Passing over Arthur Fleece — surely he’d met her at that time? — and all the more obvious and probable candidates. Did she know what she was taking on, in that vanished church in pre-war London? Had she intended to buckle-to as the wife of a wage-earning nobody? She’d perhaps continue with her job at Metropolitan Electric, since that house in Putney must have swallowed a lot of cash; and the gilt would wear off, the hectic romance fall flat, the feeling grow that she’d been a fool and thrown away her chances…
And Fleece was there to remind her of one of the chances she’d thrown away; seeing her now in a new light, as the jewel another man had snatched up. A beauty undeservedly annexed, and a discontented beauty; ready to think again and this time to grasp with a better reach. And Fleece could see fortune. He’d discovered the ways and means. He’d got a tourniquet in his hand and was ready to try his luck with a squeeze. For a man like him, wasn’t she the woman: fair, sophisticated, a social asset; good enough and ambitious enough, but not expensive: the very thing?
Gently paused to backtrack on that. Was he quite sure it was sound? Wasn’t there something slightly amiss with that part of the picture? An ambitious man might have looked higher, above the level of Kincaid’s wife; a climber himself, he would want a mate who was already to some extent in possession. That was the flaw in the fabric; a blind passion was out of the question; he was too much in Fleece’s skin to believe that love had been the moving force. It might have piqued his pride to obtain her and he might have considered her had she been single, but as it was had the prize been worth the effort, including Everest and attempted murder? Obviously not, to a man like Fleece, a chilly egoist and a weigher of chances. It was an insufficient motive, the motive was much more likely to have been money. And he had returned, having disposed of Kincaid, to collect what must have been a substantial sum, paid by someone, it had to follow, to whom Kincaid had spelled danger. Yet who could Kincaid have threatened, that obscure little pay-clerk? What terrible secret had he learned and perhaps still carried in his head?
It seemed improbable; but if it were true, till now Gently had been pursuing a chimera, and the disappearance of Mrs Kincaid took on a darker, more sinister aspect…
His phone buzzed; he grabbed it impatiently. It was the sergeant on the desk.
‘There’s a lady here wants to see you, sir. Gives the name of Mrs Askham.’
‘Tell her I’m busy.’
‘It’s about your case, sir. She wants you and nobody else.’
‘What about my case?’
‘She won’t say, sir. A bit upstage, the lady is.’
Gently hesitated. ‘She isn’t that blonde, is she? The one who drove up in a Rolls?’
‘… wearing mink, sir. That’s the one.’
Gently fingered his tie. ‘Very well. Send her up.’
He shrugged largely, shaking his head: out of the blue it was coming, this one! The name of Askham rang no bells, nothing in society or on the stage or screen. He was belatedly reaching for his copy of Who’s Who when his door was tapped and the lady walked in.
‘I read in the papers that you were anxious to trace Kincaid’s wife, Superintendent. Since I was in London I thought I would call on you. Paula Kincaid used to be my secretary.’
She was superb. She was in the manner of women who have always had the bank behind them. She sat with legs meticulously crossed and her chin held at a patrician angle. Beneath her mink she wore a lilac suit, and it matched exactly the tint of her eyes; the legs, whole worlds from being mere limbs, were barely sheened with nylon mist. Perhaps the last thing one noticed about her, if one succeeded in noticing it at all, was that her age was ‘twenty-nine’, it might be almost approaching thirty. She spoke with a ringingly modulated voice which was also distinct from the purely functional.
‘You are still interested in the woman, are you?’
‘Oh yes!’ Gently assembled his truant wits.
‘Because if you aren’t I won’t continue to waste my time and yours. As it is, my information is probably of doubtful value. But I had an hour between engagements and I thought that this might fill it in.’
‘You are very kind, Mrs Askham.’
She flicked him a look from between well-brushed lashes. Some delicate shadowing, a touch of crimson, they were eyes a camera would have doted on, and at the distance of a desk the effect was quite breathtaking. Her angelic hair was swept up in a high wave and caught in a web of lilac organdie.
‘First, you’d like to have my particulars. I am Mrs Harry Askham. My town address is in Mount Street; I left my card down at the desk. My late husband, as no doubt you know, was what is called an industrial magnate. He was a cousin of Lord Cliffley’s and related to the Blount family.’
She paused, as though intending to let these particulars sink in. Then she said:
‘I think it likely that Mrs Kincaid is still in Wales. My country place is at Beaumaris, and we were living there when I discharged her. She was fond of Wales, as she often told me, and I heard later that she was living at Caernarvon.’
Gently rocked a little in his chair. This was too much, coming all in one mouthful! After so much painful and laboured digging, now to have it handed to him on a platter…! How many people were there around like this, waiting for an hour between their engagements, or just not bothering at all, not giving a damn for the oafish police?
He became aware of Mrs Askham watching him suspiciously.
‘I wouldn’t be boring you, would I?’ she asked.
‘No. Far from it.’
‘I only ask because I don’t want you to think me a pest. You must get a number of frivolous callers who imagine they have important information, and I should hate to be classed as one of them. This is my first visit to the police.’
‘I assure you I’m very interested.’
‘Then would you like to ask me some questions?’
‘I would. I would indeed.’
Mrs Askham complacently smoothed her skirt.
‘When did you engage Paula Kincaid, Mrs Askham?’
‘When? Oh, in the summer of nineteen-thirty-seven. She was a widow, you know, or thought she was. Rather teary and mournful. Though she soon got over it.’
‘Did you engage her through an agency?’
‘Oh no. My husband suggested her.’
‘Your husband?’
‘Harry Askham. He knew I was looking for a secretary. When you’re running three establishments and that sort of thing, then a secretary becomes essential. Otherwise you’d go mad.’
‘But how did your husband come to know of her?’
‘He employed her, of course; she worked at the firm. He thought it would be doing the girl a good turn, or so he said at the time.’
‘And his firm?’ Gently gaped.
Her lilac eyes opened reprovingly.
‘Metropolitan Electric. Harry was Met. L.’
Did she know she was a bombshell, sitting there so expensively, with a hint of the air of a duchess extracting amusement from a clown? If she did, she didn’t show it. She’d learned not to wrinkle her precious skin. And her eyes, cool and bold, merely stared at him interestedly.
‘You mean… before the merger?’ Gently grasped for the phrase blindly.
‘Oh yes. And afterwards too. It was we who took over Intrics, you know. Harry continued as managing director up to his death nine years ago; then Clarence Stanley was appointed, chiefly at my instigation. I was never actually on the Board, though of course I own the controlling interest.’
‘Then Mr Stanley is… well known to you?’
‘Naturally. I wanted a man I could trust.’
‘He would follow your instructions?’
‘He would consult me on matters of policy.’
