Gently in the Sun csg-6

by Alan Hunter

  There were the youngsters, most of whom seemed to be on their own. Their ages appeared to range from about sixteen to twenty. Then there were the elderly people, some, no doubt, retired: a few of them, like Colonel Morris, were residents at the Bel-Air.

  In between there was very little, and only one couple had young children. They were a pair from Wolverhampton and spoke with a broad Midland accent. Gently set down the husband as being a factory foreman or minor works official.

  The teenagers were very conservative and wore almost identical clothing. It consisted of jeans and printed shirts, worn indiscriminately by both the sexes. The young men had crew cuts and the girls the gamine or urchin. They were a noisy crowd but strangely polite. They came, it seemed, from prosperous middle-class homes.

  The older people were a very mixed bunch. They ranged from Colonel Morris, with his rougish eye, to a pair of severe old maids who were probably schoolteachers. One of them was a clergyman who loved to brandish obsolete words. Another, from his conversation, had trained racehorses in the north of England.

  But they had this in common: they were civil and well bred. Even the Wolverhampton couple were on their mettle and determinedly fitting in. It was Mixer who didn’t fit, who stuck out like a bunch of garlic. From their attitude it was clear that he’d been cold-shouldered from the first.

  Gently watched him now, new-towelled and dressed, eating teacakes at his table. Those who were nearest had their heads turned and the rest were refusing to see him. Sometimes a teenager threw him a quick look, then muttered a few words which provoked a giggle. Rosie and the other waitress attended to him with disdain: one could hear him eating the teacakes from the other side of the lounge.

  A complete outsider! Couldn’t even he feel it? Mustn’t it have been the same when Rachel Campion sat opposite him… except that, one and all, the male guests had been making eyes at her?

  Even the conversation ignored him. It was running on anything but the tragedy. As though they had conspired to turn their mental backs as well, they deftly avoided referring to the subject. It was nothing to do with them — they weren’t people of that sort! By accident, perhaps, or managerial error.

  Why did Mixer come here in the first place, or was it just that he didn’t care?

  Gently watched them leaving the lounge, one after another; first the teenagers in a body and then the others at intervals. Mixer was among the last to go. He had a surprising appetite for teacakes. Colonel Morris, thinking he was unobserved, pinched Rosie’s behind and made her squeak.

  ‘You’re a wench-and-a-half, m’ dear!’

  ‘I’ve told you before, Colonel!’

  Seeing Gently sitting in the corner the Colonel gave him the broadest of winks and strode out of the lounge as though he found the heat invigorating. Under his plate, Gently saw, he had left a florin for Rosie.

  Outside the sun had slanted but things were really no cooler. Instead a subtle change had occurred in the atmosphere. The heat now seemed to float one, it derived equally from sun and ground; in place of the steady beating one was immersed in a bath of heat.

  In going down to the beach Gently had no settled intentions. He had already funked several avenues at which Dyson had fumbled hopefully. So far, he had ignored the bridge players, who might have remembered something. And Maurice, who had seen her last… he had completely neglected Maurice!

  To be honest, his approach was the reverse of businesslike. As usual he was following his instinct, or rather an innate feeling. Or, to be more precise, the ghost of Rachel Campion — she had got under his skin, that woman: still he couldn’t exactly place her. She was fascinating him in death as she had done others during her lifetime.

  Because… what was it that had struck him, as he sat there munching his toast? Something important though half-recognized, a tiny spurt of revelation. It was that, unlike Alfie Mixer, Rachel had fitted in at Hiverton. Morals, cockney accent, and all, she had not been out of place.

  But that wasn’t so much to strain over, as though he were digging for a diamond! By all accounts she had behaved herself and been otherwise acceptable. Why then did it seem important and even curiously significant? It told him absolutely nothing except that Mixer might have underrated her background.

  Had she been there before? That seemed improbable. A woman of her outstanding appearance would hardly have been forgotten. She was a stranger to the manager and also to the village: everyone had been intrigued but nobody had recognized her.

  He strolled over to the boats, from which most of the fishermen had gone to tea. There remained only the Keep Going’s owner watching his young mechanic at the engine.

  ‘Police. I’d like to ask you some questions.’

  Both turned to look at him expressionlessly.

  ‘It’s about this woman who was killed. Had you seen her here before?’

  They were a fair cross-section of witness, standing there, and shaking their heads. The boat owner was three score, the freckled youngster two-and-twenty. As soon as his question was answered they returned their attention to the engine.

  No, it didn’t lie there, the meaning he was trying to fathom. It was nothing so simple, nothing so easy to come at. Perhaps it would appear in Pagram’s report, perhaps it would remain locked up in that photograph.

  He turned his back on the boats and, plodding through sand and shingle, came to the firm wet level of the tideline. There were plenty of people about, more than had been there earlier. It was half-day closing in Norchester and Starmouth and his arrival, most likely, had been splashed over the lunchtime papers.

  ‘Can’t you give us something to go to press with?’

  The first reporter had been joined by colleagues: now there were six of them, advancing on him almost menacingly. Two of the newcomers were carrying cameras. They wasted no time in committing his shirt and hat to celluloid.

  ‘All right — you can print this.’

  Notebooks appeared like lightning.

  ‘As a result of our investigations enquiry has been extended to Starmouth and London. The dead woman is presumed to be a native of the London area and enquiries are being prosecuted at Camden Town.

  ‘The police are eager to interview any person who was acquainted with Miss Campion. They are asked to get in touch with Chief Inspector Pagram, Central Office, New Scotland Yard (Whitehall 1212), or with their local police station.’

  ‘You think someone followed her up here?’

  Gently made an indefinite gesture.

  ‘We’ve no positive reason for thinking so.’

  ‘What are you looking for at Camden Town, then?’

  How could he tell them what he didn’t know himself?

  After a little more prying they hurried off to phone their papers. A curious group had been attracted by the interview and Gently, irritated, went striding off along the tideline.

  He didn’t know himself — that was the worst of it! Without a single logical reason he was letting her personality dominate him. And there was no need to look abroad for people to suspect, when anyone who’d fallen heavily… anyone with a latent streak… Mixer had a motive, but he wasn’t alone in that.

  A quarrel after they’d made love, followed by the shock of the limp-fallen body — anger, perhaps, because she had died so treacherously. And indignation with the fear as he tried to cover the deed. A crime he hadn’t meant! A penalty that couldn’t be just!

  Why be complicated and subtle with facts which told their own story?

  He kicked at the pebbles which came in his way. If only he could start again and begin to see things clearer. Yet could there have been another way except the one he was pursuing? Were the facts so very simple, when they began with Rachel Campion?

  After walking till the sweat poured down he turned off into the sandhills. Here one imagined there would be a breeze, but in effect there wasn’t a breath of one. The view, however, was extensive. Inland one could see a broad. To the north the sandhills stretched away to a soaring mound
that marked the Ness, and southward, past the sprawl on the beach, to a bluish haze which was probably Starmouth.

  He lit his pipe and looked around him. It was a lonely spot with a spirit of wildness. A lot of beach and a lot of marrams… why did everyone cluster within a stone’s-throw of the gap?

  Between the line of hills and the first scant pasture would be two or three hundred yards of marram. It consisted of mounds and holes and ridges and was colonized by the grass and a few sea-favouring plants. Rabbits there would be, there, natterjacks, lizards. From time to time a bare foot would step on an adder. But there was no shade at all. No shade for miles. The sun roared down on the marrams like a celestial blowtorch.

  He shook his head and set off again, for the village. He had come further than he intended in his walk along the tideline. Ahead of him, in an endless series, stretched the summits of the sandhills, their tawny flanks soft and hot, their grass rough and spiteful. Who ever came that way unless it was Nockolds, the poacher?

  As he blundered among the last of them he smelt an unexpected savoury odour: someone was frying sausages — out there, on the marrams! But the mystery was quickly solved. He had stumbled on to Simmonds’s encampment. Over a spirit-stove set between beach cobbles the artist was cooking his evening meal.

  ‘You’ve got a nice little spot here.’

  Gently fanned his face with his hat. Simmonds, after a quick look at him, continued poking and turning his sausages. The compliment was not unmerited. The camp site really was well chosen. A flat-bottomed depression on the top of a hill, it almost hid the tent without at all obstructing the view. Also it was handy for the village, though still remote from the daily hurly-burly.

  ‘This isn’t my first camp.’

  There was a touch of pride in the young man’s voice.

  ‘I spend all my holidays this way. Last year I was painting in the Snowdonia area.’

  ‘Alone, are you, always?’

  ‘An artist doesn’t want company.’

  ‘What does your girlfriend say about it?’

  ‘I don’t happen to have a girlfriend.’

  Gently looked round for a seat and chose a baulk of sun-whitened driftwood. While Simmonds was talking he had lit a second stove and placed a billy of water over it. Now he forked the sausages on to a plate and added boiled potatoes from a smaller billy.

  ‘You’ve come to ask me some more questions, have you?’

  His movements were self-conscious but he was well in control of himself.

  ‘If it isn’t too hot!’

  ‘That’s something I’m used to.’

  ‘I wish I could say the same.’

  ‘It’s a matter of training oneself.’

  Gently nodded and smoked silently, letting the artist get down to his meal. On the beach below he could see some of the Bel-Air youngsters, three of them in the water and the rest tossing a ball about. Simmonds sat cross-legged before the taped-up flaps of his tent. He ate with a deft fastidiousness, sprinkling salt from a little tin.

  ‘I only spoke to her twice, you know.’

  ‘You’ve the advantage of me. I didn’t speak to her at all.’

  ‘You don’t mind me going ahead with my tea?’

  ‘Good heavens no. I had mine at four.’

  The tent, the stoves, the utensils, the site, they all bore witness of tidiness and method. Within the tent one could see a pile of precisely folded blankets. Against the inner pole stood the canvas at which Simmonds had been working that afternoon.

  ‘Among other things, there’s the view from here.’

  It was something which hadn’t escaped Gently’s notice. You could see the village, the beach, the marrams, and part of the track leading inland from the gap. The boats, however, were not included. They were obscured by the line of the hills and by the net store.

  ‘That’s Hazey Mere, away at the back there. You can make out the sails of the yachts on most days. Beyond the Ness is Sea Weston lighthouse, this way the water tower at Castra. And when there’s rain coming up you can see Starmouth quite plainly — in fact, for subjects, I need only turn the easel round.’

  ‘It sounds an ideal pitch.’

  ‘I found it two years ago.’

  ‘You’ve camped here before, then?’

  ‘Only once, over a bank holiday.’

  ‘When did you first meet Rachel Campion?’

  ‘Last week. It’s in the statement I signed.’

  Gently knocked out his pipe, grinding the ashes under his sandal. Simmonds had finished his sausages and was emptying tinned rice on to a fresh plate. Beyond the bathers, but inshore, chugged a smart motor sailer. Further off was a white-painted vessel with a yellow funnel.

  ‘Tell me exactly how you met her.’

  ‘She came and watched me — while I was painting.’

  ‘Here, do you mean?’

  ‘No, higher up the marrams. I was painting the Ness and that great big sandhill.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t remember. It was one of the silly things that people always think are clever.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘She sat down and watched me. I don’t like people doing that. In the end I simply packed up — it was nearly lunchtime, anyway.’

  ‘And she came back with you?’

  ‘Yes. As far as the gap. I had to go into the village to pick up some bread and some methylated.’

  There was no doubt about his composure — or about the nervousness under it. It was a curious amalgam with an undertone of brittleness; he was like someone grasping a nettle or going deliberately to stand on a precipice. In a way it was touching, in a way it was droll. He was trying to be grown up while in fact he was still largely a boy.

  ‘One thing I can tell you — she wasn’t just what they’re making her out. She was intelligent, too. She knew something about art.’

  ‘I thought she said something silly?’

  ‘Yes, but that was just at first. Then she told me about a Braque exhibition she’d seen and asked if I liked Rouault. As a matter of interest, Rouault is one of my influences.’

  ‘That was certainly intelligent of her.’

  ‘She knew Dali, too.’

  ‘I take it that you admired her.’

  ‘Well… I don’t know about that!’

  He finished the rice with a flush on his tight, well-drawn features. Then, the water having boiled, he measured in tea and removed the billy.

  ‘Can I offer you a cup?’

  ‘I think I could manage one.’

  It was served in an aluminium mug which burned the lips, but had the strong fragrance of tea made in camp-fire fashion.

  ‘No, she wasn’t just… one of those, if you understand my meaning. She was beautiful, I admit, but that’s not the same. And she was friendly, too. She was easy to talk to. With women, as a rule… she was different from other women.’

  ‘When was the other time you spoke to her?’

  ‘A day or two later. It was the same as the first time — she came to watch me painting. To be quite honest’ — Simmonds hesitated awkwardly — ‘I made a pencil sketch of her. I didn’t tell that to the other man.’

  He waited for Gently to say something, but when he didn’t, rose uncertainly to his feet. Gently sat with unchanged expression though his whole being had been suddenly alerted. It was as though he had heard a word in a secret language, a mystic signal of significance.

  ‘There… but it isn’t very good, I’m afraid.’

  Simmonds had fetched a framed satchel from the tent. Keeping the flap between Gently and himself, he pulled out a sheet of rough-surfaced drawing paper. On it, at about half life-size, was a portrait head of Rachel.

  ‘Actually, I’m better with a brush.’

  ‘Here — hand it over to me.’

  Gently grabbed the sheet impatiently and turned himself to shade it from the sun.

  It was a rubbed atmospheric drawing; it differed surprisingly from the photog
raph. The face was the same, the features were rendered accurately, but the expression was quite other than that captured by the camera. A maternal expression… was that possible? Apparently it was, if one could rely on Simmonds. The dark eyes were now tender, generous, beneficent. The lips, relieved of sensuality, had an unconsious little smile. Yet there was nothing idealistic in the manner of the drawing. If anything it was heavy, due to an uncertain technique. At twenty-two the artist was still fumbling for adequacy: whatever he had brought out had been achieved accidentally.

  ‘Let me see the rest of them.’

  ‘Rest of them… do you mean?’

  ‘This isn’t the only one — you’ve got a whole bagful. Just hand it over, and I’ll sort them out.’

  Simmonds was reluctant but he made no objection. Like a well-brought-up child he handed Gently his satchel. Then he stood by, slightly flushed, his chestnut hair hanging over his forehead. Again he was like a child, one who had passed up a good essay.

  ‘Excepting that one they’re from memory.’

  There were fourteen drawings, of a single subject.

  ‘As you see, when it comes to paint…’

  A canvas, depicting Rachel wearing only the lower half of a bikini.

  ‘But don’t think for a moment.’

  ‘How long did it take you?’

  ‘Take me?’

  ‘To paint this. It wasn’t done from memory!’

  Gently planted the canvas carefully on the forks of the baulk of driftwood. Simmonds wasn’t making a mistake when he supposed he was best at paint. Colour was clearly his forte; he could make it burn and scintillate. There were overtones of Gauguin in this Rachel among the marrams.

  It’s done from life, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘It is! And not at one sitting — or lying, to be precise.’

  ‘Suppose I were to say…’

  ‘Just stick to the truth.’

  ‘All right then, if you insist. I suppose I’ve got to tell you.’

  But now he was shaking, for all his assumed composure. His coolness was too unnatural and he was appearing to notice it. Strangest of all, he had become apologetic, he seemed to want to please Gently, and as he talked he kept throwing the detective little ingratiating glances.