Evans.
‘I can see it all now. I’m the biggest arse going. He lied to me, that fellow, and I swallowed it down to the tail. Never thought, never doubted; just trusted my own stupid judgement. I could see a wonderful case, man, and I couldn’t see anything else.’
‘He might still have been telling the truth,’ Gently mumbled over a sandwich.
‘No he mightn’t, man. I can sense it. We can forget about Kincaid. He was just a red herring, he happened along very convenient.’
‘Heslington’s description fitted him, didn’t it?’
‘What sort of a description was that? A brown jacket and grey slacks — and he might have seen him somewhere, anyway. No, no, you’ll never convince me now that Kincaid was up there. I have an instinct, I tell you. My promotion is down the drain.’
At that moment the phone went. Gently limbered it to his ear. Evans watched his face fearfully, trying to read there his own perdition. Better men than Evans, however, had failed to read Gently’s poker face, and the call turned out to be a longer one than the description of a car would require. Gently reached for a pad and pencil and scribbled down some unintelligible notes. Finally, he adjured his telespondent to try again in the morning. He hung up and sighed humorously.
‘It’s been and done it on us again.’
‘Who was that, man?’ Evans asked.
‘Dorking, reporting on Sarah Amies. They’ve never heard of her in Penwood. They’ve never heard of Baxter or Blackstable. The village church has been converted to a hall and they can’t for the moment lay hands on the register. Penwood is one of the new overspill areas. Most of the original inhabitants have hopped it.’
Evans gestured with shoulders and hand. ‘Does it matter now, the way things are?’
‘It matters to me, if nobody else. I’ve been told off to identify Kincaid.’
‘But if Heslington is Mrs Fleece’s boyfriend-’
The phone buzzed again to interrupt him. This time, while Gently listened, an expression did flit over his face. He replaced the phone. He dusted his hands.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘That’s that for the evening. Heslington’s car is a new Ford Anglia. It’s Cambridge blue, and its been garaged all day.’
Evans was staying in a wretched hotel in the vicinity of Euston Station, and Gently, still feeling responsible for him, invited him home to his Finchley rooms. Elphinstone Road was a gem of its kind. It had come into being during the eighteen sixties; a sedate thoroughfare, little disturbed by traffic, with public gardens on one side and ice-cake villas on the other. Its atmosphere had always held a charm for Gently. It was hansom cab, parasol, hard hat, and bustle skirt. The teardrop street lamps had never been ravished and war had spared the cast-iron railings, while of twenty complacent villas, twenty still lined Elphinstone Road.
Evans, who came in glum and silent, soon warmed to the snugness of Gently’s retreat. He browsed over the books and the photographs and the fishing rods, and the big stuffed pike with its glassy eye. He too was an angler, it appeared, though his talk was of Gwyniads and bottomless llyns; and by the time they’d eaten supper and were sitting over the fire his mercurial spirits were once more to rights.
‘But I don’t mind telling you I’m foxed by all this. We’ve had plenty of bites, but we never strike a fish.’
‘All the same, it’s interesting. Some of the bites are unexpected. We were using paste over at Hendon, but we got a pike-size in nibbles.’
‘He’s a deadly liar, man, is that Mr Stanley.’
Gently yawned. ‘I agree… he’s also an actor of some talent. And still the questions are: what’s behind it? Why was he covering up on Kincaid? Why didn’t he want us to meet Piper and get the information we did from him?’
‘Do you think it’s her he was protecting?’
‘That’s a very seductive theory. Fleece was in the same line of business; there’d be an esprit de l’electricite or something. They’re both liars, Stanley and her. We can’t take their words for the extent of the acquaintance. And if Mrs Fleece is Paula Kincaid, she’d have reason enough to want it kept quiet.’
‘But where does the bloke in the sports car come into it?’
‘Where indeed? We shall have to know that. And there’s another idea that’s struck me. We may have jumped at the divorce angle too quickly.’
‘How do you mean, man?’
‘Can’t you see the alternative? Kincaid was moving heaven and earth to find her. She may have been using the hotel as a hideout when his inquiries were getting too close.’
‘Aye. That’s possible too.’
‘And one of the club members may have been in the secret. That would account for her getting that trunk- call. The sports car johnny may be a blind.’
A grin spread delightedly over Evans’ face. ‘Man,’ he said, ‘you’re cheering me up something wonderful. But what about Kincaid’s reaction to that picture — you aren’t going to tell me you accept it as positive?’
‘He talked to his lawyer, don’t forget.’
‘I know. And little good it seems to have done him.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Kincaid is far from being a simpleton. He may have decided to change his mind about his policy of being himself; in which case he wouldn’t recognize fifty photographs of his wife. And we’d be the more likely to believe him if he kept up the pretence, so why should he drop it? His course of action is plain.’
‘That’s a beautiful piece of reasoning, and I wish I could believe it.’
Gently chuckled. He tapped out his pipe on the serpentine bar of the grate. ‘Tomorrow we’ll do some more fishing. We’ll cast a line in Fleece’s business. And perhaps a little quiet ledgering in the Everest Club waters.’
The morning was fugitively fine with a bright sun among darkling clouds. In the gardens across the way the autumn trees steamed and sparkled. Gently was finding it rather pleasant to have a guest sharing his breakfast routine, even though the papers were subdivided and his reading time was diminished. Evans was enjoying himself too and his appetite delighted Mrs Jarvis. Her cousin had married a Welshman, she told them, and really he was quite like one of the family…
The arrival of their Wolseley put an end to the domestic interlude. Fleece’s firm, Electroproducts, had an address at Ilford. They took the North Circular Road, bending through Edmonton and Woodford, the great reaching arc that spanned the metropolis like a dome. Electroproducts occupied a site not far from Seven Kings station. One saw at a glance that it was unable to challenge comparison with its vast competitor at Hendon. A range of plain crook-roofed buildings, some subsidiary sheds and erections and a yard enclosed with wire mesh: these comprised its entirety. In the yard was a roofed rack in which cycles were stacked. Beside it were parked a few cars and a number of scooters and motorcycles. The office section, a long lean-to at the side of the workshops, was approached through fence-gates which stood open and unattended.
They drove in and parked. They were met by no palatial reception. Beyond the door was a narrow passage which received a dim light from the workshops. A girl came hurrying out of a doorway with a sheaf of work sheets in her hand. She stopped on seeing the two detectives and stared inquiringly before asking:
‘You want Mr Bemmells, is it?’
Mr Bemmells was the general manager; he was a lean and hard-faced man of about fifty-five or so. He had a haggard, harassed look, his eyebrows slanting down from the centre, but this seemed a natural condition with him and no reflection of the current circumstances. He found them seats in his cluttered office and listened attentively to Gently’s preface.
‘So you want to know how we started up? Then you’ve come to the right person. I was in this firm from the beginning, back in nineteen-thirty-eight. We were in Walthamstow then, in a converted warehouse in Sibley Street, and we stayed there till forty-two, when Jerry copped us with incendiaries. Then we moved to this site — a priority job, building this was; we were turning out aircraft stuff in those days, cable conduit, jennies, starters. Then after the war we went back to appliances — you’ve probably seen our products about — and now we’re working up an export connection besides our regular contract work. That’s the story of Electroproducts: a good investment, if I may say so.’
Gently grinned. ‘I’ll have to mention the name to my stockbroker. But I’d like more detailed information about the way the firm was formed. How did you come to be associated with it?’
