Gently Floating Read Online Free PDF Page B

that morning. When they had eaten Superintendent Gently read the statements which Parfitt had taken. They were very dry reading, but Superintendent Gently was an expert reader. As he read he asked Parfitt questions about the people who had made the statements. Marion, Mrs Glaskell, didn’t make the mistake of serving coffee. At six-thirty p.m. Superintendent Gently and Inspector Parfitt left the terrace. When Superintendent Glaskell returned from seeing them off he said something to his wife, who looked pleased.
    They took the Moorford road from Hamby, driving almost straight inland. It was a narrow country road between stunted hedges of hawthorn. Beyond the hedges lay fields of stubble and fields of wheat and fields of barley, and in two of the fields lurched orange-painted combines, pushing out rectangular bales of straw. Amongst the wheat and the barley poppies grew and the air smelled of straw and poppies and dust. The sun was in front of them, low but brilliant. Air lay melted in dips of the road.
    Parfitt said: ‘Will you see anyone tonight?’
    ‘No,’ Gently said. ‘Tomorrow.’
    ‘Don’t pay too much attention to what I say,’ Parfitt said. ‘It’s new to me, all this.’
    Gently said nothing.
    ‘When you come to think of it,’ Parfitt said, ‘I’ve only been on the case twenty-four hours. Just rushed in and got a lot of impressions. I reckon I could have been too hasty.’
    ‘We all feel like that,’ Gently said.
    ‘You fetched me up short,’ Parfitt said. ‘I can see now I wasn’t certain at all, just rushing in there and picking out a chummie.’
    Gently kept driving.
    ‘I think I panicked,’ Parfitt said.
    Gently kept driving. Parfitt was silent.
    They passed through Moorford, struck the Stallbridge Road. The marshes lay flat ahead across the fields. The marshes were pale green and pale fawn and pale brown and very level and very wide and found their own horizon. Peaked rectangles of sails stood small across the marshes. The sails were white sails but cowslip-coloured in the evening sun. The sails moved very little. Sometimes a patch of willow or alder hid one. Two windpump towers without sails rose, bluish-ochre, far south. Coming to the marshes, the road dipped and ran flat between dykes and pollard willows. It approached a group of buildings of painted timber which stood squarely, flat-topped. From each side of this group stretched close-packed lines of low hutments with painted roofs and in the centre the road lifted over a narrow stone bridge. To the left of the bridge striped awnings clustered. Above them a wooden-valanced canopy sparkled with light bulbs. Also to the left rose a handful of masts at the trucks of which small triangular flags hung drooped.
    ‘This is it,’ Parfitt said. ‘That’s Reuben’s, that is.’
    A pulse of rhythm, overlaid with sprightly brass, grew towards them.
    ‘Is the fair a regular event?’ Gently said.
    ‘Ever since I can remember,’ Parfitt said. ‘Every August Bank Holiday week it’s here. It tours the other villages too.’
    They came to the bridge, were halted by lights. The music bumped and clashed at their elbow. Through the stalls could be seen two elevated gangways which oscillated alternately in time with the music. At each side of the bridge the river appeared, narrow, across it gable-ended boat-sheds. Motor-cruisers and yachts were close-moored along the quays. A motor-cruiser and a launch were passing upstream, below the bridge.
    The lights changed. Gently drove over.
    ‘There,’ Parfitt said, nodding to the right.
    Gently drove on to a gravelled park on which a number of other cars were standing. Behind it a large single-storeyed timber building presented double glass doors and a range of windows. Over the doors were gilded wooden letters: HAYNOR COUNTRY CLUB (
Residential
). Gently fetched an attaché case from the boot. They went into the club. Gently checked in. Parfitt smoked in the lounge. Gently rejoined him there.
    ‘Where