Lady With a Cool Eye

by Gwen Moffat

  Miss Pink stopped talking and there was silence broken at length by Sir Thomas: “Who killed young Edwards from Glanaber?”

  “Lithgow.”

  “So each of them got someone in the end,” Beresford remarked absently.

  “They got far more than that,” Miss Pink corrected him sternly, “they had been running the stuff across to Ireland for well over a year. They must have been responsible for many, many deaths.”

  Beresford coughed.

  “There was no way of knowing —”

  “Of course not,” she assured him, “the whole operation was very carefully planned and the operators hand-picked. Davigdor was another who was selected for the job. He was the lessee of the cottage but his references were impeccable. There is a curious mixture of evil and conformity here. The Adams are completely in the clear, by the way, and Davigdor’s references were genuine, as was his underwater exploration, like the alpine routes he and the others had done. It’s fascinating how innocent activities were dovetailed with the criminal.

  “It was Davigdor who stole the lorries from the Army depot, for the sole purpose of creating a diversion. It didn’t need much: only a handful of men, a little paint and false number plates. In view of those lorries and the implication that they were used in the theft, the police concentrated on areas hundreds of miles away, while all the time the haul was waiting at Porth Bach to be shipped out.

  “Davigdor’s job originally was to clear the harbour for the torpedo boat then, in order not to excite suspicion, he and his divers had to pretend to continue underwater activities, which in turn attracted a genuine club. However, the more activity there was in the bay of an innocent order, the better cover was provided for the illegal traffic, and the importance of that was demonstrated on that last day when the Coastguard actually logged the torpedo boat round the coast but took no special interest because they were so used to seeing her in the area.”

  “What will Slade get?” Beresford asked after a pause.

  “Life, of course,” Ted told him. “He admitted killing Bett when he was told that Nell had confessed to Mrs Wolkoff’s murder. He also wounded Williams. Fortunately, as Nell said, he wasn’t a good marksman.”

  “But what about the others?” Sir Thomas asked, “the men behind the scenes, the ones at the top?”

  No one answered him.

  “But I mean to say,” he protested, staring round the table, “someone was behind it, weren’t they? Someone directed them. Hasn’t Slade talked?”

  “Not about that,” Ted said.

  “But he must be made to talk. Innocent lives are at stake. This thing must be crushed.”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference if he talked,” Miss Pink said, “the harm’s done now.”

  “But I don’t understand —”

  “Well, you see,” she went on, “the danger’s in the idea, not the person. We’d always thought it couldn’t happen here. It could happen in Cyprus or Algeria or South America but we said our national character didn’t produce terrorists — and all the time it’s been coming nearer —”

  “But — the law is there to deal with terrorists!”

  “They think they’re above the law.”

  “That’s preposterous. The law can, and will, deal with them. We should have capital punishment.”

  “And make martyrs of them? They don’t mind whether it’s life imprisonment or death or torture —”

  “I wasn’t proposing —”

  “No, but this is world-wide; it’s not just in a corner of Wales.”

  “When what do you suggest we do?” In his bewildered old eyes there was a genuine plea for a solution.

  “What’s wrong?” he begged, “why do they do it? What do they want?”

  “They want to change the system.”

  “Change the system? There’s nothing wrong with the system; I’m happy with it as it is.”

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