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.’
‘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 protege 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?