Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

green glass rooflights and had the same submarine character as the landing. On the walls, in moulded glass frames, hung a series of Japanese prints of fish; fat, voluptuous, swirling monsters with sad eyes and gaping mouths. Glass furniture was ranged beneath them and at the end of the hall stood a glass fountain. It was in the form of a nymph who poured water from a glass pitcher into a glass rock-pool.
    ‘That was working . . . I switched it off. There’s a tank of green-coloured water. Everything’s the same except in Fazakerly’s room. She was a blonde, maybe that explains it.
    ‘She was more than a blonde,’ Gently grunted.
    ‘You should see the bathroom. And her bedroom.’
    ‘Just now, I’d sooner see the lounge.’
    ‘It’s this door on the right.’
    The lounge was a handsome room with a long veranda which looked over roofs to the Albert Bridge. From any one of its ten windows you could see a stretch of the river. It was furnished expensively, not in glass, but with neo-Victorian stuffed furniture. Curtains of heavy apple-green velvet swathed windows and door. The carpet was a green Persian and there were green Chinese vases in an alcove, and supporting the alcove, in green carved frames, two Etty, or near-Etty, nudes. A book-case painted in the prevailing colour contained books bound in a soapy green calf; they were poets of a romantic cast mingled with some Oriental erotica. On a low tray-table stood six jade figurines of posturing female nudes, while a green soapstone sculpture, on a japanned base, frankly symbolized a female genital organ. A bronze incense-burner stood near it. A perfume of cypress pervaded the room.
    ‘Where was the belaying-pin kept?’
    Reynolds pointed to a section of varnished pin-rail. It was fastened to the wall between two of the windows and partly hidden by the fall of the curtains. In effect it was exactly behind the vast settee on which Mrs Fazakerly’s body had been discovered. If she were sitting on the settee one could have seized the pin and struck her all in one movement.
    ‘Not very obvious, Chief . . . up there?’
    No: not very obvious at all. In fact, if the curtains had been allowed to fall naturally, it would have been hidden altogether. Meanwhile, distributed about the room, were several alternative weapons: the incense-burner, the bit of soapstone, two silver candle-sticks, a green glass door-stop.
    ‘Fazakerly would know where to go for it. A stranger here wouldn’t know.’
    ‘But why?’ Gently grunted. ‘Why go for a weapon that had his name on it?’
    ‘I’d say it was the natural weapon for him. He was crazy mad and he went straight for it.’
    ‘If he was crazy mad he wouldn’t go round there. He’d grab that bronze job or a candlestick. Was there blood on the floor?’
    ‘Well . . . some splashes.’
    ‘But she was killed on the settee, where the mess is?’
    Reynolds nodded.
    ‘So at the height of this row she was calmly sitting there, watching Fazakerly go after the pin.’
    ‘We don’t know exactly . . .’
    ‘But does it make sense?’
    Reynolds shrugged his shoulders diplomatically.
    ‘It doesn’t,’ Gently snorted. ‘It’s a different picture. It’s a picture of something much more calculated.’
    He went behind the sofa.
    ‘This makes more sense. She’s sitting there quietly talking to someone. Someone who knows what they’re going to do and what the weapon’s going to be. Someone who’s moved across to the window, who’s saying something about the view, about the curtains . . . then, before she can move to defend herself, out comes the pin and she’s had it. Isn’t that more convincing?’
    ‘But there was a row, Chief . . .’
    ‘Wait a minute, here’s something more! Suppose Fazakerly was mad enough to use that pin, why didn’t he then throw her over the veranda?’
    ‘The veranda . . . ?’
    ‘Yes – seven floors up – did she fall or was she pushed? Then a quick mop-up job on the settee, and it’s better than evens he’d get away with it.’
    Reynolds didn’t say anything. He stood looking unhappily at the settee. It suggested, perhaps more than words could, that Gently was beginning to overplay his hand.
    ‘All right . . . forget it for the moment!’
    ‘But . . . surely he’d panic a bit . . . after . . .
    ‘Forget it. I’m just throwing out ideas.’
    Nevertheless, Reynolds went to stare over the veranda.
    Gently jammed his pipe into his mouth and made a big business of lighting it.