Gently in the Sun (9 page)

‘Never mind about that.’

‘But I want you to understand …’

‘What I want to understand is what happened on Tuesday afternoon.’

Here was another little surprise: Simmonds could talk about it freely. He needed only the slightest prompting to give them a fully-rounded account. It was as though the whole thing had been waiting on the tip of his tongue – sometimes Gently had to slow him for the benefit of the toiling Dutt.

‘It was she who suggested it, going into the tent. She knew I wouldn’t have dared ask her – it hadn’t been like that, you know! There wasn’t anybody about, except some cars on the track. I don’t know why she did it unless it was to pay me for the painting.

‘And in fact, I hardly had time to do up the ties.’

It all checked neatly with what Gently had been told, allowing for some softening of the facts about the beating. In Simmonds’s account this wasn’t quite so one-sided: he had exchanged a few blows before Mixer knocked him down.

‘What was Miss Campion doing?’

‘Naturally she tried to stop us. She kept calling Mixer a brute and telling him not to be a fool. But in spite of his size, if my foot hadn’t slipped …’

‘She went off with him, did she?’

‘Yes, he
ordered
her to go with him.’

‘And that was the last time you saw her?’

‘The last time … until …’

Now it was difficult to stop him from elaborating the details. His awkwardness had gone and he was even picking his words. A great load, you would have thought, had been lifted from his mind: at last he could tell it all, he could spill it out freely.

Why then was Gently’s face growing glummer and glummer … why did he return to the window and stare unseeingly at the hollyhocks?

‘There … I think that’s everything. If you’ve got it down I’ll sign it. I don’t want you to think … but you know I would have told you! Honestly, I’m not one to tell lies as a rule.’

‘Just one more question.’

Gently’s shoulders were hunched. There was a deadness in his voice which made Dutt look up quickly.

‘Amongst all the rest of it you seem to have forgotten
something. We know when Miss Campion left you … but what time did she come
back
?’

Simmonds was wretchedly sick and had to be taken to the bathroom, a proceeding which greatly concerned Mrs Mears. She fetched a flask of brandy from a chest in her bedroom, and seemed half in a mind to give Gently a lecture.

‘Why don’t you let him be for a bit?’

Gently thanked her but made no comment. He sat at the desk, ruffling through the leaves of Kelly’s; he seemed quite unperturbed by the artist’s latest calamity.

‘Feeling better, are you?’

The inquiry was academic. Simmonds’s face wore a greenish tint and he shivered now and again. He sat half doubled-up, his arms folded across his knees: his attitude was one of the completest dejection.

Gently relinquished the desk and returned to his previous seat. Under the tree the reporters were still busy at their cards. They had been joined by a straggle of the curious from the beach, and occasionally one or another of them threw a quick glance at the Police House.

‘You couldn’t know about that!’

The artist’s voice was a mumble, and after he’d said it he was stricken by a fit of the shivering.

‘It was dark … there was nobody … nobody could have told you! You’re guessing about it, that’s all you’re doing.’

‘But it’s true all the same.’

‘Not unless I say so!’

‘Whether you say so or not. I know too much about her.’

‘But you couldn’t know that!’

‘It’s simple enough, isn’t it? Being Rachel, she came back: she wasn’t the
sort
to let you down. Especially after Mixer had thrashed you, right underneath her eyes.’

‘But you’ve got to have proof!’

‘That’s what you can give me.’

‘I won’t … ever …’

‘Hadn’t you better think it over?’

Simmonds covered his face and began to sob. It was the only sound in the overhot room. Dutt succeeded Gently in his researches into Kelly’s; his senior sat motionless, his eyes fixed on the group of
card-players
.

At the door, in all probability, Mrs Mears was indignantly eavesdropping.

‘You’ll think it’s all lies.’

Gently smiled grimly to himself.

‘I’d tell you … but now … and everyone’s against me. Whatever I say.’

He choked himself with sobbing.

‘Suppose I confess … are they certain to hang me?’

But it was less than a confession when it came to the point, though, if it were true, one could understand the hesitation. Slowly it came out, interrupted by sobbing: Simmonds ran true to form and didn’t need to be led.

‘It’s true … she came back. It was about ten o’clock.’

When, of course, it was dark enough to conceal
where she was going. She had got rid of Maurice – did she guess he’d been set to spy on her? – and let herself unobtrusively out of the Bel-Air. Then she had hastened along the beach, which one could depend on to be deserted, and climbed up the sandhill to where Simmonds was nursing his bruises.

There she had remained about an hour, if Simmonds was to be believed. She left just after eleven, returning by the way she had come. Simmonds had gone directly to bed. He admitted that he hadn’t slept well. At some time in the morning, not long after he had heard the boats come in, he had risen with the intention of having a swim before breakfast.

‘You’ll never believe me … what’s the use of going on?’

‘You saw her, then, did you, lying between the boats?’

‘No! That’s why it’s impossible … she wasn’t near the boats.’

‘Where was she then?’

‘Right there … in front of the tent.’

He wasn’t far wrong in anticipating disbelief – Gently stared at him for a long time without opening his mouth. It was an odd sort of tale to tell if Simmonds were guilty, on the other hand, murderers sometimes told an odd tale.

‘In that case, how did she get down to the boats?’

‘I took her there.’

‘You did!’

‘What else could I do? If someone else found her …’

‘Why did you leave her by the boats?’

‘I couldn’t get her any further. She was too stiff and heavy … it was making me sick.’

Gently let him stumble on through the rest of his narrative. There wasn’t much to add to it which was to the artist’s credit. He had slunk back to his tent and tied the flaps to behind him; he’d lain trembling and fearful, even getting back again into his blankets. In an ecstasy of terror he had heard Nockolds approaching. The terrible barking of the dog had warned him that the body was discovered.

‘I’ve always hated dogs … always … always!’

It was a long time before he dared to join the crowd on the beach.

‘Exactly where was that body?’

‘In front of the tent. I could show you.’

‘How far away?’

‘It was’ – Simmonds trembled – ‘it was just where that man was standing, the fisherman … his feet.’

‘In which direction was it pointing?’

‘The head was pointing towards my tent.’

Dutt read over the statement and Simmonds scrawled a signature to it. The whole business had taken them little over an hour. In her kitchen Mrs Mears had brewed an urn-like pot of tea; it was strong and made so sweet that one could nearly stand up a spoon in it. The greens, providentially, had been removed from the stove, though their odour yet clung to the sweltering atmosphere.

‘Where – where are you going to take me?’

Simmonds had an air of docility, a meekness that suggested a well-spanked child.

‘Nowhere. You’re free to go. Just stay around Hiverton.’

‘But I thought …’

‘Well you were wrong! Only don’t try anything foolish. If you take my advice you’ll find some digs in the village. Your stuff can stay here until you’re ready to collect it.’

‘Then you really believe?’

‘Don’t be too sure of that.’

Simmonds shook his head bewilderedly and gulped down the syrupy tea.

At the door there was another crisis – for the first time he saw the reporters. They had risen to their feet and were shuffling together cards and money.
Simmonds
went a few steps and then came to a standstill, a spasm of violent trembling overcoming his slight body.

‘I can’t go – you mustn’t make me!’

He turned in a panic to where Gently stood.

‘I’d rather be arrested … please! I’d rather …’

‘Unfortunately I haven’t given you the option.’

‘If you like I’ll confess … please, don’t make me go!’

In the end Dutt went off with him, as an alternative to tailing. Mrs Mears had supplied him with the address of a likely lodging. To the last he kept looking back hopefully towards Gently, but the figure which blocked the doorway steadily refused to catch his eye.

W
AS THERE A
tempest brewing out of all that heat? Gently had several times glanced at the
innocent-seeming
sky. The air had a hectic feel and the sun was brassy; a lot of ugly black flies had appeared and were fluttering about everywhere. Thunder-flies, were they? They had the appearance of evil. Their legs were long and shining and their antennae flickered
ceaselessly
. But as yet there was no sign of thunder, not a scratch on the dusty heavens. Today was like yesterday and probably tomorrow – another scorcher. What could improve on that description?

He dropped in at the Beach Store to buy himself an ice cream. On his way through the village he had encountered a group of fishermen. They were
lounging
under a wall and smoking their short clay pipes: they watched him in a heavy silence as he drew level with and passed them. Then one of them had spat – had the timing been coincidental? Bob Hawks was one of their number, but like the rest he’d held his peace.

Mrs Neal, too, seemed unfriendly, or at least
indisposed for a chat. She had gone straight back to her other customers after she had made his ice cream, though they, like Gently, were served and merely passing the time. He went out feeling that she had let him down in some way. It was possible that she thought he had inspired the article in the
Echo
.

He followed the example of the fishermen and found a wall under which to sit. He wanted time to think the business over, to try the pieces in their varying patterns. He had a case against the artist, of that there wasn’t a shadow of doubt. If it went before the public prosecutor then a suitable indictment would have to follow.

Only – and here he was back at the beginning – the case against Simmonds didn’t satisfy Gently.
Somewhere
, somehow, it was failing to click: it was jarring against deep-seated, deeply felt intuition. But what was that intuition and how had he come by it? Alas, that was the very thing which Gently didn’t know. All that he could do was to worry over the facts and to try, once more, to evolve something fresh from them.

He pulled out the notebook which he kept for unofficial musings. Finding a clean page with difficulty he began to scribble down the situation. There were four of them in it, beginning with Mixer, though the connection of the fourth suspect was tenuous indeed:

Having got that down he lit his pipe and stared at the scribbling. Then he added, as an afterthought:

Over this he brooded for some time, making little marks with his pencil, but finally he drew two lines under it with a sort of conclusive emphasis. Whether Dawes knew something or not, nothing would ever draw it out of him. He might inform on a stranger like Simmonds but he would never shop one of his own ‘subjects’.

And then, what was there to be known about the evil-tempered fisherman? Gently couldn’t begin to guess, it was the thinnest part of his summation. On rational grounds alone Hawks could scarcely be said to come into it. There wasn’t the merest suggestion that he had any connection with Rachel.

And yet …

Gently hovered again over the pencilled name with the (4) beside it. Wasn’t that the direction in which he found himself being drawn? If any single thing was making him hesitate about Simmonds, then it was the look which Hawks gave the artist that morning on the
sandhill. A look … against a comfortable fileful of evidence!

He grunted and shoved the book back in his pocket. It was time he put the fisherman out of his mind. There was a more logical outsider to be had in Maurice – and Mixer, he still wasn’t exactly in the clear!

Suppose he had come back and caught Rachel leaving the tent – was it too much to suppose that he’d gone there looking for her?

Gently got to his feet and brushed himself irritably. With a clear case to present he felt more in the dark than ever. The trouble was that he wasn’t content to be a simple chief inspector: he wanted to be the jury too, and probably the appeal court on top. But it wasn’t his business to say whether Simmonds was telling the truth.

Why couldn’t he let it rest there, and leave the artist to take his chance?

The heat made it a penance to be on the beach, and it may have been as a penance that Gently plodded down there. He had no hopes of a sea breeze – Hiverton despised meteorology – and the lapping of the waves was not an invitation for him.

At the net store he passed Dawes, armed today with a telescope. The owner of the
Keep Going
didn’t acknowledge Gently’s stare. His blue eyes gazed ceaselessly towards the haze-misty horizon, and he seemed quite untroubled by the stark beating of the sun.

Nor were the visitors much troubled by it, judging by their activity. Only a few of them, the elderly ones,
sat in the shade of the boats. The usual crowd of youngsters were swimming and playing on the beach, others lay tanning, a few were amusing their children. Near the gap stood an ice cream stall which was doing a steady business. A portable radio was playing under a sunshade lower down.

Had they forgotten about it, then, that earlier scene on the sandhill? One would almost have thought so, strolling among them now. Separated into units they were reasonable people, ashamed, very probably, of their madness of that moment. Nevertheless they had made a mob, these reasonable people. With a scapegoat set before them they had been ready enough for violence. Had they seen in Simmonds something a little too germane, something too much like
themselves
to be viewed with strict sanity?

But they were reasonable people … now, at all events! They were basking in the sun and
congratulating
themselves on the weather. If they glanced uneasily at Gently that was only to be expected: they didn’t really want a policeman cluttering up their pleasant beach.

He tramped down to the foreshore where the children were paddling and building castles. A number of them had banded together and were digging quite a sizeable hole. A boy of seven or eight was trying to float his model yacht; it must have been ballasted wrongly because it persisted in turning turtle.

The sea … hadn’t that to do with it, in some incomprehensible way? The sea which Dawes kept watching, as though it held an unutterable secret?

He turned his head to look for the man. Yes, he still stood there. As upright as one of the posts, for all his sixty summers, he remained planted by the hut in his tireless, oblivious vigil.

But what was he looking for in those acres of changeful water? Perhaps he couldn’t have told you himself, though you caught him in the mood. They were a ‘rum lot’, fishermen, they didn’t work like other people. Even here, in their native village, they were a race apart from the others. A fisherman’s wife was a fisherman’s widow. They were a right ‘rum lot’, and nobody understood them.

Except one of themselves … you could be certain of that! Within the clan they would understand each other, better than did the people outside it. Together in work, together in danger, together in that
inexpressible
communion of the sea … they were more like a band of brothers, a religious order almost: they were the receptacle of secrets past common understanding. And to share them you must belong, to partake of the revelation; after which … wasn’t it possible? … you could murder and get away with it!

Gently shifted his feet in the baking shingle. It was true: one could probably get away with murder. Dawes wouldn’t split on Hawks though he caught him red-handed – it was a fisherman’s murder, so let who would swing for it. The sea washed away all the sins of its children.

Again he looked back at the figure on the sandhill. Was it just an illusion, or was Dawes now watching him? The tilt of the cap seemed a few degrees lower,
the head was turned a little from its original eyes-front. Impulsively, Gently began to walk towards the net store. There was no harm in trying even though Esau wouldn’t answer him. Sometimes silence was
expressive
, sometimes more so than loquacity: it wouldn’t be the first time that Gently had drawn blood from a stone.

But then, half way up the beach, he came to a puzzled halt. Dawes was no longer posted there like a storm-beaten figurehead. The net store was deserted. There was nobody within yards of it. The fisherman had vanished as though the sandhill had swallowed him up.

The disappearance of Dawes had something less than canny about it, because Gently had been watching the man all the way from the foreshore. Only once had he glanced away – when his toe stubbed a pebble – and it was in that fraction of an instant that the phenomenon had taken place. He hurried eagerly up to the store, into which Dawes might have slipped. Had the door been unlocked he would have had bare time to do it. But no, it was bolted and the padlock in position: there was nowhere at all where a man could have hidden himself.

Then a movement caught his eye in the direction of Simmonds’s campsite. As mysteriously as he had vanished, Dawes had quietly reappeared!
Half-concealed
by one of the tops, he stood with face averted from Gently; in his demeanour there was no sign that anything out of the way had occurred.

Yet he must have moved like a goat … how else could he have covered so much ground? The distance was upwards of a hundred yards and, to keep out of sight, he must have run doubled …

Cautiously, Gently began to approach him, but immediately Esau sank down out of sight. By the time Gently himself arrived at the campsite his quarry was once more a hundred yards away. What was the man’s object? Was he having a game? There hadn’t seemed very much gamesome about Esau. As Gently paused, so too did the fisherman: he became again the sea-staring statue.

Gently compressed his lips and plodded steadily forwards. There was only one way to see what this was all about. If Esau wanted to play games, well, he was going to have his chance. When it came to
this
sort of game, Gently wasn’t entirely an amateur!

Soon there wasn’t any doubt about Esau’s
intentions
; he was deliberately leading the detective up the marrams. When Gently hurried, he hurried. When Gently stopped, he stopped. And always, without looking round, he kept at the same approximate distance. Before long Gently found himself grudgingly admiring the fellow. He began to perceive what it was that impressed the other fishermen. Esau was tough and he was clever, but he was something else besides. There was more than the look of a Viking about that active, bearded figure.

And what a chase he was giving Gently under the biting, sucking sun! On the beach, over the tops and through the spiteful, heartbreaking marrams. There
was no settled line of country. Esau went just where his fancy took him. Now they were up, now they were down, now they were battling through furze and scrub. One thing, however, was clear. They were drawing further and further away from the village. The last scatter of visitors was quickly left behind them; for the rest, they were alone with the sea and the marrams.

At one point Esau stopped and seemed to stamp with the heel of his sea boot. The pause was only momentary and he was away before Gently could get there. The spot was a shallow depression, like many others, in the top of a sandhill; the mark of the sea boot showed quite plainly, but there were also some other marks.

So Esau knew about that too – he knew the spot where the painting had been done. Gently had only to glance at the place to know why his attention had been drawn to it. Undisturbed, for there had been no wind, was the impression of a reclining body; at a distance of six feet from it were impressed the marks of easel and stool. Rachel, apparently, had been a little bored. She had played with the sand and burrowed her feet in it. Near Simmonds’s easel there were dark-coloured stains – where, one imagined, he had emptied his dipper.

And Esau knew … because he had watched them? Gently’s glance switched curiously after the evasive fisherman. He was waiting there at his customary distance, his face, inevitably, towards the sea. And at the first suspicion of movement from Gently, he was off again on his singular travels.

The man from the Central Office scrambled after him cursing. If Esau wanted to tell him something, why these roundabout methods? They must have put in miles on those everlasting marrams, and a cheap pair of sandals weren’t the equal of good sea boots. But Esau was the boss, and there was nothing to be done about it. If Gently wanted to maintain contact then he was obliged to tag along. His lonely consolation was that Esau had a method – they were on their way towards something, though what it was he couldn’t guess.

In the end, did Esau take a little pity on him? Their advance, at last, became more direct; he was straying less off the path as they approached the sandhill that marked the Ness. It loomed before them, a veritable giant, a miniature mountain among sandhills. Lying athwart the line of the others, it reduced the best of them to insignificance. Its sides were as steep as house roofs, it bettered a hundred feet at least. Gently, dashing the sweat from his eyes, was praying that Esau didn’t mean to climb over it.

But Esau did, that was soon apparent. Gently could tell it from the way he marched up to the obstacle. The sea boots, never pausing, thrashed on up the pitiless slope, dislodging puffs of dusty sand as the toes stabbed out their holds. Really, that hill was a little too much! One ought to be content to go round by the beach. Arriving at the bottom just as Esau got to the top, Gently planted his feet like an obstinate horse. His whole attitude was eloquent of his intention to stay there.