Gently with the Innocents (9 page)

After a couple of cups he rang the police station, snuggling back into the sheets while he waited for a reply. He caught Gissing just coming in. The local man sounded breathless.

‘Morning, sir . . . oof, it’s a sharp one!’

Gently clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘Any luck last night?’

‘Not where I went, sir. D.C. Scole has come up with something.’

D.C. Scole had met a man called Ringmer who remembered an incident that happened on 27 October. Ringmer had entered the WC of the Grapes preparatory to going in the pub for a drink. There he’d met Colkett, whom he knew. Colkett left the WC ahead of him. Afterwards he’d looked for Colkett in the Grapes, but hadn’t been able to find him there. Time, estimated seven p.m. Ringmer remembered the date because that day he’d backed a winner.

‘Interesting,’ Gently murmured from his snug cavern.

‘Yes, sir, it puts him an hour adrift. But I thought I’d talk to Ted Ringmer myself, just to make sure he’d got his facts straight. After that we can have a go at Colkett.’

‘What is D.C. Scole doing now?’

‘He’s making inquiries about Peachment’s movements.’

‘Tell him to wrap up well,’ Gently said.

He coaxed another cup from the pot, then consulted the directory for Bressingham’s number. The ringing-tone sounded for nearly a minute before the antique-dealer answered.

‘Yes . . . hallo?’

‘Chief Superintendent Gently.’

‘Good Lord! You get up earlier than I do.’

‘I was thinking . . . this morning, if you’re not too busy, perhaps we could go along to Harrisons.’

‘I won’t be busy – not in this weather. But give me an hour to thaw out.’

‘If I pick you up at ten?’

‘That’s more civilized. I’m human by then.’

Gently hung up and revelled a few more moments in the bland cosiness of bed. But he could think of no more calls to make. He sighed, and slid his feet to the floor.

Bressingham’s wife was waiting in the shop with him, and she presented a sharp contrast to her husband. Gypsy-featured, she was tall and lean, and wore a simple black dress with panache. In her ears she wore small gold rings, and other rings clustered on her long fingers.

‘Meet Ursula . . . she’s holding the fort for me. Actually, she’s a better dealer than I am.’

Ursula Bressingham shook hands with Gently, giving him a slow, hard-eyed smile.

‘Ursula’s a diddeki,’ Bressingham said proudly. ‘That means she’s half-way to being a gyppo. Anyone who can get the better of her should have his name put up in sovereigns.’

‘Tom talks too much,’ Ursula Bressingham said. Her black, glittering eyes remained fixed on Gently. ‘But it’s no use trying to spruce you, Superintendent. You were born under the same sign as myself.’

Bressingham chuckled. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Next, she’ll be telling you the initial of your girl-friend.’

‘It’s B,’ his wife said. ‘And she’s known a lot of sorrow. But that was all over two years ago.’

Gently shrugged. ‘What about this business?’

Ursula Bressingham shook her head. ‘Watch out for danger.’

‘I usually do.’

‘Don’t laugh. It could come when you least expect it.’

She stood waving as the Sceptre rolled away, over sugary snow brown with grit. Bressingham, tucked up in a greatcoat and a huge knitted scarf, cocked his head and gave Gently a sly look.

‘Was the initial right?’

Gently grunted. It was just over two years since he’d met Brenda Merryn.

Bressingham was grinning. ‘It’s mostly mind-reading, he said. ‘And a bit of guessing. She’s good, is Ursula.’

Nobody had bothered to grit Frenze Street and there the Sceptre was ploughing through virgin snow. Snow quilted the dead herbage in front of Harrisons and had drifted in a slope against the front door.

‘My God, it’ll be cold in there.’ Bressingham shivered.

On the roofs, snow overlapped the rotting barge-boards. Smoothing out detail, it emphasized strangely the stoop of the ridge and the lurch of the gables. Chimneys stood out harshly; in every window snow was packed hard against grimy panes.

‘We go in at the back.’

Across at Colkett’s office a light showed mistily behind steamed glass; then a hand wiped a patch in the steam and Colkett’s face peered out at them.

‘Wait!’

Gently threw up his arm, making Bressingham stagger a little.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Just keep back. Sometimes snow can tell a story.’

It told one here. From the warehouse and the foot-way numerous tracks crossed the yard, keeping, for the most part, in the same line, as people had followed in one another’s footsteps. There was one diversion. A churned-up path led straight from the tracks to the Harrisons outhouse. It showed no footprints. Whoever had made it had kicked out the prints as he came back.

‘Stay here, will you?’

Leaving Bressingham to shiver, Gently cautiously entered the outhouse. But the outhouse was floored with hard-trodden cinder-dirt which, in any case, was frozen. He came to the back door. The padlock was in place and there was no sign of attempted entry. If a prowler had been there he’d brought no tools . . . could it be he hadn’t known about the padlock?

He went out again and examined the snow-track, trying to decide if it were lately made. In some of the hollows was a little blown snow, but dustings were still being scattered by the wind.

‘Everything all right?’ Bressingham asked, his teeth nittering.

Colkett, in the office, was watching each move. Gently stared back. Then he beckoned to Bressingham.

‘Come on. I want some words with that fellow.’

Colkett met them at the warehouse side-door, a wary expression in his grey eyes. But he managed to throw on a smirk as he greeted them:

‘Anything I can do for you gents?’

‘Let’s get inside,’ Gently grunted. He pushed past Colkett into the office. Colkett followed, his smirk drooping, and Bressingham crammed himself in behind.

‘Sit down,’ Gently said to Colkett. ‘Put your boots on the table.’

‘But what—’

‘Sit down and do as I say.’

Very unwillingly, Colkett sat down and hoisted his work-boots on the office table.

They were damp, and had the clean-picked look of footwear that had been through soft snow. But in the crook of a heel there was a trace of black mud. Gently took out his pen-knife and scraped off a sample.

‘Here!’ Colkett said. ‘So what’s all this?’

Gently held the mud up to the light. Cinder-dirt? A laboratory could tell him. Meanwhile, just black mud . . .

‘Why did you go to the house this morning?’

‘Why?’ Colkett pulled his boots down sullenly. ‘Who says I did?’

‘This mud says so. And a test will soon prove it.’

Colkett stared stupidly at the scrape of mud.

‘You’re having me on, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I could’ve picked that up anywhere. You can’t swear where I got it.’

‘Very well. Hand me one of those envelopes.’

‘Yes, but wait a minute!’ Colkett said. ‘Suppose I did go over to the house. You can’t pinch me for doing that.’

‘You did?’

‘I might’ve done.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

Colkett’s leathern face puckered.

‘Well, if I did. What about that?’

‘Why did you kick out your prints in the snow?’

‘I . . . because . . .’ He got up from the chair. ‘Look, there ain’t nothing funny about this! So I went to have a peek to see if all’s well. I’m the sort of caretaker round here, aren’t I?’

‘And the prints?’

‘They’re nothing either! I just don’t like people knowing my business. So that’s about it. All above board. Why can’t you come and ask me proper?’

Gently stared at the warehouseman for some moments. Gissing, somewhere, was doing his double check with Ted Ringmer. Perhaps Gently had better hold his hand . . . set Colkett up later, back at the station. He flicked the scraping of mud to the floor.

‘In future, you can leave the caretaking to us.’

‘Don’t worry – I will!’

Gently nodded to Bressingham.

They went, leaving Colkett scowling after them.

A
RED DISC
patched the umberish sky in the direction of the town, but above and around it was a great weight of slaty cloud, swollen with snow.

‘Don’t I know these old drums,’ Bressingham chattered as Gently led him into the outhouse. ‘Oh, my gosh. And the stuff they’re selling is always in an unheated room. Can you imagine it? Trying to price their old treasures with your breath coming like smoke. And there’s usually been trouble when they call you in. Somebody dead, the old home breaking up.’

‘So this’ll be familiar,’ Gently grunted.

‘Only too familiar,’ Bressingham sighed. ‘I’ve seen some things that would break your heart. I often come away with a load of rubbish because I know darned well they don’t have a bean.’

But once in the house the antique-dealer perked up. He stood rubbing his hands and looking about him cheerfully.

‘This isn’t so bad – I’ll bet there’s some stuff here. I reckon I could get my expenses out of this.’

‘Never mind the junk,’ Gently said.

‘No . . . but it helps me to get my bearings. And young Peachment is bound to want to sell it, so I may as well give it a look in passing. That chair, now . . .’

He picked up old Peachment’s chair, took it to the window and turned it bottom-up.

‘That’s a nice old chair . . . could be Mendlesham . . . bit of worm in the seat, but nothing to worry about.’

He set it down and looked at it, his head cocked to one side.

‘I think I could spring fifty bob.’

‘What’s it worth to sell?’

Bressingham’s blue eyes twinkled. ‘About seventeen ten. But of course, they’d knock me down.’

Patiently, Gently filled his pipe and let Bressingham continue his probe of the kitchen. In turn the dealer valued an old faded-faced clock, a battered coal-scuttle and some plates from the dresser.

‘But the chair’s the best bit . . . I’d go to a fiver. Only don’t let on to young Peachment.’

‘Then can we get to business?’

‘My dear old chap.’ Bressingham dusted his hands. ‘What do you think I’ve been doing while I was prowling?’

They went through into the dining-room, where the performance continued, and where Bressingham felt he could go a tenner on the table. But Gently noticed the dealer’s eyes were everywhere and his pointed-tipped fingers touching and exploring. Once he stamped on the floor.

‘There’s some rot down there!’

‘The boards haven’t been interfered with lately.’

‘No. You don’t find much hidden under floors. It’s the obvious place, and it’s inconvenient.’

He felt deeply, however, into a wall-cupboard that had been excavated in the massive chimney-breast, panting a little as he fingered the crevices in search of a loose brick.

Coming into the book-room, he paused.

‘Now that’s a useful old country bookcase . . . I had one of those a few years back . . . got a good day’s work out of it, too.’

Gently said nothing. Bressingham advanced on the bookcase rather like a boxer shaping up. His hands strayed over it casually for a moment, then came to rest on the drawers.

‘Nothing in here, I’ll be bound. First place you’d have looked.’

‘We searched them.’

‘Of course you did. But I think I’ll just have them out.’

He withdrew the drawers carefully, not giving the contents a glance, then slipping a torch from his pocket he went down on his knees and shone the torch into the cavity.

‘Ah . . . aha!’

He reached into the cavity and struggled with something at the back. After a deal of grunting one heard a sharp click, and he lifted out a section of the match-board lining.

‘There. I was sure there’d be one.’

Attached to the lining was a flat box or compartment. But all it contained was old Peachment’s army papers and some yellowing snapshots, presumably of his wife.

Brassingham stared at these relics glumly.

‘That’s the trouble with secret drawers. Nobody keeps anything worthwhile in them – it’s been a life-time’s disappointment.’

‘Still, that compartment wouldn’t have held many coins.’

‘I’d settle for it, stuffed with Pope Innocent medals.’

He gave the interior of the bookcase another scrutiny, but the one secret compartment was all it possessed. Then he turned to the books and, surprisingly, brightened again. He stood gazing fondly, hands clasped behind his back.

‘Look – horsy stuff. I can always sell it. The old boy’s got all the classics here. And that’s Armstrong’s
History of Northshire
– it fetches twelve or fifteen these days.’

Gently puffed indulgently, giving Bressingham his head. He was beginning to understand his man. And, strangely, he noticed, in the dealer’s hands, the most unlikely junk seemed to take on value. Was it Bressingham’s enthusiasm, so naive and infectious, or just the reverent way he handled things? Difficult to say – but he had the touch: he could discover beauty among the ashes.

‘A decent bit of calf . . . and it has the map.’

Already you were seeing those histories in a connoisseur’s library.

‘I’ll bet young Peachment’ll take fifty bob for them.’ When they came in, Gently wouldn’t have offered five.

Bressingham asked few questions and Gently gave him no directions. The chubby man seemed to work on a rationale of his own. He rarely explored the whole of a room or went on tapping expeditions; often, he would simply stand somewhere in the centre and let his twinkling eyes rove about.

When they moved to the drawing-room he was soon on the scent.

‘It’s older here . . . a lot older! Look at the ceiling – they’ve raised the floor-level. Under here there’ll be quite a cavity.’

But he ignored the floorboards and went straight to the corner where the alcove cupboard concealed the priest-hole. Gently watched. Bressingham opened the door, ran his hands down the shelves, pulled out the drawers.

‘Aha! Ha, ha! You knew about this one?’

‘We knew about it,’ Gently said.

‘But have you been down there?’

‘Not yet. I got the impression it was fairly recent.’

‘Oh, my Aunt Matilda!’ Bressingham exclaimed. His fingers rippled over the door. ‘Look at those hinges. Look at that panelling. They can’t be later than seventeenth century.’