Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

paused. There was a touch of virago in the way Sarah Johnson was glaring at him. Her head was drawn down on her shoulders and her small mouth was dragged.
    ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’ll give me details. How do you make the journey to town.’
    ‘I drive there. I’m not so impoverished that I can’t afford a car. I left here at half past eleven and I was in Southampton Street at about a quarter to one. I met Molly Steward, she’s the fashion editor, and we had a pub lunch in the Prince of Wales. She was giving me the new line they’re going to push this winter. And after that I ordered some wool at Mallenders’ branch in the Strand. Then I pottered a bit round the shops. Then I drove back here.’
    ‘When did you arrive?’
    ‘Fivish.’
    ‘So you were only just ahead of Johnny?’
    ‘Oh, I haven’t a leg to stand on. I drive a TR3, too.’
    ‘How long were you pottering around the shops?’
    ‘Over an hour. Nearly two. And I didn’t meet anyone who would remember me, so I might just as well have been in Chelsea.’
    ‘You had time to go there, Miss Johnson.’
    ‘Yes. It’s too perfect.’
    ‘And you didn’t go there . . . not perhaps to have an interview with Mrs Fazakerly?’
    She stared at him, then laughed bitterly. ‘You can work it all in, can’t you?’ she said. ‘Just show you the hind-leg of a rabbit and already there’s game-pie on the menu. But I’m not your game-pie, Superintendent. You’ll have to make shift with poor Johnny. Because I was nowhere near Chelsea on Monday, and I certainly didn’t interview Clytie Fazakerly.’
    ‘Then why was she suddenly so inimical towards you.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Yes, why, Miss Johnson. That’s the question. Apparently you were just another woman of Johnny’s. Why weren’t you ignored like all the others?’
    Sarah Johnson got up. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘And furthermore I don’t care. It’s because of nothing I’ve said or done to her, you can write that down in your note-book. And now if you don’t mind, and if you’re not arresting me, I’ve things to get on with.’
    She went to the table and opened a drawer and took out a new twenty packet of Player’s. She lit one and inhaled deeply. She drove a cloud of smoke towards Gently.

 
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    H IS RETURN TRIP was made with lights and with less bravura than the outward run. In town, the rush-hour jamming had eased again into a respite of semi-free movement. He drove through New Cross and Camberwell and crossed the river at Vauxhall Bridge. Outside Divisional H.Q. he parked in the V.I.P. slot, which the Sceptre was now clicking into as though it owned it.
    ‘Sir.’
    A uniformed man came over and saluted.
    ‘Well?’
    ‘A message from Inspector Reynolds, sir. He’s been called out on the Fazakerly case, and he’d like you to wait for him if it’s convenient.’
    Gently stared at him. ‘Where’s the Inspector gone?’
    ‘To Carlyle Court, sir. About half an hour ago.’
    ‘What was he after?’
    ‘He didn’t say, sir.’
    ‘Right,’ Gently grunted. ‘I’ll be in his office.’
    He went on up, yielding to a compulsion to flick one of the rubber plants as he passed it, and let himself into the fluorescent brightness and bleak unhospitality of Reynolds’ office. His eye searched for a palliative, and found an evening paper spread on the desk. He dumped himself down by it. The paper, predictably, was open at an account of Fazakerly’s apprehension.
PENTHOUSE SLAYING HUSBAND FOUND
    Walks Into Yard
    Fazakerly Assists Police
John Sigismund Fazakerly, 38, husband of the woman whose battered body was found in a luxury flat in Chelsea, today walked into Scotland Yard and offered the Police his assistance. They had been searching for him since Monday when the body was found. He has been taken to Chelsea Police Station where he is helping the Police investigation. According to one source Fazakerly claims to have spent the past three days on a sea trip. A police spokesman said that an arrest was probable ‘within the next few hours’.
     
    Gently was mentioned cautiously as having visited Divisional H.Q. after the transfer, and Reynolds was pictured striding sharp-eyed down the steps of Carlyle Court. No picture of Fazakerly was apparently available. Instead they had one of the Murdered Woman. She was wearing a sack coat of two seasons ago and had a bemused, almost imbecile, expression. It had no hint of that strange nakedness which was