MADDEN STARED AT THE ENVELOPE. The evidence was plain, the implications chilling, and for a moment he felt paralysed. It took the sound of squeaking wheels to break the spell.
‘Is something the matter, sir?’
Preceded by the tea trolley she was pushing, Doris had emerged from the corridor that led to the kitchen.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
It was all Madden could do to answer her. ‘It’s nothing.’
He took note of the inquisitive glance she sent his way as she went by. She had spotted the envelope in his hands.
‘Would you ask Mr Sinclair to join me?’ he said.
‘Yes, of course, sir.’
He watched as she disappeared into the drawing-room and presently he heard voices, Julia’s and the maid’s, and then, after another few seconds, a murmur of assent from Sinclair.
‘John?’ The chief inspector had appeared in the doorway. ‘What is it?’
Madden put a finger to his lips. He beckoned. Frowning, Sinclair crossed the paved floor to join him.
‘Have a look at this.’ Madden kept his voice low.
The chief inspector took the envelope from his hands. He held it under the light. ‘I see it’s addressed to Julia,’ he said in the same muted tone, ‘and from her estate agent by the look of it.’
‘Look at the date stamp,’ Madden said.
Sinclair squinted at the rectangle of paper. ‘Posted three weeks ago: it must have been the letter she received just before she went up to London. Where did you find it?’
‘In Ilse Holtz’s pocket.’
‘And?’ Sinclair waited to be enlightened.
‘How do you imagine it was opened?’ Madden said.
The chief inspector studied the envelope again. ‘In the normal way . . . with a letter opener I would say.’
‘Now look at the back.’
Sinclair did as he was told. He saw that the flap had come loose from the paper beneath it and was barely attached to the body of the envelope.
‘I see what you mean. It looks as though it’s been tampered with, opened before it ever reached Julia.’
‘And the letters switched.’ Madden nodded. ‘The one saying the sale had gone through was destroyed while another saying it had been delayed was put in its place and the envelope sealed up again, but not very securely.’
‘Yes . . . yes, that would make sense.’ The chief inspector weighed the envelope in his hand. He played with the loose flap. ‘Steamed open, would you say?’
‘Unquestionably.’
‘By Gonzales?’
‘I doubt it.’
Sinclair froze. ‘What do you mean, John?’
‘I think it was opened by someone in this house who has a kettle of his own.’
The chief inspector turned pale.
‘My God, John! Do you know what you’re saying? I happen to know Baxter has one. You can’t mean him.’
‘Think about it, Angus.’ Madden’s voice was deathly cold. ‘It has to be one or the other of them, and while it’s true Gonzales was here when this particular letter arrived, that was only by chance. Baxter lives here. He was in a position to open Julia’s letters whenever he chose. The post is delivered in the kitchen and taken from there to Mrs Holtz in the study. I’ve a feeling you’ll find it’s he who assumed that responsibility. He more or less runs this place, after all.’
The chief inspector shook his head. He couldn’t hide his dismay.
‘But we still don’t know where Gonzales is. It’s quite possible he made a run for it.’
‘After killing Mrs Holtz, you mean?’ Madden’s gaze offered no comfort; it was bleak as his tone. ‘I have to tell you I find that hard to believe, Angus. In fact, if you want my opinion Philip Gonzales is no longer with us. He’s gone the way of Mrs Holtz.’
Sinclair put a hand to his head. ‘Dear God . . . poor Julia . . .’ He cast an anguished glance behind him at the drawing-room door. ‘You’d better tell me what you think.’
‘I’ll make it quick.’ Madden kept his voice muted. ‘It all has to do with the phone. If either Gonzales or Mrs Holtz had got down to the village and discovered it was working, the killer’s plan would be scuppered. He couldn’t afford to let them live.’
‘You mean Baxter?’
‘I mean Baxter. I’m not sure he wouldn’t have murdered us all by now if the car hadn’t been sabotaged. Do you remember he brought an axe with him into the garage when we thought we were leaving earlier? I couldn’t think why. But if I’m right, once he grasped the situation he had to stop and think. If he’d killed us then and there he’d have been left with only a few corpses for company and no means of escape.’
‘Succinctly put.’ The chief inspector winced. ‘So you don’t believe it was he who took the distributor cap?’
Madden shook his head. ‘I think it was Gonzales. He had already smelled a rat, but he thought it was Ilse Holtz who was trying to defraud her mistress. I think he removed the cap as a way of trapping her at the manor until he’d discovered the truth. If he’d found the phone working in the village he would have tried to call Julia’s estate agent in Lausanne, probably to find out who the money for the house had been paid to. But he never got there: I know that for a fact.’
He paused, biting his lip.
‘Assuming Baxter is Voss he must be close to cracking. Everything’s gone wrong for him—his plan is a shambles. He’s as much trapped as we are. By now he must have realized the cap was removed by either Gonzales or Ilse Holtz. For all we know he may already have searched Mrs Holtz’s body.’ Madden hesitated. ‘Were you present when Gonzales left the house?’ he asked. ‘Did you see him go?’
‘Julia and I were both here in the hall. We were talking.’
‘Where was Baxter?’
‘At the top of the stairs. He’d just found the nut that came off Julia’s wheelchair when she fell—or said he had.’
‘So he couldn’t have followed Gonzales at once. He’d have had to catch him up on the road to the village. That’s probably where he’s gone now: to search the body, wherever it is; in the woods most likely.’
‘Rather than call the police in Oxford as he was supposed to do.’ The chief inspector nodded. ‘And if he finds it, the distributor cap—what then?’
Madden shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t give much for our chances. We’re dealing with a desperate man, Angus, and a hardened killer to boot. Don’t let’s deceive ourselves we’re anything like a match for him. But Julia’s the one he wants dead the most. We must get her out of the house and Doris too.’
‘How do we do that?’
‘Well, we can’t leave until he returns; otherwise, we risk being spotted by him.’ Madden pondered. ‘Tell me, are there any other doors to the outside other than the hall and the kitchen?’
Sinclair thought. ‘There’s one at the end of the house off the gun room. It’s as far from the kitchen as you can get, if that’s any help.’
‘It is.’ Madden grunted. ‘I’m going to meet Baxter when he gets back. I expect he’ll tell me he’s called the Oxford police and help is on the way.’
‘Which may in fact be true,’ Sinclair observed. ‘You could be wrong about him, John.’
‘In that case I’ll feel like a damn fool.’ Madden smiled for the first time. ‘But that’s a small price to pay.’
‘What do you plan to do? You’re not thinking of taking him on, are you?’ The chief inspector was alarmed at the thought.
‘Not for a moment.’ Madden grimaced. ‘He’s got twenty years on me; and he must be as wary as a cat at this point. I can’t surprise him. But I want to try and divert him. We need time to get away. Your job will be to persuade Julia she has to get out of this house. Tell her as little as possible and don’t mention Baxter’s name unless you have to. Just say we believe she’s in imminent danger and we want to take her down to the village at once.’
‘She’s bound to ask how we mean to do that without a car.’
‘I’m sure she will. But I’ve thought of something that might appeal to her.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Tell her she’ll be going by toboggan.’
Leaving Sinclair to attend to the thankless task he’d set him, Madden returned to the kitchen. Finding the room empty and the yard deserted, he was on the point of going to fetch Julia’s sledge from the car when he saw the garage door open and the burly figure of Baxter appear. At the same moment the chauffeur caught a glimpse of him through the lighted window and raised his hand in a salute. With no choice but to respond, Madden unlocked the kitchen door.
‘That was quick,’ he said as the chauffeur came in.
‘I was in luck, sir.’ Breathing hard, as though he’d been walking fast, Baxter laid the golf club he was carrying on the kitchen table. ‘I found Bob Greaves in the pub and we were able to go next door to his shop, where I made the call.’
‘You spoke to the Oxford police, then?’
‘I did, sir.’ His cheeks reddened by the cold, Baxter held his hands close to the stove to warm them. ‘The station commander had gone home, but I managed to get hold of the officer in charge. I didn’t catch his name, but he recognized Mr Sinclair’s all right and said he’d try to get hold of those two detectives.’
‘Morgan and Styles?’
‘That’s right. But he didn’t seem to have heard of the other fellow you mentioned.’
‘You mean Voss?’
Baxter nodded. ‘Who is he, sir? You didn’t have time to tell me.’
Madden hesitated. Thus far he’d seen nothing in the chauffeur’s manner to suggest he had anything to hide. Baxter’s brown eyes were devoid of guile. But that meant nothing. If it was Voss he was talking to, the man had been at this game all his life, hiding his true nature, presenting a bland face to the world. He would need to probe a little deeper.
‘He’s a dangerous criminal, I’m afraid.’ Madden watched for any change of expression on the other’s face. ‘I heard about him when I was in Oxford. He’s thought to be living under a false name and there’s been a report he might be somewhere in the area.’
‘Is it the same chap Mr Sinclair was after?’ The chauffeur’s eyes had narrowed. ‘He told us he was looking for someone.’
‘It could be.’
‘What’s his game, then?’
‘He defrauds women. They’re his chosen victims. He steals money from them and then disappears.’
‘Like Mr Gonzales, you mean?’
‘That’s what I’m not sure about.’ Madden kept his tone neutral. ‘You see, he usually kills his victims before he vanishes.’
Baxter pursed his lips in a silent whistle.
‘But what about Mrs Holtz?’ he asked. ‘She was murdered, wasn’t she?’
Madden was silent. Just then he had caught the first faint hint of something new in the other’s face; there was a different look in his eyes.
‘Is that why you came here, sir, because of this man?’
His glance was cooler, more detached, almost calculating, Madden felt, and he silently cursed himself for prolonging their conversation.
‘No, I was looking for Mr Sinclair.’ He tried to sound natural. ‘But I heard about Voss in Oxford and when I was told about Mr Gonzales disappearing in that way I began to wonder if there was some connection.’
It was a poor answer and he knew it. The feeling of tension between them was real now, almost palpable, and he felt a chill as he saw Baxter reach idly for the golf club that lay on the table beside him. Weighing it in his hands, he began to swing it to and fro. There was no overt menace in the action, but Madden knew he was in danger and that the threat was growing by the second.
‘Actually there’s something you could do for us,’ he said quickly.
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘We need more wood in the drawing-room. It’ll be some time before the police arrive. Could you cut some and bring it in?’
Baxter’s response was slow in coming; as the seconds passed in silence, to Madden they seemed to stretch into an eternity. He needed no one to tell him that the instincts of a man like Heinrich Voss would be razor-sharp. Had he detected something in their exchange that didn’t ring true? For an instant the scales seemed to tilt that way and as he watched the golf club swinging to and fro in the chauffeur’s hand, steady as a metronome, he got ready to defend himself . . . though how . . . and with what?
‘Some wood, sir? Yes, of course.’
With a slight nod—suddenly once more the obliging servant—Baxter laid the club down and headed for the door.
‘I’ll tell Mrs Lesage what you’ve told me.’ Madden found he was sweating. ‘She’ll want to talk to you herself, I’m sure.’
As the door shut behind the chauffeur’s broad back he expelled his breath in a long, heartfelt sigh. Peering out through the window he saw Baxter’s dark form disappear through the gate into the stable yard. If he himself slipped out now and crossed the inner yard to the garage it would be the work of minutes to retrieve Julia’s toboggan from the boot of the car and bring it inside. But if the other man heard his footsteps on the crusty ice—and with an axe in his hand—all might be lost.
Abandoning the idea, Madden hurried back to the hall. He could hear the sound of voices coming from the drawing-room (Julia’s louder than any: ‘If you could just tell me why, Angus . . .’) but didn’t pause to listen further. Instead he went to the front door and opened it. The garage away to his left lay in darkness. But with the sky clearing and the moon up, he could see that the double doors were slightly ajar. Not wasting a second he crossed the snow-covered forecourt and slipped through the narrow opening.
The boot of the car was only a few steps away and without pausing he opened it and lifted the toboggan out. He barely had time to close it before the door at the other end of the garage opened and a bulky figure appeared. At almost the same moment the light in the garage came on. Clutching the toboggan under one arm, Madden ducked down. He heard the shuffle of footsteps, then a creaking sound that prompted him to lift his head for a second to peer through the Bentley’s rear window. The hood at the other end of the car had been raised. For a moment at least he was hidden from Baxter’s view, and seizing his chance he slipped out of the garage into the cold night outside.
Although every second was precious now, Madden stayed where he was for the moment. There was something he had to know, and, having laid his burden down softly in the snow, he risked a quick glance through the narrow aperture between the doors. He was rewarded by a glimpse of the chauffeur as he appeared from behind the raised bonnet with an axe in one hand and something else in the other, a small object not much bigger than a cricket ball, which Madden couldn’t identify but which he deduced must be the missing distributor cap.
As he watched, ready to draw back if Baxter looked his way, he saw him lean the axe against the wall and then bend down to peer into the innards of the engine.
It was all he needed to see: the final proof.
Picking up the sledge he quickly retraced his steps to the front door, and, having shut it behind him, he turned the key in the lock. Only then did he notice that his hands were shaking.
‘My God, you’re serious, aren’t you? You’ve got my toboggan.’
Madden had barely set foot in the drawing-room when Julia Lesage turned her furious gaze on him. He caught Sinclair’s eye. The chief inspector shrugged.
‘First it was Philip and poor Ilse, now it’s Baxter. I tell you I don’t believe a word of it. Neither does Doris.’ She glanced at the maid, who was sitting on the sofa, shaking her head in distress.
‘Please . . . there isn’t time to explain,’ Madden pleaded with her. ‘We must leave at once.’
‘Where is he? Where’s Baxter?’ She ignored his words. ‘I want to speak to him.’
‘Busy.’ Madden met her angry gaze. ‘I’ve just seen him replacing the distributor cap in your car. It was removed by Philip Gonzales before he set off for the village. He thought you were being cheated, defrauded, over your house in Switzerland and wanted to stop the guilty person from escaping. He was right about the fraud, but wrong about the person. It wasn’t Mrs Holtz, as he thought. It was Baxter.’
‘Who is busy at this moment trying to get my car working?’
‘With the distributor cap, yes, which he took from Gonzales’s body.’
She tried to speak, but no words came. She had turned pale.
‘Baxter had to stop him getting to the village and using the phone there. It was the same with Mrs Holtz. She also realized you were being robbed and wanted to discover the truth. I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, Julia. If it’s any consolation I believe they were both loyal to you.’
Somehow he had to put an end to their conversation. The seconds were ticking by. He had to find some way of persuading her to quit the house and for a moment it seemed his last words had had an effect. Though her gaze was still angry, the furrowing of her brow hinted at uncertainty.
‘You’re asking me to believe that Baxter killed them both?’
‘You have to stop thinking of him as Baxter.’ Unconsciously Madden echoed the same words Sinclair had used earlier that day, though with a different man in mind. ‘His real name is Heinrich Voss. He’s quite ruthless, a murderer several times over, and the only assurance I can give you is that if you don’t let us take you away now, this very minute, you won’t leave this house alive.’
She gasped then. His words had finally struck home.
‘I don’t know what to say.’ She shut her eyes. ‘How can I argue with you?’ She opened them. ‘You speak as though you know all the facts. I’m forced to follow your advice. But don’t imagine for a moment that I’m convinced by what you’ve just said. I shall want proof. What do you want us to do?’
‘We must leave by the side door, the one off the gun room. Baxter is busy in the garage, as I said. When he’s done there he’ll come looking for us. Doris, help your mistress into the wheelchair.’ He turned to the maid, who seemed stunned by what she was hearing, incapable of movement. ‘Now,’ he said sharply.
With a start she jumped to her feet and hurried over to Julia.
‘Is the gun room door locked?’ Madden asked.
‘Probably.’ Julia had collected herself quickly. But her green eyes still held an angry glint. ‘But the key should be in the door.’
‘Angus, would you go down there and make sure?’ Madden turned to his old partner. ‘We’ll join you shortly. And don’t hurry. There’s no rush.’
The chief inspector couldn’t help but smile as he rose from his armchair to obey. ‘Forgive me if I take that with a grain of salt,’ he said as he went out. But although he was able to mask his anxiety, he couldn’t fool his body and as he crossed the hall and started down the long corridor that went past Julia’s study and the library beyond it to the end of the house he felt a stab of pain in his chest and immediately slowed his pace. ‘Get a grip, Angus Sinclair,’ he muttered to himself through gritted teeth. ‘This is no time for a bloody heart attack.’
Julia meanwhile had donned her coat and was ready in her wheelchair. She’d been wearing a woollen shawl draped about her shoulders as she sat by the fire and she pressed the garment on Doris, who was dressed only in her maid’s uniform with a sweater on top. ‘It’ll be cold outside,’ she said.
Madden picked up the toboggan from the floor where he’d laid it. The sight brought a derisive smile to his hostess’s lips.
‘So . . . my carriage awaits.’
At his urging they left the room and crossed the flagged hall silently with Doris leading the way and Julia following close behind, propelling herself forward in her chair with hands and arms.
‘It’s a good thing I told Baxter to oil these wheels,’ she remarked.
Bringing up the rear and carrying the toboggan—he was straining to catch any sound that might be coming from the direction of the kitchen—Madden drew what comfort he could, if not from her words, then from the cool tone in which they were uttered. There was no hint of a tremor in her voice and he reminded himself this was a woman who had sped down many a snow-clad mountain slope heedless of danger to life and limb, who must have nerves of steel.
Light was showing at the end of the dark corridor and when they got there they found Sinclair in the gun room awaiting their arrival. He had already unlocked the outer door, which stood open, and was engaged in donning the pair of wellingtons that Julia earlier had put at his disposal. As he rose to his feet Madden saw to his astonishment that his old friend was holding a shotgun in his hand.
‘I thought we’d better take this with us,’ the chief inspector said. He indicated the now empty gun rack on the wall.
‘That won’t do you much good.’ Julia was scornful. ‘We only have birdshot.’
Sinclair thrust two cartridges, which he’d dug from his pocket, into the twin barrels.
‘Still better than nothing,’ he muttered.
Hefting the toboggan, Madden led the way out and down a short flight of steps onto the snow-covered path below. It was the same one he and Baxter had used when they went to see if the telephone line had been cut and he knew it went round to the front of the house, where the chauffeur, if he was still in the garage, might very well spot them. For the same reason it would be too dangerous to take the road down to the village. It was the first place their pursuer would look for them once he realized they were no longer in the house.
‘Is there a way we can take through the woods?’ he asked Julia as he returned to the top of the steps to help her out of her chair and carry her down.
‘Father and I marked out a trail years ago when I was a girl,’ she replied. ‘We had to cut down some bushes and saplings. It must still be there.’ She weighed next to nothing in his arms and when he smelled the jasmine scent she wore he realized it was the same as Helen’s.
The toboggan was one made for lying on full length and before bringing Julia down Madden had taken off his coat and laid it on top of the wooden slats.
‘You’re being very gallant, Mr Madden,’ she murmured as he lowered her gently onto the sledge. ‘But you do realize that if you’re wrong about this and poor Baxter has been maligned I’ll skin you alive.’