Landed Gently (10 page)

‘Now, Johnson—’ began Dyson, in a brook-
no-nonsense
tone of voice.

‘Well?’ fired the ex-miner, the word coming like a bullet.

‘I think I should warn you, Johnson—’

‘It’s kind we are!’ interrupted the Welshman, spewing shag-smoke at his interrogator.

Inspector Dyson rose to his feet. He was no mean figure, when it came to comparisons. He leant across the table, his two large fists supporting him, and gave the Welshman the benefit of a grade-one inspectorial drilling.

‘Just before we go any further—’

‘Aye?’ broke in Johnson.

‘We’ll remember where we are, and who it is we’re talking to!’

A little smile turned the corners of the Welshman’s mouth. A dreamy look stole momentarily into his blazing eyes. ‘Ohhh!’ he said, with deceptive softness.
‘The inspector wants to make something of it – yes, he wants to
make
something of it!’ And he drove a jet of smoke straight into Dyson’s face.

It happened so quickly that there was no time to intervene. The goaded Dyson swept a fist which should have decapitated his seated tormentor. Instead, it swept the air. Instead, something with the jolt of a pile-driver sent him reeling back into his chair.

‘Do you
like
it!’ roared the Welshman. ‘Do you like my
little
right hook, man? If you come outside a moment, I will show it to you again – though you will have to be a bloody sight faster, if you are going to see it coming!’

‘Arrest that man!’ bawled Sir Daynes. ‘Gently – Potter! Grab him before he does for someone else!’

‘Before I do for you, more like it!’ shouted the enraged Johnson. ‘Do you think I don’t know, man, what you are trying to pin on me?’

Nevertheless, he was brought to order with the minimum of physical persuasion. That one, beautiful punch out of nowhere seemed to have soothed the overstrung pugnacity of his nature. Dyson was picked up and restored to office, Sir Daynes smoothed his ruffled plumage, and the constable, Potter, stood resting a dutiful hand on the prisoner’s shoulder.

‘Hrm-hrmp!’ snorted the baronet. ‘You’ve just made a confounded mistake, my man – confounded mistake. Going to commit you forthwith – assault on a police officer. And damn lucky you’ll be if you walk out again in a hurry.’

‘What is that?’ demanded Johnson, the truculence rising again in his countenance. ‘Are you making a charge, man – is that what you would be saying?’

‘I’m expressing an opinion, blast you!’ retorted Sir Daynes hastily. ‘Dyson, get on with the job, and see what this feller has to say for himself.’

Dyson, chastened but ugly-looking, did as he was bid. Certain facts had come to their knowledge, he said, as a result of which they thought that Johnson might like to add to his previous statement. Johnson, perhaps, knew to what he was referring?

The Welshman sneered. ‘I know as well as yourself. You have got out of Wheeler that I think Mrs Page is a fine woman – and who, among those present, will call me a liar?’

‘Our information, Johnson, goes further than that. We are given to understand that you are infatuated with Mrs Page.’

‘Infatuated, he says! There’s a good copper’s word for you!’

‘Do you deny the truth of that?’

‘Aye, unless you can find a better word for it.’

‘You will be advised not to prevaricate, Johnson. Do you deny the truth of it?’

The Welshman looked at him with profound contempt. ‘I have said what I have said. Find me a better word.’

‘Stuck on her, man!’ broke in Sir Daynes
impatiently
. ‘Sweet on her – in love, by gad! You know what the inspector means.’

‘You have given me the word.’ Johnson was silent for a moment. ‘I need not tell you this, and hard would it be for you to prove it. But I am not a liar, no, and I am not a murderer either, whateffer ideas you have in your mind this moment. So I will tell you the truth, and care nothing what you make of it. I am sacredly fond of poor Mrs Page.’

‘Hah!’ exclaimed Sir Daynes, moving closer in his excitement. ‘Sacredly fond, eh? That’s a new way of putting it.’

‘New it may be, but true it is also. I would not have you think that I thought of her wrongly.’

‘But you didn’t like Earle hanging around, all the same, eh?’

‘No, I did not.’

‘Feller was a Yank – might not have been so sacred?’

‘I will not conceal that I often thought otherwise.’

‘And that’s why you had it in for him?’

‘That is one reason.’

‘Best one of the lot, eh? Sort of reason that might lead to something.’

Sir Daynes eased back in triumph, leaving the ex-miner to Dyson. It was only by an effort that the baronet was restraining himself from rubbing his hands. Dyson, his prey restored, hastened to apply the
coup de grâce.

‘May I make a suggestion, Johnson?’

The Welshman said nothing.

‘May I suggest that you now tell us the truth about what happened the night before last?’

‘Read it,’ said Johnson briefly.

‘Read it?’ Dyson was thrown temporarily out of his stride.

‘Read it, I said. Did you not take it down yesterday?’

‘Not what you said yesterday!’ yapped Dyson. ‘I’m talking about the truth. And it wasn’t the truth when you pitched us that yarn about going to the library for a book that night, was it? You’d got a far better reason for leaving a nice snug bed. Do you want me to tell you what it was? Shall I jog your memory about how you got Earle out on the landing?’

‘I am not a
liar
!’ exploded the Welshman, his anger suddenly flaring up once more.

‘You’re not, aren’t you?’ Dyson was well under way. ‘But I think we’re going to prove otherwise, my fine hot-tempered Welshman. Do you think the police are stupid? Do you think they can’t put two and two together? They can, you know, and a good deal faster than you seem to think. Now – when did you slip Earle that message that Mrs Page wanted to meet him in the great hall?’

‘I have not slipped any message.’

‘Then how did you get him out there?’

‘I did not get him out there.’

‘He was sleepwalking, was he?’

‘I told you, he was arguing with a woman.’

‘You admit he was there, then?’

‘I admit what I have said.’

‘Yes, and you’ve just said that he was there – I thought you said you weren’t a liar?’

Gently sighed to himself and rose quietly from his window seat. He had heard it all before … His whole life seemed to have been spent listening to policemen trying to make bricks without straw.

‘Think I’ll take a stroll …’ he murmured to the absorbed Sir Daynes.

‘Eh?’ replied the baronet. ‘Here, just a minute, Gently!’

He dragged himself away from the proceedings and accompanied Gently to the door.

‘Well – what do you think now?’ he demanded. ‘Hasn’t Dyson got him rocking, eh? And a blasted assault charge for a bonus – feller played right into our hands.’

Gently smiled at Sir Daynes’s enthusiasm. ‘I wouldn’t force the pace too much, though.’

‘Force the pace?’ Sir Daynes sounded incredulous. ‘Why, the feller will talk himself to the gallows!’

Gently shook his head unconvincedly and opened the door. Sir Daynes watched him go, an injured expression dawning on his patriarchal face. He was beginning to understand how certain superintendents of his ken could feel when the Central Office man was treading on their sacred toes.

S
OMEWHERE ABOUT THE
great house thirty or forty people were disposed, but, as always, it seemed entirely deserted. The multiplicity of rooms, their size, the thickness and solidity of the walls, all these contributed to a sensation of emptiness, remoteness and uncanny silence. Referring to his guide, Gently set off to find the south-east wing. His way took him along the entire front of the house, passing through the great hall, and though this must have been one of the principal thoroughfares he met not a soul on his journey.

The south-east wing was vaguely similar in layout to the north-east, and a brief reconnaisance brought him to the room corresponding to the yellow drawing room. He knocked and entered. The five
tapissiers
sat in a subdued group about the hearth. Closing the door behind him, he went across to the group, and stood for a moment warming his hands at the blaze.

‘Not intruding, I hope?’

‘Naw.’ It was Percy Peacock, the bald-headed little Lancastrian, who answered him.

‘I should think it’s warmer outside than it is in the state apartments.’

‘Ah, it’s a proper boom-noomber out there.’

Gently pulled out Dutt’s pipe, now beginning to lose its rough edge, and filled it with leisurely fingers. They watched him silently. He could guess at the conversation he had interrupted. Three men, three women, diverse in age, character and district, the weavers were one jealous unit when it came to interference from outside. It mattered nothing that Johnson had made himself unpopular. That was purely a domestic problem. When trouble came to him, he was first and foremost a weaver – like the Musketeers of fable, they were one for all and all for one.

‘Got a light, anyone?’

Percy Peacock produced a box of Swan.

‘I got fed up with the interrogation … thought I’d give you people a look. The local boys don’t seem to be getting very far with the case.’

He puffed away absent-mindedly for some minutes, as though his pipe and the fire met all his requirements just then. He could feel them relaxing a little. The reference to ‘local boys’ had set him a little apart from the machinations of the Northshire County
Constabulary
…

‘Anyone here got a hunch?’

They didn’t rise to it, but then, he hadn’t expected them to.

‘Me, I’m just a visitor … It’s difficult for me to weigh things up. The local lads seem pretty sure of themselves, and perhaps they’re in the best position to judge. This Johnson of yours seems to fly off the handle without much warning.’

Now there was a little stir, and Percy Peacock glanced up at him warily.

‘There’s nowt wrong wi’ our Hugh, except he’s Welsh.’

‘Well, he’s got a deadly right hook on him.’

‘That’s nobbut against him.’

‘It is at the moment … He’s just pasted the local inspector a corker.’

‘Ay?’ exclaimed Peacock. ‘You mean yon object wi’ the teeth?’

‘Inspector Dyson. He took a swing at Hugh.’

Peacock scratched his bald head and tried to conceal his pleasure at this information. One suspected that Inspector Dyson had not endeared himself with the natives …

‘Of course, our Hugh can be obstropulous …’

‘I’m afraid he was guilty of provocation.’

‘At same time, Inspector ought not to have raised his hand to the man.’

‘As you say, he ought not … He’s probably of the same opinion now.’

The atmosphere had definitely warmed up. They had ceased now to watch him with the vigilance of a herd of animals drawn together against a dangerous intruder. Percy Peacock was hiding a grin. Wheeler,
the young Yorkshireman, was lighting a cigarette for the ponytailed blonde who had attracted Sir Daynes’s attention. Doris, Peacock’s wife, was encouraging the oval-faced dark girl called Norah to bring her chair nearer to the fire. Insensibly, Gently was merging into this difficult circle …

‘Coom from the Yard, dorn’t you?’

Wheeler glanced at him with naïve curiosity.

‘Yes … I’m on holiday up here. Came to do some pike-fishing.’

‘Joost keeping eye on things, like.’

‘Between you and me they think I’m a damned nuisance.’

‘Well, dorn’t run away with t’idea that our Hugh had hand in it.’

‘Mmn?’ Gently puffed indifferent smoke.

‘Might be he took against Bill – dorn’t say he did him in. We knaw our Hugh, and he woona have done a thing like that.’

‘Well, there’s this business of Mrs Page, you know … It gives him a fair size in motives.’

‘It’s something they’re making too much of,’ broke in the ponytailed girl quickly. ‘Half of us never noticed it, that’s how much it showed. Les did, of course. He’s got that sort of mind. And I won’t say I was completely blind to everything going on. But Jimmy there, silly little fool—’

‘Aw coom now, Anne!’ interjected Wheeler,
blushing
.

‘
He
never noticed it, and never would’ve done if he
hadn’t heard one of Les’s cracks. But
of course
Jimmy had to be the one to let it slip, and now they’re working overtime on the stupid idea that Hugh killed Bill out of jealousy!’

‘Boot I didn’t knaw!’ protested the unhappy Wheeler.

‘Well, you
should
have known, Jimmy, that’s all I can say, and if they hang Hugh it will have been all your fault!’

Poor Wheeler hung his head. He was obviously much taken with the piquant little blonde, and much impressed with the heinousness of his blunder. It was Peacock who half-heartedly came to the youngster’s aid …

‘Give oop getting at t’lad, will you, Anne? Thaws ferrety coppers’d get blood out of stawn, let alawn human being-gs.’

Gently grinned at him. ‘Present company excepted?’

‘I wouldn’t like to say that till I’d seen thee gaw about it!’

Gently took another puff or two without venturing to put a question. There was no possible doubt that the weavers were behind Johnson – not merely as one of themselves, but because they were convinced of his innocence. Surely, then, they would have thought of alternatives to Johnson … and surely one or another of them would have observed something that might point elsewhere?

‘You’re positive that nobody else had a quarrel with Earle?’

‘Nawbody that we knaw – you might look a little higher oop.’

‘Lord Somerhayes, you mean?’

‘I mean it wasn’t one of us – I say nowt apart from that.’

‘Someone must have broken in and done it!’ exclaimed the pony-haired girl. ‘There’s just nobody in the house would dream of hurting Bill. I say the police didn’t look properly when they first came yesterday. If they’d really made a job of it they’d have found where someone broke in, and then all this unpleasantness need never have happened.’

‘A very tempting theory, my dear,’ said Brass, who had just come in. ‘If I were you I’d go and break a window, and then we’ll cart the inspector off to look at it.’

‘Oh, Les, I’m being
serious
!’ The little blonde sounded aggrieved. ‘You’re
always
making fun – and there’s poor Hugh in there!’

Brass patted her shoulder matily. ‘Cheer up – they won’t hang Hugh. And descending from the sublime for a moment, what happened to that hank of purple you should have dyed for me before Christmas? I’ve just been hunting through the shop for it, and I’ve a shrewd suspicion it wasn’t done.’

It was, the blonde girl protested, and she gave a minute description of where it had been left. Brass paused to light a cigarette. Around him, the weavers wore expressions of affectionate respect. To them, at all events, Brass was a giant in office, and feeling conscious
of their adultation he shot one of his cynical glances at Gently.

‘Want to take a gander at the workshop?’

Gently shrugged. ‘Is it heated, by any chance?’

‘Heated my foot!’ Brass laughed aloud. ‘This is art, my son, pure and unadulterated. Come and have a look, and don’t be such a bloody bourgeois!’

Gently grinned and followed the artist out of the snug common room, albeit with some regrets.

‘Did you get anything out of ’em?’ exclaimed Brass, as he plunged into a frigid corridor.

‘Can’t say I did … except that there was nothing to get.’

‘You’d have been lucky anyway, with Hugh going through the boiler. We’re a clannish lot of bastards, you know. “
Nemo me impune lacessit
” is our motto.’

‘Do you think Hugh did it?’

‘Me? I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. When you get a bunch of misfits together like our
tapissiers
, murder is liable to be the least of your problems. Why – are you joining the wagon on poor old Hugh?’

‘No … not yet. But I was wondering if you were.’

‘You can count me out, sonny. What gave you the impression?’

‘It was something you said that made Wheeler wake up to the Mrs Page angle. What you say carries weight here, and it just occurred to me that you may have had some doubts.’

‘Not about Hugh biffing the young heathen, you cunning old so-and-so! He’s too old and too
disillusioned about women to run amok with
truncheons
. But hold your breath for a moment. We’re approaching the sacred shrine. In the usual way we make visitors leave their shoes outside the door.’

They had come out into a building that bore all the marks of having been built as a coach-house. The walls at one side had several wide doorways, now bricked up, and the beams overhead suggested that a loft-roof had been removed. A great deal of glass had been let into the roof, in addition to long, steel-framed windows in the walls, and a double row of multiple neons flickered into brilliance as Brass brushed down the switches. There were seven looms in the shop. Six of them, placed in double rows, were flat, and had pedals, rather like so many grand pianos. The seventh stood at the far end and was of a completely different pattern, standing upright, and braced to the wall and the nearby beams. All of them were covered with dust-sheets.

‘
Voilà
!’ Brass struck a pose humorously reminiscent of a gentleman in an eighteenth-century engraving. ‘Napoleon visited the Gobelins – why shouldn’t a chief inspector of the Yard visit the holy place of Merely?’

Gently shrugged agreeably and allowed himself to be ushered to the first of the machines.

‘This is Hugh’s outfit.’ Brass threw back the
dust-sheet.
‘That’s off his own cartoon – you can see the original sitting there under the web.’

Gravely Gently examined the unfinished tapestry, part of which was taken up on a roller. It was obviously
the piece on which Johnson had been working when Earle had first made his appearance – a majestic but subdued composition depicting the great Snowdon cone pressing through wispy cloud, with Crib Goch and the Lliwedd Cliffs flanking it. Brass poked the warp open with a sensitive finger, and beneath it Gently saw the original watercolour drawing from which the Welshman was weaving.

‘In more straightforward work we sketch the design on the warp, but Taffy is an artist and won’t put up with such newfangled techniques. He interprets his cartoon like the great men of old.’

‘The others work from your cartoons?’

‘Yes – Hugh and I are the only artists here. And a damn good job too, or we should never make things pay. In these hard welfare times it’s absolutely essential to produce a lot and produce it quick. I learned that from Lurcat at Aubusson. I’ve adopted his coarse warp method, and developed a cartoon vernacular that cuts out intermediary tones and gets its effects with
twenty-four
standard colours … In addition I use a high degree of stylization and simplification in the units of design, which makes for simple weaving and also uses the coarse warp to the best advantage. As a result of these techniques we are very much a commercial proposition. We produce striking and original tapestry – modesty in a bourgeois failing – in a comparatively short time and at a comparatively low price, while the use of pure tones makes our work about as fade-proof as it comes. I don’t say that the commercial possibilities
weren’t part of the attraction, for Earle’ – Brass shook his head sadly – ‘we’ve already sounded the American market, and it looks like being a big thing. My trip over there in the autumn was going to be largely a business trip.’

They moved to the next machine, which was Peacock’s. A tapestry was in progress on it very different to Johnson’s sombre design. This one was splendid and blazing with breathtaking primaries; it was bold and simple and executed in a sort of facile short-hand.

‘See what I mean? This sort of thing takes only a week or two. That way of handling flowers and foliage cuts out all the fiddling intermediary work … Peacock can weave one of those nasturtiums in an hour, and at a short distance it gives the same effect as one laboriously copied with a hundred or so tones. Not quite, of course – but then, it isn’t meant to. The design calls for stylization, as you can see …’

Hands in pockets, Gently followed him round. Loom after loom was unveiled, and the work examined and dwelt upon. One could not be bored with Brass. His perpetual zest conquered the marble atmosphere, the reek of dyed wool and the overtone of tragedy that haunted the workshop. One could understand the reverence of his little company, the wistful homage of Somerhayes. Here in truth was a creator, a builder, a dynamic original of a man. His self-confidence was infectious. One felt that no obstacle could impede him. He dreamed his dreams, projected his plans, and
wrestled his intent out of a reluctant world. His very name sounded a challenge in the galleries of polite and bred-out Feverells, lost and execrated Lords of
Somerhayes
. To what other altar could the last of a failing line take his worship, where else sacrifice the diminished booty of his race?

‘And this other loom … I suppose that’s what it is?’

Brass clapped him on the back. ‘Now you’re going to see the work of the maestro. I’m a damned snob, Gently – let’s face facts. I learned my trade at Aubusson, but I’m a Gobelins man at heart. At Gobelins they’ve done high-warp weaving since the beginning of tapestry, and sheer, snivelling, miserable snobbery has driven me to fit a high-warp loom here for my own personal use.’