I boiled with anger—at letting myself be duped by her, at being so impotent.
“I don’t know what you hope to achieve,” I said icily. “I’m not frail like my aunt, so you’re not going to push me out of the window.”
She bent and picked up the dress she had dropped and started to fold it, slowly and deliberately.
“There will be no need for such drastic measures, Miss Fleming. I’ve got some very effective knock-out shots that will put you out cold for a couple of hours or so and no more than a nasty headache when you wake up again. By then I shall be well away from here.”
“You don’t think I’m going to let you give me an injection of dope.”
“I was trained in a very tough school,” she said scornfully. “There are precious few men who could get the better of me.”
I believed her. I could sense a sort of brute strength in that short, squat figure. I put on an act of false confidence because there was nothing else I could do.
“You seem to forget there are other people in the house. Rudi is just downstairs.”
“Is he? And have you told him about what you heard me saying on the phone?”
“Naturally. If I’m not down again in a minute or two, he’ll be coming up.”
That didn’t have the effect I’d hoped for. Freda merely shrugged carelessly. “I’ll deal with Rudi Bruckner 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 curtain 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 cubbyhole 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 movement 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 disgorged 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 suddenly 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 skylight 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 parapet. 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 dislodged 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, almost 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 crashing 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.”
“I don’t mind, Brett—if it helps.”
And so once again, right from the beginning to the end. To the final moment when Brett, after guiding his father back to a secure position, had come climbing over the rooftops to me, ripping out tiles to give him footholds on the timber framework beneath.
He held me for a moment, murmuring reassurances. Then slowly we made our way back along the gully and through the skylight into the house.
“Brett, what was it made you turn back home?” I asked him breathlessly. “However did you guess?”
“Leave it now, Gail. I’ll explain later.”
Freda Aiken and Rudi were both dead. Killed instantly, just as Madeleine had been.
“Rudi did it to save my life, Brett,” I said with an aching sadness. “He didn’t have to—if he’d let Freda kill me, nobody would have known for sure how it happened. Your father couldn’t see.”
“Perhaps,” said Brett quietly, “the poor devil knew he’d reached the end of the road and was trying to square the account. Besides, Rudi was in love with you. I’ve always known that.”
Again I asked Brett what had made him turn around and come back to Deer’s Leap.
“Something was niggling at the back of my mind—all the time I was driving. I knew there was some inconsistency somewhere. And then it suddenly hit me. Do you remember Rudi telling us that when Belle first came to work here, back in April, he was bogged down with the indexing of Alexis’s book?”
“Yes, but what ... ?”
“He was lying, Gail. He was trying to cover up for not being able to give us the details about Belle, and in doing so he said too much. I suddenly remembered a conversation I’d had with Alexis one time. He was talking about Rudi, praising him to the skies, and he mentioned how Rudi had even given up his holiday in order to do the indexing. His holiday in August. That was enough for me. I knew then that Rudi was deliberately concealing something, that somehow or other he was involved in all this. At once I turned the car around and headed back to Deer’s Leap. Even so, I’d still not have been in time if Rudi hadn’t ...”
* * * *
In the morning Alexis’s body was raised by divers from the bottom of the lake. Brett and I stood watching silently from the bank. When we returned to the house, Elspeth had left, which was a great relief to me. Brett explained that she had gone back to do some work on the film, and that he wanted to drive me to London next afternoon to see a run-through.
“Of course, there will have to be some final editing and polishing,” he said, “but I’ve decided, after all, to show it in an unfinished state—without any additional material except the commentary. Everyone will understand just why the film was never finished—because Alexis Karel was murdered in a Communist plot to discredit his name.”
In the private projection suite at the TV studios a small group was gathered. Elspeth was there with the rest of Brett’s team, and a few other people I hadn’t met before.
It was a deeply moving experience to see my uncle on the screen against the familiar background of Deer’s Leap, to hear again his vibrant, living voice. Madeleine appeared, too, looking frailly beautiful, and their devotion to one another came across unmistakably. The final sequence of the film showed Alexis at his desk in the Oak Room, reminiscing about his homeland. There was no bitterness in his words, and his last message was one of optimism and hope.
W
hen it was over, I felt in no mood to stay around and chat. Brett understood. We left the studio at once, and he took me up in the lift to the roof of the building, where we stood leaning against the balustrade, staring out across the hazy expanse of London on a winter afternoon.
“It was a wonderful film,” I said at length, my voice still tight with emotion. “A wonderful tribute to Alexis. Thank you, Brett.”
He nodded. “I’m glad you liked it.” There was silence again, then Brett went on, “Gail, I ... I want to explain about Elspeth and me.”
“I know about Elspeth and you,” I said bleakly.
“But you don’t, darling. You never have understood. That night, the night you phoned me at the hotel in Manchester and she answered—it wasn’t what you thought. Elspeth was in my room for no other reason than to discuss the film we were working on.”
“Was she?” I heard myself saying. “I wonder if Elspeth would agree with that.”
Brett caught his breath impatiently. “Gail, I know this isn’t the moment to be rough with you, but will you please accept once and for all that it’s you I care about. Just you. And now, for God’s sake, let’s forget about Elspeth.”
“I’ll try, Brett,” I murmured. And suddenly it struck me that it wasn’t going to take all that much effort to forget her. I hadn’t anything to fear now from Elspeth Vane. Perhaps I never had.
Copyright © 1973 by Nancy Buckingham
Originally published by Dell
Electronically published in 2013 by Belgrave House
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228
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Quest for Alexis Page 19