‘Since about five o’clock this morning.’
‘Then he’s talked to others! Oh, my God, he’s talked to others!’ She was beside herself, and Canfield was now frightened for her.
‘I’m sure he has. But only to his immediate superiors and I gather he’s pretty superior himself. What did you expect?’
The old woman tried with what strength she had left to regain control of herself. ‘You may have caused the murder of my entire family. If you’ve done that, I’ll see you dead!’
‘That’s pretty strong language! You’d better tell me why!’
‘I’ll tell you nothing until you get Derek on that telephone.’
The field accountant crossed the room to the telephone and gave the operator Derek’s number. He talked urgently, quietly, for a few moments and turned to the old woman. ‘He’s going in to a meeting in twenty minutes. He has a full report and they’ll expect him to read it.’
The old woman walked rapidly toward Canfield. ‘Give me that phone!’
He handed her both the stand and the receiver. ‘Mr Derek! Elizabeth Scarlatti. Whatever this meeting is, do not go to it! I am not in the habit of begging, sir, but I implore you, do not go! Please, please do not speak to a soul about last night! If you do, you will be responsible for the deaths of a number of innocent people. I can say no more now—Yes, yes, whatever you like—I’ll see you, of course. In an hour. Thank you. Thank you!’
She replaced the receiver on the hook and slowly, with great relief, put the telephone back on the table. She looked at the field accountant. ‘Thank God!’
The field accountant watched her as she spoke. He began to walk toward her. ‘Sweet mother of Jesus! I’m beginning to see. That crazy Alpine thing. The acrobatics at two in the morning. It wasn’t just to scare you half to death—it was necessary!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Since early this morning I’ve thought it was Bertholde! And he’d come to you like that to scare hell out of you! But it didn’t make sense. It wouldn’t accomplish anything. He could have stopped you in the lobby, in a store, in the dining room. It had to be someone who couldn’t do that! Someone who couldn’t take a chance anywhere!’
‘You’re babbling! You’re incoherent!’
‘Sure, you’re willing to call the whole thing off! Why not?
You did what you’d set out to do! You found him! You’ve found your missing son, haven’t you?’
That’s a lie!’
‘Oh, no, it’s not. It’s so clear I should have thought of it last night. The whole damn thing was so weird I looked for insane explanations. I thought it was persuasion by terror. It’s been used a lot these past few years. But it wasn’t that at all! It was our celebrated war hero come back to the land of the living! Ulster Stewart Scarlett! The only one who couldn’t risk stopping you outside. The only one who couldn’t take a chance that you might not unlatch that bolt!’
‘Conjecture! I deny it!’
‘Deny all you like! Now I’m giving you a choice! Derek will be here in less than an hour. Either we straighten this out between us before then, or I walk out that door and cable my office that in my highly regarded professional opinion we’ve found Ulster Scarlett! And, incidentally, I’m taking your daughter-in-law with me.’
The old woman suddenly lowered her voice to nearly a whisper. She walked haltingly toward the field accountant. ‘If you have any feeling whatsoever for that girl, you’ll do as I ask. If you don’t, she’ll be killed.’
It was now the field accountant’s turn to raise his voice. It was no longer the shout of the angry debater, it was the roar of an angry man. ‘Don’t you make any pronouncements to me! Don’t you or your rotten bastard son make any threats to me! You may buy part of me, but you don’t buy all of me! You tell him I’ll kill him if he touches that girl!’
Pleading without shame, Elizabeth Scarlatti touched his arm. He withdrew it swiftly from her. ‘It’s not my threat. Please, in the name of God, listen to me. Try to understand—I’m helpless. And I cannot be helped!’
The field accountant saw the tears roll down her wrinkled cheeks. Her skin was white and the hollows of her eyes were black with exhaustion. He thought, quite out of context with the moment, that he was looking at a tear-stained corpse. His anger ebbed.
‘Nobody has to be helpless. Don’t let anybody tell you that.’
‘You love her, don’t you?’
‘Yes. And because I do, you don’t have to be quite so afraid. I’m a committed public servant. But far more committed to us than the public.’
‘Your confidence doesn’t change the situation.’
‘You won’t know that until you tell me what it is,’’
‘You leave me no choice? No alternative?’
‘None.’
‘Then God have mercy on you. You have an awesome responsibility. You are responsible for our lives.’
She told him.
And Matthew Canfield knew exactly what he would do. It was time to confront the Marquis de Bertholde.
The Scarletti Inheritance
Chapter Thirty-one
Fifty miles southeast of London is the seaside resort of Ramsgate. Near the town, on a field set back from the main road, stood a wooden shack no more than twenty feet by twenty. It had two small windows and in the early-morning mist a dim light could be seen shining through them. About a hundred yards to the north was a larger building—once a barn—five times the size of the shack. It was now a hangar for two small monoplanes. One of them was being wheeled out by three men in gray overalls.
Inside the shack, the man with the shaved head sat at a table drinking black coffee and munching bread. The reddish splotch above his right eye was sore and inflamed and he touched it continually.
He read the message in front of him and looked up at the bearer, a man in a chauffeur’s uniform. The contents of the message infuriated him.
‘The marquis has gone too far. The instructions from Munich were clear. The Rawlinses were not to be killed in the States. They were to be brought to Zurich! They were to be killed in Zurich!’
‘There’s no need for concern. Their deaths, the man and his wife, were engineered above suspicion. The marquis wanted you to know that. It has appeared as an accident.’
‘To whom? God damn it, to whom? Go shag, all of you! Munich doesn’t want risks! In Zurich there would have been no risk!’ Ulster Scarlett rose from the chair and walked to the small window overlooking the field. His plane was nearly ready. He hoped his fury would subside before takeoff. He disliked flying when he was angry. He made mistakes in the air when he was angry. It had been happening more frequently as the pressures mounted.
God damn Bertholde! Certainly Rawlins had to be killed. In his panic over Cartwright’s discovery Rawlins had ordered his son-in-law to kill Elizabeth Scarlatti. A massive error! It’s funny, he reflected. He no longer thought of the old woman as his mother. Simply Elizabeth Scarlatti… But to have Rawlins murdered three thousand miles away was insanity! How could they know who was asking questions? And how easily might the order be traced back to Bertholde?
‘Regardless of what happened…’ Labishe started to speak.
‘What?’ Scarlett turned from the window. He had made up his mind.
‘The marquis also wanted you to know that regardless of what happened to Boothroyd, all associations with him are buried with the Rawlinses.’
‘Not quite, Labishe. Not quite.’ Scarlett spoke softly but his voice was hard. ‘The Marquis de Bertholde was ordered… commanded by Munich to have the Rawlinses brought to Switzerland. He disobeyed. That was most unfortunate.’
‘Pardon, monsieur?’
Scarlett reached for his flying jacket, which hung over the back of his chair. Again he spoke quietly, simply. Two words.
‘Kill him.’
‘Monsieur!’
‘Kill him! Kill the Marquis de Bertholde, and do it today!’
‘Monsieur! I do not believe what
I hear!’
‘Listen to me! I don’t give explanations! By the time I reach Munich I want a cable waiting for me telling me that stupid son of a bitch is dead!… And, Labishe! Do it so there’s no mistake who killed him. You! We can’t have any investigations now!… Get back here to the field. We’ll fly you out of the country.’
‘Monsieur! I have been with le marquis for fifteen years! He has been good to me!… I cannot…’
‘You what?’
‘Monsieur…’ The Frenchman sunk to one knee. ‘Do not ask me.’
‘I don’t ask. I command! Munich commands!’
The foyer on the third floor of Bertholde et Fils was enormous. In the rear was an impressive set of white Louis XIV doors that obviously led to the sanctum sanctorum of the Marquis de Bertholde. On the right side were six brown leather armchairs in a semicircle—the sort that might be found in the study of a wealthy country squire—with a thick rectangular coffee table placed in front. On the table were neatly stacked piles of chic magazines—chic socially and chic industrially. On the left side of the room was a large white desk trimmed in gold. Behind the desk sat a most attractive brunette with spit curls silhouetted against her forehead. All this Canfield took in with his second impression. It took him several moments to get over his first.
Opening the elevator door, he had been visually overpowered by the color scheme of the walls.
They were magenta red and sweeping from the ceiling moldings were arcs of black velvet.
Good Christ! he said to himself. I’m in a hallway thirty-five hundred miles away!
Seated in the chairs beside one another were two middle-aged gentlemen in Savile Row clothes reading magazines. Standing off to the right was a man in chauffeur’s uniform, his hat off, his hands clasped behind his back.
Canfield approached the desk. The spit-curled secretary greeted him before he could speak. ‘Mr. Canfield?’
‘Yes.’
‘The marquis would like you to go right in, sir.’ The girl spoke as she rose from the chair and started toward the large white doors. Canfield saw that the man seated on the left was upset. He uttered a few ‘Damns!’ and went back to his magazine.
‘Good afternoon, Mr. Canfield.’ The fourth marquis of Chatellerault stood behind his large white desk and extended his hand. ‘We have not met, of course, but an emissary from Elizabeth Scarlatti is a welcome guest. Do sit down.’
Bertholde was almost what Canfield expected him to be, except, perhaps, shorter. He was well-groomed, relatively handsome, very masculine, with a voice resonant enough to fill an opera house. However, in spite of his exuding virility—bringing to mind the Matterhorn and the Jungfrau—there was something artificial, slightly effete about the man. Perhaps the clothing. It was almost too fashionable.
‘How do you do?’ Canfield smiled, shaking the Frenchman’s hand. ‘Is it Monsieur Bertholde? Or Monsieur le Marquis? I’m not sure which I should use.’
‘I could tell you several unflattering names given me by your countrymen.’ The marquis laughed. ‘But please, use the French custom—so scorned by our proper Anglicans. Plain Bertholde will do. Marquises are such an out-of-date custom.’ The Frenchman smiled ingenuously and waited until Canfield sat in the chair in front of his desk before returning to his seat. Jacques Louis Aumont Bertholde, fourth marquis of Chatellerault, was immensely likable and Canfield recognized the fact. ‘I appreciate your interrupting your schedule.’
‘Schedules are made to be broken. Such a dull existence otherwise, yes?’
‘I won’t waste time, sir. Elizabeth Scarlatti wants to negotiate.’
Jacques Bertholde leaned back in his chair and looked startled. ‘Negotiate?… I’m afraid I don’t comprehend, monsieur… Negotiate what?’
‘She knows, Bertholde—She knows as much as she needs to know. She wants to meet you.’
‘I’d be delighted—at any time—to meet Madame Scarlatti but I can’t imagine what we have to discuss. Not in a business sense, monsieur, which I presume to be your… errand.’
‘Maybe the key is her son. Ulster Scarlett.’ Bertholde leveled his gaze intently on the field accountant. ‘It is a key for which I have no lock, monsieur. I have not had the pleasure—I know, as most who read newspapers know, that he vanished a number of months ago. But that is all I know.’
‘And you don’t know a thing about Zurich?’ Jacques Bertholde abruptly sat up in his chair. ‘Quof? Zurich?’
‘We know about Zurich.’
‘Is this a joke?’
‘No. Fourteen men in Zurich. Maybe you’ve got the fifteenth—Elizabeth Scarlatti.’
Canfield could hear Bertholde’s breathing. ‘Where did you get this information? What do you refer to?’
‘Ulster Scarlett! Why do you think I’m here?’
‘I don’t believe you! I don’t know what you are talking about!’ Bertholde got out of his chair.
‘For God’s sake! She’s interested—Not because of him! Because of you! And the others! She’s got something to offer, and if I were you, I’d listen to her.’
‘But you are not me, monsieur! I’m afraid I must ask you to leave. There is no business between Madame Scarlatti and the Bertholde companies.’
Canfield did not move. He remained in the chair and spoke quietly. ‘Then I’d better put it another way. I think you’ll have to see her. Talk with her—For your own good. For Zurich’s good.’
‘You threaten me?’
‘If you don’t, it’s my opinion that she’ll do something drastic. I don’t have to tell you she’s a powerful woman… You’re linked with her son… And she met with her son last night!’
Bertholde stood motionless. Canfield couldn’t decide whether the Frenchman’s look of disbelief was over the revelation of Scarlett’s visit or his—the field accountant’s—knowledge of it.
After a few moments Bertholde replied, ‘I know nothing of what you speak. It has nothing to do with me.’
‘Oh, come on! I found the rig! The Alpine rig! I found it at the bottom of a closet in your conference suite at the Savoy!’
‘You what?’
‘You heard me! Now, let’s stop kidding each other!’
‘You broke into my firm’s private quarters?’
‘I did! And that’s just the beginning. We’ve got a list. You might know some of the names on it… Daudet and D’Almeida, fellow countrymen, I think—Olaffsen, Landor, Thyssen, von Schnitzler, Kindorf—And, oh yes! Mr. Masterson and Mr. Leacock! Current partners of yours, I believe! There are several others, but I’m sure you know their names better than I do!’
‘Enough! Enough, monsieur!’ The Marquis de Bertholde sat down again, slowly, deliberately. He stared at Canfield. ‘I will clear my office and we will talk further. People have been waiting. It does not look good. Wait outside. I will dispense with them quickly.’
The field accountant got out of the chair as Bertholde picked up the telephone and pressed the button for his secretary.
‘Monsieur Canfield will remain. I wish to finish the afternoon’s business as rapidly as possible. With each person interrupt me in five minutes if I have not concluded by then. What? Labishe? Very well, send him in. I’ll give them to him.’ The Frenchman reached into his pocket and withdrew a set of keys.
Canfield crossed to the large white double doors. Before his hand touched the brass knob, the door on his left opened swiftly, with great force.
‘So sorry, monsieur,’ the man in uniform said.
‘Void les clefs, Labishe.’
‘Merci, Monsieur le Marquis! Je regrette—J’ai un billet…’
The chauffeur closed the door and Canfield smiled at the secretary.
He wandered over to the semicircle of chairs, and as the two gentlemen looked up, he nodded pleasantly. He sat down on the end chair nearest the entrance to Bertholde’s office and picked up the London Illustrated News. He noted that the man nearest him was fidgeting, irritable, quite impatient. He was turning the pages of Punch, but he
was not reading. The other man was engrossed in an article in the Quarterly Review.
Suddenly, Canfield was diverted by an insignificant action on the part of the impatient man. The man extended his left hand through his coat sleeve, turned his wrist, and looked at the watch. A perfectly normal occurrence under the circumstances. What startled the field accountant was the sight of the man’s cuff link. It was made of cloth and it was square with two stripes running diagonally from corner to corner. The small stripes were deep red and black. It was a replica of the cuff link that had identified the hulking, masked Charles Boothroyd in Elizabeth Scarlatti’s stateroom on board the Calpurnia. The colors were the same as the paper on the marquis’ walls and the black velvet drapes arcing from the ceiling.
The impatient man noticed Canfield’s stare. He abruptly withdrew his hand into his jacket and placed his arm at his side.
‘I was trying to read the time on your watch. Mine’s been running fast.’
‘Four twenty.’
‘Thanks.’
The impatient gentleman folded his arms and leaned back, looking exasperated. The other man spoke.
‘Basil, you’ll have a stroke if you don’t relax.’
‘Well and good for you, Arthur! But I’m late for a meeting! I told Jacques it was a hectic day, but he insisted I come over.’
‘He can be insistent.’
‘He can be bloody rude, too!’
There followed five minutes of silence except for the rustling of papers at the secretary’s desk.
The large left panel of the white double doors opened and the chauffeur emerged. He closed the door, and Canfield noticed that once it was shut, the chauffeur twisted the knob to make sure it was secure. It was a curious motion.
The uniformed man went to the secretary and leaned over her desk, whispering. She reacted to his information with resigned annoyance. He shrugged his shoulders and walked quickly to a door to the right of the elevator. Canfield saw through the slowly closing door the flight of stairs he had presumed to be there.
The Scarletti Inheritance Page 24