‘You admit you’re Lammas — you’ve heard the chief inspector charge you. If you’ve anything to say, just remember that it’s evidence. I’m not paying any attention to that last remark of yours.’
Lammas nodded without looking at him.
‘I intend to make a statement.’
‘You can do that back at headquarters, though if you’ll take my advice-’
He pulled himself up. Policemen didn’t give that sort of advice!
‘We’ve got the cars back on the road. Hansom, get this man away!’
What the super wanted to do was to regularize the situation, but the official note, once lost, seemed strangely unwilling to resume itself. He stood almost to attention as he watched them file away. First there was Lammas, conducted by Dutt and Hansom. Then followed Pauline, her head bent in sobs. Finally came Mrs Lammas and Paul, the latter still looking like a madman. Mrs Lammas walked in frozen state. She was there by constraint… this scene was unutterably beneath her!
As they disappeared behind the mill the super slowly relaxed from his pose.
‘I’ve seen some jobs in my time… I’ve seen one or two!’
He turned on Gently with a sudden fierceness.
‘You’ve made his coffin and screwed him down in it. You swine, Gently… you bloody swine!’
Gently nodded to the flowing stream. It wasn’t ever much fun, being a policeman.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘Now we know why he killed Annie Packer.’ Lammas had made a long, long statement. In the super’s office it was stuffy and warm in spite of two open windows and the obstinate issue from Gently’s sand-blast didn’t improve matters a bit. Down below the evening traffic was still busy in the street. A moment ago they’d been turning out of the theatre. In the pub across the way, no doubt, the cloth had gone up ten minutes ago.
‘What else could he do?’
Gently looked tired and bored, standing by the window. There was a nasty taste in his mouth. He had never been involved in a case he liked less, or been so sickened by his triumph. Yet Lammas had tried to kill him, too. And at the mill there’d been another bullet with his number on it.
‘When she caught him with his clothes off there was only one answer. And that’s why I couldn’t find any blood — he shot her in the cabin.’
‘We’ll find some blood — now we know where to look for it. And the bullet too, I daresay.’
The super hadn’t much kick in him either. He was sitting hunched up, his hands dug into his pockets. It wasn’t the way a super ought to sit, but for once in a while he was looking as though he couldn’t care less.
‘D’you think he told the truth about pulling the gun this afternoon?’
‘Yes… he couldn’t have gunned the lot of us. I was afraid of what he might do.’
‘It’d have saved a lot of money.’
‘I couldn’t take the risk.’
‘Would you have let him if you could?’
Gently made a meaningless gesture.
‘We don’t play God at our level… it’s higher up you meet the divinities.’
He pulled on his pipe. It was obvious that he didn’t want to talk. He’d done his job… he’d got to write his report. Apart from that, he’d have liked to have forgotten the whole thing.
But of course… he would have to tell his tale!
That’s why the four of them were hanging on there, instead of going off to supper and bed. And in a way, he did want to talk. Just as Lammas had wanted to confess. When you talked you involved other people… you crept back out of the unbearable loneliness of experience.
‘How about some coffee?’
The super pressed a button.
‘Let’s have some sandwiches too — come to think of it, I haven’t eaten since lunch-time.’
Down there, they wouldn’t know anything about Lammas’ arrest until they got the morning papers.
The sandwiches were tongue and the coffee the brand of coffee that only superintendents get out of police canteens. Gently felt better after the snack. There was a sort of humanity in food and drink…
‘Now — getting back to the beginning of this affair.’
He was sitting in his favourite way with the chair back to front. Dutt was stuck away in a corner, Hansom near the desk, his long legs sprawling. They hadn’t put the light on — it wasn’t really necessary.
‘What stuck out like a sore thumb was that week on the yacht. It couldn’t be explained — there was no adequate reason for it. Lammas had carefully planned things so that he had a week of grace before inquiries began, yet here he was, openly hanging about, almost making certain that someone took notice of him. You can argue that not many people on the Broads knew him and that he kept well clear of Wrackstead — but against that you’ve got to remember that he hired a Wrackstead boat and gave his own name and address to the boat-yard. Then, at the end of the trip, he phones for his chauffeur! What sort of madness was that, from a long-sighted man like Lammas?
‘That’s where I started going wrong. He had me fooled with the telephone call. Instead of accepting it and drawing an inference, I began looking for an accomplice in the family, somebody who could have traced Lammas to Ollby and then tipped off Hicks.
‘And I didn’t have to look very far. Both Mrs Lammas and Paul were absent from “Willow Street” at the time of the murder and neither of them had an alibi. What was more, their comings and goings were oddly mixed up with one another’s — especially by the row at the end of them! As for motive, that’s always a tricky business. You and I know, if judges don’t, that nobody’s quite sane when they come to do a murder. Mrs Lammas was the predatory type of woman who never lets go of the people she gets in her power. Paul Lammas had National Service hanging over his head — with his father standing by to kick him well and truly into it! To this you had to add their relation to Hicks. He was a confidential retainer whom either might influence. And when it came to finance, they had that too.
‘Hicks, of course, was the perfect tool. We know more about him from Lammas’ statement. He was a spy, a liar and what you might call Mrs Lammas’ creature — Lammas suspected he was something more, but we’ve no proof of that. At all events, he’d been a wedge between them. Lammas hated him and he hated Lammas. I got enough of this out of the early interrogations to convince me that Hicks was a likely man.
‘To complete the picture, there was the shadow of a fourth person — I made a certain pass at Mrs Lammas and her reaction suggested I was on the right track. We know now who it was, but then it was just something to be kept in mind. And it was the same with Linda Brent. She wasn’t really impressive as a candidate for the murder of the man she loved, so… I’d just keep her in mind and see what turned up.
‘Now the first thing to get at was whether Mrs Lammas or her son knew what Lammas was up to and the second — this was vital — whether they knew where to find him. But I was so much impressed by the oddness of that trip on the yacht that I felt compelled to tackle it before anything else. Unless I could get a reason for it, I felt I should miss the significance of other things which might turn up. And I was right… though it isn’t much comfort to me.
‘At the time my investigation of the trip seemed a complete waste of energy. I learned nothing of the motive for it except that it apparently had none. Lammas had behaved exactly as holidaymakers do behave. He had visited the same places, done the same things as the others, and it didn’t seem to have worried him that he might have been recognized. His only departure from routine was when he went up Ollby Dyke — to get murdered! There was nothing else remarkable about the whole itinerary.
‘Well, I ought to have seen it. I could kick myself now for not seeing it. Rouse… Tetzner… Saffran and Kipnik — I’d studied all their trials at one time or another. And yet I was still in the dark! Lammas had really nulled the wool over my eyes. And just to keep me well off the trail, I happened on some of the evidence I was looking for relating to Mrs Lammas.