Gently at a Gallop

by Alan Hunter

  ‘But surely this is the current idiom?’ Gently said.

  Lachlan Stogumber shook his head vigorously. ‘It’s the past, the dark past, part of the long night of anarchy. Oh, it was necessary. Poetry was sick, it had been in decay since the Romantics. It needed anarchy, blasphemy, atheism, a great roll in its own vomit. But now it’s had it. Now the patient is stirring, ready to get up from his bed.’ He touched the clipping. ‘You can still smell the vomit.’ He touched the sonnet. ‘But also, fresh air.’

  ‘I see,’ Gently said. ‘I seem to have called at a historic moment.’

  ‘Anarchy is dead,’ Lachlan Stogumber said. ‘To be a poet now, one must write poetry. Thomas was the only poet of the Abyss, and the Abyss crushed him with its darkness. It was eighteen straight sonnets, not straight whiskies, that poisoned Dylan.’

  ‘An interesting theory,’ Gently said. ‘And so, in a flash of vision, you’ve turned traditionalist.’

  ‘If that’s a label you understand,’ Lachlan Stogumber said scornfully. ‘Yes. I’m beginning again at the Piazza di Spagna.’

  ‘Where Keats died,’ Gently said. ‘But I can think of another reason why an inarticulate poet should suddenly want to be articulate, and it has nothing to do with historic necessity.’ He laid a finger on the sonnet. ‘He could fall in love.’

  Lachlan Stogumber’s eyes raked him. ‘Clever,’ he said. ‘You’re so clever. Even you have intelligence enough to identify that as a love-poem.’

  ‘Did you write it?’

  ‘Prove otherwise!’

  ‘I’ll have a try,’ Gently said. He picked up the sonnet. ‘Type me a copy,’ he said. ‘I’ll need one anyway, for comparison.’

  Lachlan Stogumber didn’t move.

  ‘Come on,’ Gently said. ‘Type me a copy.’

  ‘You know I can’t, don’t you?’ Lachlan Stogumber said bitterly. ‘One doesn’t remember them as precisely as that.’

  ‘You don’t remember your own poem?’

  ‘No – not a poem like the sonnet! It’s the sort that comes out like a bud expanding, you don’t know how, and you don’t remember. There’s another sort, the sort you labour at, and come back to, and work over – those you remember. But even those you may not recall in exact detail.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘One’s always learning! But I’ll still need a copy.’

  ‘Give me the one you have, then.’

  ‘I suggest you use the original draft.’

  Lachlan Stogumber eyed him steadily. ‘It isn’t convenient to use it,’ he said. ‘And I don’t intend to produce it for you. So give me that one, or go without.’

  ‘You do want me to accept that the poem is yours?’

  ‘As I said before – prove otherwise.’

  Their eyes linked tightly for a moment, then Gently slowly shook his head. He laid the sonnet on the desk beside the typewriter. Lachlan Stogumber sat down and fed in fresh paper.

  Gently rose, moved round the desk, stood staring through the spreading, many-paned windows. Below was the gravel sweep, then smooth-shaven lawns, separated from the drive by the moulded yew hedges. Across the road was a rough paddock and a line of seven black poplars. Then the heath began. In dark, heat-hazed ridges it stretched far off, with the sky bleached behind it.

  ‘So let’s suppose the poem’s yours,’ Gently said, without turning. Behind him the patter of the typewriter hesitated. ‘A poem you wrote – like a bud expanding – to a woman you apparently can’t visit very freely. You wouldn’t tell me her name?’

  There was a brief silence. ‘I’ll leave you to guess,’ Lachlan Stogumber said tartly.

  Gently nodded to the window. ‘I’ll be happy to do that. My guess is she lives just across the heath.’ He waited. Lachlan Stogumber said nothing. ‘Yes, across the heath,’ Gently continued. ‘And sometimes her occasions would take her on the heath – perhaps bring her in sight of this window. She’s a handsome woman, tallish, fine-figured, and you’re probably not the first to be smitten by her. Someone else may have had his eye on her, this handsome woman who frequented the heath.’ He turned from the window. ‘Am I right?’

  Lachlan Stogumber was staring at him fiercely. There was paleness in the young man’s cheek and his full-lipped mouth was drawn small.

  ‘You’re doing the guessing,’ he said aggressively.

  ‘Let’s say I’m guessing right,’ Gently said. ‘And I’m guessing the other man was Charles Berney – and that Monday’s party put him wise.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  Gently pointed to the sonnet. ‘That’s what made the penny drop. Somehow it got into Berney’s hands, and it was no riddle to him.’

  ‘He didn’t read it. Marie got it away from him.’

  ‘I think he read enough,’ Gently said. He paused. ‘You still want to claim it as yours?’

  Lachlan Stogumber’s eyes flamed at him.

  ‘Take it from there, and it’s simple,’ Gently said. ‘Berney decided he would interrupt things. He surprised you and the lady on the heath, and somehow he got himself under a horse. Of course, you have an alibi – you were up here writing – but I know already that you can’t confirm it. And in the matter of horses, there’s Farmer Creke’s stallion, while presumably the lady herself was mounted.’

  Something clicked in Lachlan Stogumber’s stare. His face loosened, he began to smile.

  ‘Clever,’ he said. ‘And now all I have to do is break down and admit that Charlie wrote the sonnet.’

  Gently nodded, watching him. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Exactly like that – or it’s no use to you. If Charlie didn’t write it you’re back to square one – making up fables about mystery ladies.’

  ‘Is the lady such a mystery?’

  Lachlan Stogumber laughed tauntingly. ‘She isn’t the one you’ve tried to saddle me with. And for all you know she doesn’t exist – I may just have been trying my hand at a love sonnet.’ He began typing again, striking the keys jauntily. ‘I should forget the stallion too,’ he said. ‘If you’ve seen it, you’ll know that only Nat can ride it. If Nat didn’t kill Charles, we don’t need alibis.’

  ‘Mr Redmayne has ridden the stallion,’ Gently said.

  ‘Leo? Don’t believe all he tells you.’

  ‘What are you telling me?’

  Lachlan Stogumber laughed again. ‘The truth. It’s what poets are famous for.’

  He finished the typing with a flourish and handed the poem and the copy to Gently. Gently made a quick comparison of the two typescripts. There was little doubt they were a match. Lachlan Stogumber spread his hands.

  ‘Final proof. Now you’ll be happy.’

  Gently shrugged and folded away the sheets. Docking, in the background, was easing to his feet.

  ‘Perhaps you haven’t solved much,’ Lachlan Stogumber grinned. But you’ve had your fun – and you’ve met a poet.’

  He mockingly offered his hand to Gently.

  Gently stared past him, didn’t take it.

  Outside the study they found Redmayne lounging casually by a window. He put his finger to his lips while Docking closed the heavy door. Gently flung him a look.

  ‘Could you hear everything?’

  Redmayne smiled, unoffended. ‘Pretty well everything. Though, naturally, I missed the revealing interplay of expressions.’ He fell into step beside Gently. ‘I thought the Wonderful Boy was exercising restraint. He can throw some brilliant temperament when he wants to. I’d say he must have taken a shine to you.’

  Gently grunted. They came to the stairs.

  ‘I adored your theory,’ Redmayne said, keeping close. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t know it, but your reasoning falls flat on one very important point. Lachlan has never shown much interest in the ladies. He doesn’t chase them or encourage them. According to my observation his only love is the muse – in fact, I’d lay a cool hundred that Lachlan is a virgin.’

  Gently crossed the hall. He didn’t look back.

  ‘I see,’
Redmayne said. ‘You don’t take my word. But I’m a trained observer too, just like yourself, and I’m in an exceptional position to report on this subject. You’d be a fool to ignore that.’

  At the top of the brick steps, Gently swung on him. ‘A trained observer! So what did the trained observer see at Berney’s party?’

  ‘At Charlie’s party . . . ?’ Redmayne’s eyes were wary. ‘What am I supposed to say to that?’

  ‘You were there.’

  ‘Freely admitted. But I don’t see anything that you might call significant.’

  ‘Not some business with that poem?’

  Redmayne shook his head.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Not that I remember.’ He stared back at Gently, his eyes blank.

  ‘Yet something significant did happen,’ Gently said. ‘And a trained observer might have seen it. Should have, would have seen it – ought to be able to report on it now. Straight after that party Berney began to act queerly and his actions terminated in his death. But you saw nothing, heard nothing – didn’t even notice a change of expression?’

  Redmayne shook his head again. ‘Sorry and all that.’

  ‘Come on!’ Gently said to Docking.

  They went down the steps and got in the car. Redmayne stayed where they had left him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE SUN WAS sloping as the Lotus fizzed its way back to Low Hale and Gently, driving towards it, was glad to pull down his vizor. Cars and cyclists were heading out of town and girls were clustering at a bus-stop. An icecream van, pulled in near the police station, was doing brisk trade with home-going workers.

  Docking took Gently to his own office, a small room facing the M/T yard. Waters, one of the Detective Constables, sat at a table typing his report.

  ‘Don’t get up,’ Gently said.

  Waters, half-up, sank on his chair again. He was a red-faced, thick-featured young man with a benignly innocent expression.

  ‘Haven’t had a lot of luck, sir,’ he said. ‘Don’t think the others have either.’ He pointed to a couple of report sheets which were lying on Docking’s desk.

  ‘Where’s Bayfield now?’ Docking asked.

  ‘He’s gone out to Hanworth, sir. The chummies have been on the church roof – stripped it clean, so the local man says.’

  Docking humphed. He unlocked a filing-cabinet and produced three squat brown bottles. He looked around. Waters dived into his pocket, handed Docking a knife that comprised a bottle-opener.

  Gently sat down at Docking’s desk and glanced over the two report sheets. They were scantly filled. Dr Pleasants now had the perfect alibi of a difficult confinement. Bayfield, who must have travelled many hot miles, had added three more horses to the list, but they were stabled rather distant from High Hale heath and their security was sworn to by their owners. No horsebox or cattle-float had been noticed in the village on Tuesday, and nobody except Mrs Bircham had seen a rider on the heath.

  Waters’s stint had been Starmouth, and he had succeeded in filling two minor gaps. About five miles out of the town, on the coast road, he had found the café that had supplied Berney with coffee and sandwiches. It was the car which the café-proprietor chiefly remembered – Berney had driven a puce Jaguar XJ6 – but he recalled that the customer had been wearing a lightweight grey linen jacket; and so had Berney when he died.

  ‘Could he fix the time?’ Gently asked.

  ‘Reckoned it was soon after ten, sir,’ Waters said. ‘That would square with Berney’s driving straight back there. He left the Britannic in Starmouth at about ten.’

  ‘Did he seem in a hurry?’

  ‘I asked that, sir, but my man didn’t particularly notice.’

  ‘He was alone, was he?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The man had his eye on the car.’

  Waters’s other contribution was a sighting of the car at a coast-road village ten miles from High Hale. His informant there was a filling-station attendant who had also been struck by the distinctive mark and colour. Also the car had been travelling fast: it had hit the bend near the filling-station with squealing tyres. The informant was uncertain about the time, putting it somewhere about mid-morning.

  ‘Sounds as though he did come straight back, sir,’ Docking said. ‘He wanted to get into cover before he was spotted.’

  Gently brooded over his pipe. ‘But why?’ he said. ‘The lies . . . the hotel room . . . the long wait?’

  Docking pulled up the visitor’s chair and sat, stretching his long legs straight in front of him ‘I don’t know, sir,’ he said. ‘You’ve put up a couple of theories, but I reckon the second one fits best.’

  Gently nostrilled smoke. ‘Carry on,’ he said.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Docking said. ‘This bit about the poem. There’s nothing on it to say who it’s written to, so even if Berney guessed he could hardly have used it for blackmail. But if he did guess, it could put him in the way of it. He had only to catch young Stogumber and Mrs Rising together. So somehow he figured they were meeting on Tuesday, and he set it up and laid in wait for them.’

  Gently puffed. ‘Do you have a map?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Docking climbed to his feet again and went to the filing-cabinet. He brought a two-and-a-half-inch O.S. map and spread it on the desk in front of Gently. It took in the complete section of coast with Low Hale down in the right-hand corner. To the left was Clayfield, at the centre top High Hale, in the middle the long run of the heath.

  ‘Mark it up – where the body was found, where Berney concealed his car.’

  Docking took a red pencil from the desk tray and deftly applied two crosses.

  Gently shrugged. ‘There’s your answer. Berney was in the wrong part of the heath. In fact, the body was found in the wrong path of the heath. It’s way off the line between Clayfield and the Manor.’

  ‘Yes, but just a minute, sir,’ Docking said. ‘We don’t know how much Berney knew. He might have overheard something, the time, the place. He must have been pretty certain they were meeting on Tuesday.’

  ‘Seems a lot to overhear,’ Gently said. ‘And the trysting-place is still a long way from Clayfield.’ He trailed a finger across the map. ‘It’s more on the line from High Hale village.’

  ‘But, sir – that’s just right!’ Docking faced him excitedly. ‘Remember, she let on she was picking up the kids from school. Well, there isn’t a school at Clayfield. The kids from there go to Hale.’

  ‘So?’ Gently said.

  ‘She came over in the car, sir, so she’d have it there to pick up the kids later. Then she took the car up on the heath and walked across to the valley to meet Stogumber.’

  ‘With Berney right on the spot to follow her.’

  ‘Yes, sir. She’d have to drive at a crawl, on the heath.’

  ‘Berney,’ Gently said, ‘being psychic, and thus knowing Mrs Rising would come that way.’

  Docking coloured. ‘I don’t know about that, sir. But Berney must have heard something. He got the day right. He wouldn’t have done what he did just on the chance of something happening.’

  ‘Unless . . . somehow . . . he knew he was on a certainty.’

  ‘Don’t see how he could have guessed about it, sir.’

  ‘And I don’t see how he could have come by the information,’ Gently said. ‘Unless, of course, someone told him.’ He puffed a little, then shook his head. ‘There are too many loopholes,’ he said. ‘If Mrs Rising was using a car, why bother to go on the heath at all?’ He pointed to the map. ‘Look – that road to the Manor. It keeps on westward, at the back of the heaths. Then it’s joined by this track coming down from Clayfield . . . impossible to get a car along there? She could have picked up Stogumber, or he her, and then gone off in the woods somewhere. I’d say they were a better prospect for lovers in this sort of weather.’

  ‘She had to be at the village by a quarter to four, sir.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘Not much of a problem! The point is that she needn’t have come on the heath if s
he were driving, and if she were riding there were nearer places to meet Stogumber.’

  ‘Perhaps there were special reasons for this place,’ Docking said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Gently said. ‘Make a suggestion.’

  Docking stared resentfully at the map for some moments, then sighed and tilted his brown bottle. Waters, who’d finished his bottle a while back, edged closer to the desk for a glimpse of the map.

  ‘Sir, it’d be the right place for Berney to meet her,’ he ventured. ‘If we know the woman was Mrs Rising.’

  Gently favoured him with a small smoke-ring. ‘We’re not even sure of that,’ he said. ‘Which brings us back to square one, as Mr Lachlan Stogumber predicted. Berney wrote the poem, made the assignation, was surprised by the injured husband. With the addition that his wife certainly knew about it – which means she may have passed on the information.’ He looked from Waters to Docking. ‘Any advance?’

  Waters looked blank. Docking shook his head.

  ‘Three theories,’ Gently puffed. ‘And we don’t like any of them . . . as though somehow we’d got on a wrong track.’

  Docking cleared his throat. ‘It comes back to this, sir. There’s a woman in the case, and we’ve got to nab her. If she isn’t Mrs Rising, we’ve got to prove that, and then start looking elsewhere.’

  ‘Find the woman . . . !’

  ‘Yes, sir. And I’m pretty sure in my own mind that we’ve found her.’

  Gently smiled up at him through wreaths of smoke. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’ll work on that.’

  He left Docking waiting for a report on the lead theft and drove to the Royal William for a shower and dinner. The hotel had a busy air. Its rather small yard was packed with Capris, Ventoras and similar vehicles. In the soft-lit dining-room, barricaded in a corner, a trio was playing a selection from The Arcadians, and sweat shone beneath the powder of the waitresses as they hastened between the tables and the swing doors to the kitchen. The manager was on the look-out for Gently. He was a plump, jowled man with a toper’s complexion. He ushered Gently ostentatiously to his table and hung about while the waitress took the order.