Hicks had been seen, but nobody knew who had seen him. That was the result of lengthy and exhaustive questioning.
About three in the afternoon the rumour began. Mrs Grey had set out to shop in the village at half-past two. Cheerful Annie was having a nap on her bunk. Ted Thatcher was fishing, Pedro gone off strawberry-picking and the rest of the community disposed in their various forms of idleness. And sometime during the half-hour that followed Joe Hicks was seen sneaking up the path to let himself into the cottage. By three o’clock, the knowledge was common property. Only everyone had heard it from somebody else.
By guile and sarcasm, Gently did his level best to break the vicious circle.
‘There’s only thirty-three of you… suppose you stand in a row, each one next to the person who told him!’
They were perfectly willing to try — if they could have remembered who in fact had told him.
‘It can’t be mass hysteria… do some of you know the difference between seeing a thing and being told it?’
But it wasn’t any good. Nobody would own up. Fact or illusion, the image of Joe Hicks creeping into his aunt’s cottage seemed to have drifted into the little community on a passing breeze: everyone knew, nobody had seen.
And Gently had other worries, anyway.
‘The super’s getting jumpy,’ Hansom had told him on the phone. ‘The Coroner’s beefing about his inquest and he’s a pal of the CC’s. The super wants to know if we’re going to make a grab in the next twenty-four hours…’
‘Coroners…!’ exploded Gently with deep feeling, as he hung up the phone.
In the morning things looked brighter. They had a tendency to do so over Mrs Grey’s breakfast-table. Also, Gently noticed once more, the mind had a way of sorting things out while one was asleep… you went to bed with a problem and woke up with a new slant on it. Or a better attitude, which was sometimes as good.
‘We goes into town, sir?’ enquired Dutt, soaking up the last of the bacon-grease with a piece of bread.
‘We goes into town, Dutt.’
‘If you don’t mind, sir, I reckon we might dig something up at the bus-station, the times of them buses being so cohincidental.’
‘You’re dead right, Dutt — that’s your assignment.’
‘Though I got to admit, sir, it beats me what the connection is there.’
Gently reached for the ginger marmalade and dredged up a tidy spoonful.
‘You have to remember that we’ve got two camps at “Willow Street” — pro-Lammas and anti-Lammas.’
‘Yessir. I see that, sir. But what business could Miss Pauline have with this Brent woman?’
‘Well… this Brent woman might be running into trouble once Mrs L. found out about her. And she had found out, if we’re to believe Mr Crow.’
Dutt nodded intelligently and rescued the marmalade.
‘But how would Miss Pauline know where to meet her, sir?’
‘She wouldn’t, would she, unless she knew the whole plot.’
‘Then why don’t we just pick her up and spring it on her sudden, sir?’
‘Because we’ve got nothing to spring, Dutt — not until we can prove she met Linda Brent.’
The sapient Dutt allowed that his senior had got something.
The super was out when Gently reported at HQ and Gently was duly thankful. Hansom’s print men had done a sterling job of work at ‘Willow Street’, but the results were entirely negative. They had acquired good specimens of Lammas’ prints and of Hicks’. It was Lammas’ which were found on the reverse of the drawer that had contained the gun. And Mrs Lammas’, of course… but they were accounted for. For the record Hansom had sweated out a press pic. of Lammas. It wasn’t too good. One got the impression of a dapper, athletic-looking man of middle-stature, expensively dressed, a touch of distinction about a badly caught profile and iron-grey hair.
Gently said: ‘You’ve had nothing in about Hicks?’
Hansom laughed a hard laugh.
‘I’m having that photo circulated… what gives you the idea that Hicks has been financed and tucked away somewhere?’
‘He’s supposed to have been seen at Upper Wrackstead yesterday afternoon.’
‘Seen?’ — Hansom’s mouth gaped open.
‘Supposed to have been… it’s probably just a rumour. I can’t get hold of a first-hand witness. I ran over the cottage to please Mrs Grey and Dutt took a shufti at the boats. We didn’t find anything.’
‘But Jeez — shouldn’t we get a man out there?’
‘Maybe we should… though he’ll show up like a sore thumb.’
Back in the Wolseley Gently sat for a minute or two gazing at the well-polished facia board. Then he solemnly produced and tossed a coin. It came down heads.
Pacey Road was a shabby-genteel thoroughfare off Thorne Road. It consisted of rows of late Victorian iced-cake houses, solid though stupid, and derived an air of sooty forlornness from the nearby marshalling yards of Thorne Station. Most of it had been taken over by the County Council and Gently, cruising slowly down, discovered the Drama Organizer’s office at the extreme and stationmost end. He was lucky, they told him. One didn’t often catch the Drama Organizer in his office.
Gently introduced himself and stated his business. John Playfair, an impish, smiling little man with bushy hair and glittering brown eyes, checked his information with scientific thoroughness. Yes, Pauline was one of his most promising young players. Yes, she had been waiting at the door of St Giles’ Hall when he got there for rehearsal on Friday. What time she left he couldn’t be sure… he was trying to iron out the Hovel scene, he seemed to remember. But it was round about her usual time. She had flashed him a goodnight and a promise to be there all day Sunday.
‘Did she seem upset at all that evening?’ Gently prompted.
‘Well… there you are! I can’t swear I noticed anything different about Pauline — I wasn’t really on the look-out for it. As far as I was concerned, she was her usual cheery self.’
‘Of course, you knew Mr Lammas pretty well.’
The smile died from the Drama Organizer’s eyes.
‘Yes… poor old Jimmy! He’d been the backbone of the Anesford since our St Julian’s Hall days… it’s a shocking thing to have happened to him.’
‘Was he popular with the Players?’
‘He was rather more than that… he was almost a tradition with us. Life won’t be quite the same here with old Jimmy gone.’
‘He wasn’t in the present production, however?’
‘No.’ Playfair frowned. ‘I wanted him to play Kent, but he said he couldn’t manage this time. This is an extra production, you understand — we’re putting it on for Festival Week. It isn’t easy to get people at this time of the year.’
‘Did he say why he couldn’t play?’
‘Well… something about business. One doesn’t bully people, you know.’
‘Had business ever stopped him before?’
‘No. But then, we’ve never put on a show in July before.’
Gently half-lofted a shoulder in acknowledgement of the loyalty implicit in the other man’s reply.
‘He was a good actor… what sort of parts did he play?’
‘Jimmy? He was a comedy actor… one of the best I’ve ever seen. The stage lost something when Jimmy went into business. The amateur stage, you know, is plagued with people who simply play themselves — the amateur who can create character is the rarest of rare birds. And Jimmy was that rare bird. Heaven knows how we’re going to replace him!’
‘He was very attached to his daughter, was he?’
‘Very attached indeed.’
‘You knew something about his family affairs?’
‘A little… though not from Jimmy. It was Pauline who dropped something occasionally.’
Gently nodded and picked up his trilby.
‘And his secretary… did he ever mention her?’
‘No — never, within my hearing.’
‘Thank you, Mr Playfair.’ Gently extended his hand. ‘If I should still be in town next week, I’ll make a point of getting along to your Lear!’
The tails side of his coin took him to a thirties-looking reinforced concrete building which stood on the river bank near Count Street bridge. Count Street was dull and industrialized, showing high, bleak walls diversified with an occasional small shop, or a flint church which had got lost during the nineteenth century. The warehouse of Lammas Wholesalers Ltd. was quite an adornment.
Gently turned in at the open gate and parked in the yard. Four steel-shuttered doors over a loading-ramp were closed and locked, but a smaller door at the side stood ajar. He pushed it open and went in. In the office to his right an elderly man in a dark suit was working at a high desk.
‘Hullo… you the sole survivor?’
The elderly man turned to survey him through steel-rimmed spectacles.
‘The Police again?’ he enquired a little tetchily.
Gently grinned and admitted the fact.
‘We can’t help it… not when people get themselves killed! What’s your name, by the way?’
He was Mr Page and he had been the head clerk. A shrivelled, martinet of a man. He hadn’t the slightest right to be there nor the remotest prospect of being paid for what he was doing… but he was doing it all the same. He was tidying up the loose ends of the business.
Gently settled himself on a table and stuffed his pipe with Navy Cut. There was something incredibly dreary and posthumous about this place…
‘You always been with Lammas?’ he asked.
‘I have. At least, ever since the firm was founded.’
‘How long have you been head clerk?’
‘Since the beginning of the war. Our last head clerk was a younger man. He volunteered for Army service.’
‘You’d know everything that went on here.’
‘In the line of business, certainly. That is what head clerks are for.’
‘Well… what about this realization? Didn’t you know about that?’
‘It could hardly have been carried out without my knowledge.’
Lammas hadn’t quite pulled the wool over Page’s eyes, but he’d got pretty close to it. He’d built his story round the approaching termination of his lease on the warehouse. Because of that he was reducing stock, because of that he was selling off trucks and vans. And if it meant the loss of business? Page needn’t worry his head about that! Lammas was conducting highly secret negotiations for the lease of bigger and better premises. When the firm acquired these it would blossom out on a scale it had never approached before. And then Page, of course, could expect a substantial augmentation of his salary
… even an allotment of shares, to increase his interest in the firm.
Yes… Lammas had played it well enough to keep Page guessing, if not satisfied.
And after all, hadn’t Page been witness to Lammas’ business acumen all these long years?
‘What about Miss Brent — you must have noticed something there?’
Page tightened his mummified lips.
‘Miss Brent worked in the ante-room to Mr Lammas’ office, which is across the corridor. It was not my business to spy on my employer’s conduct.’
‘But you’d got an idea?’
‘I have seen nothing suspicious.’
‘I’m not asking if you caught them in flagrante delicto,… just if their attitude struck you as suggestive.’
Page eyed him in hostile silence.
‘Looking at it another way… if you had noticed something, would you have felt it your business to drop Mrs Lammas a hint?’
The ghost of a flush appeared in Page’s corpse-like countenance.
‘This… has to do with the case?’
‘Oh yes! Very much it has to do with the case.’
‘It is not my business, you understand, to be a passer of idle gossip.’
‘I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t require the facts.’
‘Very well… since I have your assurance. I did in fact drop such a hint.’
‘When!’ rapped Gently, with such venom that Page nearly toppled off his stool.
‘When… why… it was Friday morning! I rang her up when the wage cheque was refused… she drove into town directly with money to pay off the staff!’
It came out easily then. Page was suddenly rather frightened. He had gone to the bank at the end of the morning to cash the cheque and when it was refused, had started putting two and two together. Mrs Lammas, when she arrived, had put them together even faster. Where was Linda Brent? She hadn’t been in that week! What was going on at the business? The unhappy Page had had to admit that it was practically sold out.
‘Who else was present at this interview?’ fired Gently.
‘Nobody — they had gone to lunch!’
‘And why didn’t you tell the police about it?’
‘I–I looked upon it as a private matter… Mrs Lammas advised me to keep it to myself…’
‘How did you find out about the Harrier?’
‘I didn’t — I didn’t know anything about it.’
‘Then where did Mrs Lammas get her information?’
The head clerk wrung his hands anguishedly.
‘She went into his office… she might have found something amongst his papers!’
With a snort Gently got up off his table and slammed across the corridor into Lammas’ office. It was a neat, well-furnished room, looking out on the drab river-frontage. Gently sized it up quickly. There was a shallow document drawer at the top of the green steel desk. On the desk lay a slightly bent paper-knife and the drawer was bent and scratched above the lock. He whisked it open. No need to look further! The current Blake’s List stared him in the face, turned back at the Harrier’s entry, and under it lay Old Man Sloley’s confirmatory letter…
‘Haven’t you got any keys to this desk?’
The shattered head clerk had followed him into the room. He shook his head helplessly.
‘Well… I doubt whether he would have left anything interesting, though we’ll have to make sure.’
He ruffled through the other papers in the drawer, then threw them back impatiently.
‘Look here! I’m pretty certain Lammas was up to something we don’t know about. Why not make a clean breast? He’s dead now and in any case he hasn’t treated you any too well.’
‘But there was absolutely nothing…!’ Poor Page was almost ludicrous in his agitation.
‘There must have been something! What were those mid-week trips of his about?’
‘They were to negotiate the new property… that’s what he told me!’
‘And you believed it — you, with your finger on the pulse of everything going on here! Do you think we’re imbeciles? You couldn’t help having an idea. And don’t think you’ll be left here any longer to cook the books and cover up!’
This was too much for the head clerk. He drew himself up with a fury that almost startled Gently.
‘Sir… sir! If you continue in these allegations I shall request the presence of my solicitor. I will not submit to such preposterous accusations!’
‘All right… all right!’ Gently waved him down pacifically. ‘We’ll check the books anyway… I’m only giving you a chance to come clean.’
‘But I have nothing to admit, sir! I am here purely in the office of a caretaker — unpaid, I may say. My services are gratuitous-!’
‘I’ll believe you… don’t labour it.’
‘-doing nothing but answering correspondence, which, sir, must be done!’
Further protestations seemed to hover on the outraged Page’s lips, but he was interrupted by the sudden clangour of the dead man’s phone. For a moment both of them stared at it, ringing away insistently on the corner of the desk. Then Gently grabbed it up and limbered it to his ear.
‘Chief Inspector Gently.’
It was Hansom at the other end.
‘I’ve been trying to get you for the last hour… thought you might like the latest bulletin from Upper Wrackstead.’
‘Upper Wrackstead!’ Gently stiffened. ‘You don’t mean you’ve picked up Hicks?’
‘Not yet… not quite!’ Hansom’s voice sounded gloating. ‘But we’ve picked up a specimen of the larky lad’s handiwork. You remember that fat burglar’s wife — Cheerful Annie, they call her? Well, they found her in the Dyke this morning… with a. 22 bullet through her head!’