‘Superintendent Gently, is it?’
He found himself staring blankly at Butters. The man had approached him down the steps and was offering his hand with mechanical politeness.
‘I’m glad that you decided to call… I’m afraid this interview has been delayed too long. But perhaps if you are a family man, you will appreciate my position…’
Gently shook hands and mumbled something in reply — had they been an illusion, those fear-struck eyes? Butters led him into the house and along a wide, deserted hall, ushering him finally into a room which had a faintly mouldy smell. It was large, and period-furnished, but there were pale areas of damp on the wallpaper.
‘Can I offer you a drink to begin with…?’
Butters closed the door carefully behind him. He was a man of sixty or over and had a flushed and alcoholic face. His figure had probably once been athletic, but now was thickening and running to fat. He wore a suit of Donegal tweed of which the waistcoat seemed too small for him.
‘If you don’t mind, I’ll have one myself… I always talk better with a drink in my hand. But you’d better sit down, Superintendent. This… I’m afraid it may take a little time.’
Obediently, Gently took possession of a petit point easy chair, one of a set of half a dozen which stood about the handsome room. Butters seated himself in another and swallowed down some brandy and water. From the slight tremulousness of the glass, Gently suspected that it was not his first.
‘Have you ever been to Norway?’
Once again, Gently was staring blankly. It was the merest coincidence, of course, and yet he couldn’t help feeling struck by it
…
‘It’s a first-rate country for fishing, and I’ve been up there several times. You take the Bergen Line out of Newcastle — it gets you across in nineteen hours.’
‘Is this to do with Mrs Johnson, sir?’
‘Yes, and you’ll see how in a minute. But let me tell the tale my own way… it puts me out when people ask questions.’
Gently held back the ghost of a shrug and fixed his gaze on a French Empire clock. In Butters’s manner there was too much of the club bore: one could hear his ‘county’ tones droning on into the night
…
‘I was there in ’53 at a hotel in Stalheim — just Phoebe and myself, the girls were in Switzerland that year. I can recommend the hotel if you’re up that way — usual incompetence with meat dishes, but that’s the same everywhere. Well, I was fishing one day some miles out of Stalheim, and I dropped into the local pensjonat for a spot of middag. I was put on a table kept reserved for another Englishman, and this other fellow turned out to be Johnson.
‘We fell to talking, of course — a treat to hear your own tongue; I can snakker a bit of the native, but only enough to get along with. He told me where he came from and the line of business he was in. Then we got on to the war, and fishing yarns, and places we’d been to…’
The upshot of it had been that Butters had taken a liking to Johnson. He had invited him back to his hotel and introduced him to Mrs Butters. Then, their holidays ending together, they had travelled back in company, first by coastal steamer to Bergen and then on the Venus home to Newcastle.
‘Well, just at that time I was selling my Lynge property, in fact it was already in the hands of an agent. But the local men are much too slow, Superintendent, all they know about selling are these nasty little bungalows…’
And so, quite naturally, he’d handed the job to Johnson, and Johnson had come up trumps by the end of a fortnight. He’d produced a retired company director from somewhere in Sussex, and what was even better, had got an advanced price from him.
‘It was a genuine deal, sir?’
‘As genuine as that clock! Nobody can have any complaints about the way he does business. He’s keen, sir, and he’s got the brains, and he knows where to find the buyers. He’s moved off a lot of stuff that had been hanging fire for years.’
‘And you recommended him, did you?’
Butters had done, with enthusiasm. He had commended this pearl to his wide acquaintance of ‘county’ people. As a result Johnson’s business had flourished like a bay tree, and he had established a monopoly in the selling of cumbersome properties.
In the meantime, he had cultivated his personal relations with Butters, and had become a familiar visitor at Lordham Grange House. They had fished and played golf and gone sailing in Butters’s half-decker, and when Butters went into town, Johnson would take him to lunch at the Bell.
‘And that’s how it’s been going on…’
Butters sounded a little petulant; he had already poured himself another brandy and water. Several times, it had seemed to Gently, the man had shied away from something painful, and now he had come to a halt with the matter still unbroached.
‘You met Mrs Johnson, did you?’
Butters made some sort of a gesture — half turning, as he did so, so that his eyes avoided Gently’s.
‘Yes… that’s just what I want to tell you, but… damn it! I don’t know where to begin. It’ll all come out, I suppose — be plastered across the Sunday papers…’
He came to a stop again, and this time Gently forbore to prompt him. It was, after all, a voluntary statement, and Butters had a right to a sympathetic hearing. And, if what Gently guessed was correct, then Butters was showing a good deal of courage…
‘You understand that we’re a county family — not a rich one, I don’t say that. But we’ve got a certain position to keep up… connections, too. We’ve got a lot of connections.
‘My wife, for example, is a sister of Lady Kempton’s — I met her in ’23 at the Faverham Hunt Ball. And Cathy, she’s married to one of the Pressfords, and Elizabeth’s husband is a nephew of Lord Eyleham. Not that that matters — I’m not a snob, either! And though Johnson has no family, I’ve never held that against him. But the other was a shock, I don’t mind telling you, especially when I first saw it staring out of a paper…’
‘The news of his wife’s death, sir?’ Gently felt that he was losing touch. Butters seemed to have gone off at a tangent from the line he had been about to take.
‘Naturally, that too, with the damning implication; but in the first place, to discover that he’d had a wife at all!’
It was an astonishing declaration, and for the moment it bewildered Gently. He gazed open-eyed at Butters, who, himself, was now staring indignantly.
‘But — in five years — you never knew?’
‘I never had a single suspicion! He was on his own when I met him, and as for his flat, I never went there. No, it wasn’t until I read the paper — until I saw it in black and white; and even then I couldn’t believe it, until I’d had a talk with my daughter.’
‘Your daughter! Where does she come into it?’
Butters’s stare turned into a furious frown. ‘They were engaged — engaged to be married, Superintendent. Or at least, that was the steady impression I received.’
Gently got up and walked over to the window. He felt unable to cope with this, seated in a chair. Johnson… engaged to one of Butters’s daughters! To the daughter of the man who had been the making of his business…
‘And this engagement had been announced?’
‘Obviously not, though we were expecting it. All the time I’d been hinting at it, trying to bring him up to scratch. His excuse was that he was looking for just the right sort of property for them; when he found it, there was going to be a regular announcement.’
‘How long had it gone on?’
‘Oh, he met her right at the start. But in those days she was still at Girton — what a waste of money that was! Then, soon after she finished there, they took to going about together — he wasn’t the match I would have picked for her, but she was the youngest, and nothing went with her. They’ve been thick for a couple of years.’