Gently 19 - Gently Where She Lay by Alan Hunter

Author:Alan Hunter
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781472108777
Publisher: Constable & Robinson
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

AT THE POLICE station I talked to Eyke, using him as a sounding-board for my ideas. He was predictable. As between Selly and the Major, his bias was all towards the former. It was almost like this: if the Major was the culprit, Eyke didn’t very much want to know about it. Selly would do. There was a case against him, and the tidy thing would be to set it in motion. Eyke’s man, Sergeant Campsey, had returned from Eastwich and his report by no means favoured Selly. The waitress at The Bull didn’t remember him, and the prostitute, Royce, told a variant story. She’d had a meal with Selly at The Bull, but then she’d left to keep a date with a client. Selly, she supposed, had remained at The Bull until he rejoined her, at her flat, shortly before ten p.m. Thus Selly was covered by nothing that would raise doubt in the minds of the average jury. Meanwhile, Eyke’s coverage of the Common houses had produced neither suspect nor information, so that, setting aside my inconvenient nominee, the ball remained firmly with Selly. The Major was mine, Eyke gently insinuated; he and Wolmering wanted no part in him.

Selly . . . or the Major? I was trying to get a fix, an intuitive nudge, towards one or the other. Usually in a case I can find myself leaning towards one or another of the available alternatives. An essential faculty: there is too often a point where probabilities balance. Then you’re on a plateau, and unless something is stirring beyond the bare facts you have come to a stand. And this time, apparently, nothing was stirring; I was being left aloof on my plateau. Could it be that I wasn’t fancying either the Major or Selly, but was moving unconsciously towards some third solution?

At dinner at the Pelican I let my mind wander among the other possibilities, trying to discover if it was secretly finding a favourite for itself. It lingered awhile with Miss Swefling (who was undoubtedly my best outsider), but I was obliged to concede that this was due less to suspicion than to my good opinion of her. Not a criterion, of course. I have met several murderers whom I liked. If sympathy and antipathy were a fair test I would be happy to settle for Selly. No: what I was seeing in Miss Swefling was a blend of strength and generosity which even under pressure would resist the temptation to seek an answer in violence. For her it would be no answer, but an even less tolerable alternative. Scandal, personal disaster, she was equipped to meet, but not the self-judgement that would follow violence. I dismissed her and moved on into more remote country. The girls: they were closest to Vivienne; didn’t instinct twitch a little there? Certainly three of them had returned to school, where they were supposedly confined during the critical period, but my knowledge of the school and its grounds suggested there was small certainty of this.

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