‘Aymas-?’
‘Previous to that, they’d been so friendly together.’
Stephens frowned and twisted his fingers. ‘She might have been kidding him about his pictures.’
‘“Liar” was a strong term to use.’
‘Well… about another bloke, then.’
There could be no question that they needed to know more about the meeting. It was the thought on which Gently had slept, and which had occasioned his call to Mallows. If you were going to mark time on Johnson, then the meeting became your first object; it was from there that Shirley Johnson had walked to her death, with the accusation of ‘liar!’ still echoing in her ears. And, out of all those that had been present, it was her accuser who most caught the eye.
‘It’s a pity that we didn’t get something positive from the breakers…’
He had seen the report of the detective who had been engaged in the search. The wheels, engine and body of Aymas’s car had been identified, but the body had been gutted and crushed in a press. The mats and linings had in any case been destroyed in an incinerator, while the seats and their cushions had been lost among a thousand others. Short of testing the whole pile there was nothing to be done, and even if blood reactions had been found, they could not be tied to Aymas’s car.
If Aymas had had something to hide, then he had hidden it with outstanding efficiency.
Butters’s Rolls slid up to HQ at a few minutes before ten o’clock. Butters, in honour of the occasion, wore a black jacket over pinstripe trousers. His buttonhole, almost inevitably, was a large white carnation, and on his head he wore a bowler and on his hands pigskin gloves. His daughter, looking dark-eyed, had also been produced in black; she wore a tailored two-piece suit but its lapel was innocent of flowers.
‘As you see, we’ve come along, sir… expect you need my statement too.’
He had been drinking already that morning: you could smell it two paces off.
Gently handed Butters to Stephens, wanting the daughter on his own; but if he had been expecting her to talk more freely he was in for a disappointment. Her mood had changed from that of last night’s. The hysterical undertone had been repressed. Now she was very much what she looked, the well-bred offspring of a ‘county’ family. She sat stiffly upright on the office chair, and neatly folded her hands on her lap.
‘Just some questions to start with, Miss Butters…’
Gently was consciously using his ‘paternal’ manner. Instead of facing her across Hansom’s desk, he had perched informally on a corner of it.
‘I’ve been talking to your fiance…’
Again, he deliberately chose this term.
‘He confirms what you were telling me, especially in relation to Monday night…’
But he might as well have saved his guile, because Miss Butters was not to be loosened. She had taken her second wind, as it were, and she was painfully on her guard. Her statement was carefully brief. It was a model of cautious admission. She answered his questions with unresponsive brevity and refused to be cajoled into voluntary additions.
Had she been on the phone to Johnson? Gently knew that he had spent the night at his flat.
‘What happened on the Sunday evening?’
‘Derek drove us to the cottage. During the afternoon we’d been sailing, and Derek had his tea with us. We said we were going for a spin to the coast.’
‘What time did you return to Lordham?’
‘At ten p.m.’
‘Did Derek go in with you?’
‘Yes. He had a drink with father.’
‘Was his wife mentioned that day?’
‘No, she wasn’t mentioned.’
‘On the Monday, what did you talk about?’
‘About the business, about Thrin Mouth regatta.’
And so it had gone on, from start to finish; you could almost hear the thud as the questions were dead-batted.
‘By the way! Touching your phone conversation with Johnson last night…’
‘There wasn’t a conversation. I haven’t spoken to him since Monday.’
But at last, after the statement was typed out and signed, a small flicker of emotion did break through the act:
‘Is he — is Mr Johnson at the police station now?’
Gently mimicked her flat responses:
‘No. He isn’t here…’
Butters was able to confirm that his daughter hadn’t used the telephone — after Gently left there had been a row, and then Butters had locked her in her room. His wife, he admitted, had taken the daughter’s part, and on the morrow, which was Sunday, there was a family conference in prospect.
The poor fellow had a stricken look, and perhaps wasn’t far from tears.
The hour was closer to twelve than eleven when Gently fetched his Riley from the garage, having previously had a chat with the detective who had done the night shift on Johnson. Stephens, invited to go along, preferred to attend to another angle: he wanted to beat round the car-park area in the hope of flushing a reluctant eyewitness.
‘We caught the chummie just like that on the Kenwood case, sir. There was a type who saw the job done, but the locals hadn’t got on to him.’
‘That was a case in a thousand, Stephens.’
‘All the same, sir… I’d like to have a shot.’
So Gently had left him to it, and set out to see Mallows alone.
Mallows lived in Oldmarket Road, which was the handsome south-west approach to the city; he also had a Regency house but in the more elaborate, urban style. It stood a good way back from the road and was largely screened by a plantation of beeches. Around this went a double carriage-sweep, its terminals guarded by fine stone gateways. The house itself was faced with plaster. It was designed to give a monumental effect. The lofty centre section was supported by a pair of recessed ones, and in the angles between them nestled two single-storey units. The whole was decorated with moulded plaster, with shallow apses, urns and friezes, and it displayed with the greatest virtuosity the period penchant for wrought-iron ornament.
A small, elderly man answered Gently’s ring, and the detective was ushered up a narrow but gracefully swept stairway. From the landing some plainer stairs departed to the second floor and it was here that, by joining three rooms, the artist had contrived his studio.
‘You’re late, Superintendent… who’s been going through the mill?’
Mallows had come to the doorway to greet him, his palette and brush still held in his hands. He wore the conventional artist’s smock with a beret to contain his rebellious hair. The former, though stained and stiffened with paint, gave the artist an ecclesiastical air.
‘Bring us a bottle of sherry, Withers — drop of the ’16, I should think. It wouldn’t do to offer common stuff to a man like the Superintendent. Oh, and what about stopping to lunch? We’ve got some fried chicken, with a flan to follow… Withers, you’d better inform Mrs Clingoe: the Superintendent will be staying for lunch.’
As a matter of fact Gently hadn’t assented, but then, he hadn’t been consulted either. The matter was disposed of as though it scarcely bore noticing — Mallows wasn’t going to bother him to make up his mind on such a trifle.
‘Come into the workshop — I’ve got some things I want to show you.’
Gently followed him into the studio, which smelt strongly of turpentine. Surprisingly the place was cool, though lying directly under the roofs; a row of windows, facing north, were swung horizontally in their frames. Along the inner wall ran a line of racks, most of which were stuffed with canvases. Some other racks, considerably larger, filled one end of the studio from floor to ceiling. Under the windows had been built a bench, and this was equipped with a tool or two; beneath it were drawers, some long and shallow, and there was a complicated stand which took up a lot of the floor space.
It was a friendly, informal and yet efficient place, harbouring none of the mess and clutter often to be found in artists’ studios. The canvas on the stand was a large, unfinished seascape and it depicted a number of yachts at the beginning of a race.