‘Oh God, how awful!’ His birdlike head thrust forward, Simon peered at the figure on the blood-soaked bed.
‘Poor little devil,’ murmured Richard. ‘But we are partly to blame. We should have foreseen this.’
‘How could we?’
‘You should know well enough, after your past experience of the occult. People with power have no difficulty in over-looking others, by means of a crystal or dark glass. After we got Nella away, the first thing von Thumm and Co. would have done would be to find out where we took her. Then, an hour or two later, one or more of them got into her room somehow and did her in. Look at that bootlace laid across her neck. She wasn’t strangled with it. Greyeyes told me once that Satanists always leave that symbol when they’ve bumped off someone who’s betrayed them.’
‘That’s about it. Ought to have kept her with us.’ As Simon spoke, he took a step towards the bed
Richard’s hand shot out and caught his arm. ‘Stay where you are! You mustn’t touch her!’
‘Why not? Can’t bear the sight of the poor girl’s face. Only going to cover it with the bedclothes.’
‘You bloody fool! Don’t you realise that murder has been done? Within a few hours the police will be here. They mustn’t find our fingerprints.’
‘Suppose you’re right. But oughtn’t we to tell the management and ask them to send for the police?’
For a moment Richard did not reply, then he said, ‘I don’t think so. Heaven knows, the fact that we brought this woman here is going to be difficult enough to explain. If they know it was us who discovered her body, we’ll be in it right up to our necks. The sooner we get out of here, the better.’
As he moved towards the door, he lifted the skirt of his silk dressing gown and put it over the light switch, as he turned out the light. When they were both out in the corridor, he again used the silk to shut the door, then gave the handle a good rub to remove the fingerprints Simon had left there when he opened it.
Side by side, they walked quietly along the passage. As they turned the corner into the broad main corridor, both of them halted, and drew back. They had seen a cleaner, a woman carrying a bucket, walking towards the lift. Although she had been facing their way, they did not think she had caught sight of them; but they could not be certain. Tense and silent, they waited for a good two minutes, then Richard took a quick look round the corner.
‘She’s gone,’ he whispered. ‘Come on. But we’d better take the stairs. Less likely to run into anyone than coming out of the lift.’
It was a long haul from the fourth floor up to their suite. They reached it without incident, but very short of breath. As Simon closed the door behind him, he burst out:
‘The bastards! How can men perpetrate such horrifying deeds? God knows, murder is bad enough. But to have mutilated the poor girl like that after she was dead, by cutting out her tongue.’
Richard was at the drink table, pouring neat brandy into a glass. Over his shoulder, he said, ‘The reason they did that is clear enough. They’d know that even if we didn’t see what they’d done, we were certain to be told about it. Nella’s tongue was a message to us. “If you want to stay alive, you’d better not talk.”’
‘Damned if I’ll let them get away with this. Best not to let anyone know we found Nella’s body. I agree about that. But when someone else finds it, we’re certain to be questioned. Nothing to stop us giving the police a full account of what happened tonight, and why we brought Nella here.’
‘No good, old chap. They’d never believe us. You can bet your bottom dollar that, within minutes of Nella’s getting away, those filthy swine would have scrapped all thought of further fun and games. They would have been frantically clearing up, getting into their ordinary clothes and disappearing. If the police went out to Glasshill’s place, even at this moment, I doubt if they’d find a scrap of evidence to show that a Sabbat had been held there. No. Later we may find some way of getting back at them. At the moment, our first concern is to think of some plausible reason to explain why we brought Nella here.’
‘It’s important if we’re going to let ourselves be questioned by the police; but if we’re not going to come clean with them, hadn’t we better try to get out?’
‘That would start a hue and cry after us.’
‘Doesn’t follow that they’d catch us. Not if we acted quickly.’
‘There’s something in the idea,’ Richard said thoughtfully. After taking a second swig of brandy, he went on, ‘Having brought Nella here in the middle of the night has got us in damn’ deep. It’s pretty certain that it will mean our being detained here for questioning, perhaps for weeks.’
‘Ummm. And put a stopper on our hunt for Rex.’
‘Yes. I’m afraid recent events had made me forget that for the moment. But the one good thing that has come out of this night’s work is that we now know where he is. Or, at least, where he was a fortnight or so ago, before Nella left the Sala. In the normal course of events, today would see us on our way up there.’
‘Then why shouldn’t we skip while the going is good? Don’t suppose a chambermaid will get sufficiently impatient to do Nella’s room to barge in there before eleven o’clock. By that time we could be on an aircraft. Nella said the Sala is just over the border in Bolivia. With luck, there may be a ‘plane flying up to the capital, La Paz.’
Richard nodded. ‘If only there is, we’d be out of trouble. It’s hardly likely that the Chilean Government could secure an extradition order just to get us back and ask us what we knew about Nella. Even if they could, by the time the Bolivian police started to look for us, we’d have left La Paz days before. There’s one thing, though. We ought to make our leaving look as natural as possible. We could say we’ve been invited to stay up-country for a few days, so we’re keeping on the suite; and leave most of our baggage here.’
‘We’ll need to do a bit of play-acting then. Carry on as usual till we actually leave the hotel.’ Simon glanced at the clock. ‘It’s getting on for seven. Bit early for breakfast, but if we were catching a ‘plane the odds are we’d be getting up by now. Shall I ring down for breakfast?’
‘Yes. But don’t order our usual Continental. People who are about to travel generally fortify themselves with something more solid. I’ll have ham and eggs with mushrooms, and a “fruit plate” to follow.’
‘Feel too sick to eat anything, but I’ll try to manage an omelette,’ Simon muttered unhappily.
Breakfast having been ordered, they went to their respective rooms and began to sort out the things they could cram into overnight bags. Richard had just switched on the radio when the floorwaiter wheeled in the trolley. Raising a cheerful grin, he told the man that they were leaving that morning, but would be returning in a few days, then gave him an extra large tip. Their attempts at conversation during the meal lapsed into silence. Neither could keep his mind off Nella’s blood-soaked body in the bedroom down on the fourth floor, and wondering how soon it would be discovered. When they had finished, Richard rang the reception desk, asked for their bill to be ready by nine o’clock, and told an under-manager that, although they would be leaving that morning, he wished to keep on the suite.
After they had bathed, shaved and dressed, Richard said, ‘It’s a quarter to nine. L.A.N., the Chilean Airlines office, is only just round the corner. I expect it opens at nine o’clock. I’ll go there now and see if there’s any chance of getting up to La Paz.’
‘While you’re out, I’ll go along and see Miranda.’ Simon paused, then added, ‘How much d’you think I ought to tell her?’
‘As little as possible. The less she knows, the better, as there is a chance that the hotel people will tell the police that they’ve seen her up in the restaurant with us; then they’d question her. You told her only that we thought the party we were going to investigate last night might be a Sabbat, so there is no need to admit that it was.’
‘True. And she brushed the idea of Satanism aside. The odds are she’ll accept that it was simply a wild party, and be hoping that it gave us a line on Rex.’
‘Good. Then you can tell her that it did, and we’re losing no time in following it up. It would only worry her to know that her uncle is mixed up with a bunch of Satanists.’
Although Miranda could not see the sights or scenery, she enjoyed the fresh air when being driven in a car, and Simon had promised to take her for a drive that morning. When he told her that he couldn’t, after all, she was very disappointed and, when he went on to say that he and Richard were leaving Santiago within an hour or two, she did not seek to hide her distress. But she cheered up when she learned that they now had a clue to Rex’s whereabouts, and resigned herself to Simon’s leaving her.
During the past few days they had had little chance to be alone together, because Pinney was nearly always with her. But they had made the most of the few occasions when Pinney had not been present; and now Miranda temporarily got rid of her by sending her down to the lobby to buy a magazine.
No sooner had the door closed behind the companion, than Simon moved over to the sofa on which Miranda was sitting, and took her in his arms. For some minutes they kissed passionately. Simon could not tell her that it would be impossible for him to return to Santiago in the foreseeable future, or give her an address where she could get in touch with him; so he told her that, as soon as he possibly could, he would write to her and they would then make arrangements that would bring them together again. On Pinney’s return, they parted with great reluctance.
Back in his own room, Simon finished his packing, then waited with as much patience as he could muster for Richard’s return. When Richard did get back, he was looking far from cheerful. There was a flight up to La Paz only once a week, leaving on Saturday, and no other aircraft by which they could leave the country until the following day.
To have remained in Santiago overnight meant that, for certain, they would be questioned by the police; and the possibility of being detained for a considerable time as material witnesses. In consequence, he had booked two seats on the flight to Valparaiso, which left daily at midday. That, at least, would get them out of the capital and, with luck, before the police caught up with them, they might find, in the big harbour, a ship about to sail for Callao, or some other port further north.
‘Might be worse,’ Simon commented. ‘Must drive out to the airport. Can’t prevent the police from learning we’ve gone there, and the name of the place for which we’ve taken off. If it was La Paz, they’d tumble to it at once that we were skipping. Perhaps they’d even have the aircraft radioed to return. As it’s Valparaiso, they’ll probably think that we’ve only gone off to spend a few nights at Viña del Mar, and not burst their guts coming after us.’
‘That’s true. It will certainly look less as though we had something to hide. As you say, it will need only a ‘phone call to the airport for them to find out where we are heading; so we might give our departure an even greater air of innocence by telling the hotel people that we’re going to get a breath of sea air at Viña del Mar. We’ll do that when we pay the bill.’
For the next twenty minutes they hung about uneasily, fearful of appearing to be in too great a hurry to get to the airport; but it was a forty-minute drive so, at half past ten, they had their overnight bags taken down. While Simon was settling the account, the hall porter came up to Richard and asked him for a forwarding address for letters. Momentarily taken aback, Richard stared at the man and then said, We’ll be back here on Friday, so there’s no point in forwarding anything.’
At last they were in the car. When it had reached the outskirts of the city, Simon glanced at his watch. It was exactly eleven o’clock, the deadline after which they could expect a chambermaid to enter Nella’s room at any moment, and come upon her dead body.
With luck, at the horrid sight of that gaping, tongueless mouth, the woman might faint, gaining them ten minutes before she revived or, in turn, was found and the management informed. Another ten minutes, or perhaps twenty, would elapse before the police arrived on the scene. Porters, floor waiters and other employees would be questioned. Of these the night clerk was the key man, because it was he who had seen Nella arrive with Richard and Simon, and go up with them in the lift. But the odds were that he was now in bed, and asleep. If so and, better still, he did not live in the hotel, well over an hour might pass between the discovery of Nella’s body and a connection between her and them established. But those delays would bring their zero hour to midday, and none of them could be counted on.
It was eleven-twenty-five when they checked in at the airport. They spent half an hour of almost unbearable suspense, walking up and down the hall. Then, when they joined the little queue at the exit gate, a loudspeaker blared in Spanish. Simon swallowed hard, then said to Richard, ‘Something wrong with the bloody ’plane. That announcement. Slight delay before take-off.’
Richard gave a sigh. ‘I’m afraid it’s not the ’plane. More likely that the police have just telephoned from the Hilton, ordering it to be held until they come out and pick us up.’
Grimly, they continued waiting in the queue, their eyes anxiously roving about the hall. Whenever they spotted a policeman in the crowd, coming in their direction, they felt certain that he was looking for them. But the minutes ticked by. At ten past twelve the flight was called again. They went out to the ’plane. The next five minutes seemed to them an eternity. Every moment they expected an official to come aboard and call out their names. But the brief routine of the captain’s announcement and fastening safety belts passed without interruption. At twelve-fifteen the aircraft took off for Valparaiso.
Yet their ordeal was far from over. The flight would take the best part of half an hour. By this time it seemed certain that Nella’s body would have been found, and the police have begun their enquiries. At any moment they might telephone the Santiago airport, to ask the destination of the ’plane by which Richard and Simon had left, then they would only have to telephone Valparaiso for them to be arrested on landing.
In an agony of apprehension they sat through the brief journey, refusing the coffee and biscuits that the air hostess offered them, but accepting American magazines and toying with, but not reading, them.
At what seemed a dangerously low altitude the little aircraft skimmed over the Mountains of the Coast, then came down out of a cloudless sky, to make a smooth landing. Tense and alert, they left the ’plane and walked across the tarmac to the airport building. As they had come in on an internal flight, there were no passport or Customs formalities, and no dreaded policeman was waiting there to accost them. Carrying their grips, they walked straight through to the taxi rank. Simon asked the driver of a cab to take them to a travel agency near the docks. The man drove them into the city and set them down outside an office in the window of which there were a number of flyblown posters; but, by then, it was past one o’clock and the place had been closed for the siesta.
Paying off the cab, they crossed the street to a café. It was a gloomy place, with a solitary, surly waiter. They did not feel like eating anything, so ordered only pisco sours and, when they had drunk them, they repeated the order at intervals until they had whiled away the next two hours. Eventually the travel agency was reopened by a short, plump young woman whose blonde hair was obviously dyed. Simon told her that they wanted to make their way to the United States by easy stages, and asked her what ships carrying passengers were about to sail for the north. After much shuffling through papers, and two telephone calls, she told them that she could get them accommodation on a Dutch cargo ship that was sailing the next day. The ship had cabins for twelve passengers, and was bound for Curaçao in the West Indies, which was her home port; but on the way there would call at Callao in Peru, Guayaquil in Ecuador and at Panama on going through the Canal.
Simon never ventured abroad without taking a considerable sum in U.S. dollars, to supplement the travel allowance to which he was entitled as a business man. So he had ample funds to pay the fare for the two of them up to Callao, the port of Lima. The Peruvian capital being much nearer La Paz than Santiago, there was a good hope that they would reach it perhaps as soon as the Saturday ’plane would have got them there.
Outside the agency, they debated where to spend the night. Richard’s view was that if the police made up their minds that it was worth going after them, at whatever hotel they stayed they would be picked up, so they might as well go to a good one in Viña del Mar. Simon disagreed, on the grounds that, if the police believed the story that they had gone to the coast only for a couple of nights, they would naturally make enquiries for them at the best places first. Whereas it would take many hours for them to check up at the scores of hotels in both the big watering place and the great port; so they would evade a police search for a few hours longer if they took a room at a small hostelry down near the docks.
Richard felt there was something to be said for that; and, after a quarter of an hour spent hunting for a suitable place, they found an inn that looked as though it might be patronised by the officers of merchant ships. There they were given adjacent rooms and, having unpacked their few belongings, went out to while away the rest of the day as best they could. By evening they were so tired of wandering aimlessly about and sitting over drinks in cafés, that they took a taxi into Viña del Mar, dined at the Casino and afterwards played roulette. Richard won the equivalent of three pounds and Simon over twenty, which cheered them up considerably as it seemed an omen that their lucky stars were in the ascendant.
Next morning Simon rang up the ship on which they had booked passages and was told that she was not sailing until the evening, but they could come aboard at any time. Having nothing else to do, they walked along to the dock at ten-thirty. A solitary Customs man lowered a newspaper he was reading, glanced at their bags and nodded to them to go through. Getting out their passports, they walked over to the Immigration desk. A policeman was lolling against it, smoking a cheroot and carrying on a desultory conversation with the Immigration official. Richard put his passport on the desk. The official opened it, laid it down and said to the policeman:
‘These are the two you want.’
The policeman suddenly became alert. Putting his right hand on the holster of the revolver at his side, he said politely, ‘Señors, I regret the necessity of preventing you from going on board a ship; but police headquarters in Santiago have issued an order that, wherever found, you are to be sent there for questioning. Be pleased to walk in front of me to the exit.’
They had no option but to obey. Their careful planning, the periods of acute anxiety and dreary boredom they had suffered during the past twenty-four hours, had all been for nothing. After making a futile protest, seething with suppressed bitterness while endeavouring to appear no more than annoyed that their lawful intentions had been interfered with, they made their way back through the Customs hall, and through an archway to the street.
There, their captor spoke to another policeman, who then went into a telephone box. For the best part of a quarter of an hour they stood on the pavement, pretending to take their arrest light-heartedly, but in fact now filled with gloomy apprehension. A police car then arrived and took them to the airport. There a police inspector took charge of them and locked them in a small, bare room. For the first time they were able to talk, in low voices, of their unhappy situation. But they were not left there for long. The daily service between Santiago and Valparaiso consisted of flights each way, both of which left at twelve noon. The prisoners were put aboard with an escort and, after the short flight, taken in another police car into the city. At a little before half past one, they arrived at police headquarters.
A sergeant took charge of their bags and, when they had been searched, the contents of their pockets. Again Simon protested. He pointed out indignantly that they were not criminals, but law-abiding citizens who had every intention of aiding the police in their inquiries, to the best of their ability. It was of no avail. They were marched off to separate cells and locked in.
Had they been treated in such a way in Britain, they would have taken a very pessimistic view of their prospects; but, as they sat on the wooden benches in their cells, both of them tried to cheer themselves up with the thought that police procedure in most Latin American countries was very elastic, and on lines which differed considerably between rich and poor. Therefore, as wealthy tourists, it seemed unlikely that, after having been questioned, they would be permanently detained.
It was not until four o’clock that they were taken from their cells to a large room on the first floor of the building. There, behind an impressive desk, a much-beribboned police officer was sitting. Just behind him stood a short, plump, dark civilian; and, at a smaller desk to one side of the room, sat a uniformed man with pens and paper.
The officer did not invite them to sit down, but stared at them for a full minute; then he asked, ‘Does either of you speak Spanish?’
‘I do.’ replied Simon.
‘That is good. But if there are any questions I ask that you do not understand, I have here an interpreter who will make them clear to you.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the short, dark man, and went on, ‘What was the name of the woman you took to the Carrera Hilton, the night before last?’
Simon pretended to rack his memory. ‘Nathan, I think. Yes, that’s it, the Señorita Nathan.’
‘How well did you know her?’
‘Hardly at all. We met her only that night.’
‘She was, then, a prostitute, and you picked her up?’
‘Oh, no; she was not a prostitute; at least, not as far as I know. But I suppose you could say we picked her up.’
‘Anyway, you took her back to the hotel with you for immoral purposes.’
‘We did nothing of the kind,’ Simon declared firmly.
‘Why, then, did you take her to the hotel?’
Soon after arriving in Valparaiso, Richard and Simon had agreed on the account they would give if they were caught and questioned. Now, Simon gave it:
‘My friend and I are fond of exercise, but we find it too hot here to take much in the daytime; so, after a late dinner that night, we decided to go for a long walk. I don’t know how far we walked, but it was right out past the suburbs, and must have been five or six miles. On our way back, when we reached that wooded hill—the St Lucia Park I think it’s called—we decided to go up to the top. Our idea was that, from the ruin up there, we’d get a wonderful view of the city in the moonlight. But we never got to the top. A little way up we came upon this woman. She was sitting on a bench, crying. I asked her what was the matter. She said she had had a terrible quarrel with her husband and had walked out on him. To calm herself down, before looking for a small hotel in which to spend the night, she had sat for a while in a café and had a couple of drinks. Five minutes after leaving it, she found that she had left her handbag behind. When she went back, it wasn’t on the chair where she had left it. In her absence the waiter, or one of the other customers, must have stolen it. The bag had all her money and a few pieces of jewellery in it. Having lost it, she was penniless; she couldn’t pay for a room and had nowhere to spend the night.’
‘So you fell for her story that she was a respectable woman? It did not even occur to you that she might be a prostitute, hoping that you would offer to take her to your own bed?’
‘I had no reason to disbelieve her. She was quietly dressed and had a small suitcase with her. That supported what she had said about having left her home.’
‘Did you try to persuade her to go back to her husband?’
‘Yes. But she wouldn’t hear of doing that. She said she would rather starve.’
‘Was there nowhere else she could have gone?’
‘Apparently not, or we wouldn’t have found her sitting weeping on a park bench.’
‘What was her nationality?’
This was a question that had not occurred to Richard or Simon they might be asked. After hesitating a moment, thinking it hardly likely that they would have come upon a foreigner in such a situation, Simon replied, ‘Chilean.’
‘In that case it seems very strange that, in a great city like Santiago, she had not a single relative or friend whom she could have asked to give her shelter for the night.’
Simon shrugged. ‘She may be a stranger here. Perhaps she had come up from the country with her husband and had the row with him in an hotel.’
‘Did she ask you for money?’
‘No.’
‘Did you offer her any?’
‘No.’
‘I see,’ commented the officer sarcastically. ‘So, instead of giving her the price of a room for the night in a modest pension, you took her off to the most luxurious hotel in the capital.’
‘By then, Mr Eaton and I were tired, so…’
‘Really! Yet a few minutes earlier you had decided that, before returning to your hotel, you would walk another kilometre up steep paths, for no better reason than to see the city in moonlight.’
Simon swallowed hard. ‘I meant we were anxious to get the matter settled and, as we had ample money, it seemed simplest to take the poor woman with us to the Hilton.’
‘And when you got there you asked for a room for her, and she went straight up to it.’
Simon had been ready for that one. ‘Not right away. She was about all in; so first we took her up to our suite and gave her a brandy and soda.’
‘How long did she remain there with you?’
‘Ten minutes, perhaps a quarter of an hour.’
‘What then?’
‘I took her down to the room she had been given on the fourth floor.’
‘How long did you stay there?’
‘I didn’t. I didn’t even go in. I gave her her case and left her at the door. Then I went back upstairs and Mr Eaton and I went to bed.’
‘How long was it before one or both of you went down to her room again?’
‘Neither of us did. We had already planned to go down to Viña del Mar for a couple of nights; so next morning we paid our bill and hers, and left for the airport’
‘Without even seeing her?’
‘Yes. She wasn’t our responsibility. We felt that, after a night’s sleep, she should be able to sort out her own problems.’
‘Then you did not know that she had been murdered?’
Simon had known that, sooner or later, he would be confronted with that fact. Letting his mouth gape, he exclaimed:
‘What d’you say? Murdered?’
‘Yes. That is what I said.’
Turning to Richard, Simon said in English, That poor woman. She’s been murdered!’
Richard pretended equal astonishment and swiftly came out with, ‘Good God! How terrible!’
Simon’s dark eyes flickered back to the officer and, reverting to Spanish, he asked, ‘When was this? And who murdered her?’
‘The crime was committed between three and six in the morning. By whom, we have yet to find out. Tell me now. When you and your friend reached Valparaiso, instead of going to an hotel in Viña del Mar, as you say you had intended to, you booked passage in a ship that was leaving for Callao the following day. Why did you do that?’
‘Just an idea.’ Simon shrugged. ‘Mr Eaton and I are travelling in South America for pleasure, and we’ve plenty of money. We have already visited Buenos Aires, Punta Arenas and Santiago. When we got down to Valparaiso, it suddenly occurred to us that a few days at sea would make a pleasant change from air travel, and the obvious place to go was Callao, as then we’d be able to see something of the nearby Peruvian capital.’
‘Indeed? It had occurred to me that your sudden change of plan was due to an urgent desire to leave this country for good.’
‘Why should we want to do that?’ Simon asked, with an air of innocence. ‘We hadn’t the least intention of doing so. If you ask the people at the Hilton, you’ll find that we left most of our belongings there, and arranged to retain our suite.’
‘That I already know. But there are occasions when it is well worth while to abandon even valuable property. For instance, if one had reason to fear arrest.’ Picking up a gold-braided cap from his desk, the officer put it on, stood up and said, ‘For today, Señors, that will be all. I am detaining you for further questioning.’
‘One moment!’ Simon said quickly. ‘With what are we charged?’
‘Nothing, as yet. I am holding you as material witnesses in a case of murder.’
‘I see, but I imagine we shall not be refused bail?’
‘Perhaps bail will be granted. It all depends on how the matter develops.’
‘In any case, we shall require the services of a lawyer. I formally request that the British Ambassador be informed of our situation and asked to arrange for us to have suitable legal aid.’
The officer nodded. ‘That shall be done.’ Then he signed to the escort, and the prisoners were marched back to their separate cells.
Later, it transpired that as they were able to pay for a dinner of their choice and bottles of wine, they were allowed to send out for them. On hard beds both of them spent a far from happy night. But they felt that, although the police obviously suspected them of not having told the whole truth about their relations with Nella, Simon’s story was quite plausible and had been received reasonably well.
At a little after ten o’clock on the Friday morning, they were taken from their cells to a bleak room furnished only with a table and a few chairs. Standing there was a tall, fair-haired, youngish man. He introduced himself as Ernest Phillips, one of the secretaries at the British Embassy.
Sitting down at the table, Simon and Richard gave him their own account of their brief association with Nella, then discussed the situation. When the question of bail arose, they had reason to regret Don Caesar’s departure for Europe, as they knew no other solid citizen in Santiago. Neither of them made any mention of Philo McTavish, as they would have been most reluctant to bring him into the affair. Moreover, they felt that, even had he been willing, it was unlikely that he would be able, at short notice, to produce the considerable sum required.
However, Richard stoutly maintained that, as they had not been charged with any crime, the police had no right to confine them in separate cells. Phillips agreed to do what he could to have that matter rectified, said he would arrange for the Embassy lawyer, a Señor Fidel Cunliffe, to come to see them that afternoon, and took his departure.
His representations proved effective. Twenty minutes after he had left them, they were taken from their cells and put together in a larger one. So, for the first time since their arrest, they were able to talk over their prospects.
Richard was inclined to be pessimistic, because of their having been arrested when about to go aboard a ship at Valparaiso. That they should have attempted to leave the country within a few hours of Nella’s murder could have been a coincidence; but nothing could have suggested more strongly that either they were her murderers or in some way involved in the crime. He now felt that it had been a cardinal mistake to try to escape being questioned by the police. But he did not press the point, because it had been Simon’s idea.
However, Simon argued that, although the police would continue to believe that Nella was a prostitute, and that they had brought her to the hotel for immoral purposes, it could not possibly be proved that they had had anything to do with her death. So, with the aid of a capable lawyer, they would soon be released.
Señor Fidel Cunliffe did not arrive until eight o’clock. He was a bulky, red-faced man, with grey hair, prominent blue eyes and a forceful manner. It transpired that he had lived in Chile all his life, but his father had been English and he spoke that language perfectly. Between them they gave him the same account of their brief association with Nella as Simon had given the police. Having made some notes, he then asked them a series of very searching questions. As by then they had their story pat, they did not falter in their replies, and he appeared satisfied. Before he left, Simon tactfully assured him that they had ample funds to pay for the best advice, so he need not be worried about money for expenses. The lawyer replied that, in that case, it would be worth while to instruct a private detective agency to endeavour to find out who, in fact, had murdered the Señorita Nathan.
Although Simon had small hope of such an enquiry proving successful, he readily agreed. Señor Cunliffe then said that his relations with the police were excellent, so he was confident that he could find out if they knew anything about the murder that his clients did not, and that he would come to see them again the next day.
On Saturday, the hours seemed to them to crawl by. The warders in charge of them proved well disposed. In addition to bringing them good meals and drinks, one of them went out and bought Richard some American magazines, and Simon two packs of patience cards. But, even with these aids for killing time, every few minutes their minds reverted to the promised visit from their lawyer and learning what he had found out from the police.
They had practically given him up when, at half past ten that night, they were taken from their cell to the interviewing room. Cunliffe was standing beside the table, looking very grave. When they had all sat down, he said:
‘I fear you have not fully confided in me. For your own sakes I must advise you very earnestly to do so. Now, what else have you to tell me about Miss Nathan?’
It seemed to Richard that it was a question of telling all, or nothing. Although both he and Simon were convinced that Nella had been murdered by Satanists, to prevent her revealing what she knew about the Black Power movement, he could not believe for one moment that, if they gave an account of the Sabbat and of how they had carried Nella off from it, they would be believed; so he replied:
‘I am sorry you distrust us. Señor; but we have already told you everything we know about this terrible affair.’
Simon backed him up by nodding vigorously.
Cunliffe stuck out his jaw aggressively. ‘I cannot accept that. When interrogated, Mr Aron lied to the police. You do not appear to have noticed that when, just now, I referred to the murdered woman, I did not use the prefix “Señorita”, but “Miss”. Mr Aron said she was a Chilean; but she was not. She was an American.’
‘What leads them to think that?’
‘The shoes she was wearing had inside them the address of a shop in Beaufort, South Carolina. Her dress carried the label of an expensive Paris couturier. Her blue cloak, that of Sax, Fifth Avenue. The little suitcase also came from New York. Such items may occasionally be imported, or find their way into Chile; but, for all four of them to be the property of a Chilean woman of the middle classes, is most unlikely. There is then the matter of your deciding to go on a short sea trip which, incidentally, would take you out of the country. In Mr Aron’s disposition, it is stated that this idea did not occur to you until after you arrived in Valparaiso. Is that correct?’
Simon nodded.
‘In that case why, earlier that morning, did you, Mr Eaton, go to the office of L.A.N., make enquiries for flights leaving that day for La Paz, Lima and places further north; and, only when you learned that there was none, take tickets for Valparaiso?’
As Richard did not answer, Cunliffe went on. ‘The police suggested to you that you took the woman to your hotel for immoral purposes. You denied that. But medical examination of the body disclosed that she had been raped by a man, or men, within a few hours of her death. Her vagina was terribly lacerated and semen found in it.’
‘We had nothing to do with that,’ Richard declared swiftly. ‘I swear to you that neither of us touched her.’
‘Then what were you doing for the best part of three hours in the room to which you took her?’
‘Three hours? What nonsense. After we had given her a drink up in our suite, Mr Aron took her down to her room. He rejoined me within ten minutes, then we both went to bed.’
‘That you gave her a drink in your suite is accepted. There were three used tumblers there. Then you took her down to her room and remained there with her. At about six o’clock, a cleaning woman saw you both coming out of it.’
‘She couldn’t have!’ Simon burst out. ‘She was in the main corridor and Nella’s…’ He had been going to add, ‘room was round the corner in a side passage’. Too late, he realised that he had given himself away.
The lawyer gave a grim little smile. ‘You see? I was right Both of you have been lying to me. And, Señor, I must warn you that your situation is now extremely grave. You are both about to be charged with murder.’