At Lordham Village, where he stopped to phone, Gently experienced an even longer delay with the exchange. The country operator answered him with a surly briefness, as though this was really laying it on too thick.
‘Can you bring Inspector Stephens to the phone…?’
His wristwatch was pointing to a minute to ten. As he could hear Stephens picking up the phone to answer him, the hour struck fussily on the church clock outside.
‘How is the session with Aymas going?’
In reality he could tell this from the sound of Stephens’s voice.
‘I’m afraid he’s been terribly stubborn up till now, sir… you were quite right about him not breaking down and confessing.’
‘What excuse does he give for sending his car to the breakers?’
‘He persists in maintaining that that was all it was fit for. He says that he only kept it till Tuesday on account of Monday night’s meeting, and that he’s negotiating for a better one, and hopes to buy it tomorrow.’
‘Have you checked on that?’
‘Yes, sir. With the vendor. He agrees that Aymas spoke to him about it over a fortnight ago.’
Gently clicked his tongue consolingly. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much about it! Just smooth Aymas down a bit and find him some transport. Then I want you to go out and to pull in Johnson for questioning… take another man with you. I want to talk to Johnson tonight.’
He hung up before Stephens could ask him for an explanation. He felt no particular exhilaration at being in possession of the conclusive facts. They had come to him by pure good fortune and through no exertion of his own, unless his luck could be counted, the luck that dogged a good detective. And that luck would have belonged to Hansom if Gently had not been called to the case.
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?
‘What prisoner-of-war camp were you in?’
‘I was in Stalag three-two.’
‘Did you ever try to escape?’
‘Twice. Once I nearly got to Denmark.’
‘Were you treated very harshly?’
‘Cocker, don’t make me laugh. I was grilled for twenty days and twice they took me out to shoot me. They wanted to know who planned the break, and if they’re alive, they’re still ruddy well wanting. So you can make up your mind to one thing.’ He sent smoke hissing in all directions.
Gently nodded. ‘Then there’s no more to it. I won’t waste my time in the steps of the Gestapo. To them you were a Royal Air Force officer, but to me you are just another criminal.’
It hit the spot; Johnson’s colour rose. He sucked in an enormous lungful of smoke.
‘Don’t take that line with me, old sport-!’
‘I’m not taking any line — but I’ll tell you the truth.’
Now it was Gently who had the pause to play with, and he occupied it in stroking off an entirely fresh pattern. Both Stephens and Johnson were now following the swept motions, only the shorthand man seeming proof against their fascination.
‘On the Monday night you had come to a crisis — not an emotional crisis, but a business one. I don’t think you gave a damn about losing Anne Butters. An ex-bomber pilot in an MG could soon pick up something else.
‘But you cared a great deal about your lucrative business, and you knew that it would take a knock if ever Butters turned against you. He knew the right people. He had sent you the best part of your clients. And he could, just as easily, put the evil eye on you.
‘So that was the thing which you had to preserve: the goodwill of William Butters, and your steady flow of clients. And the only way to do that was to marry his daughter, to make good the role you played of being an honourable man. Until Anne became pregnant the matter had no great urgency. You could fob off the pair of them with suitable excuses. You could tell him that you were waiting to buy a property that suited you, and her that you were still seeking the grounds for a divorce.
‘But once she became pregnant the situation began to run away with you, and you had to cast about to find a way out of the tangle. What was more, you needed a way which wouldn’t alienate Butters — he was due for a shock, of course; but it was essential not to make him an enemy.
‘No doubt you reviewed the possibilities, of which there were three in number. The first of them, abortion, was the one which you mentioned to Anne. But abortion had grave objections, besides being dangerous in itself: how could you keep the family from knowing, and what effect would it have on Anne? Then there was the possibility of blackmail, which I dare say crossed your mind. So, on the whole, you didn’t favour abortion, except as another excuse to amuse Anne.
‘So you were brought to the second alternative, that of the divorce of which you had talked for so long. As to grounds, you probably had plenty, and without recourse to private detectives. But here again the objections were insuperable. You had to proclaim yourself perjured to Butters. Anne you were sure of if the divorce went through, but she was no use to you unless with her father’s blessing. Also, wasn’t there a chance that he might have spiked that divorce for you? With divorce, the odds were that you would have come off with nothing.’
Gently discontinued his doodling to look hard at the estate agent, whose frowning grey eyes had never left the busy pencil. Stephens, his pipe between his teeth, was sitting as stiff as a cleaning rod. Tobacco smoke drifted lazily towards the harsh strip lighting.
‘Which left you with the third possibility: murder.’
Gently tore off the sheet and crumpled it into the office waste basket.
‘It meant risking everything, but you were a man used to risks — and the reward for it was everything that you had hoped to gain. Oh, I realize that Butters was going to have his suspicions, and that his suspicions would be near certainties when he learnt of Anne’s condition. But you banked on the initial shock of the affair to shut his mouth, and afterwards — by then, he was halfway to being an accomplice.
‘You would have had him where you wanted him! He wouldn’t dare, then, to discountenance you. He would feel that he shared the guilt, or perhaps persuade himself that there was none. And Anne’s baby would be the clincher: it would ensure that the marriage went through — with a little delay, of course, a little subterfuge — just enough to sink Butters some further!
‘I don’t know at what stage you made up your mind, but the Palette Group was always waiting to provide you with scapegoats. Your wife went about with them, ate with them, perhaps slept with them — you had plenty of time to find out about that. So, naturally, you arranged to take advantage of the Palette Group. You would murder your wife on their doorstep, so to speak. You checked what her movements were when she attended one of their meetings, and you decided that the car park would best suit your plan.
‘Next you needed an alibi, or at least a story that would check — you were clever enough to risk not producing a perfect alibi. Thus instead of going to Nearstead you went off on a round of the pubs, keeping Anne concealed in your car in case the police heard tell of her later. Then, after dropping her at ten, you drove quickly back to town; you parked your car, I think, in Chapel Street, to avoid having it seen in the park.
‘You took your stand by the City Hall, probably at the St Saviour’s end, and when your wife came by you accosted her, telling her that you were just driving back to the flat. She accepted a lift and went with you. You led her past the bus stop and into the park. As you approached the terrace wall you contrived to drop behind her, and strangling her scream with your arm, you drove the knife into her back.
‘She died instantaneously and without much bleeding. You threw her down behind the dustbins, tossing her handbag after her. Then you walked back to your car by the footway at the end here, and drove home, probably arriving at the time given in your statement.
‘You made only one mistake — you thought that Butters hadn’t got any guts.
‘But, in spite of his bottle of brandy, he has just committed you to the hangman!’
The silence that marked the end of his accusation was made the more telling by the murmurs from without — the voice and footfall in the building, the drone of a car from Chapel Street below. Johnson kept frowning at the moving pencil, his childlike lips hung slightly open. He seemed unconscious of the scene about him, unconscious, even, of Gently’s presence.
Was he trying, with desperate concentration, to find a plausible way out of this trap?
‘Poor Shirley!’ — the words came huskily. ‘She was a bitch, but Christ… she was human.’
Gently sighed to himself and reached out for the jug of coffee. He was never at his best, making speeches of that sort. They required an indignation, a degree of faith in moral judgements: to himself, at all events, they never quite rang true. He poured a cup of coffee and tossed it off in three quick gulps. Stephens cast an eye at the cup, then he folded his arms and leaned them on the desk.
‘That’s the way it was done, of course…’
‘I’m glad to find you agreeing with me.’
‘Hell, but it wasn’t me!’
Gently preserved an unimpressed silence.
‘Look, cocker…’ Johnson was stumbling, making beating motions with his hand. ‘You’ve had your fun… all right — I don’t mind!.. But it won’t stand up… I never dreamed of killing Shirley!’
‘I think I should warn you, Mr Johnson.’
‘I know all about that — and I don’t care a damn! You can take it down if you want to, you can print it off on toilet paper. But I’m warning you, cocker, your imagination ’s running away with you… you’ve cooked up a case, and it won’t convince a flea!’
Gently grunted indifferently and felt for his pipe and pouch. He had issued Johnson a warning, and now the ball lay with him. Rather sooner than he had intended he had made this concession, though in view of the facts it probably mattered very little. He filled his pipe with scrupulous care, pressed it down and struck a match.
‘You’ve figured out the way of it — good! I was wondering about that. I couldn’t think how he’d got her there, unless… it doesn’t matter! But you’re tackling the wrong kiddie… I don’t care what you’ve found out…
‘I’ve had to listen to your version — now just you listen to mine!’
He could hardly find the words, so fast did he want to bring them out; the stenographer’s pencil sounded like a mouse as it nibbled at the paper. Johnson’s legs weren’t folded now. He was leaning forward towards the desk. His frowning brow was creased with ridges and his eyes were staring and protruded.
‘I’m glad that Butters had the sense to speak up… it was me who hadn’t got the guts! I knew you’d hold it over my head — I could see that coming from the start. But I’m glad, you understand? Because I’m fond of old man Butters! You can say what you like about his bottles of brandy — he’s a decent old stick, and I’m here to say so.
‘And I like his wife… I like his family… and Anne, she isn’t just the floozie you seem to think her!
‘She’s my wife, you understand? Not the way that Shirley was! But she’s my wife all the same, in spite of not having been to church. She loves me and I love her… it’s been like that ever since we met…
‘And I didn’t give a damn about the blasted business. I’d have thrown it all up for a chance to marry Anne…’
Stephens, who had begun to sneer, was now gazing at Johnson in perplexity; he also glanced in Gently’s direction, trying to glean a cue from his senior. This wasn’t at all what he had expected to hear from a man with a murder tied on him! Johnson was blurring an open and shut case, he was upsetting its nice, clean lines…
‘Something else… I didn’t have anything on Shirley. She was too darned clever to give me a chance! You’ll never understand, because you never met her alive… as for offering her a lift… it’s funny, don’t you see?
‘She was a sadist — she liked to see other people squirm. She got a kick out of sticking to me, though we couldn’t stand each other. But if you think for a minute… I’m not going to blame her!.. Only that’s the way she was, and you’ve got to accept the facts.
‘And I did try for a divorce, whether it would have mucked me up or not — it wouldn’t have done, either. Butters wouldn’t have let me down! Just ask my solicitor… I’ve talked it over with him. But I didn’t want a detective, I tried to do the job myself, and the long and the short of it was that I never caught her at anything…
‘Then that alibi — that’s rich! My God, I could have done better than that. But the whole idea is cockeyed — we always hit the pubs on a Monday. On Sundays we used to visit the cottage, and you don’t need me to tell you… so on Mondays we toured the pubs — having a rest, if you want it in words!
‘And the abortion, too — did you ever try to fix one? You’d be surprised just how easy it isn’t! You’ve only got to hint at abortion to a medico, and the next minute he’s slinging you out on your ear. Then, after a couple of clangers like that…
‘In any case, I was dead against the idea… when I’d talked Anne round a bit, I was going to have it out with Butters. You think you know Butters, but you don’t, and that’s a fact. When he’d realized how it was with Shirley… hell, there’s nobody who’s quite an angel!’
He was brought up at last by sheer lack of breath and sat for some moments panting, a blond lock fallen across his forehead. The stenographer dropped his pencil on the desk and, in massaging his fingers, produced an unusual cracking sound. Then he selected another pencil from a supply in his breast pocket.
‘I know how it looks to you and I don’t blame you for a moment… but you can’t know, you’re only guessing about things that really matter.
‘What do you know about me, for instance? You only met me seven hours ago! You look at my car, at this moustache… and then you tack a label on me.
‘It says: “Flying Officer Kite” — all right, so I deserve it! But do you know how people came to be Flying Officer Kites? They were scared into being them — scared silly by what they were doing! They were driven into behaving like clots by sheer terror. Because there aren’t any heroes in the whole state of nature… only cowards, who one day get shoved into the breach…
‘But underneath that, what do you know about me? You must be able to see how crazy it all is. By guessing and a few facts you’ve made me out to be inhuman — an egoistic monster, a psychopath at the very least! And I’m not — I’m not like that. It’s too utterly bloody ridiculous. Get on to my friends — I’ve got plenty of them! The worst they can call me is a line-shooting bastard… I’m human, I tell you, I’m not a bloody monster…’
He flung the hair out of his eyes and dragged his chair closer to the desk; with his hands gripping the edge of it, he was only a couple of feet from Gently.
‘Listen to what I tell you, cocker… I want to see that swine collared too! Not out of revenge, or anything like that, but because he ought to be put inside. Shirley… you know how I felt about her. She wasn’t any credit to the human race. But damn it, she had a right to live, and only a madman would take it away from her…
‘But now you’re playing the madman’s game, because it was someone who knew about me and Anne. He gambled that you’d pin it on me for certain, as soon as the rest of the tale came out. So for Christ’s sake try to see this straight — I wouldn’t have laid my little finger on Shirley!
‘On Monday night I did just what I told you. I was never near here, and I didn’t kill my wife…’
Gently had never stopped puffing at his pipe, but now he put an entirely gratuitous match to it. Having done that, he broke the match in two pieces and arranged them fastidiously in the ashtray.
Always, with Johnson, it was the selfsame question — was he being honest, or was he being clever? Before, they had given him the benefit of the doubt, and even now he was keeping his foot in the door. He had no defence against the charge, and yet… what was the answer going to be?
‘Take Mr Johnson back to the charge room, will you?’ He swung on Hansom’s revolving chair, so that his back was towards them. From the reluctant way in which Stephens got to his feet, Gently knew that the Inspector was critical of the order.
‘You’re holding me… is that it?’
‘I may want to ask some more questions.’
‘And meanwhile I’m in custody?’
‘You are assisting the police…’
They took him out while Gently was still savouring the irony of the phrase.
Stephens came back quickly, his face wearing a worried look.
‘Super, I don’t know…’
‘Sit down and light your pipe.’
‘Yes, sir. But my impression-’
‘Take a seat! I’m trying to think.’
Stephens did as Gently bid him with the best grace possible, but his pipe, that pride and joy, seemed unable to absorb him. Gently continued to face the wall, his cogitations marked by smoke rings; Stephens was not the first person to have noticed that the Super’s back was like an iron curtain.
‘So you’d slap him inside, and no more nonsense?’
Ten minutes had passed in the silent smoke rings.
‘Under the circumstances, sir-’
‘I’ve got no option. But suppose I was damn fool enough to make myself the option?’
Stephens was thoroughly unhappy and didn’t know what to say. He had never before come across Gently in this awkward, angular mood.
‘I must admit, sir… to my way of thinking…’
‘Just tell me straight out, Stephens.’
‘Very well, sir. I wouldn’t think twice about it. He’s our chummie, and we’d get a conviction.’
‘Hmm.’ Some more smoke rings rose towards the ceiling, and again the office was broodingly silent. Then suddenly Gently swivelled round in the chair, the ghost of a grin spreading over his face.
‘I always like to ask someone’s advice when I’m in danger of making a fool of myself! You are perfectly right about Johnson, of course. No jury would give him twenty minutes.’
‘Then we’ll go ahead and charge him, sir?’
‘No, just get him to amend his statement.’
‘But I don’t understand-!’
Gently’s grin grew broader. ‘That’s exactly what Johnson was trying to tell us…’
Once more he was rebelling against the accepted order, and once more he was positive that he was doing the right thing. He wished that he could have explained himself to Stephens, but how could one explain an unreasoning intuition? It was a faculty which had to grow, there was no passing it on.
As it was, he simply patted Stephens on the arm.
‘Don’t look so upset! I’m going to put a tail on him. If he tries to do a bunk we’ll pull him in fast enough. In the meantime, I don’t want to tie my hands with Johnson.’
‘But if ever there was a case where circumstantial evidence…’
‘I know. But Johnson made one very good point. We haven’t been here long and we don’t really know the people… why he said it doesn’t matter. We can afford to take our time.’
In the end he had Stephens partly propitiated; the young detective, though apprehensive, was eager to follow where Gently led. Johnson’s statement was revised, typed out and signed. Nobody had very much to say apart from the bare requirements of the transaction.
‘But I can take it that I’m still number one on your list…?’
If Johnson was surprised to be getting away with it, he was at pains to conceal the fact.
‘For the present I want you to stay within the city jurisdiction. If you try to go outside it you will be instantly arrested.’
The detective who was to tail him, a raw-boned local with prodding dark eyes, had been instructed that coyness was not essential to the contract. From the window they watched him setting out after his quarry — Johnson must have known he was there, although he didn’t turn his head.
‘I suppose it’s all right, sir, to let him go like that…?’ All Stephens’s uneasiness returned at the sight.
‘Come on — let’s go to bed! It’s getting on for two already, and in the morning we’ve got a couple of statements to take.’
The hotel into which they had been booked was only a short distance from the marketplace and as they walked there, step for step, they didn’t meet a single person. A train whistle from the Thorne Yards was the only sound to break the stillness and above them, in a clear sky, a new moon was scratched in silver.