by Alan Hunter
‘But what else can I think, if you will not tell me the truth?’
‘I tell you he did not do it!’
Gently shrugged and shook his head, made a pattern with the four remaining peppermint creams. Into the comparative quiet of the room broke the distant shriek of a circular saw biting at oak. The sound was mirrored by a quiver that ran through Gretchen’s body. ‘Look!’ she said, ‘I tell you – I tell you the truth about myself!’
Gently’s eyebrows lifted slightly. ‘I would like the truth about everything you can tell me, Miss Gretchen.’
‘It is about everything … it is the truth …’ She stared at him with wide open eyes, as though she would compel him to believe her by the naked will. ‘You are right, I did not go to the pictures … at least, I did not go in. I just go there to find out about it so I can pretend, that is all.’
‘At what time was this, Miss Gretchen?’
‘I don’t know … about half-past four.’
‘It would be about the time that Fisher returned to his flat … or a little longer, to enable you to reach the Carlton?’
‘He – was – not – there!’ She beat on her knees with her clenched hands. ‘I do not know where he is – if he go out, he go out, but it is not to me. I am the one who was there, in the house … it is me that Peter sees …’
‘Just a moment,’ Gently interrupted, ‘let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? What did you do after lunch?’
‘I told you, I have a wash, then I fetch my coffee from the kitchen and take it to my room.’
‘Was Susan in the kitchen when you fetched your coffee?’
‘But of course.’
‘Did you have any conversation with Susan at that time?’
‘No doubt … we said something.’
‘Did she ask you, for instance, whether you were expecting a visit from Fisher that afternoon?’
‘It may be that she did.’
‘And what did you reply?’
‘Oh … nothing special. I just shrug my shoulders and let her think what she like.’
‘You gave her the impression that he was coming?’
‘I do not know.’
‘It was the afternoon on which he customarily visited you, Miss Gretchen. If you gave Susan the impression that he was not coming, then surely she would have commented on it and perhaps enquired why that was so. Did she do this?’
‘No … I think perhaps she thought he was coming.’
‘Why was it, in fact, that he did not come?’
Gretchen twisted her hands together. ‘How should I know …?’
‘Then you were expecting him?’
‘No! I knew he would not come … I think he told me that the last time, but I forget why.’
‘Had there been a quarrel?’
‘Perhaps it was that.’
‘Had it come to your knowledge that Fisher associated with other women besides yourself?’
The clenched hands pulled apart. ‘I do not know that!’
‘Then why did you quarrel?’
‘Perhaps it was not a quarrel. Maybe I told him it was too dangerous for him to keep coming like that.’
‘And he agreed straight away not to come any more?’
‘Well … he agreed.’
‘Had you some reason why it should be more dangerous than it had been in the past?’
‘I don’t know … it was never safe that he should come.’
‘And he was quite agreeable to give it up immediately on your suggestion?’
‘… yes!’
Gently picked up the third peppermint cream and ate it solemnly. ‘Miss Gretchen,’ he said, ‘would you consider it as being an unusual coincidence that this should happen immediately before your father was murdered?’
Gretchen bit her lip, but said nothing. Gently swallowed the peppermint cream and arranged the remaining three in a triangle. ‘Ah well …’ he sighed, ‘you took your coffee to your room. What did you do then?’
‘I … prayed.’
‘And how long were you occupied with prayer?’
‘That I do not know. Sometimes one is taken away and the prayer is very long. It may have been an hour, or less.’
‘You would not be aware of anything that was taking place in the house while you were praying?’
‘Oh no! I am not in the house, then. It is like a far country where everything is … changed.’
‘And you do not know precisely when your praying ended?’
‘I think it was when Peter came. I heard him and got up.’
‘But you have just said that you would not have been aware of anything which was taking place in the house while you were praying, Miss Gretchen.’
The hands twisted again, finger over finger. ‘Perhaps I got up before that … just before.’
‘And then you came out on the landing to see if it was Peter?’
‘I thought it would be him … I did not know.’
‘He says that you withdrew immediately he looked towards you. Why was that?’
‘Oh … my father would have been angry … he might have come out to see who it was.’
‘But surely there was no need to have hidden away from him – you might have smiled to him or greeted him with a few words from the landing and still have been in a position to withdraw if your father should have appeared?’
‘I don’t know … I thought it was best not to see him.’
‘Tell me what happened after that.’
‘I stayed up there on the landing to hear how my father would receive Peter. At first I heard nothing, but later on they raised their voices and I knew it was not going well for him. I heard Peter call my father some names and my father say things which I could not make out. So I crept down the stairs and along the passage in order to hear them better.’
‘Between the time when Peter went in and the time when you went down, did you see anybody in the hall?’
‘There was nobody there.’
‘You’re quite sure of that?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Then you did not see Susan pass through from the dining-room to the kitchen?’
‘Susan? Of course! I thought you meant somebody else …’
‘Continue with your account, please.’
‘I could not hear anything when I went down the stairs … they had stopped talking. I stood close to the door, but they had finished, so I thought that Peter must have gone. I was just going to go back again, then …’
Gretchen broke off, shaking her head stupidly.
‘Then?’ prompted Gently.
‘… then I heard my father … scream.’
‘What sort of scream?’
‘Oh, dreadful … terrible! … as one screams at a terrible injury …’
‘What did you do?’
Her head continued to shake, senselessly, like the head of a mechanical doll. ‘I stood still … I daren’t move … I could not move at all. I don’t know how long it was that I was like that.’
‘But afterwards?’
‘Afterwards … I got the door open and he lay there with the knife in his back … by the safe, where you found him.’
Gently said: ‘Nobody had passed you in the passage and there was nobody else in the study … is that so?’
‘Yes … nobody.’
‘And you heard no movements that suggested the presence of some other person?’
‘I heard movements in the study directly after the scream, but nothing else.’
‘What sort of movements?’
‘First, a thud … then the safe door, which squeaks … after that it was somebody moving across the room.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No.’
‘Not after you had entered the study?’
‘I heard nothing then … I was not listening.’
‘What did you do?’
Gretchen spread her hands over her knees and took a deep breath. ‘I went and got the knife,’ she said.
‘What was your object?’
‘It was a throwing knife, and Peter could throw knives … also, it would have his fingerprints on it.’
‘Did you notice if the side door was open?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘And the garden gate?’
‘I did not notice that.’
‘What did you do when you had got the knife?’
‘I wiped the handle of it with the hem of my skirt and hid it in the chest … then I went up to my room again. All the time it was quiet, there was no sign of Susan. I say to myself: “She does not know if I am here or if I am not, and I could easily have slipped out earlier on … if she sees me come in, she will believe it when I say I went out after lunch.” So I put on my coat and creep out through the study. Then of course I went up to the Carlton to find out everything that was on … I came back a little while after Mrs Turner.’
Gently removed another peppermint cream from his shrinking battalion. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you, Miss Gretchen,’ he said, ‘that it would have been considerably wiser to have left the knife where it was, and to have phoned the police immediately?’
Gretchen stared at him with wide-open eyes. ‘But my brother … I had to do something to help him!’
‘And what in effect did you do?’ asked Gently. ‘Your brother was bound to be the principal suspect, with or without the knife. Furthermore, the prints on the knife may not have been his. Didn’t that occur to you, Miss Gretchen?’
‘I don’t know … I didn’t think …’
‘In which case you will have destroyed the one piece of evidence which would have cleared your brother on the spot. But apart from that, why did you take the trouble of establishing an alibi for yourself? It hardly seems worth the trouble. Once you had satisfied yourself about the knife there was no reason why you should not have contacted the police … at least, nothing that appears in the account you have given.’
‘My brother … it give him time to get away.’
‘What connection is there between that and your alibi? Why did you want an alibi, Miss Gretchen? It was a difficult thing to establish and it was bound to bring suspicion on you … quite unnecessarily, by your account.’
Gretchen twisted herself in her chair. ‘I just think it best if you think I have nothing to do with it …’
Gently shook his head. ‘It doesn’t seem worthwhile to me. People in murder cases who can prove their innocence are usually very keen to tell the truth.’
‘But it was as I say!’
‘It was not to shield someone other than your brother?’
‘No!’
‘It was not because Fisher was with you?’
‘I tell you he is not!’
‘Not because he might be suspected of having been here, unless you could prove you were somewhere else?’
Gretchen covered her face with her hands again and sobbed.
‘And not,’ continued Gently remorselessly, ‘because you knew him to be the murderer?’
‘No, no! It is not so! Oh why are you asking these things … why … why …?’
Gently sighed and reached for the penultimate peppermint cream. The saws in the yard screamed savagely, two, three, four of them. In his mind’s eye Gently saw the blades tearing into the ponderous trunks, cruel and merciless, ripping them into the geometrical shapes of man.
‘Do you intend to marry Fisher?’ he asked.
Gretchen sobbed on.
‘I understand that you have been refusing to see him.’
She looked at him for a moment, tear-wet. ‘I shall not see him any more.’
Gently shrugged. ‘I don’t blame you,’ he said, ‘he’s not the sort of man to make a good husband …’
Gretchen sobbed.
‘Still, I’m surprised to find him thrown over so quickly.’
‘It is to do with me!’ she burst out. ‘Why have I to tell you about this? Leave me alone!’
‘I was wondering if it had to do with me.’
‘I tell you nothing more … nothing more at all!’
Gently rose, went over to the small window and stood for a moment looking out at the neat little garden with its high walls and quaint summer-house. ‘You haven’t told me the truth, Miss Gretchen,’ he said.
There was no answer but her sobbing.
‘I’m going now, but I shall be coming back. In the meantime I would like you to think over your situation very, very seriously.’ He moved back into the room. ‘Your brother’s life is in danger and it may be only by your telling us everything you know that his innocence can be established. I want you to think about that during the next few hours.’
She looked up suddenly. ‘I’d like to …’ she began, her hands gripping each other convulsively.
‘Yes …?’
‘Please, I’d like to …’ She broke off as a brisk tap sounded at the door. Gently’s lips compressed and he strode across and opened it. Leaming stood in the doorway.
‘Hullo, Inspector!’ he said, ‘I didn’t realize you were here … I’ve come to fetch a check-list.’ He glanced at Gretchen in surprise. ‘Why, Miss Huysmann … you’ve been crying!’ he said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LEAMING’S VERMILION PASHLEY slid out of the yard with a surge of conscious power and rode superbly down Queen Street towards Railway Bridge. Gently adjusted himself in the well-padded seat and lit a hand-made cigarette. ‘I hope your housekeeper isn’t going to mind my coming to lunch …’ he said. Leaming smiled handsomely. ‘Don’t worry about that. She always cooks for half a dozen.’ ‘If I took home someone on spec my housekeeper would go on strike …’
The Pashley swept over the bridge and into Railway Road. On the right reared the long, high, windowless back of the football-ground stands. Leaming indicated it with a movement of his head. ‘That’s it,’ he said, ‘one of the best grounds outside the First Division. They’ve got another home match on Saturday … the Cobblers … usually a hard game. Going to see them?’
‘I might,’ said Gently. ‘Are you?’
Leaming made a face. ‘This business is meaning a lot of extra work … we’ve got the accountants in next week. I shall have to spend the weekend preparing for them.’
‘You’ll have to make sure of your pink’un.’
Leaming dashed away some cigarette ash and was silent. The Pashley sped on through the narrow, smoke-visaged streets adjacent to the marshalling yards and out to the east-bound road. Here it went through Earton, a residential suburb built round a village, and the narrow, twisted road packed with traffic gave Leaming plenty of opportunity to display both his car and his skill. They passed Earton Green, a narrow, tree-shaded strip bounded by the Yar, where rivercraft, spick and span from their winter grooming, lay fresh-launched and naked at boat-yard quays. Past the Green the road widened, still going through suburbs, hesitating before it shook off the last straggling cottages and plunged into the country beyond.
Here Leaming gunned the Pashley till it was leaping eastwards in the eighties. He would probably have gone faster, but the road wasn’t built for really high speeds and there was a good deal of outgoing traffic to be passed.
‘Like it?’ he jerked at Gently.
‘Not really,’ admitted Gently frankly.
‘I can get a hundred and fifteen out of her on the Newmarket road – going down to London I reached Hatfield one hour dead out of Norchester.’
‘You must miss an awful lot that way.’
‘I’ve missed everything so far!’
Gently’s ordeal did not last long. Three miles beyond Norchester they came to the side turning which led to Haswick. Monk’s Thatch, Leaming’s house, stood at the nearer end. It was a beautiful modern riverside dwelling standing amongst trees, hidden from the road by a shrubbery. The verandaed front looked over a terraced lawn to the river and a thatched boat-house, standing apart, suggested that Leaming had other interests as well as cars.
Gently said: ‘All this must have cost you a penny.’
Leaming shrugged. ‘My father left me a little money, you know …’
He led the way into the house and showed Gently where he could wash. The indoor appointments matched the outdoor ones in opulence. By the time he was sat down to lunch on a Chippendale dining-room chair, one of a suite, Gently had formed quite a respect for Leaming’s father.
Leaming said: ‘Of course, you must have guessed that I had a double motive in asking you to lunch. I very much want to hear what’s happening with young Peter.’
‘Ah …!’ Gently said, and helped himself to new potatoes.
‘I was flabbergasted when he wasn’t charged. It seemed more than we could hope for … at the same time, it set me wondering what was at the back of it.’
Gently crunched a piece of pork crackling. ‘Just means there’s some doubt,’ he said.
‘You mean you’re on to something else?’
‘Could mean that.’
‘And is it likely that young Peter will be cleared, without it ever going into court?’
‘That depends on a lot of things.’
‘But there’s a good chance of that? I know I’m asking you rather a lot, Inspector, but you can’t know how much this business means to me. Peter has been – well, almost a nephew to me, if you can understand that, and I’ve committed myself to stand by him now, whatever the cost. So if you can give me a little information – strictly off the record – I shall be extremely grateful.’ He glanced at Gently winningly.
Gently laid down his knife and took a thoughtful mouthful of beer. ‘There’s a lot of things to be cleared up,’ he said. ‘Until they are, I wouldn’t be too hopeful.’
‘Is Fisher one of those things?’
‘I think Fisher could give us some interesting information, if he had a mind to.’
‘You know, Inspector, if I had to put my finger on one particular person and say “that’s him”, I should put it on Fisher.’
‘You would?’ mused Gently.
‘Yes, I would.’
‘Have you any especial reason for saying that?’
‘He just seems to me the one person who would do it. Isn’t that your opinion?’
Gently drank some more beer. ‘I suppose he’s quite a likely customer,’ he said.
‘Ah! I thought you would agree.’ Leaming returned to his plate for a moment, then said, through the tail-end of a mouthful: ‘I believe there’s something in that business about him and Gretchen, after all.’
