Quest for Alexis (30 page)

That didn’t have the effect I’d hoped for. Freda
merely shrugged carelessly. “I’ll deal with Rudi Bruck
ner later, after I’ve seen to you!”

She went to a drawer of the dressing table, and I
watched her take out a tiny syringe. Rapidly, I scanned
the room for something small and heavy and spotted
a pair of Freda’s stout walking shoes beside the bed. In a sudden swift movement I dived for one of them
and ran with it to the window. Dragging aside the cur
tain I smashed the heel into the casement, once and
then again. The lead bent and buckled, and a dozen
diamond panes shattered and fell tinkling to the paved
terrace below. Surely that would attract attention. If
Rudi was somewhere outside, he must have heard it.

Before I could start shouting for help, I saw Freda
coming at me. I dodged aside, so that she fell against
the window. Flinging up a hand to save her balance,
she cut her wrist on a jagged edge of glass. Blood
oozed and she gripped the wound, cursing.

Her momentary distraction was my opportunity.
Grasping the full-length chintz curtains, I tugged at
them so that the fittings gave way and the whole lot
came crashing down. The heavy brass rod caught the
side of Freda’s head, and she must have been slightly
stunned. I grasped up an armful of the fabric and flung
it over her, enveloping her in clinging folds.

In an instant I had snatched the door key from her
cardigan pocket and was running across the room. The
lock clicked back smoothly, and as I opened the door
I
plucked the key out again, intending to lock Freda inside. But I wasn’t spared time enough for that. Even
as I pulled the door closed after me, Freda was already there, dragging it open. I felt her tremendous strength,
the strength of a man.

I let go and ran for the stairs. But, fatally, I turned
right as though from my own room, instead of turning
left. Ahead of me, through a curtained archway, were
the stairs to the attics. I raced up them in the dark with
no clear idea in my mind except to get away from
Freda. I recalled from my childhood explorations that
at the end of the attic corridor there was a little cubby
hole under the eaves. I sped along to it and crawled
inside.

I could hear Freda blundering up the unfamiliar
stairs. At the top she paused, and then after a moment
she found the light switch. But my hiding place was
shadowed by a heavy beam of the roof.

Slowly, Freda came along the corridor, flinging open the door of each room as she reached it, peering inside,
satisfying herself it was empty before moving on. All
the time she was getting nearer.

There was a cold draft blowing down the nape of
my neck, and that brought back a memory. I was
about fourteen the first time I had found this place,
found the sloping skylight that led out onto the jumbled
rooftops of Deer’s Leap. I’d been out there a few
times, unknown to Alexis, who would probably have
had a fit if he’d found out about it.

Carefully, I felt for the remembered catch. I turned
it, and silently, inch by inch, I eased up the heavy
glazed door. But when I’d got it wide open, it suddenly
slipped from my nervous fingers and fell backward
onto the roof with a crash of splintering glass and tiles.

I froze and heard Freda Aiken’s exclamation, her
footsteps running along the corridor. In a quick move
ment I heaved myself through the opening and out
onto the roof.

What now? Useless to try and close the door—it
couldn’t be fastened from the outside. I slithered the
couple of feet down the steep-angled roof to the lead
gully I knew was there, hearing the loosened tiles
sliding with me. I followed the gully to where it dis
gorged into a water spout at the front of the house.
Between the crenellated parapet wall and the pitch
of the roof there was a narrow channel. I began to
edge my way along, with the idea that when I reached
the point above the great porch, a drop of about ten
feet would take me to another skylight that might with luck be unlocked, or that I could smash.

I knew that Freda Aiken had climbed out through
the skylight after me, and she must have taken some
other route across the hodgepodge of roofs. She sud
denly appeared ahead of me, outlined against the sky. In the faint starlight we crouched and stared at each
other.

“Why not be sensible?” she said in a conversational tone. “I’m not going to hurt you—just give you a little
injection. I’ve got the stuff right here. It will put you
out for long enough for me to get well clear.”

“You’ll never get away,” I said. “Rudi will—”

“You can forget about Rudi Bruckner. He’ll do
exactly what he’s told—just as he’s done in the past,”

Rudi?
A terrible wave of darkness swept over me, a
sense of utter hopelessness.

“It was lucky for us, having Bruckner so well dug in
with your uncle. It enabled us to get Belle Forsyth
fixed up with a job here without any trouble. And then
me.”

“But Rudi would never do anything to harm Alexis,” I said huskily. “I’m sure he wouldn’t.”

“I think you’re right,” she acknowledged. “But he’s a
very credulous young man. He actually believed that
Alexis Karel had run off with Belle, because she had
encouraged him to think they were having an affair. If
he had known the truth—that we had killed Alexis
Karel that night, and substituted a double in his place
—he might have been more difficult to handle. But it’s
too late for him to do anything about it. You see, he
has a sister living in Czechoslovakia. Need I say more?”

I tried to blot out my misery, concentrating only on
the need to get away from Freda, to raise the alarm, to
prevent her escaping. In a daze I began to edge back the way I had come, thinking I might reach the sky
light before she caught up with me. Stumbling against
the parapet, I felt it tremble, and suddenly it gave
way. Just in time I flung myself flat against the tiles of
the steep-pitched roof, clinging there spread-eagled.
Thirty feet below me I heard the heavy stonework
crash onto the gravel.

Even Freda Aiken was startled for a moment. Then
she laughed. “You are in a tricky situation now, aren’t you? Pity you didn’t go down with that chunk of para
pet. Still, we can soon fix that. Just a little push ...”

She started inching her way toward me. I tried to
shift my position slightly and immediately felt myself sliding down to the very edge of the roof. My foot dis
lodged more of the crumbling stonework and sent it
plunging.

There was another noise from above us, someone
frantically scrambling over the tiles. A dark figure
appeared on the ridge above my head.

“Gail, are you all right?” It was Rudi’s voice, hoarse
with fear. “You’re not hurt?”

Before I could answer, Freda called up to him.
“You arrived just in the nick of time. Go and get the
car out for me. If you behave yourself, I’ll take you
with me. Otherwise, you’ll have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”

Rudi ignored her. “Gail, you
are
all right, aren’t
you? Tell me.”

“Yes, but I’m stuck. I dare not move an inch.”

“Then keep still! Stay just where you are, and I’ll
come.”

Freda warned him in a dangerous voice, “Don’t
bother about her, just do as I tell you.”

“I’ve finished taking orders from you. I wish I’d had the courage to stand up to you long ago.”

“Really?” she said mockingly. “I thought you were
devoted to the big sister who brought you up. If you
don’t do what you’re told, Rudi Bruckner, it’s going to
be too bad for her.”

Again Rudi ignored Freda and spoke to me, his voice imploring. “Gail, please try to understand. I
didn’t want to help them, but I
had
to. They kept
threatening what they’d do to Bozena and her family
if I didn’t carry out their instructions. But even so, if
I’d realized what they were planning
...
I just thought they wanted to plant Belle here as a sort of spy, and I didn’t see how there could be much harm in that. And then ... then I really believed that Alexis had let her seduce him. I ought to have known him better.”

From across the rooftops I heard my name called.
It was Sir Ralph’s voice.

“Gail, what’s going on up here? I heard breaking
glass, and then a lot of masonry falling.”

“Get help, Sir Ralph,” I called back frantically. “It’s Freda Aiken. She’s trying to kill me.”

To my horror, I realized that Sir Ralph, too, had
climbed out through the skylight and was fumbling his
way along. A blind man.

“No, Sir Ralph, go back. Go and get help.”

But he still came on. Fearfully, I twisted my head and saw his shadowy figure appear where the gully
ended.

“Where are you, Gail?”

He edged toward me, his hand on the parapet, using
it as a guide and support. A step or two farther and he
would reach the point where the parapet wall was broken away. There would be nothing to stop him
falling.

I screamed out, “Stay where you are, Sir Ralph.
Don’t move, for God’s sake.”

This time my urgency got through to him. He stood quite still. No one spoke a word.

Four people, all of us frozen like figures in stone. I was stretched out on the steeply sloping tiles, clinging
for my life. Rudi straddled the ridge ten feet above me,
too far away to help. Freda Aiken, still with the solid
parapet to support her, could edge along and send me crashing to the gravel court below. And—if she wanted
—the sightless, bewildered Sir Ralph, too.

In the taut silence a sound penetrated through my
fear. Faint, far off, the familiar throaty boom of an
exhaust. Brett’s Lancia. But it wasn’t possible. Brett
was on his way to London, miles and miles away from
here.

Nearby, I heard the scrape of a shifting tile and
realized it was Freda, starting to move along to me.

“If you’d had any sense, Gail Fleming,” she said,
“you’d have been lying peacefully unconscious on my
bed at this moment, while I made a quiet getaway. As
it is, I’ll have to deal with you another way.”

Imperatively, Rudi called, “You stay where you are. Leave Gail alone.”

But she still came on, one step at a time.

“Whatever is happening?” cried Sir Ralph. “If only
I could see.”

Freda was scarcely a yard from me, near enough
for her outstretched hand to reach me, to give me a
push. I braced myself to fight her off, knowing I hardly
stood a chance because the least movement would
send me sliding, slithering helplessly off the roof.

In those final split seconds I heard the car again,
being driven hard. This time I knew for sure that it was
Brett.

And then there was another sound, a sudden wild
cry, weird and scarcely human. Then a clattering,
splintering noise of roof tiles breaking and slipping, al
most as if the whole house was collapsing under us.
Rudi’s dark form hurtled past me down the steep-
angled pitch of the roof. With another yell, he smashed
into Freda Aiken, carrying her and himself and more
of the stone parapet over the edge and out into space.

I closed my eyes as I heard the terrible screams and thuds of bodies and masonry plunging down and crash
ing to the gravel far below.

And when that dreadful sound was over, I heard
the Lancia racing up the drive.

* * * *

Caterina had a bedroom made ready for me, for I
could not have returned to the west wing that night.
But it was almost dawn before any of us got to bed.

The police were at Deer’s Leap again, all over the
house. And other men who were not police, grim-faced men who asked a different set of questions,
issued curt instructions, kept the press at bay.

I told them my story, over and over, until at last
Brett protested, “For heaven’s sake, can’t you let Miss
Fleming rest? She’s had enough.”