Gently Down the Stream

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Thank you, sir. It isn’t often we get such thoughtful co-operation.’ Gently tucked the envelope away in his breast pocket. ‘I’d like to know the approximate time at which the yacht was taken over.’

  ‘Yes, sir. It was at 9 p.m.’

  ‘You were in the office?’

  ‘No, it was my son who received Mr Lammas. But I saw them shortly afterwards, when they came down to the yacht.’

  ‘And you suspected there was no relationship between Mr Lammas and his companion?’

  ‘I did, Mr Inspector. There was not a scrap of resemblance between them.’

  ‘Could you describe the lady?’

  ‘I could, sir. She was above the middle height, a little obvious in her figure and had black, straight hair, worn somewhat longer than is usual in these days. Her complexion was pale and she had a delicate chin. She spoke quickly in what I may call a rather high-pitched voice.’

  Gently nodded to Hansom, who produced his photograph. ‘Would this be her, sir …?’

  The old man took it in his knotty hand and examined it attentively.

  ‘Yes, sir, I think it would. But you must understand she was dressed with greater propriety when I saw her.’

  ‘Well, that’s settled the identity problem,’ observed Hansom as they went down to the quay, where Rushm’quick awaited them in the yard-launch.

  ‘Rattled it off like a portrait-parley, he did,’ put in Dutt admiringly. ‘Who’d’ve thought the old gent had a memory like that?’

  ‘But why did she go off with the chauffeur?’ mused Gently from the back of beyond.

  ‘Why did she go off with him?’ echoed Hansom.

  ‘Yes – she didn’t have to, did she? Lammas himself was obviously planning to skip with her.’

  ‘They might have quarrelled, or she might have preferred a younger man …’

  Gently shook his head in the irritating way he had.

  Rushm’quick cast off and turned the launch downstream. The river was flocking with pleasure-craft of every kind, drifting yachts, busy motor-cruisers, skiffs, launches and majestic trip-boats. On the south bank were the bungalows. Timber-and-plaster surmounted by deep reed thatch, they nestled under downy willows and behind great velvet lawns. No Moorings, said the little white noticeboards at their quay-heads, No Moorings, No Moorings. There were no moorings anywhere on that bank.

  A mile further down the last bungalow hedged off its lawns from the wilderness, and a tangle of impenetrable alder and willow carr succeeded.

  ‘Lammas’ place is the other side of that lot,’ remarked Hansom, by way of commentary. ‘Do you want to see them today?’

  ‘Not today … we’ll let them have Sunday in peace.’

  Hansom snorted at such an unpoliceman-like sentiment.

  They saw the bungalow, however, when they turned into the broad. It stood far back at the top end, looking tiny and lost in the surrounding carrs and reed-islands. Like most of the outlying bungalows it was high-built on black-painted timber piles, the space beneath being utilized as a wet boat-house.

  ‘Are there any boats in there?’ asked Gently.

  ‘There’s a launch and a half-decker – maybe a couple of dinghies.’

  ‘Lammas do much sailing?’

  Hansom extended his two hands. ‘I didn’t get round to his hobbies.’

  They throbbed away down the broad and out into the river again.

  Now it was continuous, the wilderness, breaking only to disclose reed-choked waterways. Once they passed a headland of firm ground falling down to a little sand beach, but the rest was all carr or shaking reedways. But there was nothing lonely about it. Not on a fine Sunday at the end of June. Rushm’quick, with three policemen on board, had a tense time of it sticking strictly to the rules in the handbook.

  ‘Here we are,’ he jerked at last with relief. ‘That’s the entrance to Ollby Dyke … down there at the end of the reach.’

  It was necessary to point it out. The inexpert eye would have seen nothing just there except tangled carr and ferocious brambles. But an inlet there was, using a bit of force-work, and on the far side one caught a glimpse of a narrow dyke disappearing into the fastness of the carrs.

  ‘He must have known the country pretty well …’ brooded Gently. ‘How did he get a yacht up there?’

  ‘It’d go in all right if he had the mast down.’

  ‘There’s a keel on a yacht.’

  ‘Ah, but there’s a spring up Ollby Dyke … that keeps plenty of water in it. Shall I take her in?’

  ‘No – wait just a moment.’

  A couple of hundred yards further down on the other bank the carrs fell away and there, just visible among the bushes, was an old houseboat pulled out. And there was a ribbon of grey smoke rising above it.

  ‘Someone live there?’

  ‘Only old Noggins, the eel-catcher.’

  ‘Let’s go and see him first … we should have something in common.’

  Obediently Rushm’quick spun his wheel and sent the launch weaving downstream again.

  The eel-catcher sat on an eel-chest in front of his make-shift lodging. He was a little man of indeterminable age, dressed in a drab jacket and trousers out of which the rest of him seemed to grow, as though it were all part of him. He eyed the launch unfavourably as it pulled in alongside.

  ‘Yew be careful where yew’re comin – I got a pair of eel-trunks down there!’

  ‘Think I didn’t know that?’ growled Rushm’quick.

  ‘Well I’m tellin on yew – jus to make sure!’

  He got up reluctantly and came over to them. Gently introduced himself briefly.

  ‘You didn’t happen to be here Friday evening, I suppose?’

  ‘Frida evening – w’yes! I had m’nets up Frida.’

  ‘You were here all the evening?’

  ‘Ah, most of the day asides.’

  ‘And do you remember seeing Sloley’s Harrier go by?’

  ‘Thatta dew, and saw the bloke what was on it tew.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Gently simply.

  The little man’s face puckered up. ‘W’ … that was about eight o’clock time, I reckon. There’d been all sorts goin past – I shoonta noticed in the ordinara way. But this bloke fetches up on the bank here to pull his mast down … naturalla, I keep an eye on him.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘W’ then he start his ingin and slide off again, an the last I see of him was goin up the Deek.’

  Gently hesitated. ‘Did you know who he was?’

  ‘Blast no! Woont know him from Adam.’

  ‘Or the woman with him?’

  ‘He ha’nt got no woman.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I say he ha’nt got no woman. That was jus him on his lonesome.’

  There was a moment broken only by the throb of the idling motor and then Hansom exploded angrily:

  ‘Of course he had a bloody woman – we know all about it!’

  ‘I tell yew he ha’nt,’ retorted the little man obstinately.

  ‘You mean you didn’t see her – she was in the cabin.’

  ‘No she wa’nt. He was moored starn-on, an I could see down into the cabin. Sides, why di’nt she help him get the mast down? That wa’nt easa for him, on his own.’

  ‘She could have been in the WC!’ snarled Hansom.

  ‘Then she musta been wholla bound up, tha’s all I can say …’

  He wasn’t to be shaken – there was only Lammas on the Harrier that evening. Neither Hansom’s bullying nor Gently’s more subtle methods would make him modify his statement.

  ‘What was he wearing?’ queried Gently at the end of it.

  ‘W’one of them sports shuts an some white trousers.’

  ‘You’re sure it was a sports shirt?’

  ‘I aren’t blind, ama? That was a red one.’

  ‘A tall, heavily built man, was he?’

  ‘No, that he wa’nt, jus midlin’ an a bit on the lean side.’

  Gently nod
ded absently and signed to Rushm’quick to push off.

  ‘We may be back for another chat later on, Mr Noggins.’

  ‘The old fool’s got his lines mixed!’ grunted Hansom as they chugged back towards the Dyke. ‘The woman was out of sight and he’ll swear blind she wasn’t there.’

  ‘What about his description of Lammas?’

  ‘That tallies all right … the bits of trouser we recovered were white flannel.’

  ‘And his build?’

  ‘Like he said – medium height and spare.’

  ‘Which leaves the sports shirt, doesn’t it …?’

  ‘Sports shirt?’ Hansom stared.

  ‘Yes … didn’t you find the cuff-links with the body? It looks as though Lammas changed his shirt.’

  ‘Christ yes – he must have done!’ The divine light of ratiocination appeared in Hansom’s eye. ‘Yeh – there might be something in Noggins’s story at that. Suppose he put the female off somewhere down-river – he brings the yacht up here to hide it and kill the trail for a day or two – changes into his city clothes and rings his chauffeur, the chauffeur being paid to keep his mouth shut—’

  ‘You’re forgetting one thing, though …’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘He’d got his trail covered for the whole week. He might just as well have lit out on the previous Saturday, saying nothing to nobody.’

  Hansom sniffed in a deprived sort of way. ‘We’ve got to make sense of the facts, haven’t we?’

  They ducked as Rushm’quick sent the launch slicing through the drooping boughs and bushes that concealed the mouth of the Dyke. On the other side they seemed to be in a different world. Overhead the tangled twigs of blunt-leaved alder closed out the sky, on either hand the stretching rubbish reached out to brush the launch as it slid past. A green-lit tunnel it was, thrusting remotely into a forgotten land.

  Hansom snatched a dead alder burr out of his hair.

  ‘Thirty years ago there were wherries up and down here every day of the year.’

  It was only half a mile long, but there seemed no end to it. One hemmed-in reach followed another with bewildering monotony. And then, just as Gently’s sense of direction was irretrievably lost, the alders parted overhead and they swung out into blazing afternoon sunlight.

  They were in a little pool, grown up and almost choked with reeds, water-lilies and a myriad-flowered water-plant. On the far side, against the rotted remnants of a quay, lay the fire-blasted yacht. And by the yacht sat a Police Constable smoking a cigarette, his tunic and helmet hung on a willow-snag.

  ‘Jackson!’ bawled Hansom, in a voice to wake the dead.

  The Constable jumped as though he had been stung.

  ‘What the blue blazes do you think you’re supposed to be doing – having the day off?’

  ‘I – I wasn’t really expecting anyone …!’ blurted the Constable, struggling into his tunic.

  ‘Oh, you weren’t, eh?’ commented Hansom nastily. ‘Thought we’d come by car and you’d hear us in time, didn’t you …?’

  Rushm’quick eased the bows of the launch against the rotten quay and they jumped down gingerly on to shaky green turf. The yacht lay well in under the trees, which bore silent witness to the fierceness of the blaze. It was completely gutted. From end to end the interior showed a blackened mass of ash, nothing remaining of cabin, deck or fitments. Only the engine jutted up near the stern and the charred ribs preserved a pathetic symmetry.

  Gently sniffed at the acrid smell of burned varnish.

  ‘Was the body this side of the engine or the other?’

  ‘The other.’

  ‘Was the petrol-tank that side?’

  ‘Yes – you can see where it blew out.’

  ‘There must have been a lot of petrol used to do a job like this … is it safe to go aboard?’

  He stepped cautiously on to the hulk and was directly up to his ankles in ashes, which still seemed warm. He kicked them away from the engine and stooped to examine it.

  ‘Did you find the carburettor?’

  ‘No, it was too bloody hot to look for carburettors the last time I was here!’

  Gently poked about in the ash with his foot and was eventually rewarded.

  ‘Looks as though it was unscrewed. The cap’s off it, too.’

  ‘Reckon he took the cap off first,’ put in Rushm’quick knowingly, ‘then it wasn’t coming through fast enough, so he took the carb right off.’

  Gently nodded and continued to probe with his foot. Towards the fore part of the hulk his shoe caught something which sounded hollow and metallic. The twisted remains of a jerrican came to light.

  ‘Is this part of the yacht’s equipment?’

  Rushm’quick shook his head.

  Gently handed it out and clambered back on to the bank.

  ‘Well … there’s a nasty job for someone, going through those ashes. We’d better have it towed back to the yard and gone over there. How do you get a car into an outpost like this?’

  Hansom led the way along a doubtful track which plunged through the thick of the surrounding wilderness. But a few yards saw them on higher, drier ground and the track widened into a lane.

  ‘Here you are – you can still see the tracks where he turned the car.’

  ‘Where does the lane go?’

  ‘It joins the Lockford–Wrackstead road about a mile from Ollby. The phone-box is at the junction.’

  ‘No houses about there?’

  ‘There’s a bloke called Marsh lives in a house a quarter of a mile towards Panxford, but the house stands back amongst trees. He didn’t see anything … no bastard’s seen anything! All we’ve got is the village idiot.’

  Gently tutted. ‘You can’t manufacture witnesses. Have you searched the area round here?’

  ‘We didn’t get time to be really clever.’

  ‘Then you mightn’t have noticed … that … for instance?’

  He pointed to the bole of an alder a few yards off the track. A white flake was showing up against the dark, gnarled bark.

  Hansom glared at it as though it were a personal insult. ‘And what’s that supposed to be – the answer to a detective’s prayer?’

  But Dutt had already grasped the significance of the white flake and was making his way carefully through the rough grass. Gently waited patiently, Hansom impatiently, while the sergeant performed his operation. Eventually there was a little cluck of triumph from Dutt and he returned to drop something small in his superior’s hand. Gently examined it expressionlessly.

  ‘Spot any blood, Dutt?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Much or little?’

  ‘Not much, sir.’

  ‘Head, I expect. They’d have noticed it lower down.’

  ‘What I was thinking, sir … about the angle, too.’

  ‘Would it be too much,’ enquired Hansom with biting sarcasm, ‘would it be too much to ask what all this is about?’

  Gently extended his hand gravely and revealed the shapeless chunk of metal Dutt had dug from the tree.

  ‘It’s about the way Lammas was killed … you can let your pathologist off duty. He was shot through the head with a bullet from a .22 gun.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS A pleasant run from the village to ‘Willow Street’, lately the home of James William Lammas. After traversing the beech avenue, the road ran along the edge of the upland just where it fell into the shallow river valley and one caught glimpses of the winding stream low down amongst billowy trees and later of the broad.

  ‘All this and the best coarse-fishing too …’ murmured Gently at the wheel of the Wolseley. At breakfast that morning he had watched Thatcher fairly scooping bream out of the mouth of the Dyke.

  ‘You know, it’s rum, sir,’ began Dutt beside him, and stopped.

  ‘What’s rum, Dutt?’

  ‘Well sir, it stuck in me loaf what you said about the woman.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘About her not havi
ng to go off with the shover.’

  ‘It’s a point that needs elucidating.’

  ‘I mean, sir, it’s pretty obvious that this geezer and her were planning to fade together … it don’t seem natural for her to get the shover to do him in. What’s she going to get out of it what she didn’t have in the first place?’

  ‘Only the chauffeur … he might be quite a guy.’

  ‘No sir.’ Dutt shook his head. ‘If she’d been took with the shover there wasn’t nothink in their way … he wasn’t married. And she wouldn’t be carrying on with Lammas.’

  ‘Unless it was a deep, dark plot.’

  ‘No sir. It don’t seem right.’

  ‘What’s the theory, then, Dutt?’

  ‘Well, sir … I’d say the shover did for both of them and hooked it on his own. It’s the only way what makes sense, the way I looks at it. He knows about the money – it’s got to be on the boat – he goes there ready to do for them and make it look like an accident. When he gets there he finds there’s only Lammas, but if he shoots him first-off down by the car he isn’t going to know that till it’s too late.’

  ‘And then, Dutt?’

  ‘And then he goes through wiv it, sir – what else can he do? But somehow he runs across the woman again – maybe Lammas was aiming to pick her up somewhere close – she’s seen the fire – she sees the shover coming away from it – so he has to do for her, to keep her mouth shut. And then he dusn’t go back and shove her in the yacht, so he gets rid of the corpse somewhere else.’

  ‘Which is why he flitted, eh, Dutt? The second corpse wasn’t looking like an accident.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. Otherwise he’d be sitting tight and knowing nothink.’

  Gently grinned feebly at his subordinate. ‘It’s a nice little theory … all it needs to set it up is a bunch of facts and a fresh corpse.’

  ‘Well, sir … it isn’t to say they won’t turn up.’

  ‘No, Dutt – but until they do we’d better be good policemen and keep a wide-open mind.’

  ‘Yessir. Of course, sir.’

  ‘We’re only halfway into the picture … it’s the other half we may be finding now.’

  They had come to the ornate iron gates of ‘Willow Street’. The narrow country road turned sharply to the right, the gates being set in the corner. Beyond them a gravel drive screwed steeply down between luxuriant rhododendrons, now in full bloom, their giant salmon, white and heliotrope flowers seeming to explode against the sombre leaves.