Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

cigarette-case-cum-lighter and lit a cigarette without offering them round. The room, apart from the desk and a single filing-cabinet, was furnished more like a lounge than an office. Stock-bridge sprayed smoke over their heads, eyed Gently again, but said nothing.
    ‘How much is their rent?’ Gently asked.
    ‘The Fazakerlys? Two hundred a month. Perhaps you’ll understand now—’
    ‘When did they come here?’
    ‘When? Oh, they’ve been here five years.’
    ‘So you know them well?’
    ‘I wouldn’t say that. It’s not my place to mix with the tenants. I see them, yes, we have a drink at Christmas. But I don’t know anything about their business.’
    ‘You knew which one held the purse-strings.’
    ‘Well, that was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? Mrs Fazakerly wrote all the cheques. It’s easy to spot a set-up like that.’
    ‘What sort of set-up, Mr Stockbridge?’
    ‘Where it’s the wife who calls the tune. Where the husband is just the boy round the place, a pet poodle in trousers.’
    He stared fiercely at Gently. In a flashy way he had good looks; dark eyes, a tanned complexion, white teeth which he showed frequently. Yet there was a spivvishness in his manner, perhaps in the nattiness of his clothes. You might have placed him as a car-salesman or a high-pressure estate agent.
    ‘And Fazakerly accepted this situation?’
    ‘I don’t want to run the fellow down. I felt sorry for him, rather. I’ve got no quarrel with Fazakerly.’
    ‘Did they ever have rows?’
    ‘Not in public, anyway. In fact, you rarely saw them out together. Fazakerly has his interests, sailing, photography. I doubt if he was in the flat very much.’
    ‘Had he other women?’
    Stockbridge shrugged. ‘Better ask him. He wouldn’t have a damn sight to run them on. And he wouldn’t and didn’t bring them here. Be no point in that, would there?’
    ‘There might have been someone here already.’
    ‘Possible. We don’t check on tenants’ morals.’
    ‘A neighbour.’
    ‘Could be.’
    ‘Say, Mrs Bannister?’
    Stockbridge stared at him, shook his head.
    ‘But she was a friend of theirs, wasn’t she?’
    ‘Not of his. And anyway, you’d better forget that angle. Take it from me there’s nothing in it. He was no chum of Sybil Bannister’s.’
    He didn’t take his eyes off Gently.
    ‘I’m telling you what you know, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘I daresay it’s pretty notorious, but it’s inside the law. We couldn’t clamp down on them.’
    ‘They made it fairly obvious, did they?’
    ‘Let’s say you didn’t have to wonder too much.’
    ‘And Fazakerly accepted that too?’
    ‘Apparently. I don’t know what was going on.’
    He took a few quick draws at his cigarette, then turned to stub it out in a big silver ashtray. Though he was probably being quite frank he still gave a curious impression of insincerity.
    ‘Who were their other friends?’ Gently asked.
    ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you there. She has a sister of course, I don’t know her name. Fazakerly would have his sailing pals.’
    ‘Where were you when it happened?’
    ‘Me? I was in the City. On the first Monday of each month I show my accounts at head office.’
    ‘Where’s that?’
    ‘In Old Broad Street. The Associated Holdings and Development Co.’
    ‘You didn’t see Fazakerly that day?’
    ‘I haven’t seen him since Friday.’
    Gently had no more questions. Stockbridge followed them to the doorway. His last gambit, like his first, was:
    ‘But when are we going to get possession . . . ?’
     
    They took a silent, gentle, plush-lined lift from the hall to the seventh floor, issuing out on a broad landing lit by a rooflight of thick green glass. The landing was treated as an anteroom and had green wall-to-wall carpeting, three chairs, formed from bended green glass, and a small table of like material. The walls were finished in green plaster with a pattern of whorls. There were two doors, also green, but the smaller of them probably served a closet.
    ‘Who are the neighbours?’ Gently asked.
    ‘There aren’t any, Chief . . . not up here. There’s a penthouse flat on the other side of the block, but of course that doesn’t connect with this.’
    ‘Who’s underneath?’
    ‘Mrs Bannister.’
    ‘Does she go in for this sort of décor?’
    Reynolds apparently thought this a joke, for he gave a conscious sort of snigger.
    He unlocked the larger of the doors. They went through into a long hallway. It too was lit by