Gently Between Tides

Book 0: George Gently

by Alan Hunter

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Drifting upstream on the flood-tide in a dank October mist, a loosed dinghy carries the body of a once lovely girl, strangled. No mystery about who she was . . . everyone in the small Suffolk community devoted to music and sailing knew Hannah, the pleasant, reclusive Czech girl who lived alone in a Martello Tower by a lonely stretch of sand and shingle. The question is: who could have wanted her dead? Chief Superintendent George Gently, now living in the neighbourhood with his new wife, Gabrielle, is busy painting the stairs when the telephone rings: sighing, he agrees to help the local man with the initial stages of the investigation. But in spite of himself he's drawn into the mystery, as they start to question those who might have known Hannah well. Her ex-husband? Her bookshop employer? The local war-hero? The flashy ex-crook who now runs a pub? As the river ripples back and forth in the mellow autumnal sunshine, Gently and the lugubrious Inspector Leyston set about piecing together fragments from the dead girl's life: two dinghies drawn up on the riverbank by the church; a rendezvous note; two cigarette ends; a poem in Czech . . . it begins to seem that there was more to Hannah than met the eye. And gradually, into Gently's sympathetic and intuitive mind, understanding flows like the rising tide . . .

Release date: June 30, 2016

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 256

Sample

THOUGH THEY WERE having a fine spell that October, there was still a heavy mist on the river at 10 a.m., and the workboat coming up on the last of the high water slack was nosing its way cautiously from marker to marker.

All you could really see were sodden banks that appeared and vanished in an illogical way, while the mist was damp and nipping, smelling of mud and decayed vegetation. The markers were simple willow wands, showing where the deep-water channel lay. Elsewhere, even at high water, mud shoals waited to trap the unwary.

The boatman, a hunched figure, had an unlit pipe jammed in his mouth. As he stared ahead with narrowed eyes he could feel the wet hoar on his eyebrows. A heron, getting up suddenly, startled him, for he hadn’t seen it standing so still in a drain; it wheeled above him on broad wings and drops from its dangling legs fell in the boat. He muttered a curse and straightened the tiller, which he had jerked askew in his surprise. The heron vanished spectrally into the mist; it was the only living thing he had seen.

The boat pottered on. At any time now one should see timber piles looming up to port, then the ghosts of buildings, a mast, and finally the span of a stone bridge. Only they seemed such a long time appearing, as though the mist had somehow swallowed them up! Yet, by the boatman’s computation, he had turned the last bend below the quay. He felt a moment of panic. Could he have gone wrong, perhaps getting himself into one of the drains? But that was scarcely possible; he had followed the wands attentively, keeping each one to starboard.

Suddenly he hit his reverse with a shout, setting water rumbling beneath the workboat. Drab in the mist, and almost on top of him, loomed a varnished dinghy with an outboard motor. It was drifting sideways, plumb in his course, and the workboat halted only just in time.

‘What bloody fool . . .!’

He lumbered forward, intent to catch the dinghy before it drifted off; but arriving at the bows, he stiffened, gazing down into the dinghy with incredulous eyes.

He was looking at a woman, and the woman was dead. About that there could be no shadow of doubt. She was lying tumbled on the floorboards, her face waxen, her clothes sodden by the mist. The face was turned upwards, its eyes staring, lips parted over the teeth; and on her throat was livid bruising. The poor creature had been strangled.

‘God almighty . . . !’

The boatman came out of his trance in time to catch the dinghy’s painter. Hissing through his teeth, he worked the dinghy round until he could loop the painter over his towing post. Then he stood staring at the woman, still trying to believe what he was seeing.

Meanwhile the workboat’s engine went on burbling to itself in neutral, and somewhere in the mist, seeming quite close, one could hear the sound of vehicles passing on a road.

It was a Saturday, and the boatman was on overtime; normally, he would have gone into town for the football.

‘I’ll get it, Mr George.’

On the landing at Heatherings, Gently was putting the last touches of paint on the rails, drawing the brush in voluptuous strokes to give the balustrade a perfect finish. The Jonsons had been content to have the paintwork brown, no doubt under the impression that it was more ‘period’, but Gabrielle had at once decided that it made the hall too dark. The hall, which was the size of a large room, rose to the height of the second storey ceiling: there had been plenty to do. This was the second weekend that Gently had been toiling away at it.

‘If it’s for me, say I’m busy.’

It was Mrs Jarvis who was trotting over to the phone, leaving open a door from which issued a smell of roast pork to mingle with the heavy smell of paint.

Mrs Jarvis was in her element. At first, it had seemed like the end of the world when Gently had got married, making redundant the villa at Finchley where, as a bachelor, he had lived for so long. With a fancy French wife he didn’t need a housekeeper, and suddenly Mrs Jarvis’s future had seemed a blank: her husband long dead, her daughter married, and the house that was her home about to be sold . . .

Then they had asked her, very tentatively, whether she wouldn’t consider keeping house at Heatherings, to live in there while they were away so that the place shouldn’t be unoccupied. Well, she’d had her doubts – her, a Londoner! – but they had vanished when they took her to see it. Soon she was installed with her precious bits and pieces and lording it over a daily help and a gardener.

Gently had never seen her so chirpy, or, for that matter, more bossy.

‘Who is it – Reymerston?’

‘No, it’s one of your lot, Mr George. Says he’s sorry if you’re busy, but could you spare him five minutes.’

‘Tell him to hang on.’

Sighing, he looked round for somewhere to put his brush, then scrubbed his painty fingers on overalls already well-daubed. This was a bachelor weekend: Gabrielle was in France, and not due back until late the next evening. What he wanted was to get the hall done so that he could say to her at the door:

‘Close your eyes . . .’

In other words, he wasn’t in the mood for any interruptions from ‘his lot’.

‘Gently here.’

‘Ah, Superintendent . . . I’m Tom Bedingfield, the county Chief Constable. Let me begin by saying how pleased I was to hear that you were coming to live this way . . .’

Groaning to himself, Gently hooked up a chair and dropped on it. Sir Thomas was only the latest of a number of such callers since they had arrived at Heatherings. The local paper had done a feature, and after that the phone had started ringing: people who had wanted to meet him, and, even more, Gabrielle.

‘I know the house you’ve bought, in fact I was acquainted with Colonel Jonson . . . a lovely place . . . I couldn’t want to see it fall into better hands. Is Mrs Gently there?’

‘She’s in France.’

‘Ah. I was going to beg an introduction. You’re on your own then?’

‘I’m on my own.’

Was the fellow about to invite him to dinner?

‘Well . . . aha! . . . why I’m ringing, apart from my wanting to say hallo . . . the fact is, I have a small problem. You have met Inspector Leyston, haven’t you?’

‘I’ve met him.’

‘Well, it’s like this. There has been an incident at Thwaite Maltings . . . a woman dead in a boat, thought to have been strangled some time yesterday. Well, I want to put in some extra talent, but Leyston is being obstinate. It’s his case, and he wants to keep it, but I’m not sure he has the resources to handle it. I have every confidence in him and all that, but Shinglebourne is hardly a metropolis . . .’

It wasn’t. It was the sort of place you didn’t know whether to call a town or a village, mostly a single street strung along beside a stony beach. And Leyston, he’d be verging on retirement, a sombre, long-featured man with sideboards. A Victorian sort of figure: he went in for black suits with waistcoats, and black Oxford shoes.

‘You’ll have to overrule him.’

‘Aha . . . yes! But I don’t quite like doing that. Not at this end of his career, when he has only six months to go. Better if he went off with a flourish, eh? Actually, I’ve got myself into a predicament. He has rather a high opinion of you, and I suggested that, with you on the spot . . .’

Gently scowled at the phone. Oh no! This sort of thing needed stamping on promptly. Why did they think he had moved out here, if it hadn’t been to slam the office door?

‘Are you there?’

‘I’m here.’

At the other end, harmonics! ‘Oh dear, I’m afraid I’ve put my foot in it, and I was only trying to find an acceptable solution.’

‘London will send you a man.’

‘Of course. But I was trying to keep it unofficial – just a little chat between you and Leyston, a few pointers, that sort of thing. Leyston will be happy with that, but he won’t be happy with a man from London. But naturally I can see your point of view, and perhaps it was unreasonable to suggest it . . .’

Devil take the man! Across the hall, Mrs Jarvis was hovering curiously, her sharp-featured, unsmiling face topped with a tightly-bandaged scarf. It was just on lunchtime. With Gabrielle away, Mrs Jarvis was indulging in a ‘proper’ lunch – roast pork, dumpling and veg., followed by an apple turnover and custard. Years had taught her that her best-laid plans could be brought to nought by a ring on the phone – yet, out here they ought to be safe. Her eyes were fixed on him indignantly.

‘Where is Leyston now?’

‘At Shinglebourne. Apparently the woman comes from there. But that’s only twenty minutes’ drive from your place, so he could be with you in no time at all.’

But what use was that?

‘Thwaite was where they found her?’

‘Yes – do you know it? It’s four miles from Shinglebourne, some big maltings by the river, one of them converted into a concert hall. The boat was found drifting a short distance downstream. The body’s gone to Ipswich.’

‘Who was she?’

‘That’s interesting. A naturalized Czech, according to Leyston. Her father defected in the fifties. He’s a violinist, and plays with the London Philharmonic.’

‘She lived with him?’

‘She’s a divorcee. She lived in the Martello Tower at Shinglebourne.’

Gently hesitated. ‘Is there a political angle?’

‘Good lord, no! Or I’d be ringing Special.’

Gently stared through the window, where, in thin sunlight, butterflies were basking on tall Michaelmas daisies: along with the Red Admirals and Tortoiseshells he could glimpse the scalloped wings of a Comma. It wasn’t so easy to say no, here in this county he was adopting, where he would have liked, at least, to have got off on the right foot. At the same time . . .

‘Tell Leyston I’ll have a word with him after lunch.’

‘All I can say to that is thank you. You’re getting me off a bit of a hook.’

‘I’ll meet him at the concert hall car park at Thwaite.’

‘I really am most grateful. I promise you I won’t put upon you again, and listen, some time when it is convenient . . .’

Gently hung up, and went to clean his brushes. Had he really done the right thing? One thing was certain – the case was Leyston’s, and he wasn’t going to take it off the jealous local Inspector! He had been on a case with Leyston before and was familiar with the set-up . . in fact, one of the earliest phone calls at Heatherings had been from the Shinglebourne doctor, Dr Capel.

With Capel, it might be worth having a chat about any goings-on at Shinglebourne.

‘Are you going out, Mr George?’

The table at lunch seemed lonely. In the evening, he’d be phoning Gabrielle – would he have the courage to admit to her what he was doing?

‘I’ll probably be back again for tea.’

Mrs Jarvis sniffed as she collected the dishes.

Outside, when he went to get out his car, it was a still, serene October day.

He found Leyston waiting by his car in a park unexpectedly full of vehicles, and beside which, on a wide, level grass plot, people were picnicking and children playing.

The Maltings stood distant from the village; part of them, by the road, were still functioning, and there a lorry stood under a chute and one heard a rumble of machinery. But at the back another huge brick-and-slate structure had been adapted as a concert hall, one famous for its acoustics and the centre of an annual music festival.

One drove over a big hump-backed bridge below which flowed a tidal river between dishevelled banks, turned left through a yard, then came to the car park, shaded by willows. To the right was the concert hall with, before it, a big bronze sculpture by a celebrated artist; it was popular with visitors, some of whom were posing with it for photographs. Then there was a craft shop in a corner of the car park, which was bounded by a quay where barges once had unloaded. For the rest, a wide view over marshes, with the roofs of the village at a distance.

The mast of a yacht projected above the quay, and a workboat was tethered near it.

‘Get in beside me.’

Gently had parked with his bonnet towards the picnic-ground. Beyond it one could see a sweep of the river spreading between mudflats, islets, reeds.

Somehow the scene was as serene as the day, and as innocent as the picnic parties – you couldn’t begin to connect it with violent crime. Just a pleasant place on a pleasant Saturday.

‘Do you know where it happened?’

‘That’s just the trouble. It could have happened anywhere down the river.’

Sideboards, waistcoat and all, Leyston was exactly as Gently remembered him. A tall, narrow man with an anxious expression on his pale face, and a slightly irritable manner: Old Muttonchops, Capel called him.

‘Did you know her?’

‘There aren’t many people I don’t know in Shinglebourne. She and her husband, as he then was, converted the old Martello Tower. Name of Stoven. He’s an architect who lives in London, at Chigwell. Then, after the divorce, she came down here to live. That was a couple of years ago. She’d have an allowance from him, I reckon, and she did part-time work as a book-keeper.’

‘She lived alone?’

‘As far as I know. A good-looking woman in her early thirties.’

‘Any boyfriends?’

‘None I’ve heard of.’

‘Have you contacted her ex-husband?’

‘Chigwell are trying to get on to him, but it seems he’s away today.’

‘What about her father?’

‘Stefan Makovrilov.’ Leyston brought out the name with care. ‘He lives at Chelsea. But he’s away too, playing with his orchestra in Edinburgh.’

‘How long had she been dead?’

‘Forensic reckon not later than 5 p.m. yesterday.’

‘Where was she last seen alive?’

‘Going towards the yacht club moorings, which was where she kept her boat, at around 2 p.m.’

‘Have you a picture?’

Leyston opened a briefcase and took out a postcard-size photograph. It was in colour, and showed a handsome woman with golden-blonde hair and large green eyes. She had highcheekboned features and a rather wide jaw and her mouth was smiling, but not her eyes. A watchful, slightly withdrawn expression. You couldn’t guess what she might have been thinking.

‘Did you ever speak to her?’

‘I never had occasion to.’

‘Do you know if she had many friends?’

‘I haven’t had time to enquire much, yet.’

Gently mused over the photograph. The smile that the eyes didn’t share was troubling, like the smile of the Mona Lisa: and here made somehow more enigmatic by the Middle-European bone structure. But perhaps it was just a trick of the camera, or a momentary anxiety on the part of the sitter.

‘Do you know who her doctor was?’

‘Capel. We found his card in a bureau.’

Already he was taking it for granted that it would be he, and not. . .