Free Gently Sahib by Alan Hunter Page A

MPS.
    Gently tried the door, but it was locked, and a card said: ‘Closed Even for Larner’s Liver Pills’. Inside the shop looked cool and tidy. Gently hunched his shoulders. Tomorrow . . .
    ‘One other thing to bear in mind.’
    They were crossing Abbey Plain and could see two reporters.
    ‘The “black book” – in the last analysis, that may be the key to this business. We’ve already a “G” and an “H” and an “S’, and now an “A” and a “C” from Ashfield and Cockfield. Of course, it needn’t mean a thing – but the right initials keep turning up.
    ‘Give us just one or two more, and it’ll have to stop being a coincidence.’
    Perkins’s unhappy eyes turned on him.
    ‘You can’t mean you suspect Alderman Cockfield!’
    ‘Shsh,’ Gently said.
    The two reporters were on them.
    ‘How’s it going, Super?’
    Work, it seemed, was over for the day. In Bradfield’s office the chief constable was waiting to sweep Gently off home with him.
    His name was Villiers and he had a twist in his nose as though it had once been broken and badly set; also his chin stuck out sharply. Yet he was handsome, in his rough-hewn way.
    ‘Bradfield’s been telling me you’ve spotted your man – a struck-off medico, isn’t he? Hastings, the fellow who took over Sam Sayers’s. You never can tell in this game, I say . . .’
    An ex-army man, as like as not. He probably got that nose boxing. He had a hard, over-riding voice with a touch of Bow Bells in its accent.
    No doubt a bastard if you rubbed him the wrong way, and that wouldn’t be difficult. He’d have favourites . . .
    ‘Not local, of course, that fellow. I meet him on club nights. Don’t like him. Bit of a pansy with that beard, eh . . . easy to spot them. I’m not surprised.’
    ‘You’ve reason to think he’s a homosexual?’
    ‘What? No – nothing of that kind! I mean the way he dresses . . . his manner. If I’d known him better I’d have black-balled him.’
    ‘Was Groton ever put up for the Athenaeum?’
    ‘No, but I like him. He’s a bit of a card.’
    Soon it was evident enough how Villiers had spent his afternoon. He’d been collecting the local notables to meet Gently at dinner.
    ‘Nothing formal, y’know . . . just a meal with friends . . . the Mayor and one or two others.’
    Did it really matter who murdered Shimpling?
    They drove to Villiers’s house in Villiers’s Bentley. The house was out of town. Villiers drove fast and well. When they arrived three other cars were already parked on the sweep and through French windows came the sound of laughter and a chink of glasses.
    ‘You’d like to join them in a drink?’
    Gently would rather have had a cup of tea, but soon he had a Scotch grasped in his left hand while he was shaking hands with his right.
    ‘Alderman Parkins, our present Mayor . . .’
    A faded, ascetic-looking man.
    ‘Geoffrey Traynor . . .’
    Of Traynor’s Fine Ales.
    ‘And here’s the missus, dying to meet you . . .’
    And the Chairman of the Bench of Magistrates, the town clerk and the fire chief, all flushed and being familiar and making jokes and shooting questions.
    Well, they could have their fun. In another twenty-four hours . . .
    But just now his head was swimming and he wished he was safe in the Angel, reading
Pickwick.
    The room, in spite of open French windows, had the suffocating airlessness that went with the absence of a fireplace.
    ‘Alderman Cockfield . . .’
    Cockfield? Now he was alert again!
    A powerful, moon-faced man with thinned grey hair, who stared and shook hands challengingly.
    ‘How do, Superintendent. What do you think of our little job?’
    In his late fifties. The hands, the body of a man who’d worked his way up from the bottom.
    ‘Nothing special from your point of view, but it makes a stir here in Abbotsham. Not that the fellow was worth making a fuss about. I read in the paper he was a blackmailer.’
    ‘Does that make a difference?’
    ‘It would for me, I