The Main Chance (26 page)

In Room 14 on the first floor Paula was getting impatient. She checked her watch, looked at Tweed.

`He's been gone five minutes. I'm suspicious.'

`So am I,' said Tweed. We'll go and have a look.'

Paula had her Browning by her side as Tweed threw open the interconnecting door. Professor Heathstone had disappeared. He walked into another bedroom. Nobody. On a table an old copy of
Ulysses
. He opened it to the publisher's data in the preliminary pages. He laughed.

`It's a third edition, not a first. Worthless. And not a document inside. What a surprise!'

Paula ran across to a side door marked
FIRE EXIT
.

Opening it, she saw stone steps leading down. She ran to the bottom with Tweed behind her calling our for her to be careful. Opening the door on the ground floor by lifting a bar she found herself in an alley. Opposite a door led to a garage. She heard a car starting up but by the time she was inside it had disappeared, turning in the direction of Hengistbury.

Tweed led her down the alley into the main street and round into the car park. The Merc, driven by Newman with Marler by his side and Harry between them, was about to leave. In the back, handcuffed bodies were piled on top of each other.

Marler lowered the window. He beckoned to Tweed and Paula.

`This is what it was all about. The gentlemen in the back were supposed to kill both of you. We're taking this lot, all illegals, I'm sure, to dump them in Buchanan's lap.'

`That would be a long drive,' Tweed told him. 'I'll phone Buchanan and tell him to send police cars down to meet you, take your packages off you, then you can drive straight back to Hengistbury.'

`How did you get on with Professor Heathstone?'

Marler asked as Newman started the car.

`It was rather a short conversation, then he slipped away via a connecting door into the next room.'

`So Calouste has escaped once more,' Marler said, lowering his voice.

`He's a persistent rat. He'll be back. I'll be waiting for him.'

27

`There's a sealed envelope waiting for you from Buchanan,' Lavinia greeted them as she opened the door into the hall. 'He phoned and said that it was coming by courier. He spoke to me when I told him you were out with Paula.

`You told him the rest of my team were also out?' Tweed asked as they entered the hall and she closed the door.

`I did
not
.' She smiled. 'He's a man who uses few words. So am I. I don't pass on information to anyone unless I have to.'

`Well, I'm grateful,' Tweed replied as she handed him the envelope. 'Is there anywhere here where we won't be disturbed?'

`I'd use the smaller upstairs library next to Bella's study. No one likes to go there these days.'

Tweed thanked her again. She was wearing a longer blue skirt, the hem ending just below her knees. Round her waist she had an apron. She touched it.

`Please excuse this. I'm in the kitchen baking more lemon pies. Now, give me your coats then you can hide in the library.

Tweed entered the upstairs library. Sitting down at a table, with Paula by his side, he checked the envelope's seals, which were unbroken. He opened it slowly.

The mobile buzzed. It was Buchanan.

`Tweed? Good. Just to tell you the envelope — it has arrived? Good — contains five portraits of a man Loriot of the French DST believes is Calouste. If so, it's a coup. Sketched by a student in a back-street Paris bar. The subject had a Frenchman with him who might just be his deputy. The sad confirmation is the student was found headless, floating in the Seine. That was after I'd seen him at HQ and he'd told me he heard the deputy address him as Calouste. When I just said "I' and "me" I was quoting Loriot.'

`Why would that trigger off the student?'

`Because Calouste is becoming less invisible. There was an article splashed in
Le Monde
at my suggestion. A blazing headline worded "Calouste Doubenkian: Wanted for Questioning". The reporter who wrote the article is now under police guard in a safe house. Any progress down there about what the reporter Drew Franklin is calling "The Necklace Murders"? Didn't think you'd tell me anything yet. I must rush off now.'

Tweed told Paula the gist of what Buchanan had told him. She nodded impatiently.

`Is it going to take all day to see what's in the envelope?' `Curiosity killed the cat, to coin a cliché,' he teased. Well, women are curious like cats if they've anything up here —' she tapped her forehead — 'except skullbone.'

He withdrew from the envelope five photocopies of the same picture. It was a sketch executed in charcoal and could have been drawn by her. She sucked in her breath. She could tell the poor French student, murdered, might well have developed into a talented artist. But it was the sketches which startled her.

`They're nothing like Professor Heathstone.' `No, they're not.'

Heathstone had struck her as being in his late seventies or early eighties. The sketch was of someone in his late forties at a guess, an evil-looking man with a spade- shaped jaw, a smooth skin, a crooked nose and wearing dark glasses, which concealed his eyes. Something about the sketch made her suppress a shudder.

`Perhaps Heathstone was a deputy,' she said doubtfully.

`I thought maybe you were going to suggest Heathstone was heavily disguised. The contrast is too great for that.'

Well, when he fled I heard Heathstone's car heading this way towards London.'

`Or maybe Shooter's Lodge.'

There was a tapping on the door. Tweed slipped the sketches back inside the envelope, then called out, `Please come in.'

Lavinia appeared, without her apron, carrying a silver tray with Rosenthal crockery, a large pot, a jug of milk, plates, on one of which was a selection of cakes. She arranged them on the table.

`I thought you might like some coffee to keep you going.'

`Yes, we would. How considerate,' said Tweed. 'And now you're here do you mind if I ask you a few questions?'

`Of course not.' She carried a chair over to join them, sat down. 'I can't promise to answer all of them if they concern how the bank operates,' she concluded with a smile.

`I don't want secrets,' he said, turning his chair so her knees almost touched his. 'But Bella gave me no idea at all. You must keep records.'

`We do. In a way you'll think we're old fashioned. We have no computers in the place, no Internet connection. Bella said if hackers were able to penetrate the Pentagon, which quite young boys did, then they could certainly penetrate ours, if we had them.'

Paula was smiling inwardly. Tweed had banned the modern machines from his office for the same reason. After all, overseas agents' lives were constantly at risk.

`If you'll let me go on,' Lavinia said with another smile, `our records of depositors' amounts are typed on index cards. We employ two bright girls from Gladworth to do the work. They come in several days a week by the back door and work in the east wing. So far I've kept Chief Inspector Hammer out from that part of the building.'

`No point in invading that area,' Tweed agreed. 'I'll have a word with Hammer. Going back to your system, surely you are putting a lot of trust in these two girls from Gladworth, even risk, considering the data they must know?'

`We don't rely on trust.' Lavinia smiled again. 'They work from material I hand them. Each depositor's name is coded, and the amount deposited is coded. I carry the book with those codes everywhere with me.' Her blue eyes seemed even larger as she stared at Tweed with a mischievous expression. 'I even keep that book inside my pillow when I go to bed. So only someone with me might extract it from the pillow when I've fallen asleep.'

The last place Tweed looked at now was where Paula had settled by his side. He tried to think of something to say but nothing would come.

`And now,' Lavinia said, standing up, 'if that is all, then I think I ought to leave both of you in peace. No one else will come up. I wish you positive thoughts.'

After she had closed the door she opened it again quickly.

`If either of you need some bedtime reading matter I'd go to the bigger library downstairs. It is crammed with novels, the latest and classics. This library was Bella's collection of a range of obscure and strange volumes.'

`Thank you,' Tweed said. 'Oh, we have not seen a single newspaper since we arrived.'

`Bella didn't like them. Snape takes a whole variety and keeps them in his cabin in The Forest. 'Bye for now.'

`This coffee is just the right temperature and so welcome,' Paula said after pouring two cups when Lavinia had gone.

Tweed drank half a cup and then wandered over to the glass bookcases lining part of one wall. He could glance quickly along a shelf and absorb all the titles. He stopped, put on latex gloves, unlocked a door, reached for a large leather-bound volume pushed further in between other volumes. Taking the volume to the table he laid it down, gently lifted the front cover and the book opened to a page in the middle.

Paula stood up, joined Tweed at the table. He had closed the book, showed her the title on the well- rubbed spine.
Spanish Inquisition: Methods of Torture
, he translated. Then he let the book open by itself at two pages in the middle. He was wearing latex gloves.

`Oh, my God!' Paula exclaimed.

The right-hand page carried a series of illustrations, each showing from different angles drawings of a spiked collar which was almost a replica of the spiked wire collar which they had seen round the neck of Bella and, later, round the neck of Mrs Carlyle. One drawing showed the back of the collar with wooden handles to draw the collar tight. There was some text in Spanish.

`So now we know where the killer got his idea for the fiendish weapon.'

`Which narrows his identity down to someone inside the manor.'

`Wish I could read Spanish,' Paula mused.

`The pictures are sufficiently self-explanatory.'

Tweed asked her to give him a large transparent evidence envelope. She produced one from a compartment in her briefcase. He slipped the book inside, she sealed it, tucked it into an empty compartment in her case.

`Fingerprints?' she suggested.

`Yes. Give it to Harry. He always carries the kit. Mind you, I don't expect to find any. This killer has already shown how thorough he is.'

`What a weird book for Bella to have in her library,' Paula commented.

`I expect she bought them in job lots to fill the bookcases. Part of her showmanship to impress millionaire clients. When Harry has checked it for fingerprints I want you to bring the book back up here and slip it into place. There's a gap and I found the book pushed back about an inch between the others. As you shrewdly said, it narrows the suspect to someone in the manor. I've had enough of being in here.'

They were walking down the imposing staircase when they met Lavinia coming up. Tweed paused.

`Lavinia, am I right in assuming the only entrance to the manor and its grounds is the main entrance gate?'

Now it is.' She smiled, her arms full of files. 'But ages ago there was a small pedestrian entrance at the far end of the wall, beyond where it curves away from the road. It was bricked up Heaven knows how long ago. A small arched gateway. Was it quiet for you in the smaller library?'

`Yes, we just rested and talked, which made a change.'

At the bottom of the staircase Marler appeared from nowhere. He looked up to make sure Lavinia had gone, then told them.

`Couldn't help hearing what Lavinia said. I'm sure she thinks what she said is so.' He paused. 'But it isn't.'

`What do you mean?' Tweed asked sharply.

`I've prowled The Forest inside the wall until I almost know every tree. Eventually this morning I found the second way in, what she called the small arched gateway. Bricked up? I think you'd better come and see for yourselves. You are in for a shock.'

28

Marler led Tweed and Paula through the kitchen, ignoring Mrs Grandy's protests. She showed her feelings by raising the meat cleaver she was using and thudding it down deep into an empty section of the heavy work table.