In the meantime, he had cultivated his personal relations with Butters, and had become a familiar visitor at Lordham Grange House. They had fished and played golf and gone sailing in Butters’s half-decker, and when Butters went into town, Johnson would take him to lunch at the Bell.
‘And that’s how it’s been going on…’
Butters sounded a little petulant; he had already poured himself another brandy and water. Several times, it had seemed to Gently, the man had shied away from something painful, and now he had come to a halt with the matter still unbroached.
‘You met Mrs Johnson, did you?’
Butters made some sort of a gesture — half turning, as he did so, so that his eyes avoided Gently’s.
‘Yes… that’s just what I want to tell you, but… damn it! I don’t know where to begin. It’ll all come out, I suppose — be plastered across the Sunday papers…’
He came to a stop again, and this time Gently forbore to prompt him. It was, after all, a voluntary statement, and Butters had a right to a sympathetic hearing. And, if what Gently guessed was correct, then Butters was showing a good deal of courage…
‘You understand that we’re a county family — not a rich one, I don’t say that. But we’ve got a certain position to keep up… connections, too. We’ve got a lot of connections.
‘My wife, for example, is a sister of Lady Kempton’s — I met her in ’23 at the Faverham Hunt Ball. And Cathy, she’s married to one of the Pressfords, and Elizabeth’s husband is a nephew of Lord Eyleham. Not that that matters — I’m not a snob, either! And though Johnson has no family, I’ve never held that against him. But the other was a shock, I don’t mind telling you, especially when I first saw it staring out of a paper…’
‘The news of his wife’s death, sir?’ Gently felt that he was losing touch. Butters seemed to have gone off at a tangent from the line he had been about to take.
‘Naturally, that too, with the damning implication; but in the first place, to discover that he’d had a wife at all!’
It was an astonishing declaration, and for the moment it bewildered Gently. He gazed open-eyed at Butters, who, himself, was now staring indignantly.
‘But — in five years — you never knew?’
‘I never had a single suspicion! He was on his own when I met him, and as for his flat, I never went there. No, it wasn’t until I read the paper — until I saw it in black and white; and even then I couldn’t believe it, until I’d had a talk with my daughter.’
‘Your daughter! Where does she come into it?’
Butters’s stare turned into a furious frown. ‘They were engaged — engaged to be married, Superintendent. Or at least, that was the steady impression I received.’
Gently got up and walked over to the window. He felt unable to cope with this, seated in a chair. Johnson… engaged to one of Butters’s daughters! To the daughter of the man who had been the making of his business…
‘And this engagement had been announced?’
‘Obviously not, though we were expecting it. All the time I’d been hinting at it, trying to bring him up to scratch. His excuse was that he was looking for just the right sort of property for them; when he found it, there was going to be a regular announcement.’
‘How long had it gone on?’
‘Oh, he met her right at the start. But in those days she was still at Girton — what a waste of money that was! Then, soon after she finished there, they took to going about together — he wasn’t the match I would have picked for her, but she was the youngest, and nothing went with her. They’ve been thick for a couple of years.’
‘And she — she knew about his wife?’
‘I’ve got to admit it. She knew about everything. She was his mistress all the while, and she says she’s going to have his baby.’
Over these last few words Butters seemed to have difficulty, and there was no reason to doubt the genuineness of his emotion. One could easily imagine the horror with which he had glimpsed those banner headlines, and then had heard, from his daughter’s mouth, that they were trapped in the ghastly business…
‘You did well, sir, to speak up.’
What was the use of a reprimand? Could he be blamed for taking four days to screw his courage to the sticking point?
‘As you said on the phone, this is vital information… I think it may enable us to tie up the case.’
Butters swallowed a gulping draught of his brandy and water, and Gently was glad that the deepening twilight made the room behind him shadowy. Below him, down the romantic but deteriorating terrace gardens, a smoke mist was rising mysteriously from the still, silica-like river.
‘You don’t have to tell me that I should have spoken before… in your place, Superintendent… but I won’t stoop to excuses. I knew on the spot that Johnson had murdered his wife, and I knew that it was my business to put a rope round his neck.
‘But God, when it’s a question of your own flesh and blood! And, to a certain extent, I had other people to think of… And again, it looked at first as though they wouldn’t need my help — up till yesterday, even, I thought they were going to arrest him.
‘Then that picture business happened and the police seemed to be confused. All night I was pacing that hall… I reached for the phone a dozen times.
‘I thought of getting on to Sir Daynes, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t his business. And I knew the Inspector on the case, but in the past… I won’t go into that! Then in the morning I saw you had been called, which wouldn’t have happened unless they’d been stuck… and then I knew I daren’t wait any longer. My only consolation was that you were the man…’
Gently silently sighed to himself — so near, it had been, to his not being the man! He wondered how Butters would have got on with Stephens, who would almost certainly have read him a lecture.
Wouldn’t that reference to the county Chief Constable have got Stephens’s back up, straight away?
‘You might have confided in Sir Daynes, sir…’ He heard the clink of glass and decanter.
‘Yes… I think I might have done that. Failing you, I think I might have done it. But not that other fellow, Hansom… as I say, a motoring offence… Yet, since Tuesday, I’ve been in hell… God, I couldn’t help feeling responsible!
‘If I’d been a proper parent I would never have let it go on. I had a suspicion, once or twice, that things weren’t as innocent as they seemed. But in these days everything is different… I didn’t want to look a fool… and I trusted him, you know. I was sure he wouldn’t let me down.
‘That’s the most damnable thing about it. I liked the fellow, and encouraged him! And to think, that by doing that, I was driving him to desperation…
‘If I’d found out about his wife he would have lost Anne and most of the business… it only wanted her to become pregnant… you see how inevitable it was? There was no other way out, he was forced to do something. His wife was a wrong ’un, it appears, and she wouldn’t give him a divorce…’
Gently turned from the window and came slowly back into the room. Butters was leaning over his knees, his umpteenth brandy shaking in his hand. He wasn’t cut for a tragic figure and his posture looked at first sight comic; yet this very misfortune, paradoxically, had the effect of emphasizing his pathos. And behind him, the damp-stained wallpaper took on the office of a symbol…
‘You have questioned your daughter, I take it?’ He remembered the frightened eyes which had watched him.
‘She’s… I’ve kept her in the house since Tuesday; as a prisoner, if you like…’
‘What was she doing on the Monday evening?’
Butters shuddered. ‘If you don’t mind, Superintendent…’
‘Very well… fetch her down, then. I shall have to see her myself.’
While Butters was absent from the room, Gently made a leisurely and appraising tour of it. In the grey and absorbing twilight he was probably seeing it at its best. Unlike a period piece restored, it lacked a logical unity of style; it had gathered one or two Victorian pieces, and even some items of a later date.
The pictures, however, apart from two portraits, were all landscapes representing the local school. Gently identified a Stark and a pair of Ladbrookes, and a cottage scene which was probably by Vincent. But of their master,
