The Cruel Peak

by Gil Hogg

  “I’m not going to comment on stuff like that.”

  A silence fell in which the two men stared at each other, Stelios sardonic, Tom trying to hide anger and communicate boredom.

  “Mr Stavely, when I interviewed you the morning after the event, you told me you last saw Stuart Ashton in this room in the early hours of the morning, and that this was where you parted. That’s not true, is it?”

  “Ah, well, I think so. I was pretty drunk at the time. In fact, when I spoke to you I was still feeling the effects.”

  “You want to excuse yourself as being drunk?”

  “I’m fairly sure I last saw Stuart here.”

  “The truth is that you were in Sir Ernest’s bedroom at the material time.”

  “No. I was very drunk, but I don’t believe I was…”

  Stelios didn’t show any annoyance, only the blandness of a clerk shuffling papers.

  “You don’t believe you were there? Even if you were drunk, you’d remember a gunshot going off in the room you were in.”

  He had put himself in a corner and he was going to have to brazen it out. “The events of the night are not all that clear to me because I’d had a lot to drink.”

  “We have evidence which places you in the room.” Stelios watched for the effect of his words. A faint smile curved his very pink, small lips.

  Tom tried to fix a slightly questioning look. He shook his head negatively. For the sake of the recorder he said clearly, “Quite wrong.”

  “Your prints are on the water glass by the bed.”

  He had already thought of this. “I’ve often handled the glass.”

  “The housekeeper says a fresh glass of water was placed by the bed at eight o’clock that night. The glass had been through the dishwasher.”

  He hadn’t expected this refinement. “I may have called in there during the evening when I went up to the lavatory. Yes, I think I probably did.”

  “There’s more than one lavatory on the ground floor.”

  “I can’t explain why I prefer to piss in one hole rather than another, Inspector, but I also went back to my room during the evening and previous evenings because I suffer from hay fever, and I need fresh tissues and occasionally medication.”

  “But you’ve already told me that on the night of the death, you last saw Sir Ernest Ashton in the early evening when he retired upstairs.”

  “Yes, he was going on about the gun. What I meant was, that was the last time I had a conversation with him. As I’ve said, I probably called in later to see if he wanted anything.”

  “You were in the habit of calling in, to see if he needed any help?”

  “He was a sick man. I did what anyone would do.”

  Stelios was quiet, considering this. His plumpness and the tight buttons on the waistcoat of his blue suit made him look trussed up. “Mrs Dilsey says you had an argumentative relationship with Sir Ernest.”

  He had already anticipated what Beryl would say. She was a sycophantic fan of Ernest’s and an assiduous listener at keyholes. “How would she know?”

  “She says she heard you abusing each other.”

  “She’s never been in the room when I’ve been chatting with Ernest. Never. Ernest and I had a robust relationship. Differences of view, but you don’t get entry to Sir Ernest’s bedroom unless you’re a trusted member of the family.”

  Stelios opened his eyes wide and pursed his lips sceptically. His large teeth were a contrasting white against the grey-blue shadow of his cheeks. “Housekeepers hear things, but let’s get on. Your fingerprints are on the gun, Mr Stavely.”

  He didn’t expect this. The big eyes were drilling into him. “Ah, yes, well I used the gun to shoot rabbits in the evening - not of course on the evening of the wedding, but other evenings. Stuart and I would walk after dinner. He carried the 22 which is kept in the gun closet, and I think I borrowed Ernest’s shotgun on the last occasion. Occasionally the reverse.”

  “Sir Ernest’s precious shotgun to shoot rabbits?”

  “We weren’t shooting for the pot. The main purpose was to have a walk.”

  “Doesn’t elementary gun security apply in this house? A loaded gun in the study and the bedroom?”

  “The guns are cleaned by one of the staff, I believe, before they’re put away, and obviously wouldn’t be loaded.”

  “So who put the cartridge in?”

  He knew he had to be wary here. “I don’t know the answer, but it’s possible the cleaning had been deferred. Dirty guns could have been put away in the gun-case pending cleaning. If they were, I suppose the possibility is that they would be loaded.”

  “We can check this with the staff.”

  Another silence from Stelios, during which he glared at Tom. He had abandoned the amused superior investigator role. “I’d be glad if you’d explain this to me, Mr Stavely. There is blood on the body of the shirt which Mrs Dilsey recovered from your laundry. The laboratory has checked. It’s the blood of Stuart Ashton. Constable Mackie says you were wearing a blood-stained shirt the morning after the death.”

  He had remembered the shirt too late after the confusion of the morning. The laundry bag had gone from his room, and he couldn’t risk asking Beryl Dilsey or the staff for it. “I was in the room in the morning before Stuart’s body was removed… very early.”

  “Why?”

  “I got up to go to the lavatory and I went to see if Ernest was all right. I always did that. Nothing special about it. But he wasn’t there. I removed the sheet and realised what had happened.”

  “You touched the body.”

  “I don’t know what I touched. I may have touched the gun. I uncovered the body, which had a stained sheet over it. I probably hugged the sheet. I was shocked. Nearly ill.”

  “Constable Mackie says you were sound asleep when he went to your room, and you were wearing the shirt at the time. How could you have visited Sir Ernest’s room?”

  “After I visited the room, I felt so ill that I came back and lay on my bed to try to get to grips with what had happened. That’s where I was when Mackie came barging in.”

  “Mackie says you were asleep when he knocked. You went off to sleep after seeing your friend had been killed?”

  “Mackie is a young man who I’m sure will eventually make a competent policeman, but he ought not make suppositions through closed doors. I was in shock when Mackie came in, and scarcely able to talk.”

  Stelios weighed up what had been said. He searched Tom for a flicker of uncertainty. “I don’t believe you. I think you were in the room at the time the shot was fired. The forensic experts say your shirt was sprayed with blood. It wasn’t merely stained. It’s consistent with you being close to the weapon at the time it was fired, or even firing it.”

  “No.” A blanket denial was all he could manage. But he took care to show as little emotion as possible. He tried in his manner to shrug this off as utterly impossible. He exhaled heavily and spread his palms. For the recorder, he said calmly, “What you’re saying is unworthy of serious contention. This concerns my best and oldest friend and a sick old man.”

  What must have been buzzing around in Stelios’s head like a wasp was Tom’s centrality to the crime. Stelios was obviously sure it was a crime and not an accident. It was so easy to cross everybody except Tom Stavely off the list of suspects - the staff, including Beryl, seemed remote, as did the bemused guests in the other wing, Tia, a small wilting flower, and Robyn, who was out of the house. Only Tom Stavely was left, and Stelios could easily have picked up enough intelligence from the others to realise that Tom, a former relative himself, was in the turbulence of the family relationships. Stelios must have been pondering how to deal with Tom’s denials. He had to work out what the circumstantial evidence like bloodstains and fingerprints really meant. Tom thought Stelios was worrying that there was some family feud he didn’t know about.

  Stelios had a resentful look, perhaps disappointed that the fingerprints and the bloodstained shirt might no
t be such decisive evidence as he had thought. “I don’t believe you, Stavely. You’re in serious trouble.” He stood up and repacked his briefcase with the recorder.

  “Where do we go from here, Inspector? I need to get back…”

  “Forget about leaving the country, Mr Stavely. In all probability, you’ll never leave it for a long time…” he said, with a cold smile, as he walked out of the room.

  14

  Tom looked at himself naked in the bathroom mirror before he dressed to answer Stelios’s summons. Stelios had telephoned the night before, after a space of three days, telling him to report to Timaru police by 9am. He had been awake all night, and the ache in his mind was joined by an ache in his body. Was he going to be charged? When he had asked Stelios what the meeting was for, the derisively amused reply had been, “You know what it’s for.” When he protested, Stelios cut him off. “Be there,” he said, “or we’ll come and get you.”

  He hadn’t been carrying any extra weight, but the person he saw in the mirror seemed thin. His complexion, even after a close shave, looked sickly and wrinkled. His cheeks were flabby, his eyeballs yellow. There hadn’t been much to do but read books and drink in the long dark lonely nights at Tamaki Downs. The dread of what might happen that morning suffused every vein in his body like an agonising slow-acting poison.

  He was on the road early and in Timaru at a quarter to nine. He identified the police station, parked and waited numbly. It was like being poised on the edge of a high cliff and imagining the fall. A few minutes before the appointed time, he walked through the door into a busy office where he attracted no attention. He had to interrupt the duty sergeant who eventually directed him to an interview room. He sat down on a plastic chair at a plastic table under bright lights.

  After five minutes, Stelios appeared, immaculate in a white shirt and plain dark blue tie, smelling of bath salts. He sat down with a mirthless smirk but without a word. Tom thought there were only two possibilities. Either he was going to be charged, or the call last night, with its deliberately vague explanation, was part of a campaign on his nerves, intended to weaken him. He did his best to look unconcerned, but his haggard face must have betrayed him. Stelios took a leisurely moment to contemplate him.

  “Are you ready to be charged, Mr Stavely?” His pudgy fingers played with the file in front of him.

  “Charged with what?” Tom asked hoarsely.

  “You know that.” The big, artificial bright-eyed smile again.

  “If you’re going to charge me, get on with it and stop arsing around.” The words were forced out by despair.

  “You had a motive to kill Ernest Ashton if this story about your father is true.”

  “Ernest is alive isn’t he?”

  “He says you tried to kill him.”

  He had guessed that he might have to face this one. “Tried - and failed? He’s as weak as water. How could I fail to kill that old man if I wanted to?”

  “You thought you had killed him. You threw his pill on the floor and choked him on his water. He passed out.”

  “That’s not a very compelling story, Inspector. You don’t kill somebody by dropping pills on the floor.” Just the right implication of ridicule, and there was another lull. He could hear Stelios’s slightly asthmatic breathing. He also noticed that Stelios’s hands had a slight tremor.

  “You did drop the pill, though?”

  “No. I don’t know anything about it.”

  “He alleges that you killed Stuart.”

  The old man was a viper. He had wondered whether Ernest would go this far, and in a way wasn’t sorry that he had; it was an allegation Tom thought could never stand, and it illuminated how cracked the old man was.

  “Why would I try to kill my friend of forty years? That is really a lunatic allegation from a man who isn’t in possession of his senses. A man who is a pathological liar.”

  “Jealousy of Stuart Ashton.”

  “Jealousy of Stuart won’t survive as a motive. I live in another country. I have a completely separate life. I’m a visitor here for a few days for my daughter’s wedding. What on earth would I gain? You won’t get an ounce of support for that nutty idea from either Stuart’s wife, or his sister, my ex-wife.”

  “But why should Sir Ernest bother to lie at all, unless to protect himself, because he tried to kill his son?”

  Tom thought that Stelios had moved away from threatening that charges were imminent, to speculating about causes, but it might be a tactic of his.

  “We’ve come full circle, haven’t we?” Tom said. “Well, I doubt whether he wanted to kill Stuart, but you can hypothesize about it. I’m pretty sure they were talking about the gun. They were talking about it earlier in the evening and the account you have from Ernest is from a sick old man, who was drunk, scared and in agony over the death.”

  “Why?”

  “Because his son was dead and he was involved in an accident that didn’t need to happen. Grief. Remorse. Excuses.”

  “Sir Ernest didn’t love his son.”

  “The affection between parents and children is like a seesaw.”

  “The forensic tests on the hands of the son, and the clothes of he and his father, support the fact that they were grasping each other.”

  “That doesn’t take you far, Inspector. It could have been a happy embrace. It could have been that Ernest had a seizure while they were talking, and had to be lifted on to the bed. Maybe they argued over the gun and came to grips. I don’t know. Nobody will ever know.”

  “Isn’t it the height of improbability to find a gun in the bedroom of a man like Sir Ernest Ashton?”

  “Not really. Ernest used to shoot rabbits from the bedroom window with a .22, until a few years ago.”

  Stelios was beginning to look peeved as Tom tried to rebut his arguments; his cheeks were flushed. Tom was heartened by the thought that Stelios wasn’t ready to make charges, and that could mean that last night’s summons was merely gratuitous cruelty.

  “Mrs Dilsey says you and Stuart weren’t so friendly. You were shouting at each other in the library earlier in the evening.”

  “It was boisterous good humour. We spent the whole evening drinking from around 7 to 3am. Together.”

  “But Stuart had a poor relationship with his father. I have this from the housekeeper, and Tia Ashton. He might have attempted to kill his father. He had a motive. His father was facing disgrace.”

  “Ernest isn’t saying that, is he? I think they were talking or even arguing over the merits of a gun.”

  Stelios sat back, frustrated. “Are you are covering up for the family?”

  At last, Stelios had touched the core of it, but he wasn’t sure. “Why should I get involved in the Ashton family affairs and chance a charge of obstruction? If Ernest murdered his son, nature is going to be his executioner. He’ll die soon. He’s far too ill to face a trial. I honestly don’t think there is anything in this situation for you, Inspector.”

  “We have to complete our investigation. We’re also looking at Sir Ernest Ashton’s involvement in your father’s death. We’ve seen the material gathered by The Mountaineer magazine. We’ve compared it with his evidence in the coroner’s court. There’s a material difference. Sir Ernest says Stavely died at about eight thousand feet on the way up while he went on to the peak. If, however, it was Stavely who went on to the peak and was killed later, and Ashton claimed the conquest, it’s a very suspicious situation.”

  “What does it really matter? My father was killed going up or going down.”

  “Don’t you want to find out?”

  “Not particularly. I’m afraid this is turning over cold stones. It doesn’t lead anywhere, Inspector.”

  “Do you believe Ernest Ashton killed your father?”

  “No. I think he is a monstrous liar with an ego as big as Mt Vogel, and that he’s now broken down, but I don’t think he is a murderer.” He knew better than anybody else that Ernest Ashton could be a double murderer, but mak
ing accusations like that would only heat up the police interest in the case.

  Stelios stopped to consider this.

  “Look, Inspector, I want to go home. I want my passport back.”

  “You’re a very long way from going home at the moment, Mr Stavely, and you’re on the brink of facing a charge of murder of one man and attempted murder of another, and at the very least a charge of perverting the course of justice.”

  “You don’t have a case.”

  “Look at the circumstantial evidence, man. You’re in the house and involved with both men on the night. Your fingerprints are on the weapon and on the bedroom glass. Your shirt was bloodstained…” Stelios’s steady stare was tinged with malevolence.

  The words left Tom at the bottom of a deep depression and with a sense of horror that the police might just manage to stitch together a prima facie case out of the rags of suspicion. Stelios wanted a charge. He was a hunter. But the facts would have to be sieved through the Crown Law Office before that could happen. Maybe the particular Crown Prosecutor who would make the analysis in this case would be a chancer, a gung-ho operator who thought that it was better to haul a suspect into court and make him squirm, rather than wait for cut and dried certainties. It was a prospect which made Tom choke.

  He sat through a performance of Oh What a Lovely War! in Christchurch in order to see Robyn, although he was too preoccupied to enjoy it. She had given him a ticket and he couldn’t refuse, especially as he was going to beg - he’d try not to let it show - a favour. He did note that it was a convincing production, well-attended and amusing. The theatre group were talented amateurs.

  He felt like a beleaguered general himself, trying to fight his campaign with the police. Since he learned from Stelios of Ernest’s allegations against him personally, flimsy in fact as they were, he had toyed whether to commit the further crime of attempting to pervert the course of justice by persuading Robyn to influence the old man.

  They met in the small café behind the theatre immediately after the performance. Robyn was open-eyed with success, brusque and hurried, looking forward to getting away to the post-performance party. People stopped at their table to congratulate her. The coffee was too hot to drink.