MADDEN STOOD IN THE OPEN DOORWAY of the garage and watched as Baxter, with his heavy overcoat buttoned up and a woollen cap pulled down over his ears, started down the drive. He was carrying a torch in one gloved hand and his trusty golf club in the other.
‘Just in case I run into him on the way,’ he’d confided to Madden. ‘I know Madam doesn’t want to say so, but I reckon that Mr Gonzales has got some explaining to do. What did he think he was doing running off this way, and just when Madam needs him?’ He shook his club to add emphasis to what he’d just said. ‘I might as well tell you there’ve been some funny things going on in this house these past few days, sir, and it’s clear now who was behind them. If you ask me he’s scarpered.’
‘You may be right, but we’d better not jump to conclusions.’ Struck by Baxter’s haggard expression—it seemed the sturdy chauffeur was finally starting to wilt under the shock and strain of the past few hours—Madden seized the opportunity to cut him short. ‘The important thing now is that you get down to the village as quickly as possible. We have to report Mrs Holtz’s death to the police. You’re sure you have it all straight in your mind?’
‘I think so, sir.’
‘Let’s go through it once more. As soon as you get there you’re to ring the Oxford police. I’ve given you the number. Try and get hold of the station commander. He’s a superintendent called Maxwell. If he’s not there, then ask for the senior officer on duty. Tell him there’s been a murder here. Explain who Mrs Holtz is and then say you’re calling on behalf of Chief Inspector Sinclair. It’s important you mention his name. Tell him Mr Sinclair believes there’s a dangerous man at large in the vicinity and he’s concerned for Mrs Lesage’s safety.’
‘Madam’s safety, sir? You never said that.’
‘That’s because I’m not sure it’s true.’ Madden had done his best to calm him. ‘But I want them to know how seriously we regard this business. You must tell them Mr Sinclair thinks it’s vital they get some police officers here as soon as possible and to get in touch with Inspector Morgan and Inspector Styles. You’ve written those names down?’
‘I have, sir. Morgan and Styles.’
‘They’re either at the Banbury police station or on their way back to Oxford. I don’t know whether they’re in a radio car, but every effort should be made to intercept them and direct them here. It’s possible the bobby at Enstone can help. He should certainly be alerted to what’s happened here. And there’s one further thing I haven’t mentioned yet. In some ways it’s the most important.’
Madden had paused to lend extra weight to his words.
‘They are to be told that it may concern a man called Voss.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir.’ Baxter’s eyebrows had shot up in astonishment. ‘Who did you say?’
‘Voss is the name.’ Madden had spelled it out. ‘You don’t need to write it down. You’ll remember it. But it’s vital they pass that on to Mr Morgan and Mr Styles.’
‘Voss, you say?’ Baxter repeated the name. ‘Very well, sir, but can you tell me who he is?’
‘Not now. There isn’t time. In fact, we’re wasting precious minutes. You must hurry up and get down there and then come back as quickly as you can. You’re needed here.’
‘Don’t you worry, sir, I won’t waste a moment.’
He had set off at once and Madden stood in the doorway of the garage waiting until his swiftly striding figure had disappeared into the darkness.
The decision to send for the police had been taken earlier at Sinclair’s prompting when the whole party had returned indoors from the garage.
‘It’s not just Mrs Holtz’s death that has to be reported: it’s also clear that an attempt is being made to isolate this house and the people in it.’ The chief inspector had sent a meaningful glance Julia’s way. ‘We can’t have that. Someone must go down to the village at once and alert the authorities.’
Baxter had been quick to volunteer, but Sinclair had wondered whether he was the right man for the job.
‘Wouldn’t it be better if you went, John?’ he had suggested. ‘No offence, Baxter, but Mr Madden was a policeman himself once. He can explain better than you what’s going on here.’
‘No, let Baxter go.’ To the chief inspector’s surprise his old colleague had disagreed. ‘And he must ring the police in Oxford.’ He had turned to the chauffeur. ‘We’ll give you the number and tell you what to say. But you’d better go and get ready now. There’s no time to waste.’
‘Ma’am . . . ?’ Baxter had looked at Julia for confirmation and she had nodded.
‘Yes, do that. And, Doris, will you bring us something to eat . . . sandwiches, I think, and a pot of tea.’
Julia had waited until the two servants were out of earshot.
‘Is it possible?’ She had looked at them both. ‘Could Philip really have done this, murdered poor Ilse and then stolen . . . what is it again . . . the distributor cap? I must tell you I find it all but impossible to believe.’
‘You have to think of him as someone else.’ Sinclair had tried first to explain. ‘Not as the person you thought you knew, but as someone quite different.’
‘Could he truly have deceived me that way?’
‘If he’s Voss, as we fear, then he’s had long practice at it.’ Now it was Madden who took up the task. ‘But there’s nothing to be gained by trying to understand it. You’ll only torment yourself. All we can do for the moment is to wait until Baxter gets back. I’ll go and give him instructions now. With any luck it won’t be too long before the police are here. Then we’ll all breathe easier.’
In no hurry to rejoin the others, Madden remained in the garage after Baxter had gone. He wanted a few minutes to himself while he wrestled with the puzzle confronting them. Earlier he had thought that Gonzales and Ilse Holtz were working together, even that they might be Voss and his sister, Alicia, though this last had seemed unlikely. The presence of the murderous pair at Wickham Manor at the same time Angus Sinclair happened to be there had seemed to stretch the bounds of probability past breaking point. He had thought it more likely they were simply a pair of confidence tricksters whose attempt to defraud Julia Lesage had come unstuck, prompting them to flee.
Now, with the murder of Ilse Holtz, he was forced to accept the possibility that Gonzales and Voss were one and the same man. Mrs Holtz’s role had been no more than that of a faithful employee. Her decision to slip out of the house without anyone knowing and make her way to the village had presumably been prompted by a need to get in touch with Julia’s estate agent, Maurice Jansen. She had wanted to test Gonzales’s story about their supposed meeting in Lausanne: whether indeed they had met and whether Jansen had denied writing the letter received by Mrs Lesage reporting a delay in the sale. Their argument the previous day suggested she thought Gonzales was lying. Whatever her reason for quitting the manor, however, it had resulted in her death. Gonzales himself had apparently gone down to the village at Julia’s request to inquire about the telephone. But Madden knew from talking to the storekeeper in Great Tew that he’d not been seen there. It seemed likely now that he had lingered somewhere near the house, perhaps in the garage or in one of the stalls in the stable yard, uncertain what to do next until he caught sight of Mrs Holtz heading for the village and taken immediate steps to stop her reaching it, after which he’d had no choice but to hide her body.
Baxter’s bluntly expressed view—that Julia’s supposed admirer had simply ‘scarpered’—might in essence be correct. Gonzales’s scheme, whatever it was, had come unstuck and he’d been forced to cut his losses. Sabotaging the car’s engine by removing the distributor cap had simply been a way of giving himself more time to escape. Madden had earlier suggested that he might have a car of his own somewhere nearby, perhaps in the village, and this now seemed even more likely.
But the crucial question remained, and Madden knew he had not yet found the answer to it. Was Philip Gonzales simply a confidence man who had got in over his head and committed a crime he would never have contemplated in advance and to which he’d been driven by the fear of exposure? In that case he would more than likely have fled. But if he was Voss then the murder of Ilse Holtz would of itself be no reason to abandon his plans and there was every chance that he would have stayed in the vicinity of Wickham Manor to complete what he’d set out to do.
But in that case why hadn’t he gone ahead then with his presumed plan to bring matters to a bloody close? Why hadn’t he returned to the house at once and dispatched the occupants? It seemed to Madden that if his earlier reading of the situation was correct—if Voss had managed to divert the money paid Julia Lesage for her house to an account he controlled, the only way he could be certain of securing it was to ensure that the person to whom it was owed was no longer in a position to reveal the fraud: in other words, dead. It was his modus operandi; it was how he had acted in the past.
Possibly the presence of Baxter, a formidable opponent and one devoted to his mistress, had deterred him, Madden thought, while his own unexpected arrival at the house not long afterwards—most likely observed—might have been enough to tip the balance and persuade the would-be killer that his scheme had gone irretrievably wrong, that he must abandon it and depart. But that was no more than a guess—and a hope.
As for Voss’s sister, Alicia, it seemed she had played no part in the charade. But then more than a decade had passed since the two of them were known to have collaborated in a crime: the murder of Frau Klinger and her lawyer in Germany. Much could have happened since then. It was possible they were no longer together; it was possible she was dead. There had been a war in the intervening years, a conflict in which uncounted millions, most of them civilians, had lost their lives. Had she been one of its casualties?
These were questions to which he had no answers, but thinking of Ilse Holtz and the role he and Sinclair had wrongly ascribed to her reminded him of something they had not done earlier when the discovery of the unfortunate woman’s corpse had prompted them to return Julia Lesage to the warmth of the house as quickly as possible so that she would not have to look at the body of her friend any longer. Now that he had the opportunity he opened the chest and made a quick search of the murdered woman’s clothes; it yielded nothing beyond an empty used envelope addressed to Mrs Lesage and bearing Swiss postage stamps, which he found in one of her coat pockets. Not wishing to waste any time examining it—the light in the garage was dim—he slipped it into his pocket and, having closed the chest again, went out into the yard. As he crossed the icy surface he caught sight of Doris through the lighted kitchen window and when she saw him approaching she went to the kitchen door and opened it.
‘I’ve been keeping it locked,’ she told Madden as he came inside. ‘I can’t stop thinking about poor Mrs Holtz.’
She was clearly on edge, biting her lip as she turned away to collect a plate of sandwiches from the counter where she’d been working and lay it on the table with the cups and saucers and other tea things that stood ready there.
‘Are those for us?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Madam wants to have supper in the drawing-room. Just sandwiches, she said. Now, where’s that kettle?’ She looked about her distractedly.
Madden indicated the silvery object he saw standing on a sideboard, but Doris shook her head.
‘Not that one, sir, it doesn’t work. We had to borrow Mr Baxter’s . . . there it is.’
She fished the kettle she was looking for out of the sink and began to fill it with water from the tap.
‘Do we really have to worry, sir?’ She turned to look at him while the kettle was filling. Her eyes were wide and bright. ‘And is Madam in any danger? If so, then Mr Baxter ought to be told.’
Madden made no response. He had fallen momentarily into a trance and he watched with empty eyes as she took the kettle out of the sink and plugged it in.
‘Sir?’ She awaited his answer.
‘What?’ Madden came to himself with a start.
‘Ought we to be worried, sir?’ She looked at him.
‘No . . . no, I’m sure we’ll be all right. You mustn’t be concerned.’ His mind was a blank.
‘Could you tell Madam supper will be ready in a few minutes?’ Doris turned back to the kettle.
‘Yes . . . yes, of course.’
Still shaken—for a moment he had lost his bearings—Madden walked down the long corridor to the hall. He tried to tell himself that the thought that had struck him a moment before was nothing more than a fanciful notion brought on by an association of ideas with no basis in fact. Where had it come from? he wondered and then realized he knew only too well.
When he reached the hall he stopped near one of the tall standing lamps positioned about the cavernous room. Taking the envelope he’d retrieved from Ilse Holtz’s body, he held it under the light. He had already noted that it was addressed to Julia and bore Swiss stamps: now, on closer examination, he saw that the sender’s name, Maurice Jansen, together with the name and address of his company, ABC Immobilier, was printed in the top left-hand corner. The date stamp was November 25, some three weeks earlier, and Madden calculated that it must be the envelope that held the letter Julia had received on the same day she went up to London, the one that had informed her about the delay in the sale of her house.
Why hadn’t Mrs Holtz thrown it away? he wondered. Why had she chosen to preserve it?
With a sickening sense that he already knew the answer, he turned the envelope over to look at the other side.
‘God Almighty!’ Unable to stop himself, he spoke the words out loud. It was just as he’d feared.