Gently Between Tides Read online

  ‘Now . . . first things first! Where’s the boat?’

  ‘That’s it pulled out down the bank. But it was drenched with dew, and the only dabs were on the outboard, and they were hers.’

  They got out and walked down the bank, past picnickers who barely spared them a glance. Hadn’t it got round that, earlier that day, a body had been found near the spot?

  The dinghy was a twelve-footer with red plastic cushions taped to the seats. An Evinrude outboard motor perched on the transom and there were also oars, laid beneath the seats.

  ‘She was lying in the bottom, sprawled out . . . you could see at once what had happened. She was wearing a skirt and blouse and a woollen cardigan, all soaking. I helped them lift her out. She was stiff as a board.’

  ‘A handbag?’

  ‘There was forty quid in it and some change in a purse, then the usual sort of stuff, compact, lipstick, fags, keys. There was a letter from her father, but it isn’t written in English, and a note making an appointment, but signed only with a C.’

  ‘What sort of an appointment?’

  ‘I’ll show it to you. Only you can’t tell if there’s any connection.’

  Gently stooped to raise the floorboards, but under them were only dead leaves.

  ‘Is the man who found her about?’

  ‘Yes, I made him hang on. He came up to tow in the yacht.’

  They went back to the quay. With the ebb nearly run, the yacht was ten or twelve feet below them. Leyston shouted down. A man in gumboots came out of the yacht and clambered up some iron rungs.

  ‘This is Ted Brinded from Friday’s Yard.’

  A bulky, red-faced man, he stared at them with anxious, small blue eyes.

  ‘Look, old partners, if I don’t get away I’m going to miss this blinking tide . . .’

  He was wearing a thick turtle-necked sweater and stained serge trousers, stuffed into the gumboots.

  ‘Just a few questions! Point out where you found the boat.’

  ‘Well, it was just down there, wasn’t it? Not above a couple of hundred yards from the bridge.’

  ‘Was the painter trailing?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. Somebody had thrown it into the boat. So like that she was set adrift deliberate and didn’t just drag her moorings, like.’

  ‘Where would you say it happened?’

  ‘Now you’re asking, but she was coming up on the flood. If it happened some time yesterday, I’d reckon it wasn’t too far from here. Look down there.’

  He pointed a thick finger towards the marshes and flats downstream, to where, on a long, stretching promontory, one could see a flint tower half-hidden by trees.

  ‘That’s Bodney Church. There’s a sharp turn there where the channel goes north for half a mile. Nothing’ll drift past it, ebb or flood, so she couldn’t have come from below the church. Leastways, that’s my opinion. She stuck on the ebb and came back on the flood.’

  ‘Are there moorings down there?’

  ‘There’s a bit of bank where you could pull up a boat.’

  ‘Any houses?’

  ‘No houses, but there’s a road running close at the back there.’

  ‘Could you take us there?’

  ‘Look . . . have a heart! I’ll be punching the flood as it is. . .’

  But Gently was obstinate. In the end, they climbed down the rungs into the workboat, Brinded started the engine and cast off, and soon they were sliding down between the high, oozy banks.

  The river bore right, past the frontage of the concert hall, then by the grounds of some private property; there, at the top of a muddy slipway, a sailing-dinghy sat on chocks.

  ‘Who owns that?’

  Leyston stared at it doubtfully.

  ‘Reckon that would be the Group Captain’s,’ Brinded said. ‘That’ll be his house, back there. He used to have a yacht down at the club.’

  ‘Who is the Group Captain?’

  ‘Group Captain Riddlesworth. He’s a big man around Thwaite.’

  ‘He’s chairman of the concert hall committee,’ Leyston explained. ‘He flew bombers during the war. He’s a V.C.’

  ‘Are there any other boats moored at Thwaite?’

  ‘Not regular like,’ Brinded said. ‘You get a yacht or two coming up. Mostly they moor at the club.’

  They chuntered on, between reaching grey mudflats and reeds left high by the receding water. In the drains shelduck dabbled, and waders rose from the flats in front of them.

  To the left was a wilderness of marsh and drains with the distant dry land invisible; to the right, over flats and reed islets, a low bluff followed the line of the river.

  Then, when they turned another bend, a soggy shore appeared, guarded by flats.

  ‘Is this the place?’

  ‘Further up, old partner. You can’t get a boat in just here.’

  They were passing down a long, straight reach, barred ahead by the church on its promontory. For a while the low bluff was concealed by oaks and by trees that were beginning to colour; but finally the trees ended and there the bluff was covered with gorse.

  ‘You want to go in?’

  Brinded throttled down, edging the boat towards the shore. They had come to a short stretch of bank free of flats, where water extended to rough, sodden marsh. They touched, and Brinded jumped ashore.

  ‘Now you can’t be long, old partners . . .’

  Leyston followed Gently as he sploshed over the marsh to a stretch of rabbit-bitten turf beyond.

  ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘I don’t reckon anything.’

  Gently was staring about the spot. It was certainly remote. There was only the church, a quarter of a mile away, lost in its trees. The turf was bounded by the gorse, a thick covert, through which however a path led; he followed it, and came to a narrow road only seventy yards from the bank. Though the road was narrow, there was a bit of verge running alongside the gorse.

  ‘A car has parked here . . .’

  He pointed to a spot on the verge where the grass was flattened.

  ‘Where does the road go?’

  ‘To Harford,’ Leyston said. ‘It’s the back road from Thwaite.’

  ‘What’s at Harford?’

  ‘It’s a village down the river, about four miles below Shinglebourne. There’s a yard and moorings there.’

  ‘About the same distance downstream as Thwaite is up-stream . . .’

  They returned to the bank, where Brinded waited impatiently. But still Gently wasn’t going to be hurried. Slowly, he strolled up and down the turf in the neighbourhood of the workboat. Finally he beckoned to Leyston.

  ‘Look.’

  Jammed into the turf was a damp cigarette-end, and, a short distance away, a second. There was also a single expired book-match.

  ‘Was there a book of matches in the handbag?’

  Leyston stared blankly; then nodded.

  ‘Do you remember the make?’

  He didn’t remember either the make of the matches or the cigarettes.

  ‘Pick them up . . .’

  It wasn’t proof yet, but suddenly Gently felt quite certain: this was the spot. Twenty-four hours ago, under the same kindly sun . . . Why had she come there? One had only to look round. This was a place to meet a lover: remote, unobserved, and with the friendly gorses waiting.

  She had moored her dinghy, and sat there during the smoking of two cigarettes. And then . . .

  Had her lover come by car, or by boat?

  ‘Get some men out here for a thorough search – especially up there in the gorses. And chase up people who may have seen a car parked there yesterday. Also anyone who has seen boats of any description on this bit of river.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  For the moment, Leyston had completely forgotten that Gently was unofficial – and Gently, he’d forgotten too, had momentarily taken the case into his hands.

  He lit his pipe, and had a last look round before sploshing back again to the workboat. To push off, Brin
ded had to get his shoulder under the stem and shove till his gumboots almost disappeared. When he jumped aboard, mud flew. Gently waited for him to get under weigh.

  ‘Where were you at 2 p.m. yesterday?’

  ‘Me?’ Brinded’s blue eyes widened. ‘At the yard, wasn’t I, having my lunch.’

  ‘That was when the lady fetched her dinghy from the yacht club.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t there to see her, old partner.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you have heard the engine?’

  He shook his head. ‘I was in the top shed, larking with the others.’

  ‘Try to think. I want to know if she set off upstream or down. If you could remember hearing an engine . . .’

  Brinded scowled in thought, but, after all, could only shake his head.

  A man was waiting for them at the quay. He caught their ropes, looping them deftly over bollards; then he stood by, puffing at a cheroot, while Gently and Leyston clambered up the rungs.

  ‘I’m Riddlesworth. I’d like a word with you.’

  He was a short but sturdily built man, determined in manner, but his square features savagely marked by cosmetic surgery. He wore a blazer on the pocket of which was an RAF badge, and a firmly knotted service tie.

  ‘I knew Hannah, you understand. She kept the books for the yacht club . . . who am I talking to?’

  He had thrusting, yellow-hazel eyes and a bold chin; but his mouth, no doubt due to the surgery, was a wry, thin slit.

  ‘It has been a shock, I don’t mind telling you. I trust you’re on the track of the devil who did it. I’ve met her father, too . . . a fine man. Poor fellow, he’ll be devastated.’

  Gently said: ‘You have something to tell us?’

  ‘What? No, but I’m ready to give you any help. Just ask. I might know something, or be able to do something.’

  ‘Were you out on the river yesterday?’

  The yellow eyes gazed steadily from the frozen face.

  ‘No. I’ve given up my yacht . . . a touch of screws in my old age.’

  ‘Don’t you have a dinghy?’

  ‘That’s Mark’s – my son’s.’

  ‘Was he out in it yesterday?’

  ‘No. He’s a student at the music school here, he had classes till after five.’

  ‘Does anyone else use it?’

  ‘Susan does sometimes – that’s my wife. But not yesterday. Yesterday, she was up at the church arranging flowers.’

  He drew on the cheroot, his mouth puckering oddly.

  ‘Look – any time you think I can help you! My house is just up the road. I knew Hannah, you see, which makes it personal.’

  ‘How well did you know her?’

  ‘What –? Now don’t start getting any ideas! I knew her to say hallo to at the club, have a drink at the bar, that’s all.’ He puffed a few times. ‘She didn’t have many friends . . . rather a reticent type, you’d say. Still felt she was a foreigner, probably. She’d just be pleasant and leave it at that. Are you on to anyone?’

  Gently said nothing. Below, the workboat’s engine grumbled afresh. When there was a shout from Brinded to cast off, it was Riddlesworth who gave Leyston a hand with the ropes. The engine throttled up. Slowly the tall mast of the yacht drew away from the quay, the workboat came into view, and finally the yacht, gliding obediently on a taut towrope.

  ‘Who does she belong to?’

  ‘A fellow from Cambridge. Brought her round from Maldon last weekend.’

  A stocky figure, Riddlesworth stood watching as the two boats slid away down the narrow channel.

  ‘Well, that’s it – I’ve had my say. I won’t hold you up any longer.’

  He paused, as though expecting Gently to detain him, then turned and walked stiffly away across the park.

  ‘He’s like that,’ Leyston muttered. ‘Always ready to poke his oar in.’

  The yacht and the workboat had turned the bend, and now one saw only the moving mast. On the grass plot the picnic parties were packing up, there being a little chill in the afternoon.

  TWO

  IF LEYSTON WAS, as claimed, an admirer of Gently’s, he was letting little of it past his face; it might be that he was remembering that moment on the bank when, briefly, he had slipped into a subordinate role. Gently was unofficial. It was probably with reluctance that Leyston had accepted the Chief Constable’s compromise, willing to admit as a lesser evil this conference with a Central Office expert. But a conference it was to have been . . .

  With an air of injury Leyston lit a cigarette, and then, without another word, went to call up the station and to order out a team to search the bank.

  ‘If you’re ready to leave . . .’

  They drove to the police station with Leyston’s Escort preceding Gently’s Princess. A slight haze of mist hung about the fields and trees that here and there showed tints of yellow. The road passed through heath outside Shinglebourne, and there the bracken was red-brown, almost maroon, while a horse-chestnut in a town garden was already shedding big, apricot-coloured leaves.

  ‘May I use your phone?’

  Leyston’s office had been repainted, but otherwise had changed little. It still smelled of soot, and the desk and chairs were of a pattern reaching back at least fifty years.

  Leyston’s first move had been to unlock a filing-cabinet and to take from it a handbag to which a label had been tied; he had decanted the contents on his desk, and now sat glumly gazing at them.

  ‘Can I speak to Doctor Capel?’

  ‘I’m sorry, he’s out, but if you wish to make an appointment . .’

  It was Tanya, Capel’s wife, who was answering, and Gently could imagine her bright face and hyacinth eyes.

  ‘Will you tell him I’ll be calling on him later . . . this is Chief Superintendent Gently.’

  ‘Oh . . . it’s you! It’s a funny thing, but only at lunch Henry was saying . . .’

  Meanwhile there had been a tap on the door and a uniformed sergeant had entered. He was carrying a message slip, which he handed silently to Leyston. Leyston scanned it with a faint frown.

  ‘It’s a message from forensic. She’d had intercourse a short time before death. No signs of violence on the body, other than bruising to the throat . . . nothing recovered from the nails. Clothing intact, no pregnancy.’

  A rendezvous it had been.

  ‘Do those cigarettes and matches square with what we found?’

  ‘Yes – Benson & Hedges. The matches are Bryant & May.’

  But still it wasn’t absolute proof, though the double conjunction made it almost so: the two brands were common enough, and sometimes coincidences did happen.

  ‘Get them off for saliva tests and matching.’

  Gently pored over the contents of the handbag. Among them were the two letters, one addressed in a neat script and the other in a handwriting bold and large. From the latter envelope he took a single sheet.

  ‘That’s the note I was telling you about.’

  Though its message was short, the large, swaggering handwriting occupied almost the whole sheet:

  Hannah –

  All right for tomorrow!!! I’ll be on the look out for you.

  Chick

  There was no date, and the postmark on the envelope was a mere smudge.

  ‘Has this been dusted?’

  ‘We got her prints off it, and a couple of others. But they were smeared.’

  ‘The postmark looks like that of a village post office.’

  Leyston merely fingered a sideboard.

  ‘Try it on your local post office.’

  Gently was frowning: somewhere, the nickname ‘Chick’ touched a chord in his memory – and that swirling, exhibitionist handwriting, hadn’t he seen that before, too? It must have been several years ago, and almost certainly not in these parts. But his recall failed him; in any case, there was probably no connection . . .

  ‘Do you reckon it was chummie who wrote the note?’

  Gently grunted – that was the tempting interp
retation! Hannah Stoven had kept a rendezvous, and in her handbag was a letter confirming just that. But without a date, who could tell? The other letter was dated ten days earlier. She might have kept the note in her handbag for as long, and ‘Chick’ might even be a woman.

  ‘One thing is certain, she had a boyfriend – and it shouldn’t be too hard to turn him up. Check with her place of work, the yacht club, neighbours. You’re sure to find someone ready to gossip.’

  ‘Where she lived, she didn’t have any neighbours.’

  True; Gently had seen the Martello Tower. It stood at the end of a causeway to the south of the town, overlooking both the sea and the river. A lonely place. As a holiday home it had no doubt seemed desirable, but as a permanent residence? On the dark winter nights, when the wind howled, and the sea pounded at her very doorstep?

  Perhaps she had stuck to the tower because it reminded her of happier days; or perhaps it suited some quirk in her nature.

  ‘Dispatch this stuff, then we’ll look the place over.’

  Leyston found a form and began scribbling. Through his window one saw the High Street and the Saturday shoppers, many come in from the outlying villages.

  Tied together as though by a wire, two US assault-planes skated in from the sea, angular but comely aircraft, heading for their base a few miles inland. Then across in Friday’s Yard, a quarter of a mile away, two men were shoring up a hauled-out yacht; otherwise, a gaggle of gulls were the only living things near the squat brick tower.

  You drove down the High Street, then past the yard and the yacht club moorings, in the bend of the river, and over broken tarmac that became crunching shingle when you had climbed the ramp to the causeway. At this end a few cars were parked and the dark shapes of anglers were strung along the tideline. Further on, the deep shingle became treacherous, causing car wheels to spin and dig in.

  And finally you came to the Martello Tower, which was reached by a footbridge across a dry moat.

  Beyond it, for ten miles, stretched a narrow spit of sand dunes, barely separating the river from the sea.

  ‘How long had she lived here?’

  ‘Two years, about.’

  So she had seen two winters come and go: in the dark nights, leaving behind the bright town for this brick fortress, lashed by wind.