Gently Down the Stream (12 page)

‘Now – there it goes. And it isn’t a little one! Here, you’d better land it … I’ve just remembered I haven’t got a licence!’

Paul snatched the rod out of his hand and played the fish in. It was a handsome sharp-headed bream, clean-looking and full of jump. With considerable expertise the young man slipped a landing-net under it, lifted it aboard and disengaged the hook. Then he threw it straight back into the water and put the rod well out of Gently’s reach.

‘Now …! Perhaps we can learn what Scotland Yard is here about.’

Gently extended his hands. ‘First things first! Where did you go on your motorbike last night?’

‘I went for a ride.’

‘A ride – not
again
?’

Paul looked at him in surprise. ‘What do you mean – not
again
? Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?’

‘Not really …! Where did you go?’

‘To Starmouth.
And
I can prove it.’

‘What time did you get back?’

‘About eleven, I believe.’

‘And you spent the night in bed?’

‘Has it broken a local bye-law?’

Gently brooded a moment over his pipe, then his mild glance sought Paul’s.

‘Look! I’ve pretty well made my mind up about this business – but not quite. There’s a whole lot of features that keep getting in the way, and I’ve got to know which of them belong and which of them don’t. And I think you could tell me – if you stopped looking on all authority as your natural enemy!’

The young man’s flush sprang burning in his cheek.

‘I’ve told you before—’

‘Yes, I know what you’ve told me before. But things have moved on a bit since then – enquiries don’t stand still, you understand. And what you told me isn’t good enough any longer … that’s what it amounts to.’

Now he looked hard at Paul.

‘We don’t have to be enemies, remember.’

There was a silence between them broken only by the puffing of Gently’s pipe and the jewelled twitter of a reed-warbler somewhere close at hand. Fifty yards away a pair of grebes watched them suspiciously, swimming flat and jerky on the water. Then there was the slightest of chuckles and the grebes had vanished.

‘You mean I’m not under suspicion?’

Gently’s head barely moved to indicate the negative.

‘It was absurd all along – you
couldn’t
have thought that I did it!’

‘But you’ve made a bad impression.’

‘I don’t care. I’m just not the type!’

It was true, and in more ways than one. Gently tried to conjure up the picture of the frail young man
manoeuvring the enormous remains of Cheerful Annie.

‘And if I’m not under suspicion, why can’t you just leave me alone?’

‘I’ve told you … because you’ve got some important information.’

‘And I say I haven’t, so what are you going to do about it?’

‘First, I’m going to tell you just where your mother stands in this business.’

There was no doubt about it being a shock. Paul’s cheek was a barometer to his emotions that a child could read. But Gently was in no hurry to press home his advantage; he puffed contemplatively for a while, his eyes dwelling dreamily on the golden-shadowed stars of the water-lilies.

‘You know … your mother fits the bill rather neatly.’

Paul’s teeth were almost chattering and he had to fight to keep a countenance.

‘I ask you … as one intelligent person to another … don’t you think your mother would be capable of homicide as a last resort?’

Now he had to put his hand on the counter to steady himself.

‘As I read her character it is completely implacable. She has a psychopathic will-power, a destructive will-power. I feel reasonably certain that she would sooner destroy a person than relinquish her hold on him.’

‘No!’ gasped Paul. ‘You don’t understand – she’s had to stand up for herself, that’s all. She isn’t what you say!’

Gently shrugged. ‘You should know …! But to me, as an outsider, that’s the picture. And we have there the motive. Her husband is trying to escape.
You’ve
got a motive too, but yours isn’t nearly as strong … neither, as you will remember pointing out, are you the type!’

Paul choked, his eyes fixed wildly on the Central Office man.

‘Of course, at first we couldn’t show that your mother knew anything about Linda Brent or your father’s plans to disappear. That made your mother’s position reasonably safe. We might suspect it, but we couldn’t show it, and it’s only the things you can show that impress a jury. But now, I’m afraid, we can show it too.

‘By lunch-time on Friday your mother had all the relevant facts but one.’

‘But she didn’t – she
couldn’t
have known!’

‘Your father’s whereabouts? No – not at lunch-time! But she took steps to discover it … another point for the jury. And then there’s the matter of the fingerprints on the drawer which contained the gun – her’s of course, superimposed on your father’s – and her lies about her movements – it’s a pretty formidable list!’

Paul’s state was truly pitiable. His shaking made the dinghy vibrate till it produced fine, shivering lines on the glassy surface.

‘She wouldn’t have shot him … she didn’t know anything about the gun!’

‘What do you have to know about a double-action automatic, except to point it and pull the trigger?’

‘She’d have to load it … she couldn’t do that.’

‘Wouldn’t it be loaded, when it was kept handy to deal with burglars?’

‘But she couldn’t … I tell you she
couldn’t
!’

Gently hunched a shoulder, as though it didn’t matter either way.

‘That won’t be the charge, in any case. We know who pulled the trigger. The charge your mother will face in dock will be conspiracy to murder, and if you think Hicks will shield her, you haven’t followed many cases of this sort! And incidentally, we’ve got Hicks nicely netted. He’s probably under arrest by now.’

‘Stop!’ croaked Paul, scarcely able to speak.

‘I thought you should know the situation.’

‘It isn’t true … you’ve got to listen!’

‘On the facts, we shall have to make a charge.’

‘No … listen to me … only listen! I’ll tell you all that happened on Friday!’

Gently turned to look at him, sitting shrunken and crouched in the stern of the dinghy.

‘Ah!’ he murmured. ‘I was hoping that you would.’

The story that Paul told was as pathetic as its narrator. He hadn’t known a thing about his father’s projected disappearance until the quarrel late at night. For him, the tragedy had been on quite a different key. Even now he seemed unable to get the matter out.

‘You see … she met him at a party.’

His mother had a lover.

‘His name is Henry Marsh … he’s a solicitor in Norchester. Heaven knows what she sees in him! I could tell him for a cad at a glance.’

But his mother had fallen for him, and he for her. There had been a head-over-heels romance lasting three months and during that time Paul’s heart had accounted for quite a number of weeks’ absence from the university.

‘When did all this happen?’

‘She met him at Christmas … it was going on till Easter.’

‘Did they keep it under cover?’

‘I suppose so … anyway,
I
knew about it!’

‘What about your father?’

Paul shrugged feebly. ‘I couldn’t say what
he
knew.’

From the beginning Paul had been suspicious and before long he had had a row with his mother. It was then he was made to realize that he had slipped into second place. His mother wouldn’t listen to him. His old influence with her had vanished. For the first time in his life he felt the icy wind of neglect seek out his pampered ego and after astonishment and self-pity had run their course he reacted in strict character.

‘At first I threatened to commit suicide, but she wasn’t impressed by that. Then I told her I would inform Father unless she stopped seeing him. It was this that put an end to it – for the moment.’

It would, of course. Mrs Lammas had no intention of either losing or being lost by her husband. A love affair was all very well while it remained a gay flourish to the pattern of life. It was not very well when it threatened to disrupt that pattern, to demolish reputations, to liberate a bondman. So Mrs Lammas had yielded, or at least appeared to yield. When Paul was around she no longer drove off to her discrete rendezvous.

Gently wondered what sort of certificate Paul would get from his mother’s specialist the next time National Service reared its ugly head.

‘But you weren’t satisfied?’

‘No … I knew the difference in her manner towards me! Once we were everything to each other, nothing could come between us. Now she was cool, so horridly cool! How can I describe it? She no longer confided in me and I felt I could no longer confide in her. All the little things that pass between people who love one another! And I knew I couldn’t trust her. She had put me outside her heart. I was sure she would tell me the biggest lie without a grain of remorse.’

So it had become an armed peace between mother and son. Outwardly, everything was the same. Inwardly, they spied upon each other, two enemies, each watching to catch the other at a disadvantage. And Paul couldn’t be away from Cambridge all the time.

‘That’s the real reason why you are at home, is it?’

‘Of course it is! You knew what I told you was an excuse. While I was here she had to stop seeing him … before this happened, anyway. If she went out, I followed her. What else was there I
could
do …?’

On the Friday morning he had followed her into Norchester and witnessed her visit to the office. During the afternoon she was very silent and absorbed in thought. At about half-past three he had passed through the hall and found her in the act of telephoning. She had immediately hung up and avoided him by going into the kitchen and giving some orders about tea. A little later he had seen her slip out of the house by the kitchen door.

‘She went to the phone-box at Wrackstead Turn. I timed her. She was talking for twenty minutes.’

Suspicious and very much on his guard, Paul had laid his plans for the evening. Instead of staying in the house he would deliberately go off on his motorcycle and then lurk in a side-turning, waiting to see what she would do. Mrs Lammas fell into the trap. Within five minutes she had set out to visit her lover. On the way, for motives then obscure to Paul, she had turned off to Halford Quay and made some inquiries of a petrol-pump attendant. But then she went directly to Marsh’s house. She had remained there for the rest of the evening.

‘You’re sure of this – it’s important, you know!’

‘How can I be other than sure, when I was watching the whole time on a thousand knives! She drove straight up the drive as though she owned the place, parked the car so it was out of sight and ran into the house without even knocking. Do you think I took my eyes off it one second after that?’

Gently nodded, satisfied. If Paul were telling the truth, no plain-clothes man could have watched that house half as intently as the slighted spoiled boy …

‘I watched for nearly two hours, from just after half-past seven till just before half past nine. Then she came out, and him with her – patting her shoulder and all that sort of slush! When she got into the car I raced back home. I wanted it to be a surprise, didn’t I just! And I waited for her in the lounge – and that was the row the servants heard.’

Under the circumstances, he had simply refused to believe her excuse that she had gone to Marsh for
advice. What sort of tale was she telling him, about his father having sold out the business and gone off with Linda Brent? It was all too ridiculous! A palpable invention! They had gone on rowing till the return of Pauline put an end to it.

Gently refilled his pipe and lit it meticulously.

‘All right … it hangs together. Now where is Henry Marsh’s house?’

Paul hesitated before replying. He had talked himself back into fettle.

‘I suppose you’ve got to know?’

‘Oh yes, I’m afraid we have.’

‘Very well, then – and please don’t think it’s something significant! – his house is at Ollby.’

‘His house is
where
?’ The spent match stayed put in Gently’s fingers.

‘At Ollby, about quarter of a mile from the turning. But I can tell you right now that it means exactly nothing!’

It seemed an age before that spent match was flicked into the water. Gently kept staring at it as though it were something he hadn’t seen before. Then it went suddenly, with a curve of irritability, and Gently was lugging out his beginning-to-be-dog-eared Ordnance Survey.

‘Come on, now! No fooling about. Just whereabouts is that house situated?’

Paul pouted at his rough tone, but pointed to the spot.

‘Yes – just where I thought! It’s that white house with the trees round it, standing all on its own … over a mile this way from the village, and a good two from Panxford Upper Street!’

‘But it doesn’t signify – it might have been twenty miles away!’

Gently’s eyes fastened on him and there was no mildness in them now.

‘You can’t be that stupid! Don’t you realize what you’ve told me? On your own admission you, your mother and this Marsh were within half a mile of the scene of the murder at the time it was going on.’

‘That’s just the point – I can
prove
she didn’t go there!’

‘On the contrary, Mr Lammas … you can’t even prove that
you
didn’t go there.’

The cheeks blanched to their incredible whiteness, as though Gently had stabbed him with a knife. Even the hand clutching at the counter was drained of colour.

‘You – you trapped me into telling you this!’

Gently shook his head. ‘You seem to have trapped yourself.’

‘I told you in good faith – now you’re making it evidence against me!’

‘You told me because you had to tell me something … how much remains to be seen.’

‘I told you everything!’

‘Then look at this map.’

He prodded at the buff coloured line of the secondary road taping out from Wrackstead. It left Panxford to one side, passed through the hamlet of Panxford Upper Street and for over three miles from thence to Ollby proceeded without a single side-turn … except one.