Gently at a Gallop by Alan Hunter

have overheard something, the time, the place. He must have been pretty certain they were meeting on Tuesday.’
    ‘Seems a lot to overhear,’ Gently said. ‘And the trysting-place is still a long way from Clayfield.’ He trailed a finger across the map. ‘It’s more on the line from High Hale village.’
    ‘But, sir – that’s just right!’ Docking faced him excitedly. ‘Remember, she let on she was picking up the kids from school. Well, there isn’t a school at Clayfield. The kids from there go to Hale.’
    ‘So?’ Gently said.
    ‘She came over in the car, sir, so she’d have it there to pick up the kids later. Then she took the car up on the heath and walked across to the valley to meet Stogumber.’
    ‘With Berney right on the spot to follow her.’
    ‘Yes, sir. She’d have to drive at a crawl, on the heath.’
    ‘Berney,’ Gently said, ‘being psychic, and thus knowing Mrs Rising would come that way.’
    Docking coloured. ‘I don’t know about that, sir. But Berney must have heard something. He got the day right. He wouldn’t have done what he did just on the chance of something happening.’
    ‘Unless . . . somehow . . . he knew he was on a certainty.’
    ‘Don’t see how he could have guessed about it, sir.’
    ‘And I don’t see how he could have come by the information,’ Gently said. ‘Unless, of course, someone told him.’ He puffed a little, then shook his head. ‘There are too many loopholes,’ he said. ‘If Mrs Rising was using a car, why bother to go on the heath at all?’ He pointed to the map. ‘Look – that road to the Manor. It keeps on westward, at the back of the heaths. Then it’s joined by this track coming down from Clayfield . . . impossible to get a car along there? She could have picked up Stogumber, or he her, and then gone off in the woods somewhere. I’d say they were a better prospect for lovers in this sort of weather.’
    ‘She had to be at the village by a quarter to four, sir.’
    Gently shrugged. ‘Not much of a problem! The point is that she needn’t have come on the heath if she were driving, and if she were riding there were nearer places to meet Stogumber.’
    ‘Perhaps there were special reasons for this place,’ Docking said.
    ‘Perhaps,’ Gently said. ‘Make a suggestion.’
    Docking stared resentfully at the map for some moments, then sighed and tilted his brown bottle. Waters, who’d finished his bottle a while back, edged closer to the desk for a glimpse of the map.
    ‘Sir, it’d be the right place for Berney to meet her,’ he ventured. ‘If we know the woman was Mrs Rising.’
    Gently favoured him with a small smoke-ring. ‘We’re not even sure of that,’ he said. ‘Which brings us back to square one, as Mr Lachlan Stogumber predicted. Berney wrote the poem, made the assignation, was surprised by the injured husband. With the addition that his wife certainly knew about it – which means she may have passed on the information.’ He looked from Waters to Docking. ‘Any advance?’
    Waters looked blank. Docking shook his head.
    ‘Three theories,’ Gently puffed. ‘And we don’t like any of them . . . as though somehow we’d got on a wrong track.’
    Docking cleared his throat. ‘It comes back to this, sir. There’s a woman in the case, and we’ve got to nab her. If she isn’t Mrs Rising, we’ve got to prove that, and then start looking elsewhere.’
    ‘Find the woman . . . !’
    ‘Yes, sir. And I’m pretty sure in my own mind that we’ve found her.’
    Gently smiled up at him through wreaths of smoke. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’ll work on that.’
    He left Docking waiting for a report on the lead theft and drove to the Royal William for a shower and dinner. The hotel had a busy air. Its rather small yard was packed with Capris, Ventoras and similar vehicles. In the soft-lit dining-room, barricaded in a corner, a trio was playing a selection from
The Arcadians
, and sweat shone beneath the powder of the