Gently With the Painters (11 page)

‘Which was where art came into the picture – its job was to gild the ersatz lily. It had to inject mere nature with significance, and to exhibit man as larger than life. And that, my dear fellow, it was doing, up and down the painful centuries; until a handful of decades ago, art had no other aim at all.’

‘But now …?’ Gently pressed him hesitantly, painfully conscious of his threadbare ignorance.

‘Ah! There’s the question which vexes the age – the flywheel has dropped off, and the machine has flown to pieces.

‘It happened, as it was bound to, that man came to his senses. It was a long time stirring but it came to a head in the last century. He was in fact growing up, he was throwing away his baubles; he had begun to grasp his universe and himself, and how things worked. So he could do without the gilt, having trampled on the lily. There was scarcely any need for the sublime any longer. The arts, which had always purveyed it, were rapidly stranded high and dry; they had lost their
raison d’être
and they were left with the bleak, flat truth.

‘A desperate state of affairs indeed! No wonder it presented a scene of chaos. The tradition of a thousand years was dead, and man was left without a precedent …’

‘And so you got all this … hocus-pocus?’

‘Yes. It was every man for himself. Theories, slogans, cranks and abuse – art became a bedlam of heroes and panic. And now, to cap it, there’s the “New Criticism”, to prove that a couple of blacks make a white.

‘If you are faced with an art which is meaningless, why, you proclaim that art shouldn’t have a meaning …’

At that stage they had returned to the doctrine, and it lasted until Withers called them to lunch; once Mallows had fairly got into the subject he pressed it along like a yacht under full sail.

‘My dear fellow, I can lecture all day …’

Gently’s acknowledging shrug was rueful. But he hadn’t been bored during that enthusiastic monologue, and all the while, round the corner, lurked the prospect of fried chicken …

But this, unhappily, he was destined never to eat; he was called away to the phone before he had even finished his soup. It wasn’t Stephens but Hansom who had made a call so untimely, and there was a mocking ring in the Chief Inspector’s voice.

‘I thought you’d like to hear how the Johnson boyo was doing. You know, he always struck me as a restless sort of character.’

‘How do you mean …?’

‘He’s done a skip act – bolted – skedaddled out of town. He cleared his bank account at eleven, and that’s the last that anyone’s seen of him.’

‘But what about the tail?’

‘Yeah.’ Hansom sounded a little sour. ‘He fell for the oldest gag in the book – Johnson went in at the front door and came out at the back. That’s why it’s taken so long to hear about it. Our dumb-bell stood waiting there over an hour. Then he did a quick tour of Johnson’s flat and office – all that, before he decided to let us know.’

‘You’ve got an alert going?’

‘Yep. Shoot him on sight. And that’s not as funny as you think it is, either. You want to know what the boyo was hoarding in his safe deposit? It was a souvenir Luger, with a belt full of ammo!’

Gently clamped down the receiver and swore, far from gently.

J
OHNSON’S RED MG
was parked blatantly in front of the bank, which was a branch in a street only a stone’s throw from his office. A constable stood by it with the self-conscious air of picketed constables. A police car, Hansom’s, was jammed in behind Johnson’s.

‘The Chief Inspector is with the manager, sir.’

Gently nodded and strode on in. Behind their counter with its barricades of varnished mahogany the clerks glanced quickly, deprecatingly towards him.

‘Superintendent Gently …’

‘This way, sir, please.’

A counter flap was lifted for him, and he was led down an aisle of desks.

In the office he found Stephens as well as Hansom. The young Inspector avoided his eye; he had an awkward, apologetic look.

Hansom quickly took Gently aside:

‘This geezer knows more than he’s letting on! There’s only one back way out of here, and it goes through the private hall of the bank house …’

‘What does he say about it?’

‘Says that Johnson was a friend of his.’

The manager was, as Gently had realized, the man he had met in the George III. His smile had now become a little less cordial, but he was still making an effort to keep it in place.

‘So … we meet again, Superintendent!’ He made a wan attempt to sound facetious. ‘I didn’t imagine that it would have been quite so soon …’

Like Stephens, he had an apology in the way he carried himself, but unlike the detective he suffered from no trace of awkwardness. As a senior bank official he understood the airs and graces: he made a slight, ingratiating movement as he felt Gently’s deliberate scrutiny.

‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me exactly what happened?’

‘Certainly, Superintendent. I’ve just been telling these gentlemen.’

‘You’re James Farrer, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, that’s my name … as you know, I am one of the Palette Group members.’

Gently grunted, his mind switching momentarily to the exhibition. Now he remembered one of the bank manager’s pictures – a rather commonplace affair, a still life of roses.

‘Johnson was shown in here at eleven or thereabouts. I should tell you that I know him socially, that’s to say, he belongs to my club. He informed me that he wanted to close both his accounts – he was in some sort of a crisis; I understood it to be financial.’

‘Did he say it was financial?’

‘No.’ Farrer whipped up his smile. ‘But in a bank
manager’s office one rarely hears of any other kind. In any case, I understood him so … I even offered to give him advice. However, he only wanted his money, and it was not my place to question him.’

‘Didn’t it strike you as being just a
little
bit queer?’ Hansom weighed in with his heavy sarcasm.

‘It did cross my mind, I have to admit … but then, you fellows didn’t seem to be worrying about him.’

‘You could have stalled him and got on the phone!’

‘I’m sorry.’ Farrer shrugged his shoulders politely. ‘I would certainly have done so had I known he was wanted, but of course, in my eyes, he was still a free agent.’

Gently inquired: ‘How much did you let him have?’

Farrer consulted a memo which lay on his desk.

‘From his current account, seven hundred pounds … and another six hundred against his deposits. That was the best I could do at a moment’s notice. In cash, I mean. He wanted small notes.’

‘What about his safe deposit?’

‘He emptied his box. Naturally, I’m not supposed to know what was in it. Since I advised him about his investments, however … if you insist, I can give you a fairly good guess.’

‘It might be useful.’

‘Well … ten or eleven thousand … bearer bonds, preference … some government stock.’

‘And a Luger pistol?’

‘Yes, that … he once showed it to me.’

‘Did he show you his licence?’

Farrer shrugged again, smiling thinly.

‘All right – how long was he occupied by these transactions?’

‘Not more than half an hour. He was in a hurry – did I say?’

‘And then?’

‘Well, then he left, after shaking my hand.’

‘By the back door – through your hall?’

‘It’s the quickest way into Shadwell Street.’

‘And
of course
– you were friends!’ Hansom bit in again. ‘And
of course
, you didn’t ask him why he was scuttling out at the back! And
of course
he didn’t mention that there was a detective watching the front – when we’re all so damned polite we don’t talk about these things!’

Farrer winced under the attack, but clung to the shreds of his official smile. Too clearly he was a man who couldn’t be bullied out of his composure.

‘He asked to use that way out as a favour, as he had done once or twice before. It happens to be nearer for his office. I am very sorry if it discommoded you.’

‘Yeah, I’ll bet you are!’ Hansom could detect the delicate taunt. ‘But don’t think we’re so dumb as people make us out, either. There’s a little misdemeanour called “obstructing the police”, and I wouldn’t like to say that we couldn’t pin it on you.’

‘Always supposing that you had evidence to support it, Inspector.’

Hansom gave one of his snarls, but he knew when he was beaten.

‘This money …’ Gently took up the ball again. ‘Can you remember what sort of notes it was in?’

Farrer glanced at the memo. ‘Mostly in ones and tens. But I had to give him the odd five hundred pounds in fivers.’

‘And you’ve got a note of them?’

‘Yes. They were new and numbered consecutively.’

‘We’ll have the numbers, please, and all you can remember about his securities.’

That was all there was to it: Gently picked up his hat. But Farrer now seemed to be wanting to add something unsolicited. He fiddled with his memo, smiling once or twice at nothing, then:

‘You know … I’ve seen as much of Derek Johnson as most people.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Oh, just that I thought him fairly trustworthy. We don’t come to be bank officials without having a flair for judging character.’

‘You’re saying that he wouldn’t have murdered his wife?’

‘Yes … no. I don’t want to interfere! But I feel it my duty to say that to one who knows him … well, it’s unlikely.’

For once he wasn’t smiling but looking at Gently with an earnest directness, and in a flash Gently understood what the bank manager was trying to convey.

‘And you were prepared to back your judgement?’

‘The bank is always prepared to back it.’

‘It’s kind of you to be so frank, Mr Farrer!’

‘I think, in justice, I could be no less …’

Hansom, as sore as a baited bear, slammed the car door with a fearsome crash. ‘It makes my blood simmer – and we can’t lay a finger on him! For all we can show it was just the way he tells it – and then the grinning chimpanzee has to go and rub it in!’

Gently closed his door more quietly, though he sympathized with Hansom. On the other hand, one had to spare some admiration for Farrer. The man had stood by his friend at a certain risk to himself, and had risked a little more to impress his faith in Johnson on Gently.

Whatever faults the ex-pilot had, at least he could command a great deal of loyalty …

‘So what are we going to do about it, besides sitting on our fannies?’

‘I’m going to have lunch. You dragged me away from it.’

‘But this geezer’s got a gun!’

‘That’s regrettable, of course. But I don’t feel any the less hungry because of it.’

Surprisingly, Hansom didn’t go up in smoke – he was learning to take his Gently more temperately, perhaps. He extricated the Wolseley with much clashing of gears, but Hansom at his best was no trophy winner with a car.

‘I’ve alerted the rail police and put a man on the bus terminus – and one each, of course, on the office and the flat.’

‘You remember young Huysmann?’

‘Hell yes! And you were right there. I’ll ring up the river police and have them check on the boats. That’s it, I reckon, apart from putting out the numbers.’

‘Just one other thing … he left his car behind.’

‘You think—?’ Hansom’s eyes left the road for a moment.

‘We’d better check on it, since he’s so flush with the ready. In his place, my next move would have been to buy another car.’

Also, Gently thought, he would have shaved off that moustache, though whether Johnson could have borne to
part with it was quite another matter. With him it was probably a gimmick like the chair and the horseshoe, and he would doubtless sooner hang with it than face the world clean-shaven.

‘You’re not forgetting Miss Butters, sir …?’ These were the first words Stephens had spoken; from his behaviour one would have thought that he was personally responsible for Johnson’s escape.

‘No, I haven’t forgotten Miss Butters.’ Gently eyed his confrère humorously. ‘She’s probably the best bet of the lot – perhaps you would like to keep an eye on her?’

Stephens flushed. ‘I was going to suggest it …’

‘Righto, my lad! We’ll find you some transport. But remember that Johnson has got a gun … If he should turn up, just ring us at Headquarters.’

He had Hansom drop him off outside his hotel, where he went straight down to the below-stair dining room. Being Saturday, the place was crowded in spite of the lateness of the hour, and the waitress who served him looked fagged as well as heated.

‘You wouldn’t have a plate of fried chicken, would you?’

In the end, he settled for steak with new potatoes and peas. Cramming the tables round about him were red-faced farmers, those who were attending the weekly cattle market that was held beneath the Castle. Watching them, he wondered how many would stray into the exhibition, which, well found in posters, opened directly off their sale ground. Their wives, perhaps, but what about the menfolk …?

He could imagine their reaction to the Wimbush fishes!

After the steak, with which he had drunk half a pint of bitter, he ordered an apple turnover and custard sauce. The
noise and clatter of the farmers, whose Saturday lunch was an institution, had a pleasantly lulling effect in the warm and gravy-scented room. As happened so often, his mind relaxed over a meal. It seemed to loosen the ideas that until then were held rigid. Apparently without assistance they began to sort and adjust themselves, forming patterns and suggestions like the pieces in a kaleidoscope.

There was for instance that sketch of Mallows, which lay photographed on his brain – was it merely an hypothesis or had Mallows taken it from life? Did he know of such a man, and know him to be infatuated with Shirley Johnson, or was there another and secret reason why Mallows had suggested this to him?

For a little he toyed with the idea that X had been a self-portrait, given adjustment, naturally, to obscure the resemblance. But no, such an assumption had to be fundamentally impossible; what assurances did Mallows need for his spreading, triumphant genius?

Aymas fitted the description a good deal better, allowing his angry young mannishness to be a case of inversion. Mallows, Gently was convinced, was capable of applying misdirection, and a misdirection of this kind would be characteristic of him. But was Aymas’s choler an example of inversion – or the sort of inversion required to satisfy X? Though he had seen little of Aymas, Gently was disinclined to think so; his impression had been of an irritable extrovert who suffered from glands rather than from psychopathic troubles.

Who, then, was next in line –Wimbush? Baxter? Farrer? The latter had a smile, though it could scarcely be called a shy one! Or was it one of the members whom he had yet
to meet – or somebody else entirely, beyond the orbit of the Palette Group?

From the way that Mallows had drawn the portrait Gently could swear that it had had a definite subject, and this was the point which kept emerging through the various permutations. It had been sketched with such vivacity, such unhesitating strokes, as though Mallows had long since explored what he described. Thus it followed that X was a familiar acquaintance of Mallows’s, or one at least whom he had had good opportunities to observe. Was it his knowledge, then, which had suggested this interpretation of the murder to him, or did he possess some information which more positively indicated X?

If X were indeed a familiar acquaintance, the
academician
’s
hedginess was explicable. Unless he was positive that X had done it, he would take pains not to give him away. But his suspicions, however founded, were strong enough in one article: he had wanted to deflect Gently’s interest from Johnson, and so had partly shown him his hand. What would have happened if Johnson had been charged? Would Mallows have volunteered information?

Gently tossed off a cup of coffee which had stood until it was nearly cold. Going back again to the beginning, had Mallows some other reason for that hypothesis? As a man he attracted Gently, but that was a bad excuse for passing him over; on another occasion Gently had met an engaging murderer, and nearly made a third on his list of victims. And there was another point which kept
reappearing
. Mallows was the last person to see her alive. He had tried to make fun of it but it was hard to laugh it away, and
a motive of blackmail was more convincing than the most strongly argued psychological theory …

Impatiently, Gently thrust this angle into the
background
. Somewhere, at some time, you had to trust your instinct about people. About Mallows there was something too sane, too balanced – his reaction to attempts at blackmail would probably have been a public lecture.

So, you were left with the conviction that his suggestion was bona fide, and that his X was a serious alternative to the missing Derek Johnson. And the problem remained, where did you begin looking for X? His outward marks a shy smile, and a trail of hopeless paintings. The field seemed to embrace the Palette Group and the whole acquaintance of St John Mallows … unless, by the aid of their pictures, one could winnow out some of the former.

From the hotel kiosk he rang HQ:

‘You wouldn’t have an art expert on the strength, would you?’