Alan Hunter: Gently With the Painters

‘What time did she leave this artists’ meeting?’

‘Some time after ten-thirty, say twenty to eleven. She stayed talking outside with Mallows and maybe some of the others, then went off alone in the direction of her bus stop.’

‘That’s the one beside the car park?’

‘Yes, the City Hall stop. It can’t be more than a couple of hundred yards from the George III. You go up a flight of steps and then along the front of the City Hall, then turn left into St Saviour’s, and there’s the stop, nearly under the clock-tower. The bus she went after was an eighty-eight, which leaves that stop at ten to eleven.’

‘But she didn’t catch it, of course.’

‘Yeah — so we narrow things down to ten minutes.’

‘Were there no witnesses in the car park?’

‘Two we’ve got, and they didn’t see a sausage.’

The Super put in: ‘It just missed the theatre turn-out. It’s the patrons of the Playhouse who mostly use that park of an evening. Only half an hour earlier and the place would have been crowded, but they’ve all got away by twenty to eleven.’

‘What about people using the bus stop?’

Hansom extended a pair of none-too-clean hands.

‘How do you make them come forward, that’s what I’d like to know! We’ve appealed in the press a couple of times, but all it brought us was an old tabby with a complaint about a conductor. By her account there were six or seven other people waiting, but that’s the beginning and end of her information.’

Gently nodded and drew some patterns on the desk with his finger. This murderer had either been lucky, or else very clever. He had committed his crime in the most improbable of places, and yet, by chance or plan, seemed to have got completely away with it.

‘The buildings bordering the park — was nothing seen or heard from them?’

‘Police HQ, I suppose you mean…! Well, we didn’t, so there you are. From the back here, I daresay, we could have watched from a score of windows — we could have done, but we didn’t. We don’t expect chummies down there!’

‘You’ve got to remember that it was dark,’ added the Super. ‘The car park isn’t lit and the nearest lights are in St Saviour’s. To see anything going on you’d need to put a searchlight on it, and naturally, we don’t spend our nights inspecting the car park with a searchlight.’

‘What about the other buildings?’

‘In effect there’s only the City Hall. The fourth side of the park is bounded by blind ends and derelict property. We questioned the nightwatchman from the City Hall, but it appears that he was doing his pools in the basement.’

Gently was conscious of Stephens leaning forward from behind him. He turned his head. ‘You’ve got a question, Inspector?’

‘Yes, sir — if I may! Perhaps the Chief Inspector can tell me… I was wondering how chummie got the woman into the car park — that is to say, when she was waiting for her bus?’

It wasn’t a question as much as an answer. Put like that, it immediately offered the solution. Gently nodded his satisfaction at his lieutenant’s acuteness, and from the corner of his eye he noticed the youngster colouring up.

‘Of course…!’ Hansom could tell a hawk from a harnser. ‘He was offering her a lift, that’s as plain as my eye. He was someone who knew she was going to catch that bus home, and what’s more, he was someone who was known to Shirley Johnson.’

‘And had his car on the car park.’

‘Too true… her husband! He was sculling around in his car all the evening. He says he was on a pub crawl out by Halford Ferry and Lordham, but it’s a fact that we can’t check his movements after half past nine.’

‘It might equally well have been someone else…’

‘Don’t you believe it — Derek Johnson hated her guts. He’s the dead spit of Neville Heath, eyes, curls and everything. I could smell him for our man the moment I set eyes on him, it was only this other business that put me off him for a bit.’

Gently shrugged indifferently, knowing Hansom’s enthusiasms from of old. It needed only the appearance of progress to set him in full cry. But Stephens’s suggestion, though it narrowed the field a little further, didn’t point to Derek Johnson or to any other individual.

‘Do you know where the Palette Group members parked their cars?’

Stephens had taken the question off Gently’s lips.

‘They’re a poverty-stricken bunch, I shouldn’t think they’d got any cars.’

‘Not the chairman, St John Mallows?’

‘Oh, him. He’s got a Daimler.’

‘And did you find out where he parked it?’

‘Huh…! Hansom made a contemptuous motion of his head.

A moment later, however, he climbed off his high horse. He was far from being dense when he gave himself time to think.

‘There are two or three others who own heaps of some sort — Aymas is one, and Farrer, and Allstanley. But I wouldn’t mind betting that they parked them in the Haymarket — or Chapel Street, in front of us. That’d be nearest for the George III.’

‘But, to date, you haven’t made any definite inquiry?’

‘Nope. I like to leave something for Scotland Yard to have a chew at.’

Gently smothered a grin in the lighting of his pipe. It hadn’t taken Stephens long to measure swords with the handsome Hansom. Already, he was sure, the Chief Inspector bore a ‘difficult’ label — without being aware of it, he was supporting Northshire’s reputation. And now, with hands that trembled slightly, Stephens was also lighting his pipe…

‘Let’s leave that for the moment. I’d like to hear more about the Johnsons. You haven’t got a portrait of the victim, I suppose?’

Hansom dipped into the manilla folder which had contained the official photographs, finally selecting a half-plate print to skim across the desk to Gently.

‘That’s a recent one, I’m told… It just about gives the right effect. Don’t forget that you’re talking to an eyewitness — I danced with this femme, at the Charity Ball.’

He leaned his elbows on the desk and watched as Gently examined the print. It showed a fragile-looking blonde whose eyes, one could swear, had been hyacinth blue. The hair was short and only slightly wavy, the nose rather straight over a small mouth and chin. Though not very striking she’d been pretty in a way… for a moment, Gently couldn’t put a name to the quality.

‘You begin to catch on, do you? Well, you’re wrong — she wasn’t a lesbian. She’d got the look and the manner, but you only saw her around with men. Mind you, she might have had some girlfriends in private… that’s possible: but she was the one and only female who belonged to the Palette Group.’

Gently inclined his head, passing the portrait on to Stephens.

‘How old would she be?’

‘Twenty-nine last May. She stood five feet seven and had a fashion-horse sort of figure — as lean as a lath, with just a top dressing of sex. She had a bedward way of gazing at you with her innocent blue eyes. Her voice was the tinkling sort, but you can bet it had an edge, too.’

‘Did she belong to these parts?’

‘Not her. They came from Bedford. Johnson arrived here five years ago and branched out as an estate agent. He’s a right Battle-of-Britain charlie, complete with MG. You could hang up your hat and coat on one side of his handlebars.’

‘Does he make a go of the business?’

‘His car and clothes say he does.’

‘You’ve seen his flat, of course?’

‘Yeah. It’s a posh, brand new one. Over an office block.’

Hansom produced the estate agent’s statement — not a great deal to show for three hours of grilling — and Gently skimmed through its inevitable police jargon, pausing occasionally for Stephens, who was reading over his shoulder.