The Shivering Mountain

by Paul Somers

  Mollie said, “Surely Clara had visited Angel before? Someone might have seen her.”

  “No, Miss Bourne—Angel had always visited her, very discreetly, using the back way into her house, because he’d been afraid his patroness might stop subsidising him if she found out what was happening—so there was no great risk from that point of view. What did worry Clara was the thought that there might be some small thing, like a telephone number written down somewhere, that she didn’t know about. Barr said there was only one safe way to take care of that possibility—through hin. Clara, he said, must pretend she was his fiancée, and that she’d been visiting him— and he’d undertake to account for any evidence that might emerge of contact between Clara and Angel, simply by saying that all three of them had been acquainted. Clara needn’t worry about anything, he said—he’d do all the talking when the police came. He was very confident and resourceful—he even produced an engagement ring for her, that some girl had returned to him …!”

  I glanced at Barr. There was the shadow of a grin on his face. Considering how dim his prospects were he was remarkably cheerful again. I didn’t much like it—I’d felt easier about him when he was morose.

  “Then Barr called the police,” Landon went on. “When they came he told his story about hearing shots next door and going down and seeing a woman rushing from the mews. Clara merely had to behave like his fiancée and corroborate what he said. Nobody suspected them of being anything but bona fide witnesses in the case. In due course they repeated their story at the inquest. Barr’s evidence of various women going to Angel’s flat—which actually wasn’t true—fitted very well into the picture the police had formed of Angel. The field of suspicion was wide—though in fact it was Angel’s patroness, Mrs. Albury, who received most of their attention. …”

  “Dear Mrs. Albury!” Barr murmured.

  Landon continued. “Barr waited till the inquest was over and it was clear that he and Clara had got away with their story. Then he showed his hand. He’d kept the gun, which had Clara’s fingerprints on it, and also the letter. He began to talk about money. Clara told him she hadn’t got any money, but he said that didn’t matter—he’d like to meet me, because he had an idea I might be able to get hold of some. Clara wasn’t in a position to refuse his request. She wrote to me and asked me if I would go and see her. I was surprised, because she’d been steadily drifting away from me and lately had avoided seeing me altogether—but I was also very pleased. I went along, and she told me everything.… You can imagine how I felt. I was appalled.…”

  He broke off again. His forehead was suddenly glistening in the firelight. He took out a handkerchief and gently dabbed his face. Then he went on:

  “The next evening, Barr came round. Until then, he’d been thinking in terms of a comparatively small amount of money—a few thousands—but now he’d suddenly become much more ambitious because he’d seen the security police car outside Clara’s house and concluded that I must occupy a position of exceptional importance at Crede. He was very cool and self-assured and said at once that he expected to be paid handsomely for his silence. I pointed out that he’d already committed perjury at the inquest and therefore wasn’t in a position to tell the police anything, but he said he’d been planning to go abroad for some time and that if I didn’t pay up he’d post the gun and the letter to the police with a covering note just before he left. I asked him how much he wanted and he said the exact figure would be a matter for discussion and negotiation but the kind of figure he had in mind was of the order of £50,000. I said he was mad—I just didn’t have that sort of money and couldn’t possibly get hold of it. He said that what I had was knowledge—top secret knowledge that must be worth a fortune in the right quarters—and that I’d better start making plans for selling it. I told him I’d never do that. He said I’d better think it over, because if I didn’t find some way of raising the wind Clara was as good as finished. And, of course, I did think it over. I thought about it night and day, to the exclusion of everything else.…”

  “No wonder the Crede people thought you were overtired!” Mollie said.

  “Well, I tried to hide it, but it wasn’t possible. I was in a state of mental agony.… Clara had always gone her own way, she’d insisted on living her own sort of life, she’d virtually told me to mind my own business when I’d reproached her about the kind of company she was keeping—but I still felt a deep sense of responsibility for her. I couldn’t help thinking that at some stage it must all have been my fault. And it wasn’t only that. The most agonising thing to me was that Clara was exactly like her mother in appearance. The likeness haunted me. Every time I saw her it took me right back.… The thought of what might happen to her was torture. It was a sentimental feeling, I know, but I couldn’t help it.…

  “Clara was pitifully frightened—and she had good reason to be. She swore to me that she hadn’t visited Angel with the deliberate intention of killing him, but I felt she’d had the will to kill if she couldn’t get her own way. The fact that she’d dropped the gun and rushed from the house in panic after the shooting was perhaps in her favour—though she’d obviously recovered her self-possession in a remarkably short time. I certainly didn’t think she’d have the slightest chance with a jury, in view of the contents of that letter, and the fact that two shots had been fired, and that she’d made such calculated efforts to conceal her part in the affair afterwards. If I did nothing, it wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility that she’d be hanged for a capital crime. At the very least, she’d spend the rest of her life in prison.… I couldn’t face that. I couldn’t abandon her. If she’d continued to be hard and brazen it might have been different, but she seemed full of genuine remorse about all that had happened. She swore she’d change her way of life, that she’d learned her lesson. She beseeched me to help her. There were some appalling scenes.… I don’t expect anyone who hasn’t been in my situation to approve of what I did—but to me it seemed I had no choice. She was a terrified child—my child. I knew I’d got to help her. I’d got to think of some way of satisfying Barr and lifting the threat from her.…”

  His voice had become unsteady as he relived his ordeal. For a moment or two we sat in silence as he struggled to recover his composure. It was impossible not to be moved by his story. Only Barr seemed completely unconcerned. He was toying with the knife, testing the point against the ball of his thumb, thoughtfully rather than demonstratively. I wondered uneasily if he had shot his bolt, after all.

  Presently Landon took up his story once more. “Well,” he said, “I thought of everything. I even thought of killing Barr. I’d have done it without compunction if it would have helped. But he’d taken precautions against that—or said he had. He’d made a parcel of the gun and letter, he told me, with an accompanying note, and left it with Scotland Yard’s address on it in a place where it would be found if anything happened to him. It may have been a bluff, but I couldn’t risk it.…”

  “It wasn’t a bluff,” Barr said.

  “So I had to find some other way,” Landon went on, ignoring him. “I had to turn my unique knowledge into cash and buy back Barr’s evidence. Once the gun and letter were in my hands, I knew the police could never prove anything against Clara, and that meant that Barr would have lost his hold over us. The problem was, how to raise the money. I applied myself to it with the same concentration as though it had been a piece of vital research at Crede. The exceptional position I was in suggested the exceptional step. I doubted if my knowledge was marketable in any foreign country, even if I’d been prepared to sell it—but I knew that it was of the utmost value to my own country. Thinking along these lines gave me the idea. If I could fake my own kidnapping, I might be able to collect a ransom. I had no expectation that the Government would pay it, but I thought there was a very good chance that someone else might.… Anyhow, I decided to try—and once I’d made up my mind I spared no effort to produce a perfect plan.”

  “It was entirely your plan, was
it?” I asked.

  “Yes, it was my plan. I had to have Barr’s physical co-operation, but I did all the working out myself.”

  “Was it you who chose this hiding place?”

  “Yes.… In my rock-climbing days I’d done quite a lot of potholing, and this was one of the pots I’d explored. I described it and its location to Barr, and he and Clara came up here and secretly looked over it. Clara hated being underground, but she forced herself to do what was necessary. She showed more courage in the end than I’d have expected.… Anyhow, they both agreed it was the perfect place. I couldn’t take any actual part in the preparations myself, because the security people were with me wherever I went. Barr had to do all the buying and provisioning. I told him where he could get potholing equipment, and drew up a list for him, and he bought everything—tent and sleeping-bag and rugs, lamp and fire, ladder and rope and fuel—and a boiler-suit and helmet for himself because he was constantly in and out with the supplies.”

  “I’d have thought someone might have remembered afterwards that he’d done it,” I said. “His picture was in the papers, too.”

  “We thought of that. He disguised himself a little when he made the purchases, so there’d be no risk of identification.”

  “I see.… And I suppose he brought all the stuff in at night?”

  “Yes—there was no danger that anyone would see him. Actually, all the preparations went very smoothly, and by 13th March, which was the Sunday I’d chosen for my disappearance, everything was ready for me here.…”

  At that moment there was an interruption. Barr, I saw, was scrambling to his feet. I sprang up, too, and Landon half rose—but it was a false alarm. Barr moved the paraffin fire a yard closer to us and sat down again. “Sorry!” he said. “I feel a kind of chill in the air!”

  “Go on, Landon,” I said.

  “Well, the faking of the actual kidnapping was a simple matter. I’d prepared the ground a little by telling as many people as possible that I proposed to visit my daughter that Sunday evening, so there’d appear to be many channels by which the information could have reached the kidnappers. In the morning Barr went along with a tin of treacle and some brown paper and broke the pane of glass over the back door while Clara played the radio loudly. Afterwards he took the treacle away and got rid of it. It was Barr, of course, who made the bogus telephone call to Clara at six o’clock. Clara went off to the hospital, leaving the light on so that the security police would think everything was all right when they got there. Having to light up so early was a weakness, but we were working to a tight schedule and it was impossible to start any later or I’d have missed a vital train. When I arrived I let myself in with the key Clara had given me, just as I’d done the week before. My having a key could be considered a weakness, too, but it was unavoidable—and the police certainly suspected nothing. I walked straight through the house, wiped the back door knobs and back door key on my way, and left by the back garden.”

  “How did you get to the station?”

  “Barr was waiting with his car at the end of the path. He drove me to St. Pancras and I just caught the 7.10 to Chinley Junction—that’s a place about seven miles from here.…”

  As Landon paused again, I couldn’t help recalling what Lawson had said about the need to check up on Barr’s movements that evening. He’d never done so, of course, because his theory had collapsed—and neither had anyone else, since Barr had been under no suspicion. I wondered if it would have made any difference. Probably Barr would have produced some plausible account of his activities anyway.

  I switched my mind back to the 7.10 for Chinley Junction. “What about the risk of being remembered afterwards? Did you have some sort of disguise, too?”

  “I’d changed my clothes in the car,” Landon said. “Barr had brought along a hiking outfit—sports jacket, flannels, walking shoes, cloth cap, rucksack and stick. The effect was to alter my appearance completely, especially as I’d removed my glasses. I dozed in a corner seat with my head well down and no one took any notice of me. I got to Chinley at 11.30 and walked here. I found everything in order and—well, I took up residence.”

  “And it was you who wrote the ransom letters?”

  “Yes—I prepared the first one in the morning. We’d got everything ready here. Barr had brought down a stack of old newspapers, and gum, and the necessary envelopes and paper, and a pair of surgical gloves.”

  “A little while ago,” I said, “you mentioned fifty thousand pounds. What made you cut the figure down to thirty thousand?”

  “Barr decided that £30,000 in five-pound notes was about the maximum weight we could deal with, because it had to be hauled up the cliff and carried quite a distance and then manhandled through the tunnel.”

  “I see.… What about posting that first letter?—you did that yourself, I suppose?”

  “Yes, I walked into Sheffield that morning and put it in a suburban box. I’d decided I’d be quite safe because it was too soon for any photographs of me to have appeared. Then I came back here and settled down to live as comfortably as I could.”

  “It must have been frightful,” Mollie said. She was very much on the job now, packing away the information we were getting.

  “Actually, Miss Bourne, it wasn’t as bad as you might think. Physically I’d got everything I needed. The way I look now gives a false impression—I didn’t wash much, or shave, simply because I thought a rather wild appearance would fit the picture of a kidnapped man better when I finally left. I ate sparingly, because a little loss of weight would serve the same purpose—but I had all I needed.”

  “And I suppose you were able to go out at night?” Mollie said.

  “Yes, every night I went up for fresh air and exercise on the moors.”

  I said, “Wasn’t there a risk that some of the local potholers might come exploring here during the weekend? That would have wrecked everything.”

  “The possibility did cross my mind, but it was an outside chance and I didn’t let it worry me. To tell you the truth, Curtis, I’d almost got beyond worrying. I’d committed myself, and I’d got to go through with it and hope for the best.”

  I nodded. “Well—then what happened?”

  “The next thing was that on the Wednesday night Barr drove up here, bringing me newspapers and a report of the latest developments. He told me the Press were saying I’d never be released alive even if the ransom money were paid, because I’d be able to describe my kidnappers. I obviously had to do something about that, so I wrote my personal letter explaining why I wouldn’t be able to describe them. Barr made a detour on his way back to London and posted it at Staines, just to confuse things. Then, on the Friday night, he came up again with news of the Record’s offer, and we composed another letter, accepting the offer and stating our terms. Barr posted that one in Saffron Walden.”

  “You were taking quite a chance, weren’t you—of a trap?”

  “We had to accept some risk. We thought that if we insisted on Clara accompanying the money, that would be a sufficient safeguard against the police being brought to the meeting place.”

  “I realise that—but what about the numbers of the notes being kept? Didn’t that possibility worry Barr?”

  “We took precautions,” Landon said. “I’d thought out all these things.… When Barr called at the Record office ostensibly about the danger to Clara, and accused the Record of planning a doublecross, and made a scene, he was able to check up on the situation—and he went away completely satisfied that no trickery was going to be attempted.”

  “So that was why he came.…!” The pieces were falling neatly into place now. “Incidentally, what about that telephone call to the Record that was supposed to come from one of the kidnappers …? I assume that was Barr, too?”

  “Yes, that was Barr. We felt it was essential that one of the supposed kidnappers should actually be heard by some independent person, to prove they really existed and bolster up my story when I got out. For the same reaso
n, it was arranged that Clara should say she’d been rung up several times by the kidnappers, too.… Don’t imagine I take any pride in these details, Curtis—I don’t. I’m only telling you them to give a complete picture.”

  “He’s got a tidy mind,” Barr said.

  “So then what happened?” I asked. “Who collected the suitcase on Mam Tor?”

  “I collected it.”

  “It must have been quite a job.”

  “It was a job—it was heavy, and it kept sticking on the way up. It was a job carrying it here, too, because I had a big coil of rope as well. But I managed.”

  “Those ribbed footmarks we noticed on the moor—were they yours?”

  “Yes, they were mine.”

  “What about the message you sent down the cliff saying you would be released to join Clara next evening and asking where she was staying …? Presumably you needed her around—but why?”

  “Having her here was an essential part of the exchange arrangements I’d made with Barr.… You see, although I could identify on my own the letter that Clara had written to Angel, only she could positively identify the gun she’d used. That meant she had to stay up for a second night, since it would have been too late to make the exchange on the first night. We’d already prepared you for a delay by pretending we’d need twenty-four hours to check that the notes weren’t marked, so that was all right. But there had to be an excuse for Clara to stay—and the note I lowered down the cliff gave it to her.”