Gently at a Gallop

by Alan Hunter

  ‘And you’re saying she passed it on to Berney?’ Gently said.

  Redmayne shook his head. ‘Not quite like that. My theory is that Marie is a tragedy-prone person, with the power to give a tragic inflection to events.’ He turned earnestly to Gently. ‘Look detachedly at what’s happened. It shouldn’t have been tragedy – it should have been farce. Charlie, the old lecher, marrying a young girl, and finding out too late that she had a lover. That’s farce – and so was the rest of it, Charlie behaving like an ass to unmask his rival. But then, somehow, the wrong chance came up – the millionth chance – and the farce was tragedy.’

  ‘And it was Marie who brought up the millionth chance . . . ?’

  ‘I don’t know how else one can explain it. In the powerful emotional pressures of the situation, her tragic influence became energized. Suppose there was a stray on the heath – suppose, if you like, it was Nat’s stallion. Is it impossible to accept that Marie’s influence attracted it, even roused it to a fury against Charlie? Reaction to human emotion by animals is a fact, and the horse has always been regarded as a psychic beast.’

  He looked keenly at Gently. Gently said nothing.

  ‘Perhaps you think I’m talking nonsense,’ Redmayne said. ‘But I mean it seriously – and I’m kin to the Stogumbers. I’m only too convinced it could have happened like that.’

  Gently’s shoulders twitched. ‘I would need a witness.’

  ‘You’d hardly expect Marie or the fellow to confess.’

  ‘Even though it were an accident?’

  ‘Even so. Their going through the mangle wouldn’t bring back Charlie.’

  ‘It would make me go away.’

  Redmayne looked rueful. ‘And is it the only thing that would?’

  Gently didn’t say anything. Redmayne sighed.

  They tramped on together, keeping step.

  CHAPTER TEN

  RATHER MORE THAN half-way across the heath, Redmayne called a halt at the top of a ridge. The haze had now climbed up to the sun, which smouldered whitely behind it, like a pulsing wheel. Below it, seaward, a dark, blind curtain was shutting across the dimmed skyline, and hot, waspish little gusts were driving over the heath, spinning bents and leaf-rubbish as they came.

  Redmayne grimaced at Gently. ‘Time to get off or get wet,’ he said. ‘I was going to show you an Oboranche eliator, anglice Tall Broomrape, but it would have been past its best anyway.’

  ‘Which is the nearest,’ Gently asked, ‘the Manor or the village?’

  ‘The village,’ Redmayne said, ‘but there isn’t much in it.’

  ‘I think I’ll continue to the village.’

  Redmayne slowly nodded. ‘I thought you would.’

  He eased his broad-brimmed hat and resettled it, his hazel eyes mildly reproachful. ‘I suppose it’s no use reasoning with you,’ he said. ‘You’ll go your policeman’s way regardless.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘That’s why you pay me.’

  ‘But you’re human too,’ Redmayne said. ‘This is a wretched business, and you can’t make it better. Shouldn’t you hesitate before making it worse?’

  Gently was silent. Redmayne fingered the hat, pushed it up off his brow again.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘go easy with her. You may think she’s to blame, but she has a heart.’

  ‘Are you coming with me?’ Gently asked.

  Redmayne shook his head. ‘You’ll find me at the Manor. By now, I imagine, you and I misunderstand each other about as well as we’re ever likely to.’ He grinned wryly. ‘Keep to the ridges. They’ll take you across to the survey point. And don’t hang about – it isn’t pleasant to be caught out here in a real pelter.’

  He pulled down his hat, turned quickly and strode briskly away in the direction of the Manor. In a few moments his tall figure dipped below the ridge-top and disappeared.

  Gently kept to the ridges. Another quarter of an hour’s walking brought the edge of the plateau into view, and he was surprised suddenly to recognize below him the spot where Berney’s body had been found. Automatically, he checked his watch. It was nearly an hour and a half since he’d left the Manor. Deducting time for the detour to view the C. europaea, the spot was approximately an hour’s walk from the Manor. And coming the other way . . . ? He glanced towards the survey point. Twenty minutes at the outside, allowing five for the circumstance of the lady’s being enceinte . . .

  He frowned down at the narrow valley. It really was an anonymous sort of place! Until the thicket of hawthorn had registered with him, he’d taken it for just one more of the heath’s multitudinous folds. From the survey point it wouldn’t be easy to find, and from the heath behind many times more difficult. From Clayfield, for example, it would almost be easier to head from the survey point, and to start from there . . .

  Yet, on the other hand, for an illicit meeting, the spot could scarcely have been bettered. Lost entirely in the empty heath, it might have kept a secret for ever. Berney, guessing the heath, hadn’t been able to guess farther, though presumably the heath wasn’t strange to him. A perfect spot . . . but needing a man who knew the heath like his own face.

  A gust of chiller wind puffed along the ridge, and soundless lightning lit the wrack seaward. Gently shivered and set off once more, aiming for the track below the survey point. The blue of the heather had gone dull and the bright scatters of gorse had faded. The sombre swartness that underlay the heath seemed suddenly to surface, like an alerted animal. He reached the track. Then he heard a low moaning of the wind, hollow and eerie.

  Ten minutes later, when he got to the road, the first fat drops were splashing in the dust.

  By the time he reached the Lodge it was raining busily, and he was sodden at the knees and shoulders. Haynes, the domestic, answered his ring, and stood staring at him disapprovingly before letting him in.

  ‘Mrs Berney is upstairs. If you’ll just wait . . .’

  She left him in the hall while she went on her errand. The house was silent: the buzz of rain outside sounded remote, in a separate world.

  Mrs Berney appeared on the landing to gaze malevolently down at Gently. She was wearing a smock dress which concealed her bump yet gave no hint of being designed for maternity. She swung down the stairs with springy grace.

  ‘Something I can do for you?’ she asked insolently. ‘If we’re no longer issuing our policemen with raincoats, I may be able to find you an old one of Charlie’s.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Gently said gravely. ‘I may accept that.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you would,’ Mrs Berney said. ‘And probably a bowl of soup if I had one, but I’m afraid the soup’s gone for swill. What do you want?’

  ‘Just some information.’

  ‘Then why not try the public library.’

  ‘I don’t think it would have it,’ Gently smiled. ‘At least, it won’t have it yet.’

  Her grey eyes flashed at him with a ferocity that was reminiscent of her brother’s. ‘I know what you’re after,’ she said. ‘Lachlan rang me. So don’t waste your time smarming me.’

  ‘Shall we talk, then?’

  ‘It won’t do you any good. But then, of course, it might amuse me.’

  ‘So,’ Gently said. ‘You’ve nothing to lose.’

  ‘Only my temper with policemen,’ Mrs Berney said.

  She gazed spite at him for another moment, then tossed her hair and crossed to the lounge. Gently followed. She stalked through the room and dropped into a high, throne-like Hepplewhite chair. Gently closed the door. Notwithstanding its bays, the lounge was gloomy in the dulled light; and perhaps because of them the rain sounded louder, a hissing beat on the gravel outside. Gently chose an easy chair and sat. A little thunder was crumpling softly, directly overhead.

  ‘Do you believe in witchcraft, policeman?’ Mrs Berney said.

  ‘I believe in punishing it,’ Gently said.

  Mrs Berney laughed jeeringly. ‘A proper policeman’s answer! But you may believe in it yet, before you’ve fi
nished here. And you wouldn’t be able to burn me, you know. I have the classic plea in my tummy. So I could raise the devil from that rug in front of you, and not a single thing you could do about it.’ She laughed again.

  ‘Are you a witch?’ Gently said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Mrs Berney said. ‘At least, I have a demon lover, which is the part that interests you. But like all demon lovers mine is invisible, he comes to me in a cloud of night. Perhaps I dream him. Do you think that’s possible? The way Endymion dreamed of Artemis?’

  Gently shook his head. ‘Your lover is human enough.’

  ‘Of course, he comes in human form.’ Mrs Berney said. ‘That’s understood. He couldn’t make love if he were merely incarnate spirit. But which human form – that’s the question, isn’t it? For all you know, he changes it nightly. I’m positive that’s what Charlie thought. He suspected everyone who wore trousers.’

  The room expanded briefly in a gleam of lightning. Mrs Berney sat shadowed in the sudden light. At the end of a stretched interval the thunder rippled subduedly, sounding very lofty above the house.

  ‘Why did you marry Berney?’ Gently asked.

  ‘For the reason you find so obvious,’ Mrs Berney said.

  ‘Is it obvious?’

  She sat motionless in her darkness, erect and tall in the straight-backed chair.

  ‘We’re living in permissive times,’ Gently said. ‘Not much stigma attaches to unmarried mothers. You are not poor. There is no economic reason why you could not have had your child at home. Alternatively, abortion is now legal, and you have the means to make it easily possible. Yet you don’t choose either of these ways. You marry Berney. Why?’

  Her laughter was biting. ‘Because I chose to. Who are you to ask me for reasons?’

  ‘Were you afraid of your father?’

  ‘I’m afraid of nobody.’

  ‘Your brother?’

  Her laughter pealed through the room. ‘My lover is a demon,’ she said. ‘Let that be your answer. I have a demon’s child in my belly. Demons don’t like their children to be bastards, nor do they permit them to be got rid of. And furthermore I want to have my child.’ She gave a breathless chuckle. ‘Aren’t you curious to know what it will be?’

  ‘You must have hated Berney,’ Gently said.

  ‘Why should I bother to hate such a creature?’

  ‘Because you were his prisoner.’

  ‘I a prisoner!’ Her silky mane flicked across her shoulders. ‘He was the prisoner. I laid a spell on him. Charlie was bound hand and foot. He was locked up in the cell of his jealousy. He knew I was loved, but he could never catch the lover. Oh, he was the prisoner, make no mistake – he married a witch, the poor fool.’

  ‘But he would still be a threat.’

  ‘No threat to me.’

  ‘He had the rights of a husband.’

  ‘Never,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose I would have let him sleep with me, when I was fresh from the arms of my lover?’

  ‘But surely . . . to begin with?’

  She shook her head forcefully. ‘I told him on the wedding-night,’ she said. ‘It took the poor fool an hour to understand it, and then he reacted like any other peasant.’

  ‘How did he react?’

  ‘He brandished a penknife. He threatened to kill me unless I told him the name.’

  ‘And then?’

  Mrs Berney laughed mockingly. ‘He came to heel. Like any other peasant.’

  The thunder growled suddenly, now sounding much closer, then lightning glowed, and the thunder came again. Mrs Berney raised her hand.

  ‘Perhaps he’s up there now,’ she said. ‘My lover. Aren’t you just a little afraid?’

  Gently hunched a shoulder. ‘So he came to heel,’ he said. ‘You told him his role, and he agreed to play it.’

  ‘What else could he do?’ she said. ‘He was besotted with me. I probably stole his nail-parings and gave him philtres.’

  ‘He didn’t ever rebel.’

  ‘He was too bemused. No doubt he thought that one day I’d come round. I was a sort of woman he’d never dealt with before, he didn’t know what was making me tick.’

  ‘But he’d watch you.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that make things difficult?’

  ‘Not for me,’ she laughed. ‘My lover walks by night. Charlie watched and watched, but discovered nothing.’

  ‘Not at the party?’

  ‘Not then. The poem was Lachlan’s, and Charlie had to accept it.’

  ‘But he didn’t accept it,’ Gently said. ‘He set a trap for you.’

  ‘And it was he who fell in it,’ Mrs Berney said.

  The lightning flared, to be followed by a sharp detonation of thunder. Mrs Berney jumped up, then, checking herself, moved calmly to one of the bays and stared out at the rain. It was whirring down fast now. Straight, steady rods of it rumbled on the gravel and bowed the leaves of the rhododendrons. Over the lawn, still fawn-patched with drought, it raised a fine mist of bouncing spray.

  ‘Of course, you can never marry him,’ Gently said.

  ‘Who cares about marriage,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried it.’

  ‘There can’t be any future. We shall keep watch on you. When he comes to you, we shall have the murderer.’

  She laughed softly. ‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘But now you’re reminding me of Charlie. Once I had a jealous husband on the watch for my lover, now I have a jealous policeman. And what makes you think you’ll do better than Charlie? He was living with me, day by day. He kept a watch on my bedroom at night. And it was no use – love found a way.’

  ‘But, at last, he did spot his man,’ Gently said.

  ‘No, never,’ she said. ‘He was still guessing. He was guessing when he set his puerile trap, and went out on the heath, and the stallion trampled him.’

  ‘So it was Creke’s stallion,’ Gently said. ‘Thank you.’

  Mrs Berney turned from the window haughtily. ‘That’s scarcely worthy of you,’ she said. ‘It was you who said it was the stallion. Another peurile trap. But you are wasting your time – you’ll never know what happened out there. This is far away, outside your knowledge, beyond the wit of Scotland Yard.’

  ‘You could try me,’ Gently said.

  She tossed her head. ‘You are still in the outer darkness. How can you understand our enlightenment, the sudden step forward into freedom? My lover is a king, a god. Without such a love you must remain in ignorance. We laugh at the slave world of the mortals where contingency rules and no freedom is possible.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘I’ve come across such illusions. They’re usually connected with L.S.D.’

  ‘Acid.’ She laughed. ‘I’ve tried acid. But acid is passé, my poor friend. Mere chemical joys are for the slaves. Opium is the religion of the masses. But we’re beyond that, beyond the slave-tricks. Don’t bother searching the house for drugs.’

  Lightning bleached the room and left fizzing gloom, and thunder hammered the roofs again. Mrs Berney stood with raised hands, as though claiming the pounding uproar for her own. She let her hands fall. She moved closer to Gently.

  ‘You should have a little fear,’ she said. ‘A mortal man, dealing with things immortal. With a demon who rides such a storm as this.’

  ‘Not to mention Creke’s stallion,’ Gently said.

  ‘Would he need to ride it?’ she said. ‘He could reach from the moon to lift the stable-latch, and send the stallion out on the heath. What other than that will you learn?’

  ‘A name. To go with yours on the charge sheet.’

  Her laugh was shrill. ‘But if he has no name?’

  ‘Then perhaps yours will stand there alone.’

  Her hand swept up as though to strike him, its long fingers outspread: then she checked, staring past Gently. The lights had come on. Lachlan Stogumber had entered.

  ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Easy, sister. Don’t let this gentleman get you stirred up.’

  He clos
ed the door and came into the room, his gaze fixed tightly on his sister.

  ‘But Lally, he’s accusing me—’

  ‘I heard. But losing your head won’t do any good. And of course, it’s a try-on, he doesn’t know anything. So cool down, stop playing his game.’

  He stood close to her, forceful and intent, staring down her wild indignation. For some moments she resisted him, her eyes hating; but she bit her lip and kept silent. Lachlan Stogumber turned to Gently.

  ‘You’re an expert,’ he said, ‘aren’t you? Getting people to flip is your big thing. Perhaps it’s as well I came when I did.’

  Gently hunched. ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘Because I ran into Leo,’ Lachlan Stogumber said. ‘He was going to drive round and pick you up himself, but I decided to save him the trip. Also, I thought Marie might need a little support.’

  ‘Very brotherly of you,’ Gently said.

  Lachlan Stogumber shook his head. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I’ve learned my lesson. Don’t waste your talent.’ He turned back to his sister. ‘Has he upset you?’ he said.

  Mrs Berney tossed her hair sulkily. ‘The man’s a fool,’ she said. ‘He thinks he can understand me. That’s the only reason why I’m upset, Lally.’

  Lachlan Stogumber grinned. ‘No cause to worry, then.’

  ‘He thinks I knew about the stallion.’

  ‘And did you?’

  She flashed angry eyes at him. ‘Only that you told me he was asking about it.’

  ‘So I did,’ Lachlan Stogumber said, smiling. ‘And that’s the perfect answer, Marie. And as for him understanding you, you’re quite right. Any man who thinks he can do that is a fool.’

  Her angry stare lasted another moment, then slowly it softened into a smile.

  ‘Take him away,’ she said. ‘I’m tired of the fellow. Let him have another go at you and Leo.’

  ‘Leo he’s done. Leo’s very thoughtful.’

  Mrs Berney’s smile faded. ‘Well anyway, get him off my back. I feel insulted all the time he’s here.’

  They stayed looking at each other. The thunder rumbled outside. The lights in the room dipped and brightened. Lachlan Stogumber shrugged his neat shoulders and glanced at Gently: Gently rose.