Gently Where the Birds Are

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Yes.’ Lionel Easton’s eyes dropped again. ‘I mean, it was all so . . . melodramatic. One just doesn’t run into freshly shot bodies. So I insisted on seeing it, and he tried to put me off, which made me even more suspicious. In the end he took me to the spot, and there was no trace of it. It had to be a joke.’

  ‘What time did you get there?’

  ‘Well, after three . . . we probably spent ten minutes jawing. Perhaps twenty-past three. The fellow and his pal had plenty of time to sheer off.’

  ‘There was no one.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘At the cottage.’

  ‘It was empty and locked.’

  ‘And you didn’t look in the garage.’

  ‘Yes, I did. The car was out.’

  The clock with the greasy ticking chimed, and Cosmo Easton promptly rose.

  ‘This is dry work, Superintendent . . . do let me fetch you a Scotch.’

  Gently said nothing. Cosmo Easton crossed to the illuminated cabinet. On a silver salver he mixed drinks, giving them adroit squirts from a siphon. Mrs Easton smiled brightly at nobody. Lionel Easton sat still and straight. He had controlled the flush in his cheeks but his mouth was still tight, his gaze lowered. When his father returned he accepted a beer and a look passed between them. Gently accepted his Scotch. Cora Easton had a gin and lime.

  ‘Cheers, Superintendent . . .!’

  Gently grunted and barely tasted his Scotch. Lionel Easton gulped beer as though his mouth were very dry. In his corner, Aspall sipped a Scotch with absent concentration. For a moment, a hiatus. Yet the tenseness hadn’t relaxed.

  Gently set his glass beside him.

  ‘And all this while . . . no hint of it being a hoax from Middleton.’

  Lionel Easton nursed his glass determinedly. ‘Sir, Dick was convinced all along.’

  ‘Yet he didn’t convince you.’

  ‘Well . . . no, sir. Especially after I’d seen the print. It was the sort of thing you could easily fake with modelling clay and a squeeze of ketchup.’

  ‘The sort of thing you’re good at.’

  Lionel Easton drank. ‘But I wasn’t there, sir. I couldn’t have done it.’

  ‘You could have devised it for someone else.’

  Lionel Easton kept drinking.

  ‘What made you post the print to us?’

  ‘I . . . I’m not quite certain, sir.’

  ‘Because you thought it showed a corpse or because you didn’t?’

  He twisted the glass between his palms. ‘I suppose I wasn’t quite sure, sir. Not absolutely. Most of me thought it was a hoax. But it just mightn’t have been. Somehow . . . I thought I ought to let you see it.’

  ‘Because Middleton was so positive?’

  He shook his head. ‘Dick can be an awful ass.’

  ‘Was it something in Miss Stoven’s behaviour?’

  The glass was still. ‘I can’t think what . . .’

  ‘How many times did you see her afterwards?’

  ‘Only that once. That same afternoon. When she came in from the reserve to explain why she hadn’t turned up.’

  ‘Because of the stork.’

  ‘Yes . . . she seemed very excited about that. She isn’t usually an excitable person. But I suppose a stork is quite rare.’

  ‘She was certainly in a whirl,’ Mrs Easton smiled. ‘I thought she’d had one or two to drink. Or perhaps that Phil had popped the question. Only Phil was all quiet and serious.’

  ‘Yes . . . Phil was quiet,’ Lionel Easton said.

  ‘Not quite approving,’ his mother said. ‘Perhaps he’d popped the question and she’d turned him down. Actually, they weren’t here very long.’

  ‘Can you estimate the time?’

  ‘Oh, fivish. They were talking football on the telly.’

  ‘Final Score,’ Lionel Easton said. ‘They left again before it was over.’

  ‘And that’s the last you’ve seen of her,’ Gently said.

  Lionel Easton sipped before nodding. ‘I . . . haven’t gone out of my way to see her. I just wasn’t certain . . . well, what to think. It really all depended on what Dick told me . . . except that this fellow was on the photograph. It was awkward. I didn’t want to poke my nose in . . . it wasn’t my affair, after all.’

  ‘Yet you sent us the photograph.’

  He sipped some more.

  ‘Sir, I’ve told you all I know. I’m pretty certain it’s nothing serious and that somebody was out to give Dick a scare. But if it is . . . more than that . . . I’ll swear that Ka has nothing to do with it . . . probably doesn’t know it’s happened. I just hope you find her soon.’

  ‘You won’t add to that?’

  ‘I can’t, sir.’

  ‘Like who might own a certain gun?’

  Lionel Easton’s eyes were large. But in the end he shook his head.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE GREASY-TICKING clock had chimed eight before they were through with Lionel Easton’s statement. The process was attended throughout by Cosmo Easton and his agreeable wife. They didn’t interfere, they offered no comment, they whispered few words to each other, but they were there: never relaxing for a moment the atmosphere of benevolent co-operation. The affluent, law-supporting middle-class . . .! Cosmo Easton and Claude Middleton. Whose sons apologized for misdemeanours that were, after all, mere freaks of high spirit.

  Marx could come and Marx could go, but the axis of the world was Easton–Middleton . . .

  A frosty moon was glimmering mistily when they returned to the opaque-windowed car. Aspall went round the windows with a chamois leather while Gently sat brooding in the icy interior. Aspall climbed in.

  ‘What now, sir . . .?’

  ‘I’m damned hungry!’ Gently growled.

  They drove back to the village, a distance insufficient to stir warmth from the car’s sluggish heater.

  Coloured lights decked the front of the pub and its park was full of cars. From the saloon came the tinkle of a piano and the sound of voices in wavering chorus. In the hall they were met by the landlady.

  ‘There’s a man from a paper wants to see you, sir.’

  ‘Keep him off me! Can you manage some food?’

  ‘There are hot pies, sir . . .’

  ‘Send some in.’

  Warren, Campsey and the six men sat about the private room, glooming over pints. They too had been indulging in pies: crumby plates were scattered over the small tables. Warren rose.

  ‘The warrants are here, sir. Do you want us to get weaving?’

  ‘They’ll keep. What else?’

  ‘Sweet Fanny Adams I’m afraid, sir.’

  In fact they’d scoured the wood and its vicinity from Sandlings almost to the village: six fed-up men and a sergeant, all of whom should now be off duty. And for a body that might be a rumour . . .! No wonder they sat and stared at their pints.

  The pies came, and a couple of jars. Gently ate and drank with absent eyes. Aspall, dying to talk, was obliged to contain himself, because plainly Gently didn’t mean to respond. Yet what was there to say . . .? At each step forward you found yourself just where you were before, unless . . . No, nothing to talk about! But perhaps a moment of decision . . .

  And somehow, that feeling pervaded the room, inhibiting the others as they lounged at their tables. Nobody was talking, the time for it was past: now they were waiting, sensing . . . what?

  ‘Sir . . . this reporter . . . if you’re ready to see him?’

  Gently pushed his plate aside. He knew the reporter, a wasp-waisted young man with a scar-damaged eyelid, looking like a cast.

  ‘Chiefie, nobody seems to know what’s cooking . . .’

  Everyone was watching the interview with interest. Aspall, mug in hand, never took his eyes off Gently’s face.

  ‘We’ve received information of a death in the village.’

  ‘Oh come on, Chiefie! That’s stalling.’

  ‘I have been detailed to investigate the report.’


  ‘Some hard stuff, Chiefie. Something to print . . .!’

  Picking his words, he gave a summary that the paper would be only too eager to print. The reporter, his object achieved, scribbled away with happy industry. And the room listened silently. From across the hall came the piano’s tinkle and some muffled singing, but in the room there was only Gently’s measured tones and the rustle of the pencil.

  ‘This Sternfield . . . they’re sure he did the bank job?’

  ‘Sternfield is wanted in connection.’

  ‘That’s the same . . . can we say he’s her boyfriend?’

  ‘Miss Stoven and he are known to have been acquainted.’

  ‘Who sent you the pic?’

  ‘It was sent anonymously.’

  ‘Now, Chiefie! You must know who.’

  ‘There may be later information.’

  ‘Can we print the pic?’

  ‘The Inspector will give you an artist’s impression.’

  Back and forth, a contest of wits that both had engaged in before, of which both knew the rules, would exploit them to the full. At last the reporter rested his pencil.

  ‘Oh . . . there’s just one more thing, Chiefie. At HQ they didn’t seem able to tell me . . . you are treating this as murder, aren’t you?’

  Was he? The query in Aspall’s eye was ten times sharper than that in the reporter’s. Warren, Campsey and the six men, all were listening and watching like lynxes.

  ‘I should have thought that was plain.’

  ‘We like to be sure, Chiefie. Of course, we would have inferred it anyway.’

  ‘Now you can print it in so many words.’

  ‘Roger, Chiefie.’

  And that was that.

  ‘Sergeant Warren and two constables. The rest of you can go.’

  Still, he didn’t want to discuss it, to explain the logic of the decision. Not that it carried much logic, being based on impressions as much as fact, on readings of character . . . a hunch, if you liked! Though the logic was there in the background . . .

  ‘The cottage first, sir?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The cottage might put fresh cards in their hand. Then, after that, they could proceed to the bird-warden’s . . . arriving late, as he was about to retire.

  Oh yes, the gloves were off now! Any trick that shortened the course was worthwhile.

  Warren drove with them in the squad car. The two men followed in Campsey’s Panda. They met no other vehicle on the dark road to the cottage. In the blackness of the sky, away north, winked the red eye of Wolmering’s lighthouse, but that vanished behind trees when they turned into the lane. They parked and cut their lights: then it was darkness indeed. The moon was lost in cloud, the cottage a shape barely visible.

  ‘Bring a hand lamp.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  Its beam pencilled across the garden. Raking shadows from the rose bushes moved with them as they advanced, Warren tried the green door perfunctorily before fetching out his keys. They stood waiting in the frost while he juggled with them for, it seemed, a long time. The door opened. Warren found a switch: light overflowed from a narrow hall.

  ‘Take a room apiece.’

  Already briefed, they spread out to begin their task. In every room lights blazed, dully revealing the gardens without. And you could smell the tension of that moment. ‘Perhaps what we’ve been looking for’ was the briefing Gently had given them. One body . . .? Two . . . That was certainly how they had interpreted it!

  But the moment passed, and there was no hurried summons from rooms, upstairs or down. Just trampling feet, and the incidental sounds of drawers, cupboards being opened and closed.

  As yet, no sensational climax! With this case it wasn’t going to be so simple . . .

  He joined Aspall in the parlour. The cottage was icy and smelled faintly of soot. The parlour was a largish, low-ceilinged room with a big open hearth in which there was wood-ash. Before it stood a wooden settle, its seat cluttered with flowered cushions, and a couple of chairs. Near the window stood a desk, the drawers of which Aspall was rifling. And bookcases of course, on every wall. And Beardsley prints, four of them.

  And here she’d lived, all alone . . . What there wasn’t was a television. Just books. All of Lawrence and a couple of shelves about him . . . Mansfield, Murry . . . and poets by the yard.

  Alone, provided for, scribbling her verse, watching birds: handing off the young men who admired her, and doubtless an older man, too . . .

  Frigid, perhaps? Lesbian? No hint of that yet. But odd in some way, an eccentric . . . one who might not go by the book . . .

  And then, picking up a photo-wallet from one of the bookcases, he found himself staring at her: a slightly pugnacious-faced young lady with straight dark hair, cut in a fringe. No doubt of who it was – it was signed Ka, and embossed with the name and address of a Wimbledon photographer. She stared back at him with cool dark eyes that looked a little uneven, one more hooded than the other. Not quite pretty – the jaw too broad, the nose and chin too prominent – yet striking, sharply intelligent, with a dimple or twist to the side of her mouth. And the signature, a powerful ‘K’ followed by an ‘a’ precisely articulated.

  ‘Sir, these’ll be some of Sternfield’s letters . . .’

  Aspall was poring over a bunch on the desk. They were written on pink paper and had been bundled together with a piece of tape.

  ‘He sounds a bit of a case. But he was gone on her when he wrote them.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Dated last year, sir.’

  But she hadn’t thrown them away.

  Gently examined one of the letters: it began ‘My Goddess’, and was written in a looping, back-slanted hand. This one was dated in September and referred to some occasion when the recipient had been ‘cruel’ and had ‘touched me with a nettle’. It continued in a high-flown style and was signed, with flourishes, ‘Your Ericdymion’.

  ‘What’s the date of the latest one?’

  ‘Feb of this year, sir. Sounds like he’d got his marching orders.’

  The letter was a long, flowery complaint that seemed too unreal to contain true feeling.

  ‘Don’t reckon he’d got very far with her, sir. You don’t write that sort of bilge when you’re in.’

  ‘Perhaps he knew the lady better than we do.’

  ‘She’d have to be a weirdo to fall for that.’

  ‘Perhaps she was . . .’

  Aspall grunted – if that was the case, you could keep her! He jumbled the letters together again and knotted the tape around them contemptuously.

  ‘Then there’s these letters from her mamma – not very affectionate they are, sir – and some bank sheets – she’s doing all right – and stuff from her broker, and a printer at Lewes.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  Aspall flicked open a file. ‘The Rodmell Press, sir. Anthony Firle. Where she gets her poetry printed – there’s a receipt here for a job in August.’

  ‘And the rest of it?’

  Aspall wagged his head. ‘Author’s manuscripts, I reckon you’d call it! Stories, bits of writing . . . there’s enough to paper a house. Then there’s this.’

  He uncovered a bound volume. It was a manuscript book part-filled with verse, poems inscribed in the same firm hand as that appearing briefly on the photograph. Her proper book, no doubt, into which the finished poems went. The poems were dated. Gently turned to the last one: the date was that of the day before.

  ‘She must have been here yesterday . . .’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘Not while we were here, sir,’ Aspall said, heavily.

  ‘That was from quarter-past eleven till dusk.’

  ‘She must have cleared out before we arrived.’

  That was the most probable: and the icy chill of the place confirmed it. Miss Stoven had departed in the morning, leaving those ashes to go cold on her hearth. By half an hour, it might be, they had missed her, and perhaps had passed her on
the road . . .

  ‘Well, she was safe and sure of herself then, sir.’

  They brooded over the last poem. Certainly the handwriting was even and confident, but the content . . . what was that saying?

  The elms disrobe and re-embrace the sky;

  The sun peers sidelong, and the field fares cry;

  The west wind strokes the air with flakes of gold,

  But not a leaf that falls is lost as I.

  I would that some hoar dew or tyrant rain

  That beats the earth asleep, to dream again,

  And sets it working to another Spring,

  Would spare some opiate for my shaken brain.

  The door of Summer closes, and a door

  On the long dream of life that went before;

  I call, but no god answers, and the song

  I hear not, catch the Orphic strain no more.

  Written on the Saturday, if the meteorological detail had any significance, and copied out on the Wednesday morning, her last act before leaving the cottage . . .

  Gently flicked backwards. Earlier poems were largely evocations of scene and season. But there were two, two immediately preceding, that struck a much more personal note. Beside him, Aspall read frowningly.

  ‘Don’t reckon she wrote them about Sternfield, sir.’

  ‘No . . . not Sternfield.’

  ‘It would have to be Rushmere. And if he felt the same way, that could be a motive.’

  ‘Jealousy . . .?’

  ‘Well, Sternfield came here, and it doesn’t look like she turned him away.’

  Gently hunched. ‘She might have let him stay and still not have jumped into bed with him.’

  ‘But did Rushmere know that?’

  Gently was silent. Had Rushmere read those two sonnets? The money was not a motive that Gently would have ascribed to him, but the loss of such tenderness . . . might that not fit?

  They ruffled through the Dryad’s books, but no cascade of banknotes tumbled out. Gently left Aspall poking round the chair cushions and strolled down the hall to the kitchen. All had been left neat. Dishes were washed and replaced on the dresser. In the small refrigerator there was butter and cheese, but no milk bottles in the gallery allotted to them. An enamelled bread bin stood empty, its lid tilted for ventilation, and the dish cloth had been squeezed out and spread at the side of the sink to dry. Gently touched it automatically: still a residue of dampness. A pad calendar hanging on the door was still exhibiting Tuesday’s date.