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 out 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.’
