Read Online Gently in the Sun by Alan Hunter - Free Book Online Page B

fail, as if put together by an inept artist? Why did one’s eye go perpetually roaming after a factor that wasn’t there?
    It was meaningless – that was the word! But one was checked directly by the paradox. There was plenty of meaning to be found in Hiverton, it was active and busy in its peculiar way. Only the word, once hit on, began to haunt Gently. It had an uncanny aptness which wouldn’t let him alone. In some sense to be decided he knew it was applicable: to someone, somehow, Hiverton was devoid of meaning.
    Still puzzling, he went up the steps to the Beach Store. Mrs Neal gave him a smile and a nod over her bacon slicer. By now, like everyone else, she would know his identity, and was probably expecting anofficial visit from him. Gently had read her statement, which confirmed that of Nockolds. There was plenty of routine that he had studiously neglected.
    ‘Heard from your husband yet, Mrs Betts?’
    A neat, drab woman stood waiting with a partly-filled rush bag.
    ‘I had a letter from him this morning. They’ve done with the mackerel. They’ll be working round this way for the season before long.’
    ‘They’re usually back at Starmouth by the first week in September … let’s hope it’s a better herring-fishing this year than last.’
    ‘The Scots boats are coming for all they said last time.’
    Bacon, tea, and the latest gossip, and you could supplement the news with a copy of the local ‘evening’. Gently picked one up from a pile on the stationery counter. It wasn’t carrying his picture although his arrival had made the headline.
    ‘My boy Tommy was telling me that the police are properly stumped.’
    Mrs Neal hissed something in a whisper and her customer turned to stare at Gently.
    ‘Well, I suppose one can speak!’
    ‘That’s five-and-seven, Mrs Betts.’
    The drab woman stalked out offendedly with the air of a hen driven from its hopper.
    Mrs Neal came round the back of the counters. She beamed at Gently as though it were a great joke. She had a twinkle of transparent malice in her eye: it was this that gave point to the plump good nature of her face.
    ‘I suppose you get used to being gawked at and talked about? It’s just a job, like everything else, though I wouldn’t want it myself.’
    ‘Aren’t you in the same position?’
    ‘Here, you mean, behind the counter?’
    ‘I should have thought they talked about you.’
    ‘Oh, they do! Don’t you live in a village?’
    Again that flash of unconscious malice, drawing a smile of response from Gently. He knew now what it was that attracted him to Mrs Neal. She was someone who understood Hiverton and understood it with detachment. More, unless he mistook her, she understood it with affection; he felt a twinge of surprise that such a thing was possible.
    ‘Of course, when you came in here I didn’t know you from Adam. It took half-an-hour for the word to get round. I’ve been wanting to have a talk with you. It’s about Fred Nockolds. There’s no harm in Fred, you know, but this business has got him worried.’
    ‘About what he was doing there?’
    ‘Yes … exercising his dog!’
    ‘It’s a bit thin, isn’t it?’
    ‘Go on! He’s up there regular.’
    Gently brooded a moment, mentally reviewing Dyson’s file. In effect he had long dismissed Nockolds from his thoughts. The poacher, who worked at a farm a mile outside the village, had been assisting in a calf delivery at the critical period. The vet and two witnesses had established this fact. ‘I think we can accept his story.’
    ‘He’ll be relieved. Can I tell him?’
    ‘You can if you like, but I’ll be seeing him myself. By the way wouldn’t he have had a gun and stuff on him?’
    ‘There you are again! But he reported to Ferrety, didn’t he?’
    Her husband came in, a smooth-faced man with a bald patch. He related afresh how he had accompanied Nockolds to the beach. Gently listened, his eyes closed, trying to visualize the scene. Had the body then been