Passion in the Peak

by John Buxton Hilton

  ‘I was the one who jumped up and pulled her away from it.’

  ‘Exactly. Diverting attention away from yourself.’

  ‘Only a bastard would see things that way, Kenworthy.’

  ‘There are bastards about. Some people are going to see things that way. And other things have happened here besides horse-play. A man’s dead and a woman’s dying. How about somebody trying to stick those coincidences on your ticket too?’

  Lindop tried to laugh it off—unconvincingly.

  ‘Could be nasty,’ he said. ‘Except for one thing. I was fully occupied on Saturday night. In reliable company.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. It means you could be in a strong position to help me. I’d like that. So fire away, Lindop. Is there anything you feel you ought to tell me?’

  ‘You’re overestimating me. I know very little.’

  ‘You can tell me plenty about the Stalag days—and about Alfie Tandy.’

  ‘That’s for sure. I was a foundation non-playing member of The Stalagmites. I could split your sides with the goings-on. But they’d stop short of telling you what happened on Saturday night—because I don’t bloody well know. And I’d like to know—for personal reasons.’

  ‘You could tell me what happened in Doncaster.’

  ‘What has Doncaster to do with it?’

  ‘When were you last there?’

  ‘One night early last week. The Deviants were playing away, which isn’t exactly flush with their contract. They are a group of triers—not exactly beginners, but they’ve a long haul to the top—with no Dyer to pull ropes for them. I’ve been giving them a bit of a hand. They need a few local engagements, because this show has bogged them down. All Furnival has given them is two spots of two and a half minutes each. So anything helps. I rather like them. I like their music, and I like their spirit. That’s why I’m safe about Saturday night. They were singing at a club near Edale. I was twiddling the knobs.’

  ‘And the same thing in Doncaster?’

  ‘Doncaster, Barnsley, Rawmarsh, Heckmondwike, Halifax: clubs and pubs. They’ve been around—all the beauty spots.’

  ‘And Alfie Tandy was in Doncaster too, wasn’t he? What was it? A committee meeting, safe from eavesdroppers, of people who had scores to settle with Larner? Was Ricarda Mommsen there too?’

  ‘You’ve a strong imagination, Kenworthy.’

  ‘Have I? I also once had a reputation for hammering at indicative little facts. Here’s something I ought not to divulge, Lindop: did you know that one of Gleed’s officers found a Doncaster book-match in Ricarda Mommsen’s apartment? That’s a characteristic little fact. It is a fact—’

  ‘If you say so—’

  ‘And it does give one grounds for thought,’ he said. ‘So was Ricarda Mommsen at Doncaster?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You need time to think, don’t you, Lindop? Well—you haven’t long.’ Then he stopped talking because feet were approaching through a backstage door. It was Gleed, and it was Kenworthy he wanted.

  They shook hands with unforced heartiness.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gleed was different from the man Kenworthy remembered. A decade had drawn something over the last of the Derbyshire Detective-Superintendent’s youth. What had first struck Kenworthy in their earlier case had been Gleed’s boyish appearance for a Chief Inspector. It was a screen from behind which he had loosed off some devastating surprises. Now his hair was not far off white. And although he had never looked lean, he had taken on a modest but perceptible layer of fat. They went for a walk together, away from the theatre, away from the tracks frequented by those connected with the theatre. Kenworthy forwent his lunch, did not mention it. Gleed was at that stage of his career and of this case where meals were not part of the rhythm. He ate when he felt hungry if he happened to have time to spare within reach of food.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know—but just what is your brief from Furnival?’

  ‘To keep an eye on the interests of the show.’

  ‘And just what does that mean?’

  ‘To try to anticipate your moves. If someone in his company is involved, to try to save him from surprises.’

  ‘Hasn’t he got Cantrell for that?’

  ‘Cantrell’s reduced to commanding the palace guard. He’s no detective.’

  ‘Also, he’s notoriously been no friend of Wayne Larner.’

  ‘I gather he hasn’t always watched his tongue,’ Kenworthy said. ‘He has no room for show-biz in general—or for anyone else who isn’t short back and sides. I’m surprised that he took on the job.’

  They were climbing a stony track between walled fields. They stopped to lean over a gate, commanding a panorama of limestone scars and tiny rectangular parcels of land, marred by the barbarism of a modern limekiln-complex on the skyline.

  ‘I’ve been keeping out of your way,’ Gleed said, ‘so that you could get around in your own fashion. It’s time you told me what you’ve found—apart from Julian Harpur’s spikes.’

  ‘The Doncaster connection.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Kenworthy told him.

  ‘And now you tell me, Gleed: how far have you got with young Harpur?’

  ‘Nowhere—except for acquiring the nastiest taste in the mouth I’ve had for many a year. You met Mrs Harpur—’

  ‘Briefly.’

  ‘If there is such a place as the judgement seat, that woman is going to answer for the wreckage of a boy’s life. It’s not true, of course, that Julian Harpur was ever a genius, but he has the making of a very bright lad, and in present-day technology he could be well up one of the trees in the forest. But whether he’s retrievable or not, I wouldn’t like to say. We’ve had a trick-cyclist looking over him at HQ, and he won’t say, either. He’s supposed to have done himself irreparable brain-damage in an explosion, doing an experiment at home that he’d been warned off at school. But that’s as nothing compared with personality derangement.’

  ‘I honestly believe that if I could be left alone with him, I could get at something.’

  ‘We made some progress, but he insisted immovably that the spikes had simply turned up on his workshop bench. And I’m left high and dry. I simply don’t know whether to believe him or not.’

  ‘So you won’t be holding him?’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve just taken him home. Of course, he’ll be watched.’

  For the last half-minute a sparrowhawk had been hovering over a clump of last year’s dead weeds. It swooped and soared away carrying something. They could not see what its prey was.

  ‘Traffic and Forensic have given us some interesting stuff about the car crash,’ Gleed said. ‘Of course, it had been raining stair-rods, and came on worse after Larner had left the road. But they found a compression of the mud where he had started to brake. And they drew some useful conclusions about the damage done under the bonnet by the impact. Whatever else you can say about Larner, he was a consummate driver. What we think happened was that the Mommsen girl was waiting up by the wall to wave him down before he ran into the spikes: she may have tried to pick some of them up, but it was too dark and there were too many of them for her to do a thorough job. His engine may have been making a hell of a noise, but he had lost speed up that gradient, and he must have been almost in control again when he skidded, pinned Miss Mommsen against the wall, then pushed her through it and over the edge. The inference is that he came within a split second of not crashing at all. The medics found evidence of mild whiplash.’

  ‘Mild? Not enough to kill him?’

  ‘No. What he ultimately died of were injuries from being beaten about the head. Somebody was evidently waiting near the scene and must have taken him off—probably in a very dazed condition.’

  ‘And could that possibly have been young Harpur?’

  ‘That’s something I simply can’t answer. Would he have been out of bed and out of the house?’

  ‘Harpur certainly couldn’t have transported him f
ar.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Harpur. Harpur’s odd, and he’s nosy. That’s why he loiters. But I believe it’s without intent.’

  There followed a few seconds’ silence. Kenworthy was the first to speak again.

  ‘I’ve said all along that much turns on who knew that Larner had disimpounded his Lotus. But how the hell did the Mommsen lass know that he was going to come up the hill? She’d been to Manchester for the day, on a fool’s errand set up by Furnival so that he could go over her pad. We don’t know what time she got back, or who she had the chance to talk to. I’ve thought a good deal about who knew about that car. And have taken the liberty of setting a young man on it.’

  Gleed looked at him with comic oddity.

  ‘Honest Fred Kershaw?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Keep me posted. It might save me a chore. And there’s another line of thought that you might be working on.’

  Three miles away there was a salvo of blasting in the quarry. They saw smoke rise and hang over dead ground.

  ‘We are tempted to assume that the tricks against the Mary Magdalenes came out of the same bag as the attack on Larner. They could be a quite separate issue. But they’ve all got to be gone into. Who wanted to drive the Magdalenes away so that he could get the part for some woman that he wanted to oblige?’

  ‘Dyer?’

  ‘One has to wonder.’

  ‘Or Jimmy Lindop?’

  ‘You seemed to be getting on well with him just now.’

  ‘I’ve got him scared. He’s hovering on the edge of basic truths—because I hinted that you were quite likely to be pulling him in soon to ask him some awkward questions.’

  Gleed rolled his eyes towards the heavens.

  ‘You know, a detective needs to retire. It’s the only way he can put himself in a position to get things done. Carry on with the good work, Simon. I look forward to hearing from you from time to time.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was a bad morning for Joan Culver. She had fallen out with her father because of one of his table habits, his way of scraping the bottom of his cup on the edge of his saucer when his tea had slopped over. She had been living with him, watching him, unable to do anything about him for too long. And her brother Matthew was home for the morning, and seemed to think it actually funny that his sister had got herself mixed up with stage people. The singer’s death was not a reality to him. He did not think of Wayne Larner as a person. He saw him not quite as a caricature, but as a phenomenon created by an abnormal way of life—a name without personality.

  So Joan was short-tempered with him, and it amused him to see her furious: the sister who had always been so prim and had always looked contemptuous about his private life.

  ‘By the way, I’m out tonight, taking Sarah to a Country and Western frolic at Foolow. If you happen to be doing any ironing, I fancy that pink shirt I wore last week. I’ll make it worth your while.’

  It was at that stage that Joan Culver decided to put up with this mode of life no longer. She did not know how she was going to do it, but she had to get away. And it was at that moment of conscious decision that Hajek knocked at the front door.

  The producer looked more like a great shambling bear than ever. He was wearing the most voluminous sweater that Joan had ever seen. His trousers looked as if they had done a lifetime of field labour and were tucked into the tops of outsize Wellingtons. He might have been mistaken for one of the outdoor workers on the site except for one thing: the fire in his eyes. And for a man who over the last decade and a half had produced several of the most resounding stage spectaculars in the English tongue, his command of it was lamentable.

  ‘You come back, be Mary Magdalene one more week. You be on stage ten o’clock.’

  It did not seem to have occurred to him that there could be any counter-argument.

  ‘We have Madge Oldroyd tape. We have Wayne Larner tape. You know movements, timings. You make pivot for Chorus. You teach new Mary Magdalene when she here. We make contract next week.’

  His eyes were scanning her face, cutting like a laser through all it encountered.

  ‘I’ll be over,’ Joan said. ‘Ten o’clock.’

  Kenworthy also had a visit. Julian Harpur’s father had taken a day off work. He came with his wife to the small apartment that Furnival had put at Kenworthy’s disposal at the Hall. The couple had been living on their nerves for two days, and their eyes bore witness to nights awake.

  ‘Mr Kenworthy—where have we gone wrong?’

  ‘You wouldn’t much like my answer to that,’ Kenworthy said.

  ‘Nevertheless—’

  ‘Then to be brutal—it’s taken you too long to ask that question.’

  ‘Mr Kenworthy—we owe you an apology.’

  Mrs Harpur murmured keen but not very articulate agreement; she had been allowing her husband to do all the talking so far.

  ‘You see, we know, Mr Kenworthy, that he had nothing to do with those spikes. It would be entirely out of character. Oh, I know you’ll say that in the state he’s in it’s absurd to try to make any such claim.’

  ‘We do not believe,’ his wife said, ‘that the trauma that has thrown him temporarily off-course has interfered with his moral training. We are sure that wherever else we may have failed, our efforts have gone too deep for that.’

  How blinkered could people be? Kenworthy expressed no opinion, encouraged them to go on talking.

  ‘Perhaps it would help, Mr Kenworthy, if I went briefly over the nature of the disturbance he has been struggling against. There may have been some damage to brain cells, that is as far as the medics are willing to go. Sandra and I are inclined to agree with the psychiatrist, who believes that an aggravated guilt complex is much more likely to lie at the root of the trouble. All that happened was that he carried out a perfectly puerile experiment—well, you can’t call it an experiment. He brought chemicals home from the school laboratory after hours. The headmaster, of course, could only see it as a disciplinary offence.’

  ‘He has been wanting for years to treat Julian as a delinquent.’

  ‘And would have done this time, only he’d have had some awkward questions to answer about the security of his stores. Julian’s shame was greater than he could bear. He knew that he had behaved childishly, treating science like a toy. He believes that he has betrayed everything he has been taught about absolute values.’

  There was only one thing more dangerous than professional psychiatrists—and that was amateur ones. Kenworthy continued to keep his opinions to himself.

  ‘It has been an intolerable burden to him,’ Julian’s mother said, ‘and he has collapsed under the weight of it.’

  ‘And now we learn that he has been wandering about the village and its surroundings at night, when we thought he was reading in bed. And I’m afraid—’

  Harpur fidgeted with embarrassment in his chair.

  ‘—There was some trouble with a detective-constable about peeping through actresses’ dressing-room windows. And I’m afraid that Julian has something to answer for there.’

  ‘Mind you, these women should not put temptation in men’s way. Some of them are very careless about their curtains.’

  ‘But this other thing—these spikes—he would never have been so irresponsible.’

  ‘So you are suggesting that the spikes were planted in your workshop?’

  ‘There can be no other explanation.’

  ‘Have you any concrete reason to suspect it? Any signs of break-in or interference?’

  Harpur did not wriggle, but he looked as if it would have been a relief to him to do so. To what extent was he here only to say what his wife had scripted for him?

  ‘Have you noticed any suspicious loitering?’

  ‘I cannot say that we have. We are not detectives, Mr Kenworthy.’

  Kenworthy sat back and looked at them for a moment: they were the unbelievable epitome of inconsistency and illogicality.

  ‘
I am not clear what you would like me to try to do.’

  ‘To talk to him, Mr Kenworthy. My wife tells me that you were making great progress with him the other day.’

  Again, Kenworthy suppressed himself.

  ‘He was talking to you more fluently about his submarine than I have heard him speak for months,’ his mother said. ‘Please, Mr Kenworthy—we believe that you can get at the truth.’

  Another moment’s thought.

  ‘I’ll have a go—given the opportunity,’ Kenworthy said.

  Kershaw made the mistake of going straight to the garage proprietor. A more experienced operator would have made his first soundings lower down.

  He drew hostile fire. The owner had heard all he wanted to hear about Larner and his bloody car, thank you very much. And Larner or no Larner, he wasn’t going to discuss a client’s business with an outsider.

  Kershaw came away from the sump-oil stink of the office, despondent with failure. But when he was half way across the main workshop, he was buttonholed by a jack-of-all-garage-trades who looked and smelled as if he used sump-oil as sauce on his lunch-plate.

  ‘You the law?’

  ‘You might say that.’

  ‘Couldn’t help hearing what you were saying in there. The old man doesn’t know which side his bread is buttered, cold-shouldering the law. How much is it worth to you?’

  ‘A fiver.’

  ‘Make it ten.’

  ‘All I want is to know how Larner’s car came to be released to him.’

  ‘You’ve come to the right chap. I was the stupid bugger who released it. Tried to argue with him, first off. But after all, it was his car. And now I’m working off a week’s notice.’

  ‘It hadn’t been arranged beforehand?’

  ‘It had not. I must have gone soft in the head. I let the ponce talk me into it.’