‘A desperate state of affairs indeed! No wonder it presented a scene of chaos. The tradition of a thousand years was dead, and man was left without a precedent…’
‘And so you got all this… hocus-pocus?’
‘Yes. It was every man for himself. Theories, slogans, cranks and abuse — art became a bedlam of heroes and panic. And now, to cap it, there’s the “New Criticism”, to prove that a couple of blacks make a white.
‘If you are faced with an art which is meaningless, why, you proclaim that art shouldn’t have a meaning…’
At that stage they had returned to the doctrine, and it lasted until Withers called them to lunch; once Mallows had fairly got into the subject he pressed it along like a yacht under full sail.
‘My dear fellow, I can lecture all day…’
Gently’s acknowledging shrug was rueful. But he hadn’t been bored during that enthusiastic monologue, and all the while, round the corner, lurked the prospect of fried chicken…
But this, unhappily, he was destined never to eat; he was called away to the phone before he had even finished his soup. It wasn’t Stephens but Hansom who had made a call so untimely, and there was a mocking ring in the Chief Inspector’s voice.
‘I thought you’d like to hear how the Johnson boyo was doing. You know, he always struck me as a restless sort of character.’
‘How do you mean…?’
‘He’s done a skip act — bolted — skedaddled out of town. He cleared his bank account at eleven, and that’s the last that anyone’s seen of him.’
‘But what about the tail?’
‘Yeah.’ Hansom sounded a little sour. ‘He fell for the oldest gag in the book — Johnson went in at the front door and came out at the back. That’s why it’s taken so long to hear about it. Our dumb-bell stood waiting there over an hour. Then he did a quick tour of Johnson’s flat and office — all that, before he decided to let us know.’
‘You’ve got an alert going?’
‘Yep. Shoot him on sight. And that’s not as funny as you think it is, either. You want to know what the boyo was hoarding in his safe deposit? It was a souvenir Luger, with a belt full of ammo!’
Gently clamped down the receiver and swore, far from gently.
CHAPTER NINE
Johnson’s red MG was parked blatantly in front of the bank, which was a branch in a street only a stone’s throw from his office. A constable stood by it with the self-conscious air of picketed constables. A police car, Hansom’s, was jammed in behind Johnson’s.
‘The Chief Inspector is with the manager, sir.’
Gently nodded and strode on in. Behind their counter with its barricades of varnished mahogany the clerks glanced quickly, deprecatingly towards him.
‘Superintendent Gently…’
‘This way, sir, please.’
A counter flap was lifted for him, and he was led down an aisle of desks.
In the office he found Stephens as well as Hansom. The young Inspector avoided his eye; he had an awkward, apologetic look.
Hansom quickly took Gently aside:
‘This geezer knows more than he’s letting on! There’s only one back way out of here, and it goes through the private hall of the bank house…’
‘What does he say about it?’
‘Says that Johnson was a friend of his.’
The manager was, as Gently had realized, the man he had met in the George III. His smile had now become a little less cordial, but he was still making an effort to keep it in place.
‘So… we meet again, Superintendent!’ He made a wan attempt to sound facetious. ‘I didn’t imagine that it would have been quite so soon…’
Like Stephens, he had an apology in the way he carried himself, but unlike the detective he suffered from no trace of awkwardness. As a senior bank official he understood the airs and graces: he made a slight, ingratiating movement as he felt Gently’s deliberate scrutiny.
‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me exactly what happened?’
‘Certainly, Superintendent. I’ve just been telling these gentlemen.’
‘You’re James Farrer, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, that’s my name… as you know, I am one of the Palette Group members.’
Gently grunted, his mind switching momentarily to the exhibition. Now he remembered one of the bank manager’s pictures — a rather commonplace affair, a still life of roses.
‘Johnson was shown in here at eleven or thereabouts. I should tell you that I know him socially, that’s to say, he belongs to my club. He informed me that he wanted to close both his accounts — he was in some sort of a crisis; I understood it to be financial.’
‘Did he say it was financial?’
‘No.’ Farrer whipped up his smile. ‘But in a bank manager’s office one rarely hears of any other kind. In any case, I understood him so… I even offered to give him advice. However, he only wanted his money, and it was not my place to question him.’
‘Didn’t it strike you as being just a little bit queer?’ Hansom weighed in with his heavy sarcasm.
‘It did cross my mind, I have to admit… but then, you fellows didn’t seem to be worrying about him.’
‘You could have stalled him and got on the phone!’
‘I’m sorry.’ Farrer shrugged his shoulders politely. ‘I would certainly have done so had I known he was wanted, but of course, in my eyes, he was still a free agent.’
Gently inquired: ‘How much did you let him have?’
Farrer consulted a memo which lay on his desk.
‘From his current account, seven hundred pounds… and another six hundred against his deposits. That was the best I could do at a moment’s notice. In cash, I mean. He wanted small notes.’
‘What about his safe deposit?’
‘He emptied his box. Naturally, I’m not supposed to know what was in it. Since I advised him about his investments, however… if you insist, I can give you a fairly good guess.’
‘It might be useful.’
‘Well… ten or eleven thousand… bearer bonds, preference… some government stock.’
‘And a Luger pistol?’
‘Yes, that… he once showed it to me.’
‘Did he show you his licence?’
Farrer shrugged again, smiling thinly.
‘All right — how long was he occupied by these transactions?’
‘Not more than half an hour. He was in a hurry — did I say?’
‘And then?’
‘Well, then he left, after shaking my hand.’
‘By the back door — through your hall?’
‘It’s the quickest way into Shadwell Street.’
‘And of course — you were friends!’ Hansom bit in again. ‘And of course, you didn’t ask him why he was scuttling out at the back! And of course he didn’t mention that there was a detective watching the front — when we’re all so damned polite we don’t talk about these things!’
Farrer winced under the attack, but clung to the shreds of his official smile. Too clearly he was a man who couldn’t be bullied out of his composure.
‘He asked to use that way out as a favour, as he had done once or twice before. It happens to be nearer for his office. I am very sorry if it discommoded you.’
‘Yeah, I’ll bet you are!’ Hansom could detect the delicate taunt. ‘But don’t think we’re so dumb as people make us out, either. There’s a little misdemeanour called “obstructing the police”, and I wouldn’t like to say that we couldn’t pin it on you.’
‘Always supposing that you had evidence to support it, Inspector.’
Hansom gave one of his snarls, but he knew when he was beaten.
‘This money…’ Gently took up the ball again. ‘Can you remember what sort of notes it was in?’
Farrer glanced at the memo. ‘Mostly in ones and tens. But I had to give him the odd five hundred pounds in fivers.’
‘And you’ve got a note of them?’
‘Yes. They were new and numbered consecutively.’