Gently in the Sun (4 page)

‘But haven’t I just said—!’

‘You’ve said nothing that can be proved.’

‘That woman – you can find her up.’

‘In Starmouth? Without a name?’

The sweat was running down into Mixer’s eyes. He had to keep dashing at it with the back of a hairy hand. His beach shirt, fresh on half-an-hour ago, was streaky and patched with dark areas of moisture.

‘You can’t prove it’s not the truth.’

He made it sound like a question.

‘You’re picking on me, too – I’ve been inside, and that’s all that matters!’

Gently shrugged his shoulders massively and found a seat on the table.

‘Just listen to what I say, and don’t bother to interrupt. This is the way Inspector Dyson sees it, and personally I don’t blame him!

‘Rachel Campion was your mistress and you were as
jealous as sin of her. She only stuck you for your money and she was unfaithful behind your back.

‘At Hiverton she picked up with someone – never mind who it was. She was clever at concealing such things, and his identity doesn’t matter. But the knowledge that she had a lover was eating into you like poison: you followed her, watched her, kept an eye on everyone, and on Tuesday you had a row about it and pretended to go off in a pique.

‘In reality you were following a plan, and the first part of it was an alibi. For this you went into Starmouth and built up the story you’ve since told. Then you returned to spy on Rachel. You intended to catch her in the act. You had made up your mind to murder her if you found her with her lover.

‘You did catch her and you strangled her. You were going to put the body in the sea. But then, when you got it to the beach, you found the fishermen there with their boats, and later on, when you returned, the tide was flooding and you couldn’t put her in. So you left her on the beach. It was the only thing you could do. And you crept back to your bedroom, ready to be surprised at nine.

‘Only – and this is the curious point – your Starmouth alibi doesn’t cover you. She may have been dead when you say you got back, but on the other hand you still had time in which to do the job. Either way it’s a fair case, and we might make it stick.

‘Do you still think we’re being unreasonable in viewing you as a suspect?’

Gently had rarely seen a human being reduced to
such a mess. Mixer’s streaming face was grey, his eyes staring like a sick dog’s. His whole aspect, in fact, suggested that of a distempered animal. He breathed quickly and fiercely through dilated nostrils.

‘On the other hand there’s this in your favour.’

It was a toss-up whether Mixer was listening or not.

‘You’ve given this alibi in apparent good faith, which suggests that you didn’t know when Rachel Campion was killed. That doesn’t let you out – it might simply mean that you’re being clever! But on the whole, it would have been easier for you to have squared it than not. Only another things hangs to it. For what, then, was the alibi? There’s an odd smell about that, and I should like to know what it is.’

Mixer tried to wet his lips but they and his tongue seemed equally parched. His eyes had an unhinged expression as though he were losing touch with his surroundings.

‘When did you say?’

He had to swallow several times.

‘When did you say it happened?’

‘I didn’t, but it was some time between eleven and one.’

‘Then!’

Colour rushed back. The eyes appeared to switch on.

‘What were you going to say?’

‘Nothing – only it wasn’t me!’

A bell rang somewhere, perhaps the tea bell in the lounge. It was followed by a voice calling from one of the upper windows. Two youngsters ran up the path
and disappeared into the hall: one heard the double clang of feet as they bounded over the door grille.

‘I think you’d better listen to this.’

Gently was stung by the mistake he’d made. Mixer was dabbing his face again and flapping his shirt-front to cool himself. A moment ago he’d been putty, but now, inexplicably …

‘You did two years for embezzlement – that’s on the official record. But just in case you think we’re asleep, here’s the other part of the story.

‘We know what your business is – you’re a promoter of fake companies. Up till now you’ve been lucky with it, but don’t let it kid you. And there’s something else that interests us. A little matter of warehouse robberies! There’ve been six of them in the last two years from which connections have been traced to a certain Alfie Mixer.

‘To be blunt, your career is just about to catch up with you, and this time it won’t stop at a paltry couple of years. So if you know anything about this business you’d better spit it out – it might be worth a few summers spent in Pentonville or
Wands-worth
.’

He had struck the right note. Mixer’s craven look returned. Twice he had tried to get a word in and now, when he did, his voice came in a sorry croak:

‘You can’t prove nothing about that!’

But the words lacked conviction – you could read his mind at a glance; as though his thoughts were being written across that sloping, sweating forehead.

‘Have you nothing else to say?’

‘I’m going to ring up my solicitor.’

‘You’d do better to come clean.’

‘I ain’t done nothing. I’m going to ring him!’

People were coming in to tea and one could hear their muffled voices. A man laughed, a woman responded, perhaps with a touch of reproof in her tone. In the background a chink of cups had a cooling, relaxing sound.

‘Get out then – I’ve finished with you!’

He felt a sudden surge of disgust with Mixer. A sweating, fearful lump of humanity – a criminal type, if such a thing existed! – and ugly: he was abominably ugly. What could it have been … with a woman like Rachel?

When the man had gone he sat a long time musing, then, for no reason, went over to the window. The reading room faced north and the building’s shadow lay that way. A deckchair was placed in it and in the deckchair sat Maurice. He turned to grin at Gently from a racing paper he was reading.

‘After tea I’ve got a job for you.’

Dutt, as always, never obtruded himself. Now he was sitting on the verandah and patiently awaiting his senior’s direction. After a dozen cases with Gently he knew roughly what was required of him.

‘You’re to take the car into Starmouth and to check on Mixer’s alibi. Get in touch with Inspector Copping and show him a copy of the statement. While you’re having tea I’ll make a note or two in the margin.’

Dutt jerked his chin impassively; he, too, was down to his braces and shirtsleeves.

‘Think there might be something there, sir?’

‘I’m not sure, Dutt. And I’d like to be.’

‘I’ve been having a word with the kids, sir, and it all seems to hang together. It was a joke with them how jealous he was, and once or twice they saw him come out of her room. Trust youngsters to notice a thing like that.’

On the phone he talked to Pagram, his colleague at the Yard.

‘What’s it been like today?’

‘Bloody awful! You’re well out of it.’

‘It couldn’t be hotter.’

‘You listen to this. We fried some eggs and bacon on a paving stone in the courtyard. Johnson had them for lunch and his picture’s in all the evening papers.’

‘I want some digging done.’

‘You would, wouldn’t you?’

‘It’s this woman who was strangled. I want to know who she was. Her last address before she went to West Hampstead was a furnished room in Camden Town.’

‘Have you got the address?’

Gently thumbed open a sheet of notepaper. It was scribbled across in Mixer’s primitive handwriting.

‘Eighty-two Dalhousie Gardens. She left in June a couple of years ago. No next of kin and no known acquaintances. Lower middle-class cockney – could be a native there.’

‘What exactly are you after?’

‘Every single thing you can get.’

Against the instrument Gently had propped his photograph. Its eyes, which had faced the camera, followed him about as he talked to Pagram.

D
UTT DEPARTED IN
the Wolseley, which Dyson had left at their disposal, and Gently had tea and toast in a corner of the lounge. Almost automatically he passed the guests under review; they fell, he noticed, into roughly two classes.

There were the youngsters, most of whom seemed to be on their own. Their ages appeared to range from about sixteen to twenty. Then there were the elderly people, some, no doubt, retired: a few of them, like Colonel Morris, were residents at the Bel-Air.

In between there was very little, and only one couple had young children. They were a pair from Wolverhampton and spoke with a broad Midland accent. Gently set down the husband as being a factory foreman or minor works official.

The teenagers were very conservative and wore almost identical clothing. It consisted of jeans and printed shirts, worn indiscriminately by both the sexes. The young men had crew cuts and the girls the gamine or urchin. They were a noisy crowd but strangely
polite. They came, it seemed, from prosperous
middle-class
homes.

The older people were a very mixed bunch. They ranged from Colonel Morris, with his rougish eye, to a pair of severe old maids who were probably schoolteachers. One of them was a clergyman who loved to brandish obsolete words. Another, from his conversation, had trained racehorses in the north of England.

But they had this in common: they were civil and well bred. Even the Wolverhampton couple were on their mettle and determinedly fitting in. It was Mixer who didn’t fit, who stuck out like a bunch of garlic. From their attitude it was clear that he’d been
cold-shouldered
from the first.

Gently watched him now, new-towelled and dressed, eating teacakes at his table. Those who were nearest had their heads turned and the rest were refusing to see him. Sometimes a teenager threw him a quick look, then muttered a few words which provoked a giggle. Rosie and the other waitress attended to him with disdain: one could hear him eating the teacakes from the other side of the lounge.

A complete outsider! Couldn’t even he feel it? Mustn’t it have been the same when Rachel Campion sat opposite him … except that, one and all, the male guests had been making eyes at her?

Even the conversation ignored him. It was running on anything but the tragedy. As though they had conspired to turn their mental backs as well, they deftly avoided referring to the subject. It was nothing to do
with them – they weren’t people of that sort! By accident, perhaps, or managerial error.

Why did Mixer come here in the first place, or was it just that he didn’t care?

Gently watched them leaving the lounge, one after another; first the teenagers in a body and then the others at intervals. Mixer was among the last to go. He had a surprising appetite for teacakes. Colonel Morris, thinking he was unobserved, pinched Rosie’s behind and made her squeak.

‘You’re a wench-and-a-half, m’ dear!’

‘I’ve told you before, Colonel!’

Seeing Gently sitting in the corner the Colonel gave him the broadest of winks and strode out of the lounge as though he found the heat invigorating. Under his plate, Gently saw, he had left a florin for Rosie.

Outside the sun had slanted but things were really no cooler. Instead a subtle change had occurred in the atmosphere. The heat now seemed to float one, it derived equally from sun and ground; in place of the steady beating one was immersed in a bath of heat.

In going down to the beach Gently had no settled intentions. He had already funked several avenues at which Dyson had fumbled hopefully. So far, he had ignored the bridge players, who might have
remembered
something. And Maurice, who had seen her last … he had completely neglected Maurice!

To be honest, his approach was the reverse of businesslike. As usual he was following his instinct, or
rather an innate feeling. Or, to be more precise, the ghost of Rachel Campion – she had got under his skin, that woman: still he couldn’t exactly place her. She was fascinating him in death as she had done others during her lifetime.

Because … what was it that had struck him, as he sat there munching his toast? Something important though half-recognized, a tiny spurt of revelation. It was that, unlike Alfie Mixer, Rachel had fitted in at Hiverton. Morals, cockney accent, and all, she had not been out of place.

But that wasn’t so much to strain over, as though he were digging for a diamond! By all accounts she had behaved herself and been otherwise acceptable. Why then did it seem important and even curiously significant? It told him absolutely nothing except that Mixer might have underrated her background.

Had she been there before? That seemed
improbable
. A woman of her outstanding appearance would hardly have been forgotten. She was a stranger to the manager and also to the village: everyone had been intrigued but nobody had recognized her.

He strolled over to the boats, from which most of the fishermen had gone to tea. There remained only the
Keep Going
’s owner watching his young mechanic at the engine.

‘Police. I’d like to ask you some questions.’

Both turned to look at him expressionlessly.

‘It’s about this woman who was killed. Had you seen her here before?’

They were a fair cross-section of witness, standing
there, and shaking their heads. The boat owner was three score, the freckled youngster two-and-twenty. As soon as his question was answered they returned their attention to the engine.

No, it didn’t lie there, the meaning he was trying to fathom. It was nothing so simple, nothing so easy to come at. Perhaps it would appear in Pagram’s report, perhaps it would remain locked up in that
photograph
.

He turned his back on the boats and, plodding through sand and shingle, came to the firm wet level of the tideline. There were plenty of people about, more than had been there earlier. It was half-day closing in Norchester and Starmouth and his arrival, most likely, had been splashed over the lunchtime papers.

‘Can’t you give us something to go to press with?’

The first reporter had been joined by colleagues: now there were six of them, advancing on him almost menacingly. Two of the newcomers were carrying cameras. They wasted no time in committing his shirt and hat to celluloid.

‘All right – you can print this.’

Notebooks appeared like lightning.

‘As a result of our investigations enquiry has been extended to Starmouth and London. The dead woman is presumed to be a native of the London area and enquiries are being prosecuted at Camden Town.

‘The police are eager to interview any person who was acquainted with Miss Campion. They are asked to get in touch with Chief Inspector Pagram, Central
Office, New Scotland Yard (Whitehall 1212), or with their local police station.’

‘You think someone followed her up here?’

Gently made an indefinite gesture.

‘We’ve no positive reason for thinking so.’

‘What are you looking for at Camden Town, then?’

How could he tell them what he didn’t know himself?

After a little more prying they hurried off to phone their papers. A curious group had been attracted by the interview and Gently, irritated, went striding off along the tideline.

He didn’t know himself – that was the worst of it! Without a single logical reason he was letting her personality dominate him. And there was no need to look abroad for people to suspect, when anyone who’d fallen heavily … anyone with a latent streak … Mixer had a motive, but he wasn’t alone in that.

A quarrel after they’d made love, followed by the shock of the limp-fallen body – anger, perhaps, because she had died so treacherously. And indignation with the fear as he tried to cover the deed. A crime he hadn’t meant! A penalty that couldn’t be just!

Why be complicated and subtle with facts which told their own story?

He kicked at the pebbles which came in his way. If only he could start again and begin to see things clearer. Yet could there have been another way except the one he was pursuing? Were the facts so very simple, when they began with Rachel Campion?

After walking till the sweat poured down he turned
off into the sandhills. Here one imagined there would be a breeze, but in effect there wasn’t a breath of one. The view, however, was extensive. Inland one could see a broad. To the north the sandhills stretched away to a soaring mound that marked the Ness, and southward, past the sprawl on the beach, to a bluish haze which was probably Starmouth.

He lit his pipe and looked around him. It was a lonely spot with a spirit of wildness. A lot of beach and a lot of marrams … why did everyone cluster within a stone’s-throw of the gap?

Between the line of hills and the first scant pasture would be two or three hundred yards of marram. It consisted of mounds and holes and ridges and was colonized by the grass and a few sea-favouring plants. Rabbits there would be, there, natterjacks, lizards. From time to time a bare foot would step on an adder. But there was no shade at all. No shade for miles. The sun roared down on the marrams like a celestial blowtorch.

He shook his head and set off again, for the village. He had come further than he intended in his walk along the tideline. Ahead of him, in an endless series, stretched the summits of the sandhills, their tawny flanks soft and hot, their grass rough and spiteful. Who ever came that way unless it was Nockolds, the poacher?

As he blundered among the last of them he smelt an unexpected savoury odour: someone was frying
sausages
– out there, on the marrams! But the mystery was quickly solved. He had stumbled on to Simmonds’s
encampment. Over a spirit-stove set between beach cobbles the artist was cooking his evening meal.

‘You’ve got a nice little spot here.’

Gently fanned his face with his hat. Simmonds, after a quick look at him, continued poking and turning his sausages. The compliment was not unmerited. The camp site really was well chosen. A flat-bottomed depression on the top of a hill, it almost hid the tent without at all obstructing the view. Also it was handy for the village, though still remote from the daily hurly-burly.

‘This isn’t my first camp.’

There was a touch of pride in the young man’s voice.

‘I spend all my holidays this way. Last year I was painting in the Snowdonia area.’

‘Alone, are you, always?’

‘An artist doesn’t want company.’

‘What does your girlfriend say about it?’

‘I don’t happen to have a girlfriend.’

Gently looked round for a seat and chose a baulk of sun-whitened driftwood. While Simmonds was talking he had lit a second stove and placed a billy of water over it. Now he forked the sausages on to a plate and added boiled potatoes from a smaller billy.

‘You’ve come to ask me some more questions, have you?’

His movements were self-conscious but he was well in control of himself.

‘If it isn’t too hot!’

‘That’s something I’m used to.’

‘I wish I could say the same.’

‘It’s a matter of training oneself.’

Gently nodded and smoked silently, letting the artist get down to his meal. On the beach below he could see some of the Bel-Air youngsters, three of them in the water and the rest tossing a ball about. Simmonds sat cross-legged before the taped-up flaps of his tent. He ate with a deft fastidiousness, sprinkling salt from a little tin.

‘I only spoke to her twice, you know.’

‘You’ve the advantage of me. I didn’t speak to her at all.’

‘You don’t mind me going ahead with my tea?’

‘Good heavens no. I had mine at four.’

The tent, the stoves, the utensils, the site, they all bore witness of tidiness and method. Within the tent one could see a pile of precisely folded blankets. Against the inner pole stood the canvas at which Simmonds had been working that afternoon.

‘Among other things, there’s the view from here.’

It was something which hadn’t escaped Gently’s notice. You could see the village, the beach, the marrams, and part of the track leading inland from the gap. The boats, however, were not included. They were obscured by the line of the hills and by the net store.

‘That’s Hazey Mere, away at the back there. You can make out the sails of the yachts on most days. Beyond the Ness is Sea Weston lighthouse, this way the water tower at Castra. And when there’s rain coming up you
can see Starmouth quite plainly – in fact, for subjects, I need only turn the easel round.’

‘It sounds an ideal pitch.’

‘I found it two years ago.’

‘You’ve camped here before, then?’

‘Only once, over a bank holiday.’

‘When did you first meet Rachel Campion?’

‘Last week. It’s in the statement I signed.’

Gently knocked out his pipe, grinding the ashes under his sandal. Simmonds had finished his sausages and was emptying tinned rice on to a fresh plate. Beyond the bathers, but inshore, chugged a smart motor sailer. Further off was a white-painted vessel with a yellow funnel.

‘Tell me exactly how you met her.’

‘She came and watched me – while I was painting.’

‘Here, do you mean?’

‘No, higher up the marrams. I was painting the Ness and that great big sandhill.’

‘What did she say?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t remember. It was one of the silly things that people always think are clever.’

‘And then?’

‘She sat down and watched me. I don’t like people doing that. In the end I simply packed up – it was nearly lunchtime, anyway.’

‘And she came back with you?’

‘Yes. As far as the gap. I had to go into the village to pick up some bread and some methylated.’

There was no doubt about his composure – or about the nervousness under it. It was a curious amalgam
with an undertone of brittleness; he was like someone grasping a nettle or going deliberately to stand on a precipice. In a way it was touching, in a way it was droll. He was trying to be grown up while in fact he was still largely a boy.

‘One thing I can tell you – she wasn’t just what they’re making her out. She was intelligent, too. She knew something about art.’