Gently Down the Stream (18 page)

A bemused silence followed this statement. It was so completely bizarre, so unreal. Yet Thatcher wasn’t trying to contradict the charge and the silenced Beretta lay bearing mute witness on the trampled turf.

‘You’re crazy … it
couldn’t
be him!’

Hansom found his tongue.

‘Lammas was a slim type – this bloke could give him five stone. And he was ten years younger! I tell you there isn’t any resemblance.’

‘That’s right, Gently!’ Hansom had taken the words out of the super’s mouth. ‘I’ve seen Lammas’ photograph and he wasn’t remotely like this chap.’

Grimly Gently approached the heavy-breathing Thatcher. A clumsy finger hooked into the seamy waistcoat and ripped off the buttons from top to bottom. Then it was the turn of the twill shirt, and then the cotton vest.

‘There … that’s how he got the figure!’

Through the tattered garments protruded a stuffed linen bag, expertly moulded into shape and attached with tapes.

‘And this is where he got the ten years!’

Gently pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed the corner of Thatcher’s eye. A browny-red stain of greasepaint appeared on the white fabric …

‘And if you still aren’t satisfied—’

He spun savagely on his heel.

‘—ask his daughter there, who was prepared to be an accessory for him! Ask his son, who despised his lack of spirit! Or ask his wife, who in effect destroyed him! They’ll tell you who he is – or one of them will!’

He paused, his eye fixed on Mrs Lammas. The hate that flared at him was like a glimpse of hell-fire. But she didn’t say anything. Neither did Paul say anything. It was Pauline who ran sobbing to throw herself into her father’s arms.

‘Daddy – oh daddy! I did my best!’

Somehow, in spite of the handcuffs, he managed to stroke her short, fair hair.

‘I guessed what had happened … I wouldn’t tell them!’

‘Don’t cry, little girl.’

‘Daddy … I did my best!’

‘You’ve always done your best …’

It was Lammas speaking now. They had heard the last of Thatcher. His voice was inexpressibly soft and kindly, but his eyes were staring vacantly and he didn’t look down at his daughter.

‘Oh daddy – oh daddy!’

‘Little girl … you mustn’t cry.’

Gently bit his lip painfully and touched her on the shoulder. She broke away directly, as if acknowledging
her powerlessness to resist. He hesitated by the pinioned man.

‘But why did you have to do it?’

Lammas shook his head bewilderedly.

‘Christ knows … Christ only knows.’

‘You’re a decent sort of chap …’

‘I got the idea … it fascinated me. Christ knows! I
had
to do it.’

‘All right then – we know where we are!’

The super’s bark was unnecessarily biting.

‘You admit you’re Lammas – you’ve heard the chief inspector charge you. If you’ve anything to say, just remember that it’s evidence. I’m not paying any attention to that last remark of yours.’

Lammas nodded without looking at him.

‘I intend to make a statement.’

‘You can do that back at headquarters, though if you’ll take my advice—’

He pulled himself up. Policemen didn’t give that sort of advice!

‘We’ve got the cars back on the road. Hansom, get this man away!’

What the super wanted to do was to regularize the situation, but the official note, once lost, seemed strangely unwilling to resume itself. He stood almost to attention as he watched them file away. First there was Lammas, conducted by Dutt and Hansom. Then followed Pauline, her head bent in sobs. Finally came Mrs Lammas and Paul, the latter still looking like a madman. Mrs Lammas walked in frozen state. She was there by constraint … this scene was unutterably beneath her!

As they disappeared behind the mill the super slowly relaxed from his pose.

‘I’ve seen some jobs in my time … I’ve seen one or two!’

He turned on Gently with a sudden fierceness.

‘You’ve made his coffin and screwed him down in it. You swine, Gently … you bloody swine!’

Gently nodded to the flowing stream. It wasn’t ever much fun, being a policeman.

‘N
OW WE KNOW why he killed Annie Packer.’ Lammas had made a long, long statement. In the super’s office it was stuffy and warm in spite of two open windows and the obstinate issue from Gently’s sand-blast didn’t improve matters a bit. Down below the evening traffic was still busy in the street. A moment ago they’d been turning out of the theatre. In the pub across the way, no doubt, the cloth had gone up ten minutes ago.

‘What else could he do?’

Gently looked tired and bored, standing by the window. There was a nasty taste in his mouth. He had never been involved in a case he liked less, or been so sickened by his triumph. Yet Lammas had tried to kill him, too. And at the mill there’d been another bullet with his number on it.

‘When she caught him with his clothes off there was only one answer. And that’s why I couldn’t find any blood – he shot her in the cabin.’

‘We’ll find some blood – now we know where to look for it. And the bullet too, I daresay.’

The super hadn’t much kick in him either. He was sitting hunched up, his hands dug into his pockets. It wasn’t the way a super ought to sit, but for once in a while he was looking as though he couldn’t care less.

‘D’you think he told the truth about pulling the gun this afternoon?’

‘Yes … he couldn’t have gunned the lot of us. I was afraid of what he might do.’

‘It’d have saved a lot of money.’

‘I couldn’t take the risk.’

‘Would you have let him if you could?’

Gently made a meaningless gesture.

‘We don’t play God at our level … it’s higher up you meet the divinities.’

He pulled on his pipe. It was obvious that he didn’t want to talk. He’d done his job … he’d got to write his report. Apart from that, he’d have liked to have forgotten the whole thing.

But of course … he would have to tell his tale!

That’s why the four of them were hanging on there, instead of going off to supper and bed. And in a way, he did want to talk. Just as Lammas had wanted to confess. When you talked you involved other people … you crept back out of the unbearable loneliness of experience.

‘How about some coffee?’

The super pressed a button.

‘Let’s have some sandwiches too – come to think of it, I haven’t eaten since lunch-time.’

Down there, they wouldn’t know anything about Lammas’ arrest until they got the morning papers.

The sandwiches were tongue and the coffee the brand of coffee that only superintendents get out of police canteens. Gently felt better after the snack. There was a sort of humanity in food and drink …

‘Now – getting back to the beginning of this affair.’

He was sitting in his favourite way with the chair back to front. Dutt was stuck away in a corner, Hansom near the desk, his long legs sprawling. They hadn’t put the light on – it wasn’t really necessary.

‘What stuck out like a sore thumb was that week on the yacht. It couldn’t be explained – there was no adequate reason for it. Lammas had carefully planned things so that he had a week of grace before inquiries began, yet here he was, openly hanging about, almost making certain that someone took notice of him. You can argue that not many people on the Broads knew him and that he kept well clear of Wrackstead – but against that you’ve got to remember that he hired a Wrackstead boat and gave his own name and address to the boat-yard. Then, at the end of the trip,
he phones for his
chauffeur
! What sort of madness was that, from a long-sighted man like Lammas?

‘That’s where I started going wrong. He had me fooled with the telephone call. Instead of accepting it and drawing an inference, I began looking for an accomplice in the family, somebody who could have traced Lammas to Ollby and then tipped off Hicks.

‘And I didn’t have to look very far. Both Mrs Lammas and Paul were absent from “Willow Street” at the time of the murder and neither of them had an alibi. What was more, their comings and goings were oddly mixed
up with one another’s – especially by the row at the end of them! As for motive, that’s always a tricky business. You and I know, if judges don’t, that nobody’s quite sane when they come to do a murder. Mrs Lammas was the predatory type of woman who never lets go of the people she gets in her power. Paul Lammas had National Service hanging over his head – with his father standing by to kick him well and truly into it! To this you had to add their relation to Hicks. He was a confidential retainer whom either might influence. And when it came to finance, they had that too.

‘Hicks, of course, was the perfect tool. We know more about him from Lammas’ statement. He was a spy, a liar and what you might call Mrs Lammas’ creature – Lammas suspected he was something more, but we’ve no proof of that. At all events, he’d been a wedge between them. Lammas hated him and he hated Lammas. I got enough of this out of the early interrogations to convince me that Hicks was a likely man.

‘To complete the picture, there was the shadow of a fourth person – I made a certain pass at Mrs Lammas and her reaction suggested I was on the right track. We know now who it was, but then it was just something to be kept in mind. And it was the same with Linda Brent. She wasn’t really impressive as a candidate for the murder of the man she loved, so … I’d just keep her in mind and see what turned up.

‘Now the first thing to get at was whether Mrs Lammas or her son knew what Lammas was up to and the second – this was vital – whether they knew where
to find him. But I was so much impressed by the oddness of that trip on the yacht that I felt compelled to tackle it before anything else. Unless I could get a reason for it, I felt I should miss the significance of other things which might turn up. And I was right … though it isn’t much comfort to me.

‘At the time my investigation of the trip seemed a complete waste of energy. I learned nothing of the motive for it except that it apparently had none. Lammas had behaved exactly as holidaymakers do behave. He had visited the same places, done the same things as the others, and it didn’t seem to have worried him that he might have been recognized. His only departure from routine was when he went up Ollby Dyke – to get murdered! There was nothing else remarkable about the whole itinerary.

‘Well, I ought to have seen it. I could kick myself now for
not
seeing it. Rouse … Tetzner … Saffran and Kipnik – I’d studied all their trials at one time or another. And yet I was still in the dark! Lammas had really nulled the wool over my eyes. And just to keep me well off the trail, I happened on some of the evidence I was looking for relating to Mrs Lammas.

‘If only people wouldn’t lie to the police!

‘The next morning I was hard at it, proving that Mrs Lammas knew what her husband was trying to do. I had just succeeded in doing that when I heard about Annie Packer.’

Gently broke off, ostensibly to fill his pipe. But the super was well aware of the reason for that delicately-timed little pause. He shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.

‘I suppose I ought to apologize …’

‘Admittedly, I was being a fool.’

‘You couldn’t have saved Annie Packer.’

‘No, even Lammas couldn’t have foreseen …’

‘And I should know you better by now!’

Gently lit his pipe forgivingly. A gesture was all he asked for. He breathed a long stream of smoke into the darkening room and prepared to take up his tale again.

‘Anyway – it brought me up with a jolt!

‘It needed a fantastic theory to cover it. If Hicks had been the tool he must have been packed off into hiding – they wouldn’t have left him dodging about the neighbourhood. And if someone else had done it, then it could only have been for a blind … but what sort of blind was this, which involved the murder of an innocent person? People don’t kill so lightly, not even people with blood on their hands. There were a dozen ways short of murder to make us think that Hicks was still around – and all of them a good deal less risky.

‘Yet murder had been done. Right there, on my very doorstep. And to make it artistically right, somebody had circulated a rumour of Hicks having been seen there before the murder took place.’

‘Of course, we know now there was no connection,’ the super interrupted. ‘The rumour was Lammas’ red herring. Packer’s murder was purely fortuitous.’

Gently nodded.

‘We know it now … but we didn’t guess it then. I could see it only as an incredibly cold-blooded manoeuvre. And it seemed to indicate that somebody
was getting scared, very scared indeed – a fact which pointed in only one direction.

‘But before going into that I had to learn what I could about Annie’s killing. There were several curious points connected with it, not the least being the one you noticed about the origin of that rumour. How
could
it have been started by a stranger in a place like Upper Wrackstead? Everyone knew everyone, and strangers drew attention. Yet if a stranger hadn’t done it then a native must have done … or else somebody actually
had
been seen who might have been taken for Hicks.

‘You can judge how far I was out of my depth. I actually accepted the latter alternative – at least as a working hypothesis. I was so taken up with the idea of Mrs Lammas and Paul being in on it that I was looking at everything from their angle … you don’t know how hard it is for me to admit that.’

Dutt cleared his throat sympathetically.
He
knew how hard it was!

‘But to get back to the killing.

‘Up to a point, I could reconstruct it. I could understand how Annie slipped out to visit Thatcher, how she was intercepted on the way, how she was shot with a silenced revolver and how her body was disposed of. What I couldn’t understand was the absence of blood-stains. There had to be some, unless she’d been shot where she would fall into the Dyke. But that would have made a splash and there wasn’t any splash – so there had to be some blood … and there wasn’t any blood!

‘Looking at it now, I can’t think how I could have been so dense. Certainly, I got part of an answer when
I discovered that the wounded head had been bandaged. But the major fact was unexplained – some blood had been shed somewhere – and it was sheer, blind prejudice that stopped me from going to the right spot. You see, I was assuming that Annie’s killer came from outside. He had waited for a victim to emerge, and
of course
Annie was shot
on the bank.
Was there ever such a classic example of an investigator preferring a theory to a fact?’

The super frowned uneasily at his blotter. He’d harboured a theory or two himself in this case.

‘I don’t see what else you could have thought at the time,’ he observed cautiously.

‘I could have followed that fact up. The answer wasn’t far away. If I’d been on top of the situation just then we might have arrested Lammas twenty-four hours sooner than we did.’

The super held his peace. It wasn’t entirely displeasing to hear Gently admit himself at fault. At the same time, he couldn’t help feeling that Gently aimed at impossibly high standards in criminal investigation …

‘Then there was the stub of greasepaint liner that I picked up off the rubbish-heap. Naturally, I was too bemused to see the significance of that right away. It seemed to connect somewhere. The Lammases were mixed up with amateur dramatics. But all I could think of was that Paul may have got hold of some of his sister’s greasepaint and doctored himself to pass for Hicks … he
could
have dropped that stub out of his pocket while he was busy with Annie Packer.

‘Anyway, I went after Paul in the best way I could, which was by showing him how near his mother stood
to a murder charge. That took me to Marsh, and probably to the truth of what went on on Friday night. Only I didn’t know it was the truth … and it might so easily not have been. At that point I was almost ready to back the Paul-Marsh-Mrs Lammas combination. It seemed too tempting to pass over. We hadn’t got enough proof, and it might take some digging up, but we hadn’t quite exhausted the possibilities – and there’s such a thing as luck.

‘And then I was checkmated again. Dutt, here, found us Linda Brent. We picked her up – you know what happened. It seemed past doubt that Linda Brent had guilty knowledge of
l’affaire
Lammas. And if she had, or even thought she had, then what became of a conspiracy which couldn’t have been hatched till just before the murder? No – it went back further! It must have been plotted before Mrs Lammas discovered what her husband was doing and probably before the trip on the
Harrier.

‘There was the further factor of Miss Brent being in love with whoever she supposed did it. This seemed to point to Paul, and certainly Paul might have got at Hicks
after
he had paid his visit to “High Meadows”. But how could Paul have planned what took place on Friday
in
advance
?’

‘This Brent woman might have let him know what his old man was up to,’ suggested the super, intrigued.

‘Yes – as far as the trip went. But how could she have known that Lammas would go up Ollby Dyke in such a convenient way, setting her off first at Halford Quay?’

‘She might have been able to fix it …’

Gently nodded eagerly.

‘That’s where I began to smell the scent again. Because I couldn’t think of one single way in which she or any of the others could have fixed such a thing!’

He eased back on his chair to give them time to appreciate the proposition. It was clear enough now, when one knew the denouement!

‘You’ve got to remember how Lammas was placed. He’d cut his ties with his past, there was nothing there for a motive. It wasn’t his business or his family which could draw him into a secret rendezvous. And if it wasn’t these, what was it? What else could have been used to get him up Ollby Dyke just as he was about to fade away?

‘There isn’t an answer, but there is a corollary. If Lammas wasn’t enticed up the dyke, then he must have gone there on his own initiative – and if that was the case,
who could have known he was there
?

‘Mrs Lammas couldn’t. She only knew he had set out towards Wrackstead. Paul couldn’t. He didn’t even know as much as that! And as for Marsh, he only knew what Mrs Lammas told him.