Crowshaw said I should go along with him and take notes, which was a bit of promotion, I suppose, due to him being annoyed with Freer. I tagged along, and we eventually found her in the garden.
Myra Gaines was pruning her roses, or at least snipping off the dead flowers. She stood in a blue cotton dress and a kind of smock against a back-cloth of blue, distant hills and a tumbled layer of landscaping down to a brook in the valley. I guessed her age as the late twenties, so I wasn’t far out, which made her eighteen years younger than her husband. She had an impulsive, almost aggressive beauty, which I’d got time to appreciate while Crowshaw did the talking.
‘Mr Crowshaw, isn’t it?’
‘I felt I ought to see you.’
She had a small wheelbarrow half full of ruined heads. ‘Don’t you think it’s a sad time of year?’ she asked.
‘But it’s a fine day.’
She looked at him quickly, half frowning. Her eyes were brown, far apart, level and unflinching. The brow was wide and smooth, with a high hairline, and at that time she wore her hair longer. Crowshaw found himself wondering whether her husband had ever attempted to capture some of her beauty on canvas, but certainly he could never seize and hold such a fluid flow of emotions as ran across her features. No still picture of her could record more than one of an infinite variety of poses. The impression was that she controlled her expression consciously, that she intended every second of it. Myra Gaines was a woman who played for attention, and she was enjoying being interviewed.
Then she smiled. ‘There’s very little I can add to what I told the sergeant.’
‘I’m finding it rather difficult to understand your husband,’ said Crowshaw. ‘Of course, this was impulse. But it’s not like the grabbing of a knife in a blind fury. It must have taken him twenty minutes to drive over to Paterson’s. It suggests a settled anger, some sort of determination that he’d built himself up to.’
She inclined her head. Her secateurs went snip, snip, and two more soggy heads fell into the wheelbarrow.
‘And I’ve talked with him a lot, now,’ went on Crowshaw. ‘He isn’t the type to sustain such a pitch of emotion.’
‘But he did,’ she suggested gently.
‘He’s a quiet man, withdrawn—’
She caught at the word. ‘Withdrawn!’ Then the sound she made could have been a laugh or maybe a sob. ‘Neville’s in another world.’ She moved her chin in an upward arc that hinted at anger. ‘Withdrawn from existence, from all reality.’
‘But this was real enough.’
Then she relaxed. The hand with the secateurs moved in despair. ‘I never believed he could face anything. If I’d believed it, the whole thing might not have happened. I don’t let myself think about that. But if I’d accepted he could, I’d have… I don’t know… been prepared, perhaps.’
‘The quiet men,’ he said, ‘build up inside and you can’t see it, until they must face what they’re trying not to see. And then the explosion carries them on and on… until it’s done.’
She was looking at him in anger. On that smooth brow her frown was a mere crimpling of the surface. ‘Then why did you come here, if you understood?’
Crowshaw smiled. ‘But I didn’t, you see. You’re helping me. You stimulate my imagination.’
It pleased her. ‘Perhaps you’d better see his studio,’ she said, as though it might offer more stimulation.
And a quiet man, he realized as he followed her, would be sustained by a rumbling fury at the disturbance to the gentle flow of his life. But would he sustain it as long as Gaines had? There was not just the long drive through the rain, and the subsequent hunt, but the prior preparation of approaching Lovejoy and buying the gun, and, now that the idea was growing in credibility, the approaching of somebody else and buying another.
She took us to the left from the terrace. Along this side of the house was a large glasshouse, built against the main structure as an annexe.
‘My father grew tropical plants in here,’ she explained.
It was hot and humid inside, though the greenery was then confined to one end and along one side. It was perhaps forty feet long and fifteen wide, the glazed walls rising up from ground level and continuing up in one sweep of curve, over to meet the house wall. It could hardly have been more unsuitable as an artist’s studio, the sun slanting through the draped vines in a shimmering of green and gold light. Gaines had made an impractical attempt to control the light with shades, but there was such a conglomeration of cords that they’d become tangled long ago, and shades were stuck here and there so that the floor was mottled in a frantic distortion of light and shade. He had six easels scattered around the floor space, as though he had sprung from one to the other as the light changed and the inspiration seized him. Five had half-finished canvases on them, and on a table were his palette and brushes. No—no brushes, I saw; one palette knife only. And scattered about were the battered tubes of colour he had mangled in his strong fingers.
In the far corner a fountain played, its basin overflowing into a lower basin, and so on, down to a small pool in which several goldfish swam. Along the rear glass wall was a roof-high rack stacked with finished works. A dozen or so were leaning against it, drying it seemed.
‘You can see how good he was,’ she murmured, and Crowshaw detected sarcasm. His taste and knowledge of painting were both rudimentary. He knew what he liked, and he did not like these. Gaines had lashed at his canvases, scattering them with colour as though he hated them.
The place was fantastic, tumbled and untidy—Neville Gaines’s refuge. For most people the house and grounds would have been sufficiently remote as a retreat from the hammerings of life. But here he had built the ultimate in refuge, of such fantasy that he would be removed completely from all reality.
They had been married now for ten years. There was one daughter, sent to stay with an aunt until it was all over.
‘Neville was hopeless with everything,’ Myra said, and there was just a touch of fondness in her voice. She caught Crowshaw’s eye on her and laughed softly. ‘I suppose that was why I married him. I mean, you get so tired of people fussing over you with their silly platitudes.’
I was watching a goldfish idly waving a tail against the weak current. You couldn’t imagine Myra becoming tired of compliments, which was obviously what she meant. But her husband, by inference, had not been free with his platitudes. He’d be too introspective even to consider complimenting anybody. He would present a singular challenge.
But Myra had taken on more than she could handle. Gaines was self-centred, yes. He was inoffensive, certainly. But he knew where he stood and how he intended to live. He was so unpractical that he’d raised it to a fine art. The changing of a razor blade became a performance of obscene mutterings and eventual bleats for help.
‘He can dress himself and feed himself,’ Myra conceded with a shrug. ‘Though he was as difficult as hell. If we had company I had to fight him into a decent suit, and he’d sit at the table in one of his dazes, pretending he didn’t know one knife from the other. Just to embarrass me.’
She was moving around, picking things up and putting them down. The studio was obviously as he’d walked out of it. For a moment it seemed she was not going to continue.
‘Perhaps he was simply absent-minded,’ Crowshaw prompted.
‘No,’ she said violently. ‘He just could not understand anything practical. Why, it took him three years to learn to drive, and that was only when I refused to drive him myself.’
‘Refused?’
‘I had to do something. He was digging further and further into his shell. But, d’you know, even now he can’t change gear without looking at the knob to see where the next notch is.’
Crowshaw nodded, smiling in sympathy.
‘Even his painting,’ she cried, picking up his palette knife. ‘He got it all down to this. One knife. He used to slash on the colours with this thing, and you wouldn’t believe the agony that went on before he could get
himself to do it. He’d go into a daze, prowl around—and you couldn’t get a word through. Then he’d pounce on the canvas and for five minutes it’d be splash and slash and flick—you’d have laughed, really you would. And the poor dear never realized it was rubbish.’
I’d been doing a tour of the easels. Her voice, in the background, was breaking towards the end. They were hideous, I thought, all crude colour and no taste, no form.
‘The Royal Academy laughed at him,’ she said, her voice now under control. ‘The critics ignored him. But d’you think he cared. Not Neville. He just went along with his little life, and nothing I could do would shake him out of it.’
‘But you tried?’
‘I tried.’ She glanced at him. ‘I felt… oh, I don’t know. As though he was slipping from me, getting further and further out of touch all the time.’
There could be four hundred canvases there. Gaines might have been hopeless, but if they hanged him they’d sell as masterpieces. Gaines might be ironically pleased at the thought.
Crowshaw slipped it in very casually. ‘And you don’t think he could re-load an automatic pistol?’ he asked.
‘What?’
He couldn’t have expected such a startled response. The blood ran from her face and her eyes flickered.
‘A technicality,’ he explained. ‘There were more shots than one gun-load, you might say.’
‘That’s… oh, that’s ridiculous.’
‘His re-loading it?’
‘He just couldn’t.’ She moved a hand, dismissing it.
‘Too unpractical? Has he ever loaded one, do you know?’
‘Neville couldn’t fill a fountain pen.’ And she instantly caught her lower lip between her teeth.
‘But he could certainly fire the thing.’
‘Yes… I suppose so. I don’t know,’ she cried, her eyes bright. ‘I don’t want to think about it.’
‘I can’t help thinking about it.’
‘No.’ She looked at him with scorn, then immediately softened. ‘It’s your job, I suppose.’
‘Did you know he’d got it?’ I noticed he used the singular.
‘The gun?’ She beat her right fist into her other palm and walked away from him. ‘Yes, I knew.’
‘Yet you let him go?’
‘Let him? How… how would I know where he was going?’
‘But you knew he’d bought a gun?’
‘Andy Paterson told me. It was ridiculous.’
‘And how did he know?’
Her eyes flickered. It had never occurred to her to wonder. ‘I don’t know.’
And that, I thought, was probably true.
‘Ridiculous, you said,’ Crowshaw prompted.
Her lips moved in a sad little smile. ‘How else could Andy take it? Certainly not seriously.’
‘Maybe he should have done.’
‘That was his fault,’ she cried. ‘Neville’s.’ Emotion was crumbling her control. ‘The way he’d arranged things. His fault.’ Then it all came tumbling out as she tried to justify the claim, and Crowshaw let her get on with it.
She had made numerous attempts to draw him out, all unsuccessful. It seemed that he treated her overtures as a game, tossing the ball back at her happily. Any lure, bribe or threat only had an adverse effect; he simply retreated even deeper into his personal seclusion. He was insisting on being carried through life, and of course Myra resented it. She hated being taken for granted, and she felt he was leaving her behind on his personal journey to somewhere she could not reach. But Neville assumed she should be pleased, even happy, to bear the burden created by his Art. Angry frustration drove her on and on, in a pathetic search for some personal recognition. If he’d only looked at her, really looked! But he seemed not to understand her. She could not frighten him with threats of financial hardship. He sold nothing, but she had money, so what did it matter?
If his justification was in his painting, he must have considered hers was in protecting him from the harshness of life, so that more and more of his precious Art could burst into lurid life, even if it never reached an adoring public.
Into such an arid relationship there entered Andy Paterson. There would have to be an Andy Paterson some time.
Here Myra faltered, as though embarrassed. But it was merely because she was uncertain how to present Paterson.
‘Andy never was a farmer at heart,’ she said at last. ‘I met him at a dance, over at the Darnley’s. He was a big man—big, you understand, more than just size. He swept over you with that laugh of his, and with his confidence. Nothing was ever sacred to Andy, no private thought or secret…’
She paused. ‘…longing.’ She glanced at Crowshaw, projecting her longing for companionship and affection, reaching for his sympathy.
But would the longing have been such a secret? She would have shrieked aloud her yearning, with every gesture and every word.
Before very long she and Andy Paterson were spending two or three evenings together.
‘We went to concerts in Birmingham, shows, the ballet. Once we did a trip down to London for the opera.’
‘Did your husband know?’ Crowshaw asked.
‘I kept nothing from him.’ She was proud, defiant. ‘Do you imagine he’d care?’
‘I don’t know.’ Crowshaw considered it. ‘I imagine so.’
‘Then he never showed it,’ she flashed back.
Neville had presented a flat indifference. He was unmoved to hear that she was spending evenings at Paterson’s place. He didn’t seem to believe it. So she brought Paterson home and showed him to Neville, if only to prove his existence.
Antagonism bristled at the meeting. Andy was patronising and hearty. He flung out inferences that should have shrivelled Neville’s complacency, but only increased his polite disdain. Paterson he plainly considered a heathen. The evening ended with a singular triumph for Neville’s quiet contempt. And later, when Andy had gone, there was a hysterical outburst from Myra, from which Neville quietly walked into his studio.
It lasted six months. Neville would not believe. Though she stayed late at Paterson’s farm, Neville would not be shaken. Myra had too much taste, he inferred.
‘And had you?’ Crowshaw asked.
She flashed hatred at him. ‘I loved Andy.’
‘And he loved you?’ he asked softly.
She bathed in it. Recalling, she moved sensually.
‘Yes, Andy loved me.’
But Paterson had become intensely possessive. It mattered little to him whether her husband knew, realized, accepted—or just disappeared in a puff of smoke. Paterson simply hated Gaines for his contempt and his indifference.
Several times he invited both of them to the farm. It gave him hearty pleasure to flaunt his feelings under Neville’s nose. But every visit ended with Paterson burning in fury, and Neville’s calm eyes never seeing anything but a heathen.
In the end Myra had grown tired of it. Andy’s possessiveness had become wearisome, and it had all been a failure. She had only wanted to jerk Neville into reality. Really, it had always been that, she told Crowshaw. But Andy would not release her. His hold was a social one. Myra moved—usually without Neville—in a social circle which she prized. Andy could ruin that for her, by always being there with remarks and suggestions calculated to ruin her reputation, which up to that time he had respected. Abruptly she became afraid of him.
Neville seemed as unmoved by her fear of Paterson as he had been by her apparent attraction to him. There was a terrible scene, when she tried to express her fear of Andy, and her inability to avoid seeing him. But Neville saw it as yet another challenge. She screamed, wept, at his indifference—and Neville simply walked away into his studio.
Then there was one final visit—Neville and herself—to the farm. She hoped to provoke Neville into some sort of demand, however feeble, that Paterson should never see her again. And Neville calmly walked out into the soft September evening, leaving them together over their drinks.
My
ra was drunk when he drove her home. Neville said nothing.
Crowshaw waited while she collected herself. The soft scatter of the fountain dwelt on the air. Her voice was hoarse.
‘Then Andy phoned to say that Neville had bought a gun. He was laughing about it. I didn’t know what it meant. I just couldn’t ask Neville. You understand. It was a joke… or something. I didn’t guess. How could I have guessed?’
But something had happened to Neville Gaines, because he took that gun up to Paterson’s farm, and solved the problem for good and all. And if Myra could understand it, she was now certainly too upset to express anything but anguish.
I could see that Crowshaw realized there was nothing further to be gained by staying, so shortly afterwards we left.
The sun was low on the drive back, and dreary streaks of mist snaked across the road between the high hedges, seeping down from the fields. Crowshaw didn’t say a word.
I went off home, but Crowshaw wasn’t so lucky. Freer had gone off duty. On Crowshaw’s desk were the evening papers, and they weren’t encouraging. They complained there were no official claims of progress on the case. What was holding things up? Crowshaw threw them from him in anger.
There was a curt note from the Chief Super’s office, requesting his presence early in the morning. He went down to see Gaines, viewing him now with fresh eyes—but he saw nothing new. Sympathised, perhaps, but did not understand.
‘Have you seen a solicitor?’ he asked.
‘He came this afternoon.’ Gaines sounded unimpressed.
He was spread on his bunk, and made no move to rise. Crowshaw took the single hard chair.
‘What did he say?’
‘Not to tell you anything.’ Well at least he was frank. ‘But there’s no more to say, is there?’
Crowshaw said: ‘I’m not supposed to advise you. I’m not even supposed to be seeing you now, not alone. I’ve just been to see your wife.’
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