by Hunter Alan
Hastings laughed again. ‘Chance,’ he said. ‘Whenever I gamble, I lose.
‘My father was an estate agent at Bude, so I knew a little about the business. I decided I’d go in for that and I looked for something in the professional paper. I found an agency being offered at Abbotsham. It was miles away from my connections. I rang Sayers and got details and settled the matter the same day. I simply went. A very good friend of mine wound up my affairs in Kensington. How was I to know I was going to the one place where Shimpling was bound to find me again?’
He sipped his drink, almost indignantly.
‘The swine had another victim at Abbotsham,’ he said. ‘For six months, I really thought I’d slipped him. Then one day I met him in the street.’
‘How did you know Groton was another victim?’
Hastings went still. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘It was worth a try, but it’s not coming off. I didn’t mention any names.’
‘We know about Groton.’
‘Good for you. But I’m not giving any names.’
‘It was Groton you meant.’
‘No names.’
Gently sighed. ‘Carry on!’
Hastings sipped some more. ‘Shimpling sounded me out. He didn’t know if he could still swing Laura on me. I tried hard to bluff him but he was too sharp and threatened to try his luck with Laura. Then of course I had to give in. By that time Laura was Lady Buxhall. I hadn’t seen her since the trial . . . ironically, it was Shimpling who brought us together again!
‘What he wanted now was not, at first, money, but a place at Abbotsham where he could live. He told me that business was improving in Abbotsham and that he intended to move there to watch his investments. He wanted a quiet place – nothing expensive! – somewhere handy but unobtrusive. I had Young’s bungalow on the books. I showed him that. He took it.’
‘So you’re actually the owner of that bungalow?’
Hastings nodded. ‘I bought it. Young is living near Derby now. Owles and Porteous did the conveyancing.’
‘But surely . . . haven’t you been back there?’
Hastings closed his eyes, said: ‘Never.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why should I? Do you think it’s a place of happy memory?’
Gently said: ‘Put it like this. Suddenly Shimpling disappears. You own the bungalow – wouldn’t you repossess it, perhaps sell it to get your money back?’
‘I might have done. But I didn’t.’
‘So why not?’
Hastings shrugged. ‘To start with, nobody would have bought it from me. It had been on the books for twelve years.’
‘So you left it to rot.’
‘That’s about it.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been safer to set light to it?’
‘Perhaps. I wouldn’t know, would I?’
‘You would if you’d looked inside the door.’
Hastings twirled his glass, saying nothing. His handsome face had no expression. He sat easily, almost relaxedly, one well-trained leg crossing the other. At last he said:
‘This means nothing, I’m just throwing away some lines. Different things happen to different people, different people have different reactions. If something happens to you, you understand it. Somebody it hasn’t happened to, doesn’t. All you can do then is to point out to him that different things happen to different people.’
‘And you risked not going back to the bungalow?’
‘As I said, I was throwing away lines.’
‘Don’t throw them away too often,’ Gently said. ‘You might find twelve other people waiting to catch them.’
Hastings inclined his head. ‘Now may I go on?’
‘Yes – but it’s a question we may come back to.’
Laura Buxhall said: ‘I think it’s my turn. I’ve something to tell you about Shimpling.’
She was leaning forward, not looking at Gently, her legs tucked back and to one side. A very faint scent of lily of the valley must have had its origin with her. She spoke haltingly.
‘I don’t know how much people have told you about Shimpling – people who knew him, I mean – what he was like, the man himself. Well, he was – evil: that’s the only word. It was almost as though you could smell it. Not that you could smell it, of course . . . he used cosmetics, just like a tart.
‘Yet he wasn’t effeminate to look at – from a distance, he appeared quite manly – all the same, there was something wrong, something indecent . . . you seemed to smell it! As though under the flesh he was rotten, neither a man nor a woman. He made you shiver, you couldn’t help it. He had eyes like a ferret’s. They glittered.’
‘When did you meet him?’ Gently asked.
‘I saw him at some of those – parties. I had nothing to do with him, of course. He was just there . . . a sort of part of it. Then I didn’t see him again until I came to live at Hawley House – I’d forgotten all about him, that people like that even existed. But he . . . contacted me, I suppose you’d call it. I’d been doing some shopping in Illingford . . . suddenly he was sitting there at the table with me, in Derry’s, in the Coffee Garden. It was like a nightmare. I was on my own; I looked up, and there he sat.’
‘Why didn’t you walk out?’ Gently said.
‘I couldn’t do that . . . he had an effect on me. I seemed to know in a moment that he had some power over me. He said he’d met an old flame of mine, the one who used to take me to parties, and did I think he should be discreet about that or did my in-laws know already. What could I possibly say to him? He had an effect that was simply mesmeric. You found yourself saying and doing anything just to break the spell, to get rid of him.
‘He asked for a loan of fifty pounds and I opened my handbag and paid it to him. He said at the end of the month he might be short, and could he rely on my generosity? He wrote an address on a slip of paper. I could send it there, he said – the same sum, unregistered, on the last day of each month. Then I was sure he would stay my friend, that he would always protect my reputation.
‘And suddenly his chair was empty again. And I burst into tears. I couldn’t help it . . .’
Hastings reached out to press her hand.
‘It’s all right, Dave,’ she said. ‘Don’t fuss me.’
‘By God, I’d have maimed him!’ Hastings said. ‘It was just after I’d paid him to keep away from you.’
‘Dave, you mustn’t talk like that.’
Hastings looked fiercely at Gently. ‘Now you’ve a picture of him,’ he said. ‘This is the man you’re making trouble over.’
Gently nodded. ‘Point taken! Perhaps now we can come to something more important?’
‘What’s more important?’
‘Shall we say – the state of the market, when Shimpling smelled a divorce in the offing?’
Laura Buxhall’s hand went to her mouth.
‘Steady, Lolly!’ Hastings said. ‘The Superintendent is good at guessing. That’s what superintendents are for.’
‘I’m not guessing,’ Gently said. ‘Just dealing the cards off the pack. Shimpling wouldn’t have missed a trick like that, especially when it was to lose him a couple of clients. If that divorce had gone through he would have lost his hold on you for good – so he had either to bust the divorce, or settle for a lump-sum payment. But he couldn’t easily bust the divorce without prejudicing his set-up, so he chose the lump sum. Isn’t that a logical sequence?’
‘Lolly, don’t say anything,’ Hastings said.
‘He must have asked plenty,’ Gently said. ‘Dr Cheyne-Chevington had private resources, Lady Buxhall a millionaire husband. And this was the pay-off, the once-for-all. I’d say Shimpling was asking five figures. Maybe twenty . . . thirty thousand: he’d certainly open his mouth wide.’
‘Go on – have fun!’ Hastings snapped.
‘Only this time he opened it too wide. Usually he didn’t make mistakes like that, but just this once he’d priced himself out. You couldn’t or you wouldn’t pay him. On the other ha
nd you couldn’t and wouldn’t do nothing. So how was this interesting plot to end? What were the final cards to be?’
‘You know I have an alibi!’ Hastings exclaimed.
Gently shook his head. ‘I know you haven’t. Groton is the only one with an alibi – unless Sayers comes up with something convincing.’
‘I was right here – in this chalet.’
‘Part of the night you may have been.’
‘Ask Cockfield. Ask Ashfield—’
‘Perhaps I should ask Lady Buxhall?’
‘I – what should I know about it?’ Laura Buxhall faltered. ‘I wasn’t anywhere . . . I didn’t know anything!’
‘You weren’t told what was going to happen?’
‘No . . . nothing about the tiger.’
‘Lolly,’ David Hastings shouted.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ she cried in confusion. ‘I can’t tell you anything, I don’t know anything. David, get me out of here . . . I want to go!’
She jumped to her feet. Hastings, gone pale, followed her through the doors with the bottle-glass insets. Only moments later an engine started and car wheels crunched on the gravelled drive. Hastings came back. He stood haggardly by the doors, face thinned, lips tight. Gently had got out his pipe and was stolidly filling it. On the floor lay Laura Bughall’s glass.
Hastings came forward. ‘Well?’ he asked dully.
Gently struck a match. ‘Give me Sayers,’ he said.
‘Sayers?’
‘For him, I’ll keep Lady Laura out of it. You know she wouldn’t stand up for five minutes.’
‘But I can’t do that!’
‘Please yourself. You wanted a deal, I’m giving you one.’
‘But Sayers—’
‘Where is he?’
David Hastings bit his lips.
Gently rose, puffing smoke. He said to Dutt:
‘Come on!’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BY A MIRACLE – or was it because people were beginning to know Gently? – he and Dutt were left to eat their lunch at the Angel in peace.
It was Saturday menu, no doubt concocted with an eye on the farmers. It included roast turkey, roast chicken, roast sirloin and beef pudding.
The sweets were also more substantial; special today was an apple dumpling, huge servings of which, swimming in thick custard, kept going past to the tables. It was Dutt’s choice. The Saturday menu was clearly earning his approval. Before the apple dumpling he had silently tucked away what looked like a quarter of a good-sized turkey.
Then dreamily over the coffee he remarked:
‘These country boys know how to eat!’
And for a while he sat sleepily, benignly watching the dispatch of food by other customers.
Gently had fared more abstemiously, on chicken followed by fruit salad. He’d looked wistfully at Dutt’s apple dumpling, but had been warned by a lingering soreness in his head . . .
‘Is that the chemist bloke over there, chief ?’
Gently looked where Dutt was indicating. Yes, it was Ashfield all right, at a corner table at the end of the room. He must just have arrived; his black head was bobbing over a plate of vegetable soup. Opposite him sat his grey-haired wife with a glass of tomato juice before her.
‘Can’t say I admire his taste . . .’
As though she’d heard, Mrs Ashfield stared towards them. A stare of hard, penetrating condemnation. Then she spoke to Ashfield, but he didn’t turn round.
‘Blimey!’ Dutt said.
Gently shrugged feebly. ‘For all you know, she’s an excellent woman.’
‘That’s just what I mean, chief – she’s an excellent woman.’
‘Perhaps that’s the reason why he’s a philosopher.’
But perhaps he loved his wife too? Gently watched the black head from the corner of his eye. Ashfield wasn’t a timid man, either, he’d fire up soon enough if you roused him. Yet he submitted to those ugly assistants, and shrank from a showdown about Shirley Banks . . . was it fear? Was it love? Possibly a mixture of both.
‘Anyway, don’t leave Ashfield out of your reckoning.’
‘Don’t worry, chief, I wasn’t going to.’
‘Keep pressuring him, Cockfield and Hastings. Keep an eye on Groton. Find the other two.’
‘Especially the other two,’ Dutt said. ‘What line shall I take with Lady Laura?’
‘She’s your ace in the hole. She’ll break down easily. But don’t make use of her unless you have to.’
Because, in any case, how much did she know? Most likely she’d told the truth about that! It was possible that until a few days ago she’d never known how the blackmailer had been dealt with. Hastings would have said: ‘We’re going to have a showdown – Shimpling won’t threaten us any more.’ And so it had been: all she could tell them was that Hastings was implicated, and perhaps with whom.
Whereas what they wanted so much to know . . . but nothing fresh had come in on Banks or Sayers.
‘Banks can prove the blackmail set-up. Get it out of her somehow! Once it’s proved you can squeeze the others, make it really fierce for them. They must know where Sayers is hiding. Hastings knows for a certainty. And that’s how you’ll use Lady Laura – as a jemmy to prize open Hastings.
‘Meanwhile, keep them checking on Hastings. He probably forged documents when he switched identities.’
‘I’ll do my best, chief,’ Dutt said.
Gently grinned. ‘You’ll manage,’ he said. ‘Keep up the pressure, that’s all. These people aren’t pros. They’ll crack.’
But he sighed, lighting his after-lunch pipe. Really oughtn’t he to stay with it for another day . . . say over the weekend, by which time Miss Banks must surely be in the bag?
That’s what the Assistant Commissioner would have envisaged, Gently getting his teeth in and staying on . . . leaving Evans to loiter by his side with nobody to use his spare rod. Yes, that was the idea! When had Gently ever left a case unfinished?
Right now, as he set off to drive to his golf club, the AC would be chuckling over his astuteness . . .
‘Superintendent Gently, sir?’
A waiter stood by them.
Gently volleyed smoke. ‘Who wants me?’
‘On the phone, sir. Gave the name of Barnes. Said it was very urgent he should speak to you.’
Gently grunted pessimistically, but got up and followed the waiter. The waiter led him into the office, where a phone lay off its cradle. Gently took it.
‘Gently here . . .’
‘Chiefie, you’ve got to get out to Groton’s place!’
‘What is it – a fire?’
‘No, this is serious! Grab some men and get out here.’
Gently settled slowly on the desktop. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘in words of one syllable. Why should a chief superintendent leave his lunch and rush anywhere on the say-so of a crime reporter?’
‘I’ll tell you why,’ Barnes gabbled. ‘There’s a panther loose, for one thing! And there’s a blonde up a tree taking pot-shots at it – and Groton taking pot-shots at everyone else! For crying out loud, chiefie, it isn’t a leg-pull.
‘Bring some men – and bring guns!’
It wasn’t a leg-pull.
The lane to Groton’s farm was jammed with cars when Gently arrived. Swearing, he had to park with two wheels in a ditch, a hundred yards from the farm gate.
As he and Dutt alighted a shotgun cracked and shot swished overhead. It pattered harmlessly into the hedge, but it had people shouting and diving behind cars.
Barnes ran up.
‘Have you brought some men?’
‘They’re on their way. What are these people doing?’
‘Stupid bloody rubbernecks! I’ve been trying to tell them – Groton is threatening to let out the animals—’
‘Where’s this panther?’
‘Sitting under the tree. She’s emptied her gun and never scratched it!’
Men, women, even two children hung about the cars jammin
g the lane. A photographer was lying on top of a shooting-brake, taking shot after shot with a Leica. In an upper window of the farmhouse Groton was visible. You could see the gun lying in the crook of his arm.
‘How did the woman get here?’
‘Drove up in that Anglia. Marched up to the farmhouse as bold as brass! When Groton opened the door she pulled a gun on him – just stuck it straight into his guts.’
‘Then?’
‘They went inside. The boys were flabbergasted – couldn’t believe it. Some of them wanted to ring you, the others thought they’d hang on.’
‘So, of course, nobody rang.’
‘Oh, chiefie, we’re all human! This was the crime scoop of the decade – cameras, everything at the ready. And we’d earned it. All day we’d been here with Groton pumping lead at us—’
‘Who let the panther out?’
‘Groton. At least—’
‘Don’t tell me! You didn’t see him.’
He marched on up the lane, deliberately shoving people aside. Near the farm gate a covey of pressmen were deployed behind a fence. Groton had seen Gently. He threw his gun up and aimed at him. Gently kept on walking. Groton didn’t fire.
Nearer the gate one could hear the animal noises coming from the cages behind the outbuilding. At the corner of the outbuilding a cameraman was crouched: only his head projected farther.
‘Fsst! The panther’s just round there.’
Gently stopped by the pressmen.
‘Did anyone see what happened?’
‘We couldn’t, chiefie. It happened at the back.’
‘Well?’
‘The bird was screaming her head off. We belted down here and round the buildings. There’s a paddock back there with a thorn-tree in it. She was going up the tree like a jack-in-a-box. Then we saw the panther go loping across and start circling round the tree, and the bird was screeching and popping off at it and clawing higher up into the branches.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘What the hell could we do? We grabbed some quick pics and scapa’d! She’s all right if she stays put. He’ll never make it into the thorn tree.’
‘Brave boys,’ Gently said. ‘Where was Groton this while?’
‘Didn’t see him. The next we knew he was shooting and shouting out of his window.’
