Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

magnate.’
    ‘All the same, it puts her in the picture, and you’ll have to admit she had opportunity.’
    ‘It won’t wash, Chief, really it won’t. You’d do better to blame the job on a burglar.’
    No, it wouldn’t wash. None of this by-play was going to wash. It had the ingenuity of a desperate defence which would sound so persuasive in a printed record. But recite the facts, put Fazakerly in the box, and no bunch of red herrings would get him off. It didn’t need Reynolds to tell Gently that his finesses were convincing neither of them.
    ‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘Let’s look at the bathroom.’
    Reynolds ushered him to it with an air of relief. It was comparatively small, but had been entirely modelled to resemble a grotto of green crystal. It had no window. At the pressure of a switch it was suffused by a dim, subterranean glow, and water was fed to the bath, which was sunken, from inlets concealed beneath the rim. Three extended fingers of a glass hand were levers operating the supply.
    ‘Would you credit it?’ Reynolds marvelled. ‘Where do they sell this sort of thing, anyway?’
    He reached out and moved one of the fingers.
    ‘Ugh!’ he said. ‘It’s bloody obscene!’
    They went next door into the bedroom, which appeared completely dark as they entered it, but after a moment one saw that the windows, two large ones, still filtered light through bottle-green glass cubes.
    ‘Where’s the switch?’
    ‘Wait a moment . . . this is it.’
    Reynolds fumbled around and located a silk bell-pull. But the light he produced was so feeble and diffused that it scarcely improved what came from the windows. At last one could see a huge four-poster bed, almost as wide as it was long, a low divan, or padded bench, and a big semi-circular stuffed chair. The floor was completely carpeted over what felt like a deep foam base and the walls and ceiling were thickly quilted in green silk with jade studs. The door was similarly quilted. When it closed it seemed to vanish. The air in the room, though apparently fresh, was warm and charged with the odour of cypress.
    ‘Look over here, Chief!’
    Reynolds had lowered his voice, and was pointing furtively to a wall bracket. Hanging from it was a small whip with a bush of very fine thongs. Gently took it down. It had a silver handle set with what may have been emeralds. The thongs were silk and carried no weight. You could barely have swatted a fly with it. He put it back.
    ‘Just a toy.’
    ‘Yes . . . she didn’t intend to get hurt, did she? Then there are these.’
    He showed some plaited silk cords which had been lying over the back of the chair.
    ‘Did she actually sleep in this room?’
    ‘Yes. That’s what I asked Fazakerly.’
    ‘Quite a woman.’
    ‘She was queer as hell, Chief. If you ask me, she had it coming to her.’
    They went out again into the corridor, the door closing noiselessly behind them. Reynolds, eager to show all the gimmicks, switched on the fountain and stood admiring it. As he had said, the water was green. It fell with a tinkle in the glass basin.
    ‘Well . . . that’s about it, Chief. What do you really think . . . now?’
    ‘I think he’s guilty,’ Gently said.
    ‘He is. You don’t have to worry about that.’
    ‘Just the same.’
    Reynolds nodded. ‘I’ll see it’s tied up a bit tighter. This’ll do me some good, this case, I’m not going to slip up on the details. Can I charge him now?’
    Gently made a face. ‘Let it stick till tomorrow lunchtime. That’ll give me an alibi with the family.’
    ‘As you like, Chief. It’s all one to me.’
    They took a cursory glance at the rest of the flat, including Fazakerly’s untidy bedroom; then, on the landing, Gently pointed to the second door.
    ‘What do they keep in that?’ he asked.
    ‘It’s just a boxroom.’
    Reynolds shoved open the door. Inside was a stack of expensive luggage. Colourful labels, now marked and rubbed, spoke of Paris, Cannes, Monaco, Capri.
    ‘Did you find the door locked when you came here?’
    Reynolds frowned, said: ‘I don’t remember.’
    ‘That’s fresh cigarette ash down there.’
    ‘That’d probably be Buttifant. He always has a fag on.’
    Gently nodded, remembering Buttifant, a sad-faced man who smoked self-rolled cigarettes.
    Just his trademark on the floor.
    What was the point of trying too hard?

 
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    I N THAT CASE , why was he still hesitating, while the two of them stood waiting for the