Gently to the Summit csg-9 Page 18

  And Kincaid:

  ‘I feel greatly in your debt, Superintendent. Not only for clearing me of the charge. It goes much deeper than that.’

  They were shaking hands; they all shook hands. It might have been an old chum’s reunion. Then Kincaid offered his arm to Mrs Askham, and Mrs Askham laid her gloved hand on it…

  When Gently returned to the office he found the C.C. seated behind the desk; with a perceptible stiffness in his bearing and a resolute gleam in his eye. He pointed to the seat of interrogation, sniffed and angled his moustache.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Perhaps a man can be told what’s going on in his own division?’

  Gently sat, feeling for his pipe.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ he replied.

  But it was simple too, for all stories were basically simple; the story of a rich man’s enticement of a poor man’s wife. Of the corrupting power of large possessions, of the cropping of dragon’s teeth, and the ultimate destruction of a guilty one when no man pursued him. Simple and moral, if morals still lingered in a well-explained world. Simple anyway, like truth. A dramatic testimony for five players.

  ‘Mrs Askham was very generous in filling in the minor detail.’

  She had been; though wouldn’t ‘confessed’ have been the word that best described it? Deliberately, never glancing at Kincaid, in her low, steady voice, she had rehearsed without excusing every incident of that long-ago. A confession, yes, and more: a revelation of herself. A picture of the woman as she was, pitilessly drawn for Kincaid to see. His blind devotion had made her honest, she’d felt compelled to render account. At least she would tender a rigid integrity to his unconditioning acceptance.

  ‘She married Kincaid in the first place because she thought herself pregnant by Askham. They had had a brief affaire, very much a boss-employee relation. But after the marriage a change took place. Askham had taken a second look at her. He saw that her husband was deeply in love with her and it suggested that he’d thrown something away. He began to fall in love with her himself. Soon it was no longer enough for her to be his mistress. He grew jealous and possessive and wanted Paula entirely, he saw in Kincaid an interloper, a mere gesture to the proprieties.

  ‘Towards the end of nineteen-thirty-six the situation became more critical, since Paula was really pregnant this time and there were reasons why Kincaid could not have been the father. A divorce was out of the question; it would have had business repercussions for Askham; and he wouldn’t hear of an abortion even if that had been practicable. The only relief from the dilemma lay in the proposed Everest expedition, and this was languishing from lack of funds and want of an experienced leader. But Askham could provide it with both, and this he did, in strict secrecy. He did more. He suborned that leader in an effort to prevent Kincaid from ever returning. Fleece was serviceable, he was ambitious. It needed only a bribe to do the trick. The money was promised. Fleece agreed. Harry Askham had found a solution.

  ‘Paula was naturally not informed of this second and criminal part of the arrangement. She knew only that Askham had put up the money and had influenced Fleece to lead the party. The bribe was substantial. It enabled Fleece to set up business on his return. His wife remembers him receiving the money and being delighted with himself about it.

  ‘He was subtle, and from a professional standpoint one must admire the way he handled the job. He manoeuvred the assault, he worked his opening, and he brought back a story that was easy to believe in. It fitted Kincaid’s character neatly, for he was just the man to continue alone. And it was accepted; people questioned Fleece’s judgement, but his integrity went unchallenged. There remained a little matter of a lost climbing rope, but that passed unnoticed in the excitement of the moment.

  ‘When news of the tragedy reached England, Askham acted without delay. It was not to be supposed that Paula was greatly stricken with grief. By an apparent miracle, her troubles were over and she could be united to her affluent lover, so she let him carry her off to Wales, where they were married by special licence. From Wales she never stirred until after the birth of her son Henry, and then she moved in circles remote from all who knew her as Mrs Kincaid. She had always been a person of refinement. She took care now to adapt herself to her environment. Askham married her for love, but he never had cause to regret it.

  ‘Fleece returned and established his business and seemed content with his one bite at the cherry: in fact, with the guilt so evenly distributed, the prospect of blackmail was practically excluded. When Askham died the position was unaltered. Mrs Askham was his legitimate though harassed legatee. She had to fight for her rights. His brother Richard pressed her hard; but she won her case, and was safely installed in her millions.

  ‘Then the impossible happened. The grave gave up its dead. From ten thousand miles and a dim memory Kincaid came stalking into the Asterbury. He had changed; he was hard to recognize; his manner was eccentric: and distrait; but from the moment he began his story Fleece, at all events, had no more doubt. Kincaid alone could know those facts and to know them branded the man as Kincaid. It was hardly surprising that Fleece lost his head and started a suit to discredit the intruder.

  ‘He soon found it again, however; Fleece was a man with both eyes open. It may have been Kincaid’s anxiety to trace his wife that revealed to Fleece his great opportunity. I imagine he’d kept an eye on the Askhams. He knew just how vulnerable was Paula’s position. And Kincaid could recognize her, that was a fair gamble, though it was highly unlikely that she would put it to the test. It was a situation that was tailor-made for blackmail. Fleece went to Wales and stated his demands.

  ‘He wanted everything, her hand and her fortune. The small matter of his being married could be adjusted quite easily. For a year or two now he’d known that his wife had a lover, and his divorce was a formality which he put in hand directly. His position was unassailable and he revelled in his power. He made no bones about discussing the affair before her son. They were helpless. Their choice lay between Fleece and relative poverty. Any compromise they suggested he brushed insolently aside.

  ‘That was the situation on Monday, with one significant development: Kincaid was in Caernarvon. He had been seen and recognized by Mrs Askham’s housekeeper. His presence there then may have been fortuitous or it may have been contrived as a flick of the whip, but he was there, and that circumstance gave rise to a desperate plan. Henry Askham would seek him and confide to him the situation. He would offer him an unlimited bribe to declare himself an impostor. Askham sought for him in Caernarvon and was directed to Llanberis, and there discovered that Kincaid had bought sandwiches and had set off again up the Pass. Askham guessed, and guessed wrongly, that Kincaid had gone up Snowdon, and rather than miss him he went up also, taking what he judged to be the same track.

  ‘You’ve heard his statement. He arrived at the summit a little ahead of the Everest Club party, and seeing them coming he decided to wait in case Kincaid should be among them. Because he was giddy he sat down on the cairn, which had the effect of concealing him, so that neither Heslington nor Fleece were aware of his presence when they arrived. But he saw them, especially Fleece. His hatred flared at the sight of him. To his tormented brain this was part of a plot, Fleece had come there to rendezvous with Kincaid. When Fleece went down to the edge and stood watching he was presumably on the look-out for his man, and Askham would have been less than human if a certain idea hadn’t occurred to him.

  ‘But there were two things against it. One was Askham’s poor head for heights. I believe he would never have dared to go where Fleece was standing then. The other was the structure of the cairn, which, as you may know, is built of loose rock. It would have been physically impossible for Askham to have got down off it without making a noise and attracting Fleece’s attention. And the distance between them was about forty-five feet, and Fleece was a powerful and heavily built man; so murder was out. I was convinced of that as soon as I had a chance to examine the place.

  ‘What,
then, happened? Askham was left with his original plan to pursue. Kincaid was coming, or so he thought, and with luck he might be intercepted. But by now Askham’s nerves were so tattered that he was unfit for even this course, and after rising to his feet he lit a cigarette in an attempt to smooth them down. Then he took a step forward, and made a clatter. Fleece turned to see Askham standing above him.

  ‘The sequel is instructive: it was his sense of guilt and nothing else that did for Fleece. Askham had no intention of attacking him, nor could he have done so if he’d wished. But Fleece’s guilt prevented him from seeing it. I imagine he had only one thought: here was a person who he’d driven to extremes, and who was about to act as he himself would have acted. The shock unnerved him. He gave a shout of dismay. He lost his balance, and with a scream toppled backwards.’

  Gently broke off, his nice sense of timing warning him that here he should relight his pipe. His authority was felt, for neither the C.C. nor Evans unsettled the spell with a question. From outside came the patter of rain. It was beating insistently on the pavements below. Only just in time had they gone to the mountain, subpoenaing the sun to be a witness…

  ‘Askham was petrified, but he knew he’d be a fool if he stopped there to explain matters. Forgetting his cigarette-case, which he’d dropped, he made tracks for Llanberis. At Trecastles he told his mother and they agreed between them to keep it quiet, but later he remembered the cigarette-case and the loss of it preyed on his mind. The case, of course, had been Kincaid’s; it had a history of its own. It had been given him by his wife a short time before the expedition. But on the same day, which was his birthday, he’d learned something suspicious about his wife; there’d been a row, he’d returned the case, and she’d taken to using it as a gesture of defiance. Kincaid was disturbed when I showed it him. It concealed a memory which he wanted kept concealed.

  ‘However, the fact that it had been Kincaid’s suggested a piece of embroidery to Askham. He knew by his own experience that people tended to remember Kincaid. So the next day he drove into Llanberis and reported to the police about seeing Kincaid, giving them the name of ‘Basil Gwynne-Davies’ and an address he’d noticed in Bangor. The result exceeded his expectations; he had intended only to confuse the inquiry. But on the evidence there was nothing we could do except to arrest Kincaid and charge him. And then immediately a fresh danger arose, since we were bound to investigate the antecedents of Kincaid, and so the threat which should have died with Fleece was revived in a second and more alarming form. The Askhams fled from Wales to London, where they consulted their friend, Mr Stanley. They conspired to obstruct what inquiry they could and, in Askham’s case, to lay the ghost of Paula entirely.

  ‘Again it was he who went one too many. I could credit Mrs Askham, and Stanley’s obstructions only baffled me. But Henry’s gambit I knew for a fake, it was much too obvious and convenient, and once I grasped how it tied in the case began to fall together. But Henry wasn’t going to split, and showing motive wasn’t enough. I had to know and prove before witnesses exactly what happened up there on Monday. So I put him through the reconstruction, which was the only course open to me. And it worked, I’m pleased to say. The rest was merely a matter of production.’

  ‘So I noticed.’ The C.C. was gruff after his long bout of silence. He looked away, tweaking his moustache with alternate jerkings of his face muscles. ‘But, dash it all, there was a chance there… you needn’t have sunk the lady’s canoe. Once you were certain that it was an accident you might have given it the soft pedal.’

  Gently nodded. ‘I did think about it. Though she rated a reprimand. But then I saw it in a different way as I was coming down Snowdon.’

  Evans said roundly: ‘Kincaid, man,’ as though he had suddenly solved a problem.

  Gently nodded again. ‘Yes, Kincaid, man. We owed him something. I thought his wife.’

  He took the noon train for town after spending a Sunday morning with Evans, admiring Caernarvon, which was easy, and submitting to the Welshman’s long post-mortem. Evans had lost, but he bore no grudge for it; he appeared to have forgotten his dimmed hopes of promotion. His object now was to study that case and to dwell on each aspect of the way Gently had handled it. He wanted to learn and he acknowledged his master. He acknowledged the insufficiency of his restless logic. He had seized on the secret that logic was not enough, and he wanted to be logically certain that he was reading it aright. He developed his ideas with a native fervour, and Gently responded to him generously.

  At the police station they met the Chief Constable again: another man who had been indulging in meditations on Kincaid. He succeeded in cornering Gently in the superintendent’s office, where after some introductory compliments he came down to the business near to him.

  ‘You know, I can’t help thinking that our man was a bit simple. Damn it, he might have waited a day before hanging a charge on Kincaid.’

  Poor Evans. Gently was glad that the office door was closed between them. He paused before returning an answer and raised his brows in surprised dissent.

  ‘Our Assistant Commissioner was convinced we had a case against Kincaid.’

  ‘Oh, was he?’ The C.C.’s tone sounded deferential but doubting. ‘All the same, it was rather hasty. He showed a lack of judgement, I thought. It doesn’t do our name any good to go throwing capital charges around.’

  ‘In principle, of course.’ Gently conceded the point ungraciously. ‘But in the circumstances we felt your man acted properly and with intelligence. Kincaid’s apprehension was necessary: he appeared to have had a powerful motive for murder. He was also in funds and he had no ties. He might have disappeared at any moment.’

  ‘I see your point.’ The C.C. thought about it. He continued to look unenthusiastic. ‘Perhaps I’m being wise after the event, but you must admit I have some grounds for it.’

  ‘You’re doing less than justice to Evans.’

  ‘Oh no. I’ve always thought him a good man.’

  ‘He’s more than that.’ Gently took a plunge. ‘We could use him in Whitehall if you’d agree to his transfer.’

  ‘If I agree-!’ The C.C. was startled. ‘Good heavens no. I’ll hear of nothing like that.’

  ‘He’s the sort we need. I can vouch for him personally.’

  ‘No, Gently. We can’t let you pinch our Evanses.’

  But now he looked pleased. He took a turn up the office.

  ‘It’s like this,’ he said abruptly. ‘Owens here is retiring. It’s been a toss-up whether we promote Evans or move in the superintendent from Bangor. But you’ve seen something of Evans and you seem to think him a deserving customer-’

  ‘I have to agree with our Assistant Commissioner.’

  ‘Exactly. And in view of his opinion…’

  Gently was still chuckling over that interview when his train pulled away from Menai, leaving Evans, a waving figure, standing alone at the platform’s end. Then he settled to his papers: ‘Kincaid… Dramatic Move… Release’; but by Penmaen-mawr he’d fallen asleep, with the vestige of a smile still lining his face.

  For how else could one look at the Kincaid affair? From first to last, it had been a preposterous business.

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