Gently in the Past Read online

  ‘So what’s your opinion of Reymerston now?’

  Eyke’s eyes had taken on a cautious expression. About his opinion at the time Gently’d had no doubt: it was that Reymerston’s confession had been a clever trick. Eyke hadn’t wanted the demoralizing job of bringing the Major to his knees; he’d jumped at the confession. For him, it was enough that Gently had believed it.

  ‘Sir, we did send a copy of your report to Birmingham.’

  Because there had lain the hook-up with Vivienne Selly. Under his former name of Reginald Aston, Reymerston had been chief accountant of a firm of manufacturing chemists. Aplan, Rayner Ltd had made a bomb from the reckless marketing of untested drugs, then they’d gone bust, and the Fraud Squad was called to investigate a deficit of half a million. The evidence had pointed to Joseph Rayner and a clique of his associates: nobody apparently had given a thought to Reymerston, who had resigned his position a few months earlier. His wife had died: natural enough for a grief-stricken man to drop out of sight ...

  ‘Did nothing come of it?’

  ‘They went through the motions, sir. I had a talk on the phone with one of the Squad. He as much as said jolly good luck to anybody who could put one over on Joe Rayner. But I don’t think they believed it, sir. They seemed quite certain about who had the money.’

  ‘Andrew Reymerston is Reginald Aston and Vivienne Selly worked in his department.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but what threat was she to him, when all she knew was he’d changed his name?’

  ‘She could have tried it on.’

  ‘He’d have laughed in her face, sir. And she was into the Major’s ribs already.’

  ‘The Major resisted and she backed down.’

  ‘Sir, we’ve only the Major’s word for that.’

  But Vivienne Selly had tried it on; so Reymerston had told him, and it fitted. At the end of the line, without hope, she had made her last, forlorn play. In the dark night she had gone to his cottage and made a pass at shaking him down; and he, like the Major, had said no; and Vivienne had always taken no for an answer. But she didn’t leave the cottage. According to Reymerston, a little later he heard her call him from upstairs. There he’d found her lying naked on the bed, and staring at him with her strange eyes. Something had clicked in him. There was in the bedroom a plastic wrapper from a new mattress; he had taken it and wrapped it round her, then placed a pillow over her face. She hadn’t resisted; by his own account she had somehow willed him to do it. But when, a few seconds later, he’d removed the pillow, Vivienne Selly had treacherously died.

  Avowedly the confession was made to save the Major, and there hadn’t been a cobweb of proof; but it fitted; and it explained how she’d died, which had baffled both Gently and the forensic laboratory. The corpse, when they found it, had been immaculate, the face in an expression of profound peace.

  Gently said plangently: ‘Yet you’re gunning for him now, and apparently on the flimsiest of evidence.’

  ‘Sir, he gave a false alibi ...’

  ‘And what would you expect, if he was on a date with a married woman? Did you tell him what it was about?’

  ‘Well ... no, sir.’

  ‘So he was trying to protect this Mrs Quennell. And all you got from frisking his place was a possible weapon that didn’t do it ...’

  It was too absurd. He was seeking to defend Reymerston, whom he believed to be a killer; whereas Eyke, who had never believed it, was seeking to hang a killing on him. Why was he taking such a stupid line ... as though, in some odd way, he owed Reymerston something?

  ‘Let me see that letter.’

  Eyke was thoroughly rattled; he stumbled clumsily in going to fetch the file. He must have been thinking, like the AC, that marriage had scarcely improved Gently.

  ‘Here, sir. And a sample of her writing.’

  The letter was little more than a note. Written on white Basildon Bond notepaper, it was blurred and stained by rain. It was headed simply: ‘Saturday Morning’ and continued:

  Dear Man,

  I know you want to see me, and I want to see you too. During the racing this afternoon I shall be waiting at Gorse Circle. You know the place? I can be there at 2.30, and it’s always deserted on a Saturday. Don’t disappoint me, and I won’t disappoint you!!! I’m tired of being a

  ‘Neglected Woman’

  The envelope, which matched, bore no address; it had been torn open roughly. The sample of Mrs Quennell’s writing was a copy of a recipe for saffron cake.

  ‘Have you had this vetted by an expert ...?’

  The blurring by rain was unfortunate. It probably meant that no positive opinion was possible one way or the other. But at sight there seemed no reason to doubt the common identity of the two hands.

  ‘How would she have sent this to Reymerston?’

  ‘Well, sir, I’m guessing the daughter. She went off the deep end when she saw it, and nobody’s got sense out of her since.’

  ‘Wouldn’t a phone call have been less risky?’

  Reymerston, it appeared, no longer lived in Wolmering. Like the Major, he had sold up and moved, though in his case merely across the river. His house in Hare Lane, Walderness, was only a short distance from the Quennells’.

  ‘Any problems at the business?’

  Eyke shook his head: Tallis Press was a thriving concern. A long-established firm, it was in the process of re-equipping with electronic typesetting. One got an impression of Quennell as a buzzing executive directing his firm with a confident touch, a man who worked hard and played hard: he raced his Dragon yacht every weekend. His secretary and mistress, Marilyn Lawrence, was a yachtswoman and shared in his sport.

  ‘What’s her form?’

  ‘County family, sir. She’s very cut up by what’s happened. She was waiting for him at the yacht club. She lives in an executive flat in Stansgate.’

  ‘Where was the daughter that afternoon?’

  ‘Here in Wolmering, sir. She’d come in shopping with Mrs Tallis, who’s the wife of another director.’

  ‘Living in Walderness?’

  ‘Yes, sir. At Caxton Lodge, by the river. Her husband is Raymond Tallis, whose grandfather founded the Press.’

  Gently stared a moment. ‘Are they the only connections of the firm resident in the village?’

  ‘Well, there’s the son,’ Eyke said. ‘Young Frank Quennell. He was his father’s assistant.’

  ‘What’s his story?’

  ‘We checked him out, sir. He was in Stansgate with his fiancée. He went in before lunch, and called later at the works to pick up some estimates.’

  Innocence everywhere: when it came to the crunch, you had to keep looking straight at Reymerston. Just one small point that needed explaining to keep the picture bright and clear.

  If Quennell intercepted this letter, how would Reymerston know he had a rendezvous to keep?’

  ‘There’s only one answer to that, sir,’ Eyke said promptly. It was a put-up job to get Quennell out there.’

  ‘Involving the daughter?’

  ‘I don’t see why not, sir. They could have gambled on her blowing the gaff to her father.’

  ‘Also on her subsequent loss of memory?’

  Eyke looked down his wry nose.

  ‘I see it this way, sir. They never expected that letter to be found. Reymerston should have taken it off the body, then we would never have had a smell. Only he didn’t, so they were caught short and had to patch up a tale.’

  Gently stared. ‘And you’re happy with that?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I think so.’ But he didn’t sound happy.

  ‘Come on,’ Gently said, rising. ‘Let’s get out there and look it over.’

  A foot-ferry crossed the river to Walderness, but by road it was nine miles: a detour to a bridge on the A12 watched over by a lofted church. Here the river spread out in mudflats which the tide was beginning to flood, an expanse fledged with reed and notched by black, rotting piles. They turned seaward again; umbrella-headed pines made dark shape
s against the water; then the narrow road was wandering through heath and obscurely pointing towards a square flint tower.

  ‘Here, sir.’

  There was no division between the heath and the road. Gently drove off on to grass and bracken where other cars had parked before him. At this point the heath was a maze of gorse, green now without flower, through which, however, one could still glimpse the river over open heath below. Eyke pointed to the gorse.

  ‘He shoved his car in there, sir. One of my men spotted tracks leaving the road.’

  ‘Is this the only road to the village?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So then Quennell’s son would have come this way.’

  ‘Well ... yes, sir.’

  ‘And the daughter with Mrs Tallis.’

  Eyke stared but said nothing.

  They got out to examine the spot, innocent and fragrant in the lazy sun. Half a mile off the church tower peered above a fan of trees. Paths went among the bracken and heather beyond the gorse, but they were deserted. Down across the river, chalk white, Wolmering’s lighthouse jutted over the town roofs.

  ‘He left his house when?’

  ‘Just before two, sir. He would have driven straight out here. He was dressed in sailing gear, ready to go down to his yacht.’

  ‘E.T.D.?’

  ‘Between two and three.’

  His just having eaten lunch was a bonus for forensic.

  ‘Carry on.’

  Eyke led the way through the alleys of green gorse. At some hundred yards’ distance they came to an area where the gorse formed an extensive thicket. Not far from the road, it presented an appearance of complete impregnability; nevertheless a way was clear for a car to have driven up to it.

  ‘This way, sir.’

  Eyke led him round it; and then suddenly one saw that the thicket was hollow. Stepping through a gap, one entered an amphitheatre of about thirty yards diameter. Still, scented with the green gorse, floored with short, rabbit-bitten turf, it had almost the appearance of design, of being some relic of prehistory.

  ‘He was lying just there, sir.’

  In the file had been photographs that showed the body a few steps from the gap. Quennell had been stabbed, it appeared, when entering, to finish up face down, head towards the centre. He had been killed by the one violent blow of an assailant who had come from behind.

  ‘Now look at this, sir.’

  Eyke vanished suddenly into the gorse adjacent to the gap. Gently followed; they entered a tiny chamber in the heart of the bushes.

  ‘Look ...’

  A branch had been freshly cut, permitting a view of the amphitheatre: one stared through it at precisely the spot where Quennell’s body had lain.

  ‘Would you say it wasn’t premeditated now, sir?’

  ‘Are you suggesting that the murderer made that peep-hole?’

  ‘I’m damned certain of it, sir! This is where he stood, watching for Quennell to come by.’

  ‘And then went out and stabbed him?’

  ‘What else, sir?’

  ‘Coming out of this gorse without a sound?’

  ‘Well ... you wouldn’t make much, sir.’

  ‘Go and stand where he stood and listen for me coming out behind you.’

  Eyke hesitated, then pushed his way out. Watching intently, Gently saw Eyke’s head and shoulders pass by the aperture. Then he too emerged, taking every care to tread silently and hold back the gorse; but the effort was vain. In the sunny stillness his every motion was signalled.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, sir ...’ Eyke still looked unconvinced. ‘Chummie had to hide somewhere, and that’s the only place close to the circle.’

  ‘Suppose he wasn’t hiding, but came with Quennell.’

  Eyke stared a second, then shook his head. ‘No, sir, I’m not buying that. Quennell wouldn’t want company when he was spying on his missus.’

  ‘Then suppose it was he who was hiding ...’

  Gently broke off, his hand on Eyke’s arm. A girl had appeared from among the gorse bushes and was gazing at them with wide, dark eyes. She was young, in her teens, with a sturdy but shapely figure, her smooth, pale face bracketed by dark hair caught up behind. She stood quite still, quite expressionless, not more than twenty yards from them.

  ‘It’s the daughter ...’ Eyke muttered.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Miss Fiona.’

  Smiling, Gently called: ‘Miss Fiona! Were you looking for us?’

  Still she simply stood gazing, without a flicker in the brown eyes. As though she were in a different world, seeing people whose voices she couldn’t hear.

  ‘Miss Fiona ...?’

  Gently took a step forward, when immediately she turned and darted away. Walking slowly after her, he saw her snatch up a bicycle, run it to the road and pedal off towards the village.

  ‘The little devil!’ Eyke exclaimed, coming up behind. ‘Get her to talk, and we’d know everything. But we can catch her at the house.’

  Gently didn’t reply.

  ‘She was listening to us,’ Eyke said.

  TWO

  ‘HAVE FORENSIC ANY fresh ideas about the weapon?’

  They had returned to the sun-warmed car; Gently was sitting half-in, half-out of it, letting heat leak from the muggy interior.

  The trouble was that he was still feeling only casually involved in this affair of the East Anglian printer, notwithstanding the complication of Reymerston ... or was it perhaps just because of that complication?

  For example, seeing the Quennell girl pedal away, he had been switched back immediately to Gabrielle – something about the girl’s stocky figure must have done it, because otherwise she bore no resemblance. In a flash he was seeing Gabrielle long since, when she had been a teenager too: speeding off on a bicycle, just like that, on some girlish ramble by Dives or Houl-gate. A Gabrielle he could never know caught suddenly in the flying figure: which, to Eyke, had been merely part of the case, a wilful obstruction; an irritant. Was this how it was when one got married – to be swept back continually into private worlds? For a moment his business there seemed curiously irrelevant, as though he had caught a glimpse from a transcending view-point ...

  ‘They think it may have been a one-off, sir, a job that chummie faked up. A bit of steel rod with a point. Either that or an old-fashioned dagger.’

  ‘A bit of steel rod ...’

  ‘It was round-sectioned, sir. You don’t see many jobs like that. I asked them if it could have been a bayonet, but they wouldn’t say yes or no.’

  ‘How well have you searched the area?’

  ‘We had dogs and men with metal-detectors.’

  ‘Has Reymerston tools?’

  ‘There’s a vice in his garage, and an old hacksaw with a broken blade.’

  But you couldn’t really see Reymerston in his garage, solemnly fashioning a weapon for murder: sawing off a length of rod and filing away at it, clamped in the vice. A wrong picture ...

  ‘Get on to forensic and press them for something more definite.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But if chummie did make the weapon, not much doubt then about premeditation.’

  He surprised Eyke in a quizzical look: not at all the Gently he remembered, the look said! Well, perhaps it wasn’t. Sitting beside Eyke was a man whose home had suddenly become nowhere ...

  ‘Do we get after the Quennell girl, sir?’

  With an effort, Gently hauled his feet into the car. While they had been parked there, a matter of twenty minutes, only half-a-dozen vehicles had passed. On Saturday afternoon, would there have been more? With perhaps ramblers on the paths that crossed the heath? But the writer of the letter at least had been confident that the spot was secure from observation ...

  He slammed his door. ‘Where’s Reymerston’s place?’

  ‘Sir, if we caught up with the girl now ...’

  Gently shook his head: not a chance. He had to see Reymerston, face to face.

/>   They drove past a sign and outlying houses and the massy but ruinous church; then they were descending a slightly crooked street bordered by period houses and cottages. In brick or plaster, with roofs of pantile, they crowded close to the narrow thoroughfare, some pressing quite up to it with little bays and mullioned windows. A stores was set back at a junction; an antique shop, a post office blended with the houses; further down one saw an old-fashioned garage, and beyond it a comfortable-looking inn. The village breathed modest affluence: houses, cottages were well kept. Finally the street bore left towards the river, while ahead, between marram hills, lay a panel of sea.

  ‘No poverty here ...’

  ‘No, sir. Property fetches a price in Walderness.’

  Many of the loiterers they were having to slow for were elderly people, stylishly dressed. A village with tone: at the end of its one road, with a foot-ferry across to town, the river and yacht club at its door and, over the sandhills, beach and sea. Quennell had been no fool when he settled here, twelve miles from the racket of the presses in Stans-gate. If Wolmering were sweet, this was sweeter: sea and Suffolk and county rates ...

  ‘What sort of car had Quennell?’

  ‘A Rolls, sir.’

  Of course. In which he would have left late and returned early.

  Eyke indicated an anonymous junction and they turned off into a leafy by-road. Behind trees one could see intriguing houses nursed by shrubs and set in spacious gardens. Then, at a bend, came a surprise prospect across hayfields, marsh and river: Wolmering, clustered along its ridge and cutting off sharply into a haze of sea.

  ‘Which house?’

  ‘Next on the right, sir.’

  Like Reymerston’s previous dwelling, this one was modest: a white-plastered cottage, tucked up high, with a big picture window turned to the view. Trees backed it, and a steep drive led to parking at the side; a timber garage had open doors that revealed a metallic blue Renault 4L.