Gently With the Painters (3 page)

‘But, to date, you haven’t made any definite inquiry?’

‘Nope. I like to leave something for Scotland Yard to have a chew at.’

Gently smothered a grin in the lighting of his pipe. It hadn’t taken Stephens long to measure swords with the handsome Hansom. Already, he was sure, the Chief Inspector bore a ‘difficult’ label – without being aware of it, he was supporting Northshire’s reputation. And now, with hands that trembled slightly, Stephens was also lighting his pipe …

‘Let’s leave that for the moment. I’d like to hear more about the Johnsons. You haven’t got a portrait of the victim, I suppose?’

Hansom dipped into the manilla folder which had contained the official photographs, finally selecting a half-plate print to skim across the desk to Gently.

‘That’s a recent one, I’m told … It just about gives the right effect. Don’t forget that you’re talking to an eyewitness – I danced with this femme, at the Charity Ball.’

He leaned his elbows on the desk and watched as Gently examined the print. It showed a fragile-looking blonde whose eyes, one could swear, had been hyacinth blue. The hair was short and only slightly wavy, the nose rather straight over a small mouth and chin. Though not very striking she’d been pretty in a way … for a moment, Gently couldn’t put a name to the quality.

‘You begin to catch on, do you? Well, you’re wrong – she wasn’t a lesbian. She’d got the look and the manner, but you only saw her around with men. Mind you, she might have had some girlfriends in private … that’s possible: but she was the one and only female who belonged to the Palette Group.’

Gently inclined his head, passing the portrait on to Stephens.

‘How old would she be?’

‘Twenty-nine last May. She stood five feet seven and had a fashion-horse sort of figure – as lean as a lath, with just a top dressing of sex. She had a bedward way of gazing at you with her innocent blue eyes. Her voice was the tinkling sort, but you can bet it had an edge, too.’

‘Did she belong to these parts?’

‘Not her. They came from Bedford. Johnson arrived here five years ago and branched out as an estate agent.
He’s a right Battle-of-Britain charlie, complete with MG. You could hang up your hat and coat on one side of his handlebars.’

‘Does he make a go of the business?’

‘His car and clothes say he does.’

‘You’ve seen his flat, of course?’

‘Yeah. It’s a posh, brand new one. Over an office block.’

Hansom produced the estate agent’s statement – not a great deal to show for three hours of grilling – and Gently skimmed through its inevitable police jargon, pausing occasionally for Stephens, who was reading over his shoulder.

A peculiar household must that one have been! Here and there, through the stiff formality, a telling phrase or two crept out. ‘I wanted Shirley to have a baby but to this she would not agree.’ ‘I bought a new bed for the guest room and have been sleeping there for three years.’ ‘I do not know if she has been unfaithful and I myself have not been unfaithful.’ ‘I agree that I wanted a divorce, but that she would not contemplate a divorce.’

And then his account of Monday evening:

‘When I arrived home my wife was going out. I did not ask her where she was going as we had agreed not to ask one another this. I found some eggs in the larder and poached two for my tea. Then I got out my car again and drove first to the Halford Ferry public house and afterwards to several public houses, including the Lordham Dog and the Porter Haynor Falgate. I returned to the Ferry and remained there till closing time, fetching my drinks from the bar to a table by the river. I arrived home at eleven o’clock or soon after. I went straight to bed without
visiting my wife’s room, and I did not know that she was missing until I was informed of it by the police.’

Hansom sneered: ‘He was playing it close to the chest, don’t you think? The innocent wronged husband who doesn’t know a thing! We checked at the pubs which he condescended to mention, and like I told you, they don’t remember him after half past nine.’

‘Is he fairly well known to them?’

‘You bet. He’s that type. His MG would do the circuit with him blind drunk in the dickey.’

‘Halford Ferry is that large pub …?’

‘Yep. He’s a regular clever boyo. It’s big, and rushed off its feet at this time of the year. Naturally, they won’t swear that he wasn’t there till closing, especially with him claiming that he sat at an outside table. He
may
have sat nursing a pint for an hour.’

‘It’s either true or very clever.’

‘Cobber, you’ve put him in a nutshell.’

The Super, feeling perhaps that he was being ignored, now filled in some details of their investigation of Johnson. His service record was good, they knew nothing against his character, and though he owned a fast car his licence was virgin of endorsements. He had friends in his own profession and was generally well thought of. His business was honestly conducted and had a good reputation. That he was estranged from his wife was no secret to his acquaintances, but the subject was painful to him and he became abrupt if she was mentioned.

‘Can anyone vouch for the time he arrived home?’

‘No, and that and the time he gives seem to lend support to his good faith. If he had known at what time his wife
had been killed, he could have sworn that he was home by ten without fear of contradiction. Inspector Hansom here thinks that it’s an example of Johnson’s cunning, but failing evidence to the contrary one is bound to allow him the doubt. It was small things like these which made us uncertain about Johnson, and I suggested that we should turn our attention elsewhere.’

‘Elsewhere’, of course, was the Palette Group and its members, and from Hansom’s bored expression Gently could judge what luck they had had. From his folder the local man produced a sheaf of bitty statements, the result of many hours of unprofitable labour.

‘Perhaps you could give me the overall picture.’

‘Sonny, I’d be delighted! They all had a “thing” about her.’

‘Infatuation, you mean?’

‘Hell, no – these are painters! There were some who thought she could paint, and the rest who thought she couldn’t. Apart from some guessing about times, there’s damn-all else.’

Gently paused for an instant before putting his next question; he wasn’t confident that Hansom could give him the answer.

‘Did it strike you as being the … usual relation, as between artists, or was there a little bit more of a point to it?’

‘How the devil should I know!’ Hansom stared his disgust at Gently. ‘They’re queers, the whole bunch, and that’s putting it mildly. The fact that she was croaked didn’t seem to have penetrated – they were only concerned with the way she lashed paint on.’

‘But they were concerned about that – they held strong opinions?’

‘I couldn’t get them to talk about anything else. And yesterday it broke out again, when they opened the exhibition. We had to grab that picture to save ourselves a riot.’

The picture was produced and displayed on the top of a filing cabinet. On the whole, it seemed to lack something as a potential riot-raiser. A monotone drawing of about eighteen by twelve, it showed practised execution but no startling originality. There were qualities, however, which had been lost in reproduction. The figure wasn’t striding through rain but through a grove of wire-like stalks. And it was a strangely evil figure, something medieval and witch-like; little breasts, like shrivelled gourds, hung from the wasted and wrinkled chest.

‘Urs Graaf … possibly Dürer.’

Stephens, it appeared, was knowledgeable in art. Both the Super and Hansom viewed the picture with degrees of distaste.

‘But that’s the sort of thing she’d paint …!’ Hansom lofted his beefy shoulders. ‘She was dried up somewhere herself, with all her beautiful come-on eyes.’

‘Have you seen her other pictures?’

‘There’s a room full of them, back at the flat. I saw a pair that hung in her bedroom, but I hadn’t any reason to look at the rest.’

Oddly, though, the picture seemed to fascinate them, and each one kept his eyes fixed upon it. In the Super’s office there was silence for a minute while they steadily appraised the dead woman’s last conception.

‘Their chairman … what had he to say about her painting?’

‘Oh … him! Well, he was more sober than the rest. As a matter of fact, I don’t think he mentioned it. It was from him that I managed to get the facts about the meeting.’

It had lasted three hours, from seven-thirty till
ten-thirty
. According to Mallows, it had run its usual course. The members, carrying their pictures, had foregathered in the cellar, and, aided by pints from up the stairs, had criticized each other’s work.

‘There was a little bit of business – subscriptions, reports, the usual thing. Then they started showing the pictures on an easel they’d fetched along. Mallows, being the
chairman
, was the first to have a crack, after which all present took a hand in the discussion. When they’d had a bellyful of one picture they set up another, and started crabbing that.’

‘Did Mrs Johnson show a picture?’

‘No, but she was a leading critic. Apparently she carried a bit of weight about the cellar. They would listen to her even when they were hotted up – because she was the only sheila there, do you think?’

Then followed the important timetable of the order in which the meeting broke up, though Hansom warned Gently that it wasn’t unanimously subscribed to. Mallows had given him the outline and he had checked it with the various members, but some of them couldn’t remember and others denied its accuracy.

What appeared was that six members had left the cellar before Mrs Johnson, one of them, Shoreby, as early as ten, in order to catch his last bus to Cheapham. The others had
left when the proceedings ended, all of them within two or three minutes of each other. Their names were Seymour, Lavery, Farrer, Baxter and Allstanley, but the precise order of their leaving could not be agreed on. Mallows thought that Allstanley was the first to depart, but Allstanley denied it and said that someone went out ahead of him. Lavery admitted that he was one of the first to leave the cellar, but claimed that he had returned to fetch his canvas, which he had forgotten.

‘And after those six came Mallows and Mrs Johnson?’

‘That’s right. They stood in the doorway chatting for a moment. The cellar at the George III has got a separate door from the pub – it’s on a little side-lane, at the end of the marketplace.’

‘Then he saw her depart in the direction of the bus stop?’

‘Yeah … that seems to indicate that his car was parked elsewhere.’

‘Which makes him the last person to have seen Mrs Johnson alive.’

‘Excepting everybody else she might have passed on her way.’

Along with the reports, that had to be enough for the present. The solemn boom of the City Hall clock had already announced the hour of lunch. Superintendent Walker, who had a great respect for his meals, had for the last five minutes been pointedly examining his wristwatch.

‘Just one other thing – the knife. Did you find out where it was purchased?’

‘They stock them at Carter Brown’s, a draughtsman’s supplier in Prince’s Street.’

‘But they don’t remember selling this one?’

‘Not on your life. That would make it too easy. They haven’t sold one for several years – there’s a plastic job which has swept the market.’

For lunch, Gently took Stephens to a café which he knew about in Glove Street. The young Inspector had little to say to him as he accompanied him thither. Until the sweet came he was silent, a picture of solemn
preoccupation
, then, dipping his spoon in a trifle, he murmured:

‘It’s got to be blackmail or nothing!’

Through a mouthful Gently murmured back:

‘Unless the estate agent’s got a girlfriend …’

I
T MAY HAVE
been that chance remark which led him first to visit Johnson’s office, thus ignoring some obvious preliminaries which, quite frankly, ought to have been seen to. These included a visit to the dustbins, a step which Stephens regarded as de rigueur: Gently, with a better appreciation of Hansom, expected small profit from this piece of routine.

He had, moreover, used the car park in the past, and so was familiar with the general layout. More important for him, in the initial stages, were the things with which his mind’s eye was unable to help him.

‘I think I’ll take a look at the husband! Perhaps you’d like to go back to HQ?’

‘Whatever you say, sir. But shouldn’t we, to start with—?’

‘I’ll leave that to you, then we won’t be duplicating our efforts.’

Stephens, as he had intended, was mildly complimented by this, but a little to Gently’s surprise the young man preferred to tag along with his senior.

‘The husband, after all, is the number one suspect …’

It went without saying that Stephens was a graduate from Ryton. He was a product of the new policy for catching promising material young. He had been groomed into inspectorhood at an age when Gently had been proud to be a sergeant, and as with others of the new school, textbook lore came readily to his tongue.

Johnson’s office was in Upper Queen Street, in the business area of the city. It was housed in a Victorian building which owned a dignified, sugar-ice front. The street was a traffic artery to the north and was busy with steady streams of vehicles; it adjoined the cathedral precincts at one end and was closed by the GPO at the other. The office had a prosperous appearance and it rejoiced in some brilliant paintwork. To air-force blue had been added crimson linings, with a touch of gilt on the scroll above the portal. On the plate-glass of the window appeared Johnson’s name in discreet small capitals; the window was backed by a pegboard, to which details of the properties were attached.

‘He seems to get the county people …’ Gently brooded over the photographs and particulars. Very few of the advertised properties were at addresses in the city. A score or more of the neatly typed cards referred to substantial country houses, and there were mentions of shooting rights and ‘half a mile of the best coarse fishing’. It was the sort of estate-agent’s window before which Gently had often stood and dreamed.

The clerk’s office behind the window developed this note of established prosperity. It was furnished in
contemporary
style and contained electric typewriters and the
most modern equipment. Two of the typists were middle-aged women and they paid no attention to the intruders; but the third, a rather sharp-faced brunette, rose to greet them with a flashing smile.

‘Is Mr Johnson busy at present?’

‘Did you want to see him especially, sir?’

The smile went into a decline when Gently introduced himself, and the two typers, looking up quickly, showed that they could listen as they worked.

A handsomely carpeted flight of stairs took them up to the first floor. The receptionist flounced ahead of them, her spiked heels trotting briskly. By the time they had reached the landing Johnson had emerged from his room to meet them; another girl, carrying a shorthand
notebook
, slipped out of the room and went down the stairs.

‘I saw they’d called you in, old sport!’ Johnson was insisting on shaking their hands. ‘They plastered it over the local, you know, and me, with a gendarme’s hand on my shoulder …’

He was so much to type that it was difficult to believe in him – you felt he must be clowning it, laying it on a bit. But there wasn’t much that was funny in the tone of his voice, and after the first defiant stare, his eyes switched about him nervously.

‘Come into the ops room …’

He turned and preceded them into his office, which in its smartness was of a piece with the rest of the premises. With an attempt at an air he swaggered across to his desk, and before sprawling into the revolving chair, spun it once with his fingertip.

‘I always do that – it’s a gimmick I’ve got.’

‘Something you picked up in the Service?’

Johnson nodded his head briskly. ‘I used to do it in the mess before we took off on a prang … then one day I forgot, and copped a packet over Cologne. Bloody Lanc went up in smoke. Mine was the only chute that opened. Funny thing, wasn’t it, cocker? All the way down I was laughing my head off …’

His grey eyes fastened for an instant on Gently’s, as though watchfully seeking the Yard man’s reaction. It produced an unpleasant impression, a feeling of distrust. What had Hansom said about Johnson? ‘I could smell him for our man …’

Hansom had also said that Johnson resembled Heath, but perhaps he was judging from the press photograph of the murderer. Certainly they both had fair wavy hair, and eyes of pale grey that stared a little. But Johnson’s features were heavier and broader, he lacked the cleft chin and the length of the nose. His mouth, too, was stronger, a mouth full of determination. It looked as though it knew how to keep itself shut.

‘You’ve come here to put me through it again? It’s like the old days with the Gestapo, cocker. Don’t apologize or anything – I’m well up in the drill. I’ve been through worse grillings than you’ll ever dish out.’

‘This is just a routine recap, Mr Johnson.’

‘Good show! I love going through it ten times.’

‘I’m hoping that so much repetition won’t be necessary.’

Gently pulled up one of the office’s plastic-seated iron chairs. At a respectful distance, Stephens also took a seat. Johnson had shaken a cigarette from a torn-open packet, and having struck a match on his nail, was puffing smoke out noisily.

‘You knew that your wife was a member of the Palette Group, Mr Johnson?’

‘That’s a silly question, cocker. I couldn’t very well not know it.’

‘How long had she been a member?’

‘Two years or thereabouts. But she’d always mucked about with paints, even before we got hitched up.’

‘So for two years she had attended their meetings?’

‘Roger. And I knew about it all the time.’

‘You knew that they met on the first Monday of each month?’

‘And that the meetings lasted from half-seven to half-ten.’

‘I just wanted to get that clear, Mr Johnson. In your statement you merely said that you didn’t ask her where she was going.’

‘Whizzo. I thought you were leading up to something!’

‘Naturally, I wanted to establish that you knew where and when to find her.’

The smoke hissed through Johnson’s teeth but he made no comment. He was tilting his chair backwards and had got his chin buried in his pullover. Though Gently had purposely sat to his side, the estate agent was facing ahead so that he avoided the light from the window.

‘You’ve got a useful set of reference books in your office, Mr Johnson …’

Again there was no comment except the fierce
expulsion
of some smoke. He had a peculiar way of doing it, it was like the growling of a dog; the smoke emerged in an upward fan between the two horns of his massive moustache.

‘The current Kelly’s … is that a Blomefield? … and surely a run of Ladbrooke’s
Churches
. And an estate agent like yourself should have a fairish selection of maps …’

Johnson slid open a drawer of his desk and pulled out a mint-looking Ordnance Survey map. He weighed it for a second in his hand, and then adroitly copped it to Gently.

‘You can drop all the crafty stuff straight away, cocker. I tell you, I’m used to interrogation by experts. I’ve had three thousand and ten official lectures on security – plus the pleasure of being put through the mill by the Nazis.’

Gently shrugged, examining the map that Johnson had tossed him. It was indeed new, but bore a typed label on its cover:

‘Route taken by Derek Johnson on Monday, 5 July, with approximate times and number of pints imbibed.’

Inside the route was marked in heavy green ink: it corresponded exactly to what Johnson had given in his statement.

‘When did you cook this up?’

‘After the locals started in on me.’

‘For your benefit or theirs?’

‘Mine of course – don’t be naive.’

‘You know that it doesn’t give you an alibi for the murder?’

‘A bloody shame, isn’t it? But that’s my story, and sticking to it.’

Gently nodded his head slowly and with a little reluctant admiration. He was beginning to understand why Hansom had had his doubts about Johnson. The man possessed a certain panache, a degree of bold and persuasive frankness. One could set a query against it, but on the balance, felt inclined to accept it.

‘Why did you move up here from Bedford?’

There was another thing, too, concerning Johnson. The case against him rested entirely on suspicion, it didn’t admit of any pressure or of trapping by contradiction. With no alibi to support, he had no worthwhile handle to him.

‘Not to murder my wife, you can bet your shirt on that. I was looking for a business, and there was one up here for sale. I didn’t pinch my capital either – it was left me by my mother. As for the district, I’ve always liked it – I was stationed up here for most of the war.’

‘Is it a good one for the business?’

‘It depends on what you handle. Being outside the commuting range, the properties here are relatively cheap. So I look for customers down south who want more consequence than they can afford in Surrey. A
four-bedroom
man down there can usually rise to eight in Northshire.’

‘You deal mostly in country properties?’

‘Roger. I specialize in them.’

‘Do you have any difficulty in finding them?’

‘Why the hell should I? There’s plenty about.’

For an instant it seemed to Gently that Johnson was uneasy, and he deliberately paused to see if anything would develop. But the silence produced nothing except some more hissing smoke, and then the replacement of the first cigarette by a second.

‘You yourself prefer to live in the city, however?’

Was he imagining it, or had he really touched something?

‘Why not? I was born and bred in a town. There have never been any swede-bashers in our line of the family.’

‘And your wife felt the same way?’

‘No she didn’t, as a matter of fact. Since you’re curious, I had some thoughts of moving out of the city. Not that it would have made a scrap of difference – things had gone too far for that. But a flat’s a small place when you get on each other’s wick.’

‘You’d actually settled on a place?’

This time it was Johnson who made the pause. For several seconds he fanned out smoke before he decided on a reply.

‘No, I hadn’t, suppose it matters. I was still looking round for one. Being an estate agent and all that, one doesn’t rush into properties quickly.’

‘Was your wife very insistent about it?’

‘No. You can lay off sniping round that. My wife had given up being insistent about anything – except ignoring her husband’s existence.’

Gently stared at the map, which was still unfolded over his knees. His instinct assured him that they were on a very interesting subject. He explored it for a little, trying to see if he could tie it in, but it involved him in hypotheses of which the facts gave no suggestion. First catch your fact …

He sighed and returned to Johnson.

‘Your wife was younger than you, I believe?’

‘You know she was if you read my statement.’

‘Seven years, I believe it was.’

‘Let’s be precise – seven years and two months.’

‘Where did you meet your wife, Mr Johnson?’

‘In Bedford. She was my boss’s secretary. When I came out of the airworks I took a job with Wright and McOubrey – they’re estate agents in the town. I went there to learn the business.’

‘She had relatives in Bedford, of course?’

‘Her father. He died two years ago. Then there’s a cousin who lives in Evesham. That’s the lot, as far as I know.’

‘Did you ever meet the cousin?’

‘Only once, when he came to the wedding. He’s a thin and miserable type, he manages a canning factory over there. I sent him a note with the time of the funeral – that was yesterday – but he didn’t turn up.’

The phone rang on his desk and Johnson scooped it to his ear. In the clerk’s office below a customer was apparently asking for him. He listened for half a minute, his eyes fixed in front of him, then he barked out some instructions and slammed the phone back on its rest.

The object his eyes had been fixed upon was a small ivory paper knife. It was yellowed, as though by sunlight, and a little serrated at the edges.

‘Where was it we got to …?’

His eyes flashed at Gently aggressively. Then, as they had done at first, they wandered away and about the room. He lit a third cigarette from the butt of the second, grinding the latter out with emphasis in a tray which bore the RAF crest.

‘We’d got to where you met your wife in Bedford.’

‘Roger. It’s a day I shan’t forget in a hurry. She came as a temporary when McOubrey’s secretary was sick, but she only left it to marry me – she was a sticker, was dear Shirley.’

‘You thought differently, then, I take it?’

‘I’m not so blazing sure of that. Ask any second man how he came to be married, and if he’s honest, he won’t
be able to tell you. She wasn’t my type of female at all. She was lean and blonde and a bit of a pansy. She used a rank sort of scent which I loathed the smell of – like poppies and horse piss, if you can imagine the combination. Well, I suppose she had her eye on me, that’s the way it usually happens. It gratified my vanity and I used to take her out. We went to dances and the flicks, and home to meet her papa, and before you could say “bingo” I was standing at the altar.

‘Believe me, cocker, it’s still a bit of a surprise packet. I’ve never quite been able to see myself as her husband.’

Johnson inhaled long puffs and fizzed them out at the ceiling – he really did sound surprised at this strange thing which life had done to him. A picture passed through Gently’s mind of a younger, callower Johnson, a Johnson in his Service uniform, drinking pints with his mates in the local. At twenty-one he had commanded a bomber. At twenty-two, been shot out of the sky. And then, settling down at last to build a life, he’d fallen into the hands of the husband-hunting Shirley.