Gently Down the Stream Read online

  Gently Down the

  Stream

  Alan Hunter

  FOR THE BOSUN

  (my sister, E.M. Hunter)

  and to the memory

  of a peerless 16–foot sailing-dinghy

  RECKLESS

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  THERE WAS SOMETHING wrong at Sloley’s Yard. Everyone knew it, but nobody was sure what it was.

  To start with, it had begun like every other Saturday morning during the high season. The men had come in early to begin clearing out the hire-boats which had drifted in on Friday night. A little later the women had come, chaffing and giggling, and soon the pillar-box red of boat blankets was seen as they were hung out to air in the hot June sun. Lastly came Old Man Sloley, white-bearded, neat in his old-fashioned slop-coat, and with him his son and junior partner, Harry, better known around the yard as young Rushm’quick. As usual, Old Man Sloley unlocked the office. As usual, young Rushm’quick set out in the long, low, powerful yard-launch to round up straggling hire-boats and, if necessary, tow them in. And for two hours, the work of preparation for a fresh batch of hirers went on without let or hindrance.

  At the end of two hours, young Rushm’quick returned in the launch, an irritable expression on his face. He tossed the painter to a yard-hand, swore at him when he didn’t catch it and strode off to the office at a high rate of knots. From the office could be heard the sound of the two partners in conference. Rushm’quick sounded exasperated and defensive, Old Man Sloley was plainly in his tantrums. In a short while Sid Seymour, who was innocently varnishing a gaff under the office window, reported that they were busy phoning round the yards and quarter of an hour later the yard foreman was summoned to the conference. He came out frowning.

  ‘Fill up the launch – get the little tender out and fill her up, too.’

  ‘Someth’n’ wrong?’ enquired Sid Seymour, who had dropped his gaff to attend to these orders.

  ‘Never you mind. Just do what I tell you.’

  Sid shrugged and went about his business. But he was pretty certain in his own mind now.

  ‘They’ve lost a boat,’ he muttered to Fidown Young. ‘All this mystery about it!’

  ‘Someone drowned, maybe …?’ suggested Fidown hopefully.

  ‘Drowned my foot! They’d’ve had the drags if it was a drowning job.’

  But Fidown wasn’t altogether convinced.

  Rushm’quick and the foreman came out with a map, over which they pored as the launch and tender were being fuelled. Sid strained his ears to catch something of what was going on, but Rushm’quick and the foreman kept their voices low and huddled the map between them. In the end he had found out nothing fresh. The boats set off, one downstream, one up; the Old Man was still phoning all round the option, and once more the yard settled down to its busy Saturday.

  It was the middle of the afternoon when Rushm’quick got back. There was more than irritation in his look now. He slammed the door of the office behind him and a moment later the window, but Sid, throwing shame to the winds, nipped round the back of the office and clapped his ear to the wooden wall. He held this pose for quite five minutes – five rapt, enthralled minutes. Then he sneaked away down to the wet boat-house, where half a dozen others were awaiting his intelligence.

  ‘Drowned?’ demanded Fidown. ‘I lay my bottom dollar on a drowning.’

  ‘Drowning – naow! You’ve got it on the brain.’

  Sid paused for a delicious moment while the others hung on his words.

  ‘It’s the Harrier – burned out up by Ollby Deek.’

  ‘Burned out?’ echoed Fidown.

  ‘Yeh – burned down flat to the water. And they found the bloke on it … all that’s left of him. The Old Man’s ringing the police up now.’

  And he feasted his eyes on his mates’ incredulous faces.

  There was a light on in Superintendent Walker’s office. Inspector Hansom knocked and went through without waiting for a reply. Inside the super, lean and keen-looking despite the hour, sat at his desk studying an interim report: he knew the way Hansom came into a room and didn’t bother to look up.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s have the rest of it.’

  Hansom sank his burly frame on to the visitor’s chair. ‘There’s a helluva lot of it to tell …’

  ‘Complications?’ The super glanced up shrewdly.

  ‘You can say that again. I hardly know where to begin.’

  He sighed and made a pass at his cigar-pocket, but the super was a strict non-smoker, so it was only a pass. From down the corridor could be heard the clink of cups and there was an empty coffee cup at the super’s elbow. Hansom eyed it pensively.

  ‘Well, to start with, there’s no doubt about the corpse. That’s the one sure thing in the mess. There’s some cuff-links, a signet ring that didn’t quite melt and some bits of cloth that got protected in the crooks of the legs. The family have vouched for all of them. And here’s the bonus for a good detective.’

  Hansom fetched out a little package wrapped in a handkerchief and untied it on the super’s desk. It contained a set of dentures, charred and a bit twisted in front but undamaged behind. The super stared at them unmoved.

  ‘You’ve traced the dental mechanic?’

  ‘I got his dentist’s address from his wife. He identified them and double-checked with the mechanic. Lammas only had them made a few months back.’

  The super nodded and pushed the relics back to Hansom.

  ‘Tell me some more. Have you established the cause of death?’

  ‘The pathologist is working on it, but it could be accidental. The Harrier is a small auxiliary yacht with the engine in the well. The corpse was lying beside it and there’s indications that the cover was off the engine when the fire started. But’ – Hansom shrugged wearily – ‘that’s where the complications start.’

  ‘Go on,’ said the super.

  ‘Well, he seems to have had a woman with him – I got that out of them at the boatyard.’

  ‘Not his wife?’

  ‘Definitely not his wife. His wife didn’t know anything about the trip – he told her he was away on business.’

  ‘Do we know who she was?’

  ‘I’ve got a pretty sound idea. He had a secretary called Linda Brent. She hadn’t been in at the office since the Saturday previous and according to her mother she left with a suitcase, saying she was going to Gayton Holiday Camp. I’ve checked there, but they hadn’t heard of her. I got a photograph from her mother, but I haven’t had time to try it on any one.’

  He produced a print from his wallet. It showed a curvaceous beach-girl with straight black hair, a heart-shaped face and appealing, wide-set eyes.

  ‘Quite a dish, isn’t she … though mind you, his wife isn’t to be sneered at.’

  The super sniffed, but didn’t curtail his examination of the exhibit.

  ‘She wasn’t in the wreck?’

  ‘Nope. And she wasn’t at home, either.’

  ‘Nobody seen her?’

  ‘Nobody we’ve asked yet. And that isn’t all – Lammas’ chauffeur is missing too. According to the servants he
said Lammas rang him last night with instructions to pick him up at Ollby. He took off in the car at 8.30 p.m. and that’s the last anyone’s seen of him. We found the car ditched in some trees at Panxford.’

  ‘And what time was the conflagration?’

  ‘We’ve got an old fellow at Ollby village who thought he saw smoke over that way at about 9.30 p.m. It’s so damned remote out there at Ollby.’

  ‘There’s a marsh-track through to the dyke, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yep. About half a mile.’

  ‘Did you see any tyre-marks?’

  ‘Two sets, going and coming, and the place at the end where the car turned round. They match the tyres on Lammas’ car.’

  The super picked irritably at the report sheet. ‘Put me in the picture,’ he said. ‘I can’t quite get it all. Give me the Lammas set-up to begin with.’

  Hansom shifted in his seat and made another abortive pass at his cigar-pocket.

  ‘All right!’ snapped the super. ‘Smoke, if you bloody well have to!’

  Hansom acknowledged the concession gratefully. A certain peaked look left his semi-handsome features as he sucked in the first mouthful of Havana.

  ‘James William Lammas, fifty-four, belongs to an old Norchester family … trades as a provision wholesaler in the city, Lammas Wholesalers Ltd., Count Street … wife and daughter the minor shareholders … wife about ten years younger … son, Paul, aged twenty, second year at Cambridge … daughter, Pauline, aged twenty-one, works at the business. In 1938 he had a big bungalow built at Wrackstead Broad. Before that he lived in the city. On Friday last he told his wife he was going to London for a week to attend a wholesalers’ conference – there was one on – and briefed his head clerk to carry on the week without him. In fact he had hired the Harrier for a week. He turned up at the yard late on the Saturday evening when most of them had gone home, referred to the woman he’d got with him as his daughter and set off downstream. On the Friday night the Harrier was up Ollby Dyke. At 8.30 p.m. the chauffeur, Joseph Hicks, alleges a call from Lammas and goes off in the car. At 9.30 p.m. Jabez Tooley of “The Cot”, Ollby—’

  ‘Yes, I know all about that!’ broke in the super tetchily. ‘It’s the family I want to hear about. What were they doing last night?’

  Hansom puffed expensively. ‘The daughter’s got an alibi. The other two were just out.’

  ‘How do you mean – just out?’

  ‘Mrs Lammas has got her own car. She says she drove to Sea Weston.’

  ‘Which is in the opposite direction to Ollby. And the son?’

  ‘He was out on his motorbike.’

  ‘And anywhere but near Ollby!’

  Hansom nodded. ‘Says he went as far as Cheapham.’

  The super drummed on the desk with his fingers. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it at all. And I suppose nobody knew about Lammas’ fancy woman?’

  ‘Not according to what they say.’

  ‘Just one big surprise.’

  ‘That’s the way it’s played.’

  The super drummed some more and threw dirty looks at Hansom’s cigar.

  ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Let’s take it in easy stages. Let’s pretend everyone is telling the truth. So the chauffeur gets his call from Lammas – where did Lammas make the call?’

  ‘There’s a phone-box near where the marsh-track joins the road.’

  ‘Right. We’ll assume he used it. Now, why did Lammas want the car? Answer, to send his tootsie home so that he didn’t have to sail in with her on a crowded Saturday morning.’

  ‘Meaning his chauffeur knows about his tootsie,’ put in Hansom brightly.

  ‘Precisely,’ returned the super cuttingly. ‘It’s something that chauffeurs usually do know about, Hansom. Now the chauffeur arrives – picks up the female – while he’s there, let’s say, Lammas asks him something about the yacht’s engine. He gets the cover off to show him – petrol leak – makes a spark somehow – woof – chauffeur jumps clear – Lammas perishes in the flames. It’s plausible, Hansom, completely plausible … up to that point. But now the chauffeur and the female, instead of going for help, decide to disappear. Why? What possible motive?’

  ‘They might have been in love?’ suggested Hansom.

  ‘That’s not a reason!’

  ‘She’s the sort of female a man would want to disappear with.’

  ‘But why disappear with her just then?’ snorted the super. ‘Surely there were other and better times? No – they must have had a stronger motive than that.’

  ‘Like having quarrelled with Lammas and bumped him off.’

  ‘No, man, no! If they’d done that and simply left a corpse, that would have been a reason. But if it was murder, it was made to look like an accident. And the only way it would keep looking like an accident would be for everyone to act naturally, which they haven’t done. So we’re back with the assumption that it was an accident.’

  A frown crept over the Hansom brow. ‘If they’d known he’d got money with him; that might have been it.’

  ‘Money?’ barked the super. ‘What money had he got with him?’

  Hansom stirred uneasily. ‘I said it was complicated … he seems to have cashed out on his business.’

  The super looked as though he would bite him. ‘Go on,’ he said dangerously. ‘Take your time. Tell me when you feel like it. I’m only the Joe around here.’

  ‘Well … his head clerk came across with it. Lammas had left him a cheque to draw the wages. He presented it yesterday morning and the bank told him the account was closed. And that isn’t the whole story either. He’d been reducing stock during the last few months till it was practically at zero, also the lease falls through at the end of the month, also he’d closed his personal account at the bank. I made the bank give and we reckoned he had collected between seven and eight thousand pounds in small denomination notes, besides anything else he might have had. Now if he’d had that lot on board with him …’

  ‘Yes, Hansom,’ prompted the super witheringly. ‘Don’t stop … if he’d had that lot on board with him?’

  ‘Well, it might explain why the chauffeur and the tootsie lit out … whether they bumped him off or whether they didn’t.’

  The super breathed deeply. ‘Thank you, Hansom,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much. And are there any other minor details you would like to mention before we try to pick up the pieces?’

  Hansom indicated that there weren’t and the super snorted viciously.

  ‘Now … getting back to where we were. Let’s just say he had the money with him, shall we? He had the money, and during the course of the week his female finds out about it. She tips off the chauffeur – perhaps she tries to smuggle the money off the yacht in her bag. Then one of two things happens. Either there is a genuine accident, or else Lammas finds out what is going on and they have to silence him. Now if it was an accident they might conceivably cut and run, though there would be no need for it. If it was murder arranged to look like an accident then they wouldn’t run anyway, because it would defeat its own purpose. The only logical circumstance in which they would run would be if they had stolen the money and left without knowing about the accident – that’s to say, before it happened. Isn’t that so, Hansom? Doesn’t it make some sort of sense out of the facts?’

  Hansom wagged his cigar-stump dumbly. The super had a bad habit of making sense out of facts.

  ‘Very well,’ continued the super more agreeably. ‘Let’s not rush our fences. There’s enough homicide going about without people vamping up cases. We’ll keep an open mind, of course. The investigation will continue on its merits. But I feel pretty certain, from what you’ve discovered so far—’

  He broke off and snatched the receiver from a ringing phone.

  ‘Superintendent Walker … good … what did you find … you DID!!! Are you certain of that? … of course … send it right away.’

  He slammed down the receiver and glared at it for some moments in a black
silence.

  ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘Yes! About this murder case, Hansom …’

  ‘Murder?’ gaped Hansom.

  ‘I said murder!’ rapped the super. ‘That’s the pathologist who was on the phone. He’s done his autopsy and there wasn’t a trace of carbon in the lungs – and you know what that means!’

  ‘He – he was dead before the fire?’

  ‘It does, Hansom. It means exactly that.’

  They stared at each other across the superintendental desk. A look which was almost sympathetic came into the super’s sharp blue eyes.

  ‘It’s up to you, Hansom,’ he said kindly. ‘I won’t take it away from you till I get the down.’

  Hansom shook his head. ‘I could see it coming all along … it isn’t news.’

  ‘You’ve got to admit it’s a sticky-looking prospect.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to stand in his way … and we sort of owe him a case on account of the last one.’

  The super nodded. ‘I think it’s a wise decision. The CC would be crying out for it anyway when he gets the report …’

  He picked up the phone again and rattled on the rest.

  ‘Get me Central Office, CID,’ he said.

  Inspector Hansom laughed mirthlessly from the gloomy depths of his soul.

  CHAPTER TWO

  TWO FIGURES EMERGED from the sanctified dimness of the Norchester City Police HQ and paused, blinking, in the sudden stab of June sunlight. One of them was a tall, bulky, middle-aged man in a baggy tweed jacket. He carried a raincoat over his arm and wore a battered trilby on his head. The other figure, not so tall though no less bulky, was carrying a pair of suitcases which he dropped gratefully on the top step.

  ‘And here we are again, sir,’ he observed aggrievedly. ‘Whisked away from the Sunday joint – and me going to take the nippers to the fair, too. I ask you, who’d be a flipping copper?’

  Chief Inspector Gently smiled distantly at the empty street.

  ‘The call of duty, Dutt. People never consider the police when they’re planning a homicide.’