Gently to the Summit

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Did this man ever visit your husband?’

  Her eyes flickered. ‘No. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘It isn’t a face that’s easily forgotten.’

  ‘I warned you. My memory for faces is bad.’

  ‘Then why are you sure he didn’t visit your husband?’

  ‘I … oh well, perhaps I was being too positive. But I don’t remember him, I can assure you of that. And you’re right about the face. It really gives one the shivers.’

  She smiled dismissingly and rose to her feet, retrieving the sharkskin bag and the gloves; the duchess who’d more than done her duty and who now intended to seek other diversions.

  ‘I’m afraid I shall have to be getting along. I have an appointment to keep at André’s. I’m reposing in you the strictest confidence, Superintendent: not a whisper of our little chat to the Press.’

  He nodded vaguely. ‘Thank you for coming, Mrs Askham.’ He rose and accompanied her to the door.

  ‘I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly and you’ve been very kind. I shall tell Clarence he’s quite mistaken in his views about our police force.’

  When she’d gone, when the door was closed, Gently stood for a few moments thinking; then he chuckled and went to the window to watch the blue Rolls drive away in the rain.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT WAS HALF an hour later when Evans returned, and Gently was sprawled at his desk again, nursing another cup of coffee. The Welshman began sniffing as soon as he stepped into the room, and after a sharp look round he glanced suspiciously at Gently.

  ‘That’s not Gold Block, man, I do know,’ he said.

  ‘Chanel.’ Gently pretended to leer. ‘There’s still some glamour left in being in homicide.’

  ‘You’re telling me, man. And I only let you out of my sight for five minutes. Tell me, what would be my chances of getting a transfer to the Central Office?’

  Gently waved an airy hand. ‘It needs personality,’ he replied. ‘But I’ll give you the scandal in a minute. Tell me the news from Somerset House.’

  Evans dropped down on the chair which had lately been occupied by Mrs Askham.

  ‘There isn’t any, man,’ he said. ‘News disgusts them over at that place.’

  ‘It’ll require a day or two, will it?’

  ‘You take the words out of their mouth. Nearly laughed at me they did when I told them I’d be waiting. I see now why you went to Dorking. The long way round is down the Strand. We’ll be lucky to hear from them by next year’s Eisteddfod,’

  ‘They handle a deal of business, of course.’ Gently sipped at his coffee. ‘But as it happens it doesn’t matter. I’ve a feeling that trail can be written off.’

  ‘You’re on a new scent. I can smell that.’

  ‘It’s just a whiff that came in from the bank. But it brought some other smells along with it and I’m still trying to sort them out.’

  He outlined his interview with Mrs Askham, and Evans listened to him in silence; but it wasn’t difficult to read the expression that slowly developed on the inspector’s face. Here was ground for fresh hope. Kincaid had not eluded them yet. The excitement grew in Evans’s eyes, and at the end he exclaimed:

  ‘Then we’re back, man. We’re back where we started. It’s just the way I had in mind. Kincaid did see his wife in Caernarvon – and as a result of it, he murdered Fleece!’

  ‘On the facts it’s possible.’ Gently sounded discouraging.

  ‘But goodness, you can’t miss it, it fits them like an old shoe. Fleece had been at her, he was going to marry her; that was the reason for his divorce. Then away comes Kincaid and learns about it, and the rest just follows on natural.’

  ‘But why should Fleece want to marry Paula Kincaid?’

  ‘Because she knows something. That’s what it will be. She knows something that didn’t matter as long as Kincaid was dead, but when he came back Fleece had to marry her to be safe from her evidence.’ It was a good point; Gently considered it.

  ‘But what could it be that she knew?’

  ‘Something to do with what happened on Everest.’ Evans gave him a sapient nod. ‘You think a moment. There’s no harm in supposing that Paula Kincaid was once his mistress. We keep looking at it from Fleece’s angle and there’s no call for that at all. It may have been her who wanted Kincaid away. It may have been her who persuaded Fleece to do it. Then, when it was done, she pulls up her stakes and disappears; to avoid answering awkward questions and perhaps giving herself away. Wouldn’t that be a good reason for her taking a job with Mrs Askham? And for staying in Wales too, after Mrs Askham sacked her?’

  ‘Then why was she worrying Fleece?’

  ‘Do you ask, man, with Kincaid back? He was spreading an awfully suspicious story, and scouring the country for his wife. Perhaps Fleece wasn’t worried at first, not till he’d talked to Paula Kincaid; and perhaps it was her who was doing the worrying; perhaps it was she who suggested the divorce. It would be unnatural if Kincaid had not suspected his wife, but once she’d married Fleece, well then they’d be fireproof.’

  ‘It fits,’ Gently conceded.

  It does. It must do.’ Evans’s red face split in a triumphant grin. ‘By the beard of Cadwalader, I’ll be a superintendent yet, and boss my own show back there in Caernarvon. Now we’ve only to find Paula Kincaid.’

  ‘In Caernarvon or out of it.’

  Evans’ face sank. ‘Do you think she’ll have hopped it?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you ask, man?’ Gently mimicked. ‘She’d be out of there like a scalded cat. You might look for her at John o’ Groats, but you’ll scarcely find her in Caernarvon.’

  ‘That’s true enough.’ Evans was dour again. ‘There had to be a catch in it somewhere. And we must lay our hands on her if we’re to make it stick to Kincaid. But you must admit, man, we’re seeing our way, we’ve got the drift of it now. It’s only a question of time and routine before we sew up the case.’

  ‘Have you forgotten our friend, Heslington?’

  ‘Oh, to hell with that fellow.’

  ‘And a few other matters, like two large sums of money?’

  Evans made a rude noise. ‘So what is that to us now? A couple of years in Somerset House and you’ll perhaps find where Fleece got his money. And as for the other – well, what about it? So there were philanthropists before the war. If we studied every little coincidence we’d never have a case at all, man.’

  As though in comment on this bold line Gently’s telephone buzzed, and after an intervention from the board he found himself connected to Overton.

  ‘I looked up that address you wanted, the solicitors who signed the banker’s order. They’re Sedley and Haines in Lincoln’s Inn … Yes, I’ve got their number here.’

  Gently jotted it down, thanked Overton and gave the number to the board. Evans, his thumbs under his lapels, awaited the issue with elaborate insouciance.

  ‘Sedley and Haines? This is Superintendent Gently of Scotland Yard … I’d like to speak to one of the partners. It’s about a commission you had before the war.’

  To Evans it seemed to take an hour before the suspicious lawyers would come to business. Twice Gently repeated himself and he gave numerous though vague assurances. At last the receiver was returned to its rest. Evans rocked gently back in his chair.

  ‘Who was it then? Nuffield or William Lever?’

  Gently’s hazel eyes twinkled. ‘It was your coincidence,’ he said.

  ‘But does it make so much difference when all’s said and done?’

  Evans was still arguing the point though his mouth was full of buttered crumpet. Sitting at a table in the canteen, a buttery knife in his hand, he ate steadily and drank many cups as he tried to win Gently to his way of thinking.

  ‘Look at it straight, now. Who would you have expected to donate that money? Why, Askham; weren’t two of his employees in the expedition? And Fleece, he was one of the management, Askham may have spoken to him about it, and you remember how Overton told us that Fleece
had suddenly changed his attitude. What could be more natural, then? Why does it need to be sinister? Askham was interested, he admired their spirit, so he came across with the necessary.’

  Gently deftly severed a crumpet; he was looking his woodenest and most obstinate.

  ‘He came across with ten thousand pounds?’

  ‘But that was chicken feed to the fellow!’

  ‘And anonymously.’

  ‘Why not? Some rich men are like that.’

  ‘With Met. L to advertise?’

  ‘He was modest, that’s all.’

  ‘He went yachting and shooting, but I didn’t hear he was a climbing enthusiast.’

  ‘Oh St David listen to him!’ Evans bolted a savage crumpet. He seized his cup and irrigated the morsel with a number of full-throated gulps. ‘Then what do we do? Where do we go? What’s the next step from here? Either we chase up Paula Kincaid or we stick the case in the files!’

  Gently sipped more abstemiously. ‘Things aren’t quite so desperate,’ he returned.

  ‘We’ve got Kincaid in a vice if we can only turn up his missus!’

  ‘She mightn’t talk if we did. Also, we don’t know where to look for her. And in the meantime it was Askham who footed the bill for the expedition.’

  Evans snatched up another crumpet and began unconsciously to chew it. He felt a pang of pity for the Assistant Commissioner, who had to deal with Gently day by day. ‘Very well, man,’ he said. ‘I wash my hands of it from now on. I’ve said my say, and I stand by it. And now I should like to hear your views.’

  Gently’s hand gestured indefinitely. ‘Mine are still unsettled, I’m afraid. I’m still groping in the dark for what happened in nineteen-thirty-seven. There’s a reason behind that ten thousand pounds, but for the moment I can’t see the shape of it … Kincaid knew something, but what did he know? Was it he who was trying to blackmail Askham?’

  ‘You’ll scarcely find that out now,’ retorted Evans with satisfaction. ‘And if it’s blackmail you have in mind I’ll stick to Fleece for a client.’

  ‘It would have to be something ruinous. Perhaps affecting Met. L. And his wife would have to know something too, because in an involuntary way, she was also dangerous; and Askham was keeping her under wraps, that’s fairly certain from the evidence. But from whom, with Kincaid dead and Fleece apparently in the secret? If a member of the expedition were aimed at, how could his curiosity be threatening? If it wasn’t his wife behind Kincaid’s disappearance, she could be left in ignorance to play the widow, but if she was privy to it, as you suppose, then why is Askham so deeply in the plot? We’re left with the unlikely supposition that Askham and she had separate motives, that they were equally responsible, and together contrived her own disappearance. And that’ – Gently gave Evans an amiable smile – ‘sounds like a lot of moonshine to me. It meets the facts in a sort of way, but it collides head-on with common sense.’

  ‘So?’ Evans was far from placated.

  ‘So the facts are wrong. Or we’ve missed their significance.’

  ‘If you’ll just let that money be a coincidence …’

  ‘It’s a coincidence too often, which means that it isn’t one.’

  Gently drank. His eye drifted away from Evans, seemed to vanish through the murals on the wall behind him; it was uncanny, it made Evans feel uncomfortable, it was as though the Yard man had disembodied himself. Evans made a clatter with his knife and plate to interrupt the phenomenon.

  ‘In reality it will be much simpler …’ Gently returned from his distant oracle. ‘There’ll be a pattern that a child can understand; it isn’t the way of murder to be complex. We’re making heavy weather of something. I can’t put a finger on it yet. But it’s got its roots in what happened before the war, and when we make a breakthrough there …’

  ‘But how do you propose doing that, man?’ Evans refused to lose sight of the practical. ‘We’ve covered all the leads we’ve got, and it’s unlikely we’ll turn up anything fresh.’

  ‘I think Mrs Askham did remember Fleece.’

  ‘She’d never let on. She’d be a fool if she did.’

  ‘There’s also Stanley. If we could put pressure on him …’

  ‘Isn’t it more likely that he’ll put pressure on us, man?’

  ‘And there’s Paula Kincaid.’

  ‘Now you’re talking, man.’ Evans brightened visibly; this was where he’d come in. ‘We can go to Caernarvon and try to pick up her trail. I’ll phone Williams at once. I’m sure we’ll get on to her.’

  ‘She may have married or changed her name.’

  ‘It won’t make so much difference—’ Evans broke off to scowl at a police cadet who had approached their table. The youngster came to attention, giving his heels a click.

  ‘Superintendent Gently, sir. A message from the desk.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s a lady wants to speak to you, sir.’

  Evans gazed at the lad. ‘Not another one. Why, there’s no holding the fellow!’

  Gently asked: ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Sir. A Miss Paula Kincaid.’

  ‘Paula Kincaid I am, and I live up in Kilburn. I’m an artist’s model, and I’ll thank you to remember it.’

  If Gently’s disappointment was keen, he was at pains to keep it hidden; he sat unmoved behind his desk, eyeing his new conquest with mild gravity.

  ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’

  ‘Well, p’raps you have and p’raps you haven’t. This is my first time down this way, but I’ve had the treatment back in Kilburn.’

  ‘Under the name of Paula Kincaid?’

  ‘Don’t be daft! That’s me proper name. I’m Phyllis Waters on the charge sheet. It makes a change from Smif and Brown.’

  She was barely twenty, but she carried herself with a hard self-possession. She was a little above the average in height, a peroxide blonde with brown, unashamed eyes. She had on a bushy-skirted gown of green and over it a short coat of fabricated fur, her stockings were black and her shoes had stub-heels and apart from her mouth she wasn’t heavily made up.

  ‘Have you brought your birth certificate with you?’

  ‘Go on. I haven’t got one of them things. Got lost, that would’ve done, years ago. And I don’t know where I was born, so I can’t get another one.’

  ‘What’s your age?’

  ‘Eighteen I am. I had me birthday last month.’

  ‘So why have you come to see me, Paula?’

  ‘About me ma, of course. Reg Kincaid’s missus.’

  Self-possession; she had that, but it was the stock-in-trade of a street-girl. Unless you had it you didn’t take to the business in the first place. You had to tell a lie with a lot of clamour and always have an act ready for the police; you were tough: brazen they used to call it: you put on a burlesque all the time. She sat confidently with her feet apart, her shoes turned over, the stub-heels outwards. She’d be capable of staring down the devil if Gently by chance should adopt the role.

  ‘Why did you decide to do that? Because you usually assist the police?’

  ‘Naow – don’t talk silly!’ Her beaming smile wasn’t entirely false. ‘But it won’t do me no harm, that’s the way I looks at it, and it could do me a bit of good. So here I am.’

  ‘You won’t get any money.’

  ‘Didn’t ask for none, did I? But you could pass the word I come to see you; had been of assistance, you could say that.’

  ‘And that was your whole motive in coming?’

  ‘Ain’t it good enough for you? Coo, I reckon it’s a bit of jam, me coming in here like this.’

  He couldn’t help it, he returned the smile. She had a streak of Cockney charm about her. A graceless, graceful, perky sparrowness, the quick gaiety of the London pavements.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re Paula Kincaid. You’ve come to tell me something about your ma. And the first thing you can tell me is where your ma is at this moment.’

  ‘That�
��s the point, dear. She ain’t anywhere. Least-ways, not above ground.’

  ‘You mean she’s dead?’

  ‘And buried, she is. She was killed in the blitz in forty-three.’

  ‘Where was she buried?’

  ‘Now do me a favour! I was only two when they buried me ma.’

  ‘But you must know where it was.’

  ‘I’m telling you, ain’t I? I never went to the funeral. Don’t even know if they dug up enough of her to bury. A blockbuster it was. Over Notting Hill way.’

  Gently gave her the benefit of a long, pointed look. There was something too Kincaid-like about this unsolicited tale! It promised to end things so neatly, so finally, so irrefutably; drawing a firm straight line across all further investigation …

  ‘Who told you what happened to your mother?’

  ‘Gertie Fox, what brought me up. Ma had took me to Gertie’s on the night when it happened.’

  ‘Why did your mother do that?’

  ‘’Cause she was on the bash, she was. And so was Gertie, if you want to know, but she used to have me there all the same.’

  ‘And where does this Gertie live?’

  ‘She had a flat down Maida once. But then she married the bloke what was looking after her. I ain’t seen Gertie since she did that.’

  ‘So in effect you can’t substantiate any of these statements?’

  ‘Didn’t say I could, did I? It’s take it or leave it.’

  ‘Who put you up to coming here?’

  ‘Not nobody didn’t. I come here on me own.’

  She smiled again; but Gently had finished with smiling. He picked up a pencil and did some scribbling on a pad. He passed the result to Evans, who read it frowningly and then nodded. He rose and left the office. Their visitor’s eyes followed him uneasily.

  ‘Where’s he gorn off to?’

  Gently’s answer was merely to stare. He filled his pipe unhurriedly and spent a couple of matches lighting it.

  Now,’ he said. ‘Let’s hear all you know about your mother, Miss Kincaid. And about your father, too. I dare say Gertie will have mentioned him.’