine as well as a roof.’

  Still it rained. A black twig sticking out of the grille over the drain by the Huysmann house cut a rainbow wedge from the descending torrent. Gently stood a moment looking at it as he came out. Hansom had departed in the police car, carrying with him the constable and his notebook. He had offered Gently a lift and lunch at the headquarters canteen, but Gently preferred to remain in Queen Street.

  ‘Looks like it’s set in for the day, sir,’ said the constable on the door. Gently nodded to him absently. He was looking now along the street towards Railway Bridge, sodden and empty, its higgledy-piggledy buildings rain-dark and forbidding. ‘Where’s Charlie’s?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s Charlie’s, sir?’

  ‘It’s a snack-bar.’

  ‘You mean that place down the road, sir?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘It’s that cream-painted building about a hundred yards down on the other side.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He plodded off towards Railway Bridge, his shoes paddling in the wet. They were good shoes, but he could feel a chill dampness slowly spreading underfoot. He shivered intuitively. The cream-painted building was a rather pleasant three-storey house of late Regency vintage. It had wide eaves and a wrought-iron veranda on the first floor, and had been redecorated probably as late as last autumn. It was only at ground level that the effect was spoiled. The sash windows had been replaced with plate glass and the door was a mixture of glass and chromium-plate. A sign over the windows said: CHARLIE’S SNAX. Another sign, a smaller one, advertised meals upstairs. Gently pressed in hopefully.

  Inside was a snack-bar and several lino-topped tables, at which sat a sprinkling of customers. Gently approached the man behind the bar. He said: ‘Are you serving lunch today?’

  The man looked him over doubtfully. ‘Might do you something hot, though we don’t do meals on a Sunday as a rule.’

  ‘Where do I go – upstairs?’

  ‘Nope – that’s closed.’

  Gently took a seat at a vacant table by the door and the man behind the bar dived through a curtain behind him. It was not an impressive interior. The walls were painted half-cream and half-green, with a black line at high water mark. The floor was bare, swept, but not scrubbed. An odour of tired cooking-fat lingered in the atmosphere. The clientèle, at the moment, consisted of two transport drivers, a soldier, a bus-conductor and an old man reading a newspaper. The bar-tender came back.

  He said: ‘There’s sausage and chips and beans and fried egg.’

  Gently sniffed. ‘I was hoping for roast pork and new potatoes, but never mind. Bring me what you’ve got.’

  The bar-tender dived through the curtain again. Presently he came back with cutlery and a plate on which lay three scantly smeared triangles of thin bread, each slightly concave. ‘Will you have a cup of tea to go on with?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. No sugar
.’

  The tea arrived in a thick, clumsy cup. But it was fresh tea. Gently sipped it reflectively, letting his eye wander over the snack-bar and its inmates. This was where Fisher went for lunch. Fortified by a pint of beer, the chauffeur had come in to face his plate of sausage, chips, beans and fried eggs. What had he done while he waited? Read a newspaper? Talked? There was talk now between the two transport drivers.

  ‘I got a late paper off the station … there’s a bit in the stop-press about Scotland Yard being called in.’

  ‘That’s because the son hopped it, you mark my words.’

  ‘D’you reckon he did it?’

  ‘Well, you see what it said …’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘It said the police thought he could assist them in their investigation. That’s what they always say before they charge them with it.’

  ‘They’re a rum lot, them Huysmanns … you don’t know where you are with foreigners.’

  The bar-tender sallied out with Gently’s plate. Gently motioned to him to take the chair opposite. He hesitated suspiciously. ‘You knew this young Huysmann?’ enquired Gently blandly. The bar-tender sat down.

  ‘Yep, I used to know him,’ he said.

  ‘What sort of bloke was he?’

  ‘Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. You’d think he was English if you didn’t know.’

  ‘Used he to come in here?’

  ‘He did before he went away, but he’s been gone some time now. He had a quarrel with his old man before this lot happened.’

  ‘Do you think he did it?’

  ‘Well, I dunno. Might’ve done. He didn’t look the sort, but you can never tell with these foreigners.’

  Gently essayed a piece of sausage and chip. ‘You know the chauffeur up there?’ he asked through a mouthful.

  ‘Who – Fisher?’

  ‘That’s his name, I believe.’

  ‘Oh, he’s often in here for something to eat. You know him?’

  ‘I’ve run across him somewhere.’

  ‘He’s another rum card, if you ask me. He lives for women, that bloke. Thinks he’s the gnat’s hind-leg.’

  ‘I heard he fancied the Huysmann girl.’

  ‘He fancies every bloody girl. He was after our Elsie here till I choked him off.’