The Original Inspector George Gently Collection by Alan Hunter

Author:Alan Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472108371
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

‘There seems,’ said Chief Inspector Gently, Central Office, CID, sagely, ‘to be some as-yet-undiscovered connection between coastal resorts and homicide, Dutt. Have you noticed it?’

Detective Sergeant Dutt nodded dutifully, but without really listening to his senior. It had been hot in the train coming up. It was still hot in the train. Their third-class compartment was a little oven, and its atmosphere wasn’t improved by the haze contributed by Gently’s pipe.

‘You’ve only to go back to the ’twenties,’ continued Gently, with a damaging puff. ‘There were the Crumbles murders – Field and Gray in ’20, and Mahon in ’24. Both classics, Dutt. Especially Mahon.’

‘I was bashing me first beat in ’24,’ said Dutt reminiscently.

‘Then there was Smith and the Brides in the Baths – Blackpool and Herne Bay were two of his spots – and coming the other way there’s the Brighton Trunk Murders and Sidney Fox at Margate, and that other Starmouth business – slaughter in all shapes and sizes, and all of it going on by the sea. There’s a link there somewhere, Dutt, you mark my words. The sea has a bad influence on potential homicides, whether it’s recognized or not.’

‘Dare say you’re right, sir,’ replied Dutt, staring out of the window.

‘When I retire I shall write a monograph on it,’ added Gently. ‘There may be some implications which would help a good defence.’

He sank back into his seat and puffed away in silence. The train clattered on, wearying, somnolent. They were nearing the end of the run, four sun-beating hours of it, and both of them felt jaded and grimy. Outside stretched the marshes of East Northshire, very wide, very flat, their distance broken by nothing except the brick towers of windmills and the white handkerchief sails of yachts. Inside there was Gently’s pipe and the sooty smell of third-class cushions . . .

‘Well, it won’t be so bad, sir,’ said Dutt, trying to cheer himself up, ‘it can’t be worse than Southend or Margate.’

Gently smiled at a distant cow. ‘It isn’t,’ he said, ‘there’s parts of it one grows to like.’

‘You know the place, sir – you’ve been there before?’

‘When I was ten,’ admitted Gently, ‘and that’s further back than I like to remember.’

He thought about it, nevertheless. He could see himself now as he was then, a thoughtful child with sunburn and freckles, and those damned knickerbockers. A solitary child he had been, a bad mixer. It may have been the knickerbockers that made him antisocial.

‘There isn’t much difference between criminals and policemen,’ he said, surprising Detective Sergeant Dutt.

They pulled in at Starmouth Ranelagh, a gloomy terminus where the smell of fish blended into a neat olfactory cocktail with the smell of soot, steam and engine oil.

‘It hasn’t changed,’ mused Gently, ‘that’s just the smell it used to have.’

He reached down a battered leather suitcase and deposited himself and it upon the platform. Sergeant Dutt followed, carrying a similar case, while in his other hand he clasped the ‘murder bag’ with which a careful Central Office had equipped the expedition.

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