Gently Where the Birds Are Page 12

  ‘Please – I don’t want to hear!’

  ‘So when he was in trouble, where would he go? If she’d responded once, she’d respond again, that was the way young Sternfield saw it. And he was right, wasn’t he? Because his robbing the bank really made her sit up and take notice. Before, she’d thought him a bit milk-and-watery, but now he’d cut a proper dash! More of a Daphnis than an Endymion. No wonder he swept her off her feet.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘It wasn’t like that?’

  ‘She . . . you don’t have any idea!’

  ‘But she went along with him, didn’t she?’

  ‘That was because . . .!’ He broke off abruptly, mouth snapping tight.

  ‘Because of her kind heart, you were going to say?’

  Rushmere moaned through his teeth.

  ‘I can understand that,’ Gently said agreeably. ‘No doubt her kind heart was well to the fore. Sternfield was in trouble, he needed reassurance, and an old flame would know what to do about that.’

  ‘You . . . you . . . you’re slandering a wonderful person!’

  ‘Are you telling me he held her up with the gun?’

  ‘No . . . not . . .!’ Once again Rushmere’s mouth closed like a trap.

  ‘I see,’ Gently mused. ‘The gun came into it. Well, we found the gun . . . did I tell you? Still smeared with Sternfield’s blood. Why didn’t you throw it in the sea, by the way?’

  Rushmere moaned.

  ‘We’ll need your fingerprints, of course.’

  He gave a little cry and clutched his hands together.

  ‘And it would help to know what you did with the money.’

  ‘The money . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  He closed his mouth.

  Aspall came through the door and, catching Gently’s eye, shrugged. He spent a moment blowing on his hands, then began quietly to frisk the room. Rushmere eyed him with hate, but didn’t try to intervene. The big detective worked deftly. Finding a drawer filled with botanical specimens, he emptied it delicately, sheet by sheet. And the books, of which there were so many! Rapidly but gently they ruffled through his hands. The room that at first sight appeared so cluttered was soon, without fuss, being stripped to the bone.

  ‘It won’t get you anywhere!’ Rushmere piped at last. ‘All this harassment is mere persecution. There’s nothing to find. And your stupid insinuations are without the smallest foundation in fact.’

  ‘You won’t reconsider that . . .?’

  ‘No I won’t! And you can’t prove the things you allege. Because none of them are true. I know nothing of this man, or guns, or robberies, or any such nonsense.’

  ‘So where were you at two-seventeen on Saturday?’

  ‘What – when—?’

  ‘At two-seventeen. When the police siren was sounding on the main road, and Sternfield was being shot in the Priory Wood?’

  His mouth sagged, but he recovered quickly. ‘I was here – out here – with Miss Stoven! We were watching the stork, she and I, and you can’t prove anything else.’

  ‘We can try.’ Gently knocked out his pipe. ‘Perhaps it’s time we took a look at your car.’

  ‘My car? What about my car?’

  ‘We shall need it anyway for a laboratory check.’

  He nodded to Aspall, who fetched a hand lamp, and they traipsed out into the freezing night. Rushmere’s garage was a timber shed with double doors that scraped the ground. Inside, on bare earth, stood the Daf 33, a late model in Kobina white, its doors and boot secured.

  ‘The keys.’

  ‘Really, this is farcical!’

  ‘All the same, hand them over.’

  For a moment it seemed he wouldn’t, then he jacked them out of a trouser pocket.

  Gently unlocked the boot. For such a small car it was a compartment of unusual capacity – quite large enough for a man to curl up in with the lid closed over him. But now it was empty. The probing hand lamp revealed only rubber and painted metal. Empty and clean . . .! Forensic were going to need a bit of luck with this one.

  ‘When did you wash that rubber mat?’

  ‘I don’t feel called on to remember.’

  Gently flipped it up. Underneath, gleaming paint-work and the top of the tank. But then, behind the lip of the lid, the lamp revealed a fleck of yellow. Screwing his head under, Gently found himself staring at a pluck of fabric, snagged in a clip.

  ‘What’s this then?’

  He disengaged it carefully and held it up for Rushmere to see. He heard the birdman’s quick-taken breath: immediately he flashed the light on his face.

  ‘How – how should I know?’

  His hand had jerked up to hide his horror-stricken eyes.

  ‘Of course you know! It’s a bit of towelling. You’d know when you had a yellow towel in the boot.’

  ‘But I don’t—!’

  ‘Listen to me! Sternfield was shot through the head. You’d have to bandage the head with something to keep it from bleeding in the boot. And what would come handy? A towel! A towel from Miss Stoven’s cottage. And with the body doubled up in the boot, the head would lie tight under the lid.’ He dropped the lid with a loud clang. ‘Just where that clip would snag the towel!’

  ‘This . . . this is fantasy . . .!’

  ‘You had to slam the lid!’

  ‘I won’t listen—!’

  ‘Then how did this get there?’

  Suddenly, he shoved the lamp at Aspall, grabbed the birdman’s wrist and forced the hand from his horrified face.

  ‘Answer the question!’

  I . . . I . . .!’

  ‘You know how that towelling got in your boot.’

  Rushmere was shaking. He made a feeble effort to free his wrist from Gently’s grasp.

  ‘It’s . . . it’s from an old cleaning cloth . . .!’

  ‘A towel?’

  ‘Yes . . . I’d forgotten! It was some time ago . . .’

  ‘You clean your boot with a towel?’

  ‘Yes . . . an old one . . .’

  Gently flung the wrist aside with disgust.

  ‘It isn’t from an old towel. This one was newish, looks as though it might have been freshly laundered – snatched from the airing cupboard at the cottage by someone who hadn’t a moment to lose!’

  ‘No – you’re wrong!’

  ‘So where is it now?’

  ‘I put it out – burned it.’

  ‘Yes – of course!’

  ‘But it’s true! You’re making all this fuss about nothing . . .’

  Gently snorted. But the moment had passed: Rushmere was pulling himself together. Now he was massaging his wrist aggrievedly and preparing to parry any fresh onslaught. The birdman was no pushover . . .! In the witness box, it would take a good counsel to get him going . . .

  He stowed the pluck of towelling in an envelope and turned his attention to the rest of the car. The interior was less immaculate than the boot: there was mud on the mats that might have significance. But nothing else. Under the bonnet lay the flat-twin engine, devoid of mystery. There was mud on the inslanted sills, and a yellowish spatter . . . cow dung?

  ‘Have you visited a farm lately . . .?’

  Rushmere chose to be sulkily silent. And really, that was his best bet, as perhaps he was belatedly realizing!

  When they’d finished with the garage he followed them stiffly to the garden shed, hands dug in his pockets, all his bearing one of defiance. Among the raffle in the shed was a stuffed plastic sack, which Aspall fell on and prodded eagerly. But all it contained was musty leaf mould: doubtless a perk of the wardening business.

  Gently pointed to a spade on which clay was crusted.

  ‘When did you last dig your garden?’

  For a moment Rushmere held to his silence, then he snapped: ‘When it suited me.’

  ‘And you have a clay soil?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘I would have thought the soil here was sandy.’

  ‘You
can think what you like, can’t you?’

  Gently nodded to Aspall. ‘Take the spade.’

  But after that it was stalemate: Rushmere had finished with answering questions. Back in the parlour he sat rigid in a chair, his face turned sullenly from the policemen. And in his way, he too was Grimchurch, represented that same dogged polity – exposed now, harassed and buffeted: yet still presenting a bruised dignity . . .

  ‘We shall need your statement.’

  He didn’t turn his head. ‘And suppose I refuse to give one?’

  ‘You can make it here or at the police station.’

  In the end, it was Campsey who coaxed him to consent.

  Aspall muttered, aside: ‘Aren’t we taking him in, sir?’

  Gently shook his head. ‘We’ll let him stew. With a tail posted in the lane. Leaving him loose could save us time.’

  ‘He might pick up the money and bolt, sir.’

  ‘That’s what I mean by saving us time.’

  Aspall rasped his chin dubiously but kept further objection to himself.

  And so they left him sitting by his fire, which by now had burned low again. It was after two; a low mist had risen, but the moon was sailing clear of clouds.

  ‘What’s for tomorrow, sir?’ Aspall asked.

  ‘The same priority. We want the bodies.’

  After a silence, Aspall said: ‘Bodies, sir?’

  Some seconds later, Gently shrugged.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE FISHERMAN DIDN’T normally take in guests, but they had provided him with the room of an absent daughter – a bright, colourful little apartment with folk-weave curtains and a candlewick bed-spread. On the dressing table the daughter smiled at him, a youthful version of her buxom mother, while from the window you had a view up the hill to the ruins of the Priory, pale in the moonlight.

  He’d tumbled into bed dog-tired, not even bothering to knock out his pipe, to be wakened – it seemed – only minutes later by the landlady, with a tea tray.

  ‘Good morning, Superintendent!’

  ‘Uhuh.’

  ‘It’s a lovely day. Shall I pull your curtains?’

  ‘Were there any messages?’

  ‘Your man wants to see you. Would you like me to send him up?’

  Struggling into consciousness, he could see through the window a low sun gilding frosted trees. And the landlady was still in her dressing gown, with her blonde hair parcelled in a net.

  The Detective-Constable’s name was Reydon. He came in carrying a pad of notes – a fair-haired youngster with a girlish mouth: you would scarcely put him at nineteen.

  ‘We’ve got some results with the gun, sir!’

  ‘Park your backside while I pour some tea.’

  ‘Sir—?’

  ‘And hand me that ashtray. What you’ve got can wait for two minutes.’

  Reydon blushed like a scolded child and hastened to pass the ashtray. Then he sat embarrassedly on the low dressing chair while the latter gulped tea and put on his pipe.

  ‘Now! What’s shattering the world this morning?’

  ‘Sir, the gun belongs to the girl.’

  ‘To Miss Stoven?’

  ‘Yes sir. It’s registered in her name in Wimbledon.’

  Was it then! Gently took a reflective pull of tea. And all this time . . . was it possible that he’d been on the wrong track, after all?

  ‘Is there a valid licence?’

  ‘It seems so, sir. She obtained it through a local gun club. Her father was the club secretary. Miss Stoven is still a paid-up member.’

  ‘When was the licence issued?’

  ‘In seventy-three, sir. She used to go shooting with her father. She packed it up when he died, but the gun is still registered in her name.’

  ‘What else about it?’

  ‘They’ve matched the bullet, sir.’

  ‘Dabs?’

  ‘No sir. But the blood is human. They’ve queried Wimbledon about Sternfield’s blood group, but nothing has come through on that yet.’

  Gently drew hard on his first pipe. This certainly gave things a different complexion! If Sternfield had used the gun in the hold-up, was it possible that he’d done so without the owner’s knowledge . . .? Because if not, Ka Stoven was in it with him, might even have instigated the affair. And then his coming to her wouldn’t have been fortuitous but part of a plan, due to happen anyway.

  And yet . . . there were no letters later than February . . . and none from her at Sternfield’s flat.

  Those from her he might have thought to destroy, but why would she destroy those from him . . .?

  ‘Any luck with the car?’

  ‘No sir.’ Reydon turned a leaf of the pad. ‘Boot, negative. Mud, a common sample. Cow dung in wheel arches and on sills.’

  ‘The bit of towelling?’

  ‘Clean, sir. A piece torn from an Osman hand towel.’

  ‘And the spade?’

  ‘They couldn’t identify the clay, sir. It’s being referred to the Agriculture laboratory.’

  But the ownership of the gun . . .! Gently poured more tea and sipped it slowly, with absent eyes.

  Reydon, his information exhausted, sat on uncomfortably, nursing the pad.

  And the ownership of the gun was Aspall’s topic when he interrupted Gently’s breakfast – accompanied, today, by a second minibus, extra squad cars, and two more dogs.

  After accepting a cup of coffee, he said decidedly: ‘She had to be in it from the start, sir!’

  Gently grunted over his marmalade. ‘There could scarcely have been two guns.’

  ‘Not very likely, sir. And if he used her gun, he must have been out here to collect it.’

  ‘We found no letters . . .’

  ‘We wouldn’t do, sir. They’d have more sense than to keep those. And there’s always the blower. I reckon they had meetings, either up here or down there.’

  Gently spooned on more marmalade. In fact, the evidence was all against it. Sternfield hadn’t been seen in the village, and people didn’t remember the Dryad taking trips. If they’d been professionals, now . . .! But they weren’t. The whole business had an amateur stamp. A half-cocked bank clerk having a brainstorm and, by luck, getting away with it . . .

  ‘What motive would she have?’

  Aspall rocked his shoulders. ‘Why do chummies do these things? There’s a lot of it going on these days, sir. They think it’s a gas to pull off a job.’

  ‘The writer of those poems . . .?’

  ‘Why not, sir? If she isn’t a nutter she’s halfway there. And Rushmere’s another. I reckon Campsey was a hero when he took that gun off him.’

  Gently chewed silently for some moments. ‘So what have you got laid on this morning?’

  ‘I’m extending the search, sir, to the heath and the foreshore, and the marshes north of the village.’

  ‘What about the reserve?’

  Aspall whistled through his teeth. ‘The Chief Constable wouldn’t hear a word about that, sir. But he’s authorized the use of a chopper, flying not lower than a hundred feet.’

  ‘A hundred feet!’

  ‘He might spot something, sir. And it would be a swine of a place to search on foot.’

  Gently drank coffee glumly. That reserve was the focus of the exercise! If Rushmere had a body or bodies to lose, wouldn’t that be the first place he would make for? A hiding place guarded by man and nature . . . and he alone its keeper. The sea might treacherously give up its secrets, but not that forbidden mere and reed-swamp . . .

  ‘We’ll take a look round Rushmere’s place by daylight.’

  ‘Yes sir. I’ve sent Warren with a dog handler.’

  ‘And I want patrols on the lookout for Miss Stoven’s car – it may have been left somewhere in the neighbourhood.’

  Aspall nodded silently.

  ‘And lay a car on for me.’

  He finished his coffee and rose. From outside they could hear the grumbling flutter of the chopper, making a low pass over
head.

  Rushmere was about.

  His gaunt, tall figure hovered by the doors of the empty garage, near where Warren and the handler were prowling about the unkempt garden.

  Hearing Gently pull up, he turned to stare, his narrow face a blank. He was wearing the jacket with the green flashes and stout field boots. And his glasses.

  Gently got out and strolled to a Panda that was parked near the gate. The driver, who’d been smoking, hastily stubbed his fag and climbed out too.

  ‘Was there nothing to report last night . . .?’

  ‘No sir. He didn’t leave the premises.’

  But he had just come to the door, about half an hour after they’d left. He’d stood staring into the darkness with the faint light of the lamp behind him. Then he’d turned and gone in quickly, closing the door with a bang.

  ‘You think he spotted you?’

  ‘Must have done, sir. Though I’m hanged if I know how he could’ve. Last night I was parked down the loke a bit, and the moon was in. He must have eyes like an owl.’

  Down the garden Warren and his man were turning over a pile of rubbish. The dog, secured to an apple tree, was whimpering and prancing excitedly. Gently joined them, ignoring Rushmere. Warren paused in his labours.

  ‘Reckon it’s no go, sir,’ he muttered. ‘I thought it might be from chummie’s attitude.’

  ‘What did he say to you?’

  ‘Asked if he could help, sir. Said his garden needed a bit of a turn over.’ Warren pointed a grubby finger to his forehead. ‘One of those, sir, if I ever met one.’

  Gently glanced round the dishevelled plot, separated from the heath only by rusty wire. On one side it was bordered by the thicket of hawthorn, its dense tangle barely penetrable.

  ‘When you’ve done here, take a look at that thicket. Then report back in.’

  Warren gave the hawthorns a sour gaze before returning to the pile of rubbish.

  Above them the chopper went clattering, its observer sitting with dangled legs. Leisuredly intent, it gave the impression of some huge, yellow, mechanical dragonfly. It scoured low across the heath and disappeared over a rise. Rushmere had come running round the garage to watch it.

  ‘That . . . that is an outrage!’

  Gently shrugged, eyeing the birdman. There was pallor in his weathered cheeks and puffiness beneath the eyes. Had he slept at all . . .?