Gently at a Gallop

by Alan Hunter

  ‘But this is inconceivable!’

  ‘Is it?’ Gently said. ‘Or is it the reason why Marie didn’t marry her lover? Because he was poor? Because he had no prospects? Because Berney had the money that both of them wanted?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re saying!’ Redmayne burst out. ‘Jimmy’s got money, and so has Lachlan. And as for death duties’ – he pointed to the portraits – ‘there’s a Reynolds up there that can take care of them.’

  ‘And you?’ Gently said.

  ‘Ask my broker.’

  ‘I’d sooner you told me,’ Gently said.

  ‘All right,’ Redmayne said. ‘And welcome. I hold a block of Poseidon for a start.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Gently said. ‘I may check that.’

  ‘And then go to the devil,’ Redmayne said. ‘My God, you’re dirty, you play it dirty. I was a fool to pretend you were a human being.’

  He tramped to the door and threw it open, then stood by it, his eyes glinting. Gently went. He ignored Redmayne. Behind him he heard the door slam thunderously.

  Outside, the rain was mizzling to a close and a greyish light was breaking over the heath. Gently got in the Lotus. He ran down a window, sat staring broodingly at the rain-dulled house. Then he took out Lachlan Stogumber’s two manuscripts. He spread them both against the wheel. The second sonnet was undated, though the ink appeared darker than the ink of the first. It ran:

  Like Love’s two only squires we sprang to arms

  And hotly reached for joy in one another,

  Compounding in a kiss all past alarms

  And seeking each in each his flames to smother;

  Our double rapture now was single fire

  That went about our bodies in fierce glee,

  Our two hands joined in one devout desire

  To take and tender melting ecstasy:

  And sudden we could speak our dear intending

  In free words, each such perfect partner finding,

  Owning our loveliest love, our longed-for

  blending,

  With piercing thrill each one the other binding.

  A kiss, a touch, and open flew the door

  To all we wished, but only dreamed before.

  Two sonnets; a similar style; but were they indeed original drafts . . . ?

  He glanced again at the house. Redmayne stood at a window. His face was a blank paleness in the drained light.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  NO MESSAGE WAITED for him at the police station, and Docking and his team were still out. Gently tooled the Lotus back to the Royal William and parked it in the yard with the Capris and Vivas. But before going in to lunch he took a stroll in the High Street. In a peaked-gabled Georgian building he found Crampton’s (Stationers). They were also booksellers in a small way, and after inspecting their windows, he went in.

  ‘Do you have any books by Lachlan Stogumber?’

  It was a safe bet: he was their local author. In addition, they carried a title by Leo Redmayne, Fumariaceae of Great Britain. It was priced at four guineas. Gently winced, but bought it, along with Lachlan Stogumber’s High On Ink. The latter, clad in a brilliant psychedelic jacket, came more modestly at fifteen shillings.

  He tucked the two books under his arm and sauntered in to lunch. Today the hotel dining-room was only half full and he had no difficulty in finding a secluded table. He laid the books on a chair and gave his order absent-mindedly. Somewhere, this morning, his finger had been close to it . . . why was it the coin hadn’t dropped?

  He ate mechanically, scarcely noticing when the waitress changed his plates. On the screen of his brain he was slowly playing back each word and detail of his several encounters. First there’d been Redmayne, then Lachlan Stogumber, then Redmayne again, then Mrs Berney; Lachlan Stogumber, trying to steer him off his sister, Redmayne, Creke and old Stogumber, and – once more! – Redmayne. And each one, except Creke, had tried to make a sale, had tried to steer Gently in a different direction . . . surely, if you put their various attempts together a common factor, the truth, ought to emerge?

  Yet strangely, it didn’t. The only common factor appeared to be an intent to confuse. Redmayne, Mrs Berney and Lachlan Stogumber had each in their way tried to hand him a non sequitur. Murder didn’t follow: it was tragic inevitability, supernatural intervention, or a misread accident; while old Stogumber’s unconvincing confession was a piece of desperation, aimed at the same end. They were covering: that was all. They sensed he was close, and they were trying to wrong-foot him. Perhaps the only significant point in the whole farrago was Lachlan Stogumber’s assertion that a lover needn’t have come into it . . .

  Gently scrubbed his hands on a serviette and took the two books from the chair. They were published, he noticed, by the same publisher, and each bore the date of the current year. Also, they were each author-illustrated, Redmayne’s with delicate colour plates, Lachlan Stogumber’s with wavering line drawings, some of which were slyly obscene. The poems were in the style of the New Statesman poem, patterns of words and printer’s signs. Here and there were obscene phrases, but nothing that amounted to an articulate love-poem. Redmayne’s prose, on the other hand, had a disciplined but easy clarity, and even though his matter was technical he had succeeded in conveying a touch of his personal charm. Gently grunted. Not much that corresponded! And the critical verdict was very clear. Grant the choice of these two for authorship of the sonnets, and the poll wouldn’t go to Lachlan Stogumber.

  He slapped the books together and accepted his coffee. Somewhere, he knew, he was missing something. There was a subtle factor about this case which he sensed intuitively, but which continued to elude him. Something behind there . . . He was standing on the edge of it, yet still couldn’t drag it into view.

  He gulped his coffee down impatiently. Meanwhile, you dealt with the facts you had!

  In Docking’s office the scene was domestic: they were making a late lunch of fish and chips. Four C.I.D. men with four packets, they sat around the desk tucking in. When Gently entered the only sounds were of rustling and champing, but then chairs scraped as the lunchers reluctantly got to their feet.

  ‘Carry on,’ Gently said. ‘I’ve had mine.’

  ‘Thanks, sir,’ Docking said. ‘We’ve been having a busy time of it. Did you have any luck with Redmayne, sir?’

  ‘Nothing that would go on a charge sheet,’ Gently said.

  He strolled over to the window and filled his pipe. Behind him chairs scraped again and the champing recommenced. Across the M/T yard he could see shorn, sodden fields lying low and empty under a dull sky. The office, after the heat, felt almost chilly, and moisture had filmed on the window’s metal frame. Two or three of the thunder-flies, which had been so lively, now climbed about the panes looking sickly and subdued. The storm had come and the storm had gone . . . what had it brought him, that he wasn’t quite grasping?

  He lit his pipe, shrugging, and sat himself on the table with the typewriter. Docking drained one of his brown bottles, balled his paper packet and wiped his hands on it.

  ‘Well, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve checked the list out.’ Gently nodded. ‘But no results.’

  ‘I wouldn’t quite say that, sir,’ Docking said. ‘There’s one of them, Brightwell, who doesn’t have an alibi.’

  Gently considered. ‘Didn’t Mrs Berney mention a Brightwell?’

  ‘Yes sir. Said she was talking to him at the party.’

  ‘And he used to knock about with her?’

  ‘Yes, sir, he admits that. But what he says is it never amounted to anything.’

  Gently blew smoke. ‘Let’s have it,’ he said.

  ‘Well, sir, this Brightwell lives at Clayfield. He’s an accountant who works with Livesy and Livesy, but on Tuesday he didn’t come in. Says the party upset him or something, he had to keep running to the loo. And he was alone there Tuesday. He lives with his parents, but both of them were out most of the day.’

  ‘Sounds promising,’ Gently said. ‘Is
he a horseman?’

  ‘Better than that, sir,’ Docking said. ‘He’s a friend of the Risings. So like that, sir, he could have borrowed a horse, and the Risings wouldn’t have let on to us.’

  ‘Who did he go to the party with?’

  Docking looked down his nose. ‘That could be a snag, sir. He took a girl called Diane Stevenson, and according to him they’ve just got engaged.’

  Gently formed a smoke-ring. ‘Then we’ve lost our motive.’

  ‘But the rest of it, sir! It fits like a glove.’

  ‘When was he supposed to have knocked about with Mrs Berney?’

  Docking humped his shoulders. ‘Not lately, of course . . .’

  That was Brightwell: and none of the others fitted like a glove or anything else. They consisted of three single young men, Stanford, Phillips and Greenhough, and a couple of newly-weds, Paston and D’Eath. The two latter had been accompanied by their wives and the three former by their girl friends. Each gave his place of work for alibi, and where these had been checked they stood up. Paston, D’Eath and Greenhough were horsemen and they patronized the Rising stable; D’Eath, who worked with Drury, the auctioneer, knew Creke by sight, but only as a customer at the livestock market. Stanford, junior partner at the local wine merchant’s, and Greenhough, a surveyor, both admitted to being former admirers of Mrs Berney. But theirs was the same story as Tommy Brightwell’s.

  ‘Stanford thinks she was frigid, sir,’ D.C. Waters contributed. ‘I had a heart-to-heart chat with him down in the wine vaults. He fancied her a lot and she led him on a bit, but she always clamped down when he made a play. A tease, he says. She liked them to suffer. He reckons Berney was a hero, marrying her.’

  ‘That’s about what Greenhough said, sir,’ Sergeant Bayfield said. ‘He got to wondering whether the lady was a queer. She’d be all over a woman like Mrs Rising, but when it came to a bloke she’d got nothing for him.’

  ‘But she used to go out with him?’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh yes sir, she’d knock around. But mostly her brother and Mr Redmayne came too, and it was just a show or dinner somewhere. Then he’d wangle to drive her home on his own and pull up at a quiet spot. Says she’d let him get worked up over her and then shy off. He never got anywhere.’

  ‘Could be she is a queer,’ Docking said. ‘There’s something about her, sir. She puts me off.’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ D.C. Waters said slowly. ‘She’s quite a bird. And someone got there.’

  ‘Perhaps it was bloody ignorance,’ Bayfield said. ‘She didn’t know what it was all about. Then one time someone got to base, and the lady clicked, and made a grab for Berney.’

  Gently drew a few times on his pipe. ‘Unfortunately, this isn’t what we’re looking for,’ he said. ‘What we want is a man who Mrs Berney loves, not just a man who may have loved Mrs Berney. He belongs to her past. They must often have been together. In her eyes, he’s a very remarkable man. For some reason, perhaps the simple one, she couldn’t marry him. And he’s horseman enough to manage Creke’s stallion.’ He puffed. ‘I could add,’ he said, ‘that Mrs Berney describes him as being supernatural. But I think we should take a closer look at the mortals before we call in a clergyman.’

  Docking’s eyes rounded. ‘She said that, sir?’

  ‘She said he was invisible, and rode on the thunder.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Bayfield said. ‘We’re dealing with a nutter.’

  Gently nodded. ‘I’m not ruling that out.’

  They thought about it silently for a space, each one keeping his eyes to himself. Bayfield, a shiny-faced man with a moustache, had his eyebrows hooked high, as though in indignant disbelief. Waters was absently cracking his fingers; Lubbock, an older man, had his eyes on his knees. Docking was frowning. He had a report sheet before him, and kept fretting at a corner in an irritating way. At last he looked up.

  ‘Could she have done it, sir?’ he said.

  Now everyone else looked at Gently. Gently grinned at them through his smoke and added one or two fresh rings.

  ‘I suppose it’s possible,’ he conceded.

  ‘I mean, I know she’s preggers, sir,’ Docking said. ‘But she’s pretty limber with it, and it didn’t stop her going riding on Sunday.’

  ‘She wasn’t riding Creke’s stallion.’

  ‘No, sir – but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t. Creke can ride it, and he did allow that Mrs Rising might, too. I’d say it was a case of getting to know the horse. I reckon Creke would know how to make him take to you. And Mrs Berney’d know Creke, and she’s the sort who might have a go.’ Docking’s eyes glinted. ‘In fact, it’d fit pretty well, sir,’ he said. ‘A man she might see a lot of – and Creke’s wife can’t be a lot of good to him.’

  ‘By the centre,’ Bayfield said. ‘That’s an angle, sir.’

  ‘I reckon it fits all round,’ Docking said. ‘It never needed a man to ride that horse. That’s where we’ve been wrong from the start.’

  Gently jetted smoke. ‘Follow it out,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Docking said. ‘Allowing she can ride the horse. Then all she has to do is to get Berney on the heath, and with him as jealous as sin it shouldn’t have been difficult.’

  ‘Creke didn’t write that poem.’

  ‘Didn’t need to, sir. It could be the brother’s, like they tell us. She just had to flash it around and make sure that Berney got an eyeful. Then he was set up. When he says he’s going to town, she’s pretty sure what he has in mind. So she lets him stew till the afternoon, then drives to the Home Farm and collects the horse.’

  ‘What would make him keep watch on the heath?’

  Docking hesitated. Bayfield weighed in.

  ‘He’d know if she spent a lot of her time there, sir,’ he said. ‘And if he didn’t, she could soon sell him the idea.’

  ‘And him going to the valley?’

  ‘Well, there,’ Bayfield said. ‘If you ask me it doesn’t mean a thing. When she didn’t turn up where he was staked out, he was bound to hunt around to see if he could spot her.’

  Gently puffed. ‘Then there’s our horseman.’

  ‘Coincidence, sir,’ Docking urged. ‘Could have been Rising every time. And you wouldn’t expect him to admit it.’

  Gently smiled benignly. A neat package! And it took care of some other things, too. Stogumber’s halting confession, over-chivalrous when related to Redmayne, fell adroitly into place if it was intended to shield Marie. ‘I deserved a better daughter . . .’ Stogumber had almost sign-posted his motive. Yet, if Creke was Marie’s lover, would he be so callous as to hold the threat of exposing her over Stogumber’s head? Creke . . . Gently clicked his tongue.

  ‘I doubt if Mrs Berney is a second Lady Chatterley.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, sir,’ Docking said eagerly. ‘You can’t go a lot on that these days.’

  ‘We’re told she’s frigid.’

  ‘But that could be just the point, sir. She may have needed a bit of rough to get her going.’

  ‘Plenty of dollies like that, sir,’ Bayfield put in. ‘Especially the uppity ones. They want a caveman.’

  Gently swayed his shoulders. ‘Maybe so! But do they make an idol of the caveman afterwards? Because that’s what we have to assume with Mrs Berney, if we’re to be left with a motive at all. Whoever it is, she worships him, and I can’t see Creke filling her bill. The picture calls for a cultivated man, perhaps a man of distinction.’

  ‘But she could still have done it, sir,’ Bayfield said. ‘It doesn’t matter if Creke was her lover or not.’

  ‘It means we’ll need to think again,’ Gently said. ‘If the lover isn’t Creke it blurs a nice, simple image.’

  Docking stared glumly at his report sheet. ‘It would come back to this, sir,’ he said. ‘Mr Redmayne.’

  Gently nodded. ‘But there’s the problem. We know of no reason why he shouldn’t have married her.’

  ‘It wasn’t money, sir?’

  ‘Not unless he�
�s a liar. And he’s too clever for that.’

  ‘A religious thing . . . ?’

  ‘Do you know their religion?’

  ‘They’re not Catholics, sir,’ Bayfield said. ‘Or I would know it.’

  Gently gestured. ‘If we could find one reason, we could sink our teeth in Mr Redmayne. Until we can, he’s laughing at us – and perhaps we’re missing a better prospect.’

  ‘A better prospect,’ Docking repeated. The phone buzzed, and he grabbed it impatiently. He listened awhile, his face blank, then snapped, ‘O.K.’ and hung up. He looked at Gently. ‘That was the desk,’ he said. ‘Rising’s out there. He wants to talk to us.’ He hesitated, his eyes calculating. ‘Perhaps we were speaking of the devil,’ he said.

  Bayfield and the two D.C.s went out, taking with them the fish-and-chip papers and empty bottles. When Rising came in Gently had taken the desk chair and Docking was seated on his right. Rising halted to view this disposition.

  ‘The Inquisition in session,’ he sneered.

  ‘You wanted to talk to us?’ Gently said.

  ‘Yuh,’ Rising said. ‘But like man to man.’

  He spun the chair they’d put for him in front of the desk and sat down on it saddlewise, arms resting on the back. He was wearing breeches and a plaid shirt and a smart hacking jacket of soft tweed. He glanced quickly at Docking, then back to Gently.

  ‘Right, we won’t beat about the bush, sports,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to tell you to stop looking for Berney’s woman, because that’s not what this kick-up’s about.’

  Docking gazed at him. ‘You’ve come to tell us that?’

  ‘True,’ Rising said. ‘That’s the message. I could’ve told you yesterday, but I had reasons. So now I’ve come to tell you today.’

  Docking snorted. ‘We know that,’ he said.

  Rising’s eyes jumped to him. ‘You know it?’ he said.

  ‘We’re not exactly stupid round here,’ Docking said. ‘If that’s the lot, you’re wasting our time.’

  Rising’s stare hardened. ‘So if you know it,’ he said, ‘what games were you playing out at my place yesterday?’