Gently Sahib (9 page)

‘Does that make a difference?’

‘It would for me, I can tell you. I hate blackmailers. So far as I’m concerned, this Shimpling got what was coming to him.’

‘What do you recommend us to do, then?’

‘What? You’ll have to do your duty, won’t you? A man must always do that, whether he likes it or not. Do your duty. But don’t do a stroke more than that.

‘Work to rule – that’s the ticket! We shan’t mind if you don’t find the fellow.’

‘Old Ted is a Socialist,’ Villiers chipped in.

‘Labour, Bill – I’m not ashamed of it. I’m the biggest employer in Abbotsham – and the biggest red. Ask anyone.’

‘He’ll talk Marx to you.’

‘And why not? I’ll talk Marx to any intelligent man . . .’

And there he was, setting his drink down, as though about to strip and roll up his sleeves.

But out of the corner of his eye he was watching Gently, playing to him, watching the effect . . .

‘I’ve been talking to David Hastings.’

At once he had Cockfield’s attention.

‘Hastings? He’s all right, Hastings.’

Villiers stood by anxiously, nursing his glass.

‘You’re friendly with him?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. So-so. See him around.’

‘Do you often invite him to your chalet at Weston?’

‘Didn’t know – oh yes! He was there once.’

‘When was that?’

Cockfield hoisted his shoulders like a comic Jewish gentleman.

‘Why you ask me that, huh? Why not ask Dave Hastings?’ Gently matched the shrug.

‘It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t be the weekend when the tiger escaped.’

Cockfield stared. ‘He says it wasn’t?’

‘What do you say, Mr Cockfield?’

Cockfield didn’t say anything for a moment, then he burst into loud laughter.

‘He knows his business, this one, Bill! No use trying to sell him short. And it’s Old Ted, Mr Superintendent – Ted the Red. Bottoms up!’

A moment later a gong began to sound and Mrs Villiers signalled her husband.

During the meal Gently had Cockfield seated on his left. The big contractor talked ceaselessly, cramming food into his mouth as he did so.

He drank wine as though it were beer, swigging down glassfuls in single gulps; then he’d help himself from the bottle and top up Gently’s glass at the same time.

‘Skaal, Super!’

He grew merry, yet one could swear it was half put on.

Round the table they exchanged glances. Old Ted was on form tonight!

‘D’you think they could use me in Westminster, Super? I’d be a stumbling-block for them, what? A Labour backbencher with seven hundred employees . . . never a strike in twenty years.

‘You want to know why? They can talk to me! We use the same sort of language. I’ll sit on a plank and roll a fag and quote them Lenin by the shovelful . . .

‘Skaal!

‘I’m not a boss, I’m a leader, Super . . .’

While, down his temples, sweat rolled in streams, so that he had to break off to dab with his handkerchief.

Across the table, the ascetic-looking Parkins was eating nut-meat and salad. He was short-sighted and kept squinting at Cockfield as though one of Groton’s animals were sitting opposite him.

On Gently’s right, the Chairman of the Bench tried to begin a legal anecdote; but he was too studied and long-winded to make any headway against Cockfield.

‘Skaal! You’re not drinking, Super. Try some of this . . . what is it? Chablis! I don’t know one wine from another, that’s a job for the wine merchant . . .

‘Look, you’re an intelligent man, Super, you’re a man I can talk to. Nationalization is bunk – I’ll prove it to you. It’s like this.’

‘Spare us Nationalization!’ someone called.

No,’ Cockfield said. ‘No. I know you rabble don’t care a hoot – but the Super, he’s different!

‘Nationalization – what is it? It’s trying to force a natural process. We’ll get it, anyway, that’s my point – it’s an economic inevitability.

‘Take the chemical industry – two big cartels, trying to do each other down – one’ll swallow the other, then what? The last takeover – by the Bank! That’s Nationalization as a natural process, a historic process.

‘Skaal!’

But now he was getting a little fuddled, because he spilled the wine down his shirt front.

‘Mr Cockfield is a character,’ the chairman murmured. ‘He made an excellent Mayor, though . . . which reminds me . . . ?’

‘When was he Mayor?’ Gently asked.

‘He held office last year, before Mr Parkins.’

Parkins heard his name mentioned and squinted severely. He drank a little water from a tumbler.

‘Mr P. is a hotelier,’ the chairman murmured. ‘Which reminds me . . .’

‘Skaal!’

By the end of the meal there was no doubt that Cockfield was squiffy. He had to be assisted into the lounge, and Villiers helped him drink his coffee.

But still he wanted to sit by Gently, still he kept his eye on him, while he rambled on about politics and whatever came into his head.

He’d really taken to Gently! The others couldn’t get a look in. Villiers was mooning around the two of them like an unhappy hen who’d hatched ducklings.

‘I want to see you tomorrow, Super . . . show you round . . . what about it?’

‘Too busy.’

‘Don’t be like that, man! Who cares a damn about . . . what’s his name?’

‘Shimpling.

‘That’s him! Well . . . who cares about him? He’s dead, best thing too . . . I want to show you my sites.’

‘I’ll see.’

‘That’s better. Y’know, I like you, Superintendent . . . who’s driving you back?’

‘Mr Villiers.’

‘Just put me in the car . . . you’ll find I can drive!’

But actually it was Parkins, stone sober, who drove them back in his Daimler, with Gently supporting the snoring Cockfield as they proceeded at a sedate forty.

They dropped Cockfield off at a large house on the outskirts of the town, where he was taken in by his son Tommy, who showed no surprise.

As they drove away, Parkins said:

‘That fellow killed a man, you know.’

Adding, as Gently turned to him:

‘It should have been manslaughter, but of course it passed off as careless driving.’

‘When was this?’

‘When he was in office. Last May twelvemonth, I think. Ask Villiers.’

‘Thanks, I will.’

Parkins went on driving, chin high.

I
N THE LOUNGE
of the Angel Dutt sat alone, reading the marked copy of
Pickwick
. It was a thick, early edition with the plates, and Dutt was frowning at it through his reading glasses. When Gently entered he put it down.

‘Hello, chief. Have a good evening?’

Gently grimaced and took a chair. He closed his eyes and leaned backwards.

‘I’ve been having a go at this Dickens bloke . . . they must have been a rum lot in his day! I reckon he overwrote, you know. Blinking great paragraphs and long sentences.’

‘It went down big when he wrote it.’

‘Perhaps we’ve got on a bit since those days. I don’t know, but I’m not with it. I reckon he did things the hard way,’

‘What did you have for tea?’

‘Bangers and chips with an egg.’

‘Any good?’

‘So-so. Bangers don’t vary much, chief.’

Gently opened his eyes slightly.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Lady Buxhall.’

‘Who?’

‘Lady Buxhall. Lord Buxhall’s missus.’

Gently opened his eyes wide, then closed them again.

‘Nuts,’ he said. ‘You’ve delusions of grandeur. Keep
Debrett
out of this one, Dutt.’

‘But it’s right, chief!’

‘Nuts.’

‘I’ve got her description and the lot. Lady Laura Betty Buxhall, née Potter. Used to be a model for Burns and Winsmoore.’

‘A model, was she?’ Gently opened one eye.

‘That’s how old Buxhall picked her up. Before that she might have been something else – someone who had dealings with Cheyne-Chevington.’

Gently nodded. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Though I think you’re ten jumps ahead. But let’s go back to the bangers and chips and what the policeman saw through the window.’

‘I saw her, chief. No doubt about it. Tall. Ash blonde. Lean build. Driving a light blue Mercedes coupé, licence number B22.

‘I called the waitress over and she confirmed it was the same blonde. This was about ten minutes to six. She was only there a quarter of an hour.’

‘Snogging with Hastings.’

‘Not snogging. They were talking nineteen to the dozen. Hastings was walking up and down. She was smoking a fag in a long holder. Then before she left he did kiss her, but they didn’t make a ball of it. She came out looking rather peevish. He went up into the flat and poured himself a drink.’

‘Then, naturally, you did some research.’

‘What do you think, chief ? The car belongs to Lady Buxhall and the blonde answers her description. The Buxhalls live at Hawley House, about twenty miles from Abbotsham. That’s near Illingford, in the next county, which is perhaps why people don’t know her up this way.

‘Then I rang the
Express
Building and talked to Stan Taylor, the gossip columnist. She’s Buxhall’s second. He’s pushing seventy and is reckoned to be worth over a million.

‘He has a son and two daughters who are daggers drawn with Lady Laura, but the old man is besotted with her, so they’ve had their noses put out of joint.

‘He met her at a party at Claridges where Burns and Winsmoore put on a show. There was a whirlwind romance. He married her about four years ago. She’s behaved like a model wife, and Taylor says she better had, because if the family catch her slipping it’ll be lights for Lady Laura.

‘That’s the lot, chief. She doesn’t have form. Thought I’d wait up and give it to you.’

‘Hmm,’ Gently said.

He took out a card on which he’d pencilled the ‘black book’ initials. He put a tick against the ‘B’.

Six out of ten . . . four to go!

Enough to rule out coincidence? Now it began to look that way. And here was enough money involved to motivate half a dozen murders . . .

‘She’d be a wide-open touch for Shimpling.’

‘She’d come to hand like a pint pot, chief. If he was keeping tabs on Hastings he’d soon find out about her. Was she in the book for much?’

“‘B” was paying fifty a month.’

‘I’d say that was a pretty reasonable touch.’

‘Shimpling was fly. He was a clever operator.’

Dutt tucked his head on one side. ‘I reckon this is the angle, chief,’ he said. ‘This is where the big money is, where Shimpling might have stepped out of line. There’s Lady Laura, sweating on a million, and Hastings sweating on it with her – and all of it ready to go up the spout at a couple of words from Shimpling.

‘And that fifty a month was only going to last till Lord Buxhall turned it in.

‘I’d say Shimpling tried for a lump sum and got the tiger set on him instead.’

‘Yes, the tiger . . .’

Gently fetched out his pipe and began sucking it, cold. That improbable tiger! And after the tiger, even more inexplicable happenings at the bungalow.

For if the idea of using the tiger had been to make the murder appear an accident, why had someone then buried the body, and locked the door – and stolen the car?

Of course, the car theft may have been unconnected . . . but that was the least of the improbable features.

‘Let’s try it for size,’ he said. ‘Granted that Shimpling had got too greedy. So there’s a plot between Hastings and Lady Laura to put Shimpling away. What gave them the idea of using the tiger? It’s too bizarre, almost inconceivable. Only one person would even dream of it, and that’s a person who owned a tiger.’

‘Groton.’

‘Groton. And what follows? Groton must have been in the plot. He must have been known to Hastings and Lady Laura as another Shimpling victim. But how? Blackmailers are usually careful to keep their victims from knowing each other, and here we have a combination too unlikely to have been mere chance.

‘You don’t say to a stranger in a pub, “I’m being blackmailed – what about you?”!’

‘Shimpling may have let something out, chief.’

‘He’s never shown up as a careless type. But, however it was, this is what we’re faced with – Groton was in it with the other two.

‘So the plot is laid. Groton is out. He must have an alibi above suspicion. Hastings too – he’s involved with Shimpling: inquiry would reveal his true identity. Groton’s alibi is easy, but Hastings has to cast about him. He chooses a weekend in the country with an ex-mayor and a respectable chemist.

‘But here there’s mystery again – these two men have “black book” initials; and I’ve just learned that Cockfield may have had a handle for Shimpling to use. Two more possible victims who were known to the others, and in the plot! It begins to look as though Shimpling’s clients were ganging up to put him away.’

‘Then Hastings’s alibi is a fake?’

‘We have to take that into consideration. Let’s say for the moment it’s by no means innocent. But the same goes for the others, if we can pin them down as Shimpling victims – Hastings, Cockfield and Ashfield, they’re equally in it or out of it.

‘We’ll suppose they’re out of it. Hastings was vulnerable, and the job of the other two would be to give him cover. But there was another man who wasn’t vulnerable and we’ll presume it was he who did the job.

‘Samuel Sayers, the man who sold the estate business to Hastings. He vanished from Abbotsham after the tiger scare and Hastings doesn’t want us to find him. He was a queer, which would be his handle as far as Shimpling was concerned. He lived in the flat over the office and he has a “black book” initial.

‘This is what may have happened. Groton left the tiger loaded. Sayers collected it and drove to the bungalow and parked the truck at a distance from it.

‘He knocked at the door. He was a judo expert. He laid Shimpling out cold. Then he backed the truck up to the door and raised the grille and released the tiger.

‘After that we can only assume he left the tiger to get on with his meal, then came back later to search the place and to remove the blackmail evidence.

‘Which should have been all – but for some reason it wasn’t all. Sayers, or somebody, buried the body, locked the door and stole the car.