Alan Hunter - Gently With the Painters

‘So for two years she had attended their meetings?’

‘Roger. And I knew about it all the time.’

‘You knew that they met on the first Monday of each month?’

‘And that the meetings lasted from half-seven to half-ten.’

‘I just wanted to get that clear, Mr Johnson. In your statement you merely said that you didn’t ask her where she was going.’

‘Whizzo. I thought you were leading up to something!’

‘Naturally, I wanted to establish that you knew where and when to find her.’

The smoke hissed through Johnson’s teeth but he made no comment. He was tilting his chair backwards and had got his chin buried in his pullover. Though Gently had purposely sat to his side, the estate agent was facing ahead so that he avoided the light from the window.

‘You’ve got a useful set of reference books in your office, Mr Johnson…’

Again there was no comment except the fierce expulsion of some smoke. He had a peculiar way of doing it, it was like the growling of a dog; the smoke emerged in an upward fan between the two horns of his massive moustache.

‘The current Kelly’s… is that a Blomefield?… and surely a run of Ladbrooke’s Churches. And an estate agent like yourself should have a fairish selection of maps…’

Johnson slid open a drawer of his desk and pulled out a mint-looking Ordnance Survey map. He weighed it for a second in his hand, and then adroitly copped it to Gently.

‘You can drop all the crafty stuff straight away, cocker. I tell you, I’m used to interrogation by experts. I’ve had three thousand and ten official lectures on security — plus the pleasure of being put through the mill by the Nazis.’

Gently shrugged, examining the map that Johnson had tossed him. It was indeed new, but bore a typed label on its cover:

‘Route taken by Derek Johnson on Monday, 5 July, with approximate times and number of pints imbibed.’

Inside the route was marked in heavy green ink: it corresponded exactly to what Johnson had given in his statement.

‘When did you cook this up?’

‘After the locals started in on me.’

‘For your benefit or theirs?’

‘Mine of course — don’t be naive.’

‘You know that it doesn’t give you an alibi for the murder?’

‘A bloody shame, isn’t it? But that’s my story, and sticking to it.’

Gently nodded his head slowly and with a little reluctant admiration. He was beginning to understand why Hansom had had his doubts about Johnson. The man possessed a certain panache, a degree of bold and persuasive frankness. One could set a query against it, but on the balance, felt inclined to accept it.

‘Why did you move up here from Bedford?’

There was another thing, too, concerning Johnson. The case against him rested entirely on suspicion, it didn’t admit of any pressure or of trapping by contradiction. With no alibi to support, he had no worthwhile handle to him.

‘Not to murder my wife, you can bet your shirt on that. I was looking for a business, and there was one up here for sale. I didn’t pinch my capital either — it was left me by my mother. As for the district, I’ve always liked it — I was stationed up here for most of the war.’

‘Is it a good one for the business?’

‘It depends on what you handle. Being outside the commuting range, the properties here are relatively cheap. So I look for customers down south who want more consequence than they can afford in Surrey. A four-bedroom man down there can usually rise to eight in Northshire.’

‘You deal mostly in country properties?’

‘Roger. I specialize in them.’

‘Do you have any difficulty in finding them?’

‘Why the hell should I? There’s plenty about.’

For an instant it seemed to Gently that Johnson was uneasy, and he deliberately paused to see if anything would develop. But the silence produced nothing except some more hissing smoke, and then the replacement of the first cigarette by a second.

‘You yourself prefer to live in the city, however?’

Was he imagining it, or had he really touched something?

‘Why not? I was born and bred in a town. There have never been any swede-bashers in our line of the family.’

‘And your wife felt the same way?’

‘No she didn’t, as a matter of fact. Since you’re curious, I had some thoughts of moving out of the city. Not that it would have made a scrap of difference — things had gone too far for that. But a flat’s a small place when you get on each other’s wick.’

‘You’d actually settled on a place?’

This time it was Johnson who made the pause. For several seconds he fanned out smoke before he decided on a reply.

‘No, I hadn’t, suppose it matters. I was still looking round for one. Being an estate agent and all that, one doesn’t rush into properties quickly.’

‘Was your wife very insistent about it?’

‘No. You can lay off sniping round that. My wife had given up being insistent about anything — except ignoring her husband’s existence.’

Gently stared at the map, which was still unfolded over his knees. His instinct assured him that they were on a very interesting subject. He explored it for a little, trying to see if he could tie it in, but it involved him in hypotheses of which the facts gave no suggestion. First catch your fact…

He sighed and returned to Johnson.

‘Your wife was younger than you, I believe?’

‘You know she was if you read my statement.’

‘Seven years, I believe it was.’

‘Let’s be precise — seven years and two months.’

‘Where did you meet your wife, Mr Johnson?’

‘In Bedford. She was my boss’s secretary. When I came out of the airworks I took a job with Wright and McOubrey — they’re estate agents in the town. I went there to learn the business.’

‘She had relatives in Bedford, of course?’

‘Her father. He died two years ago. Then there’s a cousin who lives in Evesham. That’s the lot, as far as I know.’

‘Did you ever meet the cousin?’

‘Only once, when he came to the wedding. He’s a thin and miserable type, he manages a canning factory over there. I sent him a note with the time of the funeral — that was yesterday — but he didn’t turn up.’

The phone rang on his desk and Johnson scooped it to his ear. In the clerk’s office below a customer was apparently asking for him. He listened for half a minute, his eyes fixed in front of him, then he barked out some instructions and slammed the phone back on its rest.

The object his eyes had been fixed upon was a small ivory paper knife. It was yellowed, as though by sunlight, and a little serrated at the edges.

‘Where was it we got to…?’

His eyes flashed at Gently aggressively. Then, as they had done at first, they wandered away and about the room. He lit a third cigarette from the butt of the second, grinding the latter out with emphasis in a tray which bore the RAF crest.

‘We’d got to where you met your wife in Bedford.’

‘Roger. It’s a day I shan’t forget in a hurry. She came as a temporary when McOubrey’s secretary was sick, but she only left it to marry me — she was a sticker, was dear Shirley.’

‘You thought differently, then, I take it?’

‘I’m not so blazing sure of that. Ask any second man how he came to be married, and if he’s honest, he won’t be able to tell you. She wasn’t my type of female at all. She was lean and blonde and a bit of a pansy. She used a rank sort of scent which I loathed the smell of — like poppies and horse piss, if you can imagine the combination. Well, I suppose she had her eye on me, that’s the way it usually happens. It gratified my vanity and I used to take her out. We went to dances and the flicks, and home to meet her papa, and before you could say “bingo” I was standing at the altar.