Halfway down the room, a long velvet curtain fluttered eerily in front of an open window.
‘Damn and blast!’ swore Boswell, picking himself up and making for it, Joe close behind him.
‘Where the hell is he?’ said Joe peering out into the swirling snow. ‘Wait! There!’
A dark shape appeared out of the whiteness.
‘No,’ said Boswell. ‘That’s Dave. In any case …’
He was noticing what should have immediately jumped out and hit him in the eye. There was no sign of any disturbance in the snow outside the window. Which meant that …
Behind them came a thud and a startled cry. They turned. Johnson, tempted by the lack of violent activity within to step through the door, lay on his side on the floor. His hand was grasping the back of his neck. A raincoated figure was glimpsed briefly through the doorway, moving fast and heading for the stairs. A still fluttering curtain by the window nearest the side-wall revealed his hiding place.
‘Come on,’ said Boswell. He jumped over the still, prostrate figure of Johnson and sprinted from the room. Halfway up the stairs, the fugitive presented an easy target, but he was reluctant to shoot. The man seemed to be moving very slowly and should be easily overtaken. On the landing he put on a bit of a spurt, but Boswell was now close behind.
It wasn’t even worth calling on him to stop. He was moving at what was scarcely a quick walk now, more of a stagger. He just made it round the angle of the corridor and when Boswell turned the corner the man was on his knees by the wall, sliding slowly sideways. Boswell halted and watched. Further down the corridor a door opened. He looked up. It was Arabella, glorious in a skimpy nightdress, who was running towards him. This concern for his well-being was very touching. But there might still be danger.
‘Keep back!’ he commanded, looking down at the man who was now lying flat on his face.
Arabella ignored him, stopping only when she reached the man on the floor. She knelt beside him and gently turned him over so that his head rested on her lap.
It came as no surprise to Boswell to see who it was. Face grey as ash, breathing intermittent and harsh, it was Bloodworth. If he had had any doubts about the genuineness of the man’s illness, they were dispersed now.
Arabella looked up at him, her eyes full of contemptuous accusation.
‘You bastard,’ she said. ‘You’ve killed him.’
11
You are a humbug, sir … I will speak plainer if you wish it. An impostor, sir.
MR. SAMUEL PICKWICK
Breakfast was a remarkably lively meal, indecently, so it seemed, to those who had had less than their fair share of sleep the previous night.
There was a feeling of excitement among the guests as they realised they were to all intents and purposes cut off from the outside world. Many were disappointed that they were unable to make or receive Christmas greeting telephone calls, but the sense of being involved in an adventure (safely and comfortably endured) more than compensated.
After breakfast people drifted into the parlour, where they were delighted to discover heaps of gifts piled beneath the Christmas tree, and even more delighted to find how well chosen they had been.
‘It might have been hand-picked, specially for me!’ averred Mrs. Burton, looking at the small bottle of perfume she had just received. ‘You’re very efficient, Mr. Boswell. You must have a file on me somewhere!’
Boswell nodded his appreciation of the compliment and of the unconscious irony. The investigation carried out on all the guests had proved very useful in selecting their gifts. It seemed, however, it had been less useful in its premier task of weeding out security risks. It might well turn out that there was some innocent explanation of Bloodworth’s activities early in the morning, but it would be foolish to assume anything but the worst. The old man had been treated by his niece, Mrs. Hislop, and put to bed. His condition was not as grave as it had appeared to Boswell at first, but the doctor had made it clear he was a very sick man and it was out of the question for him to talk. Of course, her own close connection with Bloodworth made her opinion less weighty than it might otherwise have been, but it was impossible to contradict it without alternative medical advice. And certainly Boswell’s own amateur observations confirmed her diagnosis.
There had been no opportunity to talk with Arabella since her outburst. Her own interest in Bloodworth was still as mysterious as the man’s activities themselves. But there were other matters of greater concern. Sawyer, first and foremost. Incredibly, there was still no sign of the man. He must have got away out of the house, Boswell decided. Perhaps Bloodworth had had some kind of rendezvous with him? But even this theory was hard to maintain. He had detached four of the seven men under his control and sent them through the snow to give the barn and stables a thorough going-over.
The result was nothing.
Perhaps Sawyer had tried to make his escape in the night. In which case there was little doubt that nature would have done Boswell’s work for him and be holding the fugitive to be picked up later when the thaw came. Dead.
It would simplify matters. And, recalling Wardle, Boswell had no qualms about hoping that this in fact was what had happened.
Wardle’s absence he explained (and continually, painfully, had to re-explain to a succession of guests) as the result of illness, a temporary indisposition brought on by the previous evening’s festivities. The laughs and witticisms the explanation produced were hard to bear. But bear them he had to, especially now Wardle’s mantle of the jovial mine host had fallen onto his shoulders. Fortunately the hotel staff were easy to cope with. They were not trained field operatives in the way that Joe and Johnson and the others were. But they were all hand-picked after strict vetting for qualities of discretion and trustworthiness. Their salaries were rather more than the going rate for their respective jobs and they did not need to be told that over-curiosity or garrulousness would more rapidly result in loss of place than the mere spilling of hot soup down a guest’s cleavage. They accepted Boswell’s story of Wardle’s indisposition as unquestioningly as the guests. But unlike the guests they would know, or very soon discover, that Wardle was not resting peacefully in his bed.
Boswell could only hope that none of their kitchen speculations came anywhere near the truth. A couple of extra pound notes in your pay packet didn’t buy loyalty in the face of sudden death.
As he came from the kitchen, one of the maids followed him with a breakfast tray.
‘Who’s that for?’ he asked casually.
‘Madame Leclerc, the French lady,’ said the woman. ‘Not feeling well, I hear. Seems to be catching, sir.’
He didn’t respond to her hint of irony but took the tray from her.
‘I’m going upstairs,’ he said. ‘I’ll see she gets it.’
He had noticed Leclerc a few minutes earlier going into the dining room. The next conference session was due to start in about twenty minutes. It was time he could usefully spend having a quiet word with Suzie.
She showed no surprise when he walked into her room with the tray. She did not look as if she had slept much. There were large dark shadows under her eyes. Her hair hung uncombed round her unpowdered face. She was sitting up in bed smoking a foul-smelling cigarette and her nightdress had slipped low on her shoulders. She made no effort to adjust it, but stared at him gloomily, unblinkingly, through a cloud of blue smoke. It was like a scene from one of those magnificent French gangster films they didn’t seem to make any more.
He put the tray down on the bedside table.
‘I’m sorry you are unwell,’ he said.
She shrugged, dislodging the nightdress a little more. The action, he diagnosed with a tinge of regret, was accidental; the display of such a breathtaking canyon of cleavage arose from complete indifference rather than any desire to distract him from his purpose.
‘I’d like to ask you a few questions if I may,’ he began.
‘Does my husband know you are here?’ she interrupted.
<
br /> ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Shall I send for him?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘You know, of course, what your husband is doing here?’
It was a rhetorical question. Some security men kept their wives in complete and lifelong ignorance of the nature of their work. A wise move, if at all possible. But Suzie Leclerc had been actively concerned in the business herself when she and her husband-to-be met. After their marriage she had retired from active work while Jules had progressed from strength to strength in the department. But it was inconceivable that she was here without full knowledge of what was going on.
She nodded.
‘Then you’ll realise how important it is that I investigate anything unusual.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. In that case, I’d like you to tell me exactly what happened after you left the ball last night with Stephen Swinburne.’
She reached out of bed to the tray and poured herself a cup of coffee. The movement did nothing to help Boswell’s peace of mind. She was a beautifully made woman.
She drank her coffee. He had the feeling that she was on the brink of telling him the truth. She leaned forward and almost unconsciously he took a small step backwards.
The realisation seemed to dawn on her then of his interest in her attractions. A look of distaste, whether for him or for herself he could not say, passed over her face and she pulled up the coverlet round her neck.
‘You are mistaken,’ she said. ‘Young Mr. Swinburne and I may have left the room at the same time but we did not leave together.’
‘Why did you leave?’ he asked.
‘Why? I wished to go to the bathroom. You want details?’
‘The bathroom. I see. Not the linen room? You didn’t go into the linen room?’
She was taken aback for a moment, then she laughed, not very successfully.
‘Why should I go to the, what did you call it, this linen room?’
‘You want details?’ echoed Boswell, mockingly.
She looked at him angrily.
‘Details? All right. You give me these details!’ she snapped.
‘I too should like to hear these details,’ said a new voice.
Boswell turned. Standing just inside the door was Leclerc.
Boswell knew he had missed whatever opportunity he had had to learn anything from Suzie.
‘Good morning, monsieur,’ he said. ‘I just brought your wife’s breakfast tray and we were discussing some details of last night’s party. But it was really you I came to fetch. I am sure you do not want to be late for this morning’s conference session?’
Leclerc returned his smile.
‘Of course not, Monsieur Boswell,’ he said. ‘You are most solicitous. Let us go together, shall we? We will meet at lunch, my dear.’
They left the room together and made their way in silence towards the conference area where all was in readiness and most of the other delegates were already present.
‘Good morning, Leclerc,’ said Swinburne suavely. ‘We should be able to make good progress today, I hope.’
‘I hope so too,’ answered Leclerc. ‘Are we ready to start?’
‘Everyone’s here except Herr Himmelstor, I think,’ said Swinburne. ‘As soon as he comes, we’ll begin. But it would be discourteous to start without him.’
They had to wait nearly another fifteen minutes before Herr Bear appeared, rather pale and still wearing his military uniform. He clicked his heels and gave a short stiff bow to the already seated delegates, then disappeared into the bar next door and returned clutching what Boswell later discovered to be half a pint of hock and soda-water. Whether it did him any good, Boswell did not immediately discover, as his attention was caught by urgent signals from Joe standing in the doorway.
‘What’s up?’ he asked in a low voice.
‘It’s Sawyer. We’ve found him.’
‘Great! Where’ve you put him?’
‘Well, nowhere,’ said Joe, rather unhappily.
‘What the hell do you mean? Where is he?’
Joe smiled conciliatingly.
‘He’s in the parlour. Drinking coffee.’
‘He’s what!’
He realised he had unconsciously raised his voice. Glancing back into the conference room, he saw Swinburne looking at him speculatively. Giving him a reassuring smile, he closed the door and turned on the Fat Boy.
‘Show me!’ he snarled.
He was somewhat reassured to see James and Grose, the two ‘gamekeepers’, standing casually outside the parlour.
‘Johnson’s covering the window outside,’ said James.
‘Fine,’ said Boswell. ‘Play it cool now. We don’t want anyone in there getting hurt. Let’s go.’
He stepped into the parlour.
And stopped.
Prepared though he was for it, the sight took his breath away. Robert E. Lee Sawyer, who the day before had probably blown a man’s stomach open with a shotgun, held another’s head beneath icy water till the life bubbled away from him, and possibly clubbed a nineteen-year-old boy to unconsciousness, perhaps idiocy, was stretched at his ease on a chaise longue, the centre of a group of highly amused and entertained dames. Where he had spent the night was still unknown, but clearly he had spent it in some comfort. He was very spruce, freshly shaved and had somehow got access to the hotel’s Dickensian wardrobe. The evening wear he had been given for the ball had been discarded and its place taken by a very elegant sporting outfit consisting of a green shooting coat, plaid neckerchief and closely fitted drabs.
He seemed to be in the middle of an autobiographical shaggy-dog story describing how he had found himself driven by a blizzard in the Rockies to take shelter in a singleroomed log-cabin with four women, an Indian guide and an episcopalian minister. His audience, prevented by the snow from venturing outside, were clearly delighted by this diversion.
‘So this minister, he says, “Brethren, and sistren, let us kneel down and pray,” which we did very willingly, there being nothing more attractive immediately suggesting itself; but after a couple of minutes, when the splinters in the floor started working themselves through my knee-caps, I took a peek between my fingers—like this…’
He put his hands up over his face, opened a couple of fingers and squinted through towards Boswell. The ladies giggled appreciatively.
‘Well, you’ll never believe this, ladies,’ he went on. ‘But there in the furthermost and darkest corner was that there minister and he was … well, I won’t say what he was a-doing, but when we finished our prayer, he looked a mighty relieved man!’
There was a great deal of laughter, Sawyer’s uninhibited guffaws outsounding everyone else. Under cover of the noise, Boswell moved swiftly down the room and took up a position immediately behind the American. The Fat Boy meanwhile had moved over to the window where he announced loudly and totally inaccurately, ‘I think the snow’s slackening off.’
There was a general movement towards the window to check on this hypothesis. Boswell leaned over Sawyer, prodded his neck none too gently with the Walther PPK he held in his jacket pocket, and said conversationally, ‘I wonder if I might have a moment, Mr. Sawyer? I don’t think we got your passport when you arrived. If it would be convenient for you to fetch it now…’
He gave another prod, but it was unnecessary. Sawyer stood up, his face a-beam with co-operation, his hands hanging loosely at his sides, well clear of his pockets.
‘Sure thing, Boz, old son,’ he drawled. ‘Hey, girls. I’ll finish the story later. It gets worse.’
The women, having seen for themselves how fallacious was Joe’s optimism, cooed in disappointment. Boswell too felt irrationally disappointed. Clearly a struggle here with the risk of physical harm to these innocent bystanders would be regarded by Swinburne as a disaster. But for all that something inside him longed for an excuse to see sudden, violent pain remove that open attractive smile from Sawyer’s lips and glaze those sparkling eyes.
&n
bsp; ‘After you,’ he said, and Sawyer unhesitatingly led the way towards the door.
Now something else deep down began to struggle with his desire to hurt Sawyer. A puzzlement. A worry. This was going very easily. Too easily. What the hell could have possessed the man to offer himself for capture like this? Bravado? An acceptance of the inevitable?
At the parlour door they met Arabella. Her expression changed rapidly from shock at the sight of Sawyer, through puzzlement at seeing him in an apparently friendly relationship with Boswell, to understanding as Boswell jerked his head at her to move aside and dug his concealed automatic so hard into the American’s spine that he almost stumbled.
In the hallway James and Grose quickly closed on Sawyer while Boswell watched the stairs and Joe held the parlour door shut. It only took a moment.
‘He’s clean,’ said James, stepping back. Odder and odder. No gun. Still that smile, that confident manner, as if he, Sawyer, were completely in control.
The sooner he got him upstairs behind the steel door which closed the conference area off from the rest of Dingley Dell, the better Boswell would be pleased. His mind was already experimenting with notions that Sawyer might have an accomplice. But who? If someone else had slipped through the net … It was small comfort that it had been Wardle’s net. It was his now. People like Swinburne didn’t have nets. They just sat in great comfort and picked at the bones of perfectly grilled fish.
What was comforting was his personal knowledge of the meticulous nature of the searches all the guests had undergone on arrival. Even the delegates, the only difference between them and the genuine holidaymakers being that the former knew they were being searched. The only people with guns in Dingley Dell were Boswell’s men and of them he was one hundred per cent certain. Or ninety-nine. Distrust was the better part of complacency.
For all that he sighed with relief as the metal door closed behind him and Sawyer was pushed into a small lounge in the company of three men, each quite keen to kill him.
‘Just don’t let him move,’ he said. ‘If he does, shoot a hole in his knee.’
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