‘ Coffee or tea, sir?’
‘Coffee!’
Gently almost growled at the middle-aged waitress, who in turn looked sullen. And to be truthful, there had been nothing to grumble at in either the food or the service.
He had had onion soup, which he liked, followed by a very good sole with sauce tartare. Then had come apple charlotte, which again he was fond of, and now he was eating Stilton cheese with biscuits. An excellent meal, served deftly and with promptness. Surely a smile should have rewarded the waitress?
Across the road another sort of lunch was being taken. Four of the mill workers were sitting on the pavement, their backs to the office wall, each with an open tin beside him. Their jaws worked slowly and they watched the passers with a naive interest. Sometimes one of them would venture a remark, when the others would laugh raucously.
Earlier, Fuller had gone home in his neat Ford Consul. Then Mrs Blythely had slipped the latch of the shop door, trying it twice before she was satisfied it had caught. Next Blacker had come loping across, giving Gently a queer look, and finally Ted Jimpson, who had finished work for the day.
Ted had met a girlfriend, a sturdy little country wench. When a car passed Gently could see them reflected in the window-pane where they were sitting behind him. They, too, were glancing at him queerly, and apparently in a close conference together…
‘Black or white, sir?’
‘White — not too much milk.’
This time he made up for his surliness with a wink, and the waitress forgave him as far as to smile bleakly.
‘Not a very nice day, sir.’
‘At least it isn’t raining.’
‘Very dull, it’s been, ever since Good Friday.’
Over the way a mill worker had seen him and was nudging his neighbour. Gently studiously avoided catching any of their eyes. He wanted them to see him, everyone connected with the mill. It never did any harm to let people feel you were still keeping an eye on them.
Nevertheless, he realized that it fell into the category of ‘going through the motions’ — he wasn’t following a lead, or even, for that matter, a hunch.
A grudge, perhaps — that was another matter!
After getting a frozen reception at headquarters when he gave them the news about The Roebuck, he was feeling a perverse desire to hang Taylor’s murder on Lynton’s door.
They had been so smug, all of them, police and laity alike. And Press, though he hadn’t actually torn him off a strip, had delicately rapped his knuckles for shouldering Pershore aside so roughly.
‘You don’t know what it’s like, being in a small town like this one…’
He was wrong. Gently did. But it would have been pointless to have said so.
‘In London Mr Pershore might not cut very much ice, but in Lynton I assure you…’
In Lynton you were a big-shot as soon as you started paying supertax.
Then there was Griffin, listening intently, and coming up with a cautious theory. ‘Suppose he’d gone out to meet a woman, and her husband happened to find them?’
The trouble was that it was a tenable theory and one which ought to have crossed Gently’s mind. The Blythelys were who Griffin was thinking about, and certainly the cap seemed to fit… if Taylor had been a Casanova, and setting aside the subsequent reactions of Ames and Roscoe.
Press, however, had sat down firmly on this scandalous interpretation of the facts. The mayor-elect had suffered enough without having further enormities fathered on him…
‘Waitress, I’d like another cup of coffee!’
He had drunk the first one at a single gulp and was surprised to find the empty cup in front of him.
Blythely had come out into the mill yard and was standing staring at the pigeons. A van which momentarily hid the baker from view showed Ted Jimpson shaking his blond head and looking distinctly unhappy. What were they talking about, with their furtive glances at Gently’s broad back?
Well, then, he had had a long talk over the phone with the assistant commissioner, the latter, no doubt, still twiddling his glasses and peering at the slice of Embankment across the courtyard. There hadn’t been much comfort in that. The A.C. was still nursing his idea of a glorious, gilt-edged racket going on in Lynton.
‘Have you thought of the docks, Gently? There’s a lot of dope getting in these days…
‘What about that chemical works outside the town? I see in the gazetteer that Lynton produces three per cent of the national supply of commercial sulphuric acid…’
It was too easy, sitting there in the Yard and turning over maps and reference books. One had to be in the place and get the feel of it
… wasn’t a betting system and Griffin’s crime passionel the more likely idea of the two?
The assistant commissioner’s information had been entirely of the negative variety. The division couldn’t be quite certain when the three men had disappeared from Stepney, and Ames and Roscoe had not returned there. A round-up of likely elements had produced no worthwhile intelligence. There had been a notable silence in the world of narkdom.
‘It’s at your end, Gently, whatever it is. I feel sure that if you’ll poke around a little more…’
‘Would you like me to send you Simpson, of Anti-narcotics?’
He had asked for an all-stations and hung up feeling more depressed than ever. The arrival of an empty-handed Dutt had done no more than set the seal on his mood.
‘There wasn’t nothing at the station, sir — nobody didn’t remember them. The bank manager sees Taylor, of course, and the cashiers remember him, but the lolly went to their headquarters and nobody did a check on it.’
‘Pound notes was it?’
‘Yessir. Sixteen bundles done up with rubber bands.’
‘New notes or old?’
‘They wouldn’t swear to that, but one of them thinks they might have been new.’
‘What about the other two?’
‘They don’t seem to have banked theirs, sir. I tried around the town, but there was nothink doing anywhere.’
After which Gently had sat smoking in the office the super had allotted to him, indulging his blues and trying to pull something out of an empty bag…
There were two ends to the stick and he seemed to be holding the clean one. The dirty end, Ames and Roscoe, had disappeared like the eternal smoke-rings he was blowing. And the clean end was so very clean! There was scarcely a mark on it anywhere. Fuller’s bare opportunity was the best it could show, coupled with the fact that the murderer seemed to have known his way about a mill… this mill, if the choice of hoppers was more than an accident.
Against that, where was the motive? What was Taylor to the Lynton miller?
They could have met at Newmarket. Taylor might have gypped Fuller
… but would Fuller have then seen fit to strangle him, and to have hidden the body in one of his own flour-hoppers?
He could hardly have supposed that the business would pass as an accident!
Or put it the other way, to try everything: suppose Fuller had done the gypping. Suppose he had lost the astounding sum of five thousand pounds, and been pursued to Lynton and badgered for the payment…?
Gently had shaken his head decisively — such a hypothesis was too fantastic! The miller would never have plunged to such a fabulous extent, or been able to produce such a sum on demand if he had. Moreover, having got it, Taylor and his associates would have departed to the happy haunts of Stepney.
Finally, there was the old chestnut of a racket. Once again you were dealing with a concept self-evidently academic. What could Fuller be running to produce pay-offs in the five thousand category — and how could Taylor and the others have cottoned on to it, meeting Fuller briefly on the racetrack?
Beside these extravagant theories Griffin’s idea seemed a breath of sweet reason… it fitted most of the facts and did violence to scarcely any of them.
Who knew what charms the baker’s wife had discovered in the little, rat-faced cockney?
Blythely had stopped staring at the pigeons and had come to the gate of the mill. Like the others, he had made out the bulky form of Gently sitting in the cafe window.
He said something to the workers, who had fallen silent at his approach; one of them laughed with a touch of self-consciousness, but the others remained serious enough.
‘Still snooping around, is he?’ — that would have been it. ‘You want to watch out, together!’ — and one of the workers had laughed.
Why were they constrained with Blythely — was it that they suspected something?
In the window he could see Ted Jimpson sitting bolt upright, his girlfriend watching him with lips which were compressed. Then somebody switched on the radio and the two of them relaxed their pose. A steel band was playing the calypso which Gently had heard tinkled out by Taylor’s cigarette-box.
‘A-working all night on a drink of rum,
Daylight’s come and I want to go home…’
Gently drained his cup and signalled to the waitress, who was becoming resigned to his periodic refills. The cafe was emptying as the lunch hour wore on. Fuller, probably, would be back by two.
‘You know the miller, do you?’
‘Mr Fuller is often in here.’
‘When was the last time?’
‘He had lunch on Good Friday, the day they found the body.’
‘Did he have a good appetite?’
The waitress obviously took this for a joke.
Now Blythely had turned his back and was going indoors with his jerky, obstinate stride. What would he have done, this man, faced with the situation Griffin had suggested? Was it in his awkward and self-righteous character to have become berserk and to have strangled the adulterer?
To have thrashed him, perhaps — ‘chastisement’ was the word that came to mind! — Taylor might certainly have had to expiate his sin through the flesh.
But strangling, that was another matter altogether. It suggested a fixed and calculated intent rather than a sudden outbreak of wrath. In addition to which he would have his wife to cope with. She might have reason to keep quiet — but dared he risk such a secret with her?
As always, one was brought up by a gross improbability. There weren’t enough facts… that was the long and the short of it!
Gently helped himself to another lump of sugar and gulped down some more coffee. What was the residue of fact which didn’t seem to link with the rest?
Well, there was Blacker and his relations with his master, and possibly the relations between the miller and Blythely. And then there was the stable, apparently a sore point with both the last two… though heaven alone knew how that could fit in.
Blacker, probably, was the most interesting to consider.
Hadn’t he been made up to foreman on the day after the murder — a man antagonistic to his employer, and of doubtful competence?
That suggested pressure — and the timing was strangely coincidental. Blacker might have got a hint of something and put two and two together.
But if Fuller was the man, would he have straightway put the new foreman on emptying the hopper — giving himself, as it were, completely into the fellow’s hands?
If it came to that, would Fuller have put it there at all? He could so easily have disposed of the corpse in some less damning spot.
So you were back where you started, floundering among the improbabilities. Wherever you picked it up the case handed you a non sequitur. It had been that way from the beginning, from the moment Taylor or one of his colleagues had lifted the phone and booked rooms in the stainless town of Lynton…
What could one do, except obstinately watch and wait?
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but Ted…’
Gently looked up to find Jimpson’s girlfriend standing uncertainly by his table. The blush on her rounded cheeks was becoming, and she had an appearance of wholesomeness, like an apple out of a cottage garden.
‘What is it you want?’
‘Ted here… we’ve been talking it over…’
Ted Jimpson had wandered into the background, a hangdog expression on his palish face.
‘Well, sir, we thought he ought to tell you…’
‘Go on, then… I won’t bite!’
‘… he wasn’t there that night — not all the time, that is! He come out to see me home. I was working late shift in the caff.’
Gently sat them down at his table, Jimpson in front of him and the girl to his right. The workers across the way, who had been about to retire into the mill, hesitated to witness this new disposition.
‘Let’s get it straight… we’re talking about the Thursday evening, are we?’
Jimpson nodded, swallowing at the same time.
‘When according to Mr Blythely you showed up at ten — and remained in the bakehouse until seven the next morning?’
‘Yes, sir, but…’
‘But Mr Blythely is a liar?’
‘No, sir — I didn’t say so!’
‘Then what am I supposed to believe?’
‘He — he wasn’t in there at the time.’
Gently folded his arms on the table and appeared to consider the hotel-plate sugar bowl. Was this the something he had been looking for, the little crack in the solid Lynton defence?
Jimpson was writhing in his chair, haplessly aware of the significance of what he had blurted out. In the background the radio continued its programme of calypsos.
‘Go on — tell me what happened. I suppose it’s no use asking why you didn’t tell this to Inspector Griffin?’
‘I didn’t want him to know… Mr Blythley, I mean! And he didn’t say nothing about having been out…’
‘Did he tell you not to mention that?’
‘No, but I thought…’
‘Never mind about that, just get on with your story.’
It was simple enough and easily corroborated. Jimpson had met his girl, Jessie Mason, when she had finished her shift at the Globe Cafe at half past eleven. Her way home took her past the mill. He had slipped out and intercepted her. At her house, ten minutes away, he had exchanged greetings with her father, and had been back in the bakehouse at just on midnight. And during all that time Blythely had been absent, neither did he return until half an hour later.
‘You’re sure of those times?’
‘Yes, I was looking for a chance…’
‘He went out shortly before half past eleven?’
Jimpson nodded his head.
‘Where did he say he was going?’
‘He didn’t say nothing.’
But he had gone out into the yard, Jimpson thought, because there had been no squeak from the broken hinge on the door to the shop. After waiting a few minutes he had ventured into the yard, and not seeing Blythely, had hurried out to meet Jessie.
‘Was he in the habit of going out like that?’
‘No, he wouldn’t never leave the bakehouse as a rule. Once you’ve got the dough rising…’
‘What did he say when he came back?’
‘Nothing, he didn’t.’ Jimpson looked sideways.
‘Go on, Ted!’ urged Jessie. ‘You said you was going to tell him everything.’
‘Well…’ Jimpson hesitated. ‘He was something upset, that’s all I can say. First off he was quiet, then afterwards he let me have it. I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.’
‘Had he seen you go out?’
‘Not him, or I’d have heard about it.’
‘What was he angry about?’
‘Every mortal thing I did.’
Gently slowly nodded, still watching his sugar bowl. This had to be true in substance… unless there was a conspiracy against Blythely! But there might be an explanation, sufficient if not innocent: Blythely might have had the misfortune to go out on business he wanted to keep quiet.
‘You corroborate this?’
Jessie’s pretty flush came back. ‘Of course I do — it’s every word the truth!’
‘What’s your father’s job?’
‘He’s a gardener with the Corporation.’
‘Up late last Thursday, wasn’t he?’
‘He always waits up when I’m on the late shift.’
‘Where did he become acquainted with Mr Blythely?’
‘He hasn’t never met him that I ever heard of.’
‘A betting man, is he?’
‘No fear! He’s very strict about everything like that.’
He would be, naturally, if he was employed by the Lynton Corporation…
Out of the corner of his eye Gently saw Fuller’s Consul draw up, hesitate, and then turn carefully into the mill-yard gate. The miller climbed out, reaching after him a leather briefcase. As he closed the door his eye fell on the cafe window: for a moment he stood quite still, an expression of blankness on his bold-featured face.
‘Just before Mr Blythely went out… what happened then?’
‘We were getting up the dough…’
‘Did you hear the hinge squeak, for instance?’
‘I wasn’t listening for it.’
‘What was Mr Blythely doing?’
‘He was kneading the…’
‘Which trough was he using?’
‘The one near the door.’
Fuller came suddenly out of his trance and flung angrily into his office. Even in the cafe one could hear the slam of the door. His face appeared a few seconds later, peering over the screen, along with it that of his not-unattractive clerk.
‘Who else was around that night?’
‘Who…? Nobody!’
‘Who was in the yard when you got back?’
‘I tell you-!’
‘You didn’t go straight into the bakehouse, did you?’
‘Yes, I did!’
‘What’s the quarrel between Mr Blythely and Mr Fuller?’
‘There isn’t no quarrel — they get on all right together!’
Gently shrugged and drank off the rest of his coffee. He was giving poor Jimpson a rough sort of a passage, but then he shouldn’t have been such a silly young…
‘What else haven’t you told the police?’
‘Nothing, I tell you!’
‘Why did you come to me just now?’
‘Jessie and me… she thought I ought to!’
‘What have you got against Mr Blythely?’
‘Nothing I haven’t! He’s all right to me…’
‘You’d better think carefully if there’s anything else you want to tell me.’
The cafe now was practically empty; Gently’s waitress stood at a distance by a sideboard, pretending not to be interested. A sunny West Indian voice from the radio was unfortunately spoiling her chances of eavesdropping.
‘Cricket, lovely cricket…
At Lord’s where I saw it!’
Only one customer was left, but he, as it happened, was sitting at the table immediately behind Gently.
‘You can add nothing, Miss Mason?’
‘Only that Ted’s telling you the God’s truth.’
‘You must have passed the junction of Cosford Street with Fenway Road — did you notice anyone making use of the back passage to the drying-ground?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Or anyone about there?’
‘No.’
‘A parked car, perhaps?’
She shook her head and then stopped herself. ‘There was a car there, come to think of it. I noticed one standing off the road just down Cosford Street.’
‘What sort of car, Miss Mason?’
‘I don’t know — I just saw it. It hadn’t got no lights on.’
‘A saloon car, was it?’
‘I suppose so. I just saw it standing there.’
Gently sighed to himself. If only women paid more attention to cars…! But there it was, another tiny fact, to fit, it might be, a final pattern.
‘Righto… that’s all for just now, though I shall probably need a statement from both of you later.’
A bit shakily they rose from the table — it had been a good deal worse than either of them had expected! Jessie stuck her hand defiantly into Ted’s, and wordlessly they passed out through the doorway.
Young love…
Wouldn’t she make him a very good wife?
‘Waitress — I think I’ll have some tea this time!’
Gently turned about and tapped the shoulder of the customer behind him.
‘Don’t be shy, Mr Blacker… come and sit at my table. I feel we could profitably discuss the situation.’