Double, Double, Oil and Trouble

by Emma Lathen

  “They must have loved that,” muttered Upton.

  “It broke their nerve,” Thatcher agreed. “Geography insulated them from Wylie’s murder. It was so far away, they could persuade themselves it had nothing to do with them. But they had a rude awakening when Cramer rushed into their living room, fresh from having killed Francesca, and told them they were all in the same boat. They reacted to the emergency by doing what they’d done once before. When Wylie failed to reappear after the ransom payment, Jill Livermore delayed her return to England. She stayed in Tangiers, sitting over her bank account like a hen, with Simon ready to flee to her side at a moment’s notice. As soon as they’d given Cramer’s alibi to Scotland Yard, Jill took off again. Simon intended to join her at the first hint that the police were closing in on Cramer. It never occurred to them that Jill would be the first one to be arrested.”

  Lancer was frowning harder than ever. “All right, John, you’ve told us how you solved it. But how in the world did you get Interpol to move against the wife of a high British official? They would have wanted more than your intuition.”

  Thatcher had been carefully leading up to this moment. Asparagus and lamb had been a celebration for everybody else. But he had been singing for his supper while the directors of Macklin felt free to pick holes, demand amplification, and air their own views. It was time to assert himself.

  “I’m surprised at you, George,” he said sorrowfully. “There was proof lying on the ground and you, of all people, should realize that. Wylie’s scheme called for the employment of two drifters with a criminal background. In order to speed up the timetable as much as possible, it was necessary for them to hold the ransom note. A nightmare tormenting the conspirators was that the drifters might try to deal themselves into the payoff. Now, if you had been in this plot, what simple precaution would you have taken?”

  The frown cleared as if by magic. “I would have given them the wrong account number,” Lancer said, thereby justifying the Sloan’s reputation.

  “Which is why the note had to be addressed to Cramer, rather than to Shute. Cramer had a substitute note at the ready to show you. All I had to do was call the Istanbul police and ask for the number on the note delivered in the restaurant. Then I had solid proof against Cramer. Jill Livermore was even easier. Leopold Grimm identified her.”

  “I thought the woman in Zurich was disguised,” Upton objected.

  Thatcher cast his mind back to the night of the Arab party in Richmond. “Oh, she had nothing to fear from a casual encounter, though she took good care to avoid a face-to-face meeting. Her most outstanding characteristics were a very small-boned head and a peculiarly smooth, gliding walk. Well, six-pound mountain boots and a full wig took care of that. Once we found a close-up of her in a wig at her old modeling agency, Leopold was almost certain. Then there was the phone call made to Davidson Wylie’s Greek hotel after the ransom was paid. As the call was not completed, the police could not trace it from the Greek end. But when I suggested that it might have originated from Jill’s Tangiers hotel, they had no trouble at all. After that it was simple dogwork. In almost no time they lined up witnesses to her flights in and out of Switzerland. Then Interpol was ready to go forward with the arrest. And they caught Jill with two false passports and bank books in the same names. Livermore was arrested trying to board a flight to Tangiers. He caved in at once when he learned his wife was already in custody.”

  “And I suppose that Cramer caved in when he realized that the Livermores had been caught,” Lancer ventured.

  “Good God, no.” Thatcher wondered how to describe the stream of legal talent now circling around Hugo Cramer. “Faced with the evidence that he palmed the original ransom note, he has admitted to participation in the fake kidnapping. But he is still denying the two murders.”

  Lancer was aghast. “You don’t think he’ll get away with murdering Davidson Wylie?”

  “I don’t know whether they’ll be able to find proof against him in the bombing, but they’re building a very strong case that he killed Francesca. The Liver-mores will testify to his admission and his attempt to concoct an alibi. Then it turns out that Francesca’s cleaning woman was in the room when she spoke to Cramer and asked him to drop by before she went out with Engelhart. And, of course, there’s no difficulty about supplying the motive. Scotland Yard is putting forth a major effort, and they hope to find an eyewitness who can place Cramer in that apartment building at the time of the murder. However, Cramer seems determined to fight every inch of the way and turn it into a show trial.”

  At this vision of the headlines to come, the men relapsed into a somber silence. Only Roberta took action.

  “Waiter!” she called, every bit as imperiously as Norris Upton. “We’ll have brandy with our coffee. Remy Martin, please.”

  When the snifters arrived, Norris Upton stared sadly into the golden depths. “You’re right, Roberta, we could all use a drink. God, what a mess. Macklin’s lost its best men, it’s going to lose the Noss Head contract, and Cramer will raise such a stench it will never get an award in Europe again. We may as well start the wake right now.”

  “Really, I have never heard such nonsense in my life.” There was a steely glint in Miss Simpson’s eye. “You make Macklin sound like a charitable institution. You’re never going to get anywhere in the corporate world, Norris, unless you learn to be a little more hard-nosed. Macklin has to go where the money is, and that’s North Sea oil. Losing Noss Head is out of the question. I admit that there have been certain unsavory aspects of Macklin’s involvement to date. But the malefactors have been removed, Arthur Shute is as pure as the driven snow, and I understand that young Volpe is proving invaluable.” A passing thought seized her fancy. “I wonder if that boy realizes that at the moment Macklin needs him more than he needs Macklin.”

  “He doesn’t, but his wife does,” Thatcher supplied obligingly.

  “One would think we had never surmounted adversity before,” Miss Simpson continued. “After what we three have been through, the problems of Macklin are a mere bagatelle. No government in the world can move as quickly as a construction crew. Our course is clear enough. By the time the British government can formulate a rescind order, the pipelines must be so far advanced that retreat is impossible. I personally look forward to a year-end at which Macklin is in unchallenged possession of Noss Head and has also retrieved its one and a half million dollars. Don’t you agree?” She paused to look challengingly around the table.

  Norris Upton was still shattered by the charge of being insufficiently swashbuckling. But John Thatcher and George Lancer knew there was only one reply.

  “Oh, absolutely!” they chorused, raising their glasses on high.