Gently with the Ladies

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t have been Siggy, I don’t believe that either. Nor Mrs Lipton. So it has to be me.’

  ‘But suppose Beryl Rogers was back in London?’

  Mrs Bannister shivered. ‘No, she’d never have come back here. Besides, after five years it’s too improbable. She’ll have married some sheep-farmer and be having ten kids.’

  ‘She had a big score to settle with Mrs Fazakerly.’

  ‘But the improbability! She has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘To her, the necklace was more than a necklace.’

  ‘Nothing will convince me. The idea is too horrible.’

  ‘Then what is the alternative, Mrs Bannister?’

  She stared at him with desperation. ‘Me, of course. I’m the alternative, the perfect and only convincing answer. You won’t have Siggy now, will you? Not with this necklace turning up where it shouldn’t! Oh, I can see why you let him go, especially when you’d dug up the story about Beryl.’

  She jumped to her feet.

  ‘Are you going to detain me?’

  Gently shook his head. ‘But you could be more helpful.’

  ‘Helpful! I’m admitting I must have done it.’

  ‘That won’t do. Without some details.’

  ‘So who will you arrest, if not me, not Siggy, and with Beryl Rogers in New Zealand?’

  Gently shrugged. ‘The murderer, I hope.’ He picked up the necklace. ‘And the thief.’

  When she had gone Reynolds turned to Gently.

  ‘Chief,’ he said, ‘this is going too fast. Nobody mentioned a Beryl Rogers to me. I’ve a feeling I’m being left down the line.’

  Gently grinned. ‘Perhaps you should have asked Fazakerly.’

  ‘Yes – but where did I get my questions?’

  ‘You went to Brenda Merryn for those.’ Gently paused. ‘Though I’m still wondering why she made me a present of them.’

  He ran over his information to Reynolds, who sat listening with silent attention. At last the C.I.D. man said:

  ‘Then I wasn’t so crazy when I let Fazakerly loose.’

  ‘He isn’t off the hook yet,’ Gently said. ‘But the case against him is looking sick. Unless this necklace being stolen is a coincidence there’s a chance we were wrong about him.’

  ‘We could make a case against Mrs Bannister.’

  ‘Macpherson wouldn’t like that either. A case with two suspects, equally hot, is a prosecutor’s nightmare. But then there’s Miss Johnson and Brenda Merryn. And a whiff of sulphur from New Zealand. And even Stockbridge down in the basement: he may have taken a fancy to this bauble.’

  ‘We checked his alibi. He’s clear.’

  ‘He’d have a master-key to the flat. But what I’m getting at is there are too many cases against too many people, and somehow . . . it smells.’

  ‘How do you mean, Chief?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s just a hunch grumbling in my belly. Too much colour, too much decoration, and perhaps something very simple behind it. Maybe I’ll see it when I’ve slept on it. But as of now, it’s a smell.’

  He lit his pipe and blew rings into the conditioned sameness of the office air. Reynolds gazed at them frowningly and dug in his pocket for some form of confection.

  ‘So what will I do, Chief?’ he said.

  ‘You’ll find Beryl Rogers,’ Gently said. ‘Sarah Johnson says she has family in Worcester, so you can make a start there. Then check with the United Press, where she used to work, and the New Zealand Office in the Haymarket, and the Immigration Office. Find where she went to, if she came back, where she is now.’

  ‘What about Fazakerly?’

  ‘Take your man off. He won’t stray far from his money. You made him rich when you didn’t charge him. He’ll be on to his lawyers tomorrow.’

  He blew more rings.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You changed the direction of quite a sum.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT WAS AFTER nine when he garaged the Sceptre at 16 Elphinstone Road, but Mrs Jarvis, his ‘jewel’, had a mixed grill waiting for him on the hotplate. He ate it in the den and drank some rough red wine along with it, propping the late editions around him on cruet, tea-pot and fruit-bowl. This was his habit in the evening, whether the meal was at six or midnight. From his particular problems he withdrew into the wider world reflected here. It was not escape, since his own problems were an aspect of the panorama, but a change of view, a standing back to merge the trees with the wood. The papers gave him a reference, a monitor glance at all cameras. He ate, drank, read and stood at one again with his world.

  When Mrs Jarvis had cleared away he selected and filled a large bent pipe, then went to his shelves and after a search located Andre Maurois’ Quest for Proust. Yes, Illiers was Combray. It was a small market town near Chartres. Only a short step from Paris, a step easily taken by an Albertine. A girl of poor family, no doubt, with few prospects in her home town, but with a sturdy pulchritude that would have its value in the great city a few miles distant. How had Clytie Fazakerly and La Bannister picked her up? In the regular way, through an employment agency? In a café on the Left Bank or in Montmartre? At some special establishment catering for Lesbians? He grunted, put the book away and picked up the one he was currently reading. No more of Fazakerly till the morning! At least, the fellow was sleeping outside a cell.

  But he’d barely sat down in his consecrated chair when the phone rang on his desk. He went to it and jerked it up with loathing, ready to jump down somebody’s throat.

  ‘Is that you, George?’

  The voice was his sister’s.

  ‘George, I can’t talk for very long. Geoffrey didn’t want me to ring you at all, but I felt I must . . . he’s in the study with someone.’

  Gently lapsed into the desk chair. ‘It’s about young Fazakerly, is it?’ he growled.

  ‘Yes, Johnny Fazakerly. We know him, George, he’s a nephew of Aunty May Fazakerly’s. And in the paper tonight . . . well, there were headlines. He’s local, of course. That makes it news.’

  Gently grimaced. ‘It’s news, period.’

  ‘But George, what’s happening? Did he do it?’

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’

  ‘George, how terrible. I mean, someone we know . . . actually a relative.’

  Gently swivelled the chair a degree and fixed his gaze on the stuffed pike. He liked his sister, but there were times when dear Bridget jarred with him a little. To her he was still a small boy playing wilful and incomprehensible games . . .

  ‘He gave himself up to me this morning,’ he said.

  ‘What . . . ?’

  ‘Walked into my office. Gave himself up. Said he wanted me to believe in his innocence because the facts were all against him.’

  ‘Poor Johnny! What did you do?’

  ‘Handed him over, what else? He was right about the facts, and I’m not prescient. So over to Chelsea he had to go.’

  ‘But . . . couldn’t you do anything to help him, George?’

  ‘Oh yes. I could pull my rank on the officer in charge. And as a result I’ve gummed-up a perfectly good case and perhaps robbed a deserving spinster of a fortune.’

  ‘But what about Johnny?’

  ‘He’s free as the air. He’s living it up at a swish hotel.’

  ‘You mean you’ve got him off, George?’

  ‘He’s out for the moment.’

  ‘Oh George, that’s wonderful!’

  ‘So happy you think so.’

  He sneered at the pike, which sneered back. It was a twenty-four pounder, caught in Norfolk. Perhaps it didn’t much resemble his sister Bridget, but just now it pleased him to imagine a likeness.

  ‘George?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t know his wife, did you?’

  ‘I’m getting to know her. Little by little.’

  ‘She was a bitch, George. I don’t like saying it, but she deserved whatever happened to her. You know how she got her money, don’t you?�
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  ‘Fazakerly told me.’

  ‘And that isn’t all. She used to have relations with other women. She was expelled from school for that sort of thing.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You forget she’s local. She went to Ferndale Grammar School with Charlotte Manners. There was a business there with one of the mistresses – another bitch. A Sybil someone.’

  ‘A Sybil someone?’ Gently came alert.

  ‘Yes, Sybil . . . Tremaine, that’s the name. She lost her job, but it didn’t matter. Her family have money and she married well. But Clytie was funny, George, that’s the point. I’m sure poor Johnny went through hell. He was silly to marry her, but she was quite a good-looker, and she was rich, of course. But it wasn’t worth it.’

  ‘I’m sure poor Johnny is agreeing with you. Who did Sybil Tremaine marry?’

  ‘What . . . ? Just a minute, George, let me listen. I think it’s Geoffrey coming out . . .’

  ‘Was it a Fletcher Bannister?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. He was killed in a road smash, remember? George, I must hang up . . . and George, thank you! I knew you wouldn’t let me down.’

  Her phone descended; but not before Gently had heard Geoffrey’s interrogative bass off-stage.

  After the call he sat some minutes still exchanging glances with the pike. So the Fazakerly–Bannister relation went back further than its blossoming at Carlyle Court! Around twenty years ago it must have begun, in that select school near Taunton, which he had once visited with Geoffrey and Bridget to watch their niece receive her prizes. And La Bannister had been a teacher there (yes, that sorted with her bearing!), a young graduate, as she must have been, from one of the senior universities; and Clytie, Clytemnestra, her maiden-name unknown, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, in the salad-days of her disturbing beauty. How had it gone? At first discreetly, a furtive crush on both sides; with Clytie, probably already an initiate, making the running from the start. Then it developed and became bolder, with the inevitable arrogance of a Lesbian relationship, till, after warnings and lectures, the crash came, and Ferndale purged itself of the sinners. What followed? Trouble at home. Clytie would behave like a caged tigress. Her step-father, Merryn, would be only too happy to find someone to take her off his hands. And sooner or later, probably sooner, she had gravitated to the care of a lecherous relative – though a rich one, it went without saying – and finally to independence and marriage. Meanwhile her partner in crime had retired to the shelter of her well-to-do family, and had also become rich. And, in a way not dissimilar.

  Gently stared very hard at the pike. Was the pattern coincidental? Both these women had attached themselves to rich, elderly men, who had not for long troubled them by continuing in the world. Then they had come together again, enriched by the spoils of the beasts; Clytie, certainly, with the foolishness of a husband, but with only enough of one to make them sport. And how had the beast-providers died? One, at all events, in a road smash. And a road smash was simple enough to engineer if one brought a modest intelligence to the problem . . .

  He took the phone again and began to dial, but was interrupted by the entry of Mrs Jarvis.

  ‘Sorry to trouble you, Mr Gently,’ she said. ‘But there’s a woman downstairs asking to see you.’

  He laid the phone down. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘She wouldn’t give her name, Mr Gently.’

  ‘Then tell her—’ he began, and stopped.

  For Brenda Merryn stood in the doorway.

  The den was illuminated by a reading-lamp and Mrs Jarvis made a silent comment. On going out she switched on the room-light and paused with her fingers on the switch. Then she went.

  Brenda Merryn winked at Gently. ‘I don’t think your good lady trusts us.’

  She went deliberately back to the door and switched the room-light off again.

  ‘All right with you?’

  Gently hunched a shoulder. Brenda Merryn came back into the room. She was dressed to kill in a plunging gown of crimson crépe with a frilled bosom. Over this she was wearing a black three-quarter coat, but now she slipped it off and threw it over a chair. She stood hands-on-hips, smiling down at Gently, pervading the den’s pipe-smoke with Blue Grass.

  ‘Like me?’

  She swung her hips.

  ‘I’m a dangerous woman when I’m roused. Your Mrs Mop was quite right. Nobody would believe I’m here to talk ballet.’

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘Seduction, perhaps. You annoyed me so much this afternoon. But you were on duty this afternoon, so you had to be strong and incorruptible, didn’t you? Only now you’re not on duty. You’re just a man. In a room. With a woman.’

  ‘I wouldn’t rely on me not being on duty.’

  She gave a laugh. ‘That would be too dull. If policemen were always, but always, policemen, and never did anything about pretty girls. She wasn’t your wife, was she?’

  ‘That was Mrs Jarvis.’

  ‘You’re not married, engaged, emotionally involved?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘So what’s wrong with me? We’re free and white, so why not be friends?’

  ‘And that’s your only reason for coming here?’

  She gave a twirl. ‘I thought it was a good one. You can see I’ve put some effort into it – bath, perfume, lace undies, the lot. And if you were chivalrous you’d leave it at that, and only put up a token resistance. I know I’m part of a case by day, but I’m something else again at eleven p.m.’

  ‘How did you come by my address?’

  ‘My dear Watson. It’s in the phone-book.’

  ‘What made you look for it in the phone-book?’

  ‘Your eyes and hands. Say your hands.’

  ‘Before or after you’d talked to Fazakerly?’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘This is bigger than both of us. But have it your way if you like. It was after I’d had my talk with Siggy.’

  ‘And what did he talk about.’

  ‘He said you were wonderful. He said you were a devil, but you were wonderful. And I agreed with him, of course, because that was exactly my impression. And I got to wondering where you lived and how and with whom you spent your evenings, and well, one thing led to another, and there were your hands, and here I am.’

  ‘Did Fazakerly threaten you in any way?’

  ‘He told me your name was George and that you were a bachelor.’

  ‘Because he’d guessed you’d told his wife about Miss Johnson?’

  ‘Yes, George, he’d guessed. No George, he didn’t threaten me.’

  ‘So it was you who told her?’

  She gave another twirl. ‘Don’t you realize,’ she said, ‘what your manner does to me? You’re so damnably tough and undentable, it simply turns me to a jelly. I said he’d guessed.’

  ‘He’d guessed right.’

  ‘I may have told her. Does it matter?’

  ‘It matters when.’

  ‘Say on Friday.’

  ‘Not on Friday.’

  ‘You choose the day.’

  She swept odorously past Gently to the hard-seated settle, which was the summit of the comfort the den had to offer. She arranged the cushions fastidiously and spread herself at full-length. Then she opened a small vanity bag and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll be serious. We’ll play it your way, like tough hombres. It will give Mrs Jarvis time to settle in and I love it anyway, that’s what’s killing me. So give me the action, George. Chew me up and spit me out over your shoulder.’

  Gently put a light to the bent pipe. ‘I think you told me some lies,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, those hands!’ Brenda Merryn moaned. ‘I told you lies by the dozen.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A woman has to lie. Lying is fundamental with women. Especially to policemen with hands like yours. We just open our mouths and babble anything.’

  ‘For example, you know a great deal about Beryl Rogers.’ />
  ‘Not a great deal. Say more than I told you.’

  ‘You know where she is.’

  ‘Just look at my knees. Please. Once. I’ll tell you anything.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She went to New Zealand.’

  ‘But where is she now?’

  ‘Does it matter? You must have enough on Siggy by now. You’ll be picking him up again tomorrow.’

  ‘I need to know where she is, Miss Merryn.’

  ‘Not Miss Merryn, George. I can’t stand it.’

  ‘I think you can tell me.’

  ‘You wouldn’t look at my knees, and anyway Beryl Rogers didn’t murder Clytie.’ She made a gesture of dragging at the cigarette, and another gesture of exhaling the smoke. ‘She’s just a ghost,’ she said, ‘that’s all Beryl is. A nasty, silly little, shallow little ghost. If you know the story you know what she is. I don’t blame Clytie for what she did to her.’

  ‘Have you seen her lately?’

  ‘If you’ll thaw I’ll say yes.’

  ‘In London?’

  ‘Perhaps. I’m a terrible liar.’

  ‘Within the last week?’

  ‘Yes. I can’t refuse you anything. Or if I didn’t see Beryl, I saw someone just like her.’

  ‘Where did you see her?’

  ‘Must we talk of other women? It isn’t worth your while, you know. Beryl Rogers is quite unnecessary. Suppose the ghost did walk a little and then vanished again at cockcrow. It was all an accident. You don’t need her. As I’m a liar, it wasn’t sinister.’

  ‘But Mrs Fazakerly had seen the ghost.’

  ‘Perhaps she only thought she saw it. Perhaps it was all done by mirrors. Perhaps it was hearsay after all.’

  ‘You mean, she was told.’

  Brenda Merryn smiled at him. ‘You aren’t treating me right,’ she said. ‘You’ve got the key to me in your hands and you just won’t turn the lock. In your hands. That’s double entente. Give it a turn and see what happens. Give it two turns, one for luck. I have such a simple combination.’

  ‘What I ought to do is give you a spanking.’

  Her smile widened. ‘Score to me. And then I’d blubber on your manly shoulder and that’s the last step up the stairs. But I’m giving you value, if you only knew it, and I’m letting you ask all the questions. Suppose you answer me one.’