Gently Sahib by Alan Hunter Read Free Book Online Page A

been a week before the escape, but recalled only that he was smartish-looking and drove a posh kind of car.
    ‘He was having a long talk with Mr Groton, but I didn’t pay any attention. They was round the tiger’s cage for a while. Then they went and sat in Mr Groton’s car.’
    Gently thanked them and they stood watching while the four policemen walked away.
    A movement behind a window in the farmhouse suggested that Groton was watching too . . .
    They drove towards town. Perkins was more unhappy than Gently had seen him yet. He sat hunched in a corner in the back of the police car trying desperately to jog his memory.
    ‘I’m sure I’ve seen that man somewhere . . .’
    Gipping had seen the photograph without recognizing it. But Cheyne-Chevington’s face, though rather handsome, had very little to distinguish it.
    ‘Of course, it may not have been in Abbotsham. I get about a bit in the district. Or perhaps I’m just remembering that photograph – what did it appear in, the
Express
?’
    Gently shrugged, but didn’t press him. Why worry? It would work out. The shape of the business was being established, the details would come in their own good time.
    Perhaps not in his time – he was handing over tomorrow.
    But Dutt and Perkins, between them, could have a ball tying it up . . .
    ‘Let’s run over the facts as we know them to date.’
    In other words, make certain they were getting the picture!
    ‘Groton and Shimpling were in Kenya together in 1953, and I’m pretty sure there was some funny business, though we don’t know what.
    ‘Shimpling was there as a journalist. We’ll have some details of that shortly. Groton was presumably leading a safari, or he might have been collecting animals to sell.
    ‘Seven years later Shimpling is police witness in a drug-trafficking case against Cheyne-Chevington: the case was laid on evidence volunteered by Shimpling and by a prostitute, Shirley Banks.
    ‘It failed, but as a result of it Cheyne-Chevington was struck off. The defence claimed that Cheyne-Chevington had been blackmailed by Shimpling but they could offer no evidence. The police, however, had strong suspicions that Shimpling was indeed a blackmailer.
    ‘Within nine months of that trial Shimpling is living in the bungalow here with Shirley Banks, only a few miles from the farm where Groton has established an animal-supplying business.
    ‘That business is a profitable one. Groton has given us an instance. At different times he has told us he bought the tiger for seven hundred and fifty, and that he proposed to sell it to a Canadian millionaire for three thousand.
    ‘Even allowing for acclimatization and training, that would leave a handsome profit.
    ‘Shimpling continues his blackmail activity. We have evidence of it in his “black book”. He is drawing money from a number of sources, among others from one designated “G”.
    ‘This continues for eighteen months during most of which time he has Banks living with him; then Banks leaves, and soon after that we have the affair with the tiger – on the very night when Groton has an alibi which nobody can question.
    ‘Investigation shows that a truck was used and that the truck almost certainly was Groton’s; also that Groton had an opportunity to load the tiger before he left for London; also that shortly before he was visited by a man who was interested in the tiger, and who had a long talk with Groton; and that the murderer searched the bungalow and probably found and destroyed the blackmail evidence.
    ‘Those are the facts.
    ‘You can safely add to them that Groton is a liar.’
    He stared hard at Perkins, but Perkins obviously hadn’t been listening.
    With head bowed, the local man was still wrestling with his memory . . .
    Dutt said: ‘I reckon there was two of them, chief. It’d have been dicey for one man to do that job.’
    Gently grunted and got out his pipe.
    Perkins murmured: ‘It’s his expression . . . I remember the