Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

door ajar, listening. This was the pay-off, don’t forget, and I was lapping it up like cream. But then it started to go wrong. Siggy was getting violent too. Suddenly Clytie began screaming “No, Siggy!” and there was a sound of a struggle and a shriek and a thump. How am I doing?’
    ‘Keep right on talking.’
    ‘Well, then Siggy bolted out of the door. He rang for the lift but it was in use, so he swore and ran down the stairs.’
    ‘What was he carrying?’
    ‘Carrying?’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t remember him carrying anything. But if you say he was, that’s dinkum with me. Only between ourselves, I didn’t see it.’
    ‘Then?’
    ‘Then I went in and found her.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘In the lounge. That’s where the row was.’
    ‘Where in the lounge?’
    ‘Ah. I’m not too certain. Subject to correction, I’d say the floor. Yes, she was lying on the floor, with Siggy’s belaying-pin beside her.’
    ‘Did you touch the belaying-pin?’
    ‘Not likely. After so much indoctrination by T.V. I didn’t touch anything, especially Clytie. The way she was bashed didn’t call for inspection. No, I spent a minute figuring my position and then I decided to follow Siggy. If I stayed and got myself mixed up in it I’d have some crude explaining to do.’
    ‘You touched nothing, took nothing?’
    ‘I’m wide open to suggestions.’
    ‘How did you leave the building?’
    ‘Inconspicuously. Down the stairs and through the mews.’
    ‘Through the yard where the dustbins are kept?’
    ‘Through the yard and straight ahead. But Siggy would have gone out through the front – he had his car there, remember. Then I went home, still inconspicuously. I honestly thought Siggy hadn’t a chance. And it’s a fact that I’m only here now because you didn’t have enough on him to hold him.’
    She smiled beautifully at Gently, lifting her face towards his. Her knee lifted and sagged, then lifted again and sagged again.
    ‘And,’ she said, ‘you believe me, don’t you?’
    Gently gave a shake of his head.
    ‘Yes, say you do,’ she said. ‘Flatter me.’
    He looked at her, said nothing.
     
    ‘At least,’ she said, ‘you don’t know, can’t be certain, whether I’m telling the truth or not. All the truth. Some of it. Most of it, bridged by intelligent guessing. You don’t know, and you don’t have to. That’s for the jury to decide.’
    ‘Your account doesn’t square with Mrs Bannister’s.’
    She pouted. ‘It can’t be very different! Not if La Bannister told you the truth, though I daresay that isn’t a blank certainty. But I’m not greedy. If it makes it easier, I’ll square my details with hers.’
    ‘And you think I’m going to accept that?’
    ‘Of course. What do you have to lose?’
    ‘By offering a perjured witness?’
    ‘You don’t know I’m perjured. And it will put Siggy where he belongs. I suppose you’re not going to tell me he didn’t do it?’
    ‘I’m going to tell you you didn’t go back into the flat. And there was no struggle and no screaming. All the frills are imaginary.’
    Brenda Merryn sighed. ‘You’re hard,’ she said. ‘And you’re not being very intelligent, George. This isn’t slipping halfbricks into somebody’s pocket, it’s really assisting the course of justice. You’ll get the murderer, I’ll get the money. Even Siggy can’t grumble. And when it’s all over George, wouldn’t you rather have a rich mistress in Kensington than a poor one? Or since you’re a bachelor, let’s go further – say a rich Mrs George?’
    ‘You’d go to that length?’ Gently said.
    She looked at him intently. ‘Not for the money. But yes, I’d certainly go to that length. Because you don’t quite hate me, do you?’
    ‘In fact . . . you’re offering me a cut?’
    ‘Perhaps I am. Money is important.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Miss Merryn. It isn’t on.’
    ‘You’re still not calling me Brenda,’ she said.
    She lay back on the settle, her face gaunt in the dimmed light, one arm hanging over the settle-back, a hand trailing on the floor.
    ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘I’m levelling with you. You’re not a kid for me to fool. You’re not a hypocrite with froth on you. You’re a realist, like me. And what I’m offering is real enough though it doesn’t add up to soap-powder ethics.’
    Gently rose. She looked up at him.
    ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Are you tossing me out?’
    ‘Have you transport?’
    ‘I’d like to say I haven’t.