Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

with lines of pencilled figures. A painted book-case stuffed with paperbacks gave colour to a dark corner, and some miscellaneous chairs and a cottage settee made up the remainder of the furniture. It was dull; yet unexpectedly, it added up to something agreeable.
    Sarah Johnson pointed to the table. ‘I’m sorry if I kept you waiting,’ she said. ‘I was busy codifying a pattern. It’s the way I make a living.’
    Gently picked up one of the panels. ‘You design these things?’ he asked.
    ‘Does it sound improbable? But yes, I design them. That’s a mohair bolero for the winter collection.’
    ‘It’s very beautiful.’
    ‘Thank you. I hope my customer thinks the same.’
    ‘Who buys them from you?’
    ‘Oh, mostly wool manufacturers. And I sell them to magazines, too.’
    She was flushing. She turned away to straighten some items on the table, a pencil, a steel rule, a rounded block of india-rubber. She was slim in stretch slacks and an exquisitely-knitted sweater and her hair, which had a natural wave, swung forward about her face as she stooped.
    ‘But . . . about Johnny. Oh, please sit down!’
    She swept some papers from an easy-chair. Her movements were quick and she wafted a sweet, fur-like odour from her person.
    ‘I mean, is he all right? One hears so much . . .’
    ‘He was quite cheerful when I left him.’
    ‘It’s so terrible. Do sit down! I feel I should be there trying to help him.’
    Gently sat in the easy-chair and Miss Johnson perched on an arm of the cottage settee. It may have been accidental, but her face was turned from the direct light of the window. She had an oval face, slightly pointed, with a shapely nose and a small mouth, and her hands, clasped about her knee, were long-fingered with revealed bones.
    ‘Are you . . . the other man was only a sergeant.’
    ‘I’m not in charge of the case,’ Gently said.
    ‘But they’ve called you in.’
    ‘Not even that. In fact, we’re pretty well on the same side.’
    ‘I don’t understand!’
    ‘Fazakerly came to me. My job is at New Scotland Yard. He turned himself in there this morning. He’s a distant relative by marriage.’
    ‘Related to you?’
    ‘To my brother-in-law. I did meet him once, years ago.’
    ‘Then you’re – actually – helping him?’
    Gently hunched a shoulder. ‘I’m looking after his interests, you can say that. But don’t misunderstand me, Miss Johnson, I’m not convinced of his innocence. And if I can help the prosecution to make their case, I’ll be in duty bound to do it.’
    Her eyes widened in the shadow. ‘But,’ she cried, ‘he
is
innocent! You must know that if you’ve talked to him. Johnny wouldn’t hurt anyone.’
    ‘There’s always a first time, Miss Johnson.’
    ‘Not with Johnny. It’s not possible.’
    ‘Perhaps you don’t altogether know him.’
    ‘Oh, I do. Yes, I do.’
    ‘Still, I’m not convinced myself, and I must make that plain. I’m willing to help him where I can, but first of all I’m a policeman.’
    She slowly shook her head at him. ‘Then you’re doing nothing,’ she said. ‘If you don’t believe him you won’t help him. No, that’s too much to expect. But he didn’t do it for all that. I know, and nothing you say can alter it. It’s his rotten wife who’s at the bottom of it – I don’t know how, but she is.’
    ‘She didn’t kill herself, Miss Johnson.’
    ‘It was her rottenness that brought it about.’
    ‘I’ll give you that.’
    ‘Her utter vileness. She was a devil. She deserved everything.’
    ‘You knew her, then?’
    ‘I? No! She never set foot in Rochester.’
    ‘But you’d come into London, wouldn’t you. To meet your editors, that sort of thing?’
    Her hair swung. ‘Yes, I do. But they’re in the Street, not in Chelsea. Oh no, I heard all about her from Johnny: and that was enough, I can tell you.’
    ‘Johnny may have been prejudiced.’
    She twisted contemptuously. ‘It’s easy enough to say that. But you had only to see what she’d done to him to know what sort of a depraved bitch she was. Because Johnny’s decent, that’s the tragedy. He isn’t what he’d have you believe. He’s just been treated so badly so long that he’s come to believe he’s rotten himself. But I know him, and it’s not so. And if you’d any perception you’d know it too. It’s worse, it’s the other way round, he’s so damned nice at the bottom of him. The times are he’s made me feel humble, he’s basically