‘Who was making all the noise?’
‘There you are, I wouldn’t know. But that bloke they call Aymas was bawling as loud as any. Then Mrs Johnson’s voice, I heard that once or twice, and I could hear Mr Mallows as though he were trying to quieten them down.’
‘How long did it go on?’
‘Up to closing, or thereabouts. Spoiled the darts match it did, they couldn’t concentrate through that. We switched the wireless on again, turning it up to kill the noise, but every time the music stopped you could hear them rumbling away.’
Gently rocked his chair thoughtfully — this was a slightly different picture! Mallows had definitely tried to give him an impression of something more pacific. It was lively, he’d admitted, but no more so than other meetings. Nothing out of the way had happened — nothing for Gently to poke his nose into…
‘Who else was serving in the bar?’
‘Dolly, of course. And she’s my stepdaughter.’
‘She heard what was going on down here?’
‘The whole bar heard it — even the deaf ones.’
‘I’d like to speak to her, if you’ll send her down.’
Dolly was a buxom-figured redhead and she had a pretty, dimpled face. She came down carrying a glass of beer to which no doubt she had just been treated. Gently motioned to the other chair. She sat down, carefully smoothing her skirt.
‘You knew Mrs Johnson, did you, Dolly?’
She nodded and sipped at her glass of beer.
‘Did you ever have occasion to speak to her?’
‘Of course I did. I knew the lot of them.’
‘What did you think of her, as a person?’
‘I dunno… she was queer, in a way. Sometimes she made a lot of fuss of me, other times I was so much dirt.’
‘Did you ever meet her outside the pub?’
‘Not to speak to nor nothing like that. She’d give me a smile if we met in the street… but only when she hadn’t got anyone with her.’
‘What sort of people did she use to have with her?’
‘Oh, that lot mostly, one or another of them. She liked Mr Mallows and the dark boy, Aymas, but they all put it on for her — I’m sure I don’t know why.’
‘Did you see her with Mr Allstanley?’
‘You mean the one who’s going bald? I can’t say I remember that… but then, I didn’t see everything, did I? He’s one of them who lives out, so you don’t see much of him in the pub. But the rest of them often drop in. There’s a couple sitting up there now.’
‘Was there anyone she was especially… fond of?’
Dolly took a thoughtful sip at her beer. ‘No… not unless it was Stephen Aymas, and she was pally enough with him. I used to think she had a weak spot for money… Mr Mallows, and the one who works at the bank. But Stephen, he only works on a farm, so it couldn’t have been money in his case, could it?’
She gazed up at Gently with naive hazel eyes, appealingly unaware of his being anyone out of the ordinary. Her make-up was heavy and clumsily applied; as though it were a ritual which she accepted rather as a duty.
‘You didn’t chance to meet her husband, I suppose?’
‘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.’