by Alan Hunter
‘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.
‘It was she who suggested it, that first time we met. I did the first sketch I showed you, and she wanted me to do an oil. So then we arranged it. She came whenever she could. We went a good way up the marrams, of course, so that people wouldn’t see her.’
‘And naturally, you made love?’
‘No! That’s just what you mustn’t think. Never once was there anything like that, even though she took her top off.’
‘You simply got on with your painting.’
‘Yes, that was the idea.’
Gently gazed at the eloquent canvas. Was it within the bounds of credibility? Had the little fool sat there, staring, painting, and never once gone over to try his luck with her? It wasn’t a sisterly pose, that one of Rachel’s. It could hardly have been made more provocative had she tried. One leg was crooked voluptuously, one lying straight, her breasts pouting skywards, her black hair sweeping the sand. And almost sliding from her hips the bare apology for a garment.
‘How many times altogether?’
‘Six, including the first.’
‘Then why did you tell Inspector Dyson two?’
‘She was murdered, wasn’t she? I didn’t want to get involved.’
Simmonds shivered, even as he tried to give one of his winsome looks. His hazel eyes followed Gently with spaniel-like eagerness.
‘On what days did you meet her?’
‘The first time was Monday … that was last week. Then again on Wednesday and Thursday, Saturday, Monday …’
‘And Tuesday – go on.’
Simmonds winced as though Gently had struck him.
‘I know – I was going to say it! But it was only in the afternoon.’
‘What time do you say she left you?’
‘At – at half past four, I think.’
‘The painting was finished. Why didn’t you give it to her?’
‘It wasn’t dry, and I wanted to touch it up.’
‘And the rest of the day?’
‘It’s in my statement.’
‘You mooned around the beach and went to bed sharp at eleven.’
Simmonds still struggled for a smile but the result was wry and tremulous. He wanted to please so much … if only Gently would let him! There was nothing, his eyes seemed to say, which couldn’t be explained and understood.
‘Didn’t you ever want to be her lover?’
Gently was turning over the various sketches. A few of them had the madonna-like look but none of them the fiery passion of the photograph.
‘No it wasn’t like that.’
‘What was it like, then? You tell me.’
‘She was simply a model.’
‘Lay off it! I know better.’
‘Well of course, if you mean …’
‘Five days you were watching her. Five days she was lying there, naked, waiting. And you want me to believe …’
‘It’s true. You’ve got to!’
‘But you wanted to, didn’t you? It’s only human nature. There were times when it was hard to keep your brush moving – times when you were only dabbing around on the palette. But you tell me there was nothing in it – what was up?Wouldn’t she let you? Kept you sitting there looking and being a good boy?’
‘But honestly, I tell you …’
‘Pretended you were too young?’
‘Believe me, you’ve got it wrong! It wasn’t like that at all.’
Gently shrugged, shuffled the sketches and slipped them back into the satchel. Simmonds was all but wringing his hands in his efforts to convey his good faith.
‘You’ve got to see – she was friendly. I haven’t got a lot of friends! At home it was impossible. I did the only thing I could. Now, for over a year … can’t you see what I mean? Other people don’t understand me … she … since my mother died …’
‘You were fond of your mother, were you?’
‘She understood me!’
‘How old was she when she died?’
‘People thought she was my sister.’
‘And that’s why these drawings?’
‘… drawings?’ He flushed hotly. ‘It’s not that – you can’t get it straight! – though perhaps, in a way …’
‘Still, it’s interesting, isn’t it?’
Gently slid in the canvas after the sketches. For a moment, as he buckled the straps, his eye dwelt strangely on the artist. Below them now the Bel-Air youngsters were ragging and rolling in the sand; the motor sailer was out of sight, the Swedish vessel replaced by a tanker. The sun, at long last, was taking definite steps westward.
‘I’ll keep these for the moment – they’ll be taken care of. In the morning I’ll want a fresh statement. Is that understood?’
‘If you like I’ll write it out.’
‘It wont be necessary. Just make certain there’s nothing else that you forgot to tell Inspector Dyson.’
He left Simmonds standing helplessly with new expostulations on his lips. Coming towards them with an eager step he could see the reporter of the Echo. And by the net store, though well out of earshot, the owner of the Keep Going had his eye on them.
Except possibly up in the marrams, there was nowhere private at Hiverton.
CHAPTER FIVE
FOR A GOOD hour past he had been wandering about the village, staring at everything and gaping at everybody: why, he would have been perplexed to answer. One hadn’t to go far to see the whole of Hiverton. It was huddled together like a misplaced hill village. On one side was the sea, on the other stony fields. From a little distance it had the appearance of a watchful, red-brick citadel.
He had plodded along the terraces which formed the northerly ramparts, turning deliberately from one to another until he had covered every yard. Here jerry-building had flourished in the years between the wars. The houses were sullenly ugly, needed plaster, needed paint. They were served by unmade-up roads. The yards behind them were small and slummy. In front they had patches of scuffed grass or anaemic flower beds edged with bottles. The paths to them, almost without exception, were of trodden earth, cinder, and cockleshells.
And the people who lived in these places? At the thought he had hunched his shoulders. Yet something about them had struck him, difficult though it was to put it into words. He had met them coming out, seen them trudging up to their doors; here one had passed a civil word, there one plucked a curtain to stare at him. But in total, what was the impression? It was escaping him, for the moment. Unconsciously, intuitively, he had made a judgement, which later would reappear in the guise of inspiration.
Now he was standing at the crossways, at the physical heart of the village. Three other shops besides the Beach Stores each faced the irregular plain. A butcher’s – wasn’t that the place where Simmonds had bought his sausages? – a baker’s which dabbled in groceries, and a grocer who dabbled in bread. In fact, all the elements of a satisfying focal centre, helped out by the bus turnround, a chapel, and the post office. Then why did it fail, as if put together by an inept artist? Why did one’s eye go perpetually roaming after a factor that wasn’t there?
It was meaningless – that was the word! But one was checked directly by the paradox. There was plenty of meaning to be found in Hiverton, it was active and busy in its peculiar way. Only the word, once hit on, began to haunt Gently. It had an uncanny aptness which wouldn’t let him alone. In some sense to be decided he knew it was applicable: to someone, somehow, Hiverton was devoid of meaning.
Still puzzling, he went up the steps to the Beach Store. Mrs Neal gave him a smile and a nod over her bacon slicer. By n
ow, like everyone else, she would know his identity, and was probably expecting an official visit from him. Gently had read her statement, which confirmed that of Nockolds. There was plenty of routine that he had studiously neglected.
‘Heard from your husband yet, Mrs Betts?’
A neat, drab woman stood waiting with a partly-filled rush bag.
‘I had a letter from him this morning. They’ve done with the mackerel. They’ll be working round this way for the season before long.’
‘They’re usually back at Starmouth by the first week in September … let’s hope it’s a better herring-fishing this year than last.’
‘The Scots boats are coming for all they said last time.’
Bacon, tea, and the latest gossip, and you could supplement the news with a copy of the local ‘evening’. Gently picked one up from a pile on the stationery counter. It wasn’t carrying his picture although his arrival had made the headline.
‘My boy Tommy was telling me that the police are properly stumped.’
Mrs Neal hissed something in a whisper and her customer turned to stare at Gently.
‘Well, I suppose one can speak!’
‘That’s five-and-seven, Mrs Betts.’
The drab woman stalked out offendedly with the air of a hen driven from its hopper.
Mrs Neal came round the back of the counters. She beamed at Gently as though it were a great joke. She had a twinkle of transparent malice in her eye: it was this that gave point to the plump good nature of her face.
‘I suppose you get used to being gawked at and talked about? It’s just a job, like everything else, though I wouldn’t want it myself.’
‘Aren’t you in the same position?’
‘Here, you mean, behind the counter?’
‘I should have thought they talked about you.’
‘Oh, they do! Don’t you live in a village?’
Again that flash of unconscious malice, drawing a smile of response from Gently. He knew now what it was that attracted him to Mrs Neal. She was someone who understood Hiverton and understood it with detachment. More, unless he mistook her, she understood it with affection; he felt a twinge of surprise that such a thing was possible.
‘Of course, when you came in here I didn’t know you from Adam. It took half-an-hour for the word to get round. I’ve been wanting to have a talk with you. It’s about Fred Nockolds. There’s no harm in Fred, you know, but this business has got him worried.’
‘About what he was doing there?’
‘Yes … exercising his dog!’
‘It’s a bit thin, isn’t it?’
‘Go on! He’s up there regular.’
Gently brooded a moment, mentally reviewing Dyson’s file. In effect he had long dismissed Nockolds from his thoughts. The poacher, who worked at a farm a mile outside the village, had been assisting in a calf delivery at the critical period. The vet and two witnesses had established this fact. ‘I think we can accept his story.’
‘He’ll be relieved. Can I tell him?’
‘You can if you like, but I’ll be seeing him myself. By the way wouldn’t he have had a gun and stuff on him?’
‘There you are again! But he reported to Ferrety, didn’t he?’
Her husband came in, a smooth-faced man with a bald patch. He related afresh how he had accompanied Nockolds to the beach. Gently listened, his eyes closed, trying to visualize the scene. Had the body then been there two hours, or was it only one?
‘Did anyone get to the beach before you?’
‘If so I didn’t see them. But we couldn’t shut the dog up and they soon started coming. It’s a rum thing, that, how a body can upset a dog.’
‘Did you notice any tracks?’
‘It’s all tracks unless there’s been rain.’
‘What about the fellow in the tent?’
‘I didn’t see him come down till later.’
‘He’s a queer one, if you like,’ Mrs Neal interrupted them. ‘Not that I think any ill of the lad, though there’s nasty talk going round.’
‘What sort of talk is that?’
‘Why, that he’s the one you’re after. But I say it’s all nonsense, and I see as much of him as anyone. There’s nothing wrong there that a good home wouldn’t put right.’
‘You know about him, then?’
‘Of course. He’s often in for a chat.’
‘Did he ever mention Miss Campion?’
‘No. It’s his mother I usually hear about.’
It was still hot enough for ice cream and Gently took a cornet out with him. From the steep-roofed buildings long shadows were falling, but a thermometer on the wall had only just sunk below eighty. One of the village children had got a bike and they were all having fun with it. As he raced across the open space they tried to catch him and pull him off. Two or three of the older ones sat apart on a bench. They glanced sideways at Gently, muttered furtively to each other.
He paused outside The Longshoreman, before which were parked several cars. The windows were open upstairs and down and one could hear the chatter of the bar from the road. Some young men, probably farm workers, sat drinking on two outside seats. They wore white shirts and their tanned flesh looked hard and healthy. Although they had only been talking cricket they, too, subdued their voices.
It was the same when he entered the bar: a lively scene seemed suddenly to hesitate. At the end of the room a game of darts was in progress and above the quick hush one could hear their soft thumping.
‘Give me a glass of bitter.’
Without appearing to look round he was nevertheless taking it in. Fishermen, farm workers, one or two who worked in Starmouth: The Longshoreman was for regulars, people who fitted into their niche. On a trestle table under the window four old fishermen were shuffling dominoes. Round the dartboard they spoke in monosyllables and changed places automatically.
‘Have this one on the house.’
But Gently tendered his coin firmly. The publican, stout and middle aged, gave him a solemn wink as he returned the change.
‘We can’t complain of the weather!’
He leaned confidentially on his massive elbows.
‘If there’s anything you want to know … but I’d sooner it was in the back room. I try to please everyone. That’s the tricky part of pub business.’
Gently grunted indefinitely and settled his hip against the bar.
The hush which marked his arrival had passed, though the conversation was perhaps quieter than before. One quickly became aware of different groups among the patrons. The fishermen, in particular, stuck very much together. The dart players were largely farm workers, those round the bar from town. In a corner by himself sat the Keep Going’s owner; he smoked twist in a clay pipe, taking slow, measured puffs.
‘That’s Esau – Esau Dawes.’
The publican had followed his glance.
‘You’ve seen his boat, haven’t you? It’s a hard one to miss! That’s Jack Spanton, his mate, the young fellow having a joke. They think the world of that boat, it’s like it was a human being to them.
‘Then there’s Josh Ives, the short ’un. Him and Aaron Wright are mates. They got blown up with a mine, which is where Josh got his limp from.’
‘On the left it’s Peero Palmer – you’ll maybe hear them call him “Dutchy”. Took his boat across to Holland, he did, and never came back till five years later.’
‘Who’s the one they’re trying to shut up?’
‘Him?’ The publican looked uneasy. ‘Don’t pay any attention! It’s Bob Hawks of the Boy Cyril. But he went queer years ago – which is saying something, when it comes to fishermen. They aren’t ordinary people like you and me.’
It was the angry-eyed man whom Gently had seen talking to the reporters. Now, seemingly the worse for drink, he was angrier than ever. Every once in a while his voice would rise above the general hubbub, and his mates, who were soberer, could do nothing to stop him.
‘There isn’t a man among you …’<
br />
‘Keep you quiet, Bob!’
‘… not one, I say …’
‘You’ve had too much into you.’
For a little while they could drown him but always he broke through again. His voice was hard and strident and full of uncertain accusation.
‘He doesn’t usually get drunk,’ muttered the publican apologetically. ‘He’s too mean as a rule – he watches every penny. Some of them now … look at Esau over there! He gets drunk every night and you can’t tell him from sober.’
Gently finished his glass and the publican promptly refilled it. He was sticking to Gently as though to give him a personal sponsorship. From time to time he was summoned away to replenish other glasses, but always he hurried back to plant his elbows by the silent detective.
‘There’s always a lot said when a thing like this happens. A couple of pints – you know how it is! But they don’t mean any harm by it, that’s what I say. They come here to let off steam and to work it out of their systems.’
‘Who’s the mate on the Boy Cyril?’
‘Abby Pike – that’s him lighting his pipe. Another rum bloke! He’s been married three times. During the war he went mine-sweeping and got a couple of bullets in him.’
Was it his imagination or had the atmosphere really become more tense? During the last few minutes, he thought, the various groups had shrunk further away from each other. Those clustered round the bar had got their backs turned to the rest; they were discussing a make of car with a conscious deliberation. At the dartboard there was silent attention, scarcely a word even being exchanged. And the fishermen had contracted their knot – only Dawes puffed on in oblivion.
‘None of you seem to realize …’
The tipsy fisherman’s voice rose again. His drinking had made it unsteady but the actual words came clearly enough.
‘… one point of view, that’s your whole trouble! One point of view … no feeling at all …’
‘Go and see to your nets, Bob.’
‘It’s the truth … and you know it …’
‘Can’t you shut him up, Abby?’
‘… you don’t like to hear it!’
The publican juggled clumsily with a couple of tankards. Beer slopped into the drip pan and made a river along the bar.
