him as a pick-lock to the problem he had before him. And for this it mattered little that Baxter himself might equate with X, since he could equally well serve as a pointer to himself or to another…
‘I’m just a layman, of course… I think I know what I like.’
‘That goes without saying. Only an artist knows better.’
‘But naturally I get puzzled, faced with a lot of different pictures… in a way, they all seem good. You understand what I mean?’
Baxter did, it was plain from his expression, he could see that Gently was a moron; by his opening remark he had betrayed the soul of a shopkeeper. But there was a note of humility in the policeman’s approach, and Baxter forbore absolutely to crush him.
‘It seems to escape the majority that art appreciation requires training. One does not, by a stroke of brilliance, become a connoisseur overnight. One must learn to judge a painting as a surgeon does an appendectomy — not by the health of the patient but by the skill of the operation.’
Gently nodded his head woodenly. ‘I felt there was rather more to it. It’s not enough to like a picture… you have to know why you shouldn’t like it.’
‘Simplifying it, that’s the point. Your emotional reaction must be set aside. Unless you can train yourself to do that, you will be perpetually floundering in a sea of preferences.’
‘So if I like a picture I should reject it?’
‘Yes. It’s the first step in appreciation.’
Gently nodded more profoundly, his head a little on one side. He really was learning something, his expression seemed to say! Baxter, unmoved, took off his glasses and proceeded to polish them on a scrap of leather; it still seemed touch and go whether he would bother with Gently or not.
‘This exhibition here, for instance… I can’t help feeling lost in it.’
‘They are not a difficult collection.’ Baxter replaced his glasses severely.
‘I can’t make up my mind about them… those fish, there, take them …’
‘You mean those planitonal variations which Arthur Wimbush is exhibiting?’
It was a start, however unpromising, and Gently kept Baxter quietly travelling. He quickly learnt, to his mild surprise, that Wimbush was not the crank he had thought him. The reverse, indeed, was true: Wimbush rippled with significance. Each and every one of his fishes was a planitonal triumph. Like the patient, they may have expired, but nothing could fault the appendectomy.
‘You would say, then, that Wimbush possesses a fair degree of talent?’
‘A rare planitonal cognition. I think you would say that.’
‘Isn’t he friendly with Mr Mallows?’
‘On the contrary, they are unsympathetic.’
Gently made a mental cross against the name of Arthur Wimbush.
They passed on to Shoreby, with whom Baxter was more censorious. He pointed out traces of involuntary emotion which were marring that gentleman’s work.
‘With geometrical panels one must preserve discipline; there should be no undercurrent of excitement, either in grouping or brushwork. You can see for yourself how those triangles pulsate, while the parallelogram is tantamount to a slap in the face. Until he is more mature, Shoreby should leave geometry alone.’
‘He lacks talent, perhaps?’
‘I disagree. He lacks control.’
On the other hand, he was notably friendly with Mr Mallows…
In one way Baxter was showing a scrupulous justice: he had sunk his partisan feelings in a desire to educate Gently. Impartially he treated with the concrete and the abstract, letting nothing of his bias interfere with the lesson. He chided Aymas for the unbridled sensuality of his colour — praised Lavery, in spite of his clumsy-looking splurges; he allowed talent to Farrer, though hampered by bourgeois sentiment, and found planic sensitivity in Allstanley’s wirework. The difficulty lay in getting a comparative judgement from him. All his geese were to be swans for the necessity of the moment. It was Gently’s business as a layman to consider the mechanics of appreciation; the estimation of degrees of talent did not lie within his province.
‘I was looking through the pictures that Mrs Johnson painted…’
Baxter was ‘whiffing’ his stalk-like pipe, making successions of quick popping noises.
‘Oh? Then you noticed the subliminal approach, I suppose, and the regressional tendency towards prenatal cognition?’
‘I noticed erotic fantasies in medieval trappings.’
Baxter looked surprised. ‘You could put it like that.’
‘Would you say that she had talent?’
Baxter whiffed. ‘She had emotive power. But it was probably entirely posited on a disassociated psyche.’
‘Sexual frustration, to put it bluntly?’
‘Y… es. It’s safe to say so.’
‘And was she the only group member with a psychopathic motivation?’
Baxter looked a little startled, but he still kept popping away.
‘I hadn’t thought it before, though of course, you may be right.’
‘Could you give me any suggestions?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Not at the moment. It’s an entirely new conception, and I would need to give it some thought. What put the idea in your head?’
‘Oh, just a general curiosity about painters.’
‘It’s possible that you’ve hit on something — I must really consider the matter.’
Now, instead of drawing him out, he had shut Baxter up. The artist seemed to have nothing more that he wanted to say to Gently. His back leant against a booth, he stood whiffing on and on at his pipe, his eyes far away above the heads of the passing viewers. Gently watched him for a little, equally silent, then he grunted and turned away.
His round with Baxter hadn’t been completely fruitless, nevertheless, since he had got from him a fair idea of how the group members stood with Mallows. There were five who were friends of his, outside the group, and if X was a group member then this quintet was likely to contain him. On a page of his personal notebook he scribbled down these five possibles adding, as was his habit, what seemed most relevant about each of them:
[1] Stephen Aymas. Paints gooey landscapes with some success. Noisy, extroverted. Mallows thinks he will make the grade.
[2] James Farrer, bank manager. Seems a good man at his job. Paints chocolate-boxy flowers. NB Would Mallows think his smile shy? NNB Shouldn’t think Aymas smiles much.
[3] Frederick Allstanley. Still to meet him. Sculpts mainly in wire. Elementary schoolteacher (grounds for delusions of grandeur?).
[4] Jack Seymour. Pal of Aymas’s. Paints minutely worked still lifes. Shy, with shy smile. But only in middle twenties.
[5] Henry Baxter. Pedant. Rather secretive. A professional (and successful) poster artist. Another non-smiler (was Mallows truthful about smile?). NB Does Baxter feel frustd. painting posters? NNB Does he paint anything else?
There were small grounds for optimism in this varied group of possibles, unless Allstanley turned out to be the living image of Mallows’s description. By the car test Aymas was the number-one candidate, but Gently felt less and less inclined to value that theory. There had been no need for a car to have been left on the park. It was enough to represent it there to lure Shirley into the darkness. But it had needed a person who was known to have a car, and this seemed to eliminate Seymour, his gratifying shyness notwithstanding.
Over the remaining two names Gently pondered narrowly. Against Farrer, of course, a black mark already stood. With more or less culpability he had assisted Johnson to escape, which, if he were guilty, it was in his interest to do. Unfortunately his qualifications seemed to end there. He was a success in his profession and it fitted him like a glove. He painted badly, it was true, but there was nothing to show that he took painting seriously; the city had an artistic climate and suggested daubing as a hobby.
This left him with Baxter, his non-smiling pedant, whose head was stuffed with jargon and critical theory; a man the complete antithesis of the brilliant and fertile Mallows — if you liked, the born failure, as against the born succeeder! Of him one could readily believe an inner frustration, a delusion of greatness that smouldered in neglect.
