Her eyes twinkled and she added: ‘He hadn’t consulted me about yesterday. But he knew the girl had been my secretary, and he was doing his loyal best to protect me. Clarence has always been a dear.’
‘Hmn.’ Gently didn’t sound so certain of it. ‘And that’s the reason for your visit today? Because Mr Stanley was unsuccessful?’
She regarded him archly. ‘That’s not a kind way to put it, but it’s close to the truth, so I’ll forgive you. Also I thought if I saw you myself I might persuade you to spare me publicity. I dread an appearance in the popular press. I prefer the greater sympathy of the Illustrated.’
Gently shrugged. ‘I can give you no promises.’
‘You’ll do your best. I feel confident of that.’
‘If I can lay hands on Paula Kincaid I won’t be ungrateful. That’s the most I can offer.’
She nodded. She picked up her sharkskin bag, which she’d laid on the desk with her pair of lilac gloves. She produced a slender silver case and a butane lighter, both flowingly monogrammed and engraved with a crest.
‘May I offer you a cigarette?’
Gently accepted from curiosity. But they were honest-to-goodness Player’s and not the gold-tipped confection he’d expected. She held out the lighter with a long-fingered hand, the nails of which were polished only. She held it steadily. Her only ring was a circle of gold on the third finger.
‘Now that we’ve examined my motives, shall we continue with Paula Kincaid?’
‘If we may.’ The unaccustomed cigarette smoke was making Gently squint.
‘I engaged her after Ascot, it must have been the end of June, and in July she accompanied us to Trecastles, at Beaumaris. Trecastles is Harry’s family place. We were both very fond of it; it looks across the Straits to Llanfairfechan, with the Great Orme in the distance. Paula wasn’t a secretary, of course, she’d worked an adding machine or something, but she was an adaptable sort of girl and soon picked up the job. She was rather flighty, I’m afraid to say. She was always doing things with her hair.’ Mrs Askham inhaled delicately and allowed herself the luxury of a frown.
‘She found a boyfriend, did she?’
The frown lingered. ‘I’m coming to that. I may be doing her less than justice, but I made up my mind I would confide in you. That was the summer I was having Henry, who is our only child, so I couldn’t keep an eye on things as much as I’d have liked. Harry kept a yacht down there, and I didn’t always feel like sailing. Then there were excursions I was sometimes out of. Having a baby is no joke. Am I making myself plain?’
‘Reasonably plain, Mrs Askham.’
‘I’m glad, because I shall never know the truth of it myself. Harry was a man and inclined that way, he would have been unhealthy if he wasn’t; but there are limits, you’ll agree. I drew a line at the servants.’
‘Did you tackle him about it?’
‘No. Not beyond hinting. There was never sufficient to go on, not till the day I sacked her.’
‘When was that?’
‘It was during the war, it would be in nineteen-forty-one. I caught him kissing her in the shelter during an alert. And out she went.’
‘What was your husband’s reaction to that?’
‘What could it be? He simply saw nothing. Harry was a husband of the greatest tact. It was a quality I always appreciated in him.’
‘Do you know if he saw her again after she left?’
‘He may have done, since she certainly remained in the district. My housekeeper at Trecastles ran across her in Caernarvon perhaps a year after that. But she no longer concerned me.’
‘And that was positively the last you’ve heard of her?’
‘Yes, positively. When Davies saw her.’
‘Did she tell your housekeeper what she was doing?’
‘No. Davies received the impression that she wasn’t in employment.’
Gently drew at the cigarette, which his clumsy fingers were making squashy. Surely l’affaire Kincaid couldn’t be reduced to these proportions? The passing whim of a millionaire for the wife of one of his obscure employees, involving murder by proxy and the disbursement of two large sums? It was top-heavy; it was taking a steam- hammer to crack the shell of a nut. Askham’s purpose could have been served at a far lesser rate. It looked more as though he’d accepted an opportunity already made, adding to his household a likely recruit whom he could seduce at his leisure. Unless… unless his motive was something other than it seemed: such as the deliberate seclusion of Mrs Kincaid and the severing of her ties with her past. But why? What did she know? From whom was her information to be kept? From the returning members of the expedition; from the designing Fleece; could that have been it? He ground the cigarette into his tray.
‘Where did Paula Kincaid spend most of her time?’
Mrs Askham’s eyes looked wondering. ‘With us, of course. Wherever we were.’
‘In Wales for the most part?’
‘For the most part in Wales. We always looked on Trecastles as being our home. And that first year, having Henry, I didn’t bother about the season.’
‘So she was in Wales during all her first year with you?’
‘Except at Christmas, when we went to a party at Cannes. Then the next summer we went to Scotland: Harry wanted to cruise the Western Isles; and after the shooting we returned to Wales, and after that on to Cannes. Then I suppose it was Wales again. It was dull in town; too many war scares.’
‘But you’d go to town to do your shopping. To see your dressmaker and the like?’
Mrs Askham said very coldly: ‘I buy my clothes from Balmain.’
‘So in fact Paula Kincaid was rarely in London?’
‘I suppose she wasn’t. But she didn’t complain.’
‘Did she ever go there to visit her mother?’
‘Her mother was dead, I seem to remember.’
‘Where did she spend her holidays?’
Mrs Askham was vague. ‘I let her off when we were abroad, she usually preferred it that way. Then after the war started we spent most of the time at Trecastles, and she never seemed to want a holiday. But perhaps that was Harry’s doing.’
‘How do you mean?’ Gently asked sharply.
Her eyes wondered at him again. ‘I should have thought that was obvious. He was always keen to keep her near him.’
It fitted perfectly. He had spirited her away from all her pre-expedition contacts, had carried her off to his castle in Wales and had held her there incommunicado. By contrivance or a hefty bribe, he had secured her consent to this: and it was only an ill-timed kiss in a shelter that had brought the arrangement to an end. How had it been managed after that? Davies, the housekeeper, suggested the answer. He had set up house for Paula in Caernarvon and had perhaps endowed her with an annuity. And now, eighteen years later, Fleece had shown cognizance of this development. His mysterious trips into Wales now throbbed with a blatant significance. But why had Fleece waited to use his knowledge until the reappearance of Kincaid? What subtle condition had been fulfilled, and who had it driven to take drastic action? Not Askham, he was dead; blackmail couldn’t reach him any longer. But there was Stanley, the father-figure, who might have inherited the Met. L secrets…
‘You said you had little to do with your husband’s business affairs, Mrs Askham.’
‘That’s perfectly true, if it helps you. Though I’m not entirely a fool in business.’
‘You place great faith in Mr Stanley?’
‘Mr Stanley is my best friend. He and Harry were at Oxford together and they were more like brothers than most brothers I know.’
Gently’s tone was deferential. ‘This may seem irrelevant, but it could have a bearing on the subject of my inquiries. Did your husband have any business anxieties?’
‘It certainly does seem irrelevant.’ Mrs Askham let it hang for a moment, her eyes half interrogative, half scornful. ‘However, I suppose you have a reason for asking, and I came here to be helpful, so I’ll answer the question. Yes, he did appear anxious about something.’
‘To do with the business?’
‘I presumed so. I wasn’t entirely in Harry’s confidence. But in latter years he seemed rather harassed, and
