Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

Sybil could do it,’ he said. ‘And I can’t. Not quite. Though she may have done it, for all that.’
    ‘Did she really love your wife?’
    ‘Love-hate. That’s the cliché. But all love is hate, you can’t have one without the other. The trouble comes when you interfere with the natural balance of the phenomenon. Which is what Christ did. Which is why his results were so deplorable. Any creed that makes love a cult is on the straight road to Belsen.’
    ‘And Mrs Bannister did that.’
    ‘Yes. She made a cult of their relations. She had to, it’s her character. She’s a curious strain of emotion and intellect. Clytie was a beast, but a natural beast, and in a strange sort of way you could sympathize with her. Perhaps that’s why I stuck her so long and let myself drift into being a bum. But La Bannister is an unnatural beast. She’s outside herself, pulling the strings. Her intellect won’t let her emotions alone. She’s an adulterated ego. So she wouldn’t just love and hate like the grass growing but she’d try to separate one from the other and she’d set up love to be worshipped and in fact she loathed Clytie.’
    ‘While at the same time being fascinated.’
    ‘More than that. Parasitical.’
    ‘She drew spiritual strength from your wife.’
    ‘That’s the key to the relation. You notice it with these split-types, they’re drawn to more primitive kinds of ego. Perhaps Albert Schweitzer is such a one. What Hamlet needed was an aboriginal mistress. And Sybil found her primitive in Clytie. They’d known each other for years, you know.’
    ‘And you can’t believe Mrs Bannister would have killed her.’
    ‘No. The other way round, I could believe that. Or somebody else, that I’d believe. But she’d always cringe before Clytie.’
    ‘Someone else?’
    ‘Say me for example. I daresay Sybil wouldn’t stop at me.’
    ‘Or say, a husband?’
    Fazakerly took a long swig. He looked at Gently over the glass.
    ‘Here we go,’ he said. ‘Dig, dig. You’re always ahead of the game, aren’t you? Dig and push. Dig and push. The art of being a top detective.’
    ‘Inquest verdicts are no secret.’
    ‘But knowing to look for them is a trick. What set you digging up Fletcher Bannister?’
    ‘I like to know how people get rich.’
    Fazakerly nodded. ‘It’s logical,’ he said. ‘That’s what we murderers will never learn. But Fletcher Bannister did smash himself up, for all the wild women at the back of him.’
    ‘You know about that?’
    ‘I was there. October fifty-nine. Greystone Manor. Fletcher was a man and I was a mouse. He went out and got it over and I hung on and made squeaking noises. I’d been married just six weeks then. Him and me found out together.’
    Gently drank. ‘I thought it might have been that way.’
    ‘It wasn’t deliberate. Nothing of that sort. Clytie hadn’t been seeing Sybil for a while and when they got together it hit the eye. Fletcher was one of these Podsnap busters who flinch if you happen to mention a choir-boy. He kept his head for a couple of days then flipped and broke into Sybil’s bedroom. Not pretty. He took me with him. There was a stinking row which he didn’t win. The next we heard him take off in his Mercedes and there was a lot of telephoning in the night.’
    ‘How did Mrs Bannister take it?’
    ‘She was scared more than sorry. But she needn’t have worried. Money talks. It washed out clean at the inquest.’
    ‘And your wife?’
    ‘She laughed.’
    Fazakerly tipped his glass again. He looked at the ice left in the bottom, then set the glass on a table.
    ‘Let me get in first this once,’ he said. ‘Creavey Merryn died of thrombosis. Creavey Merryn, her amorous uncle. He died in a nursing-home at Taunton.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Gently said. ‘I did wonder about him.’
    ‘You would, wouldn’t you,’ Fazakerly said. ‘But you misjudged Clytie. She was a bitch without morals or scruples or mercy, but she wasn’t a murderous bitch. In fact, there were moments when she could be affectionate. Of the pair of them, her and Sybil, Clytie was the one you could sometimes like.’
    Gently shrugged. ‘So they weren’t murderesses.’
    ‘No. Bitches, that’s all.’
    ‘Mrs Bannister and Miss Johnson you eliminate.’
    ‘Sarah you can put right out of your mind.’
    ‘Which brings us back to where we came in.’
    Fazakerly nodded. ‘It has to be that. If there’s any sense in this mess at all, it must be Brenda who’s