Gently Floating Read Online Free PDF Page A

there’s plenty of motive there. If we could get something to back it.’
    ‘What else do you know about him?’ Gently said.
    ‘Runs after the women, doesn’t he?’ Glaskell said.
    Parfitt shifted. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t have enough guts to run after them. But he’s been hanging round the village whore, whether he’s got anywhere or not. She’s the wife of one of the yard-hands. Lidney. A red-hot momma, I’ve seen her. Nobody knows whether his father knew about it, but there’d have been hell to pay if he did.’
    ‘What about French,’ Gently said. ‘Any gossip there?’
    Parfitt’s head shook. ‘None,’ he said. ‘French was a one-woman man. I’ve talked to his housekeeper, Playford, you’ll see her statement here. French was wrapped up in his wife. She was a fine-looking woman. She led him a dance, by all accounts, but he thought none the less of her for that. She died of anaemia last year. Her death hit French hard. He got broody, evil-tempered, tougher on his son. The son was a bit of a lost sheep, his mother didn’t care for him either, but she found money for him to throw about. He’s been having it thin since she died. He didn’t go to her funeral, by the way, and there was a row about that.’
    ‘What a hell of a family,’ Glaskell said. ‘You’ll get me feeling sorry for chummie in a minute.’
    ‘You’d be wasting it, sir,’ Parfitt said. ‘There’s nothing sweet about chummie.’
    ‘Has chummie any record of violence?’ Gently asked.
    No,’ Parfitt said, ‘not that we know of. But he gives you the impression he could slip you a quick one if you turned your back on him. I try to be fair, sir, where I can. But this one I just do not like. I know he did it. I’m bloody certain. And it makes me mad I can’t nail him.’
    ‘Yes,’ Gently said. He stared out of the window a few moments. ‘Getting back to the launch and the body,’ he said. ‘What can you tell me about that?’
    ‘Well,’ Parfitt said. ‘The launch,’ he said. ‘That was picked up below the bungalows. The ebb was running till three-thirty a.m. and there wasn’t any wind. That’d probably be right, so the River Police tell us. If it went adrift from French’s quay at about ten p.m., it would fmish up a mile or so downstream. It might have backed a little on the first of the flood. It wasn’t picked up till near five a.m.’
    ‘And the body?’ Gently said.
    Parfitt’s shoulders moved. ‘That’s not so easy. It was on the bottom, you can only guess what happens down there. But they reckon it didn’t shift much until the boats began to move, then it was sucked up through the bridge by the afternoon flood. It’s a narrow bridge, there’s a strong current through it and it’s scoured and deep under the arch. Then the water fans out after it gets through and pushes flotsam towards the bank. So the body got trapped in the slipway. That’s how the River Police see it.’
    ‘I see,’ Gently said, looking out of the window again. Then he said: ‘So the launch might have drifted a greater or a lesser distance.’
    ‘Well, yes,’ Parfitt said. ‘You can’t be precise with that sort of thing.’
    ‘It would touch here and there, might get stuck for a while.’
    ‘Yes,’ Parfitt said. ‘It wouldn’t go straight down.’
    ‘And the body,’ Gently said. ‘You were dragging for it below the bridge, weren’t you?’
    ‘The River Police did it,’ Parfitt said. ‘They know pretty well where to drop the hooks.’
    ‘But this theory of theirs of how it was sucked through the bridge, that was something that came afterwards?’
    ‘Well, of course,’ Parfitt said. ‘They wanted to figure out how it got there.’
    ‘From below the bridge.’
    ‘Yes,’ Parfitt said. He looked at Gently. Gently looked out of the window.
    Glaskell said to Parfitt: ‘I suppose it’s just possible that French wasn’t knocked off at the quay, drove somewhere else in the launch, ran into trouble