Gently Sahib

by Hunter Alan

  Behind them, guarding rusted iron gates, stood two red-faced uniform-men, while behind the gates lay a common-place bungalow with roughcast walls and quoins of pink brick.

  ‘What the devil do you want me to tell you? I’ve only arrived this minute!’

  Also he was hungry and the day was close, and . . . in fact, he was ready to jump down people’s throats.

  ‘Who do you think did it – one of his victims? You can tell us that, can’t you?’

  ‘A man is involved.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  ‘Have a heart, chiefie! Have you talked to Groton?’

  ‘He’ll be assisting us.’

  ‘Can we quote you on that?’

  ‘Why ask me?’

  ‘Where was Groton the night it happened?’

  ‘Probably minding his own business.’

  Meanwhile Perkins, the chubby-faced local inspector, was prinking himself in the background, trying to give Gently the impression that he, too, was used to firing answers at a pack of reporters . . .

  ‘All right, that’s all! Let me get through.’

  ‘There’ll be a statement before lunch, won’t there, chiefie?’

  ‘Maybe yes, maybe no.’

  ‘They’ll fire us if we miss the early editions . . .’

  But directly they were scattering back to their cars and taking off for the nearest phones, leaving four men to play cards and to keep a sharp eye on the bungalow.

  ‘This is Police Constable Kennet, Super. He shot at the tiger in the Market Place.’

  Previously Gently had shaken hands with Bulley, who had probably been kept after duty to meet him; now it was the turn of a gaunt-cheeked man who flushed and came raggedly to attention.

  ‘Kennet’s our demon bowler, Super. He took seven for forty-two in the Police versus Specials.’

  Grunt from Gently.

  ‘He keeps goal too. He’s what you’d call an all-rounder.’

  How many more were they going to trot out to shake hands with the man from the Yard?

  ‘And this is Detective-Sergeant Gipping . . .’

  A short gravel drive led up to the bungalow, branching right from the gate to a timber garage from which green paint was flaking. The gravel was scant and choked with weeds. What had once been small lawns had run away. The bungalow had two bay windows and between them a porch the door of which had a square of pebbled glass.

  A dreary place. The rough-cast had greyed, the pink bricks looked immortal. Roses, smothered with grass and sending briers everywhere, lifted a scatter of apologetic blooms.

  Then there were the hedges, overtopping the roof, out of which brambles had begun to encroach; and to the left of the bungalow a broken trellis was weighted down with flowering convolvulus.

  Who could have wanted to live in such a place? It was a mile from the town and not on a bus route.

  ‘Do you know who built it?’

  ‘Sorry, Super?’

  Perkins was still parading his men.

  ‘This bungalow – who built it?’

  ‘Oh . . . can’t say I know. A local builder.’

  ‘What I mean is, who had it built?’

  Perkins didn’t know this either, but Police Constable Kennet – he actually saluted – could recite the history of the bungalow.

  ‘It was built for a bloke called Cowling, sir, he was a bit of a market-gardener. But he went broke just before the war and then the evacuees had it.

  ‘After that it was some people called Young, but they didn’t stay very long; then it was empty for a while, I remember; then I reckon this Shimping had it.’

  ‘Did he buy the bungalow?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir. I believe he was here above a twelve-month.’

  ‘If he didn’t own it, who does?’

  Nobody seemed to know that.

  And there it lay, that misbegotten building, which perhaps even its builder had never loved; concealing, it might well have been for ever, the evidence of a gruesome tragedy.

  ‘Well, let’s take a look at it.’

  Perkins had the key and he led the way briskly to the front door. Behind Gently came Messrs Gipping, Kennet and the rest, followed at a distance by the patient Dutt. Perkins unlocked the door and opened it cautiously.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve removed the bits and pieces . . . but there’s still plenty of stains. And the claw-marks, of course.’

  Gently looked. From the front door of the bungalow the hall ran straight through to the back. Four doors opened off it, but it was unlit except by the pane in the outer door. The walls were papered with a drab flowered paper and the floor, long ago, had been painted brown.

  Extending for about twelve feet inside the door was an area of thick smudged stains and savage scrapings.

  ‘That square bit there . . . that’s where we pulled up the rug. It was cemented down with blood.

  ‘Then you can see where the chair was lying in that pool farther up.

  ‘Look at the way those claws dug in! Poor devil, he couldn’t have stood an earthly. And there, where it spouted over the wall . . .

  ‘I was nearly sick when I first saw it.’

  ‘Has Groton seen it?’ Gently asked.

  ‘Groton? No . . . should he have done?’

  ‘He’d know the sort of mess a tiger makes!’

  ‘But surely nothing else could have done it?’

  Gently shrugged massively. No, there really wasn’t much doubt about it! A brilliant effects-man might have faked it, but not in a hurry, straight after a killing.

  And surely nobody had faked that ghastly corpse, photographs of which he had now seen . . .

  ‘So that’s where the rug came up, and that’s the mark of a chair. What are those dab-marks on the fringe of the staining?’

  Perkins’s face became woeful. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m puzzled by them. Unless the tiger did it with his tail – you know, sort of tapped the floor with it.’

  ‘You think that’s likely?’

  ‘Well . . . Gipping suggested it.’

  ‘What about that curved marking, close to the wall.’

  ‘Could he have done that with his paw?’

  ‘And look – there’s another – and another. About three feet apart.’

  Perkins shook his head. ‘Frankly, I’m baffled . . .’

  ‘We’ll want those marks measured and photographed. I’d say chummie wore a number ten tennis shoe, but your lab-man can sort that out.’

  ‘You mean . . . ?’

  ‘Footprints. He was going near the wall to keep out of the blood. If he searched these two front rooms he’d have to go through it. But he found he was getting some on his shoes so he came away again on tiptoe.

  ‘The puzzle is why there aren’t more footprints – he had to fetch the body out, remember.’

  Poor Perkins! He looked as dismayed as a reprimanded child. Yet it was quite obvious, the message contained in those faint marks.

  And perhaps if it hadn’t been so close and if Gently hadn’t missed his elevenses, he’d have been more diplomatic to the well-meaning local man.

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t tell us much. Of course, it was too late for latents?’

  Perkins nodded dismally. ‘We got some of the dead man’s from the glass shelf in the bathroom.’

  ‘Have you sacks or something to cover this floor? By the way, I’d like the rest of you to stay outside. Dutt, prowl around and see if you can find what chummie used to shift the body.’

  Then they all started to do something, except Perkins, who waited gloomily. But was it Gently’s fault if he’d had this Big Man role shoved on him? The trouble was that nothing had happened at Abbotsham since the dissolution of the monasteries, and now it had they were in a flutter. You half-expected to see flags flying.

  ‘What else have you moved from the bungalow?’

  Now they were going round inside. The rooms had a doggy smell of dry rot along with a sweetish odour
that was hard to place. Dismal rooms, lamentably papered, with a minimum of old, gimcrack furniture. None of the main services came out this way so the ceilings were dimmed by the fumes of oil lamps.

  What sort of person had Shimpling been, to come living in a dug-out like this? Where water, pumped up by a daily stint, flowed cold from the tap unless the range was lit?

  ‘Only the stuff out of the hall. We sent that in to the lab. There’s a bureau in the next room where his papers are locked up.’

  ‘There’s a passport, is there?’

  ‘It’s an old one, expired several years ago.’

  They went into what no doubt had served as the living room and was furnished with a dingy three-piece suite, also a transistor radio, which still worked, though the batteries were getting feeble.

  Through the window, standing beneath bushy apple trees from which tiny unripe apples were falling, one saw a sacking screen with a uniform man posted beside it.

  ‘How did you happen on the body?’

  ‘Oh, that wasn’t too difficult. Chummie buried it in a hurry and didn’t have time to disperse the soil.’

  ‘How deep?’

  ‘Only a foot. You could smell it too, for matter of that.’

  ‘Let’s have the bureau undone.’

  The bureau, strangely, was a good one, the only decent piece in the place. It was late-Georgian veneered mahogany with brass stringing lines and the right handles.

  Perkins produced a key for it.

  ‘We found it with the key in the lock. Everything had been rummaged out of the compartments and left in a heap inside. The drawers, too, had been turned out and the stuff shoved back anyhow.’

  He pulled out the drawers and let the front down. Inside the bureau was now very tidy. Stationery was sorted off into its pigeon-holes and documents stacked neatly in the centre.

  Gently went through the pile quickly – it was almost suspiciously banal. There were rate receipts going back two years, bills for fuel, clothes, tyres.

  Then the passport.

  Peter Dennis Shimpling, described as an author and journalist, born Guildford, England, in 1911, height 5 ft 10 in, eyes hazel, hair brown.

  No special peculiarities noted, wife dash, children dash, a delicately flamboyant signature and a photograph of a man looking vaguely like Hitler.

  Issued May, 1951. Visa’d in France, Switzerland, and . . .

  ‘Have you checked through this?’ Gently asked.

  ‘Yes. It was him who was living here, all right.’

  ‘He was in Kenya in 1953.’

  ‘Kenya?’

  ‘Admitted, it’s a long way from South Africa.’

  For a moment Perkins looked abysmally miserable, then his boyish face cleared.

  ‘Of course! Groton comes from South Africa. That could be a connection, couldn’t it?’

  ‘It could also be a red herring, but it’ll be worth following up. But what was he doing in Kenya just then . . . ? It was when the Mau-Mau were going strong.’

  ‘I’ve got it. It says there he was a journalist.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘That could explain it.’

  And Perkins was all smiles again. Really, he was a very decent fellow.

  Gently pulled open drawers. They contained the usual rubbishy mixture one found in bureaus – pamphlets, old playing cards, broken pipes, loose curtain hooks and other trinkets. Also a few woman’s knick-knacks – hair-clips, earrings, an empty rouge pot. Neither in the drawers nor in the top of the bureau were there any letters. Not even a postcard.

  ‘Have you had the guts out of this?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Gently winked at Perkins.

  ‘Look at this top drawer here. Notice how much shallower it is than the others?’

  He laid the drawer on the floor then felt around inside the bureau. There was a slight click. He lifted out a small compartment attached at right angles to a piece of false lining.

  ‘Most of them have a secret compartment, but unfortunately everyone knows it. It looks as though chummie knew about this one. But you might try it for latents.

  ‘And there’s just a chance . . .’

  He began feeling again, poking up into the top of the bureau. Another click.

  ‘Ah . . . ! This is the one he didn’t know about.’

  He brought out a flat tray, no larger than a flat-fifty cigarette-tin, with lying in it a small notebook bound in black leatherette.

  ‘There! This is going to amuse us – Mr Shimpling’s Black Book.’

  ‘You know what it is?’

  ‘Of course. It was bound to be here, unless chummie got his hands on it first.

  ‘Look – dates, payments, balance carried forward. Mr Shimpling had method. The only snag is he was too cautious – just a single initial by each entry.’

  ‘You mean they’re . . . blackmail payments?’

  ‘What else? And he was doing a snug little business. Eight, nine, ten initials, paying up as regular as company tenants. There’s an H, an S, a B, a W, a C, a G, a D, an E, an L and an A, paying monthly contributions ranging from ten to fifty pounds. And no tax, don’t forget.

  ‘G was paying him twenty-five pounds.’

  ‘G – Groton.’

  ‘It’s a pleasant thought, though it might stand for George or Gwenhylda.’

  Gently felt for his pipe. For the first time the case was beginning to intrigue him a little. Already he was etching in the character of the man who’d come to live in this bungalow.

  A lonely man. One familiar with human weakness, and preying on it. Who accepted his isolation as part of the game, wasn’t seduced into trying to dodge it.

  Coming to live in this remote spot which was yet on the fringe of his selected hunting-ground, bringing with him a woman as predatory as himself who – wasn’t it probable? – helped him set up his victims.

  Yes, that would be the woman’s role . . . then, for some reason, she’d left.

  ‘The Press boys think Shimpling was a queer. Did you know about that?’

  ‘A queer?’

  Perkins stared with that dismayed expression which came over his face so readily.

  ‘But he had a woman living with him.’

  ‘They don’t have to be queer all the time.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know about that.’

  And, Perkins’s expression said, he didn’t want to . . .

  ‘Anyway, we’ll take this book and the stuff back with us. What sort of car did Shimpling run?’

  ‘It was a Ford Anglia. We’ve issued the number. Perhaps we’ll get something out of that.’

  They went through the kitchen door into a concrete yard, then along a path tangled with bindweed for a courtesy visit to the hole. Dutt joined them.

  ‘I think I’ve found what he used. There’s a garden barrow behind the garage. Right in the middle of a nettle bed – and don’t those blinking nettles sting!’

  ‘Any staining?’

  Duct shook his head. ‘Not with the time it’s been standing out there.’

  ‘We won’t bother the lab with it, then. I just wanted to know how chummie did it.’

  ‘Another thing, chief . . . if you’ll come round the front.’

  They followed him, ducking under an overblown forsythia. He led them back to the front porch and pointed to two spots at the edge of the concrete.

  ‘See those, chief ?’

  They were two stars of gravel, picked clean and bright by the action of water. Seeing them, you looked automatically at the guttering. And the guttering was fractured in two places.

  ‘What do you think, chief ?’

  ‘I think you’ve got it. Somebody backed a truck in and damaged the gutter.’

  ‘That’s my idea, they used a truck. They’d have had the doors off and just touched the two places.’

  Gently turned to Perkins. ‘How does Groton shift his livestock?’

  Perkins swallowed. ‘A truck, of course! He had it waiting when the tiger was loose –
a big closed truck with barred windows.’

  ‘Then maybe we’ve solved one problem.’

  At a distance, Gipping and Kennet were poring over the wheelbarrow.

  The four reporters had paused in their card-playing and were now all staring intently towards the bungalow.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AT LUNCH THE same atmosphere of occasion prevailed. The locals had taken him a room in the Angel Inn, the status hotel in Abbotsham.

  It was a large, handsome coaching inn with an archway leading into a big yard. Dickens had stayed there, from which it was presumed that ‘Eatanswill’ was modelled on Abbotsham; and a Georgian house round the corner was identified as his Academy for Young Ladies.

  ‘Dickens stayed here, you know . . .’

  It was the conversation piece at lunch. Instead of being allowed to enjoy himself, Gently was being feted in a private dining room.

  On his right hand sat the chief constable, a craggy-faced man with accusing eyes; on his left a Superintendent Bradfield, who claimed to have known Gently when the latter was a detective-sergeant.

  Starting with iced lemon, they had gone through a menu much too substantial for a warm day, accompanied by wine which Gently would gladly have swapped for a chaste glass of lager. Then there was cognac with the coffee, poured by the chief constable himself, and finally over-large cigars from a box served on a silver salver. And:

  ‘Dickens stayed here, you know . . .’

  It was the other thing that had happened at Abbotsham!

  ‘We got them to put you in the Pickwick suite. There’s a “Pickwick” in the lounge with the passages marked.’

  He had grunted into his cigar. He was sweating, his head was swimming from all the drink. While, as for solving the Shimpling affair, he could see that nobody cared about that . . .

  ‘What’s it like, working in the Central Office?’

  This, a little wistfully, from Superintendent Bradfield.

  ‘Perhaps you’d care to drop in this evening and meet the missus . . . she’s always been a big fan of yours.’

  Was it ever going to break up? There seemed no getting through those fiendish cigars. At the other end of the table, grinning broadly, Dutt was holding court with Perkins and Gipping.

  Finally, with the clock pushing three, the chief constable sighed and scraped back his chair.