Landed Gently (12 page)

Gently rocked forward in the chair he had been tilting. ‘And your cousin – he could have heard that? He could have heard the tone in which it was spoken?’

‘No.’ She was quick and positive. ‘That would have been quite impossible.’

‘Why do you say so, Mrs Page? You have described Earle’s tone as being fierce.’

‘Yes – it was. But naturally, he kept it down. Besides, my cousin was the length of the room away … He was pouring a drink, you remember? The drinks were on a sideboard at the far end of the room.’

‘This is a silent house, Mrs Page.’

‘I know – but then, we were round the door …’

‘Yet you saw your cousin pouring drinks at the sideboard?’

‘I – I mean he went to the sideboard just as Bill saw me out.’

Gently nodded inscrutably. ‘Let us say he was pouring drinks …’

Mrs Page gave him a glance of quick apprehension, but there was nothing to be gleaned from a poker-faced Gently.

‘Well, Inspector … what could I do? I was afraid that if I didn’t agree he would do something
unforgivable
– he spoke with a sort of desperation which I hadn’t heard before. So I told him I would see him in the saloon in about twenty minutes, and after staring at me for a moment, he went back to join my cousin. I assure you, I wasn’t very happy during those twenty minutes. I thought several times of going back on my offer. But in the state he was in, he would have been quite capable of coming here after me … In the saloon, at least, I would not be afraid to raise an alarm if he got out of hand.’

When she arrived in the saloon he was already there waiting for her. Apart from a gleam of light from the hall, which was lit at the lower level by a single night-lamp, the saloon was quite dark. She could not see his face. He had immediately seized her two hands and begun making violent protestations, punctuated with requests to be allowed to go back to her room with her. She had endeavoured to laugh it off, but he was in no laughing mood. She struggled to free her hands, but he embraced her and held her there by brute force. Finally, by threatening to call for assistance, she had made him release her; and after giving him to understand that he had better leave in the morning she
had hurried, almost run back to her wing, and bolted the door behind her.

‘And that, Inspector, is everything I have been holding back. I am willing to have it taken down and to sign a statement to that effect.’

Gently gave the ghost of a shrug. ‘It’s certainly a very interesting story, Mrs Page.’

‘I beg your pardon, Inspector?’

‘I say it raises some interesting points – do you mind if I smoke?’

She shook her head impatiently, and he rose to empty his pipe in the hearth. Her eyes followed him as he scraped it out and filled it, and caught his for a second as the yellow flame bobbed over the pipe-bowl. Wariness, was it? Fear? Pleading … ? He remained standing by the hearth, the smoke wreathed above him.

‘Yes … to the average police mind. You did well to ponder over this statement, Mrs Page. For instance, the first thing that leaps to mind is that you, and not your cousin, were the last known person to see Lieutenant Earle alive … and that, at the most, a few minutes before he was killed.’

The blood started in the petal-like cheeks. ‘I most solemnly assure you that he was alive when I left him, Inspector – I could hear him panting as I ran out of the door!’

‘Yes, but you must look at it from our point of view, you know …Suppose he had followed you, and you had snatched down that truncheon?’

‘I – this is too absurd!’

‘And supposing Johnson, your admirer, had seen this take place. Couldn’t he have thrown Earle downstairs for you, and wiped the truncheon you dropped in your flight?’

‘Inspector, this is fantasy—’

‘Or as an alternative theory, it was Johnson who got rid of him for you … If you were in danger of rape, that would be a mitigating circumstance.’

She tried to get to her feet, but her strength had failed her again. Instead she sat trembling, her big eyes fixed on him.

‘Of course, I’m not saying that either of these theories are correct. They will just appeal to the police mind. At the moment the only motive they have is jealousy, and I’m sure they feel the weakness of it. Policemen are human, Mrs Page. I’m afraid they will jump at the chance of strengthening their case along the lines I have suggested.’

‘But – but it simply isn’t
true.
’

‘If it were, Mrs Page, I think you would do well to admit it.’

‘I tell you it
isn’t,
Inspector. Oh God, why isn’t the truth enough?’

‘It’s enough for God.’ Gently hunched his shoulders. ‘When you come to policemen, you’re on a different footing. But you tell me it’s true. For the moment I’m prepared to accept that. Now, what I want you to do is to cast your mind back over every moment of that incident in the saloon, and try to remember any little
thing you haven’t told me. Which way did you approach it?’

‘I – I went through the square library and the statue gallery … and then through the west dining room and across the landing.’

‘Did you meet anybody on the way?’

‘No. Nobody.’

‘When you crossed the landing – think, Mrs Page – did you see or hear anything in the least unusual?’

‘No … I couldn’t have done.’

‘What sort of light is that in the hall?’

‘It’s a fifteen-watt bulb … It’s down by the main door. It’s just enough to illuminate the floor of the hall.’

‘But there’s a faint light at gallery-level?’

‘Yes … very faint.’

‘Enough to have seen anyone from the diagonals of the hall – as Johnson claims to have seen you?’

‘Yes, you could just about make them out.’

‘And you saw nobody?’

‘I – I wasn’t actually looking.’

‘Or heard anything?’

‘No.’

‘Nor when you came out – remember, Johnson says he was there then?’

‘I’m sorry.’ She shook her head helplessly. ‘I simply wasn’t thinking about anything except what had just happened.’

Gently nodded expressionlessly. ‘Very well, Mrs Page. We’ll have to leave it at that for the moment, won’t we?’

She glanced at him anxiously. ‘And you – you’ll tell Sir Daynes?’

‘Not immediately, Mrs Page … I’m not an official policeman here, you understand. Perhaps we can present your … confession … to Sir Daynes less alarmingly later on. In the meantime, you have made it, which is all that matters just now.’

She offered him a tentative hand. It was shaking as he grasped it. He made a sudden face at her, which produced a half-tearful smile.

‘And by the way … about your cousin. When did you tell him about what happened?’

‘I didn’t … He’d guessed about it.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Page,’ said Gently.

‘
W
HERE CAN I
find his lordship?’

Gently caught Thomas, the butler-valet, just as he was leaving the interrogation room with a tray of dirty glasses. The dignified little fellow stopped politely, the tray balanced on the tips of his fingers.

‘His lordship is on the roof, sir,’ he replied in his smooth, careful voice.

‘On the
roof
!’ exclaimed Gently, staggered. ‘You did say on the roof, Thomas?’

‘Yes, sir. He told me he expected you to enquire for him, and that is where he would be. I should add, sir, that his lordship not infrequently takes the air on the roof. It offers a considerable promenade, and the view is thought to be quite a striking one.’

‘I don’t doubt it for one minute, Thomas – but isn’t it a bit fresh up there at this time of the year?’

‘A little inclement, sir, I must admit. His lordship is very indifferent to the weather.’

‘He must be!’ Gently gestured to the window,
through which some leafless shrubs could be seen shivering in a rising north-easter. ‘Do you think I ought to have two fingers before I venture up there, Thomas?’

The little manservant permitted himself a grin. ‘I would recommend three, sir.’

Gently took the advice, shaking his head. ‘Crazy as a coot’ had been Brass’s description of the sixth baron, and assuredly there was a semblance of reason for it. No man completely in his senses would go roof-walking on a petrifying day like this.

‘You say his lordship often takes a stroll up there?’ queried Gently, as the manservant waited for him to finish his drink before showing him the way up.

‘Yes, sir. Quite often. I believe he enjoys the sensation of solitude obtained on the roof.’

‘Always done it, has he, or is this something new?’

Thomas hesitated. ‘It was not so frequent, sir, before his lordship retired from politics.’

‘Hmn!’ Gently tossed off his Scotch. ‘And he would pick today! Well, lead on, Macduff, and let’s have a look at these historic tiles.’

A spiral stairway just off the great hall led them up to the attics above the state apartments, than which nothing could have been emptier, darker and more depressing. Through these ran a straight, narrow corridor, lit only by a few meagre roof-lights, and at the end of it a door, which shielded a further spiral stair.

‘This leads directly to the roof, sir,’ chattered Thomas, shivering in his monkey-suit.

‘Righto, Thomas … no need to come any further.’

‘Thank you, sir. It is excessively cold. I would persuade his lordship to come down, sir, if you intend a lengthy interview.’

Gently huddled his ulster about his ears. ‘I’ll meet him on his own ground. Just one request, though, Thomas.’

‘Yes, sir?’ Thomas lingered reluctantly.

‘If we’re not down by lunch it’s because we’ve frozen to a chimney-stack … You might have a rescue-party standing by to chip us off !’

The second stairway was a short one, and as he climbed it, Gently could hear the wind whistling at the door to which it led. He lifted the latch and pushed the door open. He had come up through a brick hatch projecting above the roof, backing on a sheer drop of fifty feet or so into the well of a courtyard. On either side of him the chimney-forested roofs stretched away in a gigantic rectangle. They were shallow and covered with lead, and the low coping that surrounded them offered no cover from the scourging talons of the wind. Inward, the mass of the rectangle was pierced by two wells, the one near the hatch oblong, its fellow, some distance off, a square. As far as Gently could see, he had the entire, blizzard-swept desert to himself. There was not a sign of Somerhayes.

Squinting his watering eyes, he set off stubbornly to make the round of the roofs. The wind, once he left the shelter of the hatch, pierced through his thick ulster
like knives. A mad place to be … a dangerous place! If you lost your balance, you could be blown over the coping in a moment. And how did the man expect Gently to find him up here, amongst the
chimney-stacks
, hatches, sky-lights and whalebacks of lead? Or had he expected to be found … was this Somerhayes’s way of going to earth? Gently crouched by a stack for a moment. It could be that Somerhayes had cleverly got rid of him for an hour. A fine fool he would be, clinging up here to these chimneys and copings, while Somerhayes, down below …

But then, what could the fellow be up to?

He was halfway round before he spotted his quarry. By that time he had begun to feel that he would never thaw out again. His best trilby had blown away, his fingers were dead in their thick, wool-lined gloves, and his whole body felt shrunken and aching with cold. Then, as he rounded the coping at the corner of the square well, he saw the maddest thing of the whole mad interlude. At this point he had come to the back of the great triangular cornice that surmounted the columns of the portico at the front of the house. From this cornice was reared a flag-staff, and clinging to the flag-staff, his foot on the apex of the cornice, his body exposed to the full range of the blast, was Somerhayes. He did not turn as Gently rounded the corner. He was facing outwards, towards the wind, towards the distant, ice-flecked sea. And he was wearing nothing but the lounge suit he wore about the house. He had not even gloves on his blue, clutching fingers.

Incredulously, Gently plodded up a grey roof-back and down to the back of the cornice. The apex where Somerhayes was standing was a good twelve feet above the roof.

‘Hey!’ he shouted up. ‘Come down before you freeze solid!’

Somerhayes glanced down over his shoulder. ‘No … you come up, Mr Gently!’ he called back.

It was a palpable challenge, and Gently looked about him for some way to meet it. There was no ladder up the back of the cornice, but at some period a series of rough hand- and foot-holds had been chiselled into the stone, and these, though badly worn, appeared to be the means by which Somerhayes had reached his dizzy peak. Slowly, obstinately, Gently began to climb.

‘Use the flag-staff as a handrail … You’ll get stuck if you don’t.’

Gently grunted and felt across for it. Near the apex, the chiselled hollows were nearly worn away. By a final effort he got his arm round the staff where it cleared the apex, and by hugging it tight could just peer over into the airy gulf below.

‘What do you think of the view, Mr Gently?’

‘I can’t think of views when I’m being flayed to death!’

‘Look … the sea! And the Wind of God coming off it!’ Somerhayes raised his arm and pointed
outward
.

Gently blinked the water out of his eyes and looked. Directly below was the terrace with the cars, Repton’s
artful drive snaking beautifully away from it into the gloomy grove of holm-oak. To the left extended the park and the lake, hemmed in with forbidding reefs of chestnut and oak, a driveway at the extremity
stretching
to the pale cupola of the folly elevated on its gentle knoll. And beyond this, over the regiments of trees, behind a strip of rough salt marsh and a white-fringed ribbon of beach, lay the iron-grey, iron-cold sea, its horizon scarcely to be distinguished from the
iron-grey
, iron-cold sky.

‘That way came the Northmen!’ exclaimed
Somerhayes
in a strange, ringing tone. ‘On a day like this, on a wind like this, in ships without decks they sailed that sea, Mr Gently. A thousand years ago one saw their dragon sails, and a few last descendants of those ships still sail the Northshire rivers. Go into any fishing village along this coast, and look, and look, and you will see the Northmen … We Feverells come of Norman stock, but whence came the Normans to set their standard in France?’

Gently screwed up his eyes and tried to get some cover behind the weather-roughened coping.

‘We must have degenerated a good deal since those days …’

‘But have we, Mr Gently, have we?’ The crazy fellow was ripping open the front of his shirt. ‘Look … this wind is no stranger to me. You shrink from it down there, but I can receive it with a bare bosom, steel to steel, element to element – and all I feel is its fire, scorching me as it scorched the conquerors who came
here long ago. It is the world that has degenerated; we are still the men we once were.’

‘Come down,’ urged Gently. ‘Let’s talk about it in comfort.’

Somerhayes laughed, the sound of it whipping away on the lashing wind. ‘Look below!’ he cried. ‘Do you see those steps down there, immediately below, near where that constable is stamping his feet?’

Gently poked his head over.

‘There’s an answer, Mr Gently – I could have it in just two seconds.’

‘What answer is that?’

‘The answer to everything that troubles a mortal soul. See – it’s in my hand’ – he let himself swing out over the void – ‘five frozen fingers are all that hold the veil between myself and the perfect truth. Shall I accept it, Mr Gently? In your present knowledge, do you advise me to accept it? Or are there still some things which only I can tell you?’

Like a reversed weathercock he hung there, smiling down at the crouched Central Office man. With a sense of shock Gently realized that the nobleman meant what he was saying. In two seconds, he could be a lifeless heap on the steps beneath. A mis-move, a wrong word …

‘Come down,’ he repeated. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘But we can talk up here … Surely this is the ideal situation?’

‘It may be for you … Me, I’m just a bloody bourgeois. I’m going down – I’ll see you later on.’

‘Wait!’ exclaimed Somerhayes, swinging in again.

‘Sorry, I’ve had enough of it – see you when you get down.’

Deliberately, without looking back, he began feeling for the worn toe-holds. He could hear nothing except the moaning of the wind and the flap of the halyard against the flag-staff. Regaining the roof, he clambered over the shallow pent behind the cornice, and taking cover in the lee of the nearest stair-hatch, began to fumble with Dutt’s pipe. The seconds stole by. Resolutely he packed the tobacco, his fingers stiffened like claws. He was just scrabbling in his pocket for a match when there was a footfall on the lead beside him, and Somerhayes was standing there, something like reproach in his grey eyes.

‘Are you the man I took you for?’

Gently tried to keep the relief out of his brief shrug.

‘I felt sure I could depend on you …’

‘Cup your hands round this match, will you … It’s like trying to get a light in a wind tunnel.’

Somerhayes complied with a touch of disdain. His small, fine hands looked ugly from the savage exposure they had undergone. Gently got his pipe going after three attempts. For some reason, he was being particularly clumsy about it.

‘The winters you get in this godforsaken county!’

‘Our summers are correspondingly fine, Mr Gently.’

‘They’ve got a lot to make up for …Do people die young?’

‘On the contrary, this county is celebrated for longevity.’

Finally, the pipe was lit, and Gently, setting his back against the hatch-door, puffed it till the warming bowl softened the initial harshness of flavour. Somerhayes stood by him, ignoring the friendly shelter of the hatch.

‘You wanted to talk to me, Mr Gently?’

‘Mmn – just as you expected.’

‘Naturally, after my cousin had spoken to you—’

‘It’s up to you to clarify her somewhat onerous position.’

Somerhayes glanced at him with sarcasm. ‘You realized, then, that I should be able to?’

‘Otherwise, you wouldn’t have known enough to have advised her to make a clean breast, would you?’

Somerhayes nodded, looking away. ‘Perhaps I’ve mistaken you after all, Mr Gently …’

The wind whipped over the hatch-top, scuffing the smoke from Gently’s pipe. He moved up a little to make room for Somerhayes, and now the nobleman accepted the threadbare protection of the tiny
structure
.

‘You were in the hall that night, weren’t you?’

‘Yes. I was sure you must have guessed it.’

‘Would you like to say why you didn’t mention it?’

‘You may think, if you like, that it was because I didn’t know how much Janice would admit to.’

‘Suppose I don’t choose to think that?’

Somerhayes’s queer little smile was back. ‘You are the detective, Mr Gently; what you think must be entirely governed by your discoveries.’

Gently puffed sombrely for a few moments, his hands dug hopefully into the ulster’s pockets. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy it. Tell me just what you want to tell me. But before we go any further, can’t we get off this murdering roof ?’

Somerhayes shook his head and edged away a little.

‘We’ll stay here, if you don’t mind … it is a place where I have always made decisions.’

Gently grunted and tried to get his back yet further into the comfortless door.

‘In the first place I knew of Earle’s assignation – that must certainly have occurred to you. I was very anxious about his pursuit of my cousin, and I took steps to overhear what passed when he went to the door with her that night … The rest is quite simple. I merely took my stand at the corner of the gallery, opposite to where Johnson emerged. I was witness to the meeting. I can vouch, like Johnson, that my cousin left Earle in the way she will have described to you. I can also vouch that Johnson retired a few moments after my cousin left. Oddly enough, Mr Gently, I suspected that you would have guessed these trifling points without any prompting.’

‘They may have run through my mind.’ Gently grimaced behind his pipe. ‘And after Johnson retired … when you and Earle were left in the hall?’

‘What else can I say? The interlude was over, and like Johnson, I went back to bed.’

‘Leaving Earle alone?’

‘Leaving Earle alone.’

‘And the hall, of course, quite empty?’

‘To the best of my observation,
quite
empty.’

Gently shook his head gravely. ‘Well … that certainly seems to clear Johnson, doesn’t it?’ he said.

Somerhayes said nothing, but gave the Central Office man a rueful, almost reproachful look. His shirt-front was still open, his customary neat bow-tie dragged apart and hanging loose at each side. How could he stand it, that crushing, warping cold? How could he remain there, apparently so alert, when his face was grey, his neck and bosom bloodless, his neat hands swollen and all the colours of the rainbow? He had to be crazed, this fey question mark of a man!