Inspector Hansom, the Lion of Police HQ, had departed to his home shortly after six p.m. He had left a note, however, with the sergeant at the desk, and this was handed to Gently as he passed through with Stephens.
‘I thought you’d like to have the low-down on Butters, who rang a couple of times while you were out this afternoon. They’re an old county family, used to have the stuff in pots, and they still carry quite a bit of pull about the place. Butters himself is a pal of Sir Daynes Broke. Naturally, we’d be obliged if you soft-pedalled with him.’
Gently grinned to himself as he folded the note away in his wallet. Sir Daynes, the county Chief Constable, was also a pal of his own. It was probably as a result of this common denominator that Butters had insisted on speaking to Gently — rejecting, perhaps ungraciously, the respectful overtures of Hansom. But what had Butters got to do with the demise of Shirley Johnson?
Aymas was sitting alone in the charge room, looking ready to eat a dragon, and he sprang passionately to his feet as Gently peered round the door.
‘What the hell do you think all this is about-!’ His powerful frame shook with anger and defiance.
Gently shrugged and closed the door again: there was an excellent treatment for angry young men. It consisted of protracting their stay in the charge room, and during a long experience, Gently had rarely known it to fail.
‘Good… let’s go into Hansom’s office. It’s time we discussed the details together.’
Stephens was reluctant, but deferred to his senior. His hands were soiled with black grease and he had an oil smudge on his nose.
‘You drew a blank on the rest of them, did you?’
‘Yes, sir, I’m afraid so. Though Baxter’s brakes aren’t up to standard…’
‘Where did Allstanley say he parked on that night?’
‘Behind the taxi rank, sir, on the island near the marketplace.’
‘Any verification?’
‘Yes, sir, the taxi drivers. He often parks there and it gets in their way.’
So that closed the account of the group members who owned cars, leaving Aymas standing out as the only likely customer. His car had been near the spot if not actually standing on it, and the nearest way to it from the bus stop led directly across the car park.
‘It raises one or two problems, though…’ Gently filled Stephens in on this. ‘He could hardly have stabbed her in his car, so why did he sell it to the breakers?’
‘He might have had blood on himself, sir, and then traasferred it to the car.’
‘It’s a possibility, of course — only there wasn’t a lot of blood.’
But the point might still be settled by a lucky find at the breaker’s yard, though the fact that the parts had been dispersed would weaken the evidence if it came to a case. It would be necessary to prove to the hilt that they had, in fact, come from Aymas’s car.
‘I’ll give you the rest of the dope on Aymas…’
Stephens heard him with eyes that glinted; it was plain from the youngster’s enthusiasm that he was abandoning his theory of blackmail. Now it was clearly a crime passionel, a case of sudden and irresistible impulse. Shirley Johnson had quarrelled with her passionate lover, and with the first weapon to hand he had stabbed her to the heart. Didn’t the facts support this thesis? Hadn’t they the grounds of an open-and-shut case?
But even as he was building it up, Gently was slowly rejecting the idea. Could it be that Stephens’s enthusiasm had sounded a still, small note of warning for him? It was altogether too simple — it didn’t harmonize as it should! There were undertones everywhere that produced an overall chord of dissonance. He had got so far into the business that he was beginning to feel it intuitively; it was no use selecting some facts from it to make a pattern that jarred with the remainder.
‘It might be best to wait a little…’
‘You mean, we’re not going to charge him tonight?’
Stephens, whose mind had been racing ahead, sounded as disappointed as a child.
‘Oh… we’ll put him through the hoop and see how much we can squeeze out of him. But don’t expect him to break down and dump confessions in your lap. For the rest, it depends on tying in his car, and unless you can do that, the Public Prosecutor won’t look at it. Now give me the phone — I want to hear what Butters can tell us.’
The number was on the Lordham exchange, and this, at eight p.m., seemed difficult to contact. The Grieg dance which Gently had heard persisted in running through his head, conjuring up, quite irrelevantly, a picture of the rainy Bergen hills. And below them, in the fish market, knives were flashing on the busy slabs, while down the quay, beyond the Tyskebryggen, the Venus or the Leda waited…
‘Lordham one-five-eight.’
‘This is Superintendent Gently.’
‘Ah! I’m very glad to hear it. I’ve been trying to get you since lunch, sir.’
It was indeed a ‘county’ voice — a blend of Eton and the hunting field; one imagined that its owner was wearing spurs, or at the least, was flicking a dog whip.
‘My name is William Butters and I am acquainted with Sir Daynes Broke. He has always given me to understand that one can talk to you, Superintendent.’
‘Is it about the death of Mrs Johnson?’
‘Yes, it most certainly is. I have what I feel to be some vital information, and I would like you to call on me without further delay.’
Gently made a face at Stephens. ‘Couldn’t you tell me over the phone, sir?’
‘No, Superintendent, I couldn’t. It involves some highly personal explanations.’
In spite of his brusqueness a note of anxiety had crept into Butters’s voice — it was as though he wanted to ask a favour, and didn’t know quite how to set about it.
‘You are busy, sir, I am sure, but I am positive that you won’t be wasting your time… this may well affect the whole case. It is essential that you should see me at once.’
‘Then if you would care to drive over, sir…’
‘No, I’m afraid it won’t do.’
‘Then if you could give me a little idea…’
‘No, Superintendent. You must come here.’
There was obviously no help for it, and Gently hung up with a sigh. Stephens, who had divined the state of affairs, was watching his senior’s expression anxiously. Gently gave him a grin:
‘You don’t have to wait for me, you know. Just carry on with Aymas according to the rules they gave you at Ryton.’
‘You mean me… I’m to interrogate him?’
‘Why not? It’s all good practice.’
‘But I thought, sir — since a charge is so near-’
Gently chuckled and punched the younger man’s shoulder.
The drive out to Lordham took him through familiar country, it being at Wrackstead that he had arrested Lammas, the burnt-yacht murderer. There, and at Lordham Bridge, the moorings were busy with pleasure craft, and Gently needed to drive slowly through the careless crowds of yachtsmen. The address he had been given was The Grange House, Lordham, a premises not to be found without a due amount of inquiry; he was directed down narrow lanes which seemed to have lost their raison d’etre, and it was by following his instinct that he at last arrived at his destination. It was a moderate-sized property of Regency period, and stood palely among trees on a slope above the River Ent. A portico with an elegant flight of steps graced the front, commanding a panoramic view of the sedgy, twining river. Its decoration, Gently noticed, was not in first-class order, and there were signs of neglect in the rather fine terrace gardens. The garage doors stood apart to reveal a highly polished Rolls, but it was a Rolls of a period which predated the Second World War.
He parked his Riley on the notched tiling in front of the garage, and made his way to the portico, of which the door was also open. Then, quite unconsciously, he threw a glance at the upper windows — to find that a pair of frightened eyes were staring down into his. It was only for a second. In the next, they had disappeared. From such a glimpse he had been unable to register either the sex or age of their owner. An instant later a curtain was pulled, though actually this was quite unnecessary; the room behind it was already darkened by the subdued light of the evening.
‘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.’
‘And she — she knew about his wife?’
‘I’ve got to admit it. She knew about everything. She was his mistress all the while, and she says she’s going to have his baby.’
Over these last few words Butters seemed to have difficulty, and there was no reason to doubt the genuineness of his emotion. One could easily imagine the horror with which he had glimpsed those banner headlines, and then had heard, from his daughter’s mouth, that they were trapped in the ghastly business…
‘You did well, sir, to speak up.’
What was the use of a reprimand? Could he be blamed for taking four days to screw his courage to the sticking point?
‘As you said on the phone, this is vital information… I think it may enable us to tie up the case.’
Butters swallowed a gulping draught of his brandy and water, and Gently was glad that the deepening twilight made the room behind him shadowy. Below him, down the romantic but deteriorating terrace gardens, a smoke mist was rising mysteriously from the still, silica-like river.
‘You don’t have to tell me that I should have spoken before… in your place, Superintendent… but I won’t stoop to excuses. I knew on the spot that Johnson had murdered his wife, and I knew that it was my business to put a rope round his neck.
‘But God, when it’s a question of your own flesh and blood! And, to a certain extent, I had other people to think of… And again, it looked at first as though they wouldn’t need my help — up till yesterday, even, I thought they were going to arrest him.
‘Then that picture business happened and the police seemed to be confused. All night I was pacing that hall… I reached for the phone a dozen times.
‘I thought of getting on to Sir Daynes, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t his business. And I knew the Inspector on the case, but in the past… I won’t go into that! Then in the morning I saw you had been called, which wouldn’t have happened unless they’d been stuck… and then I knew I daren’t wait any longer. My only consolation was that you were the man…’
Gently silently sighed to himself — so near, it had been, to his not being the man! He wondered how Butters would have got on with Stephens, who would almost certainly have read him a lecture.
Wouldn’t that reference to the county Chief Constable have got Stephens’s back up, straight away?
‘You might have confided in Sir Daynes, sir…’ He heard the clink of glass and decanter.
‘Yes… I think I might have done that. Failing you, I think I might have done it. But not that other fellow, Hansom… as I say, a motoring offence… Yet, since Tuesday, I’ve been in hell… God, I couldn’t help feeling responsible!
‘If I’d been a proper parent I would never have let it go on. I had a suspicion, once or twice, that things weren’t as innocent as they seemed. But in these days everything is different… I didn’t want to look a fool… and I trusted him, you know. I was sure he wouldn’t let me down.
‘That’s the most damnable thing about it. I liked the fellow, and encouraged him! And to think, that by doing that, I was driving him to desperation…
‘If I’d found out about his wife he would have lost Anne and most of the business… it only wanted her to become pregnant… you see how inevitable it was? There was no other way out, he was forced to do something. His wife was a wrong ’un, it appears, and she wouldn’t give him a divorce…’
Gently turned from the window and came slowly back into the room. Butters was leaning over his knees, his umpteenth brandy shaking in his hand. He wasn’t cut for a tragic figure and his posture looked at first sight comic; yet this very misfortune, paradoxically, had the effect of emphasizing his pathos. And behind him, the damp-stained wallpaper took on the office of a symbol…
‘You have questioned your daughter, I take it?’ He remembered the frightened eyes which had watched him.
‘She’s… I’ve kept her in the house since Tuesday; as a prisoner, if you like…’
‘What was she doing on the Monday evening?’
Butters shuddered. ‘If you don’t mind, Superintendent…’
‘Very well… fetch her down, then. I shall have to see her myself.’
While Butters was absent from the room, Gently made a leisurely and appraising tour of it. In the grey and absorbing twilight he was probably seeing it at its best. Unlike a period piece restored, it lacked a logical unity of style; it had gathered one or two Victorian pieces, and even some items of a later date.
The pictures, however, apart from two portraits, were all landscapes representing the local school. Gently identified a Stark and a pair of Ladbrookes, and a cottage scene which was probably by Vincent. But of their master, Crome, he could discover no trace — but then, he was probably a death duty too late.
His prowling was interrupted by the switching on of the light, and he turned to find Butters pushing his daughter into the room. He had been holding her by the arm, which he now released, and he was prompt in closing and bolting the door.
‘I’d prefer to be present, if I may, Superintendent.’
Gently nodded, and motioned Anne Butters to a chair. Even now she hadn’t quite lost that look of terror, though added to it, Gently saw, was a seasoning of defiance.
She was a shapely, slender girl with a pale-complexioned oval face, and golden-brown hair which she wore long and slinky. She had pale green eyes under fine, symmetrical brows; they gave a touch of distinction to a face which was inclined to be plain.
‘This is a serious business, I’m afraid, Miss Butters.’
She was wearing a plain green dress, the skirt of which was gracefully flared. As he spoke to her, he noticed that she tightened her lips together; there were angry marks on her arm where it had been held by her father.
‘Tomorrow, I shall want you to give me a regular statement at the police station. Just now, I would like you to answer a few questions I shall put to you.’
‘It wasn’t Derek who killed her!’ She hissed the words out rather than spoke them, her green eyes sparking at him from lids which jumped suddenly open.
‘I didn’t say it was. Now, if you’ll be good enough to listen-’
‘He was with me the whole evening — we were in bed. So there!’
With a quick, hysterical movement she jerked back the flared skirt, revealing a pair of neat legs and a froth of black lace. Her father started forward, but she immediately dropped the skirt again. Then she turned to him like a child, making a sneering, triumphant face.
‘Do you want me to tell you some more? I’m sure you’d love to have it in detail! My father would, in any case — he adores a bit of smut! We began at half past seven-’
‘Anne — that’s quite enough of that!’
‘-at half past seven, he undressed me-’
‘For heaven’s sake, pull yourself together!’
Once more Butters started towards her, though what he could have done was problematical; before he could get to her, however, she had burst into a storm of tears.
‘He didn’t do it, I tell you, oh, Derek didn’t do it! You’ll never understand, but he didn’t — he didn’t do it!’
Somebody banged on the door and then fruitlessly rattled the handle. Butters fumbled it open and disappeared into the hall. A low colloquy could be heard, its substance drowned by Anne’s sobbing, but its rise and fall suggested that Butters was trying to reassure his wife.
In the background, with senseless monotony, an electric pump was thumping away.
‘I’ve got to apologize… it’s very difficult…’
Butters returned, and went at once to the decanter. His eyes were watering as though from a chill, and besides being flushed, his face was puffy and ugly. It was not unlikely that he was already drunk, but he carried himself steadily and it was difficult to tell.
‘My dear, for your own sake…’
He bent over his daughter. She had overcome her sobbing and was now using her handkerchief.
‘She’s like her mother, you know… they’re both highly strung. It runs in the family. Phoebe is allied to the Fitz-Morrises…’
Gently began again, trying to take it very easily. Anne Butters, as though ashamed of herself, listened meekly to his questions. Yes, she had ‘always’ known that Derek Johnson was married. Yes, she had entered the association with eyes wide open. She had been his mistress for two years, and she really was pregnant. They had always ‘taken precautions’, but once or twice they had been rather rash.
‘Did you used to go to his flat?’
She tossed her locks at him disdainfully. ‘We weren’t quite such congenital idiots as to walk in on his wife.’
‘Where did he used to take you then?’
‘Oh, it was anywhere at first. The yacht, the car, or a nice quiet wood — to begin with, we weren’t much worried by discomforts.’
‘But after that?’
‘We sometimes went to his office, only that was too risky to make into a regular thing. So Derek bought a furnished cottage — I suppose I can tell you about it now; it’s at the end of a lane, about a mile from Nearstead.’
‘Did you ever meet his wife?’
‘I looked her over once or twice. She was a bitch, as you probably know, and it didn’t surprise me that she was murdered.’
‘What did Derek say about her?’
‘He said she was queer, and that she liked other women.’
‘Didn’t he ever talk about a divorce?’
‘Yes. He said he’d divorce her when he got the evidence.’
She became bolder as the questioning proceeded, trying to compensate perhaps for her tears; her eyes she kept staring steadily into Gently’s, almost challenging him to do his worst with her. Butters, his glass never out of his hand, sat frowningly watching her from a seat near the door.
‘Where did you meet him on the Monday night?’
‘In the usual place — at the top of the lane.’
‘And then he drove you straight to the cottage?’
‘Yes. We arrived there before half past seven.’
‘And what time did you leave again?’
‘At eleven o’clock, or a few minutes after.’
Gently hunched his shoulders wearily. ‘Perhaps you would like to reconsider those estimates?’
For an instant it seemed that she didn’t understand him, her eyes slowly widening in interrogation. Butters, however, understood very well, and he made a helpless gesture with his hand.
‘It’s no use, Anne… he knows you’re lying.’
‘Keep out of this, you…!’
‘My dear, it’s no use. I… we all know what time you came in.’
‘Shut up — do you hear?’
‘It was at five past ten…’
They were trembling on the brink of another hysterical outburst. Her slim body was twitching and shuddering with emotion. But then, after a fit of glaring, she tossed her head away from her father, and contented herself with hitching her skirt a couple of inches above her knees. Butters swigged down some brandy and affected not to see it.
‘Very well, then — I told a lie! But don’t forget that I’m a harlot. You’re lucky to get a ha’porth of truth from a person such as I am.’
‘Perhaps I should tell you something, Miss Butters.’
‘Why not? It’s a favourite game of my father’s.’
‘Derek Johnson’s account of that evening doesn’t square with what you have told me.’
She burst into a mocking peal of laughter. ‘And did you expect him to tell you the truth? Did you expect he was going to tell you that he was shacked up with Butters’s daughter? He spun you a yarn, of course he did. He never dreamed that my father would betray him. He used to be in the RAF, where you could depend on your friends to stand by you!’
‘But naturally, we checked his account.’
‘There you are then — you knew it was a lie.’
‘But that is just what we don’t know, Miss Butters. His account is apparently confirmed by our checking. He made a round of some of the pubs, and a number of people can remember having seen him. So I’m afraid I must put this question to you: how did you spend that evening, Miss Butters?’
Her pallid cheeks grew paler still, and her eyes, by contrast, appeared to grow larger. Butters had gone off in a coughing fit — he had spilled some brandy on the carpet.
‘I was home by five past ten — I didn’t go out again after that!’
Gently turned to the spluttering Butters:
‘It’s true… she had a bath and went to bed.’
‘But what were you doing during the evening?’
‘It’s as I said — I was out with Derek!’
‘But nobody has mentioned seeing you with him.’
‘He — he brought me the drinks out to the car.’
Was she still lying, or was it the truth? Gently stared long at those flaming green eyes. As though it were an indicator of her good faith, she was quietly pushing her skirt back into place.
‘I was with him, all the evening, though I admit that we were going round the pubs. I only said that about the cottage because I thought you were more likely to believe it. But I was with him from a quarter past seven, and we were together until he dropped me at ten — I never stayed out later than that. It would have started my father prying.’
‘When had you told him that you were pregnant?’
‘Oh, weeks ago — as soon as I was certain.’
‘What did you intend to do about that?’
‘Derek was trying to find a good abortionist.’
‘Did he speak of his wife on Monday?’
She pouted. ‘You wouldn’t believe he didn’t! Well, he said he was certain that she was carrying on with an artist, but that she was being very clever, and that he was thinking of hiring a detective.’
‘Did he say who it was he suspected?’
‘No. She was playing about with several of them. But that was what he intended to do, and not to stick a paper knife in her back!’
Gently let it go at that, sensing further emotional fireworks — in the morning he would have another chance to see what he could chivvy out of her. Butters, in great relief, hustled his daughter out of the room; Gently thoughtfully lit his pipe and blew some smoke at the collecting mosquitoes.
A most illuminating hour! He glanced at the fallen level in the decanter. Down by the river some points of light showed where a yacht or two had made their moorings. In spite of his pipe he could smell the mustiness which persisted in the room, and he noticed a patch of mould that was growing on the paper beneath the window.
‘Do have a drink, Superintendent…’
Now, it was certain that Butters was drunk. He had to be careful where he put his feet, and his watering eyes had a bemused expression.