Gently With the Painters

by Alan Hunter

  Somebody banged on the door and then fruitlessly rattled the handle. Butters fumbled it open and disappeared into the hall. A low colloquy could be heard, its substance drowned by Anne’s sobbing, but its rise and fall suggested that Butters was trying to reassure his wife.

  In the background, with senseless monotony, an electric pump was thumping away.

  ‘I’ve got to apologize … it’s very difficult …’

  Butters returned, and went at once to the decanter. His eyes were watering as though from a chill, and besides being flushed, his face was puffy and ugly. It was not unlikely that he was already drunk, but he carried himself steadily and it was difficult to tell.

  ‘My dear, for your own sake …’

  He bent over his daughter. She had overcome her sobbing and was now using her handkerchief.

  ‘She’s like her mother, you know … they’re both highly strung. It runs in the family. Phoebe is allied to the Fitz-Morrises …’

  Gently began again, trying to take it very easily. Anne Butters, as though ashamed of herself, listened meekly to his questions. Yes, she had ‘always’ known that Derek Johnson was married. Yes, she had entered the association with eyes wide open. She had been his mistress for two years, and she really was pregnant. They had always ‘taken precautions’, but once or twice they had been rather rash.

  ‘Did you used to go to his flat?’

  She tossed her locks at him disdainfully. ‘We weren’t quite such congenital idiots as to walk in on his wife.’

  ‘Where did he used to take you then?’

  ‘Oh, it was anywhere at first. The yacht, the car, or a nice quiet wood – to begin with, we weren’t much worried by discomforts.’

  ‘But after that?’

  ‘We sometimes went to his office, only that was too risky to make into a regular thing. So Derek bought a furnished cottage – I suppose I can tell you about it now; it’s at the end of a lane, about a mile from Nearstead.’

  ‘Did you ever meet his wife?’

  ‘I looked her over once or twice. She was a bitch, as you probably know, and it didn’t surprise me that she was murdered.’

  ‘What did Derek say about her?’

  ‘He said she was queer, and that she liked other women.’

  ‘Didn’t he ever talk about a divorce?’

  ‘Yes. He said he’d divorce her when he got the evidence.’

  She became bolder as the questioning proceeded, trying to compensate perhaps for her tears; her eyes she kept staring steadily into Gently’s, almost challenging him to do his worst with her. Butters, his glass never out of his hand, sat frowningly watching her from a seat near the door.

  ‘Where did you meet him on the Monday night?’

  ‘In the usual place – at the top of the lane.’

  ‘And then he drove you straight to the cottage?’

  ‘Yes. We arrived there before half past seven.’

  ‘And what time did you leave again?’

  ‘At eleven o’clock, or a few minutes after.’

  Gently hunched his shoulders wearily. ‘Perhaps you would like to reconsider those estimates?’

  For an instant it seemed that she didn’t understand him, her eyes slowly widening in interrogation. Butters, however, understood very well, and he made a helpless gesture with his hand.

  ‘It’s no use, Anne … he knows you’re lying.’

  ‘Keep out of this, you …!’

  ‘My dear, it’s no use. I … we all know what time you came in.’

  ‘Shut up – do you hear?’

  ‘It was at five past ten …’

  They were trembling on the brink of another hysterical outburst. Her slim body was twitching and shuddering with emotion. But then, after a fit of glaring, she tossed her head away from her father, and contented herself with hitching her skirt a couple of inches above her knees. Butters swigged down some brandy and affected not to see it.

  ‘Very well, then – I told a lie! But don’t forget that I’m a harlot. You’re lucky to get a ha’porth of truth from a person such as I am.’

  ‘Perhaps I should tell you something, Miss Butters.’

  ‘Why not? It’s a favourite game of my father’s.’

  ‘Derek Johnson’s account of that evening doesn’t square with what you have told me.’

  She burst into a mocking peal of laughter. ‘And did you expect him to tell you the truth? Did you expect he was going to tell you that he was shacked up with Butters’s daughter? He spun you a yarn, of course he did. He never dreamed that my father would betray him. He used to be in the RAF, where you could depend on your friends to stand by you!’

  ‘But naturally, we checked his account.’

  ‘There you are then – you knew it was a lie.’

  ‘But that is just what we don’t know, Miss Butters. His account is apparently confirmed by our checking. He made a round of some of the pubs, and a number of people can remember having seen him. So I’m afraid I must put this question to you: how did you spend that evening, Miss Butters?’

  Her pallid cheeks grew paler still, and her eyes, by contrast, appeared to grow larger. Butters had gone off in a coughing fit – he had spilled some brandy on the carpet.

  ‘I was home by five past ten – I didn’t go out again after that!’

  Gently turned to the spluttering Butters:

  ‘It’s true … she had a bath and went to bed.’

  ‘But what were you doing during the evening?’

  ‘It’s as I said – I was out with Derek!’

  ‘But nobody has mentioned seeing you with him.’

  ‘He – he brought me the drinks out to the car.’

  Was she still lying, or was it the truth? Gently stared long at those flaming green eyes. As though it were an indicator of her good faith, she was quietly pushing her skirt back into place.

  ‘I was with him, all the evening, though I admit that we were going round the pubs. I only said that about the cottage because I thought you were more likely to believe it. But I was with him from a quarter past seven, and we were together until he dropped me at ten – I never stayed out later than that. It would have started my father prying.’

  ‘When had you told him that you were pregnant?’

  ‘Oh, weeks ago – as soon as I was certain.’

  ‘What did you intend to do about that?’

  ‘Derek was trying to find a good abortionist.’

  ‘Did he speak of his wife on Monday?’

  She pouted. ‘You wouldn’t believe he didn’t! Well, he said he was certain that she was carrying on with an artist, but that she was being very clever, and that he was thinking of hiring a detective.’

  ‘Did he say who it was he suspected?’

  ‘No. She was playing about with several of them. But that was what he intended to do, and not to stick a paper knife in her back!’

  Gently let it go at that, sensing further emotional fireworks – in the morning he would have another chance to see what he could chivvy out of her. Butters, in great relief, hustled his daughter out of the room; Gently thoughtfully lit his pipe and blew some smoke at the collecting mosquitoes.

  A most illuminating hour! He glanced at the fallen level in the decanter. Down by the river some points of light showed where a yacht or two had made their moorings. In spite of his pipe he could smell the mustiness which persisted in the room, and he noticed a patch of mould that was growing on the paper beneath the window.

  ‘Do have a drink, Superintendent …’

  Now, it was certain that Butters was drunk. He had to be careful where he put his feet, and his watering eyes had a bemused expression.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AT LORDHAM VILLAGE, where he stopped to phone, Gently experienced an even longer delay with the exchange. The country operator answered him with a surly briefness, as though this was really laying it on too thick.

  ‘Can you bring Inspector Stephens to the phone …?’

  His wristwatch was pointin
g to a minute to ten. As he could hear Stephens picking up the phone to answer him, the hour struck fussily on the church clock outside.

  ‘How is the session with Aymas going?’

  In reality he could tell this from the sound of Stephens’s voice.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s been terribly stubborn up till now, sir … you were quite right about him not breaking down and confessing.’

  ‘What excuse does he give for sending his car to the breakers?’

  ‘He persists in maintaining that that was all it was fit for. He says that he only kept it till Tuesday on account of Monday night’s meeting, and that he’s negotiating for a better one, and hopes to buy it tomorrow.’

  ‘Have you checked on that?’

  ‘Yes, sir. With the vendor. He agrees that Aymas spoke to him about it over a fortnight ago.’

  Gently clicked his tongue consolingly. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much about it! Just smooth Aymas down a bit and find him some transport. Then I want you to go out and to pull in Johnson for questioning … take another man with you. I want to talk to Johnson tonight.’

  He hung up before Stephens could ask him for an explanation. He felt no particular exhilaration at being in possession of the conclusive facts. They had come to him by pure good fortune and through no exertion of his own, unless his luck could be counted, the luck that dogged a good detective. And that luck would have belonged to Hansom if Gently had not been called to the case.

  Or would it? He stood brooding, his hand on the Riley’s door, partly conscious of the buzz from the pub across the way. If Gently hadn’t arrived, wouldn’t Butters have continued to procrastinate, probably drowning his courage, at last, in the bottom of the decanter? That was at least on the cards. Butters had much to gain from silence. And nobody had actually seen Johnson thrust that knife into his wife. There was a damning case, certainly, one which would convince any jury, but juries had made mistakes before, and there was a sop left for the conscience …

  Gently pulled the door open with a grunt of annoyance. He too was finding a degree of temptation in this viewpoint! But the facts were the facts, and they hung together in a perfect symmetry; unless the circumstantial were accepted, there were cases one would never close.

  Before he started back he scraped out his pipe and relit it. The evening was continuing fine and the sky was dusted over with stars. As he drove he could see before him the soft umbrella of the city’s lights, at first no more than a shallow mushroom, then spreading out to suffuse the horizon.

  Then, with the first of the street lights, the luminosity abruptly ended: at precisely that point the country ended and the town began its authority.

  He hadn’t hurried on the way back, wanting to give Stephens time to act, and now, threading through the haphazard streets, he slowed the Riley to a crawl. He was in an indecisive mood. He would have liked time to think, and yet wanted to be doing. He was conscious of a growing irritation without being able to assign a single reason for it. Was he even sorry, perhaps, that the case was caving in so suddenly – sorry, and just a little bit suspicious? There was something about it which had got under his skin!

  When he arrived at HQ he went through to the canteen, and bought himself there a plate of sandwiches and some coffee. While the former were being cut he strolled across to the window, and drawing aside a rep curtain, stared out at the car park. It was true that there wasn’t a lot of light in the park. The distant lamps of St Saviour’s showed precious little here. A better source of illumination was the wall lamp in the footway, but even by this the terrace wall was merely a dim shadow. And it was fifteen minutes to eleven … and four days later.

  ‘Miss … were you serving here on Monday night?’

  The counter assistant was a homely woman with hair which she had dyed to a bluish tint.

  ‘Yes … I’m regular on nights this week. But I didn’t hear anything – didn’t want to, either! And I’m keeping those windows bolted shut, from now on …’

  He nodded sympathetically, glancing round the empty canteen.

  He found Stephens waiting for him in Hansom’s office. The younger man had got his pipe on and was puffing away at it earnestly.

  ‘I grabbed him at the first try! Have you got something fresh on him? He was just putting his car away, and made a devil of a stink …’

  Gently himself was feeling weary and droop-eyed, but Stephens looked as fresh as he had done that morning. He walked up and down while describing his interrogation of Aymas, drawing briskly on the pipe as he paused between sentences.

  ‘So you think, sir, that after all …?’

  He was revelling in the case – far from being discouraged, he was eager to grapple with the newest angle. Gently, busy with his sandwiches, gave his Lordham findings disconnectedly. More than ever he was wondering if he ought not to have slept on them.

  ‘So you guessed it all along, sir!’ Nothing, apparently, escaped Stephens. Now he remembered Gently’s quip when they were discussing Johnson at tea.

  ‘You were on to it from the start – you could begin to see the pattern.’

  ‘Don’t talk a lot of poppycock! There wasn’t any pattern to see.’

  Stephens was unconvinced, however, and puffed away at a furious rate. Gently slyly watched the young man while polishing off the rest of the sandwiches. He was so intent to learn! Yet his very keenness got in the way. He was for ever looking for a formula where no formula could exist. But, further back than he could remember, hadn’t it been the same way with Gently? Hadn’t he also admired his seniors and striven to find their recipe for success?

  ‘Go and find us a stenographer … we may be in for an all-night session.’

  He suddenly remembered Herbie the Fence, and was surprised that that had been only yesterday.

  If Johnson had made a fuss when Stephens had pulled him in, he had succeeded in calming himself during his wait to see Gently. When a detective ushered him in he was smoking a cigarette and, without being invited, he spun a chair and threw himself down in it. Then he stuck a hand in his pocket with an air of being bored, and jingled his change while hissing smoke through his teeth.

  Stephens now occupied a chair beside Gently, and their shorthand constable was stationed at the end of the desk. At the other end was standing a freshly ordered jug of coffee, adding its own fragrant ingredient to the atmosphere of tobacco smoke. In front of Gently, as usual, was a pad for him to scribble patterns on.

  ‘There are some further questions which I have to put to you, Mr Johnson.’

  He was drawing a number of parallel lines, greatly to the interest of the observant Stephens.

  ‘But first, I’m going to give you a chance to amend your former statement to us. I should tell you that it doesn’t agree with our latest information.’

  Johnson continued to smoke noisily for a moment or two, though he had ceased to jingle the change in his pocket. He was gazing with apparent interest at the toes of his shoes, his legs being folded and stuck out in front of him.

  ‘So that’s the way of it, is it, cocker?’ He ventured a glance at the wooden-faced Gently. ‘I thought an old fox like you would sniff the hen roost before long – you wouldn’t have snaffled me at this time of night for nothing.’

  ‘Have you anything to tell me?’

  ‘Not until I see the cards, pardner.’

  ‘My information relates to the Butters family.’

  ‘What do you advise? Shall I scream for a lawyer?’

  There was no sign of panic about the wavy-haired ex-pilot. One would almost have said that he had taken advice already. A bulky, powerful figure in a lightweight tweed jacket, he sat casually at ease and blew his smoke at varying angles.

  ‘You don’t seem to be aware of the gravity of your situation.’

  ‘I should be, old sport. It’s my neck that we’re discussing.’

  ‘And you don’t want to modify your former statement?’

  ‘No reason to do that – it’s substantially correct.’<
br />
  ‘Didn’t you say that you’d never been unfaithful to your wife?’

  Another pause followed, during which Stephens jiffled restlessly. Gently imagined that this was not the way in which his protégé had handled Aymas. For at least a minute Johnson was silent, his attention still fixed on the upturned shoes; then he appeared to think better of it, and stubbed his cigarette in Hansom’s ashtray.

  ‘The Butters are friends of mine – at least, I used to think so. If you like, you can add that on the bottom of the statement.’

  ‘They were friends and no more?’

  ‘Butters put business in my way.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell him that you were married?’

  ‘It was something that I preferred to forget.’

  ‘And you did forget it, didn’t you?’ Gently hatched his lines with swift strokes. ‘I understand that Anne Butters is going to have a baby.’

  ‘Am I supposed to know that?’

  ‘I’m giving you every chance to tell me.’

  ‘That’s jolly decent of you, considering the circumstances.’

  He lit another cigarette, flicking the match into the ashtray, and now it was the matchbox which he elected to study. There was no doubt about it – he was a cool customer to interrogate. Was he still picturing himself as a hero before the Gestapo?

  ‘What prisoner-of-war camp were you in?’

  ‘I was in Stalag three-two.’

  ‘Did you ever try to escape?’

  ‘Twice. Once I nearly got to Denmark.’

  ‘Were you treated very harshly?’

  ‘Cocker, don’t make me laugh. I was grilled for twenty days and twice they took me out to shoot me. They wanted to know who planned the break, and if they’re alive, they’re still ruddy well wanting. So you can make up your mind to one thing.’ He sent smoke hissing in all directions.

  Gently nodded. ‘Then there’s no more to it. I won’t waste my time in the steps of the Gestapo. To them you were a Royal Air Force officer, but to me you are just another criminal.’

  It hit the spot; Johnson’s colour rose. He sucked in an enormous lungful of smoke.

  ‘Don’t take that line with me, old sport—!’