Gently Where She Lay

Book 0: George Gently

by Alan Hunter

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

There was no sign of a struggle, no wounds or bruises. To Gently, it looked like Vivienne had simply lain down and died, yet he knew she had been murdered. The Chief Inspector George Gently Case Files Alan Hunter The unflappable Inspector George Gently has become a household name through the hit BBC TV series starring Martin Shaw. These are the original books on which the TV series was based, although the George Gently in Alan Hunter's whodunits is somewhat different to his TV counterpart. He is more calculating, more analytical, and his investigations are even more enthralling.

Release date: November 21, 2013

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 224

Sample

I LOCKED THE door of the cottage, Seacrest, where only policemen had entered since Tuesday, and stood looking at the green in front of it and at the evening sea behind white-painted railings. This was the view Vivienne Selly had seen every time she had stepped through her door: the small, trim green with its three flower-beds, the cottage opposite, and the sea below. Cars passed by her window, coming from the town and turning sharp left to join the promenade; strollers idled along the cliff-top footway, or rested on one of the two green benches. But it was the sea that dominated the scene, spreading high and wide below the cliff. In her upstairs sitting-room Vivienne had placed a chair from which you could see the sea and nothing else. It was like being in a ship, sitting up there, with the great wrinkled plain moving at your elbow: looking down on seabirds winging across the wave-crests, or a long-shore fishing-boat plugging towards the harbour. But then the sea would have been special to Vivienne, who’d come from a poor neighbourhood in Birmingham. She’d have thought it heaven, two years ago, when the Sellys moved to Wolmering from Smethwick.

I slipped the key in my pocket and strolled over the grass to the footway and railings. Opposite the little green steps descended the cliff, which was neither high nor remarkably steep. But the view was surprising. Southwards, to my right, was an irregular line of fine Georgian houses (echoing a lovely house with rococo bows, a few doors up from the Selly cottage); then the cliff-top swelled greenly, with a hint of distant houses, and beyond stretched the semicircle of a huge, cliffy bay. The cliffs there were steep and of a honey-cake colour. They were helmed partly with dark woods and, further off, a heathery heath. At the bay’s most distant point, say six or seven miles off, the bluish cube of an atomic power-station notched mistily in the dulled sky. Northwards the view was less exciting, being mostly of the promenade and a prosaic pier, but still extensive, and prettily framed by tilted fields and receding cliffs. And all of it, north and south, was just twenty steps from Vivienne’s door. Wouldn’t it have consoled her on those dull days when Selly was away on his travels?

I shook my head and turned along the footway, which we knew had been her route on the Tuesday evening. At about this hour, eight p.m., she had locked her door for the last time. She had been nicely dressed – we had her clothes. The key she had used was the one in my pocket. She had taken her handbag, which contained a little money and the medical card by which she’d been identified. Nothing was abnormal. As far as we knew she had simply set out for an evening stroll, perhaps intending to have a drink later at the Pelican where (according to the barman) she was an occasional customer. What had been different about Tuesday? Whose eye had been on her as she set out, looking neat and pretty in a midi frock of a delicate beige that had probably flattered her pale complexion?

The footway was narrow. It passed under the windows of a number of charming, sea-facing cottages, some of which had miniature gardens with little bits of sculpture let in beside them. Expensive, of course. Wolmering is where the gently affluent retire; these small but immaculate period-dwellings would change hands like rare paintings. Inspector Eyke had made his rounds here. None of the residents remembered seeing Vivienne. No doubt in these parlours one’s eye caught the habit of gliding unimpressed over the passers in the footway, and in fact, at the same time of the evening, I peered into one empty room after another. Were the inmates all at dinner in rear-facing dining-rooms? The parlours might almost have been there for show. But however it was, I passed unobserved: as Vivienne Selly had done before me.

The cottages terminated and I came to a chapel-like building with a sign-board inscribed: The Fisherman’s Rest Room. A dusty model of a beach-yawl occupied one of its windows, through which I could also see the face of a large wall-dock. The place was closed, but two elderly fishermen were seated on a bench outside. They glanced at me casually. One was smoking his pipe, the other had an evening paper in his hand. I paused in front of them.

‘Police. I wonder if you’d mind answering a couple of questions?’

They talked with that sing-song local accent that seems to take you at once into its confidence but which, nevertheless, is never far from quiet irony. The pipe-smoker’s name was Bob Lockett and his mate’s George Duffield. They must have known I wasn’t a local policeman but they didn’t question my credentials. But they couldn’t help me. On Tuesday evening they’d been down at the net-store, at the harbour. Would they have known Mrs Selly by sight? Bob Lockett would. For just a moment, his eye held a gleam.

I left them. Next to the Rest Room was a culde-sac, reaching down from the town. It was filled with cars on both sides and there was a pub a few yards along it. The cars were deserted. Higher up, some youths and girls stood round a scooter, and a couple (they looked like visitors) were staring in the window of a tackle-shop. Nothing for me: though I made automatic note of the numbers of the two cars parked next to the footway.

Now, as I turned the corner by the cul-de-sac, I was coming to the aristocratic quarter. Behind long, narrow gardens, expensively maintained, ranged the terrace of majestic Georgian villas. The terrace was a medley: each spacious house had been allowed to follow its own genius; but the almost irresponsible good taste of Georgian builders had ensured that the group was in accord with itself. I lingered to admire it . . . had Vivienne done the same? Here the footway was an isolated stretch between corners. Below, without access, ran a lower promenade, on which were set beach-huts in a marshalled row. The footway was visible from both villas and promenade but neither had an uninterrupted view; shrubs, low walls and distance obscured it from the former; foreshortening and tamarisk scrub from watchers below. The section, to a certain extent, was secluded . . . what happened here might pass unseen.

But Vivienne had passed this point safely: according to our witness, Mrs Lake. Mrs Lake had reported meeting her ‘up at the Guns’, estimating the time at eight-fifteen. Had Vivienne returned this way? Nobody could tell us. Mrs Lake’s was the only sighting . . . and I, how many people had I met, following the same route at the same time?

I walked on. Just around the next corner the footway widened into an open space. Here the council had erected a wooden shelter: and it was at the shelter I met the girls.

Four girls.

I had been given only a cursory description of them by Inspector Eyke, but one girl had glowing red hair, which made recognition of the group easy. Three were wearing the deep maroon skirt-and-blazer uniform which distinguished pupils of Huntingfield School, the fourth – she was probably the day-girl, Pamela Rede – a blue maxi dress, beneath which one could see her bare feet. They were standing round Pamela and talking earnestly, each in a different, unconscious pose; coltish young girls of eighteen, near the point of becoming women.

They saw me and the talking stopped. They faced me haughtily, eyes alert. At once one was aware of closing defences, of a group solidarity in the face of threat. The sensation was almost tangible, like the sudden creation of an electric field, and as I approached them their poses altered, became more compact, directed towards me. I smiled at the girl in the maxi.

‘Miss Pamela Rede?’

She didn’t reply. She was a tall, pallid-faced girl with shoulder-length fair hair and slightly protruding green eyes. The red-haired girl was Diane Culpho. The others would be Barbara Mells and Anne Brundish. Sixth-formers. They seemed to masquerade a little in the sex-denial of their uniforms.

‘My name is Chief Superintendent Gently. I’m investigating the death of Mrs Selly.’

‘We didn’t kill her.’

‘That wasn’t the suggestion!’

‘And anyway, the police have seen us already.’

I kept smiling at her. She was trembling slightly in spite of the splendid hauteur of her voice. Her father, I understood from Eyke, was a career-diplomat, currently attached in Buenos Aires. Pamela lived with her uncle, Major Rede, who owned a house overlooking the Common. She’d been born in India; there was an Oriental touch in the long beaten-silver necklace she wore with the maxi.

‘You four people are rather important to us. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with our questions.’

‘But we told them everything.’

‘Yes – but I’m fresh to it. Why don’t we start with introductions?’

The electric field tensed. This was the moment when the cat could jump either way. I wasn’t simple enough to expect them to confide in me but I needed to get them talking, reacting. Pamela’s eyes yielded nothing. I turned to give the red-haired girl a grin.

‘You’ll be Diane, of course. Miss Culpho.’

Another tight pause: then Miss Culpho giggled.

I deliberately lingered over the introductions, putting questions that were only half-relevant. I was testing them, but they were testing me too and deciding just how much they ought to thaw. Pamela was clearly the group’s leader. Diane Culpho was their jester. She was slightly plump, but with a pretty rounded face, and her soft hair was almost the colour of poppies. Barbara Mells was a staid-looking girl; she was the daughter of an Eastwich architect. Anne Brundish, from Wimbledon, had tomboy good looks and a big-boned, athletic figure. None of them beauties, though perhaps Diane would shed her plumpness and grow into elegance. Brains were probably shared between Diane and Pamela; the other two would labour for their pass-marks.

Four girls . . . what had drawn them into the orbit of a Vivienne Selly? Average girls: you would have expected them to go thoughtlessly on their appointed ways.

‘How long had you known Mrs Selly?’

They looked at each other. ‘About a year,’ Pamela said flatly.

‘Where did you meet her?’

‘Oh, one Open Day. We saw her around the tennis courts.’

‘She spoke to you?’

A shrug. I could feel the ice beginning to form again. Dangerous ground: they guessed what I knew, but they were never going to admit it. I switched my attack.

‘I expect you knew her as well as most people in Wolmering. That’s why it’s important for me to talk to you, to get all the information you can give me. Sometimes the vital fact is a small thing, a detail that seems too vague, too trivial. Like some innocent habit of Mrs Selly’s, or a hint about money she expected to receive.’ I looked earnestly at each girl. ‘Tell me, did you see much of her husband?’

Diane coloured a little: they all gazed at me fixedly.

‘Well . . . did you?’

Pamela jingled her necklace. ‘Of course we met him once or twice. He was a boor. Viv hated him. It was a big relief when he went away.’

I nodded. ‘There were scenes, were there?’

‘Oh, Viv didn’t give him that satisfaction.’

‘Did she tell him she hated him?’

‘She told him to get out,’ Diane said.

‘You were present?’

Diane coloured again, but didn’t answer.

‘It was about other women,’ Anne Brundish said suddenly. ‘He was away from home a lot, you know. Commercial traveller and all that. He’d got women all over the place.’ She shut up as suddenly, biting her lip.

‘I think you know all about that,’ Pamela said. ‘But he’s still in the district – that’s important, isn’t it? We happen to know he’s living in Castleford.’

I smiled at her. ‘Is it important?’

Her green eyes jumped at me. ‘Of course. Who else would want to get rid of Viv? He was paying her an allowance, wasn’t he?’

‘But . . . did he hate her?’

‘Yes – he did hate her! Viv was utterly superior to him.’

‘How, Miss Rede?’

‘Just – superior! She belonged to a different league.’

She made a swerving movement with her shoulders, setting her necklace dinking again; and the others stared at me intently, as though anxious I should know they seconded the point. Yet in what sense could Vivienne have been ‘superior’ – a Brummie ex-typist who’d married a rep? It didn’t show in her books, her furniture; in the negative life she’d been living at Wolmering.

‘I’ll bet you haven’t talked to him,’ Pamela said scornfully. ‘It’s so obvious, yet you won’t do anything.’

‘We shall talk to him,’ I said. ‘We talk to everyone.’

‘But—’ It was her turn to colour.

‘Perhaps you’ve seen George Selly lately?’

‘No.’

‘Or perhaps Mrs Selly spoke of him on Tuesday?’

She shook her head. ‘But he’s a rotter and a liar. You shouldn’t put any faith in what he tells you.’

‘He’s an animal,’ Barbara Mells said. ‘A male animal.’

‘In fact, you don’t have a good word for him.’

‘Because he did it,’ Pamela said. ‘We all think so.’

She snatched a look at the others. They nodded approval.



I let them relax while I lit my pipe and while two couples passed along the footway. The sun, coming low from behind the houses, was touching the grey sea with frail light. An aquatint evening. Wolmering was a town that would have attracted the nineteenth-century watercolourists. No doubt if I had leisure to search in the library I would find views by Sandby, Cotman, Prout. From a distance what you’d see would be clustering houses on a promontory lifting towards the sea and supporting a plump, white light-house and the sharp-lined tower of a flint church. It cried for painting: in fact I had seen an artist at work there that afternoon.

I broke the match I’d lit my pipe with and dropped the pieces in a litter-bin. The girls watched. They’d stood quite silent while I went through my little ritual. To them I’d be some sort of stern uncle, a man, and well-stricken in years: a male, but now less of an animal. Certainly beyond understanding them. I blew a smoke-ring.

‘Do you sixth-formers get into town when you like?’

They shifted a little, uneasy, wondering where this was going to lead. Diane spoke for them.

‘It’s not quite like that. We have to get leave to come out.’

‘When are you due back?’

‘At nine p.m. Pam’s going to drive us in her Mini.’

‘But you get afternoons off?’

‘Well . . . sometimes! Like when there are games and we aren’t playing.’

‘And that would have been the case on Tuesday?’

She nodded, flushing. Now I’d got to it!

‘It was Junior Tennis,’ Pamela said quickly. ‘Seniors aren’t obliged to stay for that. Some of us volunteer to umpire, but we don’t have to unless we like.’

‘There isn’t some . . . alternative programme?’

‘All right! There’s the Natural History Ramble.’

‘But nobody much goes on it,’ Diane said, very rosy. ‘It’s just mostly for a few who are interested.’

I puffed and didn’t comment. They must already have been on the mat for this. Since Tuesday’s incident there would be a rigorous roll-call for all opting ramblers on games afternoons. Evening leave, I imagined, came in at all times for searching scrutin. . .