The Falcon's Malteser (18 page)

Almost casually, the Fat Man had lifted his shooting stick so that the end was pointing at Himmell. At the same time, Gott’s hand had slid quietly into his jacket pocket. The two shots were almost simultaneous. Himmell looked down. There was a hole in his chest. The Fat Man lowered his shooting stick. And it was a shooting stick. The smoke was still curling out of the hole at the bottom. He smiled. The smile faded. He frowned. He raised a hand. He’d only just realized that he’d been shot in the neck. This time Gott hadn’t used a silencer.

The Fat Man and Himmell slid to the ground together. The Maltesers fell on the grass. The last of the chocolates rolled out.

“Pick it up,” Gott said.

I picked up the box. Something was chattering. I was just thinking that it was a bit cold for grasshoppers when I realized what it was. It was Herbert’s teeth.

“Give me the box,” Gott said.

I gave it to him, then stepped back a pace. Now Herbert and I were standing close together. Gott’s gun was out of his jacket. There were too many bandages on his face to be sure, but I think his smile had grown even wider.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” he said.

There were two gunshots.

Herbert’s hands came up to his stomach. He groaned and lurched forward. “Nick . . .” he whispered. He pitched onto the grave.

I stared at him.

“Get up, Tim,” I said.

“But I’ve been shot.”

“No, you haven’t.”

He held his hands up to his face. There was no blood. He lifted up his shirt and looked underneath. There were no bullet holes. Now he was blushing. “Sorry . . .” he muttered.

Gott had watched this performance with strange, empty eyes. Suddenly he toppled forward. There were two holes in the back of his jacket. He hadn’t had time to fire his own gun.

A figure appeared behind him, moving toward us. And that was the biggest surprise of the day.

It was Betty Charlady.

“ ’Ello, Mr. Nicholas,” she gurgled. She was still in her fluffy bedroom slippers, with a forest of artificial flowers on her head. “Wotcha, Mr. Timothy. Blimey! What a turn-up . . . innit!”

“Betty!” Herbert exclaimed. “What are you doing—” But then he plugged his mouth with his thumb, stopping himself in midsentence.

Betty was holding a gun. The gun had just killed Gott.

With a smile, she pulled off her hat and threw it onto the grass. Her wig, with the electric curls, went next. Once more her hand reached up and this time it pulled at the very skin of her face. It stretched, then tore loose, carrying the wrinkles and makeup with it. The gun in her other hand remained steady, but otherwise, in front of our eyes, she was changing.

Betty Charlady was gone. Another woman stood in her place.

“Who is she?” Herbert whispered.

“Beatrice von Falkenberg,” I said. “The Falcon’s widow. Snape told us that she used to be a great actress. It looks like Mrs. Charlady was one of her performances.”

“That’s right, boys,” Beatrice said.

I took a quick look around the cemetery. The way things were going, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the alligator had turned up—perhaps disguised as a hedgehog.

“But . . . but why?” Herbert asked.

“I had to find the diamonds,” she said. “My late husband’s fortune. When the dwarf gave you the package, I had to get close to you—to find out what you knew. Then I saw your advertisement for a cleaning woman. That gave me the idea.”

“And Gott and Himmell were working for you,” I said.

“That’s very clever of you, Nicholas,” she muttered. “How do you know?”

I shrugged. “I told you we were going to the Casablanca Club. You were the only person who knew. But somehow Gott and Himmell managed to turn up just in time to snatch Lauren Bacardi. We led them to her.”

Herbert looked at me in astonishment. “That’s brilliant,” he said.

“There’s more. They learned about the Maltesers from Lauren and they told you, Beatrice. That’s how you knew what to ask for when I visited you in Hampstead. You were all in it together.”

“Until their use ran out,” Beatrice said.

“It’s incredible,” Herbert said.

“Not really,” I said. “I almost guessed when I visited Beatrice. She knew your real name. She called you Herbert—not Timothy. And she was wearing the same perfume as Betty. Lavender. That was something she forgot to change.”

“You’re very clever,” Beatrice said.

“Maybe. But there’s one thing I don’t get. Why did you kill Johnny Naples in the first place?”

She shrugged. “It was an accident. Gott and Himmell had tracked him down to the Hotel Splendide. They were going to snatch him, but I went to see him first. I walked in as Betty Charlady. Nobody looked twice. I wanted to persuade him to share what he’d found with me. I told him I was his only hope. I could keep Gott and Himmell off his back. And I could use them to stay ahead of the Fat Man. But he was greedy. He wouldn’t listen. He had a gun. There was a fight. Like I say, it was an accident.” She sighed. “There can’t be any more accidents. You two can’t leave the cemetery. No witnesses.” For a moment she slipped back into her Betty Charlady voice. “Cheerio, then, Mr. Nicholas. Ta, ta, Mr. ’erbert.”

She lifted the gun.

“Oh no!” Herbert whimpered.

“I don’t think so, Beatrice,” I said.

She looked beyond me and her face jerked back like she’d been slapped. But then she lowered the gun and laughed. Suddenly the cemetery was full of uniformed policemen. They were springing up everywhere—out of the long grass and from behind the gravestones. At their head, running to be the first ones to reach us, were Snape and Boyle.

“Well . . . that’s a lucky coincidence,” Herbert said.

“What do you mean—coincidence?” I said. “I called Snape last night. I told him everything.” Herbert’s mouth fell open. “Well, I wasn’t going to come here alone.”

By this time Boyle had reached Beatrice von Falkenberg. She stretched out her hands elegantly for the cuffs, but he threw himself at her anyway—a flying tackle that sent her crashing to the ground.

“You could have come out sooner, Chief Inspector,” I said as Snape arrived. “We were nearly killed.”

“That’s true, laddie,” Snape agreed. “But . . . well, it was Boyle. He wanted to see what would happen. He asked me to hold back. And as it’s Christmas . . .”

The policemen began to clear away bodies. Snape leaned down and picked up the Maltesers box.

“Now let’s see about this,” he said.

The three of us gathered around the memorial. The stone falcon waited, its wings spread, its beak open, its glass eyes blinking in the sun. Carefully, Snape tore off the bar code. He threw the rest of the box away. Then he laid the strip faceup in the falcon’s beak and pulled it through.

Behind the eyes, inside the falcon’s head, a lens focused the sun’s beams onto the bar code. The white stripes reflected some of them back onto a photodetector hidden inside the falcon’s body. We heard the click as a connection was made. There was a soft hum. A solar-powered generator had sprung to life. It activated a motor. There was another click and the entire front of the memorial—along with the inscription—swung open to reveal a solid metal container.

And that was the last surprise of the day. There was to be no Christmas bonus for Snape, no reward for us. Because there weren’t any diamonds. There wasn’t even a lump of coal. The container was empty. We were looking at five million dollars’ worth of nothing.

“But, Nicholas, I still don’t understand.”

“I’ve gone through it all twice, Herbert.”

“Well, if you wrote it all down . . . That might help.”

“Maybe I will.”

It was the second day of the New Year. It didn’t feel much different from the old year. It was cold. There wasn’t any gas in the apartment. And, as usual, we were down to the last handful of change. We’d had a great Christmas, Herbert and me. Two frozen turkey croquettes and the Queen’s speech—only we’d missed the Queen’s speech. Mum and Dad had sent us a card and a couple of presents, but they hadn’t cheered us up. The card showed two koalas in a Christmas tree. The presents were a boomerang for me and a hat with corks for Herbert.

I threw the boomerang away. It came back.

There were still a couple of weeks until school began and I’d have liked to have gone skiing. A lot of the guys in my class had made it to Switzerland or Austria or wherever and they’d be full of it when they got back. It didn’t seem fair. After all I’d been through I couldn’t even afford the bus fare to the travel agent.

And then the parcel came. Special delivery. From the South of France. It was addressed to me.

I think I knew who it was from before I opened it. There was only one reason I could think of why the Falcon’s safe had been empty. I hadn’t mentioned it to Snape or Boyle. I hadn’t even mentioned it to Herbert.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, open it.”

I opened it. Inside the brown wrapping paper there was a carton about the same shape and size as a film box. It was filled with tissue paper, but nestling in the center was a round ball of milk chocolate . . .

“A Malteser!” Herbert said. The color walked out of his face. Herbert didn’t much like chocolates anymore. And he hated Maltesers.

There was a card attached to the box. The message was short and not so sweet. It was written in a flowing, looping hand.

No hard feelings? I wasn’t so sure. Lauren had sold me the sob story of her life—and okay, she hadn’t had the breaks—but then she’d double-crossed me. All along she’d known more than she’d let on. Maybe she’d worked it out for herself or maybe Johnny Naples had told her. But she’d known about the cemetery and she’d known about the Falcon’s memorial. I’d given her the last piece of the puzzle when I told her about the bar code. And that day, in the office of the
Fulham Express,
she’d made up her mind to steal the diamonds. She’d accidentally left the Maltesers upstairs. And when she’d gone up to get them, she’d made a simple copy of the key: a photocopy.

She’d never gone into Fulham Broadway Station—at least, not down to the trains. The moment I’d left, she’d doubled back to the cemetery. Perhaps she’d overtaken me in a taxi. The sun had been shining that day. She’d slid her photocopy through the falcon’s beak. And the diamonds had been hers.

I reached down and squeezed the Malteser between my finger and thumb. I was angry. I wanted to see it shatter. But it wouldn’t. There was something hard in the center.

“Herbert . . .” I said.

He looked. The chocolate had squashed. It wasn’t a Malteser at all. There was something sparkling inside. “What is it?” he asked.

“What does it look like?” I said.

The last of the chocolate had crumbled away. I was left holding a diamond the size of a peanut. What would it be worth? Ten thousand dollars? Twenty thousand? Certainly not peanuts.

So we would go skiing after all. And Herbert would break his leg as he got onto the plane and we’d blow all the money we got from the diamond before we’d even gotten around to paying the gas bill. But what did I care? It was the New Year and we’d come out of it all alive, and although diamonds may be forever, you’ve got to grab every good minute and enjoy it while it’s there.

Turn the page for a preview of

Public Enemy Number Two
a Diamond Brothers Mystery

 

I didn’t like Peregrine Palis from the start. It’s a strange thing about French teachers. From my experience they all have either dandruff, bad breath, or silly names. Well, Mr. Palis had all three, and when you add to that the fact that he was on the short side, with a potbelly, a hearing aid, and hair on his neck, you’ll agree that he’d never win a Mr. Universe contest . . . or a
Combat Monsieur Univers
as he might say.

He’d only been teaching at the school for three months—if you can call his brand of bullying and sarcasm teaching. Personally I’ve learned more from a stick of French bread. I remember the first day he strutted into the classroom. He never walked. He moved his legs like he’d forgotten they were attached to his waist. His feet came first, with the rest of his body trying to catch up. Anyway, he wrote his name on the blackboard—just the last bit.

“My name is Palis,” he said. “Pronounced ‘pallee.’ P-A-L-I-S.”

We all knew at once that we’d gotten a bad one. He hadn’t been in the place thirty seconds and already he’d written his name, pronounced it, and spelled it out. The next thing he’d be having it embroidered on our uniforms. From that moment on, things got steadily worse. He’d treat the smallest mistake like a personal insult. If you spelled something wrong, he’d make you write it out fifty times. If you mispronounced a word, he’d say you were torturing the language. Then he’d torture you. Twisted ears were his specialty. What can I say? French genders were a nightmare. French tenses have never been more tense. After a few months of Mr. Palis, I couldn’t even look at French doors without breaking into tears.

Things came to a head as far as I was concerned one Tuesday afternoon in the summer term. We were being given dictation and I leaned over and whispered something to a friend. It wasn’t anything very witty. I just wanted to know if to give a French dictation you really had to be a French dictator. The trouble was, the friend laughed. Worse still, Mr. Palis heard him. His head snapped around so fast that his hearing aid nearly fell out. And somehow his eyes fell on me.

“Yes, Simple?” he said.

“I’m sorry, sir?” I asked with an innocent smile.

“Is there something I should know about? Something to give us all a good laugh?” By now he had strutted forward and my left ear was firmly wedged between his thumb and finger. “And what is the French for ‘to laugh’?”