Gently With the Painters

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Don’t you think, sir, that we can safely rule Johnson out of it?’

  He had hardly been aware of Stephens, striding smartly along beside him. The sudden clarity of vision which his mood had induced had been extending itself to the busy world passing about him. This city had always been the home of painters … at last, he thought he had hit on one of the reasons. There was a quality in the light here, a steady, glowing luminosity. Was it due to the dry, continental east wind?

  ‘I don’t know what your impressions were, sir, but I rather had the feeling that he was on the up-and-up. I admit that he struck me as being a little calculating, but I don’t think that one should be too influenced by that.’

  ‘What do you mean by being calculating?’

  Gently mentally shrugged his shoulders – how these youngsters tried to reduce everything to an immaculate black and white!

  ‘Well, sir, he was making the best of his case. I think you’ll agree with me about that. He set himself to sound convincing by pretending to have nothing to hide.’

  ‘And you think that he succeeded?’

  ‘Quite frankly, sir, I do. He made a number of risky admissions which he might just as well have kept in the bag.’

  ‘Like his knowledge of the Group meeting?’

  ‘Yes, sir, particularly that. There was no need for him to have stuck his neck out so far. I realize that in theory it might be put down to cleverness, but in practice, sir, did you ever meet with cleverness of that kind?’

  Gently grudgingly admitted it. ‘Only in defence counsels …! When your own neck is at stake, you don’t set puzzles of that kind. All the same, it would have been odd if he hadn’t known about the meeting.’

  ‘On the balance, sir, I think you must allow it’s in his favour.’

  Which was to echo the shrewd Superintendent Walker, of course, not to mention handsome Hansom’s more rhapsodical judgements. Johnson had it in the balance: that was the general conclusion, though Hansom was inclined to give the scales a prejudiced nudge.

  ‘One can’t always strike a balance …’

  Here, again, he was making a discovery – he, in his approach to a case, had never drawn up accounts of this kind. They were a compromise with the truth and he had automatically distrusted them; his way was to assemble the facts and to hold them suspended in his mind, where, by a sort of alchemy, they eventually moved into a pattern.

  ‘Yes, sir, I agree. But one has to have a shot at it.’

  ‘It’s a process which is liable to error, Stephens.’

  ‘But you’ve got to have some method for treating the facts, sir.’

  ‘If you can see the facts clearly, there’s no need for a method.’

  He could see he was puzzling Stephens, and suddenly he smiled at him paternally. He knew that it was no use trying to explain himself to the young man. It would take long years of experience, of persistent trial and error, before Stephens came to accept that detection was an art and not a science. Even Gently, at the top of his tree, had only just begun to see that …

  ‘We’ll take a look at the exhibition before we return to HQ. It’ll give us something to chat about when we put the painters through it.’

  The way to the Castle Gardens, however, took them past the City Hall and its car park, and Gently hadn’t the heart to head his colleague off them again. As usual at that hour, the park was jam-packed with lines of vehicles. An elderly attendant in a navy-blue uniform was doing his best to produce a semblance of order.

  ‘Superintendent Gently, CID. Are those the dustbins where the police found the body?’

  This was also for Stephens’s benefit, since Gently could identify the site from the photographs. There were six of them standing in a well-dragooned row, heavy-quality, galvanized Corporation dustbins; than these it would have been hard to imagine a more innocent sequence of useful ironware. Nothing remained to suggest that a tragedy had been enacted. All traces of blood had been carefully erased. The terrace wall, against which the dustbins were ranged, marked the boundary of HQ’s section of the park.

  ‘He was a cheeky sort of chummie, sir … when you come to weigh it up!’

  Gently nodded his agreement, his eye running round the open space. It was largely contained by the interior angle which was formed by the backs of the City Hall and Police HQ. Opposite to the City Hall were the blind ends and a brick wall, beside which ran a footway joining Chapel Street with St Saviour’s. The last-mentioned street made the fourth side of the square; it faced the car park with a number of small shops, and a lane.

  ‘It couldn’t have been altogether dark over here.’

  Stephens was hard at it studying the angles of the site. Above it all, sanctifying the spot with civic dignity, rose the great tower of the City Hall with its clock face of gilt studs.

  ‘By half past ten … at this time of the year …’

  ‘I seem to remember that it was cloudy on Monday.’

  ‘All the same, there’s three lamps in the street over there, and a small one on the wall where you go out past HQ.’

  Stephens paused to eye the police building with a touch of malevolence – this was certainly an unfortunate spot for a murder! There were about twenty yards, if it came to hard figures, which separated the dustbins from the windows of the canteen. But then, even police canteens ran to curtains.

  ‘Under the circumstances it could scarcely have been premeditated. Nobody but an idiot would plan a murder right here. Having got her here, he must have acted on impulse – he might have been carrying that paper knife in the locker of his car.’

  ‘Then you think it was bona fide, his offer of a lift?’

  ‘Well, sir, he might have planned to do it somewhere else. But then finding that it was quiet here, temptation got the better of him. He may have done it in his car – we might be able to find the traces.’

  It was plain enough that Stephens was chafing for a bit of action. Unlike Dutt, he wasn’t used to Gently’s seeming-casual ways. The murderer would have had three days in which to clean or not clean his car, but the urgency of beginning a check sounded keenly in Stephens’s voice.

  ‘All right … cut along to Hansom and see if we can get those cars pulled in. Though I would like to have talked to the drivers before you started to put the wind up them.’

  ‘I don’t want to upset your plans, sir—’

  ‘That’s all right. You may be lucky. And don’t forget our friend Johnson’s MG – I’d put that right at the head of the list.’

  He chuckled as Stephens went striding away – another improbability had just occurred to him. Unless the murderer had happened to be left-handed, then he could hardly have done that job in his car. But the young Inspector wanted to be up and doing, and checking the cars was a chore which would have to be done. It might also do him good to work with Hansom for a spell … as an educating influence, the Chief Inspector had his points. Still chuckling, Gently continued on his way to the Castle Gardens.

  There he had a stroke of luck, though it had not been unanticipated: he found the Palette Group’s illustrious chairman busy lionizing in the Gardens. With his natural flair for publicity he was exploiting the moment’s sensation, and long before Gently caught a glimpse of him he could hear the pontificating voice.

  ‘Art for art’s sake … that’s the purest piece of moonshine! So is Lawrence’s asinine assertion … doesn’t bear inspection for a moment. If art was for his sake, then why did he bother to publish? Why didn’t he burn his manuscript the moment after he’d finished scribbling …?

  ‘No, there is nothing here that will describe the creative process. Those who view art from a selfish standpoint haven’t learnt their A B C …’

  Characteristically, Mallows was expounding his artistic credo, the man himself almost lost to sight in the centre of his knot of admirers. It was the first time that Gently had seen the great man in the flesh, though pictures of him were commonplace in the papers and illustrated weeklies. According to your viewpoin
t he was a Philistine or a prophet. Of later years opinion had been swinging more towards the latter role.

  ‘The first lesson in art is that art is a transitive term. It is a communication that takes place between one person and his fellows. The artist has a vision, a revelation of the truth, and this he needs to express, not to himself, but to other people …’

  To get a better view of him, Gently climbed a few steps up the Mound. Mallows had a short and stocky figure which was easily hidden in a crowd. His features were thick and rather coarsened, but from a distance, very distinguished; he had a lavish head of iron-grey hair, locks of which were heaped over his forehead.

  ‘In art, one distinguishes three pillars …’

  His audience, Gently noticed, was largely of women. They were mostly well dressed in the provincial way, and hung upon every word he was uttering. Some of them were young, dressed in jeans and sloppy jumpers, and these were probably students from the flourishing Art School. But the majority were serious, middle-aged women, or women arrived at a certain age.

  On the outskirts of the group stood one or two men with bored expressions. They stared about them while Mallows was talking, and stole occasional looks at the exhibits. These, displayed on scaffolds beneath canvas awnings, were being well patronized by a steady stream of viewers. The group of stands stood in a crescent along the foot of the steep Mound, shaded partly by the giant elms which were rooted in the bank above.

  ‘These pillars are Vision, Expression and Reception. For the past fifty years or so the last pillar has been forgotten. The artists grew proud, they broke the law that gave them being. As a result we have witnessed anarchy, sterility and decadence, and an impudent arraignment of the public with whom the artists had broken faith …’

  This was the doctrine which Mallows had been hammering for the last three decades, the doctrine that art was for someone, or that else it wasn’t art. In the late twenties and early thirties it had raised storms of abuse and mockery, but as aesthetic mysticism had begun to decline, so had the storms died away to murmuring. A little, perhaps, of the truth had been with this upstart provincial shake-canvas …

  But now Mallows had said his piece and was stalking across to the attendant’s booth, leaving to break out behind him a cooing and animated conversation. Gently climbed down the steps again and also made his way to the booth. With the young man who sat at the table, Mallows was checking the sales of the pictures.

  ‘May I have a word with you, sir …?’

  A pair of fierce grey-blue eyes rose to stare into his. Mallows had thick, up-brushed eyebrows ending in Mephistophelian points, and his jaw, one noticed, had an uncompromising jut to it.

  ‘Damn it, you’re not a reporter, are you?’

  Gently modestly presented his credentials.

  ‘Aha – so you’re a policeman! I thought you had the professional approach. Now what can I do for you – do you want to buy a picture?’

  ‘As yet, I haven’t seen them—’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon take care of that. Nobody gets away from here without exposing themselves to our talent – put your notebook away, my dear fellow. You’d better come along with me.’

  It was a novel situation, being required to ‘go along with’ someone, and Mallows supplied additional point to it by grasping Gently’s arm. He led him past the first few stands, at which a number of people were clustered, and steered him into a booth in which were displayed some quaint fish pictures.

  ‘There you are – what do you think of these? I read in the paper that you were an angler.’

  Gently wondered whether to be frank and decided that he might as well be.

  ‘They aren’t the sort of fish I catch.’

  ‘Ah! You’re another one who doesn’t like Wimbush. And yet the poor fellow keeps painting these fish, as though they were the be-all and end-all of life. Do you think he’s a bit of a case?’

  ‘I don’t know … perhaps angling would help him.’

  ‘Now you disappoint me, Superintendent. I was hoping you would quote me a snatch of Freud.’

  Mallows quizzed him for a few moments from the depths of his five feet seven; then he darted a look round the booth, to establish the non-proximity of Wimbush lovers.

  ‘Now – what do you want to see me about?’

  ‘First, a question about your car …’

  ‘It’s a 1957 Daimler.’

  ‘Where did you park it on Monday night, sir?’

  ‘Hum.’ Mallows cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘Now it’s really come to business, hasn’t it? I suppose that if I’d parked it by a certain set of dustbins, you’d pull a rope out of your pocket and hang me from the next tree.’

  ‘Did you park it there, then?’

  ‘No, no, not I! In any case, you wouldn’t park a Daimler by the dustbins.’

  ‘Then where did you park it, sir?’

  ‘On the Haymarket, as always. And since you’re not going to believe me, I’ve got a witness who will prove it.’

  His witness, it turned out, was an old-age pensioner, a self-appointed attendant at the Haymarket parking space. In return for small tips he kept an eye on the cars, and had some undisclosed method for keeping places for his regulars.

  ‘Old George’ll see me clear without applying for habeas corpus – unless you hold that I bribe him when I buy him a drink. And he’ll vouch for Farrer too – he’s another contributory parker – and Farrer and I will vouch for each other. What are you going to do about that?’

  ‘Did any of the others park in the Haymarket?’

  ‘The whole lot did, for all I know. But seriously, there are only one or two who aspire to cars – three, I think, beside me and Farrer. Only they aren’t regulars at the Haymarket park, and so they’ll have to supply their own guarantors.’

  ‘Gould you give me their names?’

  ‘If you promise them a fair trial. They are Baxter, Aymas and Allstanley, the bent-wire merchant. Baxter has got a Singer and Aymas an old Triumph. Allstanley is respectable – he’s got a post-war Austin.’

  ‘And none of them were parked in the Haymarket that evening?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know. I was one of the first there.’

  ‘But you know their cars – you’d have seen them there before?’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s the usual park for the Palette Group members.’

  Of those three names, only one could be partly eliminated – Aymas’s; he had left the cellar later than Mrs Johnson. It didn’t put him in the clear, since he might have followed straight after her, but it made him a little less vulnerable than the others.

  ‘I think you told Inspector Hansom that Allstanley was the first to leave – apart from Shoreby, of course, who went early to catch a bus?’

  ‘That was what I dug up for him after racking my brains over it. But you know as well as I that such impressions are undependable.’

  ‘You mean that you want to withdraw it?’

  Mallows made a comical face at him. ‘Come off it, my dear fellow, and let’s discuss it like fellow mortals. I’m the chairman of that group, which means that I do a lot of talking. It’s my business to open the proceedings, to keep them civil and to wind them up. And that, I assure you, is not a sinecure – if you think it is, you know little about painters.

  ‘They’re like a lot of bear-cats thrown together in a pit. I sometimes think that lion tamers have a softer job than I have. As a result, I don’t have much time to tabulate arrivals and departures – when it’s getting to half past ten, I’m busy trying to break them up. I know that Shoreby went for his bus and that Allstanley took his exit promptly; but if he says that someone left ahead of him, well, I wouldn’t like to call him a liar.’

  Gently nodded without enthusiasm, his eye on one of the fish pictures. Behind them, in the afternoon sunlight, people moved leisurely against a background of flowers.

  ‘What can you tell me about this Allstanley?’

  ‘He’s picked up with wire. Which I think is a pity.
’

  ‘About his character, I mean.’

  ‘Apart from that, I know nothing against him. He’s just on forty and about my height – a lot of great men are five feet seven. He’s a teacher and lives and works at Walford – that’s a village some seven or eight miles out of town. He used to sculpt in beech before he got the wire bug. He’s been with us now … oh, four or five years.’

  ‘One of your bear-cats, is he?’

  ‘Good heavens no. He’s one of the quiet ones. Being a sculptor, perhaps, he feels aloof from the squalid mob.’

  ‘A married man?’

  ‘No. He runs a car, as I said. You can’t have it all ways when you’re merely a teacher.’

  ‘Was he a friend of Mrs Johnson’s?’

  ‘Ah, now we come to the kernel …! But we all had an eye on that lady, you know. She was a very popular member, a species of uncrowned royalty; and if it comes to that, I’ve taken her out to lunch myself.’

  ‘But he was a friend, was he?’

  ‘All right. He was.’

  ‘Something more than a friend?’

  ‘No, laddie. Just friendly.’

  ‘On lunching terms, for instance?’

  Mallows winked at him broadly. ‘Even here, it isn’t sinful to take a lady into Lyons.’

  It was a gentle rebuke, and Gently acknowledged it with a shrug. Mallows wasn’t going to be edged into tendentious guesses. Instead of trying further, Gently switched to

  Baxter and Aymas, listening absently and with few questions as Mallows described them to him.

  ‘Baxter is fortyish too, a lean fellow with an Adam’s apple. He’s principally a commercial artist and works in the art department of Hallman’s. He whiffs at a silly little pipe and has a wicked tongue when he likes – actually, he’s quite a good man. He’s got a natural flair for poster colour.