frame…’
‘Just a minute! What were you doing at the exhibition this morning?’
‘I… well, if you must know! I went to touch up my exhibit…’
‘And where does Johnson come into it?’
‘He… isn’t it too obvious? It’s his revenge, because he thinks that one of us killed his wife…’
Hansom was watching Baxter curiously, and now he shot a look at Gently. Gently shrugged, looking wooden, but he understood his colleague’s hint.
‘Well… we’d better go and look at it. Did you lock the gate after you?’
‘Yes — no, I can’t remember! I ran all the way…’
He had entered the Gardens by the gate at the rear, the one which gave access to Market Avenue. Here, as at the provision market, men were busy with brooms and hoses, and in the air lingered the musky smell of animal occupation. Baxter’s Singer stood alone by a granite horse trough. It was a pre-war ten with rather dubious tyres. He had not locked the gate, which was secured by a chain and padlock, and in fact it stood ajar with the key still in the lock.
‘Holy smoke… just look at this!’
A single glance took in the havoc. It was as though a malicious child had been let loose among the pictures. Raw destruction, it was just that, the very sight of it kindling anger. Profoundly shocked, one could only feel enraged at the insensate author of it.
‘That’s just how I found it… I didn’t touch a thing…’
Faced with it, Gently could better appreciate Baxter’s distraction. They weren’t masterpieces, perhaps, those scored and tattered canvases, but they were the products of civilized people patiently cultivating their talents. And now, in an hour of savagery, they had been brainlessly destroyed. It was the treachery that hurt: one felt that something had been betrayed.
‘You see? It couldn’t have been one of us…’
That was true: such a thing seemed unbelievable. An artist might conceivably have mutilated another’s picture, but unless he were completely crazed he could never have stooped to this barbarity.
Silently they moved along the line of damaged exhibits, each one of which had been separately, conscientiously attacked. Canvases hung in ribbons, glass lay shattered under empty frames, Allstanley’s ‘Head of a Laughing Woman’ was stamped out flat beside its pedestal. It seemed the work of some berserk gorilla which had been trained in the arts of destruction. One couldn’t comprehend the mind behind it; the single reaction was of seething anger.
‘Where’s that knife you talked about?’
‘Here, look… at the end. Stuck in this stupid thing of Farrer’s — he didn’t think it was worth a slash.’
There was no mystery about the knife — it was the fellow of the murder weapon; the same triangular sliver of stainless steel, stamped with the name of the Sheffield cutler. It had been driven hard into the frame of the picture, deliberately cutting through the artist’s name. The canvas of this one had escaped a hacking but the force of the blow had wrenched the frame from its brackets.
‘Do you remember if you touched the knife?’
‘I… yes, I may have done. I honestly don’t know. I was too upset.’
‘Why did you touch it?’
‘I don’t know if I did or not! I’d read about the other one, and felt certain that this was the same.’
Hansom murmured to Gently:
‘Do you want my theory? Chummie’s got it in for Farrer for helping Johnson to get away. That’s why he got the knife instead of having his picture slashed… let’s show it to him and watch his face. I’ll bet he doesn’t grin this time!’
Carefully, Gently disengaged the picture, turning it to the light to examine the knife. There were apparently no prints on the polished metal, and apart from some hack marks, the knife looked new.
‘Did any picture of that knife get published?’
‘Yeah — or of one just like it. The local carried it, and so did the Echo.’
So that anybody, besides the murderer, might have committed this outrage.
‘What happened to you after I saw you yesterday?’
Baxter had calmed himself now and had cleaned and put on his glasses. It was surprising what a difference those round lenses made to him; at once, from being a harassed owl, he began to be his contemptuous self.
‘I really don’t see what that has to do with it.’
‘Never mind! I’d like you to answer the question.’
‘Very well — I had my tea, and then I drove out to Floatham. I made a sketch of the mill there for a poster I have commissioned.’
‘What time did you go to tea?’
‘At six, or soon after.’
‘When the exhibition closed, in fact?’
‘I am not trying to conceal it.’
‘And that, of course, would be when you borrowed the key from Watts?’
‘Exactly.’ Baxter sniffed. ‘Your deduction is keen, Superintendent.’
‘So it seems that you had the key from around six p.m. yesterday evening?’
‘I did. And I have no worthwhile alibi to offer you.’
‘You finished your sketch and then went home?’
‘To my cottage at Dunton. Where I live by myself.’
‘And that is the only key?’
‘It’s the only one we have, though I dare say you’ll find some others if you inquire at the Castle.’
Abruptly Gently left them and stalked out of the Gardens. Across the Avenue they were still hosing pens and forking up the soiled straw. He picked on the driver of the lorry:
‘When did you get here this morning?’
They began at seven, he was told, but they had seen nobody in the Gardens.
‘When did that Singer park there?’ This they hadn’t precisely noticed, but a consensus of their opinion was that it hadn’t been there for long. One of the sweepers had seen Baxter come out. They couldn’t recall any suspicious noises. A number of people had gone by, mostly transport workers, but the only wheeled traffic had been bicycles and a truck.
He returned to the Gardens to find Hansom at work on Baxter — a classic example of bludgeon versus rapier. If anything the artist seemed to be enjoying the contest, and small head tilted, chose his stinging ripostes deliberately.
‘You will notice, I trust, that my own picture has suffered…?’
Gently ignored him, drawing the Inspector aside. ‘We’ll have to treat this as serious though it may be only a hoax — some person with a grudge, who likes to make things spectacular! I’m afraid we’ll have to rope in a lot of people. It’s going to be a day of old-fashioned routine…’
‘Do you think it could be Johnson?’
‘No. That doesn’t make sense. If there’s any link at all, it’s in the exception made of Farrer.’
‘Yeah — that’s my impression. Chummie doesn’t like Farrer.’
‘We’ll look him over first, after you’ve set the wheels turning.’
Farrer was a family man; he had a teenage son and daughter. It was the latter, clad in a dressing gown, who admitted the policeman into the bank house. Here there was an air of Sunday mornings, of relaxation and petty carelessness. One smelt some bacon being fried and saw, on a table, last night’s cups. They were taken into the lounge, the curtains of which had to be hastily drawn, while the chairs pushed together in a semicircle suggested that the family had been watching TV.
‘I’ll just see if Daddy is out of the bathroom…’
The girl went out quickly, clutching her dressing gown together. A minute or two later her brother peered in, found a paperback western and retired without speaking.
‘It must be nice to manage a bank!’ Hansom prowled round the room, allotting price tags to the contents. He was particularly struck by the TV and by the voluptuous Persian carpet. It was a room without taste, however, and
