For a long time Gently stood still beside the spot where Hawks had fallen. The fisherman had scrambled to his feet and gone off after the others. A good few of the crowd still remained there, talking, and the vicar was turning some small boys out of the churchyard. Dutt had accompanied Simmonds — he still felt responsible for him, and Mears, who had returned the ladder, was now pedalling off on his cycle.
It was over — it was calming down; things were getting back to normal. Why, then, did he have this feeling that in reality they had just begun? Something had clicked as he saw Hawks go sprawling in the road, a premonition, an unconscious warning, you could call it what you liked. A climax was being reached: he couldn’t get any closer to it. A climax of a tragic nature, coming up like the storm, Yet what, excepting imagination, was suggesting this present catastrophe? What harm could come to the Sea-King, with his rout of subjects about him?
He stood a long time, vaccillating! His instinct was to follow Esau. His whole being seemed to pulse with a blind necessity for it. Against that there was feeble reason and some questions he had for the vicar: Dyson, no doubt, had asked the wrong ones, or he hadn’t known what to ask.
It was the vicar who finally settled him, coming over to Gently voluntarily. Would the inspector step across the road for a glass of home-made lemonade? Gently, went, though with grave misgivings. He couldn’t conquer his foreboding so easily. But there were no rational grounds for it and the vicar was on the spot… what else could he do but seize time by the forelock?
The vicar was a widower who lived with his youngest daughter. She was a plain-faced but smiling girl of two- or three-and-twenty. The vicarage was a large one and bore affinities to the Bel-Air; it was sparsely furnished with old, worn furniture, and yet, all the same, had an air of negligent comfort.
‘A terrible, terrible business, Inspector.’
The vicar had taken him into what was obviously his den. A roll-top desk occupied a space by the window and the other three walls were lined with bookshelves. The books themselves were cheerfully dilapidated. Quite a number of them were innocent of backstrips and covers. The desk was littered with papers, some of them weighted with lumps of amber. Above the desk, in a frame of maple wood, hung a photograph of a college eight.
‘That poor young man! What in the world constrained him to do it? Upon my word, it was a mercy that Skipper Dawes…’
Gently shrugged and looked for an ashtray in which to scrape out his pipe. Had the vicar called him in to see what he could pump from him? Soon the daughter re-appeared carrying the lemonade on a tray. While he poured it the vicar continued his musings and exclamations.
‘In your business, Inspector…’
‘We don’t see a lot of suicide.’
‘But to a certain extent you must be innured to these things. I understand that the young man…’
‘He is a material witness.’
‘I had heard, perhaps, incorrectly…’
‘There’s always gossip in these cases.’
The vicar nodded his head gravely. It was probably wrong to suspect him. He was shocked by what had happened and wanted to talk it over with someone.
‘I feel that if ever prayer was answered…’
‘You did more for him than I did.’
‘You, too, have the conviction?’
‘Didn’t you make him change his mind?’
He was afraid he had earned a lecture by this hint of unbelief. Over his tumbler of lemonade the vicar was staring at him solemnly. Then he sighed, and took a pull from it. This wasn’t, perhaps, the time! Gently, poker-faced behind his pipe, looked less than apt as a subject for lectures.
‘I had a visit from your colleague.’
‘Yes.’ Gently puffed a ring of smoke.
‘I couldn’t help him much, I’m afraid, unless it was help of a negative nature. These have been truly distressing days, Inspector. We live in an atmosphere of doubt. The sin of one man can infect a community — in a sense, we are all of us sharers in his guilt.’
‘You are referring to society?’
‘Every one of us, Inspector. The commission of a crime is like a ripple in a pond. We have impulses of good and impulses of evil, and both can be excited by the presence of their like. Those people out there! They are good souls, all of them. Many of them I have known all the days of their lives. Yet in the presence of sin they become themselves sinful, they feel guilt in themselves and their hearts become as stone. And when you find your culprit and bring him to the gallows their guilt, I’m afraid, not their justice, will rejoice.
‘The most tragic two words in the language are “Crucify him!” There, Inspector, lies the shipwreck of the human spirit.’
Gently nodded without comment — he hadn’t come to discuss the morals of it. At the moment he wanted something more directly germane. ‘All the days of their lives’ was the phrase which had struck him… the vicar was an observer who might hold vital information.
‘How long have you been in Hiverton?’
‘Don’t ask me, Inspector!’
He pointed to his short grey hair with a smile.
‘I came here from Tuthill — that’s a parish in Dorset. It was winter at the time and I thought I’d come to the North Pole.’
‘Many years ago, was it?’
‘In twenty-seven, to be exact. I ought to remember it because poor Mary was having John. We were snowed up for three weeks — no hope of a midwife. John was our first, you know. I shall never forget it.’
‘Things have changed, I expect.’
‘Yes. Even in Hiverton.’
‘And people, no doubt.’
‘They change, but they stay the same.’
‘The fishermen too?’
‘Especially the fishermen! They haven’t altered, Inspector, since Peter cast his nets in Galilee.’
‘What about Robert Hawks?’
‘Are you interested in Bob?’
‘I’d like to hear anything you can tell me about him.’
The vicar, rather to Gently’s surprise, himself produced a pipe. It was a pleasant little briar with an apple-shaped bowl. He tapped it once or twice fastidiously before filling it from a tin — the mixture, Gently noticed, was a mild-flavoured blend.
‘You’ve been using your eyes, haven’t you?’
Gently offered his matches, shrugging. The vicar lit his pipe attentively, letting the match burn almost to his fingers.
‘In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me… how much do you really know about them? Because Dawes comes into it, all along the line. If you’re interested in one then you’re interested in the other.’
‘In both if you like. I was going to ask about Esau.’
The vicar nodded wisely and adjusted his pipe with his thumb.
‘Well, when I first came here, things were altogether different. In those days they used to go drifting — Esau’s got his skipper’s ticket. As a matter of fact, I didn’t see much of them. They used to follow the fishing for the best part of the year, and were at Hiverton for only a few weeks at a time.’
‘How long did that continue?’
‘Oh, only for a year or two. I imagine they were saving their money to buy themselves boats. But what I was going to tell you was that then they were the best of friends — now, as you may have seen, they’re on a rather peculiar footing.
‘Bob, when I first knew him, would be round about thirty. He was a swashbuckling young man with very good looks. You’ve seen those dark eyes of his — they played havoc among the females. And he was a spark in those days, he’d got a joke for everyone.
‘Esau was a few years older and a steadier type altogether. He was always a bit reserved, a bit distant from the other fishermen. He was a skipper, which made a difference. He got his ticket very young. I believe he was very much sought after and had a wonderful record of catches.
‘Well then, as I say, they bought themselves boats — or more likely, Esau bought them: he was the one to have had the money. Esau’s boat was built at Wrackstead. I can remember them bringing it round. It’s unique in the line of fishing boats and there were pictures of it in the Eastern Daily Post.’
‘Can you remember what year that was?’
‘It was the spring of twenty-nine. Mary was having Anne, and she was born on the first of June.’
‘How did they get on with the boats?’
‘Oh, well — at least, Esau did. Bob, I imagine, was paying off instalments, but I don’t think it was that which came in between them. Esau had a spanking year. He was after his second boat. He owned five altogether by thirty-two or three, and later, for no good reason, he sold them off again. You’ll have to do a lot of probing, Inspector, to get to the bottom of Esau.’
‘But this thing… whatever it was?’
‘That’s just what I’m coming to now.’
The vicar re-lit his pipe with a little conscious art; but then, after puffing once or twice, he produced an anticlimax.
‘I don’t know what caused it, and that’s being honest with you. I can’t even be sure of when it took place. They’re chapel, you know, like most of the fishermen, and not so close to me as my own congregation. But something went wrong, that was plain to everyone. You never saw them together again as they were in the old days. Esau shut himself up just the way he is now and Bob — well, you’ve seen him. He changed out of mind.
‘But this is the odd thing, and I could never make it out. Esau gained a remarkable ascendancy over Bob. It seemed that the further they drifted apart, the more Bob stood in awe of him; whenever he was by poor Bob became as quiet as a lamb.
‘Esau, you can guess, had always been the dominant partner, and Bob wasn’t the only one to feel himself subjected. You must have noticed Esau’s standing. He’s a sort of high priest to the fishermen. He’s got more authority than I have with them, and I’m bound to admit that he uses it wisely.
‘But that doesn’t account for his ascendancy over Bob. There you’ve got something quite out of the natural order. I’m certain that Bob hates him — bless me for saying so! — yet he goes in perpetual subjugation to the man.’
‘And you’ve nothing to suggest?’
‘I haven’t, Inspector. This is Hiverton’s mystery and has been for years. If you’re thinking of solving it, then I give you fair warning. I’ve lived half my life with it and have never had an inkling.’
He puffed away complacently, his pale hands on his knees. He was obviously enjoying this chat about his parishioners. But it was getting Gently nowhere, except to confirm his guesses. All that the priest had told him so far was only corroborating the Sea-King.
Gently was party to Hiverton’s mystery, but the proof was still out of his hands!
‘You say you couldn’t be sure when it happened?’
‘No… if you want me to be exact. It’s the negative sort of thing that one doesn’t at first notice. It might go on for years before your attention gets drawn to it.’
‘What drew your attention to it?’
‘Some gossip, I dare say. Like every other village, Hiverton is well served in that line.’
‘It was before the war, of course?’
‘Oh yes, a good while before. If you’re pinning me down I would say the early thirties — but don’t rely on my memory too much.’
‘Just after they bought the boats?’
‘Yes, it wouldn’t have been so long after. But I’ve long given up the view that money had anything to do with it. They’d have ironed out their money troubles and have forgotten them by now. Bob, you must understand, has never been unprosperous.’
‘He never married, did he?’
‘No, and that again was peculiar. He used to be fond of the girls, and then he was all the other way.’
‘Dating from this trouble between them?’
‘More or less, now you come to mention it.’
‘Didn’t that ever strike you as significant?’
‘Not before… and I can’t see it now.’
Still it was only corroborative, though the corroboration was growing stronger. Touch it where you would and it gave you solid support for Esau. And surely the proof must come, if one could frame the definitive question — the revealing answer was there, it needed only to be evoked!
‘Did he have any trouble with women?’
‘I believe so. From time to time.’
‘Anything special that you can remember?’
‘Yes… there was scandal about one girl. Her name was Platten, I seem to recall… she was engaged to a fellow at Hamby. Her first child was born rather soon after the wedding and rumour had it that her husband thrashed Robert.’
‘What happened to her afterwards?’
‘She’s still living in Hamby. Her husband keeps the Marquis and her daughter married a Gorbold.’
‘And she’s the child in question?’
‘No, that was a “he”. They christened him Japheth — he’s in the Merchant Navy.’
The vicar gave a little chuckle as though something amusing had struck him. He tapped his pipe on his palm and looked at Gently with a quizzical twinkle.
‘You haven’t asked about Esau. Doesn’t he impress you as being marriageable?’
‘Esau!’
‘Yes — I thought you’d stare! But I assure you that he’s a married man.’
Gently sat very still, his pipe rigid between his teeth. For a second or two he was unable to speak a word. The vicar smiled broadly at the impression he had made — here was something that had astonished the unastonishable chief inspector!
‘You’re quite certain, about this?’
‘My dear fellow, I married him. It was a particular triumph since he was such a stout chapelite. His lady, I’m afraid, had no convictions either way, but I imagine that she felt the church would give a better tone to the occasion.’
‘And his wife — where is she?’
‘He kicked her out, years ago. They were an ill-assorted couple, Esau and his Josephine. She was a foreigner, you know — that’s to say, she wasn’t Northshire. I could have told the skipper he was making a mistake, though, of course, he didn’t ask my advice.’
Gently could only shake his head. The information had struck him like a bludgeon. Almost anything but this he had been preparing himself to hear. It was nudging the whole foundation, the very groundworks of the case — in a moment, he could sense, the structure would crash about his ears.
‘Where did she come from?’
‘Josephine?’
‘From Camden Town, by any chance?’
‘She certainly came from London, though I don’t recall what part. Esau met her on a fishing trip — it was when he was on the drifters. I have a hazy impression that they met in Ramsgate or Margate.’
‘What was her name?’
‘That’s asking too much! But if you want to know we can find it in the register.’
‘Can you remember the year she left him?’
‘Precisely. It was in the summer of nineteen-thirty.’
He was aware of the vicar staring at him gravely, a puckered little frown on the ecclesiastical brow. He had laid his pipe aside and placed the tips of his fingers together: now he was rocking them towards Gently in a manner of gentle reproof.
‘I’m not an idiot, you know, and I can guess what’s in your mind. Your colleague has already told me about that skeleton in the marrams. But it won’t do, Inspector, it won’t do at all. There’s a couple of hundred witnesses that Mrs Dawes really left her husband.’
‘A couple of hundred witnesses!’
Gently couldn’t help his incredulity.
‘A couple of hundred or more, and I was one of them myself. It was a seven-day wonder at Hiverton. The village talked about it for weeks. She went off to the station in Albert Johnson’s hire car, swearing like a trooper and cursing Esau to high heaven. It was a tragedy, I admit, but not the sort that you’re thinking of.’
‘But that was the last that was heard of her?’
‘You’re wrong again. She wrote to her acquaintances. Our maid at the time had a letter from Josephine — it was a shocking epistle, highly ungrammatical.’
‘You saw it, did you?’
‘I did, Inspector. It made me congratulate myself on being rid of such a parishioner. After applying every conceivable epithet to her husband she declared her intention of never again leaving London. And she never did, you can be certain. There has never been a whisper of her. She couldn’t have set foot here without the whole village buzzing of it.’
‘And that was in the summer of nineteen-thirty?’
‘Yes, almost a year from the day on which I married them.’
‘Was there a child of the marriage?’
‘It was unblessed in every way.’
‘If you’ve no objections I should like to use your phone.’
The phone was in a niche under the stairs in the hall, and to use it one was obliged to adopt a semi-crouched position. As always there was a wait before Pagram came on: for what seemed like half-an-hour he was listening to the exchange’s murmur.
‘Pagram? Listen carefully — there’ve been further developments. It’s Campion’s mother that I want you to get a line on. Her name may be Dawes, a Mrs Esau Dawes; and she may have been living with her mother in the summer of nineteen-thirty. The vital thing to know…’
He heard Pagram’s delighted chuckle.
‘This time we’ve beaten you to the punch, old horse! I’ve just taken a statement from an ex-neighbour of Mrs Campion’s. It’s all about the scarlet daughter — would you like me to read it over?’
‘Tell me when she left.’
‘Right… in the November of that year. She had a spat with her mother, if our source is to be relied on.’
‘Was she heard of after that?’
‘Not by this particular informant. She lived next-door to Mrs Campion until the outbreak of war, after she went to Hayes to the house of her married son.’
‘What was the daughter’s name?’
‘I tried to get it, but she couldn’t remember.’
‘Was the daughter pregnant at the time?’
‘Bless you, yes! Don’t you want the details?’
Gently eased his back away from the encroachments of the staircase. The lemonade had re-started his sweat, he could feel drops of it trickling down his brow. Or was the heat entirely responsible… was some of it due to a different reason? From down the hallway he could hear the vicar in conversation with a tradesman.
‘Are you with me? The daughter was married in nineteen-twenty-nine. Her mother disapproved and she wasn’t married from home. My informant never saw the man and Mrs Campion never spoke about him — the impression was that he was of the roving kind, or anyway, unrespectable.
‘She came back again a year later, not much to the joy of Mrs Campion. The old lady was a bit old-fashioned and her daughter had the reputation of being a man-eater. But the girlie was having a child, which I dare say made a difference; so she duly stayed on and had it — a girl, of course: our old friend Rachel.
‘Then there happened this spat between them and the daughter once more slung her hook. She went off in a towering passion, leaving her baby and junk behind her. Her mother thought she’d be coming back for them, but when she didn’t, wasn’t too surprised. So the baby stayed there and was brought up by its grandmother. It was known from the beginning as Rachel Campion.
‘Those are the facts, old man, less the picturesque trimmings. My informant, needless to say, put the least favourable construction on them.’
It had to be the same woman! Gently clutched at his moist receiver. Every detail fitted pat, there wasn’t a single trace of discrepancy. And she had come back to Hiverton, back to that lonely grave in the marrams. And nobody had missed her at Hiverton. Nobody had missed her at Camden Town.
‘Hallo? I want something else done.’
‘I could hear you thinking it up.’
‘The local police have sent in some dental impressions. I’m pretty well certain that they belong to Rachel’s mother.’
‘Oh no — don’t shove that on to us!’
‘Will you see what you can do?’
‘Why not? The taxpayers expect something for their money. By the way, as you sit there sweating in Northshire…’
Pagram’s voice grew suddenly fainter and more distant, and in its place Gently could hear a soft and sibilant drumming. For an instant it grew louder and resembled something familiar; then, as though a switch were pulled, it was cut off entirely.
‘Recognize that, old man?’
‘Would it be the sound of rain?’
‘Rain is right — if you make a habit of the British understatement! The stuff is fairly whirring down. We’re in the middle of a freak storm. Over the City way it’s as black as ink, and there’s a lot of lightning without any thunder. And here’s a tip — keep your mac handy: the stuff is heading straight up-country.’
Gently jammed the receiver on its cradle and hurried back to the vicar’s den.
‘That register… I’d like to see it.’
‘Come with me then. It’s kept in the vestry.’
Even a townsman could spot it now, the terrific weather that was breeding. The southern sky was all in a haze, and northward the landscape as fragile as glass. There was a tense, galvanic stillness. The clamour of a blackbird sounded like a threat. On a distant farm, seeming unable to stop itself, a cock was crowing again and again.
‘I could smell this coming all day.’
The vicar was forced to take two strides to Gently’s one.
‘There was scarcely any dew — did you happen to notice it? In this weather it’s a sign that we’re going to catch it.’
‘I had a feeling, too.’
‘Ah! You’re country-bred, aren’t you?’
‘Do you keep the church locked?’
‘Good gracious no. Whatever for?’
As he led him up the aisle the vicar gave his chuckle again:
‘Talking of that and Bob Hawks puts me in mind of something else. I caught him in here yesterday, and what do you think he was after? The date of his mother’s wedding! If she was wedded would be more like it!’
‘You mean?’ Gently caught him by the arm. ‘He was in here — looking at the register?’
‘Just so, as large as life. I had to laugh about it afterwards.’
Gently almost ran into the vestry. The register was lying on a chest of drawers. Quickly he flickered through the pages of life, hope, and mortality. The name stood plump and plain: it was Josephine Rachel Campion. And beside it, like an evil omen, lay a single, tarry thumb mark.