The sun, by ten o’clock, was fully established, and the last of the morning had gone out of the day. The village and vicinity, which till then had seemed tolerable, now began to weary with its pitiless exposure. So little shade there was, so little promise of respite! Beach, marrams, and houses glared and rippled in the furnace. Not a motion stirred the grasses, not a bird sang anywhere. The air was a burden and one sweated doing nothing.
Oddly enough the effect was of darkness. The extreme brilliance of the sun appeared to vitiate colour. The sea looked heavy, the houses dulled, the sky itself seemed dusky and unluminous. It was the sun alone which throbbed with brightness. Into itself it drew again its effulgent light. Left behind was the heat, enveloping, ennervating: the world seemed plunged into a dark, fierce fever.
‘Another scorcher!’
One heard it everywhere. With a peculiar emphasis, it expressed the weather exactly. And yet people were somehow proud of it, this Homeric bout of sun. Inevitably the two words would come out like a boast.
‘Another scorcher, sir!’
Dutt had said it as they started out. The manager, too, had got it in when they passed him on the lawn. A little further on they encountered Colonel Morris. His step had lost its briskness and he had ceased to swing his cane.
‘Another scorcher, eh? Reminds me of Alex!’
Why did they sound so personal about it, as though in some way it did them credit?
‘That kid’s in for a rough time, sir,’ observed Dutt as they tramped along the beach. ‘I haven’t said nothing before, sir, but from the first I’ve had my doubts about him. I don’t reckon we need worry about Mixer any more.’
Gently trudged ahead without replying. Everything was pushing the ball in Simmonds’s direction. If you agreed to let out Mixer, then there seemed but one thing for it; yet, out of sheer pig-headedness no doubt, his mind kept shying away from Simmonds. It was as if he had formed an equation the terms of which excluded the artist.
‘There’s his background, sir, you can’t overlook it. The bloke on the Echo brought that out pretty well. Haven’t we seen it before with kids like that? A little extra shove, and click! — they’re over the edge.’
‘You can’t argue like that, Dutt.’
‘I know, sir. But it makes you think. And like the paper says, she wasn’t found far from his tent.’
Like the paper says! Was that what was influencing him? Not for the world would he have admitted it to himself. As always when on a case he made a point of reading the papers: sometimes they gave him a fact which he hadn’t succeeded in eliciting. But he didn’t let them bias him, one way or the other. They were a necessary evil which he had learned to put up with.
Besides, in this particular case… there was Maurice, for instance. And even on the facts, those that one knew.
‘You’d better tail him, I suppose, after we’ve had his statement.’
‘It won’t do any harm, sir, and might do some good.’
‘He might do something silly. Let him see you around. If necessary I’ll get another man out from Wendham.’
‘He’s the type to blow his gaff, sir, if he thinks we’re really after him.’
As they drew nearer to the campsite the effect of the Echo article became apparent. Most of the people on the beach had gravitated in that direction. Except for a few small boys they didn’t precisely stand and stare, but now and then a head would turn or a voice be cautiously lowered.
When the detectives arrived it was different: the crowd began to exhibit a purpose. From an accidental scattering they drew together in a group. They followed the two men up the sandhill and casually deployed themselves at the top — if this was to be the arrest, then nobody there was going to miss it!
‘What are you doing with your tent?’
Simmonds was not alone at his campsite. On the hummocks round about were seated the reporters and their cameramen.
‘I’m packing it up. I’m going!’
‘Not today you aren’t, I’m afraid.’
‘But I am — I’ve got to! Can’t you see what’s happening?’
‘You should have thought of that before you talked to the press.’
Already the tent was struck and partly packed away in a pannier. In another were stuffed his blankets, while his gear lay together in a pile. A photographer, rising to his feet, made an adjustment to his camera. Simmonds started back involuntarily and shrank behind Gently’s protective bulk.
‘You don’t understand!’
‘I do, I’m afraid.’
‘I didn’t know — I thought I could trust him! He said I should put my story before the public. I trusted him, I tell you! I didn’t guess for a moment.’
‘I’m sorry about that, but you’ve got to stay in Hiverton.’
‘You wouldn’t make me do it!’
‘I can’t let you do anything else.’
Persuasively the photographer sidled towards him.
‘If you wouldn’t mind turning…’
Simmonds threw up a terrified hand.
‘They can’t keep doing that — stop them! I won’t have it!’
The camera clicked smoothly, catching his gesture and desperate expression.
‘I can’t stop here!’
He was pretty well in tears. His slight figure was shaking as he stood helpless by the ruined camp. From the crowd came a motion which made Gently turn sharply. He found himself staring into the burning eyes of Bob Hawks.
‘If you’ve got any feeling!’
‘Very well. Finish your packing.’
‘You mean you’ll let me go?’
‘No. Just do as I say.’
Everyone was straining their ears to catch the gist of what was passing. A few bolder ones had pushed forward, but the majority were holding their line. The reporters, however, felt no need for constraint; they crowded around chatting and trying to lever something out of Gently.
‘You’re going to detain him, are you?’
‘He’s going to sign a statement for me.’
‘Where’s he going then?’
‘That has still to be decided.’
‘He was her lover, wasn’t he?’
‘So far I haven’t asked him.’
‘It’s a fact that you think he can assist you?’
‘Everyone in Hiverton can be of assistance.’
From the corner of his eye he could see Hawks approaching. The fisherman was shuffling gingerly towards the centre of the circle. At a few yards distance he stopped, his lean frame slightly crouched: his gaze was fixed on Simmonds with a ferocious intensity of hate.
‘Did you know he struck his father, and that that was why he left home?’
Nobody seemed to care whether Simmonds heard or not.
‘We’ve been in touch with his ex-schoolmaster. He was noted for his violent temper. Once he struck a boy who was ragging him and knocked out a couple of teeth.’
The artist was trembling uncontrollably as he fumbled with his belongings. His hands were shaking so much that he could scarcely buckle the pannier-straps. From every side eyes were turned on him; the heat on the sandhill was terrific. At one time it looked as though he never would get those bags on.
‘I’ve got n-nothing to put my paintings in!’
He turned towards them desperately, a pile of the canvases clutched piecemeal in his arms.
‘You took away my satchel.’
‘Dutt here will look after them.’
‘Perhaps I can get some p-paper and string.’
He spilled two of them on the sand as he handed them to the sergeant. A reporter grabbed them eagerly, but they were only a couple of beachscapes. The crowd had fallen quiet and unnaturally still: one could well-nigh hear their breathing above the gentle wash of the combers.
‘I’m ready to go.’
Simmonds heaved on the loaded cycle. Its wheels were burying in the sand and he had much ado to push it. The crowd shifted and murmured, but parted to make him way. It was Hawks, standing right in his path, who wouldn’t budge an inch for him.
‘You — murdering — little rat!’
He spat the words straight into Simmonds’s face. One could feel, like an electric charge, the violence suddenly begin to generate.
‘Hanging’s too good for your sort — drowning in a sack’d be better! By rights we ought to string you up — here, where you did for her!’
It was trembling in the balance, that situation on the sandhill: in an ugly silence it was preparing to explode. A moment before the crowd had wavered between contempt and pity, but now, in a flash, the seed of hatred had been sown.
‘There’s only one thing for your sort!’
‘That’s enough from you. Get back!’
‘I’ll say what I please.’
‘You’ll get back out of the way!’
This was no time for argument, and Gently didn’t argue. Poking his fingers into the fisherman’s chest, he drove him backwards into the crowd.
‘You two — Pike and Spanton! Take charge of this fellow will you?’
Coming out of their stupor, they seized Hawks by the arms.
‘Now take him away and see he doesn’t cause more trouble.’
With surprising alacrity they marched Hawks off the sandhill.
It was enough to break the spell: the crowd had temporarily forgotten Simmonds. Their attention divided, they permitted him to depart. They watched him off the campsite in a sort of murmuring indecision: he was sobbing like a child and scarcely able to shove the bicycle.
The cameramen, in the meantime, had taken several excellent photographs.
The Police House was a building of stodgy brick which stood some distance inland from the village. It bore the date, on a tablet, of nineteen-thirty-five, and had a garage-like addition which was obviously a detention-room.
Mears was out when they arrived and they were received by his wife. She was a tall, raw-boned woman whose false teeth had a tendency to slip. She was nursing a baby and had another child in the garden. From her kitchen a smell of greens boiling was wafted through the house.
‘We’ve a statement to take. May we use the office?’
She showed them through to her front room, which served the usual dual purpose. Across one of the corners was placed an old knee-hole desk. It bore a telephone, a Moriarty, a Kelly’s, and the Starmouth directory.
‘You’ll find the forms and some paper.’
‘Thanks. Don’t let us disturb you.’
‘I was wondering about a drink. I can soon fetch some lemon squash.’
Simmonds, at least, looked in need of refreshment. His cheeks were burning feverishly and his lips were dry as paper. Dutt had kindly wheeled the bicycle for him all the way through the village, but the artist was still trembling and much relieved to sit down.
‘Now we’ll just go over again what you told me, I think.’
He gave Dutt the desk and sat himself by the window. From there he could see, over Mears’s lawn and hollyhocks, the road and the reporters — the latter having, of course, followed them. They were squatting in the shade of a tree opposite the gate. After a minute or two, as he knew they would, they produced a pack of cards.
‘Please answer the questions slowly because the sergeant doesn’t write shorthand. First give him your name, age, profession and address.’
His back was turned to Simmonds to give him a chance to recover himself. For the same reason he tried, where possible, not to interrupt the artist’s answers.
‘When did you first meet Miss Campion?’
Dutt would excise the superfluous verbiage.
‘Where did you say she posed for this picture?’
‘Which were the days on which she posed?’
Incoherent at the beginning, Simmonds gradually staged a revival. The even flow of the questions soothed him, coaxed him into a readier response. He paused to drink long draughts of the fruit drink which Mrs Mears had brought in. From where he sat he could see nothing outside except the pink and yellow heads of the hollyhocks.
‘On the Tuesday afternoon.’
They were getting towards the end; the end, at least, of what Simmonds had told him.
‘She left you where, you say?’
‘On the beach near my tent.’
‘And what did you do then?’
‘I went up and got my tea.’
Gently paused, listening to Dutt’s slow pencil go over the paper. When it came to a stop he swivelled round in his chair. Simmonds was sitting, glass in hand, looking much more collected: he even contrived to smirk at Gently with that ingratiating undertone.
‘Where did you get that bruise from?’
‘Bruise?’
‘The one on your cheekbone.’
‘Oh that… on the tent pole. I hit it as I was coming out.’
‘So it wasn’t caused by a fist?’
‘Fist? I…!’
Simmonds looked at him pitifully.
‘Mr Mixer’s fist on Tuesday afternoon — after he pulled you and Miss Campion out of your tent?’
The young man shivered and set his glass down on a cabinet near him. The blood was beginning to drain from his feverish cheeks. He made a fluttering movement with his hand, a sort of gesture that didn’t materialize. He looked very much as though he wanted to be sick.
‘I would have told you… I didn’t think…’
‘You didn’t think that I’d get to hear about it?’
‘No… not that! It didn’t seem important.’
‘What was so trivial about it — when she was murdered a few hours later?’
Again that silly fluttering movement, this time with both hands. Really it was embarrassing to witness the artist’s mauvaise honte.
‘I wanted to tell you about it! Can’t you see that? I want to tell you everything. I hate having to lie. But what would you think?’
‘I think you can lie when it suits you.’
‘But that’s just the point! If you’re going to take that attitude.’
The puzzle was that he sounded sincere in a naive and curious way. One felt that he honestly did want to make a confidant out of Gently. The memory of another case flashed across the detective’s mind, one in which, at his request, there had been a psychiatric examination. The subject there, a convicted sex-criminal, had shown much the same response. Only in his case they had known for a fact that the ‘revelations’ were crude romancing.
‘You see, you can’t help being a policeman, can you? By that I don’t mean… but there has to be a difference!’
‘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.