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centred, I believe, on Mrs Johnson’s exhibit?’
    ‘That was only the spark which ignited the gunpowder.’
    Was there a suspicion of briskness in Mallows’s reply? Gently borrowed a moment while he felt for his pipe and tobacco. The RA, hands clasped behind him, appeared to be reassessing the Wimbush pictures; he had struck an attitude, his feet apart, his head thrust forward towards the canvases.
    ‘In fact, where did Mrs Johnson fit into this set-up – did she side with tradition or was she one of the modernists?’
    ‘Frankly, Superintendent – have you looked through her pictures?’
    ‘I have, but they didn’t answer the question for me.’
    ‘There you are, then!’ Mallows straightened up with a little spring. ‘For my money, you’re a pretty fair judge of these things. And I’m in the same position. I wouldn’t like to try to classify her. Her method was certainly traditional, though her pictures were rank with symbolism.’
    ‘Yet she must have taken a side …?’
    ‘No more she did than did her pictures. She had a talent for sitting on the fence, Superintendent. She was persona grata with both their houses. She could lean in both directions at once. She was an artist doubly committed, and both the factions would have claimed her.’
    ‘And after her death they would come to blows about it?’
    Mallows shrugged. ‘That’s a reasonable theory.’
    ‘One you know to be a fact?’
    ‘Damnation, Superintendent! I’m not a policeman.’
    Suddenly the artist looked about him, seeming, for the first time, to notice their following. He emitted a short, explosive ‘Hah!’ and waved his hands to invite them over.
    ‘I’ll introduce you to a sample, my dear fellow, then you can ask them silly questions yourself. The goat-faced gent is the celebrated Wimbush – him, I know you’ll like to meet in person!’

CHAPTER FIVE
    G ENTLY TOOK HIS tea in Glove Street, still without having returned to Headquarters. The café was a comfortable little haven, as useful for thinking as for eating. With a paper folded beside him he sat quietly puffing his pipe; a second pot of tea had been served him, and over the radio they were droning the cricket scores.
    In all, he’d met four of the Palette Group members, without including their lively chairman. There’d been the youngster, Watts, and the melancholy Wimbush, Seymour, a still-life painter, and Aymas the Ploughman.
    He hadn’t asked them very much, nor seemed too interested in them; he didn’t have the cards in his hand to make a strict interrogation profitable. His principal target had been Aymas, on account of his car, but also because he found him the most original character. And:
    ‘The dead woman, I believe, was a special friend of yours?’
    Aymas’s ruddy complexion had deepened and his brown eyes became more indignant. He was a little over thirty and of a sturdy, large-framed build. He had a handsome if belligerent face and a romantic shock of thick dark hair.
    ‘But don’t you run away with the idea …!’
    His hard, loud voice carried the stamp of the broad acres. It rose and fell in country cadences, it was sudden and pungent in driving home a point. Gently had asked him where his car had been parked, and Aymas, triumphantly, had told him that it was in Chapel Street.
    ‘Your slops must have sat there looking at it all the evening – if they’d come out in a hurry, it’d have sent them arse over tip!’
    All the same, Chapel Street wasn’t as remote as was the Haymarket – remembering the footway, in fact, it wasn’t remote at all. Of the others only Seymour had had something direct to be asked him: he was one of those who admitted to leaving the cellar before Mrs Johnson.
    But it was Mallows himself who had most strongly aroused Gently’s interest, sufficiently so to make him want to sit pondering the man. Just now and then one met somebody who stirred one fundamentally – colourful, tantalizing , challenging one to comprehend