Not until he reached the marketplace did he discover a semblance of life. Here some corporation employees were hosing down the numerous gangways. The water had spread across the Walk, bearing litter and shavings with it, and there was a smell of damaged fruit and an echoing grate of shovels. A shabby old man stood furtively watching… was it the same one who had discovered the body? Suddenly he dived into the heap of rubbish, producing a coin which he rubbed on his sleeve…
Hansom had also bought a sheaf of papers and he was digesting them in his office. He was chewing a short, black cheroot, his favourite form of nicotine ingestion.
‘Well, I found that car dealer for you!’ He tossed a report sheet across the desk. ‘He flogged Johnson a nice quiet ’53 Minx — a bit of a change from MGs, isn’t it?’
Gently took up the report sheet and glanced over it, shrugging. A Minx was an obvious choice for Johnson. It was a car as unobtrusive as any car could be: the unregistering norm, a car to go unnoticed.
‘You’ve put it out, have you?’
Hansom ringed him with cheroot smoke. ‘We made it an all-stations, because where the hell is he by now? Not in Northshire, that’s a safe bet, and maybe not in England either. But my guess is that he headed straight for the Smoke.’
‘When did you find this car dealer?’
‘Just this morning, like it says.’
‘Any message from Stephens?’
‘Nope. His relief is in the canteen.’
Gently went to talk to the relief, who was sombrely eating a canteen breakfast. The man had spent a tranquil night and had nothing of interest to report. Previously, as Stephens had told Gently, Butters’s family had arrived in two cars; lights had been burning when Stephens was relieved and had continued to do so until past one a.m.
‘Did you see any traffic go past the house?’
‘Not till seven, when the milkman got there.’
‘You had a good look at him, did you?’
‘Yes. He was a young fellow; short; dark brown hair.’
It was five minutes later, when Gently was back in Hansom’s office, that the desk sergeant buzzed to say that Baxter wanted to see them. He was shown up straight away and he arrived strangely breathless; his glasses were held in his hand, which added to his distrait appearance.
‘I’ve just come from the exhibition — run all the way…!’
He brushed aside Gently’s suggestion that he should take a seat.
‘No, this is serious — deadly serious, you understand? That fellow — that barbarian Johnson! He’s slashed all the paintings!’
‘Johnson!’
Hansom was on his feet in a moment. From the beginning, one felt, he had looked on Johnson as personal meat.
‘You’ve seen Johnson around?’
‘No… don’t be silly! But he’s slashed them with the knife — the same one. It’s still there!’
A minute or two of careful questioning was required to get the facts from him. For once he had been rattled out of his disdainful sang-froid. He stuttered and gestured and stared with his naked eyes, too upset, apparently, to clean and replace the smeary glasses.
‘I–I… this morning I had to go there — Watts gave me the key — on Sundays it’s closed… the exhibition, I mean! And that’s how I found it — slashed, every one of them! The glass all broken… the knife stuck in a frame…’
‘Just a minute! What were you doing at the exhibition this morning?’
‘I… well, if you must know! I went to touch up my exhibit…’
‘And where does Johnson come into it?’
‘He… isn’t it too obvious? It’s his revenge, because he thinks that one of us killed his wife…’
Hansom was watching Baxter curiously, and now he shot a look at Gently. Gently shrugged, looking wooden, but he understood his colleague’s hint.
‘Well… we’d better go and look at it. Did you lock the gate after you?’
‘Yes — no, I can’t remember! I ran all the way…’
He had entered the Gardens by the gate at the rear, the one which gave access to Market Avenue. Here, as at the provision market, men were busy with brooms and hoses, and in the air lingered the musky smell of animal occupation. Baxter’s Singer stood alone by a granite horse trough. It was a pre-war ten with rather dubious tyres. He had not locked the gate, which was secured by a chain and padlock, and in fact it stood ajar with the key still in the lock.
‘Holy smoke… just look at this!’
A single glance took in the havoc. It was as though a malicious child had been let loose among the pictures. Raw destruction, it was just that, the very sight of it kindling anger. Profoundly shocked, one could only feel enraged at the insensate author of it.
‘That’s just how I found it… I didn’t touch a thing…’
Faced with it, Gently could better appreciate Baxter’s distraction. They weren’t masterpieces, perhaps, those scored and tattered canvases, but they were the products of civilized people patiently cultivating their talents. And now, in an hour of savagery, they had been brainlessly destroyed. It was the treachery that hurt: one felt that something had been betrayed.
‘You see? It couldn’t have been one of us…’
That was true: such a thing seemed unbelievable. An artist might conceivably have mutilated another’s picture, but unless he were completely crazed he could never have stooped to this barbarity.
Silently they moved along the line of damaged exhibits, each one of which had been separately, conscientiously attacked. Canvases hung in ribbons, glass lay shattered under empty frames, Allstanley’s ‘Head of a Laughing Woman’ was stamped out flat beside its pedestal. It seemed the work of some berserk gorilla which had been trained in the arts of destruction. One couldn’t comprehend the mind behind it; the single reaction was of seething anger.
‘Where’s that knife you talked about?’
‘Here, look… at the end. Stuck in this stupid thing of Farrer’s — he didn’t think it was worth a slash.’
There was no mystery about the knife — it was the fellow of the murder weapon; the same triangular sliver of stainless steel, stamped with the name of the Sheffield cutler. It had been driven hard into the frame of the picture, deliberately cutting through the artist’s name. The canvas of this one had escaped a hacking but the force of the blow had wrenched the frame from its brackets.
‘Do you remember if you touched the knife?’
‘I… yes, I may have done. I honestly don’t know. I was too upset.’
‘Why did you touch it?’
‘I don’t know if I did or not! I’d read about the other one, and felt certain that this was the same.’
Hansom murmured to Gently:
‘Do you want my theory? Chummie’s got it in for Farrer for helping Johnson to get away. That’s why he got the knife instead of having his picture slashed… let’s show it to him and watch his face. I’ll bet he doesn’t grin this time!’
Carefully, Gently disengaged the picture, turning it to the light to examine the knife. There were apparently no prints on the polished metal, and apart from some hack marks, the knife looked new.
‘Did any picture of that knife get published?’
‘Yeah — or of one just like it. The local carried it, and so did the Echo.’
So that anybody, besides the murderer, might have committed this outrage.
‘What happened to you after I saw you yesterday?’
Baxter had calmed himself now and had cleaned and put on his glasses. It was surprising what a difference those round lenses made to him; at once, from being a harassed owl, he began to be his contemptuous self.
‘I really don’t see what that has to do with it.’
‘Never mind! I’d like you to answer the question.’
‘Very well — I had my tea, and then I drove out to Floatham. I made a sketch of the mill there for a poster I have commissioned.’
‘What time did you go to tea?’
‘At six, or soon after.’
‘When the exhibition closed, in fact?’