by Colin Forbes
'Pull that trigger,' Eve warned, 'and Tweed is dead. Very dead. Drop the bloody thing, you bitch.'
Her voice had changed, was a harsh growl, her eyes stared with a near-insane expression. Paula stood her ground as she snapped out a reply.
'Not that easy, Eve.' She lowered her aim. 'Shoot Tweed and you get bullets in your abdomen. It will take days for you to die in terrible agony.'
'Then we play it different, dear.' Eve's face seemed to be carved out of marble. 'I'm leaving this room. If anyone tries to stop me, Tweed is dead. If you all stay sensible – still – Tweed survives. Everyone except Tweed and Paula move away from the door…'
Newman grabbed Amberg, who seemed frozen with fear, by the arm and forced him further into the room. Gaunt and Jennie obeyed the order. Backing towards the open door, Eve kept her weapon, gripped in both hands, aimed at Tweed. Paula's Browning swivelled slowly, constantly aimed at its target.
Reaching the open door, Eve held the Beretta in one hand. With the other she slammed it shut as she stepped into the hall. As the door was closing she yelled out: 'First one who follows me is dead as a doornail…'
Paula was the first to react. She saw Eve dart past the windows of the dining-room, crouching low, heading for the stables. Running to the casement window, she flung it open and climbed outside. Instead of heading for the stables she ran to the Land-Rover, jumped into the seat behind the wheel. Tweed had left the key in the ignition. Men could be so careless.
She heard the clatter of hooves a second before switching on the engine. Newman was running towards her.
'Wait for me!'
'No time…!'
Paula shoved her Browning under the seat cushion beside her with one hand, driving in a semicircle with the other, driving towards the passage between manor and stables. She saw Eve on her horse, fleeing behind the manor, followed her. Beyond the stretch of rough grass extending away behind the manor Eve rode her horse through the gap in the firs on to the moor. Paula pressed her foot down, bracing her back against the seat, careering through the same gap…
Only a four-wheel-drive vehicle could have negotiated the rough rocky terrain of the ascending moor. Her target rode like the devil, titian hair streaming behind her in the fury of the gale. Grimly, Paula maintained her pursuit. This was personal: Eve had threatened to kill Tweed.
As Paula narrowed the gap between herself and the horsewoman, Eve turned several times in her saddle, fired the Beretta. Paula counted the rounds and knew when Eve's gun was empty. Not a single bullet had come close, not even penetrating her windscreen. Firing from a racing horse, Eve's self-control had finally cracked.
Paula suddenly realized Eve was heading for Five Lanes. She had a cottage there. High Tor loomed up ahead. As the cluster of whitewashed cottages came closer Paula saw a cream Jaguar parked outside one – Eve's hope of escape. She accelerated, came so close to the flying horse that Eve gave up all hope of using the Jaguar. Eve changed direction, plunged up a steep slope, heading for the summit of High Tor.
Paula drove up after her, had almost caught up with the flying horse when her right-hand front wheel mounted a boulder. She braked automatically as the vehicle tilted violently and she was hurled out to the left. She rolled like a parachutist landing, stopped, saw to her horror she was at the edge of the sheer abyss where the servant girl, Celia Yeo, had been hurled over.
Half-stunned by her fall, she saw the Land-Rover had righted itself, was standing four-square on its wheels. Then she saw Eve riding towards her, face twisted into an evil grimace of triumph. She was going to use the horse to kill Paula, its hooves hammering into her skull. On the verge of reining in her mare, the horse reacted with terror as it saw the drop. It reared up without warning. Paula stared as Eve left the saddle, was catapulted over the brink. She heard her long scream, saw her somersaulting body plunging down beyond the abyss, saw her head smash into a massive boulder, her arms jerk out sideways, then she was still, a broken corpse similar to that of Celia Yeo whom she had pushed over the same drop.
'The tableau in the dining-room was constructed of dummies with wigs,' Chief Inspector Buchanan explained as Paula drank sweetened tea. 'The blood was red oil-paint – nice and sticky. I enlisted the aid of a friend who worked at Madame Tussaud's Waxwork Museum before he retired. Most effective job.'
'But Amberg's face – or the dummy used to fake him. The face was also destroyed with acid.'
She looked round at all the people in the living-room at Tresillian Manor. Tweed, sitting close, with Newman near by. Amberg in a chair next to Newman, looking dazed. Jennie, gazing at the banker as though she couldn't believe what she saw.
'Yes, we used acid,' Buchanan went on. 'It exposed the metal struts inside so we painted them with red oil-paint.'
'It needed a powerful shock to crack Julius Amberg and Eve,' Tweed explained, taking over. 'The tableau worked the oracle.'
'Julius Amberg? You mean Walter,' she said. 'Julius was killed in the massacre.'
'No, Walter was. That man sitting over there is Julius.'
'Identical twins,' Tweed went on. 'Julius has admitted the whole conspiracy while you were pursuing Eve. He viewed the film, listened to the tape Joel Dyson handed him for safe-keeping. He was frightened, but Eve, the driving force behind the whole thing, saw an opportunity to make a fortune – to blackmail Bradford March for twenty million dollars. Julius had been playing with the bank's money gambling in foreign currencies. He lost ten million. The other ten million was to keep them in luxury for the rest of their lives.'
'But where did Walter come in?' Paula asked.
'I said Julius was frightened – taking on the US President was a frightening thing. Eve came up with the solution. Walter, who knew nothing about the film, was persuaded to travel here, to impersonate Julius. They told him I was a specialist in securities, that I could tell Walter how to make a lot of money. But they also explained I only trusted Julius, who pretended to be ill. Walter was the scapegoat-they counted on the news of the fake Julius's death being broadcast as part of a sensational mass murder case. The guards who travelled with Walter were to ensure the secrecy of the meeting. With the news of Julius's death reaching President March they thought they'd be safe – that Joel Dyson would be the target.'
'What first made you suspicious?' she asked.
'Have some more tea,' Newman urged, refilling her cup.
After her grim experience on High Tor Paula had driven the Land-Rover back along the main road. Halfway to the manor she'd been met by police cars Buchanan had sent out to find her, but she'd insisted on driving the rest of the way.
'Suspicious that the so-called Walter was Julius?' Tweed continued. 'First the acid – why destroy his face? To make true identification of the victim impossible. Then Eve kept going everywhere with Amberg. Her excuse – to get money out of him. A lawyer could have done the job. Also it would take strength to garrotte the two call-girls in Zurich – to the extent of nearly severing the head from the neck. At the swimming pool up at the Chateau Noir I noticed how fit and strong she was…'
'So she killed Helen Frey and Klara in that horrible way?'
'Yes. Eve was suspicious Julius had been seeking pleasure with other women. Hence her employing Theo Strebel, the detective, who tracked them down. Eve never took chances. She realized call-girls would know Julius better than any of his staff, might recognize him in Zurich.'
'I'd thought using the pearl garrotte meant a man,' Paula remarked.
'Eve visited each girl, offered her money not to see Julius again. Then showed them the pearls, said they were real and would they take them instead? She stepped behind them to fit the string round their throats, then pulled the wire supporting them with all her strength.'
'But what about Theo Strebel? He was shot.'
'She could hardly use the pearls on him. The significant factor was he knew Eve, so let her into his office without any inkling of danger. I also noticed that Eve had frequently used the name Walter – a little too of
ten – to emphasize that it was Walter. An accumulation of small pointers made me focus on her.'
'And she was going to kill me,' Jennie said and shivered. 'She knew I had seen her in Padstow early on the morning of the massacre. She was the Shadow Man.'
'How do we know that?' Paula asked.
'Because,' Buchanan intervened, 'at Tweed's suggestion I came armed with a warrant to search her luggage at the Metropole. A phone call while you were chasing Eve – that was foolhardy – from my men in Padstow confirmed they'd found a large man's hat with a wide brim – and a cloak.'
'Hence the varying descriptions we got from different witnesses,' Tweed explained. 'Sometimes the Shadow Man was slim, sometimes well built. She used the cloak to change her appearance.'
'We also found the string of pearls in a secret compartment,' Buchanan added. 'There appears to be dried blood on the strong wire the pearls are looped on. Forensic will confirm, I'm sure.'
'So there were two interlocking jigsaws,' Paula commented.
'Yes, you've caught on,' said Tweed. 'The first was Joel Dyson taking that damning film of Bradford March killing his mistress then fleeing to Europe, handing one copy of film and tape to Monica, then flying on to Zurich to deposit the others with Julius. I've no doubt it was Dyson who intended to blackmail the President in due course, but Eve jumped in first. Without Dyson's actions there would have been no incriminating material. They triggered off the biggest man-hunt by March's thugs ever launched. The second jigsaw was Eve and Amberg taking over the role of blackmailers. One led to the other.'
'How do we know all this?'
Paula glanced round at the audience. Her gaze rested on Gaunt.
'Because,' Buchanan intervened again, 'after due warning that anything he said might be taken down and used as evidence, et cetera, Amberg admitted everything.'
'I shall be returning to Switzerland,' Julius said in his normal commanding tone.
'I don't think so,' Buchanan assured him. 'After the statement you made you will be charged as an accomplice to ten murders – all of which took place here. You ran the devil of a risk – taking on the President of the United States.'
'I was desperate. I was short of ten million of the bank's money. Maybe British prisons are less austere than Swiss.'
'I expect you're going to have a long opportunity to find that out,' Buchanan said unsympathetically.
'The tide's gone out. It's just a solid sandbank in the estuary,' said Paula.
'I hope you're packed,' said Tweed as they stood with Newman in Tweed's room at the Metropole. 'Incidentally, Cord Dillon is safely back behind his own desk in Langley-he's officially returned from a long leave. No one connects him with what happened. And I phoned Howard – while they rebuild our HQ we move into the communications centre further along Park Crescent. They say it will take eight months to rebuild – which means a year. The PM is talking to Howard each day, feels he got it all wrong.'
'He did,' Paula snapped.
'Better news from Washington,' Newman remarked. 'The newspapers report Jeb Galloway was sworn in as President the day we flew from New York. He's sending fresh troops to Europe to reinforce NATO. That should checkmate the crisis in the East. Middle East terrorists are rumoured to have put the bomb on March's plane.'
'That's Wingfield's propaganda machine gearing up,' Tweed commented cynically. 'There'll be conspiracy theories invented for ages just as there were after Kennedy's assassination. Let's get out of here as fast as we can.'
'Why the great hurry?' Paula enquired.
'The Squire – Gaunt – wanted us to have dinner with him at the Old Custom House. He feels a bit of an idiot the way Eve fooled him, used him as camouflage to distract attention from Walter, who was really Julius. And the PM has asked me to dinner at Downing Street, according to Howard.'
'You'll go, of course,' Paula teased him.
'Another bit of news Howard gave me. Commander Crombie's men, digging in the remains of the Park Crescent rubble, found my safe. It was moved along the Crescent to our communications centre. Monica said it was intact, opened it up, found the film and the tape in perfect condition. Oh, Bob, Dyson tricked you – said they were copies. What he delivered to you were the originals.'
'Well, I'll be damned!' Paula burst out. 'Everything we've gone through was unnecessary.'
'Was it?' Tweed queried. 'We've got rid of a psychopath who sat in the Oval Office. Would the PM have permitted that film and that tape to be sent to Washington? Never. March would have remained President. As it is, the film and the tape will remain classified material for the next thirty years. It was a classic case of Lord Acton's maxim. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'
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