where possible, not to interrupt the artist’s answers.
‘When did you first meet Miss Campion?’
Dutt would excise the superfluous verbiage.
‘Where did you say she posed for this picture?’
‘Which were the days on which she posed?’
Incoherent at the beginning, Simmonds gradually staged a revival. The even flow of the questions soothed him, coaxed him into a readier response. He paused to drink long draughts of the fruit drink which Mrs Mears had brought in. From where he sat he could see nothing outside except the pink and yellow heads of the hollyhocks.
‘On the Tuesday afternoon.’
They were getting towards the end; the end, at least, of what Simmonds had told him.
‘She left you where, you say?’
‘On the beach near my tent.’
‘And what did you do then?’
‘I went up and got my tea.’
Gently paused, listening to Dutt’s slow pencil go over the paper. When it came to a stop he swivelled round in his chair. Simmonds was sitting, glass in hand, looking much more collected: he even contrived to smirk at Gently with that ingratiating undertone.
‘Where did you get that bruise from?’
‘Bruise?’
‘The one on your cheekbone.’
‘Oh that… on the tent pole. I hit it as I was coming out.’
‘So it wasn’t caused by a fist?’
‘Fist? I…!’
Simmonds looked at him pitifully.
‘Mr Mixer’s fist on Tuesday afternoon — after he pulled you and Miss Campion out of your tent?’
The young man shivered and set his glass down on a cabinet near him. The blood was beginning to drain from his feverish cheeks. He made a fluttering movement with his hand, a sort of gesture that didn’t materialize. He looked very much as though he wanted to be sick.
‘I would have told you… I didn’t think…’
‘You didn’t think that I’d get to hear about it?’
‘No… not that! It didn’t seem important.’
‘What was so trivial about it — when she was murdered a few hours later?’
Again that silly fluttering movement, this time with both hands. Really it was embarrassing to witness the artist’s mauvaise honte.
‘I wanted to tell you about it! Can’t you see that? I want to tell you everything. I hate having to lie. But what would you think?’
‘I think you can lie when it suits you.’
‘But that’s just the point! If you’re going to take that attitude.’
The puzzle was that he sounded sincere in a naive and curious way. One felt that he honestly did want to make a confidant out of Gently. The memory of another case flashed across the detective’s mind, one in which, at his request, there had been a psychiatric examination. The subject there, a convicted sex-criminal, had shown much the same response. Only in his case they had known for a fact that the ‘revelations’ were crude romancing.
‘You see, you can’t help being a policeman, can you? By that I don’t mean… but there has to be a difference!’
‘Never mind about that.’
‘But I want you to understand…’
‘What I want to understand is what happened on Tuesday afternoon.’
Here was another little surprise: Simmonds could talk about it freely. He needed only the slightest prompting to give them a fully-rounded account. It was as though the whole thing had been waiting on the tip of his tongue — sometimes Gently had to slow him for the benefit of the toiling Dutt.
‘It was she who suggested it, going into the tent. She knew I wouldn’t have dared ask her — it hadn’t been like that, you know! There wasn’t anybody about, except some cars on the track. I don’t know why she did it unless it was to pay me for the painting.
‘And in fact, I hardly had time to do up the ties.’
It all checked neatly with what Gently had been told, allowing for some softening of the facts about the beating. In Simmonds’s account this wasn’t quite so one-sided: he had exchanged a few blows before Mixer knocked him down.
‘What was Miss Campion doing?’
‘Naturally she tried to stop us. She kept calling Mixer a brute and telling him not to be a fool. But in spite of his size, if my foot hadn’t slipped…’
‘She went off with him, did she?’
‘Yes, he ordered her to go with him.’
‘And that was the last time you saw her?’
‘The last time… until…’
Now it was difficult to stop him from elaborating the details. His awkwardness had gone and he was even picking his words. A great load, you would have thought, had been lifted from his mind: at last he could tell it all, he could spill it out freely.
Why then was Gently’s face growing glummer and glummer… why did he return to the window and stare unseeingly at the hollyhocks?
‘There… I think that’s everything. If you’ve got it down I’ll sign it. I don’t want you to think… but you know I would have told you! Honestly, I’m not one to tell lies as a rule.’
‘Just one more question.’
Gently’s shoulders were hunched. There was a deadness in his voice which made Dutt look up quickly.
‘Amongst all the rest of it you seem to have forgotten something. We know when Miss Campion left you… but what time did she come back?’
Simmonds was wretchedly sick and had to be taken to the bathroom, a proceeding which greatly concerned Mrs Mears. She fetched a flask of brandy from a chest in her bedroom, and seemed half in a mind to give Gently a lecture.
‘Why don’t you let him be for a bit?’
Gently thanked her but made no comment. He sat at the desk, ruffling through the leaves of Kelly’s; he seemed quite unperturbed by the artist’s latest calamity.
‘Feeling better, are you?’
The inquiry was academic. Simmonds’s face wore a greenish tint and he shivered now and again. He sat half doubled-up, his arms folded across his knees: his attitude was one of the completest dejection.
Gently relinquished the desk and returned to his previous seat. Under the tree the reporters were still busy at their cards. They had been joined by a straggle of the curious from the beach, and occasionally one or another of them threw a quick glance at the Police House.
‘You couldn’t know about that!’
The artist’s voice was a mumble, and after he’d said it he was stricken by a fit of the shivering.
‘It was dark… there was nobody… nobody could have told you! You’re guessing about it, that’s all you’re doing.’
‘But it’s true all the same.’
‘Not unless I say so!’
‘Whether you say so or not. I know too much about her.’
‘But you couldn’t know that!’
‘It’s simple enough, isn’t it? Being Rachel, she came back: she wasn’t the sort to let you down. Especially after Mixer had thrashed you, right underneath her eyes.’
