Gently With the Painters (9 page)

‘I don’t know at what stage you made up your mind, but the Palette Group was always waiting to provide you with scapegoats. Your wife went about with them, ate with them, perhaps slept with them – you had plenty of time to find out about that. So, naturally, you arranged to take advantage of the Palette Group. You would murder your wife on their doorstep, so to speak. You checked what her movements were when she attended one of their meetings, and you decided that the car park would best suit your plan.

‘Next you needed an alibi, or at least a story that would check – you were clever enough to risk not producing a perfect alibi. Thus instead of going to Nearstead you went off on a round of the pubs, keeping Anne concealed in your car in case the police heard tell of her later. Then, after
dropping her at ten, you drove quickly back to town; you parked your car, I think, in Chapel Street, to avoid having it seen in the park.

‘You took your stand by the City Hall, probably at the St Saviour’s end, and when your wife came by you accosted her, telling her that you were just driving back to the flat. She accepted a lift and went with you. You led her past the bus stop and into the park. As you approached the terrace wall you contrived to drop behind her, and strangling her scream with your arm, you drove the knife into her back.

‘She died instantaneously and without much bleeding. You threw her down behind the dustbins, tossing her handbag after her. Then you walked back to your car by the footway at the end here, and drove home, probably arriving at the time given in your statement.

‘You made only one mistake – you thought that Butters hadn’t got any guts.

‘But, in spite of his bottle of brandy, he has just committed you to the hangman!’

The silence that marked the end of his accusation was made the more telling by the murmurs from without – the voice and footfall in the building, the drone of a car from Chapel Street below. Johnson kept frowning at the moving pencil, his childlike lips hung slightly open. He seemed unconscious of the scene about him, unconscious, even, of Gently’s presence.

Was he trying, with desperate concentration, to find a plausible way out of this trap?

‘Poor Shirley!’ – the words came huskily. ‘She was a bitch, but Christ … she was human.’

Gently sighed to himself and reached out for the jug of coffee. He was never at his best, making speeches of that sort. They required an indignation, a degree of faith in moral judgements: to himself, at all events, they never quite rang true. He poured a cup of coffee and tossed it off in three quick gulps. Stephens cast an eye at the cup, then he folded his arms and leaned them on the desk.

‘That’s the way it was done, of course …’

‘I’m glad to find you agreeing with me.’

‘Hell, but it wasn’t me!’

Gently preserved an unimpressed silence.

‘Look, cocker …’ Johnson was stumbling, making beating motions with his hand. ‘You’ve had your fun … all right – I don’t mind! … But it won’t stand up … I never dreamed of killing Shirley!’

‘I think I should warn you, Mr Johnson.’

‘I know all about that – and I don’t care a damn! You can take it down if you want to, you can print it off on toilet paper. But I’m warning you, cocker, your
imagination
’s
running away with you … you’ve cooked up a case, and it won’t convince a flea!’

Gently grunted indifferently and felt for his pipe and pouch. He had issued Johnson a warning, and now the ball lay with him. Rather sooner than he had intended he had made this concession, though in view of the facts it probably mattered very little. He filled his pipe with scrupulous care, pressed it down and struck a match.

‘You’ve figured out the way of it – good! I was wondering about that. I couldn’t think how he’d got her there, unless … it doesn’t matter! But you’re tackling the wrong kiddie … I don’t care what you’ve found out …

‘I’ve had to listen to your version – now just you listen to mine!’

He could hardly find the words, so fast did he want to bring them out; the stenographer’s pencil sounded like a mouse as it nibbled at the paper. Johnson’s legs weren’t folded now. He was leaning forward towards the desk. His frowning brow was creased with ridges and his eyes were staring and protruded.

‘I’m glad that Butters had the sense to speak up … it was me who hadn’t got the guts! I knew you’d hold it over my head – I could see that coming from the start. But I’m glad, you understand? Because I’m fond of old man Butters! You can say what you like about his bottles of brandy – he’s a decent old stick, and I’m here to say so.

‘And I like his wife … I like his family … and Anne, she isn’t just the floozie you seem to think her!

‘She’s my wife, you understand? Not the way that Shirley was! But she’s my wife all the same, in spite of not having been to church. She loves me and I love her … it’s been like that ever since we met …

‘And I didn’t give a damn about the blasted business. I’d have thrown it all up for a chance to marry Anne …’

Stephens, who had begun to sneer, was now gazing at Johnson in perplexity; he also glanced in Gently’s
direction
, trying to glean a cue from his senior. This wasn’t at all what he had expected to hear from a man with a murder tied on him! Johnson was blurring an open and shut case, he was upsetting its nice, clean lines …

‘Something else … I didn’t have anything on Shirley. She was too darned clever to give me a chance! You’ll
never understand, because you never met her alive … as for offering her a lift … it’s funny, don’t you see?

‘She was a sadist – she liked to see other people squirm. She got a kick out of sticking to me, though we couldn’t stand each other. But if you think for a minute … I’m not going to blame her! … Only that’s the way she was, and you’ve got to accept the facts.

‘And I did try for a divorce, whether it would have mucked me up or not – it wouldn’t have done, either. Butters wouldn’t have let me down! Just ask my solicitor … I’ve talked it over with him. But I didn’t want a detective, I tried to do the job myself, and the long and the short of it was that I never caught her at anything …

‘Then that alibi – that’s rich! My God, I could have done better than that. But the whole idea is cockeyed – we always hit the pubs on a Monday. On Sundays we used to visit the cottage, and you don’t need me to tell you … so on Mondays we toured the pubs – having a rest, if you want it in words!

‘And the abortion, too – did you ever try to fix one? You’d be surprised just how easy it isn’t! You’ve only got to hint at abortion to a medico, and the next minute he’s slinging you out on your ear. Then, after a couple of clangers like that …

‘In any case, I was dead against the idea … when I’d talked Anne round a bit, I was going to have it out with Butters. You think you know Butters, but you don’t, and that’s a fact. When he’d realized how it was with Shirley … hell, there’s nobody who’s quite an angel!’

He was brought up at last by sheer lack of breath and sat for some moments panting, a blond lock fallen across his
forehead. The stenographer dropped his pencil on the desk and, in massaging his fingers, produced an unusual cracking sound. Then he selected another pencil from a supply in his breast pocket.

‘I know how it looks to you and I don’t blame you for a moment … but you can’t know, you’re only guessing about things that really matter.

‘What do you know about me, for instance? You only met me seven hours ago! You look at my car, at this moustache … and then you tack a label on me.

‘It says: “Flying Officer Kite” – all right, so I deserve it! But do you know how people came to be Flying Officer Kites? They were scared into being them – scared silly by what they were doing! They were driven into behaving like clots by sheer terror. Because there aren’t any heroes in the whole state of nature … only cowards, who one day get shoved into the breach …

‘But underneath that, what do you know about me? You must be able to see how crazy it all is. By guessing and a few facts you’ve made me out to be inhuman – an egoistic monster, a psychopath at the very least! And I’m not – I’m not like that. It’s too utterly bloody ridiculous. Get on to my friends – I’ve got plenty of them! The worst they can call me is a line-shooting bastard … I’m human, I tell you, I’m not a bloody monster …’

He flung the hair out of his eyes and dragged his chair closer to the desk; with his hands gripping the edge of it, he was only a couple of feet from Gently.

‘Listen to what I tell you, cocker … I want to see that swine collared too! Not out of revenge, or anything like that, but because he ought to be put inside. Shirley … you
know how I felt about her. She wasn’t any credit to the human race. But damn it, she had a right to live, and only a madman would take it away from her …

‘But now you’re playing the madman’s game, because it was someone who knew about me and Anne. He gambled that you’d pin it on me for certain, as soon as the rest of the tale came out. So for Christ’s sake try to see this straight – I wouldn’t have laid my little finger on Shirley!

‘On Monday night I did just what I told you. I was never near here, and I didn’t kill my wife …’

Gently had never stopped puffing at his pipe, but now he put an entirely gratuitous match to it. Having done that, he broke the match in two pieces and arranged them fastidiously in the ashtray.

Always, with Johnson, it was the selfsame question – was he being honest, or was he being clever? Before, they had given him the benefit of the doubt, and even now he was keeping his foot in the door. He had no defence against the charge, and yet … what was the answer going to be?

‘Take Mr Johnson back to the charge room, will you?’ He swung on Hansom’s revolving chair, so that his back was towards them. From the reluctant way in which Stephens got to his feet, Gently knew that the Inspector was critical of the order.

‘You’re holding me … is that it?’

‘I may want to ask some more questions.’

‘And meanwhile I’m in custody?’

‘You are assisting the police …’

They took him out while Gently was still savouring the irony of the phrase.

Stephens came back quickly, his face wearing a worried look.

‘Super, I don’t know …’

‘Sit down and light your pipe.’

‘Yes, sir. But my impression—’

‘Take a seat! I’m trying to think.’

Stephens did as Gently bid him with the best grace possible, but his pipe, that pride and joy, seemed unable to absorb him. Gently continued to face the wall, his cogitations marked by smoke rings; Stephens was not the first person to have noticed that the Super’s back was like an iron curtain.

‘So you’d slap him inside, and no more nonsense?’

Ten minutes had passed in the silent smoke rings.

‘Under the circumstances, sir—’

‘I’ve got no option. But suppose I was damn fool enough to make myself the option?’

Stephens was thoroughly unhappy and didn’t know what to say. He had never before come across Gently in this awkward, angular mood.

‘I must admit, sir … to my way of thinking …’

‘Just tell me straight out, Stephens.’

‘Very well, sir. I wouldn’t think twice about it. He’s our chummie, and we’d get a conviction.’

‘Hmm.’ Some more smoke rings rose towards the ceiling, and again the office was broodingly silent. Then suddenly Gently swivelled round in the chair, the ghost of a grin spreading over his face.

‘I always like to ask someone’s advice when I’m in danger of making a fool of myself! You are perfectly right about Johnson, of course. No jury would give him twenty minutes.’

‘Then we’ll go ahead and charge him, sir?’

‘No, just get him to amend his statement.’

‘But I don’t understand—!’

Gently’s grin grew broader. ‘That’s exactly what
Johnson
was trying to tell us …’

Once more he was rebelling against the accepted order, and once more he was positive that he was doing the right thing. He wished that he could have explained himself to Stephens, but how could one explain an unreasoning intuition? It was a faculty which had to grow, there was no passing it on.

As it was, he simply patted Stephens on the arm.

‘Don’t look so upset! I’m going to put a tail on him. If he tries to do a bunk we’ll pull him in fast enough. In the meantime, I don’t want to tie my hands with Johnson.’

‘But if ever there was a case where circumstantial evidence …’

‘I know. But Johnson made one very good point. We haven’t been here long and we don’t really know the people … why he said it doesn’t matter. We can afford to take our time.’

In the end he had Stephens partly propitiated; the young detective, though apprehensive, was eager to follow where Gently led. Johnson’s statement was revised, typed out and signed. Nobody had very much to say apart from the bare requirements of the transaction.

‘But I can take it that I’m still number one on your list …?’

If Johnson was surprised to be getting away with it, he was at pains to conceal the fact.

‘For the present I want you to stay within the city
jurisdiction. If you try to go outside it you will be instantly arrested.’

The detective who was to tail him, a raw-boned local with prodding dark eyes, had been instructed that coyness was not essential to the contract. From the window they watched him setting out after his quarry – Johnson must have known he was there, although he didn’t turn his head.

‘I suppose it’s all right, sir, to let him go like that …?’ All Stephens’s uneasiness returned at the sight.

‘Come on – let’s go to bed! It’s getting on for two already, and in the morning we’ve got a couple of statements to take.’

The hotel into which they had been booked was only a short distance from the marketplace and as they walked there, step for step, they didn’t meet a single person. A train whistle from the Thorne Yards was the only sound to break the stillness and above them, in a clear sky, a new moon was scratched in silver.

‘
S
UPERINTENDENT GENTLY
.’

‘Damn it – you get up early, Gently!’

Gently grinned, snuggling himself a little deeper in his pillows. It was in fact five minutes to eight and he could hear the weather being announced: ‘An anticyclone over the Azores is continuing almost stationary …’

A cup of tea stood on the cabinet from which he had unlatched the phone, the sun was streaming through the window and the traffic was busy below. From next door, where there was a bathroom, he could hear the
comfortable
sound of a filling bath; in his imagination he could see the water descending and savour the voluptuous fragrance of bath salts and steam.

‘I’m sorry if I got you up …’

‘My dear fellow, don’t waste apologies. Though at this hour in the morning – you remember what Caruso said about it? “Madam, I can’t spit …!” Well, it’s like that with me: I need at least a pint of coffee to turn me into a human being.’

‘I’d like to see you later this morning, sir.’

‘Then you’ll have to come along to my studio, Gently. I’m a professional, you know, not a mewling amateur – I stand to my easel between ten and one.’

Gently chuckled to himself. How the phrase suited Mallows! One could visualize his stocky figure planted, fencer-like, before a canvas. Off-hand he couldn’t
remember
ever having seen a small Mallows picture; they were created for noble rooms and for great carved and gilded frames.

‘I’ll be along at about eleven if I’m not held up.’

‘Good. Will you be on duty, or could you stand a drop of sherry?’

‘I’ll be on duty …’

‘Never mind. I promise not to tell a soul. And I suppose it’s no use asking what you’re digging after now?’

Gently hung up, still chuckling. One couldn’t help being taken with Mallows. Mirrored in him, one could perceive a long line of master painters. They were professionals and proud of it! They had no time for self-centred aesthetes. They were the strong, the prolific creators, on whose brushes few doubts ever sat, and they produced those arsenals of work from which the small men and critics dissented.

He had the papers on his breakfast table and found that the Johnson case was overshadowed. The Yard had made their concerted sweep on the information of Herbie the Fence, and at last they had got their hands on Jimmy Fisher’s executioner.

Gently wrinkled his nose and passed the paper across to Stephens. So they had finally done it: they had laid Jimmy Fisher’s ghost. There was, naturally, a good bit of ‘arduous routine’ still to be undertaken, but now it was coasting home on a downhill gradient; while, if they had recovered the gun, even that might be abbreviated.

‘I’m glad they got around to mentioning your name, sir.’

Secretly, so was Gently; after all, he had earned it! And from the way it was put … if you read between the lines … All in all, he finished his breakfast in a mood of quiet complacence.

At Headquarters he had to confer with Hansom and Superintendent Walker, two gentlemen who were bound to be critical of the way he had treated Johnson. Unlike Stephens, however, they had precedents to go on, and they warily refrained from open disagreement with Gently.

‘It turns out, then, that Johnson has got a rip-snorting motive?’

Hansom couldn’t help dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.

‘You could pull him in at any time, and make a charge stick?’

‘At any time I feel that I’m one hundred per cent sure of him …’

He left them in the Super’s office to talk over his sins, Stephens, in the meantime, having fetched Dolly to make her statement. It amused him to watch Stephens’s reactions to the attractive barmaid; aware of his susceptibility, the Inspector became extremely punctilious.

‘You appreciate that we have to put it in statement form, miss …’

‘If you’ll be good enough to read it through, miss …’

‘Yes, miss. Sign it
there
…’

In the end it was doubtful who was most impressed by the other – Dolly, it was certain, had an eye for Stephens’s good looks. He saw her out through the foyer and they parted in mutual embarrassment. Coming back, he sat thoughtfully silent while his senior brooded over the statement.

‘What do you think about Aymas calling Mrs Johnson a liar?’

‘Aymas—?’

‘Previous to that, they’d been so friendly together.’

Stephens frowned and twisted his fingers. ‘She might have been kidding him about his pictures.’

‘“Liar” was a strong term to use.’

‘Well … about another bloke, then.’

There could be no question that they needed to know more about the meeting. It was the thought on which Gently had slept, and which had occasioned his call to Mallows. If you were going to mark time on Johnson, then the meeting became your first object; it was from there that Shirley Johnson had walked to her death, with the accusation of ‘liar!’ still echoing in her ears. And, out of all those that had been present, it was her accuser who most caught the eye.

‘It’s a pity that we didn’t get something positive from the breakers …’

He had seen the report of the detective who had been engaged in the search. The wheels, engine and body of Aymas’s car had been identified, but the body had been gutted and crushed in a press. The mats and linings had in any case been destroyed in an incinerator, while the seats and their cushions had been lost among a thousand others. Short of testing the whole pile there was nothing to be done, and even if blood reactions had been found, they could not be tied to Aymas’s car.

If Aymas had had something to hide, then he had hidden it with outstanding efficiency.

Butters’s Rolls slid up to HQ at a few minutes before
ten o’clock. Butters, in honour of the occasion, wore a black jacket over pinstripe trousers. His buttonhole, almost inevitably, was a large white carnation, and on his head he wore a bowler and on his hands pigskin gloves. His daughter, looking dark-eyed, had also been produced in black; she wore a tailored two-piece suit but its lapel was innocent of flowers.

‘As you see, we’ve come along, sir … expect you need my statement too.’

He had been drinking already that morning: you could smell it two paces off.

Gently handed Butters to Stephens, wanting the
daughter
on his own; but if he had been expecting her to talk more freely he was in for a disappointment. Her mood had changed from that of last night’s. The hysterical undertone had been repressed. Now she was very much what she looked, the well-bred offspring of a ‘county’ family. She sat stiffly upright on the office chair, and neatly folded her hands on her lap.

‘Just some questions to start with, Miss Butters …’

Gently was consciously using his ‘paternal’ manner. Instead of facing her across Hansom’s desk, he had perched informally on a corner of it.

‘I’ve been talking to your fiancé …’

Again, he deliberately chose this term.

‘He confirms what you were telling me, especially in relation to Monday night …’

But he might as well have saved his guile, because Miss Butters was not to be loosened. She had taken her second wind, as it were, and she was painfully on her guard. Her statement was carefully brief. It was a model of cautious
admission. She answered his questions with unresponsive brevity and refused to be cajoled into voluntary additions.

Had she been on the phone to Johnson? Gently knew that he had spent the night at his flat.

‘What happened on the Sunday evening?’

‘Derek drove us to the cottage. During the afternoon we’d been sailing, and Derek had his tea with us. We said we were going for a spin to the coast.’

‘What time did you return to Lordham?’

‘At ten p.m.’

‘Did Derek go in with you?’

‘Yes. He had a drink with father.’

‘Was his wife mentioned that day?’

‘No, she wasn’t mentioned.’

‘On the Monday, what did you talk about?’

‘About the business, about Thrin Mouth regatta.’

And so it had gone on, from start to finish; you could almost hear the thud as the questions were dead-batted.

‘By the way! Touching your phone conversation with Johnson last night …’

‘There wasn’t a conversation. I haven’t spoken to him since Monday.’

But at last, after the statement was typed out and signed, a small flicker of emotion did break through the act:

‘Is he – is Mr Johnson at the police station now?’

Gently mimicked her flat responses:

‘No. He isn’t here …’

Butters was able to confirm that his daughter hadn’t used the telephone – after Gently left there had been a row, and then Butters had locked her in her room. His wife, he admitted, had taken the daughter’s part, and on the
morrow, which was Sunday, there was a family conference in prospect.

The poor fellow had a stricken look, and perhaps wasn’t far from tears.

The hour was closer to twelve than eleven when Gently fetched his Riley from the garage, having previously had a chat with the detective who had done the night shift on Johnson. Stephens, invited to go along, preferred to attend to another angle: he wanted to beat round the car-park area in the hope of flushing a reluctant eyewitness.

‘We caught the chummie just like that on the Kenwood case, sir. There was a type who saw the job done, but the locals hadn’t got on to him.’

‘That was a case in a thousand, Stephens.’

‘All the same, sir … I’d like to have a shot.’

So Gently had left him to it, and set out to see Mallows alone.

Mallows lived in Oldmarket Road, which was the handsome south-west approach to the city; he also had a Regency house but in the more elaborate, urban style. It stood a good way back from the road and was largely screened by a plantation of beeches. Around this went a double carriage-sweep, its terminals guarded by fine stone gateways. The house itself was faced with plaster. It was designed to give a monumental effect. The lofty centre section was supported by a pair of recessed ones, and in the angles between them nestled two single-storey units. The whole was decorated with moulded plaster, with shallow apses, urns and friezes, and it displayed with the greatest virtuosity the period penchant for wrought-iron ornament.

A small, elderly man answered Gently’s ring, and the
detective was ushered up a narrow but gracefully swept stairway. From the landing some plainer stairs departed to the second floor and it was here that, by joining three rooms, the artist had contrived his studio.

‘You’re late, Superintendent … who’s been going through the mill?’

Mallows had come to the doorway to greet him, his palette and brush still held in his hands. He wore the conventional artist’s smock with a beret to contain his rebellious hair. The former, though stained and stiffened with paint, gave the artist an ecclesiastical air.

‘Bring us a bottle of sherry, Withers – drop of the ’16, I should think. It wouldn’t do to offer common stuff to a man like the Superintendent. Oh, and what about stopping to lunch? We’ve got some fried chicken, with a flan to follow … Withers, you’d better inform Mrs Clingoe: the Superintendent will be staying for lunch.’

As a matter of fact Gently hadn’t assented, but then, he hadn’t been consulted either. The matter was disposed of as though it scarcely bore noticing – Mallows wasn’t going to bother him to make up his mind on such a trifle.

‘Come into the workshop – I’ve got some things I want to show you.’

Gently followed him into the studio, which smelt strongly of turpentine. Surprisingly the place was cool, though lying directly under the roofs; a row of windows, facing north, were swung horizontally in their frames. Along the inner wall ran a line of racks, most of which were stuffed with canvases. Some other racks, considerably larger, filled one end of the studio from floor to ceiling. Under the windows had been built a bench, and this was
equipped with a tool or two; beneath it were drawers, some long and shallow, and there was a complicated stand which took up a lot of the floor space.

It was a friendly, informal and yet efficient place, harbouring none of the mess and clutter often to be found in artists’ studios. The canvas on the stand was a large, unfinished seascape and it depicted a number of yachts at the beginning of a race.

‘Are you a sailing man, Gently? Those are East Coast One-Designs. It’s the start of the Harwich to Ostend race – a friend of mine called Jenkins won it.’

‘You are painting this for him?’

‘Good heavens no! He couldn’t afford it. But he saw that I got the commission, so I’m going to do him a little something. By the way, would you like a portrait?’

‘No thanks. I couldn’t afford it, either.’

‘Not for cash, you silly fellow! I’ll knock you one off for a souvenir …’

He got rid of his palette and brush and wiped his hands on a scrap of stockinet. Then, picking up a pad and some charcoal, he began to sketch with firm, bold strokes.

‘You’ve got a face that asks to be painted … good frontal development … ocular benevolence.
You’re
a fraud as a detective, you know … mouth gives you away, and so does your nose. How in the world did you come to take it up?’