Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

complaining about that. I’m just in a spot where a fag would count.’
    She sighed again, then smoothed her hair and drew herself straighter.
    ‘If you think I deliberately went after Johnny and seduced him,’ she said, ‘you’d be more or less right. I think that’s what I had in mind, though it’s hard to separate and label motives. They have a way of being something else which somehow won’t go into words. But you may think the worst by all means. Let’s say I wanted to seduce Clytie Fazakerly’s husband. Not knowing, of course, he’d been seduced so many times that my poor effort was academic.’
    ‘You felt it was revenge for what she’d done to Beryl.’
    ‘Oh, and to me. I had a personal grudge. What happened to Beryl seemed to hit me too, it was like bad luck that rubbed off. First, I had to give up the houseboat. Then I lost my job with United Press. Then, I don’t know, I was on a losing streak, I had a miserable affair with a married man. So all my bright promise had come to nothing and I slunk back home to lick my wounds. And I laid it at Clytie Fazakerly’s door: Beryl in New Zealand, me in Rochester.’
    ‘But you’d soon find out that Johnny was a womaniser.’
    She winced. ‘I’d rather you used a different word. It isn’t true, either. He was driven that way. I trust him. I believe he’s been faithful to me.’
    ‘Does he know what made him attractive?’
    ‘No.’ Her eyes found his. ‘And perhaps you’ll be charitable enough not to tell him, especially since it’s so different now. You see, I love Johnny. Like that. It doesn’t matter why I picked up with him. In fact, it might have been the reason after all, with his being who he is a special bonus. I said it was hard to separate motives. But I love Johnny. And he loves me.’
    ‘Then of course you’d have had some plans for him.’
    ‘Plans?’
    ‘If you’d loved him and he’d loved you. Carrying on as you were wasn’t very satisfactory. Going shares with a yacht club in Johnny’s weekends.’
    ‘You’re so complimentary, aren’t you?’ she said.
    ‘Just constitutionally curious, Miss Johnson.’
    ‘I’d say you were too cynical for your own good. But that’s probably a policeman’s function too.’
    Gently hunched a shoulder. ‘So what were your plans?’
    ‘We didn’t have any plans,’ she said. ‘I was just trying to build up Johnny’s confidence, that was the only plan I ever had.’
    ‘But where was that going?’
    ‘Nowhere at all.’
    ‘And nowhere at all was satisfactory?’
    ‘I tell you,’ she said, twisting, ‘it was too impossible. There was nothing to be done while Johnny was down.’
    ‘But perhaps you had thought a little beyond that, to the time when you’d put some stuffing in him, to the time when he might stand up to his wife: to the time, even, when he might be rid of her?’
    ‘No, I didn’t!’
    ‘It didn’t enter your thoughts?’
    ‘Oh, God, yes, I thought about it, then! Yes, I thought about it, like a win on the pools or anything else that could never happen. But that’s all I did. I thought about it.
    ‘But never how it might be brought about?’
    ‘A divorce. I dreamed of a divorce.’
    ‘And nothing else?’
    ‘I hoped the house would fall on her!’
    She covered her face with her hands and gave a few moaning sobs, but they were over in a moment and she was facing him again, tearfully fierce.
    ‘You don’t mean that!’ she cried. ‘It’s too ridiculous to take seriously.’
    ‘What don’t I mean, Miss Johnson?’
    ‘That I – that I was a sort of Lady Macbeth! That I egged Johnny on to kill his wife, and hoped the fool would get away with it – or that the police would never guess. No – you can’t be serious.’
    ‘But that wasn’t my meaning, Miss Johnson.’
    ‘If it wasn’t, what was?’
    ‘I think you’ve guessed already. You had a vital stake in this business.’
    ‘Me!’ Her eyes expanded. ‘No, this is just a bad joke. As though there were a way to drag me in, with all the nagging in the world.’
    ‘For instance, Johnny left you here, and found you here when he returned. But I believe Sergeant Buttifant omitted to ask how you spent the time between.’
    ‘And if I say I was in town you’ll arrest me?’
    ‘Were you in town, Miss Johnson?’
    ‘Oh yes. I go there, you know. I had a lunch appointment with the editor of
Ton.
’
    ‘On Monday?’
    ‘On Monday. Now why don’t you produce the hand-cuffs?’
    Gently