‘We’ll have the numbers, please, and all you can remember about his securities.’
That was all there was to it: Gently picked up his hat. But Farrer now seemed to be wanting to add something unsolicited. He fiddled with his memo, smiling once or twice at nothing, then:
‘You know… I’ve seen as much of Derek Johnson as most people.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Oh, just that I thought him fairly trustworthy. We don’t come to be bank officials without having a flair for judging character.’
‘You’re saying that he wouldn’t have murdered his wife?’
‘Yes… no. I don’t want to interfere! But I feel it my duty to say that to one who knows him… well, it’s unlikely.’
For once he wasn’t smiling but looking at Gently with an earnest directness, and in a flash Gently understood what the bank manager was trying to convey.
‘And you were prepared to back your judgement?’
‘The bank is always prepared to back it.’
‘It’s kind of you to be so frank, Mr Farrer!’
‘I think, in justice, I could be no less…’
Hansom, as sore as a baited bear, slammed the car door with a fearsome crash. ‘It makes my blood simmer — and we can’t lay a finger on him! For all we can show it was just the way he tells it — and then the grinning chimpanzee has to go and rub it in!’
Gently closed his door more quietly, though he sympathized with Hansom. On the other hand, one had to spare some admiration for Farrer. The man had stood by his friend at a certain risk to himself, and had risked a little more to impress his faith in Johnson on Gently.
Whatever faults the ex-pilot had, at least he could command a great deal of loyalty…
‘So what are we going to do about it, besides sitting on our fannies?’
‘I’m going to have lunch. You dragged me away from it.’
‘But this geezer’s got a gun!’
‘That’s regrettable, of course. But I don’t feel any the less hungry because of it.’
Surprisingly, Hansom didn’t go up in smoke — he was learning to take his Gently more temperately, perhaps. He extricated the Wolseley with much clashing of gears, but Hansom at his best was no trophy winner with a car.
‘I’ve alerted the rail police and put a man on the bus terminus — and one each, of course, on the office and the flat.’
‘You remember young Huysmann?’
‘Hell yes! And you were right there. I’ll ring up the river police and have them check on the boats. That’s it, I reckon, apart from putting out the numbers.’
‘Just one other thing… he left his car behind.’
‘You think-?’ Hansom’s eyes left the road for a moment.
‘We’d better check on it, since he’s so flush with the ready. In his place, my next move would have been to buy another car.’
Also, Gently thought, he would have shaved off that moustache, though whether Johnson could have borne to part with it was quite another matter. With him it was probably a gimmick like the chair and the horseshoe, and he would doubtless sooner hang with it than face the world clean-shaven.
‘You’re not forgetting Miss Butters, sir…?’ These were the first words Stephens had spoken; from his behaviour one would have thought that he was personally responsible for Johnson’s escape.
‘No, I haven’t forgotten Miss Butters.’ Gently eyed his confrere humorously. ‘She’s probably the best bet of the lot — perhaps you would like to keep an eye on her?’
Stephens flushed. ‘I was going to suggest it…’
‘Righto, my lad! We’ll find you some transport. But remember that Johnson has got a gun… If he should turn up, just ring us at Headquarters.’
He had Hansom drop him off outside his hotel, where he went straight down to the below-stair dining room. Being Saturday, the place was crowded in spite of the lateness of the hour, and the waitress who served him looked fagged as well as heated.
‘You wouldn’t have a plate of fried chicken, would you?’
In the end, he settled for steak with new potatoes and peas. Cramming the tables round about him were red-faced farmers, those who were attending the weekly cattle market that was held beneath the Castle. Watching them, he wondered how many would stray into the exhibition, which, well found in posters, opened directly off their sale ground. Their wives, perhaps, but what about the menfolk…?
He could imagine their reaction to the Wimbush fishes!
After the steak, with which he had drunk half a pint of bitter, he ordered an apple turnover and custard sauce. The noise and clatter of the farmers, whose Saturday lunch was an institution, had a pleasantly lulling effect in the warm and gravy-scented room. As happened so often, his mind relaxed over a meal. It seemed to loosen the ideas that until then were held rigid. Apparently without assistance they began to sort and adjust themselves, forming patterns and suggestions like the pieces in a kaleidoscope.
There was for instance that sketch of Mallows, which lay photographed on his brain — was it merely an hypothesis or had Mallows taken it from life? Did he know of such a man, and know him to be infatuated with Shirley Johnson, or was there another and secret reason why Mallows had suggested this to him?
For a little he toyed with the idea that X had been a self-portrait, given adjustment, naturally, to obscure the resemblance. But no, such an assumption had to be fundamentally impossible; what assurances did Mallows need for his spreading, triumphant genius?
Aymas fitted the description a good deal better, allowing his angry young mannishness to be a case of inversion. Mallows, Gently was convinced, was capable of applying misdirection, and a misdirection of this kind would be characteristic of him. But was Aymas’s choler an example of inversion — or the sort of inversion required to satisfy X? Though he had seen little of Aymas, Gently was disinclined to think so; his impression had been of an irritable extrovert who suffered from glands rather than from psychopathic troubles.
Who, then, was next in line — Wimbush? Baxter? Farrer? The latter had a smile, though it could scarcely be called a shy one! Or was it one of the members whom he had yet to meet — or somebody else entirely, beyond the orbit of the Palette Group?
From the way that Mallows had drawn the portrait Gently could swear that it had had a definite subject, and this was the point which kept emerging through the various permutations. It had been sketched with such vivacity, such unhesitating strokes, as though Mallows had long since explored what he described. Thus it followed that X was a familiar acquaintance of Mallows’s, or one at least whom he had had good opportunities to observe. Was it his knowledge, then, which had suggested this interpretation of the murder to him, or did he possess some information which more positively indicated X?
If X were indeed a familiar acquaintance, the academician ’s hedginess was explicable. Unless he was positive that X had done it, he would take pains not to give him away. But his suspicions, however founded, were strong enough in one article: he had wanted to deflect Gently’s interest from Johnson, and so had partly shown him his hand. What would have happened if Johnson had been charged? Would Mallows have volunteered information?
Gently tossed off a cup of coffee which had stood until it was nearly cold. Going back again to the beginning, had Mallows some other reason for that hypothesis? As a man he attracted Gently, but that was a bad excuse for passing him over; on another occasion Gently had met an engaging murderer, and nearly made a third on his list of victims. And there was another point which kept reappearing. Mallows was the last person to see her alive. He had tried to make fun of it but it was hard to laugh it away, and a motive of blackmail was more convincing than the most strongly argued psychological theory…
Impatiently, Gently thrust this angle into the background. Somewhere, at some time, you had to trust your instinct about people. About Mallows there was something too sane, too balanced — his reaction to attempts at blackmail would probably have been a public lecture.