Gently in the Sun

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Those are the principal facts that have come to light today. As I said, an early arrest doesn’t seem very likely.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  The super twisted his empty glass between his fingers. In spite of the fan, there was a gleam of sweat on his forehead. A constable with his collar undone brought in a tray with Dyson’s sandwiches. Through the open window came the noise of traffic in the High Street.

  ‘There’s a number of interesting points there, Dyson.’

  Dyson ate without appetite, grunting when he tasted the coffee.

  ‘In the first place, where was the body all night? and why did someone get up early to put it where it was found?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that.’

  ‘Then this other point … about the man.’

  ‘It struck me directly I saw the report.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better give me your ideas.’

  Illogically, it seemed to Dyson that the fan was stealing his air. He got up and took his tray to the illusive relief of the thrown-up window. Outside it was nearly dark. A violet tint had deepened the sky. The super had switched on his desk lamp soon after Dyson had entered the office.

  ‘Doesn’t it look like a crime passionel? All the makings are there, I’d say! An attractive woman – her jealous boss – several interested males – and now this medical evidence. Mixer found her with a bloke when he came back from Starmouth … and there you are. That’s how I see it.’

  ‘He admits she was his mistress?’

  ‘Naturally not! But he’s lying his head off. A business man doesn’t take a poppet like that on vacation for nothing.’

  ‘What’s he like, this Mixer chap?’

  ‘A flashy type; a bit of a spiv.’

  ‘What’s his business?’

  ‘Company promoting – which could mean anything under the sun. He gives a business address in the City … possibly Records could tell us something.’

  The super nodded sagely.

  ‘He seems to fit the bill. What about the bloke she was with – any idea who he might have been?’

  ‘That’s the trouble. It might have been anyone.’

  ‘What about Simmonds?’

  ‘I gave him a grilling. He admitted he’d spoken to her on the beach once or twice, but I’d heard that up at the guest house already.’

  ‘Was he lying, do you think?’

  ‘He was nervous. I couldn’t tell.’

  ‘And you questioned some of the others?’

  ‘Four or five of them at the guest house. But it adds up the same way – none of them will admit anything. And you can’t narrow it down to Simmonds and the guest house.’

  Dyson gulped some of his vile coffee and reached for another sandwich. Only one thing mattered in this business, he knew. He had put it first: no arrest was imminent. Once you’d said that the rest was very largely …

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s not important, though it might have helped the case. What was your idea about the body being left outside all night?’

  ‘It’s to do with the tide, I think. He was going to dump it in the sea.’

  ‘How did the tide affect that?’

  ‘It was flooding when he got down there. As I see it he made his first attempt soon after he did the murder. He drove the body down to the beach but found the fishermen there launching their boats. So he parked it somewhere handy – that accounts for the damp pyjamas. Later on, when he tried again, the tide was flooding and he’d lost his chance.’

  ‘So he left it by the boats.’

  ‘You have to remember that it was daylight. He probably came on foot, and a body is heavy in any case.’

  The super massaged his chin with fingers that were moist.

  His beard, he noticed, felt scruffier in hot weather than at other times.

  ‘You checked his car, I suppose?’

  ‘It’s a Citroen. It was clean enough.’

  ‘Anyone see it or hear it at the relevant times?’

  ‘Nobody I’ve questioned yet.’

  ‘So in fact you’ve got nothing material against him?’

  Dyson shrugged feebly. Hadn’t he said as much?

  ‘He fits the pattern and that’s about all – apart from that it might have been anyone.’

  ‘Anyone at all who was jealous enough to murder.’

  The super sighed regretfully. ‘You see where it gets us. Unless we can show something quick I daren’t hang on to the case. I talked to the C.C. I asked him for a couple of days at least. Between you and me this heat makes him irritable.’

  ‘We aren’t homicide experts.’

  ‘That’s just what he’s been telling me. I’m afraid you’ve had this one, Dyson, unless you can suggest something else.’

  Dyson finished his coffee in silence. He had had a presentment of the outcome all day. At one point in the afternoon, when he had been questioning Mixer, he had realized with a bitter clarity that he was straying out of his depth. For homicide you needed a specialist: one couldn’t be two people.

  ‘On the whole it would be a relief.’

  The super nodded at the flickering fan-blades.

  ‘We don’t see much of homicide, not enough to signify.’

  ‘It’s the only way to look at it, Dyson. Murder’s an unreasonable responsibility.’

  ‘And in this weather too! Anyone can have it, for me.’

  Above the roofs now a moon was rising, a fisherman’s moon. It lay big and pale over the housetops of Wendham. At Hiverton it would be looking down on seven boats on an empty beach. And soon would come the fishermen with their nets over their shoulders.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT WAS THE eighth day of the heat wave, and hotter than it had ever been. The sun was like a baleful presence nailed to a merciless sky. With both windows down the train compartment had been sweltering, and here and there, beside the track, one had seen black patches of spark-ignited grass. Gently, who never stood on ceremony, had stripped to his braces before the train reached Chelmsford. At Norchester Thorpe he had dived through the barrier for a hasty glass of beer. It had tasted insipid and only made him sweat the more, while Dutt, sprawled in his seat, seemed to have remained the cooler of the two.

  ‘But when we get to the sea …’

  That was what he had kept telling himself. In his mind’s eye he had seen the pastelled marrams stir in the breeze. And the sea itself, the long falling combers; once get down to that and it would have to be cooler!

  Only at Hamby there was no sea to be seen, and certainly nothing suggestive of a breeze. The little station lay blistering in a heat still untempered, its asphalt platform soft to the foot. The porter, who picked up their bags, shed sweat. His face was the colour of a freshly boiled lobster.

  ‘But when we get to the sea …’

  It couldn’t be so far away. Beyond the line of dusty trees, perhaps, beyond the air dancing over the pantiles.

  ‘Morning Chronicle – can you give us a statement?’

  They had warned him that the press was taking a keen interest in the affair. A reporter in a printed play shirt was shoving a notebook under Gently’s nose, while in the background a photographer manoeuvred for a shot.

  ‘As you see, we’ve just arrived.’

  ‘Have the police got a theory?’

  ‘It was probably a man who did it.’

  ‘Hasn’t Mixer been inside?’

  ‘If you check the records …’

  ‘Isn’t it a fact that she was his mistress?’

  A thin-faced man with prominent teeth hurried up just as the photographer was immortalizing Gently’s déshabille.

  ‘Sorry I’m late … the car broke down! It’s all right now, I’ve got it outside.’

  ‘Are we fixed up at the Bel-Air?’

  ‘Yes, but it wasn’t easy. They’ve had to turn two of the staff out of their rooms.’

  He had met Dyson before, about six months previously. The county man wasn’t really surprised to see Gently in braces and
trailing his jacket. The photographer, however, couldn’t get enough of it. He ran ahead into the station yard and took two more candid shots.

  ‘Was it like this in town?’

  Above the bonnet of the police Wolseley the air simmered as though the engine was boiling. When you opened a door the heat spilled out, carrying along with it a smell of warm leather.

  ‘Yesterday it was ninety-one. Today, so they tell me …’

  Steeling himself, Gently plunged into the oven-like interior.

  Once they were moving things became more tolerable. The air that rushed in wasn’t cool but it was moving. They were driving through flat country along a narrow coastal road. To the right, although the sea was invisible, one could see the pale marram hills which marked the boundary of the land.

  ‘We sent you the file by despatch.’

  ‘I looked it over coming up.’

  ‘Naturally, with only one day …’

  ‘I thought you’d done a pretty sound job.’

  Dyson looked relieved rather than pleased. He was driving, Gently noticed, with text-book care and attention.

  ‘What about the photographs?’

  ‘You’ll find some in that briefcase.’

  ‘I want to know what this Campion looked like before she was killed.’

  ‘There’s a couple there I got from Mixer. He was carrying them about in his pocket.’

  Gently delved in the briefcase, pausing only briefly over the official post-mortem photographs. The two which had belonged to Mixer were post-card enlargements a little soiled at the edges. One was a full-length and the other a three-quarter profile. The full-length print showed the victim in a bikini.

  ‘Some dish, wasn’t she?’

  Dyson threw Gently a curious side glance.

  ‘From what I’ve been hearing she was everything she looks. She made a stir in Hiverton during the short time she was there.’

  ‘Went round with several men, did she?’

  ‘No, but not because they didn’t try!’

  ‘Because her boss kept an eye on her?’

  ‘You’ll never get him to say so.’

  Gently held the two photographs side by side, staring from one to the other. A ‘brunette bombshell’ was how one of the morning papers had described her. Slender, rather tall, she had the feline type of gracefulness. Her bust and hips were large and there was a misting of down on her calves. Her features were strong and the nose a little prominent. Her black hair, perfectly straight, flowed down her back like the mane of a horse. But it was the eyes that held the secret, the pulsating key to the woman. They were large and very dark and set a long way apart. They didn’t have a smile, and neither did the ripe-lipped mouth. Instead they suggested a smile, a smile compact of sensual intelligence: in a moment one seemed to have penetrated all the promise of the passionate body.

  ‘Do you think he’d introduce her to his wife?’

  Gently grunted and dropped the photographs back into the briefcase. They had come to a string of houses reaching out down the dusty road; just beyond them, at a crossing, was the flint tower of an enormous church.

  ‘Is this the village?’

  ‘Yes … this is Hiverton.’

  Dyson turned off right by the church. The village street down which they cruised was short and disappointingly commonplace, and was flanked by flint cobble cottages and featureless houses of local brick. The church had promised something better, but one looked in vain for a compensating factor.

  ‘The Bel-Air is to the right – over there, amongst those trees.’

  Dyson paused at a lop-sided crossways for Gently to take it in.

  ‘To the left you might call it residential – some rows of old terrace houses! Straight ahead is the track across the marrams. The boats are pulled up on the far side of the gap.’

  ‘What’s that hut place by the gap?’

  ‘It belongs to the fishermen, I believe.’

  ‘And that other thing, on stilts?’

  ‘A coastguard lookout, but it’s disused these days.’

  Really, there was nothing to see in Hiverton! Dyson pressed the accelerator with gentle impatience. But Gently was still gazing about at the sun-struck scene, unconscious, apparently, of the rising temperature in the car.

  ‘Let’s stop at that shop with the grass hats hung outside.’

  Dyson let in his clutch with a suspicion of a jerk.

  ‘I’ve questioned the fellow there, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know.’

  ‘I’m too hot to talk shop! What I want are some of those play shirts.’

  Leaving Dyson with Dutt in the car he went up the steps of the establishment. It was a modern shop with two long counters and seemed to sell everything from slabcake to paperbacks. A bright-faced woman in overalls was making ice cream cornets for two children. She gave Gently a smile and blew expressively through rounded lips.

  ‘Anyway, it’s good for trade – that’s what I say!’

  He bought three of the shirts of the sort he had seen the reporter wearing. They were manufactured in Hong Kong and not very expensive. One of them was printed with rich fruit-like designs in green, orange, purple, and black, another featured rock-and-roll singers, the third film actresses. If that photographer really wanted something to enliven the silly season!

  ‘I’d better have a hat – one of those Italian straws with the green bands. And a pair of sunglasses. Have you sandals in a broad nine fitting?’

  He finished up with a bottle of sun lotion and a threepenny ice cream cornet. Nibbling at the latter he began to feel happier, in spite of the intolerable heat. He had been given the run of the shop. The proprietress was treating him almost like an acquaintance. As he had pondered the various items she had left him for other customers, returning each time with a fresh smile and a remark.

  ‘You’re popular here, I see.’

  ‘We do our best to keep people happy.’

  ‘Where’s your husband today?’

  ‘Do you want him? He’s having his lunch with the girl.’

  For some reason he was wanting to linger there: it was as though, quite by accident, he had got his foot in at Hiverton. The Beach Stores, it was obvious, played a big part in the village scene. People came there to exchange a word as well as to make their purchases.

  ‘Did you get what you wanted?’

  Dyson couldn’t help the sarcasm. He squirmed as he turned the Wolseley in front of the shop. His long nose was peeling and the colour of rhubarb, and he shrank every time Gently came near his arm.

  They took the turning to the guest house, which passed a public house on its left. To the right were ugly bungalows of a bad pre-war vintage and, a little further on, an estate of forbidding council houses. There were no two ways about it – Hiverton was no beauty spot. It had a breathtaking church, but it had very little else.

  ‘I expect you’ll want to have a talk with Mixer.’

  ‘To begin with I want a shower.’

  ‘He struck me as being … I suppose you checked with Records?’

  ‘And then something to eat. I scamped breakfast to catch the train.’

  He caught a puzzled expression on the county man’s face: Dyson wasn’t quite used to Gently yet. He was apparently expecting him to dive straight in, armed with his particular brand of Central Office magic.

  ‘In my report, as you’ve seen …’

  ‘It was adequate, I thought.’

  ‘Then you agree with me that Mixer?’

  ‘What’s the food like at the Bel-Air?’

  Dyson sliced the car through an open pair of white gates, puffing up fiercely and with a scuttling of gravel. The Bel-Air loomed above them in Edwardian grandeur; it was marzipan and brick of the most exuberant vintage. A stopped door revealed a vista of black-and-white tiles. The sash windows were fitted with pale yellow Venetian blinds. In a room not far away someone was playing a jazz record, and one could also hear the sound of a tennis ball being struck.

  If Gently had
been down there on holiday he could hardly have behaved more eccentrically. That was Dyson’s fixed impression by the time they had finished lunch.

  Gently, resplendent in his fruity shirt, was well aware of his colleague’s opinion, but he gave no sign of it as he dallied over his coffee.

  They had taken the meal alone, the three of them. It was half past two and most people had retired, some of them to the beach, some to deckchairs in the garden. Six times during the past quarter of an hour Dyson had tried to get to business, and six times Gently had merely grunted and continued to stare at the pretty waitress.

  Now he was just sitting there, spinning out time over the coffee. He had had his shower, he had eaten his lunch, and that seemed to be everything at present on his mind.

  ‘How about some more coffee?’

  Injuredly, Dyson poured it for him. From the way it was received he knew that Gently was stalling him. Nobody in this heat could want two cups of coffee.

  As a matter of fact, Gently’s state of mind was curious. Ever since he had seen the photographs his ideas had been saturated by Rachel Campion. A woman … but what sort of woman? That was what he couldn’t decide on. Again and again he had summoned the pictures before his eyes, trying to fit a character to the enigma of the flat statement.

  Those eyes – was it perhaps just a trick of the camera? Were they really such windows to a world of reckless passion? And her body, too, with the perfection of imperfection: was it honestly so calculated to whet the keen edge of desire?

  He would never know, he could only imagine. The reality he was left with was the garbled witness of chance observers. But he wanted to know and he kept trying to surprise the knowledge. A woman … but what sort of a woman? Everything seemed to hang on it!

  ‘Waitress, come here a moment.’

  Her name was Rosie and she was a synthetic blonde. Her fairly obvious attractions did not go unappreciated. Gently had noticed a suggestive passage between her and Maurice, the slim young bartender.