Gently Continental

by Alan Hunter

  And the American who had that one document, which turns out to be no document, barely cold, though removed now from the sacks and the summerhouse, he’s suffered the last of his indignities, has had his very identity stripped from him, is now not Clooney, perhaps not American, only certainly alone. Alone, and unnamed. A piece of carrion with no handle. Shorn of all points of departure from which to imagine something, anything, to clothe his great nakedness. No name, no nation, no birthplace, no domicile, no shared culture, no relatives, no friends, nothing. X, torn from his equation. From his short masquerade. His make-believe. His attitude of separation, of maintaining a distinct ego. X, a dangerous picture, the residuum left in the crucible.

  So Grosvenor Square ring Whitehall with this news of non-identity, requiring at the same time, now or sooner, a very close description of X; his height, weight, colouring, marks, teeth, prints, estimated age, together with information of his accent and manner, when he was alive, and all other information whatever; with the precise mode of his dying, and preferably the names of those responsible. Whitehall reply with polite brevity, having none of this information by them, then ring the local H.Q., who in turn ring the beleaguered Shelton. Shelton, by now, is beginning to appreciate the weight of the pyramid he is supporting, and he counters H.Q. with a request for assistance. Alas for Shelton! This day he has shed many illusions. He has been pushed around by a bunch of reporters who have found out a good deal more than he has. It was they, not he, who discovered the hotel was locked up by 11.30 p.m., and that the guests, all forty-four of them, and the staff, could each show themselves to have been inside it. It was they, not he, who elicited that the American set out, it must be, after 10 p.m., as he did by habit, always alone, usually northward along the cliffs. It was not that Shelton would not have made these discoveries, but that he did not get the chance, there being only one Shelton, assisted by his sergeant, as against fourteen reporters; fourteen reporters, furthermore, who knew what to ask as well as Shelton, and wasted no time in asking it, or in collating the answers. And yet, after all, it is not very much, removed from the context of banner headlines, and promises to lead to no more in the useful future. Rather it is scraping the bottom, of which Shelton is miserably aware; it is likely no one will ever know more, or very much more, than he does at present. It may even be that the lonely American did indeed slay himself. Hence, being found in this frame of mind, Shelton makes a quick decision: he has done his best, in the limits and conditions, and if more is required, let others come after it, and because his point of view, so stated, would find no favour with authority, he translates it into an irresistible form: I’ll need more men. What for? At least, to let him start level with the press! To enable him, within a reasonable time, to cope with three-score-and-ten interrogations. Though, as Shelton craftily insinuates, it will probably be winnowing chaff only, he has no reason to anticipate, as it leaves him, that further interrogations will produce anything. Pause, discussion at H.Q. Has he, H.Q. asks, come to any conclusion? Not a conclusion, Shelton replies hastily, but a feeling, you know how it is, that if anyone did murder the American, which is far from being established, then that someone is outside the scope of the present inquiries. Not a local person, Shelton says daringly, nobody in the hotel or the village. Someone out of the American’s past. If the American, indeed, were murdered. More discussion at H.Q. Have you found the weapon? H.Q. ask. Shelton is obliged to admit he hasn’t, though he has had Stody tramping the cliff-top all day. Any thoughts about that? H.Q. ask. Shelton has many thoughts about that. In the first place, he has dragged out of Halliday the general proposition that suicides often try two or more methods. Thus it is far from unlikely that the twenty-two incisions were self-inflicted, a sort of bungled hara-kiri, which the American had not the courage to consummate; while as for the weapon, Halliday agreed that a piece of broken glass would suffice, and Shelton himself, on an excursion along the cliff-top, had counted eight discarded bottles, two of them broken. Any glass he might have used? Not exactly, but it proved nothing. He may have made the incisions somewhere else, say on the beach, where there were also bottles. Then, if it chanced to have been on the foreshore where the American abandoned his bloodied glass, the next tide would have removed it, buried it, or if neither of these, at least unbloodied it. Shrewd Shelton! What a plausible picture he is building up for H.Q., or rather, letting H.Q. draw from him, goaded by his request for more men. The cleverer, because H.Q. will want to believe it, to cut the case down to coroner-size, to return Shelton to his breaking-and-enterings and to keep the crime record tidy. On the one hand, sensational murder, straining resources and offering no credit; on the other, a routine suicide, with credit to Shelton for pricking the bubble. Can they hesitate? Not for long! Report back in, they tell Shelton.

  So Shelton has been clever, Shelton has an explanation for everything, except, and Stody annoyingly put it in his report, Stody’s reservation about it being dark, and except certain bruises on the body which may, or may not, offend the coroner. Stody’s point is a good one. The American must needs have projected himself from the cliff-top. Yet if it were dark (and the night was moonless), how could he have aimed so precisely at the pill-box? Had he been anticipating the jump during his stay at the hotel, directing his stroll to the spot each evening, measuring, calculating the event? So much so, that on a night when the pill-box below was invisible, he could yet, exactly, position himself, and, exactly, leap over? Incredible, not to be believed; except for the rude, unwinking fact. Yet, as Shelton is quick to see, the difficulty is no objection to a concept of suicide, because if murder is postulated, the difficulty remains, as much for the murderer as for the American. If not X, then Y must have measured and calculated; and Y (O Shelton!) would have had the greater difficulty, having to heave another, and not himself. So that, if any conclusion is to be drawn (thus Shelton, on the wings of inspiration), it is that Stody’s point, if it can’t be ignored, by a feather, favours suicide. Fine reasoning, and H.Q. is half-disposed to accept it. But there are still the bruises outstanding, and Shelton must reason around those too. And here Shelton’s inspiration flags, because the bruises’ story is so obvious, saying to him, as to any policeman, This man was held down, with a knee on his chest. Ignore them? Brazen it out with the coroner? H.Q. shakes its head regretfully. Suppose . . . Shelton supposes hard, can make no contact with the divine spark. It lies with the bruises, H.Q. says, everything stands or falls by them; we can’t pretend they were self-inflicted; they are evidence of an attacker. But – a thousand things, Shelton says, an attacker may not have been a murderer, it may have been (inspiration flickers bravely), may have been an attack that triggered off the suicide. You have evidence of this, H.Q. says. There is no evidence either way, Shelton pleads, and furthermore a man can bruise his own wrists, as, for example, by struggling while in hand-cuffs. You have evidence –, H.Q. begins, but Shelton knows he has shot his bolt, is even (he is a good policeman) beginning to realize that his defence of suicide is an indictment of it. There’s a case to answer, and he knows it, has all this time played the devil’s advocate, would dearly have loved to have got away with it, finds the bruises blocking his way. Right, he says, like Stody before him: he is re-aligned with the formula. But if it’s murder, he says, he’s getting nowhere, and has a strong suspicion there’s nowhere to get, unless (and provided the murderer is a hotel inmate), unless someone breaks down under interrogation. Because the picture there is formidable, a picture of credible cross-alibis, with no pointer, not one, connecting the American with any individual. He is a stray bird who flew down there, a rare exotic, strangely plumaged, viewed suspiciously by the resident birds and common migrants alike, tolerated, because he was quiet, and permitted to pick a little with the others, but making no friends, no enemies; probably pining; at last, dying. He had no handle, that American! He had given a vague London address in the register. He had on him money enough to pay his bill, but no indication of where more would come from. You’d say he’d simpl
y come there to die, to die unknown and untraceable: so well would suicide fit the bill, if he’d kept his wrists away from bruises. And if no connection, no motive. Not a shade of a motive has Shelton uncovered. X remains unqualified, no sign stands against him, no suggestion of mode of relation with a postulated Y. If indeed the equation exists, it is remote from our knowledge, Shelton avers.

  Then – and Shelton and H.Q. both know it must come: they have only talked so long to clear the ground – with suicide out, or at least questionable, what remains but to kick the case upstairs? Oh, a show of reluctance on both sides! – Sorry, Shelton, but you see how it is. Just one of those things, sir, it happens to the best of us. – After you’ve done all the donkey-work. – We have to work as a team, sir. A decent disguise for mutual relief: when H.Q. can lift the phone, and, metaphorically, boot the can into the blue distance. The formula provides for it, and the law allows it. Whitehall listens to H.Q. with Whitehall’s usual condescension (have they not seen, with their wary eyes, innumerable cans arrive from the provinces?) and ask questions which are half questions, half insinuations of H.Q.’s naïveté, until they have the facts, the whole facts, nailed immovable for instant reference. Then, strange – most strange! – they begin to argue somewhat like Shelton, though with, in place of Shelton’s wistful pleading, a tone of uncontradictable authority, showing how, on the facts rehearsed, on the balance of the facts, the case is suicide, and that H.Q. will do well to wrest this verdict, by correct presentation, from the coroner. Amazement, alarm, in H.Q.! They summon their wits to do battle. The can, hovering invisibly above the wires, speeds now this way, now that. Through fire and brimstone, storm and wrack, H.Q. maintains the cause of the bruises, though assaulted before, beside and behind by the nimble fencer of Whitehall. The bruises, always is their cry, and bloodied but firm, still they cry it. And finally that cry deafens Whitehall, and the can settles a little Londonwards. Continue investigations, Whitehall says, we will confer with the American authorities, it may be, could be, is just possible, that the man has a record that supports your contention. We, for our part, consider it unlikely, but we appreciate your concern. Please keep us informed of any developments. Please give only general statements to the press. Message ends, and H.Q. are uncertain whether they have won or lost the battle. But Whitehall, wiping a little blood from its rapier, knows where the can has come to rest. In course, having now the requested details, they do confer with the American authorities, but the American authorities, after considering the details, are no wiser than before. They’ll check it out for the British, naturally, whether X is or is not their national; but right now they can say for sure he is on no list held by them; and the British, they insinuate, would be well advised to keep an open mind on X’s nationality, thereby not hindering their investigations by possibly unwarranted reservations. Yes, Whitehall says, yes, and stifles a very polite sigh. Then Whitehall glances at a duty list and makes a few quick calculations. A phone is lifted, a phone rings. There is a departmental query. Gently is your man, says department, Chief Superintendent George Gently. Tell him to report, Whitehall says. And Chief Superintendent Gently reports.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ALL THIS OCCUPIES one day after the death of the lonely American – or X, as he now becomes, pending more curious inquiry – a fine and particular day in July, with temperatures pushing the eighties, and a shore breeze turning into a sea breeze, and the Hotel Continental’s windows all open. No music there today, not even the most melancholy. No sound of zither, fiddle, accordion, mingling with the soft-murmuring combers. Mrs Breske stays in her room. Trudi Breske refrains from tennis. Frieda, more sombre but not less efficient, undertakes the hotel routine, alone. And the guests – don’t know what to do about it, after talking the affair to a standstill; by evening the guests are very bored, and wish the American had died elsewhere. True, the service hasn’t suffered, apart from the article of music, and no one has made any prohibitions, which the knowing half-expected; yet, and still, they feel bored, as though something promised has failed to develop, as though a breathless vision of the extraordinary has tailed away into commonplace. They feel guilty, but not guilty enough. They are all too certain of being spectators. X, or the American, may have to do with the Breskes, or some unimaginable unknown, but not with themselves. Academically they are suspects, but no more, and their certain innocence is irksome; yet they cannot return to the established tenor which X, or the American, interrupted. They are suspended, are in a vacuum, or are, in one word, bored. Not even the weather or the evening papers can entirely conceal this grinding truth.

  So they sleep, and so they wake; when lo! – a man is in their midst; a man immediately recognizable as Someone by the attention of the reporters; a large man, with big shoulders, with a square face and troubling eyes, looking mentally and physically equipped, as he is, to be the support of giant pyramids: where Stody wilted and Shelton paled, see here Chief Superintendent Gently. Shelton is with him, but Shelton knows his supernumerary status. He hangs back, permits Gently to cut his swathe through the pressmen. And this the mighty man does, like a king moving among his suppliants, and they, the terror of poor Shelton, press not too close upon his majesty. His name is whispered, and the guests have heard it. They are in the presence of a manner of hero. One whose occupation is with death, with many deaths, with death in terror. They stare at Gently, this modern hero, this man who opens up mysteries, whose strong hands, casually filling a pipe, have ripped the veil from many a dying: who has seen what they pray not to see, has dealt with men they pray not to deal with: makes, as vocation, a common thing, what most men fear and turn aside from: at him they stare, a modern hero, a man who occupies himself with death. And he unthinkingly stares back, seeing the straw he will make his bricks with, mindlessly noting a thousand things as he tells the reporters precisely nothing, quite unaware within himself of the projection of a heroic image, which he would immediately know to be false, though it would reveal to him much about those who perceived it. He stares, and eyes fall, though his stare is a mild one. His stare has no penetration, yet it seems to lay one open. He has greenish-hazel eyes that lie peaceably beneath thick brows, but they have some odd power of irradiating people, of setting them in a brilliant light. He sees all round you. You cannot hide from him. No shadow is left to conceal a deception. But all this is serene, has no aggression, is almost shared or exchanged with you. Strange, naked-seeing eyes! What wonder that other eyes fall before them?

  The reporters disperse; they have all he’ll give them, and they know better than to ask for more. Gently says a few words to Shelton, Shelton, who almost jumps to attention. Listen a moment, Shelton says fiercely, we want statements from all you people. We’ll try to get through them as quickly as possible, but I want no one going out before they’ve made their statement. Is that clear? Perfectly clear! The guests admire Shelton’s new note of authority. Right, says Shelton (God bless the formula!), we’ll be taking the statements in the office. Then he, and his sergeant, Walters, and a shorthand-writer, Policewoman Dicks, set up shop in the tiny office behind the desk, beneath the alpenhorn; which office, having glass-panelled walls, shows that no deception is intended. But the man himself, the great panjandrum, is he not to be of their number? Apparently not. He pays no attention to the inquisition in the office. He goes outside, comes back inside, makes a tour of the rooms, the stairs, the kitchens, as though he suspects each and all of these to have a close bearing on the death of the American; and in a curious way, by doing this, he makes it seem not the least improbable, so that those who see him begin to peer about too and to search for guilt in familiar things. Then, having made everyone uneasy, and said something in Italian to the waiter Carlo, he goes through the big carved door lettered: Eingang Verboten, behind which is Mrs Breske’s private parlour suite. And so is lost to the eyes of the guests, who yet feel a great deal less innocent than when he arrived.

  Mrs Breske is in her parlour. She is sitting in a rocking-chair by the window. H
er big face is puffy and suety and sagging and her mouth, partly open, shows uneven teeth. She has a trace of moustache and a wart on her chin from which the hair grows bushily. The hair of her head, still dark, is parted in the centre and is perfectly straight. She rocks herself. She moans. She stares before her with bulbous grey eyes. She is wearing a widow’s dress, entirely black, with short sleeves which are too tight for her. A thick, podgy woman with rolling breasts and plump calves, and a tendency to drift into spells of abstraction: this is Edith Breske at fifty. She starts when she hears Gently’s knock. She calls, Herein! – and struggles from the chair. Gently, entering, begs her not to rise, and she falls back in the chair, which oscillates dumbly. Herr Inspektor – Superintendent. Ach, in my country that is Inspektor. Gently smiles. He has a winning smile. Edith Breske feels she may like him. Will you not sit yourself, Herr Inspektor? Gently chooses a frail, painted chair: there are six of these, and a matching sofa, with a scene from a boar-hunt embroidered on the back-rest. The carpet also, pale, fine-piled, depicts scenes of hawking and hunting, with ruffled men in tricorn hats astride small but fiery, caracoling, horses. A very fine carpet, yes, is true? Gently admits it is very fine. You like my furniture? Gently likes it. Ach, it cost Edith Breske a great deal of money. The carpet, the chairs, the sofa were once the property of Prinz Josef Czynska – you know, related to the Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürsts, and so, of need, to Maria Theresa? Gently confesses to not knowing this, yet Edith Breske affirms it; feels now established aboon her might, and at least on a level with Herr Inspektor. But what can she tell him, that she has not told already, to that other, inferior, Herr Unterinspektor?