Gently with the Innocents Read online

  At the door he hesitated, then stuck out his hand. ‘I’m grateful, really . . . I mean, suspected like that.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure you’re out of the wood.’

  ‘Fazakerly was right . . .’

  Gently said nothing.

  He came back into the den and stood some moments by the fire. Outside he could hear the Mini being started and, after some buzzing, being driven away. A curious business, an odd young man! An old man’s face on young shoulders. One could see through it to the recluse uncle, the lonely old harness-maker in his mouldering house. A medieval face . . . and a medieval coin – or did Innocent III go back yet further?

  Gently relit his pipe. But was there in fact a case here? Old men did fall down stairs and die. A fractured skull, a clutch of bruises, they were sufficiently commonplace in such an event. The locals, anyway, hadn’t pushed the matter, as they would if there had been evidence of theft. And the coroner, obviously he’d been satisfied . . . only uncertain about how the old man came to fall.

  Just one of those tragedies that happen too often to the elderly who live alone.

  And yet . . . he stared again at the thick, bulge-edged medal, with its grotesque portrait, its uneven lettering.

  Coming to a decision, he hooked up the phone.

  ‘Trunks. I want Merely 25. It’s a Northshire number.’

  As he stood waiting he could hear the rain beating faster and a drop or two hissed on the coals in the grate.

  ‘Merely 25.’

  ‘Superintendent Gently.’

  ‘Good Heavens . . . Gently!’

  He took the phone to his chair. Sir Daynes Broke, the Northshire Chief Constable, rarely came to business in the first five minutes.

  ‘. . . my first twenty-pounder on Sunday . . . live-bait, y’know, no twiddling with spoons . . . Gwen’s here, she’ll want a word with you . . . when are you coming for a day with the pike? . . .’

  Then at last, as an afterthought: ‘You’re ringing about something . . . ?’

  Gently gave him a summary of what Peachment had told him. Sir Daynes listened with little cluckings, but didn’t interrupt till Gently had finished.

  ‘Yes, well . . . know about it, of course. Fact, Lindsay, the coroner, is a chum of mine. Says there’s no doubt the old fellow took a tumble – thin skull, y’know. He was getting on.’

  ‘And the local Superintendent?’

  ‘Chief Inspector. Fellow called Boyland. He’s all right. He’s not too happy, but there’s nothing to go on. Doesn’t like the nephew – that’s a fact.’

  ‘What about this treasure?’

  ‘Oh, poppycock. Stories like that about Merely Manor.’

  ‘But there is this medal.’

  ‘Won’t be worth much. I collect them, y’know. What d’you say it is?’

  Gently told him. There was a slight pause at the Merely end of the phone.

  ‘Innocent III?’

  ‘So Peachment says. And the inscription reads INNOCENTI III.’

  ‘Describe it to me.’

  Gently described it. He had a feeling that Sir Daynes was holding his breath.

  ‘That’s dashed queer.’

  ‘Is it worth much?’

  ‘My dear Gently, it’s almost priceless. There are only two or three known examples. How did old Peachment get his hands on one?’

  Gently smiled at the spitting fire. This was young Peachment over again! But clearly the old harness-maker’s house at Cross held one mystery. Unless . . .

  ‘Of course, we’ve only the nephew’s word about where he got it.’

  The phone made irritable noises.

  ‘Doesn’t matter where he got it, man. We still want to know where it came from.’

  ‘It’s in Extremely Fine condition.’

  ‘You’re making my blasted mouth water!’

  ‘But doesn’t that suggest . . . say, a collection?’

  ‘Now you’re making a little sense.’

  Gently prodded the medal where it lay on its envelope.

  ‘I’ll check, of course, if one is missing. Seaby’s will know where they are . . . if there are only three, it shouldn’t take long. But suppose none of the known ones are missing?’

  ‘Then you’ll grill that nephew silly.’

  ‘But if he’s telling the truth?’

  Sir Daynes made throat-noises. ‘Yes . . . begin to see what you mean.’

  ‘A collection . . . a fabulous collection . . . perhaps other semi-unique pieces. Maybe nothing to do with the legend, but certainly something to do with Peachment.’

  ‘But a theft like that—’

  ‘It may not yet have been discovered.’

  ‘But there’d be records of such a collection.’

  ‘Not if it were put together illicitly by someone buying stolen coins.’

  Sir Daynes honked and hawed a little. The smile was still on Gently’s face.

  ‘So what do we do, man?’

  ‘It’s up to you. I think, on balance, perhaps Peachment was murdered.’

  ‘Hrmph! And I’d certainly like to see that medal.’

  ‘I could bring it along. If I got the case.’

  When he hung up the smile was a grin. He poured himself a Cognac and sat down to drink it. Then he picked up the phone again, raked off a number, propped the receiver under his chin.

  ‘Gently . . . send me a car, will you? I have some property that should be under lock and key.’

  Half an hour later, when the car arrived, the rain was changing into snow.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CROSS WAS a slushy, two-and-a-half-hour drive up the A’s 12 and 140, with dimmed headlights and wipers grinding at a dirty mist all the way. You turned off at Broome, a village with a handsome coaching-inn, and a murderous mile later ran into the outskirts of the little town.

  On another day it would have been charming. It was built on a slope beside a small lake. Across the lake you saw Georgian houses forming a crescent around the lake shore.

  Water Street, the principal thoroughfare, spread out and divided at the top of the slope, showing off handsome gables and facades and the Ionic portico of the Corn Exchange.

  A piece of Old England! But you needed to come back in June. Just now it was huddled in a dirty gloom which the glowing shop windows seemed to make more dreary. Pedestrians’ breath smoked and they pulled away from cars that hissed past the narrow pavements. A few grimy pigeons huddled into the nooks of the Corn Exchange.

  Gently held second all the way up Water Street, where vans parked regardless of yellow lines. At the top he pulled in beside a fishmonger’s. The man at the slab was grinning with cold.

  ‘Where’s the police station?’

  ‘Keep a-goin’. Take the second on the left.’

  He stared curiously for a moment, then turned and began jigging and chafing his fingers.

  The police station was a worn-out building with a date on a plaque, 1905. It was built of dark red brick and an inferior freestone which was flaking off round doors and windows. Gently parked in a slot near the steps. He entered a dank hall with a tiled floor. A huge, bulging, green-painted radiator stood clear of the wall and wheezed unhappily.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Chief Inspector Boyland.’

  The young constable at the desk was slow to attend to him. Then, learning his name, he blushed childishly and collided with a chair as he came round the desk.

  ‘This way, sir. I’ll just . . .’

  They went down a corridor laid with balding blue lino. The constable tapped hastily at the door at the end, opened it a little to hiss, ‘Sir . . . he’s arrived, sir!’

  Gently went in.

  ‘Inspector Gissing. He’s in charge of the case.’

  Gently shook hands with a heavy-faced, benevolent-looking man. Boyland himself was plump and jowled and had a thin moustache which looked out of place.

  ‘This business about a medal . . .’

  They’d both been drinking beer, though the glasses had b
een hurriedly pushed to one side. A plate with crumbs on it lay on the desk. Presumably Gently had disturbed their elevenses.

  ‘It’s a bit out of character, don’t you think? I mean, old Peachment wasn’t worth a bean. There’s only the house, and that’s falling down.’

  He was plainly embarrassed and trying to talk his way out of it.

  ‘Any more of that beer?’

  ‘What . . . what . . . ?’

  ‘I’m feeling a bit dry after my drive.’

  Boyland stared at him round-eyed a moment, then chuckled and pulled open a drawer of his desk.

  ‘Sorry . . . didn’t know . . . you being such a nob.’

  ‘And a couple of sandwiches would go down.’

  In the end he was sitting in Boyland’s chair with a glass of nut-brown and a full plate beside him, while Boyland sprawled fatly on the edge of the desk and Gissing leant comfortably against a radiator.

  ‘Let me put you in the picture. I’ve had another long chat with young Peachment. I can’t shake his story about finding the medal. I think we’ll just have to accept it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Boyland said dubiously.

  ‘Naturally, I’ve done some checking on Peachment. He seems to be a fairly clean-living young man. No trouble with us. No doubtful acquaintances.’

  ‘Have you checked on his alibi, sir?’ Gissing asked.

  ‘Yes. He was back in his flat by ten p.m.’

  Gissing’s eyes were blank. ‘He could have done it,’ he said. ‘It’s running it close . . . but he could have.’

  Gently drank a mouthful of nut-brown.

  ‘Just for the moment, let’s leave him in the clear. He’s telling a straight story about his movements, about finding the medal in his uncle’s book-room. Now, if the theory’s right, someone knew about that medal, and that’s why Peachment was beaten up. What I want is a list of people who were friends or associates of the dead man.’

  Boyland shook his head. ‘Won’t be easy. Peachment didn’t have any chums.’

  ‘People he talked to.’

  ‘That’s just it. He never gave time of day to anyone.’

  ‘He was a rum ’un, sir,’ Gissing put in. ‘After his wife died he sort of closed up. You’d see him ambling around and muttering to himself; but he’d never speak a word to you.’

  ‘What about tradesmen?’

  ‘There’s the milkman,’ Gissing said. ‘It was him who went in and found the body. But he was in bed asleep when Peachment was killed – I checked him out. His family vouch for him.’

  ‘Other tradesmen?’

  ‘Nobody delivered. He’d buy his bits and pieces out.’

  ‘Doctor?’

  ‘He was on Doctor Paley’s list, but I don’t think the Doctor ever visited him.’

  ‘And he didn’t have any neighbours,’ Boyland said. ‘He was the only resident in Frenze Street. It’s the livestock market down there, and Hampton’s warehouse, and some other old properties.’

  Gently drank some more nut-brown. Almost, you felt, they were trying to be unhelpful! If there was a murderer going loose, they didn’t want him pinned to the comfortable, crime-free town of Cross. Whereas young Peachment . . .

  ‘Where’s the PM report?’

  Boyland slid off the desk and fetched it for him. It listed twenty-seven separate bruises on different parts of Peachment’s body. They were indifferently distributed about arms, legs, body, face, and only two were described as severe. The fractured skull presumably came from the stairs.

  ‘Anything strike you about this?’

  Boyland’s stare was non-committal.

  ‘I saw the corpse, sir,’ Gissing said. ‘There were too many bruises there for a tumble.’

  ‘But the bruises themselves?’

  ‘Well . . . all over him, sir. Only light bruises, most of them.’

  ‘If a man were being beaten to extract information would you expect bruising like that?’

  Gissing’s eyes went blank. Then he slowly shook his head.

  ‘You’d expect them more . . . localized, sir,’ he said. ‘And more severe?’

  ‘Yes, sir. More severe. I don’t think he was duffed up to make him talk.’

  ‘Then why was he beaten?’

  Gissing’s head kept shaking. ‘It struck me as queer at the time, sir. Maybe revenge . . . something like that. All I know is they weren’t an accident.’

  ‘Maybe a nutter,’ Boyland said.

  ‘You have any nutters?’ Gently asked.

  Boyland shrugged his plump shoulders. Clearly he wasn’t going to admit that!

  About the legend of the gold hoard they were derisive. It was going around when Boyland was a kid. Wasn’t there always a tale of that sort about old houses like Harrisons? A queer old house, a queer old man – to the kids, he’d never be less than a miser. Gissing, who’d poked about the place pretty thoroughly, discounted the notion of a secret hiding-place.

  ‘You went through the book-room when you were there?’

  ‘Yes, sir. At least, there’s a room with books in it.’

  ‘Young Peachment says the medal was in a drawer in the book-room.’

  ‘Well, sir . . . actually, I was looking for a blunt instrument.’

  ‘What about the drawer?’

  There were a couple of drawers. Gissing had glanced in and seen old papers. He had rustled them with his hand, found nothing sinister, closed the drawers and passed on.

  ‘So the medal might have been there?’

  Yes, it might have been, folded away in its manila envelope. Which envelope Gently had sent down to the lab and had received a report on that left him no wiser.

  He told them about the medal. He’d taken it back to Seaby’s, who of course remembered young Peachment bringing it in. As soon as Peachment had gone they’d done their own checking – none of the known Innocent III medals was missing. Two were in museums, in London and New York; the third belonged to a Greek millionaire. Gently had nailed them down to a valuation of fourteen hundred, though in an auction it might go higher.

  ‘And this is it.’

  He laid the medal on the desk. They gazed at its heavy disc in silence.

  That was what had been under the old bills, and what Gissing had nearly put his hand on . . .

  ‘Any coin-collectors in the town?’

  He knew that would be a forlorn hope.

  ‘There’s Bressingham . . . he keeps an antique shop. But he wouldn’t stock anything like this.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him. He might know something.’

  ‘This knocks me all of a heap,’ Boyland said. ‘If old Peachment had one of these, why not a dozen, or a score?’

  ‘The hoard of gold, sir,’ Gissing said.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Gently said, ‘this one. If there’s nothing else you can think of to tell me, I’d like to go along and look at the house.’

  They watched with the same, childlike silence as he wrapped up the medal again in its tissue.

  ‘If there’s room in your safe . . .’

  ‘Of course.’

  Boyland hastened to unlock the old, double-doored Chubb, which stood in a corner.

  ‘You’d like a receipt?’

  ‘I’ll trust you this time.’

  Boyland took the medal into his two hands, handling it as though he thought it might burn him.

  A clock struck somewhere in the gloom as Gently and Gissing came out of the police station. It was noon, but it might have been any hour of what passed for daylight at the end of November.

  They snuggled gratefully into Gently’s Sceptre, still a little warm from the drive down. Gissing had donned a hefty tweed greatcoat of a style that Gently hadn’t seen for years.

  ‘Have you had any snow here?’

  ‘Two nights ago. We’ll be getting some more soon.’

  ‘What sort of weather was it when Peachment was killed?’

  Gissing thought a moment, then said, ‘A mild spell.’

  He directed Gently b
ack down Water Street and then left past a car park. A further left turn brought them into a narrow street with a sale-ground and cattle-pens along one side. Opposite was a terrace of old straw-thatched cottages, their thatch moulting, windows boarded; beyond, and set back, steep pantiled gables, and finally a dreary red-brick depository warehouse.

  ‘Frenze Street . . . it’s pretty old.’

  Gently grunted, let the Sceptre coast.

  ‘Before they built the market there were a lot of old houses . . . looked like something out of Dickens.’

  ‘A cul-de-sac?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a footway through to Thingoe Road.’

  ‘Cars park here at night?’

  ‘Never seen many. The park we went past is free.’

  Even now Frenze Street had atmosphere, with the best part of its glories gone. It was slightly dog-legged, a little sloped. Its buildings seemed watchful in the misty twilight. Pretty old . . . A spirit of age had taken root in the place.

  ‘Here’s Harrisons.’

  It was the house of the pantiled gables, at the very end of the street and butting on to the warehouse yard. A [-shaped Elizabethan house, with the two gable-fronts of unequal size. The wings were apparently of three storeys and the central portion of two. There were a number of irregular small windows. The front had been rendered with a drab plaster. It stood withdrawn from the street behind rusting palings and a tangle of dead willow-herb, nettles and rank grass.

  ‘Goes back a bit, wouldn’t you say?’

  Above the steep roofs were tall, twisted brick chimneys. One of them had been rebuilt at some stage. The other was an original Tudor chimney.

  ‘Why is it called Harrisons?’

  Gissing shrugged. ‘Name of the bloke who built it, I reckon.’

  ‘It’s not on record?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge. Perhaps the Town Clerk knows something about it.’

  ‘Yet a place like this . . .’

  It stood out sharply: once, this had been an important house. The house of a mayor, or a lord of the manor – perhaps the most important house in Cross. Surely all record of it hadn’t vanished except for the name of one forgotten owner?

  ‘Perhaps you’ll get on to the Town Clerk for me.’