Alan Hunter: Gently With the Painters

A peculiar household must that one have been! Here and there, through the stiff formality, a telling phrase or two crept out. ‘I wanted Shirley to have a baby but to this she would not agree.’ ‘I bought a new bed for the guest room and have been sleeping there for three years.’ ‘I do not know if she has been unfaithful and I myself have not been unfaithful.’ ‘I agree that I wanted a divorce, but that she would not contemplate a divorce.’

And then his account of Monday evening:

‘When I arrived home my wife was going out. I did not ask her where she was going as we had agreed not to ask one another this. I found some eggs in the larder and poached two for my tea. Then I got out my car again and drove first to the Halford Ferry public house and afterwards to several public houses, including the Lordham Dog and the Porter Haynor Falgate. I returned to the Ferry and remained there till closing time, fetching my drinks from the bar to a table by the river. I arrived home at eleven o’clock or soon after. I went straight to bed without visiting my wife’s room, and I did not know that she was missing until I was informed of it by the police.’

Hansom sneered: ‘He was playing it close to the chest, don’t you think? The innocent wronged husband who doesn’t know a thing! We checked at the pubs which he condescended to mention, and like I told you, they don’t remember him after half past nine.’

‘Is he fairly well known to them?’

‘You bet. He’s that type. His MG would do the circuit with him blind drunk in the dickey.’

‘Halford Ferry is that large pub…?’

‘Yep. He’s a regular clever boyo. It’s big, and rushed off its feet at this time of the year. Naturally, they won’t swear that he wasn’t there till closing, especially with him claiming that he sat at an outside table. He may have sat nursing a pint for an hour.’

‘It’s either true or very clever.’

‘Cobber, you’ve put him in a nutshell.’

The Super, feeling perhaps that he was being ignored, now filled in some details of their investigation of Johnson. His service record was good, they knew nothing against his character, and though he owned a fast car his licence was virgin of endorsements. He had friends in his own profession and was generally well thought of. His business was honestly conducted and had a good reputation. That he was estranged from his wife was no secret to his acquaintances, but the subject was painful to him and he became abrupt if she was mentioned.

‘Can anyone vouch for the time he arrived home?’

‘No, and that and the time he gives seem to lend support to his good faith. If he had known at what time his wife had been killed, he could have sworn that he was home by ten without fear of contradiction. Inspector Hansom here thinks that it’s an example of Johnson’s cunning, but failing evidence to the contrary one is bound to allow him the doubt. It was small things like these which made us uncertain about Johnson, and I suggested that we should turn our attention elsewhere.’

‘Elsewhere’, of course, was the Palette Group and its members, and from Hansom’s bored expression Gently could judge what luck they had had. From his folder the local man produced a sheaf of bitty statements, the result of many hours of unprofitable labour.

‘Perhaps you could give me the overall picture.’

‘Sonny, I’d be delighted! They all had a “thing” about her.’

‘Infatuation, you mean?’

‘Hell, no — these are painters! There were some who thought she could paint, and the rest who thought she couldn’t. Apart from some guessing about times, there’s damn-all else.’

Gently paused for an instant before putting his next question; he wasn’t confident that Hansom could give him the answer.

‘Did it strike you as being the… usual relation, as between artists, or was there a little bit more of a point to it?’

‘How the devil should I know!’ Hansom stared his disgust at Gently. ‘They’re queers, the whole bunch, and that’s putting it mildly. The fact that she was croaked didn’t seem to have penetrated — they were only concerned with the way she lashed paint on.’

‘But they were concerned about that — they held strong opinions?’

‘I couldn’t get them to talk about anything else. And yesterday it broke out again, when they opened the exhibition. We had to grab that picture to save ourselves a riot.’

The picture was produced and displayed on the top of a filing cabinet. On the whole, it seemed to lack something as a potential riot-raiser. A monotone drawing of about eighteen by twelve, it showed practised execution but no startling originality. There were qualities, however, which had been lost in reproduction. The figure wasn’t striding through rain but through a grove of wire-like stalks. And it was a strangely evil figure, something medieval and witch-like; little breasts, like shrivelled gourds, hung from the wasted and wrinkled chest.

‘Urs Graaf… possibly Durer.’

Stephens, it appeared, was knowledgeable in art. Both the Super and Hansom viewed the picture with degrees of distaste.

‘But that’s the sort of thing she’d paint…!’ Hansom lofted his beefy shoulders. ‘She was dried up somewhere herself, with all her beautiful come-on eyes.’

‘Have you seen her other pictures?’

‘There’s a room full of them, back at the flat. I saw a pair that hung in her bedroom, but I hadn’t any reason to look at the rest.’

Oddly, though, the picture seemed to fascinate them, and each one kept his eyes fixed upon it. In the Super’s office there was silence for a minute while they steadily appraised the dead woman’s last conception.

‘Their chairman… what had he to say about her painting?’

‘Oh… him! Well, he was more sober than the rest. As a matter of fact, I don’t think he mentioned it. It was from him that I managed to get the facts about the meeting.’

It had lasted three hours, from seven-thirty till ten-thirty. According to Mallows, it had run its usual course. The members, carrying their pictures, had foregathered in the cellar, and, aided by pints from up the stairs, had criticized each other’s work.

‘There was a little bit of business — subscriptions, reports, the usual thing. Then they started showing the pictures on an easel they’d fetched along. Mallows, being the chairman, was the first to have a crack, after which all present took a hand in the discussion. When they’d had a bellyful of one picture they set up another, and started crabbing that.’

‘Did Mrs Johnson show a picture?’

‘No, but she was a leading critic. Apparently she carried a bit of weight about the cellar. They would listen to her even when they were hotted up — because she was the only sheila there, do you think?’

Then followed the important timetable of the order in which the meeting broke up, though Hansom warned Gently that it wasn’t unanimously subscribed to. Mallows had given him the outline and he had checked it with the various members, but some of them couldn’t remember and others denied its accuracy.

What appeared was that six members had left the cellar before Mrs Johnson, one of them, Shoreby, as early as ten, in order to catch his last bus to Cheapham. The others had left when the proceedings ended, all of them within two or three minutes of each other. Their names were Seymour, Lavery, Farrer, Baxter and Allstanley, but the precise order of their leaving could not be agreed on. Mallows thought that Allstanley was the first to depart, but Allstanley denied it and said that someone went out ahead of him. Lavery admitted that he was one of the first to leave the cellar, but claimed that he had returned to fetch his canvas, which he had forgotten.