Gently With the Painters

by Alan Hunter

  ‘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.

  Strong meat for the prosecution … even stronger for the defence!

  ‘How many years had you been married?’

  ‘It would have been seven in September. At first I rented a house at Kimbolton, then I bought one on the Goldington road. Her papa used to live at Goldington. He was a dry old stick who raised prize chrysanthemums.’

  ‘Did you used to get on, at first?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by “get on”, cocker.’

  ‘Was the marriage consummated?’

  ‘Good show! Oh yes, it was. I want to give Shirley her due – she put on a pretty good act, to begin with. You couldn’t accuse her of being enthusiastic, but she gritted her teeth and went ahead with the exercise.’

  ‘Would you describe her as being frigid?’

  ‘It’s a funny thing, but I can’t answer that. As far as I was concerned she was frigid enough, but I always had the impression that there might have been more to her.’

  ‘What gave you that impression?’

  ‘Sorry, cocker. Don’t know.’

  ‘Was she friendly with other men?’

  ‘Not to the extent of going to bed with them.’

  ‘And what about women?’

  ‘Aha.’ Johnson looked knowing. ‘I’ve had my doubts about that, but I could never nail her down. She had some girlfriends back at Bedford who I wouldn’t have trusted far, but I’ve got no positive evidence. It could be my filthy mind.’

  ‘Was there anything like that up here?’

  Johnson slowly shook his head.

  ‘For the last three years I haven’t kept an eye on her, we’ve slept in separate rooms, eaten apart, avoided each other. She could have gone to the devil for all I’d have known about it, though to be fair, I never heard any scandal regarding her. About the last thing we did together was to bury her father. She took on a bit then, and it seemed we might be going to start afresh. But it only lasted a week, and then things were worse than ever; it seemed to set a seal on it, cocker. After that there was no going back.’

  ‘Didn’t it occur to either of you to get a divorce?’

  ‘Too true it did – it occurred to me.’

  ‘You suggested it to her?’

  ‘I offered to give her the grounds for it. Only Shirley wasn’t the type to let a husband off the hook.’

  From his chair near a filing cabinet Stephens was trying to catch his senior’s eye. In his urgent, jiffling impatience he reminded Gently of a schoolboy.

  ‘Inspector Stephens has something to ask you.’

  Stephens was actually clearing his throat! Johnson, breathing out smoke like a grampus, half turned to appraise this threat on his flank.

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘It’s about the Palette Group … I suppose you never attended a meeting?’

  ‘Di-dah-di-dah!’ Johnson grimaced his contempt. ‘Do I look the sort of bloke who would hold hands with that lot?’

  ‘I was wondering if you were acquainted with any of the members.’

  ‘As it happens I am, though only in the way of business. My bank manager fancies himself as an artist, and I sold a piece of property for their chairman, St John Mallows.’

  ‘A piece of property! When would that have been?’

  ‘Does it matter, or something? I sold it in January.’

  Stephens’s dark eyes were gleaming and he had edged his chair forward. His next question was rapped out in Superintendental style:

  ‘Did your wife introduce him to you?’

  ‘Did she firkin! He came through the bank. He asked Farrer to recommend him an agent, and Farrer put him on to me.’

  ‘The property – it was valuable?’

  ‘A couple of cottages out Herling way. The rents didn’t cover the outgoings on them, and my commission on the sale only just squared the advertising.’

  ‘Did your wife ever mention St John Mallows to you?’

  ‘I thought I’d made it plain that we didn’t exchange small talk.’

  ‘Now about her estate, sir. Was it around what you expected?’

  ‘Yes – the proceeds from her papa’s house, plus a hundred or so which she’d saved from her allowance.’

  It was all rather discouraging, and Stephens couldn’t help looking crestfallen. To make it worse, Johnson was watching him with a sort of quizzical amusement. To cover his embarrassment the young Inspector pulled out his pipe; but even this chanced to be unemptied, and he was reduced to sucking it cold.

  ‘And those are the only members of the Group with whom you are personally acquainted …?’

  Johnson returned his attention to the other side of the room.

  ‘I said so, didn’t I? Actually, they belong to the same golf club … I may have seen some of the others, but I’ve never met them to talk to.’

  ‘So you can’t tell us anything about your wife’s relations with them?’

  ‘Not a sausage, old sport. She might have gone to bed with the lot of them.’

  Gently folded the map and stowed it in one of his pockets.

  ‘Are you busy this afternoon? … I’d like to see over your wife’s belongings.’

  * * *

  Johnson drove them there himself in his snarling red MG – a car that fascinated Gently, fresh from his somewhat passé Riley. It was a luscious piece of machinery, sharp with response and explosive power. Johnson, driving it with his fingertips, moved up through the traffic with a surgeon-like precision. Surely, now that one was a Super, and on the Metropolitan scale …?

  The flat was situated in Baker’s Court, a short cul-de-sac off Viscount Road. As Hansom had told them, it was an area of office blocks, and the flat itself surmounted the branch of an insurance firm. Cars were parked in relays on all sides of the court, and office workers kept up a perpetual coming and going. Through a dozen or more of the wide-open windows one could hear the clicking and tinkle of hard-worked typewriters.

  ‘The beauty of this place is that it’s quiet at night …’

  Having squeezed in his car, Johnson conducted them across the court. Beside a blue-painted door was a framed card which bore his name, while on the door, with tips elevated, was screwed a chromium-plated horseshoe.

  ‘Another relic of the Service?’

  ‘Roger! … Got to keep the gremlins out.’

  In the act of unlocking the door, he paused to finger the token of luck. At the top of the stairway inside they passed a Spitfire, poised on a pedestal, and this also he managed to touch, though with a sudden, furtive motion.

  All in all Gently found the flat disappointing, though why it would have been difficult for him to say. He had not been expecting to make any grand discovery, coming three day
s late in the footsteps of Hansom. The victim’s belongings had already been checked. A few bits of correspondence had been collected and read. There was a gloomy neatness in the rooms she had occupied, as though everything there had been pondered and put away.

  ‘Where did she used to do her painting?’

  The pictures he soon grew tired of examining. They were monotones from beginning to end, all vaguely allegorical and in some way distasteful. A number of them were on phallic themes, and one or two were plainly sexual fantasies. Her behaviour towards Johnson may have suggested frigidity, but there had been no fetters on her flights of imagination.

  ‘She used to paint here in the bedroom, cocker.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought the light would have been very suitable.’

  ‘It didn’t matter a damn – she used to paint at night. I’ve seen the light under her door as late as two or three in the morning.’

  ‘How did you know that she was painting?’

  ‘You could smell it, that’s how. The place used to reek of turpentine and linseed. And you could hear her, too, when she was using a big brush – and there’d be her clutter of things in the sink in the morning.’

  Pipe in mouth, Gently strolled to the metal-framed window, which looked down on some mews to the rear of the building. Beneath it, to the ground, stretched a smooth wall of glazed brick: the cream paint on the sill was in part worn and marked. He turned on his heel.

  ‘She had a door key, of course?’

  ‘That’s right – she didn’t need to go out through the window.’

  ‘Did you think that she might have?’

  ‘Not till a moment ago. But I’m not quite as dumb as I look, old sport.’

  Gently nodded indefinitely and puffed once or twice. He had suddenly noticed that Johnson was sweating. For a second or two he seemed on the verge of a fresh question, then he motioned to Stephens, and picked up his hat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ALAZY BREEZE tempered the warm afternoon, and Gently, ignoring the buses, elected to walk back along Viscount Road. He was suddenly in a mood for the early summer weather: it seemed exactly to suit his contemplative frame of mind.

  Once more he had embarked on a case that intrigued him. During those last few moments with Johnson, he had felt the surge of the mysterious current. From being a collection of dead facts the case had sprung into vibrant life, he was getting it into his hands, beginning to sense a possible shape. Perhaps never before had he so relished the exercising of his powers. His spell of duty in the metropolis had done that for him, at least. In another way it had been a tall milestone in his career: it had pulled him up, made him see himself, confirmed the talent that was his …