by Alan Hunter
‘I told you – I was sick!’
‘With what?’
‘My heart was giving trouble—’
‘What doctor did you see?’
‘I haven’t seen one – I have to rest, that’s all!’
‘By making trips on your motorcycle?’
‘That was Friday, I was feeling better—’
‘And your mother raised no objection.’
‘Why should she – she knew I was feeling better!’
Gently paused like a stalking tiger.
‘The name “Beretta” – what does that mean to you?’
‘“Beretta” …! I never heard of it!’
Gently plunged once more into his capacious pockets and threw something heavy and metallic clattering on to the table. It was a small automatic pistol with a slightly projecting barrel and a hook-shaped catch at the base of the grip.
‘There – that’s a Beretta – a Beretta.22. Are you sure you’ve never seen one – here – in this house?’
Trembling till his teeth almost chattered, Paul leaned forward and with an effort picked up the gun.
‘It’s – it’s my father’s gun … of course I knew he had it!’
‘Go on.’
‘It was a year or more ago … there’d been some burglaries. The police gave him a licence. I’ve seen him clean it in the garage.’
‘And you knew where he kept it?’
‘No! God help me … never, never!’
‘Do you know why it’s important?’
‘Why should I – nobody’s been shot!’
‘Oh yes they have, Mr Lammas – your father was shot through the head.’
The pistol dropped with a thud on to the carpet. The young man slithered down his chair and had to seize the sides to prevent himself from falling off.
‘I didn’t do it!’
His voice was a whisper.
‘I didn’t – I just didn’t do it!’
Gently signed to Hansom, who was sitting completely enthralled with the proceedings. Hansom picked up the gun impatiently and shored Paul up in his chair again. Gently arranged the gun neatly in front of him and waited.
‘I tell you I didn’t …’
‘We heard you the first time, Mr Lammas.’
‘But you’re trying to frame me with it!’
‘No.’ Gently shook his head.
‘Then what’s it all about?’
‘It’s about the truth you haven’t told us.’
Paul bit his small, shapely lips and stared unseeingly at the gun on the table. Then his eyes rose slowly and fastened themselves on Gently. And there they rested, dark, frightened, but entirely determined.
‘Very well,’ murmured Gently, ‘that’s all there is to it … tell your mother to come in, will you? I expect she isn’t far away.’
The young man pulled himself to his feet. He left without another word.
‘I like that boy!’ exclaimed Hansom joyously. ‘Yes – I like that boy!’ He flipped a half-crown into the air and then held it out to Gently. ‘What do you say – little Paul against the field? What are you going to give me?’
Gently grinned and pushed the half-crown away.
‘I only once bet on a case and that time I won … which is why I never collected.’
‘Hell!’ exclaimed Hansom. ‘When did I start being a suspect?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
MRS LAMMAS DIDN’T appear immediately, which suggested certain things to the sagacious Inspector Hansom. Gently merely shrugged and got up to wander round the room. It was a room worth wandering around. If ever taste and expense had combined to create the ideal room to overlook a broad, this was that room. In size it was about thirty feet by fifteen. Along the south side ran a range of deep windows opening on to the wide, thatch-sheltered veranda. The colour scheme was pale yellow and green; yellow, reeded wallpaper, a carpet of restrained turquoise and furniture in straw-coloured wood upholstered in flowered turquoise silk. And it was glorious furniture. In it the genius of Scandinavia had been tempered with a Sheratonian delicacy, a feminine exquisiteness. It made Gently feel quite dangerous as he picked his way through it. On the walls were a few original pictures, a pair of Seagos, an Arnesby Brown, a Peter Scott and a group of six watercolours of Broadland birds by Roland Green. And from any point in the room one turned to the long vista of the sun-flashed broad with its low, reed-and-carr fledged shores, its lily-nestling islets, its geometry of dream-moved sails …
Also, thought Gently, there were pike in that broad … and tench and bream and roach and perch …
He shook his head sadly and put a light to his stone-cold pipe.
There were heavy steps climbing up to the veranda. It was Dutt coming back from his horticultural assignment.
‘Well, Dutt … how are crimes down there?’
Dutt smiled all over his cockney face and held up what appeared to be a toffee-tin.
‘I got the goods, sir – just take a butcher’s into this!’
Proudly he opened the tin and displayed the contents. It contained some greasy rag, a small wire-handled brush, a bottle of Rangoon oil and three spent.22 shells.
‘Fahnd it in the garage, I did – just sitting on the bench, as large as flipping life!’
‘We know, Dutt. He used to clean it there.’
‘Know sir, do we?’ Dutt was a trifle dashed. ‘But this here’s the proof, sir – the shover must have known about his nib’s pop-gun!’
‘So does everyone else, Dutt. Don’t tell me the gardener didn’t know.’
‘Well, now you mention it! But I don’t think he had anythink to do with the job.’
‘He’s got an alibi?’
‘Yessir. He’s the local sexton, sir. They buried an old girl called Micklewright on the Friday and natural-like, sir, they went and drank her health afterwards. He ain’t sure wevver he got back Friday night or Saturday morning, but if it ain’t the one then it must be the other.’
‘That sounds a fairish sort of alibi, Dutt.’
‘What I thought, sir.’
‘And what about that jerrican?’
‘Yessir. It come from the garage all right. The gardener says as how he used it to keep his weed-killer in and right upset he was ’cause someone had knocked it off.’
‘Weed-killer, eh? There’s something a bit macabre about this gardener! I suppose he didn’t tell you when he first noticed the jerrican was missing?’
‘No, sir. I asked him that particular. But this is the rum thing, sir – he swears blind it’d gone some time before Friday. He thought the shover had swiped it, but the shover said he hadn’t. Then he tackles Mr Paul, who’s always in and out wiv his motorbike.’
‘And Mr Paul gave him a rude answer?’
‘Very rude, sir … shocking.’
Gently clicked his tongue. ‘It would be interesting to know just when that jerrican disappeared.’
‘Looks like it wasn’t an off-the-cuff murder,’ sniffed Hansom.
‘But who would know in advance that they’d have a chance of burning the body in the yacht? How did they know that Lammas was going to take the yacht up Ollby Dyke and that he’d be alone?’
‘Well they did, didn’t they?’ retorted Hansom irrefutably. ‘He couldn’t have been so darned smart, after all.’
‘Unless, of course …’
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless it was Lammas himself who took the jerrican away.’
Hansom stared at him incredulously for a moment, then he broke out into sarcastic laughter.
‘Har, har – very funny! I know a couple of dozen types who’d lay on a cremation for themselves – especially when they were just going to be knocked off!’
‘No – wait a bit … that’s not the point. You’re looking at it from the wrong angle. There are other things one can do with petrol besides using it to cremate bodies.’
‘Such things as?’
‘Well … such things as running petrol engines, for example.’
<
br /> ‘Petrol engines! He could get his tank filled every mile or two on the Broads.’
‘I know he could … on the Broads.’
The master-brain of Hansom worked slowly, but exceedingly well. He had the point in three seconds, starting from scratch.
‘Yeah …! Now I’m with you! Boy oh boy, that’s a fancy idea if you like! And he’d got the right sort of boat for the job – she wasn’t big, but she’d got the depth for sea-going. And he’d dropped the femme. And the weather was set fair … we’re on to something, I tell you! This is the real Mackay!’
‘Of course, he would need a motive of some sort …’
‘Smuggling!’ yipped Hansom. ‘What do you say to that?’
‘Smuggling what … out of the United Kingdom?’
‘What can you smuggle … gold! That’s the answer. And that’s why he cashed in – to buy himself a shipment!’
Gently smiled and shook his head, but the enraptured Hansom wasn’t easy to shake free from an idea.
‘It explains the whole shoot – why he hung around here and everything! You’ve only got to take it from the beginning and work through. He wanted more money – eight thousand wasn’t enough to disappear on – so he arranges to run some gold – it won’t come till the Friday – he cruises around till then, packs the girl off to the hideaway and goes up the Dyke to rendezvous with his gold!’
‘What about the chauffeur …?’
‘He must have been on to it.’
‘You couldn’t make him the gold-merchant, just to tidy the loose ends?’
Hansom snorted indignantly and bit the end off a cigar.
‘All right, Mr Cleverdick … let’s hear your version?’
‘I haven’t got a version … I was just noting a fact.’
Hansom lit the cigar bitterly and blew smoke all around himself. The real trouble with Gently, he thought, was his entire lack of forensic imagination …
Dutt coughed confidentially. ‘’Nother fact, sir, if you don’t mind … on account of we had a warrant I takes the liberty of ascending to the shover’s quarters, which are above the garage.’
‘Any luck, Dutt? Any letters?’
‘Nothink, sir. Just two from his aunt. And a lot of old football coupons which never won tuppence.’
* * *
A cloud drifted over the sun as Mrs Lammas entered. It was as though nature had conspired to put a dramatic point on the event. She paused in the doorway, delicately sniffing the alien smell of Hansom’s cigar. Her cool gaze ran disapprovingly over the moved furniture and the policemen rising to their feet. Then it fell on the table and the automatic which lay there. And she swept forward with a sort of withering grandeur.
‘Before we go any further, inspector, I should like to know by what right you have entered my husband’s bedroom and removed that gun from the place where it was kept!’
Gently shrugged expressionlessly. ‘We’ve entered nobody’s bedroom, ma’am … except the chauffeur’s over the garage.’
‘What nonsense, man! Do you take me for a fool? That gun was kept locked in a drawer beside my husband’s bed. I have just been to examine it. It is unlocked and empty. If you didn’t fetch the gun, then how did it get here?’
‘I ought to explain.’
‘You have exceeded your duty!’
‘This gun, ma’am, is not your husband’s.’
‘I know full well that it is!’
Gently sighed, picked up the gun and handed it to her.
‘Would you be kind enough to read the serial number, ma’am?’
‘There is no need for me to read the serial number!’
‘Is it’ – he fumbled for a dog-eared envelope – ‘is it 52 stroke 7981?’
‘No, it is not – but what does that signify?’
‘It signifies that it isn’t your husband’s gun … we obtained its serial number from the record of licences issued. This one was merely brought along to jog people’s memories …’
Her sharp eyes bored into him, challenging every word.
‘If it is as you say, then where is his gun?’
Gently extended his hands. ‘We’d like to know, of course …’
‘You told my son that Mr Lammas was shot. Is it your theory that he was shot with his own gun?’
‘It’s a fact that he was shot with a gun of that calibre.’
‘Then does not a simple explanation arise – that Mr Lammas committed suicide?’
‘Unfortunately it does not, ma’am. He was not shot where he was found.’
‘I see.’
She sniffed again at the offending wreathes of Havana.
‘Very well – we had better get down to this interview. I’m sorry if I was mistaken, inspector. You must understand that I am unused to invasions in this house, either from the police or other people. It is naturally upsetting to think that somebody is making free with one’s property.’
Gently nodded soothingly and ushered her to her seat. Mrs Lammas sat down regally, folding her tiny hands in her lap.
‘While we are on the subject, ma’am … has your husband’s bedroom been cleaned recently?’
‘It most certainly has. The rooms are run over daily.’
‘The furniture, however … it wouldn’t be polished daily?’
‘It is polished once a week. I believe the maid is working there now.’
Gently nodded to Dutt, who rose immediately.
‘You will have no objection, ma’am? It is essential that we inspect the bedroom.’
‘I seem to have very little option, inspector. The best I can expect is to be informed of what I must consent to.’
Dutt departed at speed after being given the location of the bedroom. Gently toyed with the automatic for a moment before slipping it away in his pocket. Outside a little breeze had sprung up, whispering in the green reeds: it set the white sails slanting and weaving more purposefully.
‘You had very little interest in your husband’s business, Mrs Lammas, apart from being a minor shareholder?’
‘I had none whatever, inspector. I very rarely went near the place. Whatever he did or did not do there was unknown to me.’
‘Did your daughter never volunteer information?’
‘My daughter is not the type to volunteer information. No doubt you have elicited the fact that she is to some degree estranged from me. I make no secret of it. She chose to be her father’s sympathizer and that has set a certain distance between us.’
‘I gather that there was a virtual separation between yourself and your husband, Mrs Lammas.’
‘Yes. We have lived as strangers for most of our marriage. I do not propose to enter into details of this, inspector; they would not concern you. But you may take it that a state of isolation obtained as complete as may be expected in a single household.’
‘You will forgive me for being frank … why was it you didn’t separate formally?’
‘Being equally frank, inspector, it was because my husband was useful to me.’
‘Would you like to enlarge on that, Mrs Lammas?’
‘Certainly, if you insist upon it. I am what you may call a person with a static attitude to life. I dislike changes and I dislike an ambiguous status. My husband was useful to me simply because he was my husband and once our relationship had been adjusted to my satisfaction I had no wish to have it altered. I will not deny that we clashed occasionally. You will have heard that he tried to assert his right to drag Paul into his business. But generally speaking we had learned to co-exist without perpetual friction and this I considered to be quite satisfactory. I trust I have answered your question?’
‘Thank you, Mrs Lammas … and of course you knew nothing of your husband’s association with Miss Brent?’
‘Nothing whatever.’
‘It would not have affected your attitude?’
Mrs Lammas made a swaying motion with her shoulder.
‘Naturally, I would not countenance my husband being interfered with.’
<
br /> ‘You would have taken some action, possibly?’
‘I should. But it would hardly be a fair question to ask me what.’
Gently nodded but made no comment. Mrs Lammas glanced at him challengingly and then added:
‘If I had known I might possibly have averted the tragedy which took place on Friday.’
‘Possibly, Mrs Lammas.’
She shrugged her shoulders and was silent.
‘With reference to that Friday …’ Gently fixed his eyes on a passing half-decker. ‘You were here all day until the evening?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your son went out on his motorcycle. Did he tell you he was going out … and where?’
‘He told me he was going for a run. He was not certain where he would go.’
‘I understand he suffers from a weak heart and that he was home from Cambridge, resting. Surely you would have had some objection to him taking out his motorcycle?’
Mrs Lammas permitted a smile to pass over her face.
‘You musn’t be too hard on Paul … my son is a poet. Certainly his heart is not strong, but that wasn’t necessarily the reason for him being at home. The fine weather may have had something to do with it.’
‘I see … and you had no suspicion of where he was going?’
‘No. Why should I?’
‘You followed him rather quickly, Mrs Lammas. It occurred to us that you might be keeping an eye on him.’
She laughed, a low, tinkling little laugh.
‘Keep an eye on Paul! I wouldn’t dream of such a thing, inspector.’
‘It was purely coincidental?’
‘If you can call it that. I had been preparing to go out since tea.’
Gently’s eyes switched back from the half-decker, casually, carelessly.
‘Then suppose he’d gone out to keep an eye on you, Mrs Lammas … what would you have to say to that?’
The laugh went out as though it had been doused with an extinguisher. Mrs Lammas sat very still and straight, the fingers of her two hands twining themselves together in her lap.
‘Of course, I’m not saying he did. It was just the time factor that interested us.’
‘You may rest assured, inspector —’
