‘WHAT A MONSTER.’ Helen shivered. ‘If anyone had told me such a man existed, I wouldn’t have believed it. What could have been going through his mind all those years?’
‘Yes, and when does a man like that come to understand his true nature, at what stage? That’s something I’d like to know. I wish Franz were here. I’d ask him.’ Angus Sinclair scowled. He was thinking of the Viennese psychiatrist whose name he had mentioned to Ann Waites and remembering what Weiss had once said to him about the darkness of the soul. ‘When did he first know who he was and what he was capable of? What do you think, John?’
With a gesture so familiar to the chief inspector from their years together that he might have predicted it, Madden put a hand to the scar on his brow. His thoughts had been running along similar lines. He had not forgotten the anguished moments he had spent facing Heinrich Voss in the woods below Wickham Manor, nor the knife that his assailant had wielded.
‘It’s only a guess, but when he murdered that student in Buenos Aires, I would say, and took all night over it.’ Madden had his answer ready; it was something he had given some thought to. ‘He used a long-bladed knife—the kind carried by the gauchos in Argentina, apparently. It’s called a facon. Hans told me that. He said it was similar to the weapon Voss threatened Julia with; in fact, he wondered if it wasn’t the same one. Isn’t that so, Billy?’
He turned to the younger man, who had come down to Highfield from London that afternoon at Madden’s invitation so that he could give his former colleagues an account of the lengthy and complicated investigations which he and Hans Probst had overseen in their respective countries and which were now deemed to be complete.
‘That’s right.’ Billy Styles nodded. ‘He sent the police in Buenos Aires a photo of the knife and they confirmed it was the kind of weapon gauchos carry.’
‘If Hans is right, then—if Voss kept it all these years—it must have meant something to him.’
Silence followed these words and Madden rose to poke the fire and put another log on it. Close on two months had passed since he and Sinclair had taken their leave of Julia Lesage, but they had kept in touch with her and she had recently accepted an invitation from Helen to spend a week in Highfield as the Maddens’ guest when the weather improved.
‘She said in her letter that she had engaged a new chauffeur,’ Helen told her husband, ‘but he was nowhere near as entertaining as the last one. I must say I can’t wait to meet her.’
She got to her feet and filled their glasses from the wine bottle that was standing on the low table beside her.
‘Tell us more, Billy,’ she said as she sat down again. ‘How did this Baxter or Voss, or whatever his name is, and his sister come to be hired by her?’
Billy frowned. ‘It’s hard to believe, but we reckon she caught his eye while she was still living in Switzerland. That’s where Voss and Alicia spent the war, incidentally, living as man and wife. It’s where they went after that business in Berlin. The German police only learned recently that he’d acquired residence there some time before he murdered Mrs Klinger, the lady in Berlin, and her lawyer. It was how he’d always worked: carefully, planning everything in advance—and always having a bolt-hole to escape to. He had the same sort of setup arranged for after he’d done Mrs Lesage. I’ll tell you about that in a moment.’
He took a sip of his wine.
‘Voss had an apartment in Zurich. He told Mrs Klinger he had to travel a lot in his business—he claimed to be a financial consultant—but actually he just used to go back to Switzerland and stay there for a while.’
‘Creating an identity, you mean?’ Sinclair grunted. ‘One that wouldn’t be questioned later after he and his sister left Germany.’
‘As far as Mrs Lesage was concerned, he probably spotted her as a likely victim after her husband was killed in a motor accident. It made quite a splash in the Swiss newspapers: rich businessman leaves crippled wife, famous skier in her day and so on. He couldn’t very well move against her in Switzerland, where she was well established and had friends around her. But once she decided to return to England she became a potential victim. And her going back there fitted nicely into his plans.’
‘How was that?’
‘The identity Voss chose for himself and his sister when they settled in Zurich was British. People who knew them there said they always spoke English together, and that suggested to Hans and me that Voss was planning to go to England when the opportunity presented itself. They couldn’t go back to Germany, and South America was out of the question too. There was always the chance the law would catch up with them. Given their background, England must have seemed their best bet, and of course they spoke the language. It would just have been a matter of working on their accents, I suppose. How did they sound to you, sir?’ Billy glanced at the chief inspector.
‘I really couldn’t say.’ Sinclair scratched his head. ‘Like anyone else—I mean, there are so many different accents in England you’d have had to be an expert to place them. Now that I think about it, Baxter’s did sound a touch artificial at times, but then he was playing the part of a man who thought of himself as a cut above the servant class, so that fitted easily into the impression he wanted to give. To go back to what you were saying about Julia returning to England, though, it’s my understanding Voss didn’t try to approach her for some time. She’d been living in Oxfordshire for nearly three years before she hired him, or so I was told.’
‘That’s right,’ Billy agreed. ‘We don’t know exactly what Voss and his sister were doing at that stage, but it’s likely they were busy setting up the false identity they were going to need later. They could afford to take their time; they weren’t short of cash. Voss had an account with a Zurich bank in the name he’d used there with close to thirty thousand francs in it when he died.’
‘So it wasn’t only for the money.’ Madden’s voice carried a bitter note. To Sinclair, who was observing him closely, it was as though a truth he hadn’t wanted to believe had finally been forced on his friend. ‘It was at least as much for the satisfaction it gave him. I know Hans believes that. First gaining his victims’ trust, then killing them. Was that what happened with the young man in Buenos Aires? They were part of a group, Hans told us. They might even have been friends. It seems that hatred of his fellow man—or perhaps one should say woman—was rooted in his very being, and no one was safe from it. Except his sister, I suppose’—Madden shrugged—‘or was she simply his creature, someone he could use?’
‘What about his sister, though?’ Helen spoke after a pause. ‘Where does she fit in?’
‘Hard to say, except it’s clear she was under his thumb.’ Billy answered the question. ‘She still hasn’t got over his death. The psychiatrist we got to examine her says she probably never will. And she’s told us next to nothing. Apparently even her lawyer is having a hard time getting through to her. The trial’s set for next month. I don’t know what kind of defence he’ll put up, but she’ll be charged as an accessory to murder.’
‘Will she hang, do you think?’
‘I really couldn’t say.’ Billy tugged at an earlobe. ‘As far as we know, she never actively took part in the killings. She might get away with life.’
‘How did they both come to be working for Mrs Lesage?’
‘Well, as far as Doris is concerned—I’ll call her Doris—it was all quite aboveboard. Sometime after Mrs Lesage settled down at Wickham Manor one of the maids she’d hired quit, and not long after that she received a letter from Doris saying she had heard Mrs Lesage was looking for a maid and applying for the position.’
‘How did she know that?’
‘From her brother.’ Billy’s grin was mirthless. ‘He was already working there. Voss had got his job as Mrs Lesage’s chauffeur a few months earlier. Doris being hired as well was just a stroke of luck for him. It wasn’t part of his plan, as far as we know. He probably thought he could carry his scheme off on his own. But it helped having her on hand.’
‘Especially when it came to the letters,’ Sinclair put in.
‘The letters?’ Helen asked.
‘The post was always delivered to the kitchen and Voss would take it from there to Julia’s study. He would have known that she was selling her house in Lausanne. She talked very freely to him—it’s her way with everyone—and he probably spotted early on that the sale would give him his best chance to rob her. But he had to keep an eye on the post, in particular for any letters that came from her estate agent. Doris would have been a help there. I expect she gave them to him so he could steam them open. Thank heavens for that kettle! If John hadn’t realized its significance . . .’ He shook his head. ‘But we’ve told you about that.’
‘Yes, but how did Voss get hired?’ Helen asked. ‘That’s what I want to know.’
Billy scratched his nose. ‘Look, we don’t know for sure, and it’s a question that’ll never be answered, but what we do know is that in the past he’d always played the part of a man ready to help widowed or otherwise helpless ladies with their business dealings and that wouldn’t have worked with Mrs Lesage. She handled her own affairs with Ilse Holtz’s help. What she did need, though—and always would—was a chauffeur, but unfortunately she already had one, a Swiss man called Pierre Bertrand who came to England with her. Both Mr Probst and I think Voss arranged for the position to fall vacant.’
‘Arranged?’ Sinclair scowled. ‘According to Baxter he was run over by a van in Oxford.’
‘So he was.’ Billy smiled bleakly. ‘It was a hit-and-run. The driver has never been found.’
‘Good grief!’ Helen was shocked. ‘Do you mean . . . yes, you do!’ She stared at him in horror.
‘The simple truth is Voss needed to get close to Mrs Lesage, and being her chauffeur may have seemed his only option.’ Billy spread his hands. ‘Of course, he still had to persuade her that he was the right choice as a replacement, but as we know he was something of a charmer.’
He glanced inquiringly at the chief inspector, who nodded.
‘Julia thought the world of him, and I could see why. I rather took to him myself. You’d think after thirty years as a detective I might have seen through him, but I didn’t, and that’s the truth. But then neither did Gonzales and he was a crook himself. He sensed something was wrong, but he never suspected Baxter was behind it.’
Helen rubbed her brow. She appeared shaken by what she had heard.
‘I must get us all some supper,’ she said, ‘but before I do that, tell me how Voss planned to escape after he’d done the deed, Billy: where was this bolt-hole of his?’
‘In the New Forest, in Hampshire: he bought it at some stage after he and his sister left Switzerland and moved to England. It’s in a small village called Burnt Elm and the pair were known as George and Ada Bancroft. They didn’t live there. As far as the villagers knew, they had a flat in Manchester, where George had a job in insurance. But they came from the south of England, or so they said, and planned to retire to their cottage one day. They paid one of the locals to keep an eye on the place and would turn up, sometimes together, sometimes only one of them, and make a point of looking in at the village pub, just to remind people who they were, I suppose.’ Billy nodded to himself. ‘Incidentally when we showed the villagers a photograph of Voss taken after death they weren’t sure it was their George Bancroft, and it was the same with Ada, so they must have changed their appearance when they went there, at least enough to put people off the scent. It was probably something they were used to doing.’
‘And so when Voss passed through Fernley and was spotted by Greta Hartmann, he was coming back from a visit to their cottage?’ Sinclair put the question.
‘Possibly,’ Billy said, ‘but he also paid a visit to Southampton just about that time. It was when Mrs Lesage went up to London. Voss drove her there and then went back to Wickham Manor to return the car. But he only stayed a day and then went to Oxford and hired another one from Alf Hutton, leaving a false name and address with him. He was on a holiday break and as far as anyone knew he was visiting his old mum in Suffolk, who didn’t exist but was a useful excuse for when he needed to get away. But, like I say, he actually drove to Southampton and booked passage for himself and his sister on a liner to New York. They were due to sail at the end of January.’
‘That meant he was getting ready to wind things up at Wickham Manor.’ Sinclair nodded. ‘No wonder he reacted the way he did when he ran into Greta Hartmann. He couldn’t risk her telling anyone she had seen him.’
‘That’s what we thought, Mr Probst and me. That’s why he killed her. And he must have been all set to do the same to Mrs Lesage as soon as she got back from London. The letter from the agent in Lausanne telling her the sale of her house had gone through and asking where she wanted the money paid came on the very day she was leaving. Voss must have opened it and realized he had to act fast. He destroyed the letter and wrote a substitute—we found a typewriter in his room—telling Mrs Lesage there’d been a brief delay in the sale going through and put it in the same envelope, the one with the agent’s address and Swiss postage stamps on it.’
‘And then wrote a second letter to the agent instructing him where to send the money? Is that how it worked? John thought so.’
‘It was paid into a company account that Voss had set up with a bank in Bern,’ Billy continued. ‘More than a million francs—it’s been recovered. Of course once Voss had done that he couldn’t turn back. It would only be a matter of days before the fraud was discovered. He had to kill Mrs Lesage as soon as she returned from London.’
‘But then fate intervened in the shape of one Angus Sinclair.’ Madden came to life with a smile. He’d been sitting silent, lost in thought, it seemed.
‘Will you stop that, John?’ Sinclair scowled. ‘You know very well I never suspected a thing. I was only there by chance.’
‘And against doctor’s orders,’ Helen reminded him. ‘It seems fate knew better than I did. But bear in mind, you very nearly came to a sticky end.’
‘True enough,’ the chief inspector admitted. ‘But then if I had minded my own business at Fernley and come straight home, it would be Julia who’d be dead now.’
Sinclair allowed the silence that followed his words to linger for a few seconds. Then he spoke again.
‘That fall she had on the stairs, though, you think that was Voss’s doing?’
Billy nodded. ‘I had a good look at both her wheelchairs. The nuts that held the brakes were tightly screwed on. I couldn’t see how one of them would have come loose by itself.’
‘She used to race around the house at speed.’ The chief inspector recalled the memory with a smile. ‘She likes to take risks. It’s in her blood. That played into Voss’s hands. But he was overtaken by events. Yes, all right, my arrival certainly upset his plans. But then Gonzales appeared soon after, followed by you, John. And don’t forget the snow: it may have seemed a blessing to him at first—it meant the house was cut off—but he soon realized it was equally a trap, one he could only get out of by using Julia’s car. And when he discovered the distributor cap was missing, he must have been as close to panicking as he ever came.’
He reflected on what he’d said.
‘Still, he reacted quickly enough. He’d already cut the telephone line, and he couldn’t allow anyone from the house to reach the village, where the phones were working. That’s why poor Mrs Holtz and Gonzales came to grief. They were both trying to find out whether that letter from the agent was genuine, both trying to serve Julia.’
Helen rose from her seat on the sofa. She ran her fingers through her hair.
‘One final question: how was he planning to finish things, given that his scheme to fake an accident and kill Julia that way had come unstuck?’ She hesitated. ‘Though I’ve a feeling it’s probably something I don’t want to hear.’
Billy glanced at Madden.
‘I know what you think, sir.’
Madden stirred in his chair. He’d stayed silent for the most part, content to let others hold the floor. But the chief inspector could see from his face that the memories called up by Billy’s account of his investigation had left their mark on his old colleague.
‘Well, as Angus said, his only way of escape was to take Julia’s car. I’m sure he was planning to go off in it with Doris and then ditch it somewhere and make tracks for Burnt Elm. I was interested to hear that he booked passage for the end of January, six weeks ahead. He was cool that way. He knew the police would be checking all ports and airfields and he was careful never to look like a fugitive. It’s one of the reasons he wasn’t caught earlier.’
‘Do you think he might have abandoned his plan to defraud Julia?’ Helen asked her husband.
‘Oh, no.’ Madden didn’t hesitate with his reply. ‘He wanted the money all right, but that was only part of it. He’d had two years and more to think about what he was going to do and he wasn’t going to be cheated of that. There was a moment when I was talking to him in the kitchen, when I already knew it was him and he all but sensed it. For just a second or two I saw it in his eyes: what he was going to do.’
He met his wife’s questioning gaze.
‘He meant to kill us all.’
They had a light supper in the kitchen together, and when the others retired to the drawing-room for a nightcap before going to bed, Sinclair excused himself. He had been staying with the Maddens at Helen’s insistence since his return from Oxfordshire and he expected to remain there until the weather improved.
‘I’m not going to go traipsing down to your cottage to see how you are on these cold winter nights,’ she had told him firmly. ‘I want you here under my eye.’
‘Do you know, you sound just like your daughter,’ the chief inspector had replied.
But he’d been more than happy with the arrangement and the room he went up to after bidding the others goodnight was the same one he had always slept in before acquiring his cottage when staying with them. It overlooked the garden that ran down from the front of the house to a stream at the bottom of the valley and he stood there at the window for some minutes gazing out over the moonlit lawn to the dark woods on the far side of the stream that in summer rose like a green wave from the valley floor. Several miles in length, it was called Upton Hanger, and for no rational reason he had come to love it, just as he loved this room and this house and the people it was home to.
The dark mood that had come over him at Wickham Manor, when he had been lying on the sofa in front of the fire and had fancied he felt death’s cold hand on him, had passed. He no longer shrank from the thought of his end: it would come in its own good time. And meanwhile there was the summer to look forward to, when Hans Probst had promised to come over to England again and Lucy Madden was busily planning for the three of them plus Lily Poole to hire a car and play the part of tourists.
‘He’s such a sweet man,’ she had told Sinclair, ‘and it’s so sad about his family. We must try and cheer him up.’
There was a knock on the door. Sinclair looked round and saw Helen standing there.
‘I was just thinking about your daughter,’ he told her, ‘and what a good heart she has.’
‘I must try and remember that the next time she does something that gives me grey hairs.’ It was Lucy’s smile he saw on her lips. ‘Is everything all right, Angus? You left us in rather a hurry.’
‘No, I’m fine, truly. I feel quite well. But there’s a letter I need to write.’
‘Can’t it wait till tomorrow?’
‘It could. But it’s something I ought to have done already, something I promised to do, and after hearing what Billy had to tell us this evening I feel I can’t put it off any longer.’
‘Who is it to?’ Helen was curious.
‘A rather fierce lady I met in Fernley.’ The chief inspector smiled. ‘Her name is Vera Cruickshank.’