Gently With the Painters (15 page)

A perfectly logical explanation – but the damage had been done. The playful intimacy that existed between them seemed to have felt the touch of a frost. Mallows stood biting at his lip and gazing down at one of the pictures. Gently, hands stuffed in his pockets, wore the most wooden of his expressions.

‘There are a few routine questions I have to put to you … and naturally, we’re making a thorough investigation.’

‘I understand that. Damn it, you’ve got to be thorough. I don’t suppose you like it any better than we do …’

But he went through the rest of it as quickly as he could, and Mallows confined himself to giving straight answers. He had spent the evening in his garden, and then gone to bed to read; like Gently, he had had his breakfast in bed that morning.

Gently watched him drive away, and then went straight to a phone box. In the directory he found the number of the bank house.

‘Superintendent Gently … did you ring Mallows this morning?’

Farrer began with a little hedging, trying to find what the query was about.

‘I can check with the exchange. I merely thought you’d save me the trouble.’

‘I see … yes … no, I haven’t rung him today.’

Gently clamped the receiver down hard on its rest. He remained there, leaning on it, for several minutes.

H
E ABANDONED HIS
plan of lunch at his hotel and returned instead to have it in the canteen. Hansom, who was a bachelor, made a habit of lunching there, and had a small, sacred table and even aspired to a private napkin. With this tucked under his chin he had a somewhat ogreish appearance.

‘Your playmate rang in – two of the Butters’s went to church, the mother and the eldest daughter, in the eldest daughter’s car. Then the old man came out and had a mooch around the lawn. He’d been sinking it, apparently, wasn’t too steady on his pins.’

‘Did nobody else visit the house?’

‘No … half a mo’, the paperman.’

Gently grunted into his soup, imagining the Sunday scene at Lordham. Stephens had taken with him a folding stool of the type familiar to fishermen. His car being concealed, he would have crept to some hedge or shrubbery, and there, with his glasses, have zealously watched the house and grounds. Then, stealing some hasty minutes, he would send his report back on the car’s radio,
all the time in a frantic rush in case he were missing the vital moment. To be amused by that sort of thing one needed to be as young as Stephens …

‘You tipped him off about the Minx?’

‘I did – too true! And I gave him the dope about the slashings and the letter.’

This would redouble Stephens’s eagerness; now, he would be chafing to capture Johnson. Remembering the Luger, Gently experienced a moment’s uneasiness.

‘Remind him when he calls in again, will you …? If Johnson turns up he’s to report and stay with him.’

So far the ‘arduous routine’ had brought in little of interest, though the fact that it was Sunday was in some degree responsible. The various Palette Group members, heartlessly indifferent to police requirements, had
proceeded
to disperse on their lawful weekend occasions. Up till lunchtime only three had been questioned – Aymas, Baxter and Seymour – and of these only Aymas had a really firm alibi; with another man, he’d been up tending a sick pedigree cow. Seymour, the shy smiler, was the most pregnable of the three. Stammering and blushing, he had admitted to being out till three with ‘a woman’. He had got himself drunk and didn’t remember where she had taken him – and so another bit of ‘arduous routine’ was in process.

‘Did you get anything interesting out of Mallows this morning?’

Gently hedged. ‘It’s always worthwhile talking to Mallows. He recognized those capitals as being cut from
The Times
… and he’s got some of the paper. He recognized it directly.’

‘Did he now!’ Hansom grounded his irons for a moment. ‘Now that
is
interesting – very interesting indeed.’

‘Naturally, I asked him if he had given any away.’

‘And naturally he hadn’t.’

Gently shrugged, and ate assiduously.

Why was he wanting to defend the shrewd-eyed artist? Because that, when you boiled it down, was what he was instinctively seeking to do. Right then he was holding back and trying to dampen Hansom’s curiosity – throwing him titbits, as it were, to head him off from the main fact. But yet, while his hand had still lingered on the telephone, he had begun to comprehend, to see the way things had worked …

‘Suppose he didn’t give it away, then – suppose he sent that letter himself?’

‘In that case, how did Mrs Johnson get the rest of the sheet?’

‘He was lying, of course! He did give it to her.’

‘Then he might equally well have given her the lot.’

‘Yeah!’ It was logical, but Hansom wasn’t quite satisfied. His familiarity with Gently had perhaps taught him something. He sawed a long slice from his piece of steak, but sat looking at it for a while before raising it to his mouth. Then he chewed absent-mindedly, his fork still hovering.

‘He was pally enough with Mrs Johnson, wasn’t he? Used to take her out for lunch and that sort of thing?’

‘So did a lot of others.’

‘But they haven’t got that paper! And she only had that piece, because I’ve sent Ephgrave to the flat to check. Now
if Johnson sent the letter he might have destroyed some remaining paper – that’s possible. I agree, though, it could be more probable; but it’s probable enough that she got half a sheet from Mallows – and that that’s all she ever had: it’s as probable as hell!’

‘Then why did he admit to me that he had some?’

‘You tell me, you’ve made a study of the bloke. All I can say is that he’s making me curious … yeah, and wasn’t he the last one to see her?’

‘You’ve forgotten something important.’ Still he was defending Mallows! Reluctantly, he was letting Hansom draw a decisive point from him. ‘He couldn’t have composed that letter because he didn’t know about Johnson and Farrer. We didn’t release it to the press, and Mallows wasn’t there to be an eyewitness.’

‘How do you know he wasn’t there?’

‘I had an appointment with him at eleven. He was waiting for me in his studio, and I found him working on a canvas.’

‘Supposing Farrer rang up and told him?’

Gently with difficulty suppressed a smile. This was the first thing that people thought of; the easy, automatic, but quite transparent, explanation.

‘I checked with Farrer, and Farrer didn’t.’

‘Huh! All the same, I keep being curious.’

‘There could be another source for the paper, you know.’

‘You bet – it’s as common as muck, round here!’

Gently had succeeded nevertheless in heading Hansom away from Mallows, and the Chief Inspector was back to his old love by the time the rice pudding arrived. In a way,
they had each of them made personal issues, Hansom with Johnson and Gently with Mallows. Though at first Gently had not regarded the artist as a ‘hot’ suspect, had he not been preparing himself for the moment when he would? Judas-like, he had let himself be attracted by Mallows … and now he felt compelled to keep the man to himself.

It was beginning to be a mystery where Johnson had disappeared to, whether or not he had shaved off that undisguisable moustache. The subject of an all-stations, the description of his car known, he had still completely eluded the attention of authority. Two reports had come in before the car details were available, and neither had stood up to a moment’s scrutiny, but since the details had gone out there had been a uniform silence – Johnson’s Minx appeared to have vanished, with the estate agent inside it.

Did he have some other bolt hole of which the police knew nothing? The Nearstead cottage was already under surveillance. On the chance, Hansom dispatched a
detective
to Johnson’s office, with instructions to list all unsold property on the books.

After lunch Gently was able to fill in some details of his ‘X’ list. Allstanley had been traced: he was visiting some friends in the city. The balding teacher, who smoked a comfortable-looking cherrywood, drove voluntarily to Headquarters and was brought up to Hansom’s office.

‘Your people rang me up from my digs at Walford – asked me to come along to answer some questions.’

He had a quiet, pleasant voice and sensitive, retiring features, so that one wondered how he kept discipline in a crowded council school. After a while, however, one
noticed a gentle authority. He thought before he spoke and made statements that were positive.

‘No, I don’t mind telling you where I was last night. I’m spending the weekend with the Todds, and we went to the Playhouse.’

‘You slept at the Todds’, did you?’

‘They’ve put me up in their parlour. The kids being at home means they’re without a spare bedroom.’

‘So in fact you slept downstairs?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘You were the only one sleeping downstairs?’

‘Of course – what’s happened?’

On being told, he showed signs of dismay and wanted to hear the details. He looked solemn when he learnt the fate of his own precious exhibit.

‘And I’d sold it, too – the first of my “wires” to go! But it’s probably just as well. I would hardly have bashed my own “wire” …’

Having got him Gently was in no hurry to let Allstanley escape, but fired other questions at him, about the meeting and about Shirley Johnson. He was not so much interested in the answers as in the man’s personality – there were several points about Allstanley which answered to
Mallows
’s
portrait.

‘You were good friends with Mrs Johnson?’

‘I’m not sure that I’d say that. I liked her well enough, but it didn’t blind me to her faults.’

‘Suppose I told you that she expressed herself as being fond of you, to Mr Mallows?’

An unbelieving stare, and then: ‘He should know – he made the running with her.’

Gently hadn’t bargained for that, but he couldn’t let it pass: he could feel Hansom’s dark eyes boring in from beside him.

‘He took notice of her, did he?’

‘You can put it like that if you want to.’

‘Are you saying more than that?’

It was a challenge, and Allstanley shook his head.

But it continued to hang in the air, that unexpectedly dangerous response, and though Gently covered it up he couldn’t entirely remove its impact. After Allstanley had gone Hansom tapped him on the shoulder:

‘What do you say to her having blackmailed Mallows?’

It took Gently back to where Stephens had come in …

The reports, as they slowly arrived, bore a painful air of sameness. Few of the members could give foolproof alibis, though such as they had stood up to inquiry. Shoreby had spent the night on a houseboat, Wimbush was visiting his mother in Starmouth. Seymour’s ‘woman’ was a
well-known
prostitute who occupied lodgings off Riverbank Road. The results of the searches were equally negative – no mutilated
Times
es or sheets of ‘Leonardo da Vinci’; only Baxter, besides Mallows, was a subscriber to the former, and he produced his back numbers in a beautifully even pile.

It was ten minutes past three when the first excitement occurred, until when the day had seemed booked to end in a stalemate. Gently had just lit his pipe and was gazing down into the street – the sun had lately broken through, to evoke a higher incidence of strollers. Behind him he heard the phone buzz and Hansom picking it up.

‘Chief Inspector Hansom … yes … that’s right …
come again? He sold it? … well, the cheeky so-and-so! … yeah … I’ll say! … yep, do that for me … thanks a lot … yeah … thanks.’

The receiver clunked down and Hansom made a crowing sound: ‘So what do you know about that! The chummie goes and flogs the car!’

‘You were talking about Johnson?’

‘Yeah – that was Chelmsford on the wire. They’ve just spotted the Minx in a dealer’s window – Johnson flogged it to him last night – made a tenner on the deal! Chelmsford are checking the buses and trains to see if they can pick up his trail for us.’

‘Chelmsford, eh …?’

‘Yep – heading for the Smoke. He must have decided that the Minx was a bit too risky to stay with. But the craftiness of the boyo, flogging his car to another dealer! If Chelmsford hadn’t been so spry, we might not have heard of it for days.’

‘At what time did he sell the car?’

‘It was yesterday evening, round about eight.’

‘Did they ask if he’s bought another?’

‘Not from that establishment he didn’t.’

Hansom picked up the phone again and Gently puffed some steady smoke rings. If Johnson had sold the car around eight, then how had he spent the rest of the time? To drive to Chelmsford would take two hours: he had been in possession of the Minx before noon. Thus there were six hours to be accounted for – a surprising delay, for a man on the run!

‘Just a moment … let me have that phone!’

An Inspector Horrocks took the call at Chelmsford.

‘In connection with Johnson … he’s an ex-RAF pilot. Haven’t you got a charter-flight firm operating near the town?’

They had, as he remembered, and Horrocks hastened to put him through to it; the connection all the same took an unconscionable time to get. Hansom, stricken by sudden visions of his prey escaping for good, sat cracking his knuckles in a ferment of impatience. At last:

‘Wayland Charter Flights. Can we be of service?’

Gently carefully explained what he wanted to know.

‘Oh, yes. That’s the fellow who chartered our Proctor, X X-ray. He’s got it for a week, doing cross-country flips …’

Five minutes later they knew all there was to know, which was that Johnson was probably clear of the country. He had taken off with full tanks at nine a.m. that morning, and in the still air conditions prevailing, must long since have touched down in France.

‘He drove in here yesterday at half past two and asked if we had any light planes for charter. The Proctor had just come in and he took it up for a flip … he’s a beautiful peelo, his three-point was a natural …

‘He might have taken it away then – it had just had a one-twenty-hour inspection, but he preferred to wait and make his start this morning. We had it waiting on the tarmac and at ten to nine he took off for Lympne … yes, he paid for the charter in advance … he had a suitcase, and arrived in a taxi.’

A further call, to Lympne Airport, provided the necessary clincher. No Proctor from Wayland Charter Flights had been received that day. The only mystery that
remained concerned Johnson’s curious lack of urgency – why, in effect, had he delayed, when he might have made his trip straight away?

‘He hired a car and doubled back to do this slashing lark!’ – Hansom bit the end off a cheroot, spitting the pieces into an ashtray. ‘It’s clear enough why he did it – he wants to sell us on a crazy killer. So then we go and chase our tails instead of chasing chummie Johnson.’

It was a theory that fitted and left no visible gaps. Johnson, possessed of means and motive, could easily arrange the opportunity. After he had chartered the plane, no doubt, he had bought a
Times
and concocted the letter. Then, having sold the too-risky Minx, he had hired a car and returned to the city … It was all of a piece, including the knowledge shown in the letter. There only remained that perpetual query – was Johnson really so fiendishly clever?

‘Where do you suppose he got the other knife?’