Gently to the Summit Read Free

So like that it’s quite possible that Heslington might not have seen him – nor heard him, neither, when he went over the edge. This other cross by the cairn marks the spot from which he fell.
    ‘When that happened the rest of the party were climbing the Zigzags to the ridge. Overton, the secretary, was nearest to the top. He had the sense to take the time – it was one twenty-five – and he called down to the others to make an attempt to reach the body. Then he hurried up the Zigzags and along the ridge to the summit, where he came upon Heslington still eating his lunch. He didn’t waste time on him, but went and broke into the café, and from there he phoned down to Llanberis for the Mountain Rescue Team.’
    Evans paused to lick his lips. ‘So far so good. But then we heard something from Heslington which gave the business a different look. While he was sitting beside the café he’d seen a third party about there, a man wearing a brown tweed jacket and a pair of grey slacks. Only a glimpse of him he’d caught, just as the man was going away from him: he was on the railway track, here, and running down it like the devil. And this is the interesting part. He puts the time at one-thirty. Which is five minutes, look you, after Fleece took his tumble.
    ‘As you can imagine, I went over the ground with a magnifying glass, but it’s mostly bare rock and there was nothing for me to find. A bit of shale was kickedout where I’ve put the cross, only that told us nothing one way or the other. It was one of my constables who showed the best sense – he climbed up the cairn and had a poke around there. And he spotted this small item.’ Evans dived his hand into his pocket. ‘When you see it, you will think we were a little slow in drawing conclusions.’
    He produced a silver cigarette-case and handed it to Gently. It was of silver, a tubby design which had fallen from favour years earlier. A florid pattern was engraved on it though this was wearing thin, but on an oval plaque in the centre appeared clearly the monogram: RTK. Pasted down inside it was a faded snapshot of a climber.
    ‘Did you find any latents on it?’
    Gently passed it to the Assistant Commissioner.
    ‘No; it was smeary.’
    ‘It’s a poor surface for prints. Was there anything inside it?’
    ‘A couple of Churchman’s No. 1. And we found one he’d lit and thrown away, about a couple of feet distant.’
    ‘You examined them, of course?’
    ‘Oh yes, you bet I did! But there were only smears on them, and just the edges of prints.’
    Gently nodded. He puffed several times without speaking. Chummie had lit a cigarette … thrown it away … dropped his case. And his hands would seem to have been sweating on that cool October mountain . It made an interesting picture: he filed it away in his mind.
    Evans continued: ‘You’ll say I was dumb not to have connected the case with Kincaid, but when we found it Kincaid hadn’t been mentioned in the business. I showed it to Overton and Heslington and the rest of the party, and none of them admitted having seen it before. Then Overton rang me from his hotel; he wanted to have the initials again. When I gave them to him he told me that they were the same as Kincaid’s. I got them to look at the case again, especially the snapshot inside it, but none of them would commit themselves to a positive identification.
    ‘But now, with Kincaid’s name brought in, we could begin to see daylight. The next step was to inquire whether he’d been seen in the district. And you know how it is once you’ve got the right lead – people tumble over themselves to give you a helping hand. I got a call from Llanberis to say a young man had been in there. On the day of the crime he’d stopped at Llanberis and had coffee at the Snowdon Café. While he was having it he saw another customer who looked like the pictures of Kincaid, and since we were investigating Fleece’s accident he thought we might like to