Gently to the Summit csg-9

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Then suppose you tell me which way she died.’

  ‘I can’t. I only had it from Phyllis-’

  ‘Think how tempting it would have been. To dispose of that dangerous woman for ever and to end her constant threat to someone… Then you could say she was killed in the blitz. You could produce a witness who we’d have to believe. Doesn’t that sound like a clever way out, a safe way of guarding an ugly secret?’

  ‘But it isn’t true. You can’t believe it-!’

  ‘You’d be surprised what I have to believe.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about her death!’

  ‘Then prove it to me. Where is Paula Kincaid?’

  And so it went on, with never a break, chiselling and nagging at Askham’s resistance; going round in circles, dragging in hypotheses, pounding away at any variation he introduced into his answers. Who could stand it for long without truth in his corner, or even so seconded? There came a time when it didn’t matter…

  Dutt, who’d heard it all and seen it all, retired to a seat in the corner, and there sought a sombre diversion in a file of Police Gazettes. Evans, new to the virtuosities of a full-dress Gently interrogation, continued to stare and digest in unconcealed admiration. It was going ill with the local wrongdoers when Evans returned to Caernarvon…

  ‘Your mother knew Fleece, didn’t she? She’s apt to give herself away.’

  ‘She didn’t know him. She-’

  ‘He paid her a visit when he went to see Paula Kincaid.’

  ‘No — never!’

  ‘I think he did. I think they had things to discuss together.’

  ‘I tell you he’s never set foot in Trecastles!’

  ‘Where did they meet, then? In a hotel somewhere?’

  ‘They didn’t meet. We’ve never met him. What was a man like him to us? We didn’t even know he existed… not till we read about him in the papers.’

  ‘What did you read about him in the papers?’

  ‘That he’d been… accidentally killed. And before that there was something else. He’d had a suit against Kincaid.’

  ‘And, of course, you looked for items like that.’

  ‘Yes, we did. My mother was upset.’

  ‘Very natural that she should be. As the principal shareholder in Met. L.’

  ‘But that has nothing-’

  ‘Was it she who rang Fleece, or was it the other way about?’

  ‘She’d never have rung Fleece!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because she… I’ve told you! She didn’t know him.’

  ‘So he must have rung her, and that started the acquaintance. He dashed across to Wales and they held a consultation. Paula Kincaid had to be dealt with; her husband was certain to catch up with her, and once he did then the fat would be properly in the fire. How did they plan to make her safe?’

  ‘They didn’t plan anything of the sort-’

  ‘To move her was it? Send her abroad?’

  ‘No… nothing. There weren’t any plans…’

  ‘To marry her maybe? Marry her to Fleece?’

  ‘Oh, God!’

  ‘Or perhaps to get rid of her entirely. Fleece was a man of resource in these matters: how much did he want to get rid of Paula Kincaid?’

  He should have thought of it before: there was a certain relief from his torments. He could sit silent, letting the questions buzz harmlessly about his ears. It was a defeat, it vanquished the last shreds of the character he’d come in with, but it gave him pause from the destructive bombardment that was beating him to his knees. He summoned a defiant look for Gently: then he tightly closed his mouth.

  ‘So that was the way of it, was it. Is that what you don’t want to tell me?’

  Gently noticed the change of reaction but seemed in no way concerned by it.

  ‘Fleece was filing his divorce. That was a stage in plan one. But there was a later plan, plan two, devised to settle with Paula for good. She’d got the wind up about Kincaid. She couldn’t be trusted to play her part. I can understand that you don’t want to tell me, but you could put a finger on Paula’s grave…’

  ‘It’s not true!’ His silence was shattered by this intolerable insinuation; but he remembered himself directly and snapped his lips shut again.

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be true? It fits perfectly if you believe that Kincaid murdered Fleece. He was close on your trail over in Wales and might have got wind of what you were up to. That would make some sense of it, wouldn’t it? Why he pushed Fleece over the Wyddfa?’

  ‘Good gracious, man!’ It was Evans who gave the reaction to that one. He began to rub his large hands, producing a dry, rasping sound. But Askham had retired into his shell.

  His teeth as well as his lips were clamped. He stared hotly at Gently, an exhibition of determined silence.

  ‘Then there’s Heslington to consider.’ Gently pressed on almost amiably. ‘He was the man who Fleece was citing, and he’d be sure to prefer Fleece dead. He’d be susceptibile to suggestion; you’d scarcely need to offer him a bribe. You’d show him your cards, you’d tip him the wink, and he wouldn’t see too much on the Wyddfa. But what he did see would be carefully concerted to give support to a likely story.’

  ‘He saw Kincaid and you know it!’ Out, out it had to come. In spite of all the grinding of teeth, he had to respond when the chord was plucked.

  ‘Yes, exactly; he saw Kincaid. And Kincaid has been the root of the trouble. A man who should never have returned from the dead and who it was desirable to reinter. Why shouldn’t Heslington have seen him, if he saw anything at all up there?’

  ‘But Kincaid…!’

  ‘Has all sorts of motives. I know. They proliferate round the man. The more you look for them the more you find; you’d almost say he had too many. Because the murderer needed only one motive, one clear, sharp reason for giving that push. And he would need to be confident of his power to deliver it: one would have looked for somebody less frail than Kincaid.’

  ‘But if he wasn’t expecting it-’

  ‘We think he was. We think he was face to face with his killer.’

  ‘You don’t know that!’

  ‘We know a lot of things. And we’d like to know the whereabouts of Mrs Kincaid.’

  It nearly did it. Askham was teetering, twice he was on the point of blurting it out. He tried to begin it a couple of times, his lips trembling and his eyes wild. Then he seemed to rock away from it again; his face grew sullen and passionately hostile.

  ‘She isn’t anywhere. She’s dead and buried. And not because anyone murdered her, either!’

  Gently rose. He went over to the window. He stood staring out at the dark world of the Thames.

  The break was for coffee and sandwiches; it had no other significance. Gently hadn’t done with Askham; he’d hardly started on the fellow. Dutt had excused himself and gone, it wasn’t his business anyway, and Evans, bursting for a discussion, was restrained by the presence of Askham. Consequently, he said nothing much, and Gently was far from being talkative. He sat broodily chewing his canteen sandwiches while apparently eyeing the marks on his blotter…

  Yes, he’d only started with Askham; yet didn’t he already have a part of the truth? Hadn’t it begun to peer through the tangle during that first corrosive session?

  Askham had conceded little in words but he had yielded much in the sum of his reactions. Time after time his temperature had risen when particular questions had been repeated. And the shape emerging from it was new — new and suddenly enlightening; it supplied the wanted touch of simplicity that Gently’s instinct had predicted. But questions were unlikely to carry it further. They had done their duty in betraying the truth. A further session might confirm the pattern but he needed other artillery to achieve a breakdown. Questions were small-shot; the present occasion was calling for greater penetration…

  He opened the Kincaid file and took out the O.S. map he had added to it. Askham, already reviving from his ordeal, watched it being spread ou
t over the desk. Did he sense that something was decided, that a more searching test was being found for him; burning-cheeked, burning-eyed, the arrogance creeping back into his manner?

  ‘Show me Trecastles.’ Gently brought him into the act deliberately. Askham leaned forward. He pointed to the place with a finger that didn’t tremble.

  ‘Not far from Bangor, is it…?’

  ‘Bangor is just across the bridge.’

  ‘How far are you from Caernarvon?’

  ‘Eleven or twelve. I haven’t checked it.’

  There it lay in cartographical diagram, palely coloured, the drama’s cockpit; the jaw of Anglesey, the blue serpent of Menai, and the club-footed sector with its ballast of Snowdon. There the flashpoint had occurred, the critical moment of these exchanges. On that spot upon the anvil had fallen the hammer of twenty-two years. And there one must go again, seeking the knowledge of that moment, assembling the actors, producing the play, forcing the drama to re-enact itself: stripping the thousands of possibilities from the one undoubted fact and making it stand there blazing naked: upon the summit waited the truth.

  Evans was called to the phone and stood by it eating and chopping out monosyllables. Askham was gazing at Gently fixedly, watching where his eyes strayed on the map. Then, apparently by accident, their eyes came together, meeting and holding in a long caesura, holding till Askham dragged his away and let them sink to the map between them…

  ‘Wait a minute, man. I’ll jot that down.’

  Evans juggled with the pad, the phone and his sandwich.

  ‘And nowhere else… not in Caernarvon, say? Oh, very good, man… let me know the results.’

  He stripped the sheet off the pad.

  ‘So there’s another thing settled. Fleece stayed each time at the same hotel: it was the St David in Beaumaris.’

  ‘In Beaumaris?’

  ‘Under his own name. Here are the dates on this paper.’

  ‘Show it to Askham.’

  Evans flipped the paper to the shrinking young man. Now his fingers trembled all right, he needed two attempts to pick up the sheet.

  ‘What have you to say about that?’

  ‘I… nothing! It doesn’t mean…’

  ‘It means that Fleece paid four visits to Beaumaris.’

  ‘We didn’t — we’ve never seen the man…’

  It was a temptation to jump down his throat and to crush that lie flat, but Gently firmly resisted it. Not here, not yet!

  ‘Very well, then. That’s all — for this evening, in any case. But don’t go off with the idea that we’re satisfied with you.’

  ‘I’ve told you everything… the truth!’

  ‘Now listen carefully to what I’m saying. I want you to report at the police station at Llanberis at nine a.m. on Saturday.’

  ‘B-but what for?’

  ‘To assist the police.’

  ‘I won’t do it. You can’t make me!’

  Gently nodded his head steadily. ‘You’ll do it,’ he said. ‘Either I arrest you here and now on a charge of conspiracy, or you report at Llanberis at nine a.m. on Saturday. Which way do you want it?’

  Askham didn’t deign to answer. He glowered hate at Gently for a moment, then rose and hurled himself out of the office. They heard his feet patter down the stairs. Evans tipped the door shut behind him.

  ‘Do you know, man,’ he said pleasantly, ‘I had an idea you’d be coming to Wales…’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It needed a certain amount of staff work and a liaison with the Assistant Commissioner, a person who Gently preferred to avoid at this stage in a case. The A.C. was curious, rightfully curious, and he was the enemy of instinct and hunches; he had a pathetic faith in brute fact and in the validity of close reasoning. He had also a question which he deemed important:

  ‘Have you identified Kincaid, Gently?’

  It was naive, but it required an answer, and then some time-wasting explanation.

  ‘Let’s get this straight, Gently! You can prove Kincaid is the man?’

  Gently provided him with some brute facts and a modest garnish of close reasoning.

  ‘Then why are you running off to Wales?’

  In search of Mrs Kincaid, that was obvious. And taking in, for a jeu d’esprit, a reconstruction on Snowdon. Why was that? Gently was dour; he mumbled something about cigarette-cases. He added also, with engaging casualness, that powers of compulsion might be in request…

  The latter were intended for Heslington’s benefit, but in the event they proved unnecessary. After a serious chat on the phone with Gently, Heslington consented to appear at Llanberis. Overton needed no persuading, he sounded glad to be included, while a precautionary inquiry at Mount Street showed that the Askhams had left for Beaumaris. By Friday lunchtime the job was done and Gently and Evans were on the train to Holyhead.

  They arrived late in Caernarvon and took a taxi direct to Evans’s diggings. He had comfortable rooms in a terrace house that faced the low, green Anglesey shore. On their way there Gently had noticed that the streets were quite dry, and in the morning he found a Welsh sun bleaching the wide Menai flats. It was more than an omen: it was necessary. They needed the weather on their side.

  ‘It should be clear at the top, man.’

  Evans seemed a new man at breakfast. He had emerged from his London vapours and was wearing a face as bright as the sun. On the way down he’d had a spell of sulks; he’d tried and failed to draw the uncommunicative Gently; but now, with his foot under his native breakfast-table, he’d clearly dismissed the clouds from his nature.

  ‘What a view, man. What a view to eat by.’

  You might have thought he owned the Menai Straits. He sat Gently on the side of the table that faced them and kept giving him glances to be assured of his admiration. And he chaffed his landlady with an arch, sly wickedness. She was a comely forty-two. It was really too bad of him.

  He had rung his station and a car arrived for them at half-past eight. It brought with it Sergeant Williams, a youngish detective with a serious face. Evans was now more on his dignity. His mien to Williams was stern. He checked critically on the sergeant’s account of the investigations he had made locally. But there was nothing fresh to learn. Williams had uncovered no trace of Paula Kincaid. She wasn’t a ratepayer, she hadn’t voted, and she wasn’t registered with the National Health Service; if in fact she’d been living in Caernarvon, it could only have been under a different name.

  ‘Which is what one would have expected.’

  Evans’s spirits remained undampened. It was apparent that he was following a different line to Gently, and that his self-confidence was undisturbed by the odd freaks of the latter.

  ‘We must look for a woman who left the town very suddenly. On Monday evening, or some time after that. She’ll probably have left her things behind her; she’ll just have packed a bag and gone. So it shouldn’t be too difficult. There’s probably people wondering already

  …’

  Gently puffed his morning pipe without offering any comment. He watched the steaming, gold-green hills that began to appear on their right. He didn’t want to talk, the time for discussion was over; he needed now to preserve the calm, the charged sensitivity of his mood. He was as an artist who had prepared his way and awaited the moment to pick up his brush. Nothing now must be allowed to divert him, to detract from that pregnant and dedicated poise…

  They came to Llyn Padarn, looking cold and darkly blue, and then they were running into the countrified main street of Llanberis. It followed the trend of the district. It was narrow, crooked and strangely Victorian. Slate quarries frowned on it from across the llyn and folding mountains loomed ahead of it. And here it was that Kincaid had come in search of his wife, bridging two long decades with a tap on a door; noticing perhaps the new terraces which the quarriers had cut, and feeling once again the old lure of the mountains. Or so he had said, so ran his statement. And the truth was not now so very far off…

  Outside th
e police station three cars were parked, one of them being Heslington’s borrowed Austin-Healey. He sat in it reading a paper and wearing a surprisingly drab windcheater, but of course he was playing a different role: he was the Bearded Mountaineer. Near him stood Askham’s red M.G., its owner lounging beside it, and an empty Vauxhall which no doubt belonged to Overton. The cast for the production were punctually assembled.

  As they parked Heslington lowered his paper and saluted them with a scowl. Askham kept his back towards them; it was a trim back in a tweed sports jacket. They found Overton in the station chatting climbing with the inspector, and he sprang up smilingly as Gently entered. He offered his hand and a congratulation.

  ‘You’re lucky. This is just the weather we were getting on Monday. You could hardly have better in the middle of October.’

  The inspector, a grey-haired man with a scar on his cheek, drew Gently to one side for a private confabulation.

  ‘That young fellow out there. The one with the M.G.’

  Gently nodded. ‘I can guess. He’s your Basil Gwynne-Davies, isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, you know about him then?’

  ‘We’ve begun to get acquainted. I’m hoping to know him rather better in a few hours’ time.

  ‘I’ll wait, then. I thought I’d speak to you before I had him on the carpet.’

  Overton also wanted a word. He’d been measuring Gently’s build and dress.

  ‘I don’t know what you have in mind, but I’d recommend making the ascent from here.’

  ‘We’re taking the route from Pen-y-Pass.’

  ‘Of course, if that’s the one you want. Though if you aren’t used to scrambles of this sort you’ll find the Llanberis… well, less dramatic.’

  ‘Thank you for the advice.’

  ‘Don’t think I’m trying to come the “old hand”. But if you could borrow a pair of boots… and possibly a haversack and a sweater…’

  They set out again in two cars, the one from Caernarvon and Overton’s Vauxhall. In the boot of the former was a pile of gear which the Llanberis inspector had lent them. Gently had said nothing to Heslington or Askham — in fact, he’d said very little at all. Now he sat poker-faced and hunched, with even his pipe lying cold in his pocket.