Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

horrible.’
    ‘Then what is the alternative, Mrs Bannister?’
    She stared at him with desperation. ‘Me, of course. I’m the alternative, the perfect and only convincing answer. You won’t have Siggy now, will you? Not with this necklace turning up where it shouldn’t! Oh, I can see why you let him go, especially when you’d dug up the story about Beryl.’
    She jumped to her feet.
    ‘Are you going to detain me?’
    Gently shook his head. ‘But you could be more helpful.’
    ‘Helpful! I’m admitting I must have done it.’
    ‘That won’t do. Without some details.’
    ‘So who will you arrest, if not me, not Siggy, and with Beryl Rogers in New Zealand?’
    Gently shrugged. ‘The murderer, I hope.’ He picked up the necklace. ‘And the thief.’
     
    When she had gone Reynolds turned to Gently.
    ‘Chief,’ he said, ‘this is going too fast. Nobody mentioned a Beryl Rogers to me. I’ve a feeling I’m being left down the line.’
    Gently grinned. ‘Perhaps you should have asked Fazakerly.’
    ‘Yes – but where did I get my questions?’
    ‘You went to Brenda Merryn for those.’ Gently paused. ‘Though I’m still wondering why she made me a present of them.’
    He ran over his information to Reynolds, who sat listening with silent attention. At last the C.I.D. man said:
    ‘Then I wasn’t so crazy when I let Fazakerly loose.’
    ‘He isn’t off the hook yet,’ Gently said. ‘But the case against him is looking sick. Unless this necklace being stolen is a coincidence there’s a chance we were wrong about him.’
    ‘We could make a case against Mrs Bannister.’
    ‘Macpherson wouldn’t like that either. A case with two suspects, equally hot, is a prosecutor’s nightmare. But then there’s Miss Johnson and Brenda Merryn. And a whiff of sulphur from New Zealand. And even Stockbridge down in the basement: he may have taken a fancy to this bauble.’
    ‘We checked his alibi. He’s clear.’
    ‘He’d have a master-key to the flat. But what I’m getting at is there are too many cases against too many people, and somehow . . . it smells.’
    ‘How do you mean, Chief?’
    ‘I’m not sure. It’s just a hunch grumbling in my belly. Too much colour, too much decoration, and perhaps something very simple behind it. Maybe I’ll see it when I’ve slept on it. But as of now, it’s a smell.’
    He lit his pipe and blew rings into the conditioned sameness of the office air. Reynolds gazed at them frowningly and dug in his pocket for some form of confection.
    ‘So what will I do, Chief?’ he said.
    ‘You’ll find Beryl Rogers,’ Gently said. ‘Sarah Johnson says she has family in Worcester, so you can make a start there. Then check with the United Press, where she used to work, and the New Zealand Office in the Haymarket, and the Immigration Office. Find where she went to, if she came back, where she is now.’
    ‘What about Fazakerly?’
    ‘Take your man off. He won’t stray far from his money. You made him rich when you didn’t charge him. He’ll be on to his lawyers tomorrow.’
    He blew more rings.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You changed the direction of quite a sum.’

 
     
    CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    I T WAS AFTER nine when he garaged the Sceptre at 16 Elphinstone Road, but Mrs Jarvis, his ‘jewel’, had a mixed grill waiting for him on the hotplate. He ate it in the den and drank some rough red wine along with it, propping the late editions around him on cruet, tea-pot and fruit-bowl. This was his habit in the evening, whether the meal was at six or midnight. From his particular problems he withdrew into the wider world reflected here. It was not escape, since his own problems were an aspect of the panorama, but a change of view, a standing back to merge the trees with the wood. The papers gave him a reference, a monitor glance at all cameras. He ate, drank, read and stood at one again with his world.
    When Mrs Jarvis had cleared away he selected and filled a large bent pipe, then went to his shelves and after a search located Andre Maurois’
Quest for Proust.
Yes, Illiers was Combray. It was a small market town near Chartres. Only a short step from Paris, a step easily taken by an Albertine. A girl of poor family, no doubt, with few prospects in her home town, but with a sturdy pulchritude that would have its value in the great city a few miles distant. How had Clytie Fazakerly and La Bannister picked her up? In the regular way, through an employment agency? In a café on