Alan Hunter: Gently With the Painters

By half past eight the Riley was outside and their luggage deposited in the boot. Mrs Jarvis had made a packet of sandwiches from last night’s neglected joint, and this, with a couple of thermoses, she gave into the care of Stephens.

‘Just see that the Superintendent eats something…’

She stood at her gate to watch them departing. It was a brilliant morning with a few scanty clouds, and the early traffic had not yet become troublesome.

‘I thought you’d expect me to do a little work on it, sir. I’ve made a few notes of points which occurred to me. Of course, it’s too early to be certain of anything…’

Nevertheless, Stephens had already propounded a theory to himself.

‘If we rule out the husband — and the local police seem to have done it — then I’d say, sir, that we ought to look out for signs of blackmail. There’s this St John Mallows — she might have had her hooks into him, and he must have been near the spot at the time she was murdered.’

‘What do you think she had on him?’ The youngster’s zeal amused Gently.

‘Well, sir, they might have been intimate together.’

‘But St John Mallows isn’t married.’

‘No, but she is, sir. Then there might have been perversity, or something of that kind.’

Had it all seemed so easy when Gently was a young Inspector? Looking back, he couldn’t remember ever having been very sure of himself. But that, possibly, was just the difficulty which Stephens was trying to counter; he was rushing at the case and searching feverishly for a pattern in it.

‘That’s something which we shall have to bear in mind, of course.’

‘Yes, sir. I could almost swear — if we can once rule out the husband!’

‘At the same time… by the way, here’s Tally-ho Corner. I suppose you never read up the Rouse case, did you?’

It was as he had thought — Stephens was desperately unsure of himself. He welcomed the opportunity to switch the conversation elsewhere. The Rouse case, fortunately, was one that he had swotted up, and he talked about it readily as they made their way through Barnet and Hatfield.

‘If he’d kept out of the witness-box, sir — that was his undoing. They’d never have hanged him on the evidence alone.’

‘I imagine that the prosecution were banking on that. Knowing Rouse, they were pretty certain that he would take the stand.’

‘Do you think so, sir? Was it a legitimate gamble?’

At Newmarket, where they stopped for coffee, Stephens insisted on receiving and paying the bill. He was smoking a pipe which, Gently noticed, was a sandblast much like his own in pattern. It was nearly new, with an unscratched mouthpiece. He couldn’t remember whether he had seen Stephens smoking a pipe before or not.

‘Like to try some of mine?’

He pushed across his tin of navy-cut. Stephens accepted a couple of slices and maladroitly stuffed his pipe with them. From the awkward manner he had of holding his pipe while he was smoking, Gently deducted that this was the young detective’s first essay in the art…

By noon they were in the outskirts of the old provincial capital, familiar to Gently if not to his protege. It possessed a fine approach along a wide and tree-lined carriageway, on either side of which stood attractive houses in well-kept grounds.

‘Aren’t the Northshire people rather difficult to get on with? Someone was telling me in the canteen…’

Gently smiled at the keep of the Norman castle, now lifting distantly above the rooftops.

‘Don’t pay attention to all you hear! You’ll find them much the same as the rest.’

‘But you’re the expert on these parts-’

‘You’ll be one too, before we’ve finished the case.’

And Stephens, biting on his pipe, tried to look as though he believed he would.

At Police HQ, Superintendent Walker was waiting for them. Gently introduced Stephens to him and there followed the usual bout of shaking hands. A constable was dispatched to summon Chief Inspector Hansom, who, two minutes later, appeared still eating a ham sandwich.

‘I thought they’d have sent someone else, now that you’d reached the giddy heights!’

Gently shrugged, finding a seat for himself beside Walker’s desk. Between himself and Hansom there had ever been an armed neutrality; they were antipathetic towards each other, and yet, oddly enough, exerted a mutual fascination.

‘You’ve had Hansom’s report, Gently… where would you like him to begin?’

It was very nearly lunchtime, and the Super was eager to get to their business. Hansom, eating largely to get rid of the sandwich, had dumped himself clumsily at the other end of the desk. There wasn’t a chair for Stephens and so he was obliged to remain standing; he stationed himself behind Gently, where he kept uncomfortably shifting his feet.

‘I’d better begin at the beginning, which was about six a.m. on Tuesday. Sergeant Walters, who was on the desk, saw this old fool, Coles, hanging around. He’d been out there for half an hour, just loitering about and doing nothing; every time Walters went to the window he turned his back, or fiddled with a shoelace…’

Gently knew the type referred to and had given them a private cognomen: they were the ‘angry old men’, of whom every town could show some examples. Seedy, shabby and without any friends, they haunted the market places and busiest streets; they wore an expression of angry surprise, as though perpetually indignant at their age and poverty. And always, if anyone caught their eye, they furiously frowned and turned away…

‘Walters went out and accosted the old idiot, wanting to know why he was hanging about there. He says it took him a good ten minutes to get anything intelligible out of the fellow. In the end he said, he supposed that Walters knew all about her — Walters said “Who?” — and this article said: “The sick lady”!

‘He’d found Shirley Johnson with a knife sticking out of her shoulderblades, and that was the nearest he could get to describing her!’

So Walters had followed the old man into the car park, which, ironically enough, adjoined Headquarters as well as the City Hall; and there, behind the dustbins in which the ancient had come to forage, he found that very sick lady lying stiff in the morning dew.

‘When you’re ready, if you like, I’ll take you round and show you the spot, but you’ll see how we found her in these photographs here. There wasn’t a lot of blood owing to the knife being left in, but we found one or two splashes leading from a spot about ten yards away.

‘He simply stabbed her, I imagine, and then lugged her over to the dustbins. As you see here, he chucked her handbag and coat down beside her. She wasn’t tampered with or mussed up and there were twenty pounds in her bag — likewise her driving licence, so we had no trouble in tracing her.’

Gently nodded, accepting the proffered bunch of glossy prints. They were interestingly gruesome, but not notably informative. The bins were standing by a terrace wall which flanked the large and much-used park, and though by day they offered little concealment, they would be effective enough after dark. The body had been carelessly dumped behind them. It had fallen on its face and had the right arm twisted beneath it. The thin handle of the paper knife protruded from below the left shoulderblade, and on it, in close up, one could read the inscription: ‘Pearson Cutlers, Sheffield, Eng.’ Only a small stain had appeared on the light-coloured dress.

‘Did you find any prints?’

Gently handed the pictures to Stephens. The young man examined them with a painstaking thoroughness.

‘Only hers, on the handbag. Chummie must have been wearing gloves. The handle hadn’t been wiped, it just didn’t have anything on it. There were some contusions on the throat which the Doc says were made before death, so it looks as though he were taking care that she didn’t scream when she got the knife. Anyway, nobody heard her scream, and there would have been enough people about. According to the Doc she was killed between ten p.m. and midnight.’