Free Gently Down the Stream by Alan Hunter Page B

Gently merely shrugged and got up to wander round the room. It was a room worth wandering around. If ever taste and expense had combined to create the ideal room to overlook a broad, this was that room. In size it was about thirty feet by fifteen. Along the south side ran a range of deep windows opening on to the wide, thatch-sheltered veranda. The colour scheme was pale yellow and green; yellow, reeded wallpaper, a carpet of restrained turquoise and furniture in straw-coloured wood upholstered in flowered turquoise silk. And it was glorious furniture. In it the genius of Scandinavia had been tempered with a Sheratonian delicacy, a feminine exquisiteness. It made Gently feel quite dangerous as he picked his way through it. On the walls were a few original pictures, a pair of Seagos, an Arnesby Brown, a Peter Scott and a group of six watercolours of Broadland birds by Roland Green. And from any point in the roomone turned to the long vista of the sun-flashed broad with its low, reed-and-carr fledged shores, its lily-nestling islets, its geometry of dream-moved sails …
    Also, thought Gently, there were pike in that broad … and tench and bream and roach and perch …
    He shook his head sadly and put a light to his stone-cold pipe.
    There were heavy steps climbing up to the veranda. It was Dutt coming back from his horticultural assignment.
    ‘Well, Dutt … how are crimes down there?’
    Dutt smiled all over his cockney face and held up what appeared to be a toffee-tin.
    ‘I got the goods, sir – just take a butcher’s into this!’
    Proudly he opened the tin and displayed the contents. It contained some greasy rag, a small wire-handled brush, a bottle of Rangoon oil and three spent.22 shells.
    ‘Fahnd it in the garage, I did – just sitting on the bench, as large as flipping life!’
    ‘We know, Dutt. He used to clean it there.’
    ‘Know sir, do we?’ Dutt was a trifle dashed. ‘But this here’s the proof, sir – the shover must have known about his nib’s pop-gun!’
    ‘So does everyone else, Dutt. Don’t tell me the gardener didn’t know.’
    ‘Well, now you mention it! But I don’t think he had anythink to do with the job.’
    ‘He’s got an alibi?’
    ‘Yessir. He’s the local sexton, sir. They buried an old girl called Micklewright on the Friday and natural-like, sir, they went and drank her health afterwards. He ain’tsure wevver he got back Friday night or Saturday morning, but if it ain’t the one then it must be the other.’
    ‘That sounds a fairish sort of alibi, Dutt.’
    ‘What I thought, sir.’
    ‘And what about that jerrican?’
    ‘Yessir. It come from the garage all right. The gardener says as how he used it to keep his weed-killer in and right upset he was ’cause someone had knocked it off.’
    ‘Weed-killer, eh? There’s something a bit macabre about this gardener! I suppose he didn’t tell you when he first noticed the jerrican was missing?’
    ‘No, sir. I asked him that particular. But this is the rum thing, sir – he swears blind it’d gone some time before Friday. He thought the shover had swiped it, but the shover said he hadn’t. Then he tackles Mr Paul, who’s always in and out wiv his motorbike.’
    ‘And Mr Paul gave him a rude answer?’
    ‘Very rude, sir … shocking.’
    Gently clicked his tongue. ‘It would be interesting to know just when that jerrican disappeared.’
    ‘Looks like it wasn’t an off-the-cuff murder,’ sniffed Hansom.
    ‘But who would know in advance that they’d have a chance of burning the body in the yacht? How did they know that Lammas was going to take the yacht up Ollby Dyke and that he’d be alone?’
    ‘Well they did, didn’t they?’ retorted Hansom irrefutably. ‘He couldn’t have been so darned smart, after all.’
    ‘Unless, of course …’
    ‘Unless what?’
    ‘Unless it was Lammas himself who took the jerrican away.’
    Hansom stared at him incredulously for a moment, then he broke out into sarcastic