Gently took Evans down to the canteen and bought him a consoling cup of coffee. In spite of the A.C.’s careful handling, the Welsh inspector was down in the dumps. He’d sat in silence in Gently’s office while the latter had read through the Kincaid file, then he’d answered a few random questions. But his attention had plainly been wandering.
‘It just goes to show, man…’
Now he was moping over his coffee, the red flush still clinging to his straight, smooth-skinned features. He was in his forties, but he looked boyish, his hair and eyebrows being fair. He was tall and hard-framed: an ex-rugby-player, probably.
‘We don’t see much excitement in Caernarvon, look you. I had visions of making myself on a case like this. And it all went so easy, that was the whole trouble about it. One thing led to another… I got too cocky, by far.’
‘You won’t be the first to have bought stock off Kincaid.’
‘I know, man. I should have gone like a cat on hot bricks. I should have waited till my head cleared before slapping a charge on him, but it’s too late now. I’ve dropped a most almighty clanger.’
‘I wouldn’t swear to that yet…’
‘Oh yes. I can sense it. The Assistant Commissioner was very decent, but he didn’t fool me, man.’
‘But he’s right about one thing — there’s still a case to be answered. So we’d better have a chat with Kincaid and see if we can chase up an angle.’
In the courtyard a squad car was waiting to take them to Bow Street. It was a drizzling October morning and the Strand had a drear and slatternly look. Umbrellas were bobbing along the pavements, newsboys huddled into doorways, a sky of motionless grey wrack pressed low over pencilled buildings. At the first tobacconist’s shop Gently stopped to make a purchase. He returned, to Evans’s surprise, with cigarettes of three different brands.
‘You do smoke cigarettes, don’t you?’
He took charge of Evans’s cigarette-case, adding samples from his three packets to the Players already contained in it. Then he handed back the case.
‘I’ve put the Churchmans on the right… it’s a silly trick, really. But then, we’re on a silly case…’
At Bow Street Police Court a couple of pressmen stood waiting on the steps and they snapped into action when they saw Gently arrive with Evans. A flash-bulb hissed momentarily, a notebook was thrust under Gently’s nose.
‘Is it the Kincaid job, Super…?’
‘Have there been some developments…?’
He pushed past them into the police station, murmuring something about routine.
Inside the station smelt dank, as though the drizzle had seeped into it. Gently explained his errand at the desk and was passed through to the office. The inspector in charge, who knew Gently very well, shrugged and made a face when Kincaid’s name was mentioned.
‘I’ve got a feeling about him, Super… you know the sort of feeling?’ He gave an expressive nod to make his meaning the more emphatic.
Then Kincaid was fetched in. He was thinner even than the pictures showed him, a spindly, emaciated man whose clothes hung slackly about him. He had a long, narrow skull, a high forehead and a straight nose, his cheekbones were over-prominent and his brown eyes large and intense. He had a small, thin-lipped mouth set in a pessimistic droop. His cheeks were sunken, his hair short and grey. He looked ten years older than the forty-seven he should have been and one placed him directly: a fanatic or a humbug. He had the fey, alien quality of one born to be notorious.
Evans introduced the session.
‘This is Superintendent Gently, Kincaid. He has one or two questions he wants to ask you.’
Kincaid fastened his brown eyes on Gently for a moment, then he looked round for a chair and sat down without speaking. Gently perched informally on the office desk.
‘Do you smoke, Kincaid?’
‘Yes, I smoke.’
His voice was pitched high and he spoke with care. Evans, cued in, offered his case to Kincaid; then he glanced towards Gently with a scarcely perceptible nod. After hesitating, Kincaid had chosen a Churchman.
‘Now Kincaid.’ Gently waited for the cigarette to be lit. ‘I’m rather interested in these inquiries you’ve been making about your wife. You’ve had plenty of time to find her, and you’ve had a lot of publicity. If she was still alive, don’t you think she would have come forward?’
The brown eyes stared through the cigarette smoke, but Kincaid made no offer to answer. He sat perfectly still, his disengaged hand resting lightly on his knee.
‘You understand me, Kincaid?’
His head nodded once, slowly. It was set on a scrawny neck which projected stalk-like from his collar.
‘Well… what’s your answer going to be?’
When it came it surprised Gently.
‘I’m not obliged to say anything when you ask me a question.’
‘Now see here, Kincaid-’ Evans jumped wrathfully to his feet, but Gently waved him away, signalled for him to sit again. Kincaid’s mouth had shut tightly and he watched the Welsh inspector with disdain. His bony hand, now tightly clasped, showed points of white along the knuckles.
Gently said smoothly: ‘You’re quite in order not to answer questions, and I don’t intend to ask any about the crime you are charged with. But if you still claim to be Kincaid I’d like some facts about that. If you’ve changed your mind, all right. We won’t go any further.’
‘Why should I have changed my mind?’
It was a difficult question. Either Gently told him the truth or he was paving the way for a judicial reprimand. Since Kincaid was charged he couldn’t be interrogated about the murder, and it was sailing close to the wind to treat his identity as a separate subject. Gently weighed his answer with care.
‘I think you know that, don’t you?’
Kincaid rocked his head again. ‘Please don’t look on me as an idiot.’
‘Right. Then perhaps I can have your decision?’
‘I don’t have to make one. I am Kincaid.’
Gently hesitated. ‘You can take advice…’
‘I certainly shall. But it won’t alter the fact.’
‘It isn’t a fact until it’s proved.’
‘Oh yes it is. And I’ll swear to it in court. I’d sooner swing as Reginald Kincaid than be let off as some impostor.’
His face took on a contemptuous twist: he seemed almost to be enjoying himself. For the first time it occurred to Gently that Kincaid might never get to court…
‘So in that case you’ll be ready to help us to establish your identity?’
‘Quite ready. And I’ll go further — I’ll instruct my lawyer to help you too.’
‘Then I’d like to return to the question about your wife.’
‘And I repeat: I don’t have to answer your questions.’
Was he mildly sane even? Gently stared at the large, burning eyes. They never changed expression, he noticed, though the thin features had plenty of eloquence. Two glittering dark orbs, they seemed to live independently; they weren’t wholly connected to the intelligence behind them.
‘Perhaps you’d like to make a statement, then?’
‘Oh yes. I’m used to that. I’ve done nothing else since I came back from India.’
‘About your wife.’
‘About anything. My opinions are sought after.’
‘I’d like her maiden name and some details of origin.’
‘Take a note.’
Kincaid crossed one bony leg with the other; then he folded his arms and gazed vacantly at the wall.
‘Maiden name, Paula Blackman. Place of birth, not known. Was living with mother in Fulham when married to R. Kincaid. Height, five feet seven. Age, forty-three years. Colouring…’ He faltered. ‘I don’t precisely remember that.’
‘Was she brunette?’
‘I don’t remember!’ He frowned reprovingly at Gently, adding scoldingly: ‘And it’s no use your trying to make me. Now I can remember the dress… we went to Wales for our honeymoon… her shoes… her handbag… but some things I can’t see. It’s only natural, isn’t it? It’s over twenty years ago.’
‘How would you recognize her if you saw her?’
‘Stop asking me questions! I shall either tell you or I shan’t, but I won’t answer questions. And as for how I should recognize her, that’s a foolish question anyway: one has a faculty for it. You talk like a bachelor.’
Gently sighed. ‘All right! Carry on with your statement.’
Kincaid regarded the wall again. ‘Take a note,’ he said.
His memory was really surprising in both its commissions and its omissions. It could recall a minute detail and then lapse over something important. Yet there seemed no deliberate pattern, no intention of cunning, and one would almost be prepared to swear that the fluctuations were genuine. And, as one grew used to his eccentricities, Kincaid appeared less abnormal. A personality emerged from behind them, unusual perhaps, but firmly intact.
‘I’d like to have a statement about your search for your wife.’
‘Take a note. I went to our house in Putney…’
Only of course it wasn’t there, nor the houses of their neighbours, nor anything the way he’d seen it or known it. A bombed site here, a block of flats there, new people, new names, not a soul who remembered Kincaid.
‘I saw an announcement and I went to that Everest Club meeting. I don’t care about those people, they’re nothing to me at all…’
But surely some of them must know what had happened to Mrs Kincaid, and it was to question them that he had gone to the Asterbury that night. And there again he was frustrated. He couldn’t convince them of his identity. All he’d got from it was a slander suit and a waggon-load of publicity.
‘Still, I thought that when my name was published… and it was then I began advertising.’
But never a word reached him from Paula Kincaid.
‘Can I have a statement on your reactions?’
‘Take a note. I’m sure she’s alive. I’ve known that all along, really… up there in Shigatse, and Lhasa. The Tibetans have discovered a system and they can tell about people. I knew a priest in Shigatse, and he gave me lessons.’
‘A statement about Wales.’
‘Continue note. I got the feeling that she was there… can you understand that? Like a Tibetan smells his village when he’s lost in strange country. We spent our honeymoon there… I taught her to love the mountains. We returned several times, Llanberis, Capel, Caernarvon. So I went. I went to those places. I tried to find where we’d stayed. I even went to the Devil’s Kitchen, which was her favourite climb. And all the time I felt she was there, her presence was strong among the mountains… but I could find her nowhere, and there was nobody to tell me. Then the feeling went dead and I came back to London.’
Kincaid’s voice trembled slightly as he made this recital and his blazing eyes looked brighter, more glittering still. He spoke with a compulsive note of conviction, setting even Evans’s mouth agape, while the cynical station inspector gazed pop-eyed at the speaker. Yet Gently had heard that same ring in the stories of accomplished liars. And Kincaid had told stories that would have shamed Baron Munchausen…
‘A statement about the club members who knew your wife.’
‘Take a note. Dick Overton, Ray Heslington, and Arthur Fleece.’
‘Fleece? Fleece knew your wife?’
Kincaid sneered. ‘I don’t answer questions.’
‘A statement about Fleece.’
‘No, thank you. See my lawyer.’
It was infuriating, and there was nothing that Gently could do about it. If only he’d had Kincaid for just one hour before he was charged! The concatenation of those three names dangled seductively in front of his nose, but there was no way for him immediately to sink his teeth into them. Overton — Heslington — and Arthur Fleece. They had all known Paula Kincaid, and one of them had died…
‘Heslington believed you were Kincaid. Give me a statement on that.’
‘Take a note.’ Kincaid’s sneer had deepened during Gently’s silence. ‘Heslington’s an idiot, but he’s a well-meaning idiot. I never had a scar. That’s a wrinkle on my forehead.’
‘Continue the statement.’
‘About Heslington and my wife? He only met her twice, and he could tell me nothing about her. He lives in Wimbledon, you know, though the line passes Putney. Don’t ask me what I mean, because I won’t be able to tell you.’
‘Continue the statement.’
‘Of course. There’s Dick Overton. Now he knew her rather better; in fact, he was quite a friend. But he didn’t believe I was Kincaid — Dick’s intelligence isn’t his strong point — so of course he told me nothing.’ Kincaid paused. ‘But you could try him.’
‘Continue the statement.’
‘End of note. I’ve no more to tell you about my wife.’
‘Hmn.’
Gently studied him, trying to reach some conclusion. In his wide experience of human enigmas, Kincaid bid fair to take the cake. For if he were not Kincaid, what second process could have evolved him? From what strange school of life had such a character graduated?
‘Give me a statement about your career.’
‘Take a note.’
Kincaid grinned horribly. He too had been doing a little studying, his head tilted back, his expression superior.
‘Well?’
‘I didn’t have a career. It was over by the time I was twenty-five. I lived at Salisbury with my guardian and was educated there at the local grammar school. Afterwards I took a post in the town, and then came up here, to Metropolitan Electric. I married Paula in thirty-five as part of the Jubilee celebrations. And I climbed Everest in thirty-seven. After that, see the Sunday Echo.’
‘That’s the sort of stuff you could have dug up somewhere.’
‘I didn’t promise you anything else. I’ve been dead above twenty years.’
‘You’ll have to do better than that. If you want us to prove your identity.’
‘No comment. And I’d like to be getting back to my cell.’
‘Just one thing more.’ Gently produced the cigarette-case, the one which Evans had found on the cairn. ‘You’ve seen this before, but I’m showing it to you again. Perhaps you’ve remembered something about it which you didn’t tell Inspector Evans.’
Kincaid took the case, a frown appearing as he examined it; he turned it over and over and stared long at the snapshot.
‘The initials… those are mine. I might have had a case like this. But it’s gone… I can’t place it. I can’t place the picture.’
‘I think you know the case is yours.’
‘No, you’re wrong. I’d say if I did.’
‘It’s the one you took to India.’
‘Why should I have done a thing like that? I was smoking a pipe when I went there. I smoked nothing else while I was in Tibet…’
‘But you’re smoking cigarettes now.’
‘Oh yes, I began again when I got back to Delhi. But we all smoked pipes on the expedition — it was the thing, you know. We were serious young men.’
‘Surely that case is the sort of present your wife might have given you.’
Kincaid stiffened. There was a twitching in the muscles about his eyes. He burst out agitatedly:
‘No — I’d remember! I wouldn’t forget a thing like that. I’ve never seen it before, I tell you. Take me back to my cell!’
Gently shrugged and motioned to Evans, who went to the door to fetch the constable. Kincaid got jerkily to his feet and began to shamble out. Then at the door he turned suddenly, and tears were streaming down his face.
‘I want her back!’ he exclaimed brokenly. ‘I want my wife… I want Paula back again…’
‘ Back from whom? ’ Gently fired at him, but Kincaid didn’t seem to hear. Weeping like a child, he permitted the constable to lead him away down the corridors.
Evans sucked in air and slammed the door shut after them. The station inspector shook his head; he put a finger to his temple.
‘The skinny bastard. I could kick him from here to Llanfairfechan!’
Evans was furious; he could hardly persuade himself to sit down.
‘Take a note. Take a note. Like he was running a bloody press conference! I ask you, would you have thought he had a murder charge pinned on him?’
Gently gave him a rueful grimace. ‘There’s Kincaid for you, man,’ he replied.
‘I know. And to think that it’s me who’s responsible for it. Now we can’t lay a finger on him. “Take a note,” he says. It makes you wonder why you ever joined a police force at all!’
‘He’s screwed, that’s what,’ observed the station inspector comfortably. ‘You don’t have to worry, boy. He’s booked for Broadmoor anyway.’
Gently said: ‘How does his present behaviour compare with yesterday’s?’
‘It doesn’t,’ Evans snorted. ‘And for why? Because then I had the drop on him.’
‘Would you say he was building it up, then?’
‘He doesn’t need to build it up!’
Gently shrugged. ‘He could be sweating on an insanity plea.’
‘Oh… I see.’ Evans was silent for a moment, eyes glaring at nothing. Then: ‘Yess… it could be that. It could be that very well.’
‘There’s another thing too.’
Gently began filling his pipe; slow, squarish-tipped fingers packing the rubbed tawny tobacco.
‘“Like a Tibetan smells his village” — you remember that bit? It had me wondering at the time… how near do you suppose it was to the facts?’
‘What facts do you mean, man?’
‘The facts of last Monday. Kincaid’s journey to Wales, his being in Llanberis and on Snowdon. It’s all very romantic and might be due to E.S.P., but there’s a simpler explanation: somebody tipped him off that his wife would be there.’
Evans’s hand crashed down on the desk, making the issue ink-pots jump. ‘But that’s brilliant, man!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s a bloody brilliant piece of surmising!’
‘It suggests a certain sequence. I wouldn’t like to go any further.’
‘But it’s brilliant — don’t you see? It gives us a whole new angle to work on!’
Gently struck himself a light. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You tell me.’
‘Why, it’s over his wife he murdered Fleece, and not what happened on Everest at all.’
‘Unless it was part of the same story.’
‘Man, there’s no keeping pace with you. You’re right — of course you’re right: it must all have begun in thirty-seven. Fleece was after Kincaid’s wife, which is why that Everest incident happened.’
‘And he was still after her in fifty-nine?’
‘Of course! And somebody warned Kincaid. And he traced the pair of them to Wales, and took his chance up there on Snowdon. Heslington — he’s the man to have warned him, and he was on the spot at the time. I’m telling you, man, you’ve been inspired. It’s making sense of the whole affair.’
Gently drew in a mouthful of smoke and blew the smallest of rings at Evans. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But it’s doing nothing of the kind.’
‘But why? Why not, man?’
‘Only ask yourself the question. There are too many things which don’t square with the hypothesis. For instance, if Heslington was in it, why did he mention seeing Kincaid? Why was he on the summit at all, when he might have had an alibi with the others?’
‘He might not have known what Kincaid would do.’
‘Then why did he hedge with what he told us? He’d either spill the lot or nothing, not just enough to make us curious. Then again, there’s the cigarette-case — don’t tell me that Heslington was the one to drop it! Because if he was, then the moral is plain: we’d better scratch Kincaid and start again.’
‘But look, if you rule out Heslington for a moment-’
Gently grinned. ‘Then we’re left with conjecture. And a crying need for some facts before we worry our brains any further.’
Poor Evans hung his head. ‘I’m not so sure… it’s a fine connection…’
‘It’s an alluring theory, so we won’t kill it. Only file it for later reference.’
‘Then where do you reckon we go from here?’
‘We’ll go to the bottom, as usual. We’ll start with the firm whom Kincaid last worked for and try to pick up the trail from there.’
Gently hooked up the phone and dialled the Central Office desk. Metropolitan Electric, he was told, still flourished out at Hendon. On the point of ringing off he gave the office a further task:
‘Check Kincaid in Who Was Who and read me over the entry.’
As he listened a pleased smile crept over his face. He dropped the phone back on its cradle and took a few thoughtful puffs.
Evans asked: ‘What did they say, man?’
Gently said: ‘What you’d expect. Kincaid’s story checks with the book. He gave us nothing fresh at all.’
He blew another couple of rings.
I’m beginning to like this case,’ he said. It’s what the Americans would call a lulu… in Wales, you’d have a different name for it.’