Free Gently Down the Stream by Alan Hunter

much.’
    ‘What do you mean by that?’
    ‘We talked, didn’t we? We discussed the traffic and the way Sea Weston was being spoiled by trippers.’
    ‘Then why did you not say so when I first asked?’
    ‘You didn’t give me time to remember – you started accusing us of having a row.’
    Gently sighed and reached out for a fortifying peppermint cream.
    ‘Your memory is certainly an oddity … but then, I’m not used to dealing with poets! Let’s try some background stuff. What was Hicks doing all day?’
    ‘What he usually does.’
    ‘Go on. Tell me.’
    ‘Well … he washed the cars down – drove my sister to the office – did some shopping in town for Mother. In the afternoon I imagine he was taking it easy. Pauline caught a bus back and nobody else called him out.’
    ‘You saw a lot of him, I’m told.’
    ‘I did, but I didn’t persuade him to kill my father.’
    ‘That is not the suggestion, Mr Lammas. It would be helpful if you confined yourself to answering a question. Was Hicks on good terms with your father?’
    ‘Nobody was on good terms with him.’
    ‘Wasn’t there some question once of Hicks being dismissed?’
    ‘There was no question about it – Mother engaged Hicks. Otherwise he would have gone long since and the cook and the maid with him. My father’s authority here was fortunately limited.’
    ‘I don’t have to ask what was your own attitude towards him.’
    Paul shrugged.
    ‘I’m not hiding it, am I? He wasn’t wanted here and he knew it.’
    ‘That matter of going into the business …’
    ‘Yes – that was a spoke in his wheel he didn’t forget! I can’t make you understand. You’re simply policemen and it wouldn’t make sense to you. There are two powers in this world, one for beauty and one for ugliness. My father stood for ugliness, sordidness – spiritual blindness, if you know what I mean. And into this he would have drawn me. Oh yes! It was to be a matter of course. I was his son, and he could do what he liked with me. As if, for one moment, I should have dreamed of burying my life in the filthy, parasitic business of wholesaling!’
    ‘Parasitic? It offended your political principles?’
    The young man glanced at him jeeringly. ‘All politics are a racket … of course, my father was a politician! A Liberal, mind you – the height of bourgeois timidity. He was too soggy to be a thorough-going Tory or a thorough-going Communist, or even a Socialist. Just a milk-and-water Liberal!’
    ‘That’s not so terrible … I should probably be one myself if I wasn’t a policeman. Did your father put any pressure on you to enter the business?’
    ‘Moral pressure – he hadn’t anything else. Oh yes, he argued himself black in the face!’
    ‘Did he threaten to cut you out of his will or anything like that?’
    ‘Why should that bother me? Mother and I have plenty of money.’
    ‘But did he?’
    ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
    ‘And what else?’
    ‘There was nothing else he could do.’
    ‘You are a minor, Mr Lammas. Your father had certain powers. I should be interested to know, for instance, what was to have been done about your National Service … now, I take it, comfortably postponed until you leave Cambridge?’
    The flush crept back into Paul’s cheek.
    ‘I wouldn’t have done it … I shan’t ever do it. I happen to have a weak heart. I can get a specialist’s certificate to prove it any time I have to.’
    ‘Is that quite true, Mr Lammas?’
    ‘Yes, it is! Mother’s specialist promised to give me one!’
    Gently folded his hands under his chin and gazed at the young man for a long moment.
    ‘Isn’t it possible, Mr Lammas … isn’t it just possible … that your father threatened to query that certificate and to ensure that you did do your National Service, if you persisted in refusing to enter the business? Would that be why you went to Cambridge and postponed your career as a poet with a private income …?’
    Like a lighting switch the