Read Gently North-West for Free Online

develop. There’s no need to put your foot in the bath till you see the colour of the water.’
    ‘What a horrid metaphor,’ Brenda said. ‘It suggests bog-water soupy with peat.’
    ‘But you agree with me, Brenda,’ Geoffrey smiled.
    ‘I did till the metaphor. Now I don’t.’
    ‘We’re back every time to knowing too little, though I daresay Mrs McFie will soon remedy that. But till she does my advice is caution. We can always respond when we get a cue.’
    ‘I see,’ Brenda said. ‘Our lawyer’s advice. It only remains now for us to ignore it.’
    ‘You won’t do that?’
    ‘If I don’t, George will. Surely you know better than to offer him advice.’
    ‘Ah,’ Geoffrey said. He looked at Gently.
    Slowly Gently nodded his head. ‘Sorry, Geoffrey,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Bridget. But I’ll just be a bear until I’ve talked to them. Brenda can stay out of it.’
    ‘No fear,’ Brenda said. ‘Where you go, I go.’
    ‘It shouldn’t take long. And there’s no danger of Scottish police trying to co-opt me on to their case.’
    ‘That I’ll believe when I hear it,’ Bridget said. ‘And Brenda had far better let you go on your own.’
    ‘Ah me, but I’m a sucker for punishment,’ Brenda said. ‘Come on, George. Duty to death.’
    With windscreen-wipers thrashing busily the Sceptre sluiced along the village street, turned left to cross the bridge, then right to Strathtudlem Lodge. At the gate to the track a constable was stationed, a dark, dripping, hunching figure, his raincoat supplemented by a cloak and a plastic cover over his chequered peak-cap.
    ‘Accident!’ Gently grunted, nodding at him. ‘Who do they think they’re kidding with that tale?’
    ‘Poor boy. I can feel the water trickling down his back.’
    ‘Likely enough he was off-duty when they grabbed him for this job.’
    They drove through the Lodge gate and up a carriage-way of granite chippings. Three police cars were parked outside the house and a second constable guarded the porch. The Lodge was a tall, white-plastered house with clustering small gables and dormers; it had stone-framed and mullioned windows at ground-floor level and a pargetted crest above the porch.
    ‘The laird’s house,’ Brenda whispered. ‘We did get to visiting it after all.’
    Gently ‘humphed’ – and parked the Sceptre as near the steps of the porch as it would go.
    The constable came hastily down the steps.
    ‘Here,’ he said. ‘What’s your business? You canna come visitin’ here today – you’d best jist take that vehicle out o’ here.’
    Gently wound down his window. ‘Is the officer in charge inside?’ he asked.
    ‘Ay, he is, but that’s no matter – you canna come in at any rate.’
    ‘Oh yes, I think so,’ Gently said. ‘What’s the officer’s rank and name?’
    ‘It’s Inspector Blayne, but I’m tellin’ you—’
    ‘Tell Inspector Blayne two people want to see him. A Mr Gently and a Miss Merryn. Tell him they have information for him.’
    The constable, a man with a plump, freckled face, hesitated a moment, mouth open, eyes searching; then he turned to slam back up the steps and disappear into the house.
    ‘Phew!’ Brenda whistled. ‘Not exactly an open-arms welcome. Are you sure we still want to help the natives?’
    ‘The rain doesn’t help their tempers,’ Gently shrugged.
    The constable returned. ‘A’richt,’ he said. ‘The Inspector will gi’e ye five minutes. But jist the same ye can take that vehicle and park it properly, like other folk.’
    ‘Oh, pull some rank,’ Brenda said.
    ‘I don’t have any rank,’ Gently grinned. ‘Get out here by the porch. It’ll save a belt through the rain.’
    He parked the Sceptre by the police cars then they went on in. Beyond the massive front door, which was studded with bolt-heads, they stepped into a high, spacious hall. On their right a pine staircase, polished to a brilliance, rose to a gallery at first-floor level; and beneath the gallery,