Gently With the Painters

by Alan Hunter

‘Oh yes, but I did.’ Dolly nodded her head at him assuringly. ‘And I’ll tell you something about him. He was as jealous as could be. I know for a fact that he used to follow her in the street.’

  ‘You’ve seen him do that?’

  ‘Yes, I have – and another thing. He once came into the bar when they were having a meeting down here. He had a pint and hung around, trying to see down the hatch, then he asked me right out if Mrs Johnson was at the meeting.’

  ‘How did you know who he was?’

  ‘I told you, I’d met him before. My uncle runs the bar at the golf club and I’ve been up there to lend a hand. I particularly noticed Mr Johnson – he’s got a way with him, you know. Then there’s that silly moustache of his, and the way he likes to turn his chair round.’

  ‘This following her in the street! How did you come to notice that?’

  ‘I saw him do it from my window. You can see all the Walk from up in my bedroom, and I just happened to notice her, along with Mr Mallows. Then I saw Mr Johnson. He followed them right up the Walk.’

  ‘When do you say this was?’

  ‘I dunno … round about Whitsun.’

  ‘And what about the other?’

  ‘Oh, that was at the meeting last month. He came in here just after it started, and stayed leaning on the bar for a good half-hour. He bought a packet of Players – I remember that especially. It was the last packet, you see, so I had to fetch some more from the store …’

  ‘Did you see him again that evening?’

  ‘No. He hasn’t been here since.’

  When he remembered how nearly he had missed interviewing these people, Gently couldn’t help feeling alarmed with himself. It had been touch and go whether he had visited the pub, or had trusted to Hansom’s usually efficient researches. Now, it became clear, the Chief Inspector had scamped this angle, for if Dolly’s statement had been in his files the Yard would scarcely have been called at all …

  ‘Coming to that meeting on Monday!’

  He almost made Dolly jump. She had been nursing her beer glass between her knees, causing the contents to rotate. ‘I’d like you to tell me everything you can remember about it – even the little things which don’t seem to matter.’

  ‘There isn’t much to tell, really …’

  ‘Never mind. Do your best. Let’s have it from the time when the bar opened after tea.’

  Dolly nodded and sought inspiration in a sip of beer. ‘Well, I’m not in the bar when it opens, not as a rule. For the first hour it’s quiet enough, just the men off the market. I did slip in for some fags and stop a moment to have a word with them – they were talking about the new winger, the one the City has bought from Newcastle.

  ‘Then I went back to my bedroom to do a bit of mending – you’d be surprised how I bust the straps off my things! – and out of the window I saw one or two of them arrive – the artist lot, I mean; Mr Mallows and some of the others.

  ‘It’s easy to pick them out because they’re all carrying pictures, all except Mr Allstanley, who does funny things with wire. And of course, Mr Mallows – he never brings anything. But then, he’s rather different from the rest of them, isn’t he?’

  ‘Did you see Mrs Johnson?’

  ‘Yes, I’m going to tell you. She always gets off her bus near Lyons. Stephen Aymas went to meet her – he always does that, then sometimes they have a glass in the bar before the meeting.’

  ‘Did they do that on Monday?’

  ‘N-no, I think they went straight down, and it struck me that Mrs Johnson was looking a bit peevish. I watched them across the marketplace, with Stephen chattering away to her; but she hardly said a word to him, and when she did, he seemed put out by it. Something’s upset her, I said to myself, and I remember thinking it might have been her husband. Anyway, poor Stephen was getting the edge of it, and that’s maybe what made him so angry later.

  ‘Well, I went down into the bar after that – we’d got a darts team coming, and I like to watch a darts match. Now and then there was a knock on the shutter for drinks, but I soon got rid of them and latched up the door again.’

  ‘Did you catch anything of what was going on down here?’

  Dolly stared for an instant at her revolving beer. ‘They were going on about Mr Wimbush, how he’d used the wrong colours. It’s always something like that – they never seem to do anything right! If I painted any pictures I wouldn’t show them to that lot …’

  ‘Could you hear Mrs Johnson?’

  ‘Oh yes, she was at it. Though I can’t remember anything she said, not particular. But I thought the same thing – she was upset about something; she sounded spiteful, you know, as though she wanted to take it out of someone.’

  ‘How many times did they knock for drinks?’

  ‘Two … three times, I think it was.’

  ‘And each time you served them you could hear Mrs Johnson?’

  ‘Yes, I told you … and later on! That was the time when the big row started – half past nine, as near as makes no difference. Me, I was washing up a few of the glasses, and Father was having a Guinness along with Bob Samson. It went off sudden, if you know what I mean. They’d been right quiet just a minute before. Then I heard Stephen Aymas shout something out, angry-like, and before you could say it they were all carrying on.’

  ‘What was it that Aymas shouted?’

  ‘That I can’t tell you. I was listening to what father was telling Bob Samson. But later on I heard him bawling that somebody wasn’t genuine, and then that they were a liar and hadn’t ever told the truth.’

  ‘Who do you think he was referring to?’

  ‘Why, Mrs Johnson, of course. You could hear her shouting back at him, though naturally, not so loud.’

  ‘And did you hear what she said?’

  ‘No, but she sounded more spiteful than ever. You can lay your hand to your heart that she was the one who set it off. Well, then father switched on the wireless and turned it up as high as it would go – Edmundo Ros, it was, and Victor Silvester after that. The boys went on with their darts match, though it was putting them off a bit … they’re a useful lot from the Grapes, they went a long way in the Shield …’

  ‘Did you hear anything else that was said?’

  Dolly shook her head. ‘There wasn’t much chance. And by the time we’d hung the cloth up, they’d managed to cool themselves off a bit. I went down after their glasses. She’d gone by then, had Mrs Johnson. Those that were left were still muttering to each other, but they dried up when they saw me.

  ‘I asked them what all the fuss was about – like I told you, I know them pretty well; but they shrugged and put me off, said I wouldn’t understand it anyway.’

  ‘Was Aymas still in the cellar then?’

  ‘He was leaving just as I was going down.’

  ‘You couldn’t give me the time, precisely?’

  ‘Near enough twenty to eleven, I should think.’

  Which was almost exactly on cue, if Aymas intended to follow Mrs Johnson – though whether the moment was propitious for offering lifts was a point which a good defence counsel would snatch at. But then, such an offer might not have come into it. The idea of that lift was still hypothetical. And in the meantime a case was slowly tightening around Johnson: they could now show some motive and the appearance of a prior plan.

  ‘In the morning I’d like you to come along and sign a statement.’

  ‘To the police station, you mean?’ Dolly looked a little concerned. To have a chat over a beer in the cellar of the George was, apparently, poles apart from the same thing at HQ. Gently grinned at her consternation:

  ‘I give you my promise not to eat you …’

  Still, she looked as though she thought that she might have been mistaken in him.

  The bar, when he returned upstairs, had several more customers in it, and the radio over the cigarette display was playing a Grieg dance. A game of darts had begun, played with private sets of darts: it was plain that the sport was taken se
riously by the George III patrons.

  The publican touched his arm: ‘There’s three of the playmates over there …’

  He motioned with his head towards a table near the door, at which was sitting Phillip Watts in the company of two older men. One of them, from Mallows’s description, Gently recognized to be Baxter, and the other, by his smart appearance, he guessed was the bank manager, Farrer. As he studied them Watts looked up, and his eyes encountered Gently’s; after a word to his two companions he rose and signalled to the detective.

  ‘Can I offer you a drink, sir …?’

  Gently went over to them, shaking his head.

  ‘If I may, sir, I’d like to introduce you … I’ve just been telling them about this afternoon.’

  They were, as Gently had supposed, the man from the bank and the poster painter, and it soon transpired that they had a grievance to air. Both their cars had been impounded by the machinations of Stephens; Baxter, who lived far off the bus routes, was particularly biting in his complaints.

  ‘I assume that the police do have these powers, but all the same, given a modicum of low-grade intelligence …’

  He was just as Mallows had limned him, with a small, bony head and greying hair; he spoke in a dry and scratchy manner and wore steel-rimmed glasses over deprecating eyes. The pipe that he ‘whiffed’ at, giving successive little puffs, had a flat round bowl and a spindly stem.

  ‘I suppose it’s what you’d call routine, Superintendent …?’

  Gently found himself taking a little better to Farrer. He was a good-looking man of not more than forty-five, and though his smile was probably professional, he was at least making use of it.

  ‘You realize that we are obliged to do these things.’

  ‘Of course, Superintendent. But you can’t expect us to like them.’

  ‘I could probably arrange some transport for you gentlemen.’

  ‘No, no, don’t bother. We’ll see it out now.’

  He took the opportunity of asking where they had parked their cars on the Monday, though Farrer’s, he knew already, had been on the Haymarket. Baxter’s, it appeared, had been there also, and after a moment or two’s thought Farrer was able to confirm this.

  ‘Do either of you remember where Allstanley put his?’

  Farrer pulled himself up short, but Baxter was not so discreet:

  ‘Allstanley comes from Walford – he’d have to come in along St Saviour’s.’ And he whiffed with his pipe stuck out at a defiant angle.

  But when it came to the meeting itself there was a conspiracy of silence. A curious sort of uncomfortableness seemed to descend on all three of them. It was as though they felt ashamed of the scene which had taken place, and had tacitly agreed to forget all about it.

  ‘I think I ought to tell you that this is important! I am already aware that Aymas quarrelled with the deceased …’

  Farrer admitted that the two of them had disagreed about a picture, but at the same time insinuated that it could hardly be called a quarrel.

  ‘Yet they were shouting at each other?’

  ‘Aymas’s voice is naturally loud.’

  ‘Didn’t he call the deceased a liar?’

  ‘He’s called me one, too, before now.’

  Baxter flatly observed that Aymas was ‘naturally choleric’, but permitted nothing else to escape past his pipe. As for Watts, he could take a tip from his elders and betters; he simply chimed in assentingly to whatever the others said …

  The encounter was broken up by the appearance of Stephens, who had apparently come out looking for his errant senior. The young Inspector had a gleam of excitement in his eye, and it was easy to divine that he was fraught with red-hot information.

  ‘Could you come back to Headquarters, sir?’

  Gently grunted and rose, nodding his congé to the three painters. Since it was too much to expect that Stephens could keep his news till they had returned, Gently took care to steer him the least-frequented way thither.

  ‘What’s it about – did you find something in one of the cars?’

  ‘Yes, sir, that is to say, no sir. But I’ve found something else! You remember that there was a chummie called Aymas, sir?’

  ‘Aymas!’ Gently couldn’t keep the interest out of his voice.

  ‘Yes, sir, Aymas. One of those who had a car. Well, he hasn’t got it now, sir – he sold it to a firm of breakers. And he sold it on the Tuesday morning, right bang after the murder!’

  Gently gave a soft whistle. ‘Have you managed to get hold of it?’

  ‘That’s the devil of it, sir. The breakers have gone and broken it up. But I’ve got a man over there, and they’re trying to identify the parts, and in the meantime I’ve taken the liberty of pulling in Aymas for questioning.’

  And there was another trifling matter, one which Stephens had almost forgotten. He remembered it only as he was whisking up the steps to HQ:

  ‘Oh, and someone rang you, sir – a person by the name of Butters. He wouldn’t state his business to me, and he wants you to ring him back.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  INSPECTOR HANSOM, THE Lion of Police HQ, had departed to his home shortly after six p.m. He had left a note, however, with the sergeant at the desk, and this was handed to Gently as he passed through with Stephens.

  ‘I thought you’d like to have the low-down on Butters, who rang a couple of times while you were out this afternoon. They’re an old county family, used to have the stuff in pots, and they still carry quite a bit of pull about the place. Butters himself is a pal of Sir Daynes Broke. Naturally, we’d be obliged if you soft-pedalled with him.’

  Gently grinned to himself as he folded the note away in his wallet. Sir Daynes, the county Chief Constable, was also a pal of his own. It was probably as a result of this common denominator that Butters had insisted on speaking to Gently – rejecting, perhaps ungraciously, the respectful overtures of Hansom. But what had Butters got to do with the demise of Shirley Johnson?

  Aymas was sitting alone in the charge room, looking ready to eat a dragon, and he sprang passionately to his feet as Gently peered round the door.

  ‘What the hell do you think all this is about—!’ His powerful frame shook with anger and defiance.

  Gently shrugged and closed the door again: there was an excellent treatment for angry young men. It consisted of protracting their stay in the charge room, and during a long experience, Gently had rarely known it to fail.

  ‘Good … let’s go into Hansom’s office. It’s time we discussed the details together.’

  Stephens was reluctant, but deferred to his senior. His hands were soiled with black grease and he had an oil smudge on his nose.

  ‘You drew a blank on the rest of them, did you?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I’m afraid so. Though Baxter’s brakes aren’t up to standard …’

  ‘Where did Allstanley say he parked on that night?’

  ‘Behind the taxi rank, sir, on the island near the marketplace.’

  ‘Any verification?’

  ‘Yes, sir, the taxi drivers. He often parks there and it gets in their way.’

  So that closed the account of the group members who owned cars, leaving Aymas standing out as the only likely customer. His car had been near the spot if not actually standing on it, and the nearest way to it from the bus stop led directly across the car park.

  ‘It raises one or two problems, though …’ Gently filled Stephens in on this. ‘He could hardly have stabbed her in his car, so why did he sell it to the breakers?’

  ‘He might have had blood on himself, sir, and then traasferred it to the car.’

  ‘It’s a possibility, of course – only there wasn’t a lot of blood.’

  But the point might still be settled by a lucky find at the breaker’s yard, though the fact that the parts had been dispersed would weaken the evidence if it came to a case. It would be necessary to prove to the hilt that they had, in fact, come from Aymas’s car.

  ‘I’ll give you the
rest of the dope on Aymas …’

  Stephens heard him with eyes that glinted; it was plain from the youngster’s enthusiasm that he was abandoning his theory of blackmail. Now it was clearly a crime passionel, a case of sudden and irresistible impulse. Shirley Johnson had quarrelled with her passionate lover, and with the first weapon to hand he had stabbed her to the heart. Didn’t the facts support this thesis? Hadn’t they the grounds of an open-and-shut case?

  But even as he was building it up, Gently was slowly rejecting the idea. Could it be that Stephens’s enthusiasm had sounded a still, small note of warning for him? It was altogether too simple – it didn’t harmonize as it should! There were undertones everywhere that produced an overall chord of dissonance. He had got so far into the business that he was beginning to feel it intuitively; it was no use selecting some facts from it to make a pattern that jarred with the remainder.

  ‘It might be best to wait a little …’

  ‘You mean, we’re not going to charge him tonight?’

  Stephens, whose mind had been racing ahead, sounded as disappointed as a child.

  ‘Oh … we’ll put him through the hoop and see how much we can squeeze out of him. But don’t expect him to break down and dump confessions in your lap. For the rest, it depends on tying in his car, and unless you can do that, the Public Prosecutor won’t look at it. Now give me the phone – I want to hear what Butters can tell us.’

  The number was on the Lordham exchange, and this, at eight p.m., seemed difficult to contact. The Grieg dance which Gently had heard persisted in running through his head, conjuring up, quite irrelevantly, a picture of the rainy Bergen hills. And below them, in the fish market, knives were flashing on the busy slabs, while down the quay, beyond the Tyskebryggen, the Venus or the Leda waited …

  ‘Lordham one-five-eight.’

  ‘This is Superintendent Gently.’

  ‘Ah! I’m very glad to hear it. I’ve been trying to get you since lunch, sir.’

  It was indeed a ‘county’ voice – a blend of Eton and the hunting field; one imagined that its owner was wearing spurs, or at the least, was flicking a dog whip.

  ‘My name is William Butters and I am acquainted with Sir Daynes Broke. He has always given me to understand that one can talk to you, Superintendent.’