Gently With the Painters (7 page)

‘The news of his wife’s death, sir?’ Gently felt that he was losing touch. Butters seemed to have gone off at a tangent from the line he had been about to take.

‘Naturally, that too, with the damning implication; but in the first place, to discover that
he’d had a wife at all
!’

It was an astonishing declaration, and for the moment it bewildered Gently. He gazed open-eyed at Butters, who, himself, was now staring indignantly.

‘But – in five years – you never knew?’

‘I never had a single suspicion! He was on his own when I met him, and as for his flat, I never went there. No, it wasn’t until I read the paper – until I saw it in black and white; and even then I couldn’t believe it, until I’d had a talk with my daughter.’

‘Your daughter! Where does she come into it?’

Butters’s stare turned into a furious frown. ‘They were engaged – engaged to be married, Superintendent. Or at least, that was the steady impression I received.’

Gently got up and walked over to the window. He felt
unable to cope with this, seated in a chair. Johnson … engaged to one of Butters’s daughters! To the daughter of the man who had been the making of his business …

‘And this engagement had been announced?’

‘Obviously not, though we were expecting it. All the time I’d been hinting at it, trying to bring him up to scratch. His excuse was that he was looking for just the right sort of property for them; when he found it, there was going to be a regular announcement.’

‘How long had it gone on?’

‘Oh, he met her right at the start. But in those days she was still at Girton – what a waste of money that was! Then, soon after she finished there, they took to going about together – he wasn’t the match I would have picked for her, but she was the youngest, and nothing went with her. They’ve been thick for a couple of years.’

‘And she – she knew about his wife?’

‘I’ve got to admit it. She knew about everything. She was his mistress all the while, and she says she’s going to have his baby.’

Over these last few words Butters seemed to have difficulty, and there was no reason to doubt the
genuineness
of his emotion. One could easily imagine the horror with which he had glimpsed those banner headlines, and then had heard, from his daughter’s mouth, that they were trapped in the ghastly business …

‘You did well, sir, to speak up.’

What was the use of a reprimand? Could he be blamed for taking four days to screw his courage to the sticking point?

‘As you said on the phone, this is vital information … I think it may enable us to tie up the case.’

Butters swallowed a gulping draught of his brandy and water, and Gently was glad that the deepening twilight made the room behind him shadowy. Below him, down the romantic but deteriorating terrace gardens, a smoke mist was rising mysteriously from the still, silica-like river.

‘You don’t have to tell me that I should have spoken before … in your place, Superintendent … but I won’t stoop to excuses. I knew on the spot that Johnson had murdered his wife, and I knew that it was my business to put a rope round his neck.

‘But God, when it’s a question of your own flesh and blood! And, to a certain extent, I had other people to think of … And again, it looked at first as though they wouldn’t need my help – up till yesterday, even, I thought they were going to arrest him.

‘Then that picture business happened and the police seemed to be confused. All night I was pacing that hall … I reached for the phone a dozen times.

‘I thought of getting on to Sir Daynes, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t his business. And I knew the Inspector on the case, but in the past … I won’t go into that! Then in the morning I saw you had been called, which wouldn’t have happened unless they’d been stuck … and then I knew I daren’t wait any longer. My only consolation was that you were the man …’

Gently silently sighed to himself – so near, it had been, to his
not
being the man! He wondered how Butters would have got on with Stephens, who would almost certainly have read him a lecture.

Wouldn’t that reference to the county Chief Constable have got Stephens’s back up, straight away?

‘You might have confided in Sir Daynes, sir …’ He heard the clink of glass and decanter.

‘Yes … I think I might have done that. Failing you, I think I might have done it. But not that other fellow, Hansom … as I say, a motoring offence … Yet, since Tuesday, I’ve been in hell … God, I couldn’t help feeling responsible!

‘If I’d been a proper parent I would never have let it go on. I had a suspicion, once or twice, that things weren’t as innocent as they seemed. But in these days everything is different … I didn’t want to look a fool … and I trusted him, you know. I was sure he wouldn’t let me down.

‘That’s the most damnable thing about it. I liked the fellow, and encouraged him! And to think, that by doing that, I was driving him to desperation …

‘If I’d found out about his wife he would have lost Anne and most of the business … it only wanted her to become pregnant … you see how inevitable it was? There was no other way out, he was forced to do something. His wife was a wrong ’un, it appears, and she wouldn’t give him a divorce …’

Gently turned from the window and came slowly back into the room. Butters was leaning over his knees, his umpteenth brandy shaking in his hand. He wasn’t cut for a tragic figure and his posture looked at first sight comic; yet this very misfortune, paradoxically, had the effect of emphasizing his pathos. And behind him, the damp-stained wallpaper took on the office of a symbol …

‘You have questioned your daughter, I take it?’ He remembered the frightened eyes which had watched him.

‘She’s … I’ve kept her in the house since Tuesday; as a prisoner, if you like …’

‘What was she doing on the Monday evening?’

Butters shuddered. ‘If you don’t mind,
Superintendent
…’

‘Very well … fetch her down, then. I shall have to see her myself.’

While Butters was absent from the room, Gently made a leisurely and appraising tour of it. In the grey and absorbing twilight he was probably seeing it at its best. Unlike a period piece restored, it lacked a logical unity of style; it had gathered one or two Victorian pieces, and even some items of a later date.

The pictures, however, apart from two portraits, were all landscapes representing the local school. Gently
identified
a Stark and a pair of Ladbrookes, and a cottage scene which was probably by Vincent. But of their master, Crome, he could discover no trace – but then, he was probably a death duty too late.

His prowling was interrupted by the switching on of the light, and he turned to find Butters pushing his daughter into the room. He had been holding her by the arm, which he now released, and he was prompt in closing and bolting the door.

‘I’d prefer to be present, if I may, Superintendent.’

Gently nodded, and motioned Anne Butters to a chair. Even now she hadn’t quite lost that look of terror, though added to it, Gently saw, was a seasoning of defiance.

She was a shapely, slender girl with a pale-complexioned oval face, and golden-brown hair which she wore long and slinky. She had pale green eyes under fine, symmetrical brows; they gave a touch of distinction to a face which was inclined to be plain.

‘This is a serious business, I’m afraid, Miss Butters.’

She was wearing a plain green dress, the skirt of which was gracefully flared. As he spoke to her, he noticed that she tightened her lips together; there were angry marks on her arm where it had been held by her father.

‘Tomorrow, I shall want you to give me a regular statement at the police station. Just now, I would like you to answer a few questions I shall put to you.’

‘It wasn’t Derek who killed her!’ She hissed the words out rather than spoke them, her green eyes sparking at him from lids which jumped suddenly open.

‘I didn’t say it was. Now, if you’ll be good enough to listen—’

‘He was with me the whole evening – we were in bed. So there!’

With a quick, hysterical movement she jerked back the flared skirt, revealing a pair of neat legs and a froth of black lace. Her father started forward, but she immediately dropped the skirt again. Then she turned to him like a child, making a sneering, triumphant face.

‘Do you want me to tell you some more? I’m sure you’d love to have it in detail! My father would, in any case – he adores a bit of smut! We began at half past seven—’

‘Anne – that’s quite enough of that!’

‘—at half past seven, he undressed me—’

‘For heaven’s sake, pull yourself together!’

Once more Butters started towards her, though what he could have done was problematical; before he could get to her, however, she had burst into a storm of tears.

‘He didn’t do it, I tell you, oh, Derek didn’t do it! You’ll never understand, but he didn’t – he didn’t do it!’

Somebody banged on the door and then fruitlessly rattled the handle. Butters fumbled it open and disappeared into the hall. A low colloquy could be heard, its substance drowned by Anne’s sobbing, but its rise and fall suggested that Butters was trying to reassure his wife.

In the background, with senseless monotony, an electric pump was thumping away.

‘I’ve got to apologize … it’s very difficult …’

Butters returned, and went at once to the decanter. His eyes were watering as though from a chill, and besides being flushed, his face was puffy and ugly. It was not unlikely that he was already drunk, but he carried himself steadily and it was difficult to tell.

‘My dear, for your own sake …’

He bent over his daughter. She had overcome her sobbing and was now using her handkerchief.

‘She’s like her mother, you know … they’re both highly strung. It runs in the family. Phoebe is allied to the Fitz-Morrises …’

Gently began again, trying to take it very easily. Anne Butters, as though ashamed of herself, listened meekly to his questions. Yes, she had ‘always’ known that Derek Johnson was married. Yes, she had entered the association with eyes wide open. She had been his mistress for two years, and she really was pregnant. They had always ‘taken precautions’, but once or twice they had been rather rash.

‘Did you used to go to his flat?’

She tossed her locks at him disdainfully. ‘We weren’t quite such congenital idiots as to walk in on his wife.’

‘Where did he used to take you then?’

‘Oh, it was anywhere at first. The yacht, the car, or a
nice quiet wood – to begin with, we weren’t much worried by discomforts.’

‘But after that?’

‘We sometimes went to his office, only that was too risky to make into a regular thing. So Derek bought a furnished cottage – I suppose I can tell you about it now; it’s at the end of a lane, about a mile from Nearstead.’

‘Did you ever meet his wife?’

‘I looked her over once or twice. She was a bitch, as you probably know, and it didn’t surprise me that she was murdered.’

‘What did Derek say about her?’

‘He said she was queer, and that she liked other women.’

‘Didn’t he ever talk about a divorce?’

‘Yes. He said he’d divorce her when he got the evidence.’

She became bolder as the questioning proceeded, trying to compensate perhaps for her tears; her eyes she kept staring steadily into Gently’s, almost challenging him to do his worst with her. Butters, his glass never out of his hand, sat frowningly watching her from a seat near the door.

‘Where did you meet him on the Monday night?’

‘In the usual place – at the top of the lane.’

‘And then he drove you straight to the cottage?’

‘Yes. We arrived there before half past seven.’

‘And what time did you leave again?’

‘At eleven o’clock, or a few minutes after.’

Gently hunched his shoulders wearily. ‘Perhaps you would like to reconsider those estimates?’

For an instant it seemed that she didn’t understand him, her eyes slowly widening in interrogation. Butters,
however, understood very well, and he made a helpless gesture with his hand.

‘It’s no use, Anne … he knows you’re lying.’

‘Keep out of this, you …!’

‘My dear, it’s no use. I … we all know what time you came in.’

‘Shut up – do you hear?’

‘It was at five past ten …’

They were trembling on the brink of another hysterical outburst. Her slim body was twitching and shuddering with emotion. But then, after a fit of glaring, she tossed her head away from her father, and contented herself with hitching her skirt a couple of inches above her knees. Butters swigged down some brandy and affected not to see it.

‘Very well, then – I told a lie! But don’t forget that I’m a harlot. You’re lucky to get a ha’porth of truth from a person such as I am.’

‘Perhaps I should tell you something, Miss Butters.’

‘Why not? It’s a favourite game of my father’s.’

‘Derek Johnson’s account of that evening doesn’t square with what you have told me.’

She burst into a mocking peal of laughter. ‘And did you expect him to tell you the truth? Did you expect he was going to tell you that he was shacked up with Butters’s daughter? He spun you a yarn, of course he did. He never dreamed that my father would betray him. He used to be in the RAF, where you could depend on your friends to stand by you!’

‘But naturally, we checked his account.’

‘There you are then – you knew it was a lie.’

‘But that is just what we don’t know, Miss Butters. His account is apparently confirmed by our checking. He made a round of some of the pubs, and a number of people can remember having seen him. So I’m afraid I must put this question to you: how did
you
spend that evening, Miss Butters?’

Her pallid cheeks grew paler still, and her eyes, by contrast, appeared to grow larger. Butters had gone off in a coughing fit – he had spilled some brandy on the carpet.

‘I was home by five past ten – I didn’t go out again after that!’

Gently turned to the spluttering Butters:

‘It’s true … she had a bath and went to bed.’

‘But what were you doing during the evening?’