Gently Floating (8 page)

She smiled again. It was a flashing smile. She had large china-blue eyes and they were opened wide. She had curling golden-brown hair that fell loosely, nearly to her shoulders. She was wearing a flowered knee-length dress and white ankle socks and tennis shoes. But she wasn’t a girl, Gently now saw. Her age would be nearer to thirty.

‘Well,’ Gently said. ‘I’m glad to hear you’re booked up.’

‘Oh, that doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘You can come into the office. I don’t mind. Only I can’t let you have anything, of course. All the booking’s done through Hookers, but you’d know that, wouldn’t you, if you’re a policeman.’

‘What’s your name?’ Gently said.

‘V,’ she said. ‘It stands for Vera. Miss Vera Spelton. Dave and Jackie call me V.’

She opened the door of the office, went gliding through, stood holding it. She had a slim, narrow-hipped figure with a slight bust, but well-rounded limbs. Her nose was blunt, a little snubbed, had freckles round the bridge. Her mouth was wide and smiling. She was tanned. She smelled of sunwarm hay. She pushed a chair towards Gently.

‘Do sit down,’ she said.

Gently sat. Vera Spelton skipped to a chair behind an old walnut writing-table. There were two other chairs in the office and a filing cabinet and a chest of drawers, and on the walls hung many photographs of yachts and each photograph was in a fretwork frame. In addition there was a fretwork case containing a stock of burgee-badges in the Spelton colours, and a fretwork holder of coloured yacht postcards and a fretwork perpetual calendar on the writing-table. Vera Spelton picked up the calendar, adjusted it, replaced it, smiled at it.

Now,’ she said, ‘about the yacht you’re having. You can’t have
Victor. Victor’s
out. You can’t have
Damsel, Tomboy
or
Maid
or any of the
Breezes,
they’re all out. Then there’s
Melody, Insignia, Eclipse, Flame, Ensign, Novice
and
Dolly.
Nothing there. Then there’s the
Bird
class, one to six. Fully booked. You don’t seem very lucky, do you?’

No,’ Gently said. ‘Perhaps some other time.’

‘Oh, I’d fix you up if I could,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘Would you be one of our old customers?’

‘Not so very old,’ Gently said.

‘I’m not old at all,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘Do you think I’m attractive? Do you like me?’ She leaned across the table. ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ she said. ‘Some of our customers think I’m attractive.’

‘Some of your customers?’

‘Shh,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘It’s a secret. You mustn’t let my brothers know. They’re very angry if people think I’m attractive. Silly, isn’t it? That’s how they are.’ She drew back, still smiling. ‘In the boats,’ she said. ‘Some of them have kissed me and put their arms round me and tried to do naughty things. I don’t let them, of course. But they try. They think I’m attractive.’

‘Why do you go in the boats with them?’ Gently said.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘there’s lot’s of excuses. To see if they’ve got clean sheets or know about the toilet, any excuse to go in the cabin with them. Then my arm gets round their waist, that’s one of the ways I’m attractive, or I touch them in a special way. It’s very easy when you know how.’

‘And your brothers are angry?’ Gently said.

Vera Spelton pouted. ‘They shout at me. They shout at the customers. That’s not the way to run a business, is it?’

‘I’m not a businessman,’ Gently said.

‘No,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘It’s silly. But it makes it exciting, knowing they’ll be angry. I don’t mind them shouting at me.’

‘I take it you’re only attractive to the customers,’ Gently said.

‘Oh, I attract most people,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘Only I can’t go into the boats with other people, you have to go somewhere with them alone.’

‘How about somebody else’s boat?’ Gently said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Then I wouldn’t have an excuse. It’s very complicated, really it is. If you don’t know the rules you can’t do it.’

‘Did you use to attract Mr French?’ Gently said.

Vera Spelton’s eyes smiled an inquiry. ‘Who is that?’ she said. ‘I don’t know who you mean.’

‘Your neighbour,’ Gently said. ‘The man who kept the yard across the road.’

Vera Spelton shook her head. ‘Don’t go there for a boat,’ she said. ‘Their boats are no good, they’re all rubbish. Nobody goes to them twice. Did you just want a boat for yourself, or is it a party you want it for?’

‘You’ll know his son, John French,’ Gently said. ‘Harry French the father, John French the son. French’s boat-yard. Harry French. You’d have known Harry French?’

‘I’m extremely sorry,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘All our boats are out in any case. We’re Speltons, of course, we’re always booked up. I don’t think we can do anything for you.’

‘Harry French,’ Gently said, ‘in his launch.’

‘We don’t cater for launch-hirers,’ Vera Spelton said.

‘A big man in a launch,’ Gently said.

‘We don’t like launch-parties here,’ Vera Spelton said. Suddenly she picked up the calendar, held it out to Gently. ‘You didn’t know I did fretwork, did you?’ she said. ‘I’ve done all this in here.’

‘Harry French, who made your brothers angry,’ Gently said.

‘Yes, I’m very good at it,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘They won’t let me work on the boats, though I’m just as clever as they are, so this is what I do. I could sell it for money if I wanted. Do you do fretwork?’

Gently said nothing.

‘I really could sell it,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘All sorts of things. Even furniture. I’m just as clever as they are.’

She smiled at Gently without meeting his eyes, smiled at the calendar, the writing-table. A flashing smile. She had small brown hands with mobile, flat-tipped fingers. The fingers moved about the calendar, feeling the outline of the design. She breathed quickly. The smile lighted every part of her sunned face. Gently’s shoulders lifted.

‘Where can I find your brothers?’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Dave and Jackie. I don’t know. They’re not here.’

‘Aren’t they in the yard?’ Gently said.

‘I couldn’t say where they are,’ she said. ‘But it’s no use going to them. I’m afraid you must come back some other week.’

Gently nodded. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said. He rose, turned towards the door. He met a man coming in through the door. The man had approached the door on tiptoe.

The man was nearly as tall as Gently and he had angry yellowish-grey eyes. He had a hard, broad frame with flat shoulders and large but well-formed hands. He was in his late thirties. He had a small moustache. He had Vera Spelton’s blunt nose. He had Vera Spelton’s wide mouth, but without Vera Spelton’s smile. His mouth and face and body were taut and his eyes were fastened on Gently’s. He wore an old dragged tweed jacket and a faded red cotton shirt and dungaree trousers and ragged plimsolls. He went flat-footed very slowly. In a tight, low-pitched voice he said:

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Routine inquiries,’ Gently said.

‘Oh, and who are you supposed to be?’ the man said. Gently told him.

‘I get it,’ the man said. ‘Getting V on her own. Seeing what you could make her spill. A copper. A screw. A human ferret.’

‘Oh, don’t take on, Dave,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘It’s only a policeman about a boat. I’ve told him that our boats are always booked up and he’s just going and he wasn’t naughty. You shouldn’t’ve come interfering.’

‘V,’ David Spelton said, ‘go and set the table.’

‘But I’ve set the table,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘I have really, you can go and look.’

‘Well, get on with your fretwork,’ David Spelton said. ‘I want to talk to this gentleman alone. Maybe we’ve got a boat he can have, I’ll see about it. You finish that wall-bracket.’

‘No, we haven’t any boats,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘He’ll have to go to those people.’

‘V, just do what I say,’ David Spelton said.

‘All right, Dave,’ Vera Spelton said.

She rose, smiling at neither of them. She glided round her brother. She vanished. David Spelton closed the door, leaned on it.

‘I don’t know if there’s a law against it,’ he said. ‘Getting a subnormal person on their own and trying to work on them in that filthy way. But I’m going to find out, you can depend on that. And if it’s an offence, I’m going to prosecute you. You think you’re fireproof because you’re a policeman, but you bloody aren’t fireproof.Not with my sister.’

‘It isn’t an offence,’ Gently said. ‘Murder is. Investigating it isn’t.’

‘And that covers every dirty little trick,’ David Spelton said. ‘That’s your excuse when you’re caught out.’ He came away from the door, went round the writing-table, leaned on the chair-back, stared. ‘I heard what you were getting at,’ he said. ‘I know how your putrid mind is working.’

‘Congratulations,’ Gently said.

‘People like you make me sick,’ David Spelton said. ‘Harry French interfering with V. It takes a policeman to think up filth like that. And you get her alone and keep feeding her with it, trying to plant it in her mind. But she isn’t as stupid as that, you know. She’s got her way of protecting herself. Because it’s a lie. A damned lie. The dirty lie of a dirty mind.’

‘Is it off your chest?’ Gently said.

‘What’s the point of talking to you,’ David Spelton said. ‘Of course you’ve got a skin like a plastic fendoff, you wouldn’t be in your line of business if you hadn’t.’

‘I might think you’re afraid of something,’ Gently said.

‘Oh of course, of course,’ David Spelton said.

‘I didn’t know you had a sister before I came here,’ Gently said. ‘I came to see you. About something quite different.’

‘And V just fell into your clutches,’ David Spelton said.

‘You weren’t eavesdropping early enough,’ Gently said. ‘She told me some very interesting things which I didn’t know enough to prompt her in. What kept you so long at the yard after you saw me try the doors?’

David Spelton stared, said nothing.

‘And now you’re puzzling me,’ Gently said. ‘Suppose you drop the moral indignation before I find it significant?’

‘Oh, very clever,’ David Spelton said.

‘What were you afraid I should get out of her?’ Gently said.

‘You’ve a thing about me being afraid,’ David Spelton said. ‘I’m not afraid, not of people like you. Only of the injury you might do to my sister. And it’s got to end here, you understand? You’re not shoving that lie at her again. Hawk your filthy ideas around to other people, but let V alone. Or you’ll have me to deal with.’

‘Shouldn’t you just have walked in here,’ Gently said, ‘if your motive was to protect your sister from me?’

‘I mean what I’m saying,’ David Spelton said. ‘Your being a policeman isn’t going to protect you.’

‘Yet you waited to eavesdrop,’ Gently said. ‘Till our interview was over. As though you wanted to hear what I was going to ask her, which you wouldn’t have done if you’d come straight in. And Harry French’s body turned up in your slipway.’

‘I’ll forget myself in a minute,’ David Spelton said.

‘I think you’ve already forgotten yourself,’ Gently said. ‘Why were you going to knock Harry French down?’

The knuckles of David Spelton’s hands paled over the carved wood of the chair-back. His stare was less steady. He drew the chair a little towards him. He said:

‘You’re trying to build a case against me, is that it?’

‘Routine inquiries,’ Gently said.

‘You can’t fix one against young French. Now you’re trying me for size.’

‘Just asking questions,’ Gently said. ‘Why does everyone assume we’re after young French?’

‘Well, I don’t fit,’ David Spelton said. ‘You’re cooking it up first to last. Harry French never had anything to do with V. We never saw Harry French round here. He wasn’t welcome, you understand? We hate Harry French’s guts in these parts. If he’d stepped over that threshold I’d have kicked his arse, that’s how welcome Harry French was here. He never met V, he never talked to her, you’re up the spout with the whole deal. And come to that, he didn’t run after women. That’s the only decent thing I know about him.’

‘But you seem to have had something against him,’ Gently said.

‘Am I saying I didn’t?’ David Spelton said. ‘I’m not afraid to admit I hated his guts. You can hate a man’s guts without killing him.’

‘It’s sometimes a preliminary step,’ Gently said.

‘It probably was in this case,’ David Spelton said. ‘But I didn’t kill him all the same for that, nor I’m not shedding tears because someone else did. I couldn’t care less, that’s my position. I’d rather forget Harry French ever existed. It’s just a bloody nuisance he wound up in our slipway and brought you and all the other ferrets trading their muck here. And if that’s the lot you can get out. I’ve better things to do than talking to you.’

‘More profitable things, perhaps,’ Gently said.

‘A darned sight more profitable,’ David Spelton said.

‘Like arranging a purchase with John French,’ Gently said. ‘Now his father is out of the way and can’t prevent it.’

The chair jumped. David Spelton let go of it. He came round the table, stood close to Gently. He had a puffiness about his eyes and a slight tremor. The eye-whites were bloodshot.

‘Like that, is it?’ he said. ‘You’re full of reasons why I should have killed him. If it wasn’t the one it was the other, and you’re going to make something stick.’

‘Will it stick?’ Gently said.

‘You rotten louse,’ David Spelton said. ‘I wouldn’t have your job for the Bank of England. I’d sooner scrub bottoms for a living.’

‘Compliments aside,’ Gently said.

‘I ought to belt you,’ David Spelton said.

‘It’s been tried,’ Gently said. ‘But it never seemed to help anybody.’

‘Yes,’ David Spelton said, ‘I ought to belt you.’

‘Look,’ Gently said, ‘this is getting us nowhere. You might stack up an assault charge for yourself, but I’ll still want the answers to my questions. Cool off. It’s doing you no good. You don’t act it well enough. You’ve lost too much sleep.’

‘I’d love to belt you,’ David Spelton said.

He raised his fist. Suddenly, he was sprawled on the floor. ‘I told you, you’d lost too much sleep,’ Gently said. ‘That one was free. Don’t do it again.’

David Spelton got up off the floor, hesitated, didn’t do it again. He looked at Gently several times. Then he got out a cigarette and lit it. He went over to the window, looked out of the window. People were passing on the cinder path. David Spelton blew a lot of smoke at the window. He turned his back to it, blew smoke at the floor.