Gently French by Alan Hunter Page B

grassed leaf-mould. I followed them. They entered the plantation; stopped and criss-crossed in a little clearing. Here the car had parked, out of sight from the lane, the precise spot shown by the deeper indentations. I prowled around. Cores, apple-peelings; screwed-up wrappings from chocolate biscuits. Fresh: the peel hadn’t browned, the wrappings had taken no damp from the ground. The car-tracks were unidentifiable, but the car had not been a large one, credibly a Viva. And along with the tracks were a number of footprints: these similarly unidentifiable.
    So what more had I now?
    A small matter of confirmation: that Mimi was in contact with a person unknown; and whom she wanted to keep unknown.
    And whom she was probably dashing back to warn by phone.

    I handed in the runabout, collected the Lotus and drove through rush-hour traffic to Norchester. I found Hanson in his office; he was drinking beer and eating fish-and-chips from a newspaper package. I went over my facts. Hanson listened, scowling.
    ‘That lane would be Sallowes way,’ he said. ‘Are you saying there’s a chummie hiding out there?’
    ‘It’s a possibility. And he could be the man who stayed at the Three Tuns on Thursday.’
    ‘You think he’s the killer?’
    ‘We don’t know that. We do know he’s in contact with Deslauriers.’
    Hanson worried a chip. ‘I still fancy Rampant. I wish I could believe he’s a brilliant liar.’
    He fetched a map and we found the lane. It connected with a back road between Sallowes and Wrackstead. By water about two miles from Haughton, by road nearer seven, when you knew the way. In the vicinity were two farms and a scattered handful of farm cottages; Sallowes village was two miles one way, Wrackstead village four miles in the other.
    ‘Is there a pub at Sallowes?’
    ‘Yeah, The Peal of Bells.’
    Hanson reached for the phone and talked to the switchboard. Two minutes later he was connected; they had had no guests at The Peal of Bells.
    ‘Any guest-houses? Private lodgings?’
    ‘There’s nothing of that sort at Sallowes. A bit of housing development, mostly commuters. Perhaps chummie is camping in a field.’
    ‘He’ll be close to a telephone.’
    ‘Well, that should help. I’ll ask the County to do some checking. Only if he isn’t the chummie with the blue Viva, how are we going to know him when we find him?’
    A good question.
    ‘He’ll have been around since Friday, possibly all the preceding week. A man on his own, no apparent business. Most likely from London or that direction.’
    Hanson hefted a shoulder. ‘So we’ll look. But it could be Timmy from Timbuctoo.’ He ate a few chips. ‘Meanwhile there’s Rampant. You haven’t got closer than him yet.’
    I used Hanson’s phone to ring Dainty. Dainty had a tale of woe to tell. He had just missed laying hands on Fring at the staked-out house in Battersea. At about 2 p.m. a Ford Zephyr came by with a driver resembling Fring. It had slowed, pulled in, then departed in haste, the driver obviously having smelled a rat. Alarms and excursions. They had found the Zephyr (it was stolen) across the river in Chelsea, but no Fring, no money; and now the stake-out had been blown.
    I made sympathetic noises. ‘What about our Peter Robinson?’
    Dainty sounded less than interested. ‘You have to admit your description is vague.’ I was getting that reaction from everywhere.
    ‘This chummie has been missing from his usual haunts.’
    ‘So have half the chummies we know.’
    ‘The description would fit someone like Jack Straker.’
    ‘Straker’s away. Hadn’t you heard?’
    I passed on my little bit of information about Quarles’ deposits in a Swiss bank. That didn’t cheer Dainty either: but I hadn’t supposed it would. He came back with something else.
    ‘We found Quarles’ will in his safe deposit.’
    ‘He left a will?’
    ‘It’s dated last August. It leaves his whole estate to Mimi Deslauriers.’
    I chewed that over as I drove