Alan Hunter: Gently With the Painters

About his grilling he asserted that Gently would never repeat his success:

‘You took me by surprise, you old devil, or we’d still be arguing the toss.’

And of the danger he’d stood in from Farrer, who had clearly suspected what Mallows knew:

‘Now you’re making it melodramatic — he’d never have dreamed of hurting me.’

Their conversation about the case drifted leisurely to other subjects, became a wandering, vagrant chat, in tone with the summer afternoon. They had found, each in the other, something that exactly suited their taste; and what better thing was there to be done than to talk at ease in the bird-haunted garden?

‘You’ll be going back, will you, to start on something fresh…?’

‘Yes… but I’ve got my holiday coming shortly.’

‘Fishing, I thought you said?’

‘I’m spending one week fishing, near Lynton.’

‘And the other week?’

Gently shrugged. ‘I’m supposed to be visiting my sister in Wiltshire.’

‘My dear Gently! Spend it with me. I keep a houseboat on Burton Broad.’

It was arranged as easily as that. It needed no pressing or polite reluctance. Afterwards Mallows took him up to the studio, where a fresh canvas stood clamped to an easel.

‘You see? I’m not entirely disinterested! I’ve begun a portrait and I want to finish it…’

On the canvas, blocked out in charcoal, was Gently caught with his far away smile.

The turn of events had been saddening to Stephens and his cup was filled when they were cheated of an arrest; he had wanted a resounding success so badly, the sort of success that one expected of Gently. He was also a little piqued about Johnson. His efforts there had been slenderly rewarded. Instead of the heroic capture of the murderer they appeared, indeed, as an indiscretion of youth.

‘It wasn’t even as though Farrer were a principal…’

Hansom, too, had made the same complaint:

‘This boyo breezed into the case from nowhere — like somebody had pulled him out of a hat!’

Were they wiser as well as sadder? In Hansom’s case Gently had his doubts; but Stephens, he decided, had learnt a lesson here and there. He himself had learnt something too. He felt his rank sitting easier upon him. He was still a rebel, always a rebel, but hadn’t the world a great many mansions? And at heart, wasn’t there a dash of the rebel in everyone?

Driving back, he came suddenly to a very solemn conclusion. It was time he sold the Riley, time he bought something a little newer…