The Main Chance (35 page)

`Yes, I can,' Tweed said quietly. 'How did you find out?'

`You know that.'

Keep her talking, he said to himself. He had seen the safety catch on the shotgun was released. Lavinia had only to press the trigger and both of them would be dead.

`I'd like you to tell me, please.'

`I found Marshal's secret chequebook. Large sums paid out to the Carlyle bitch. Blackmail. I guessed why.'

`Why did you murder Bella?'

`Obvious. She stood in my way for my ultimate succession as the bank's owner.' Lavinia's lip curled in the same sneering smile. 'She was eighty-four. She'd had her time.'

Paula was again appalled at the same sheer callousness. `Logical,' Tweed agreed, his face devoid of expression. 'So why murder Mrs Carlyle?'

`Obvious again. I loathed the woman. And she could become dangerous, resuming the blackmailing of Marshal.'

`What happened when you arrived at Dodd's End?'

`I told her who I was. She sneered, said it was pleasant to meet her only daughter. She was drunk, and hardly got out of her chair.'

`So what happened next?'

`Her remark incensed me. I had a collar inside a carrier. I said I needed a drink, went behind her towards the drinks cupboard. It was so easy. I slid the collar down over her filthy head.' She grinned. 'I've never used more strength than when I tightened the collar. I nearly took her head off her shoulders.'

`Understandable,' said Tweed, forcing himself to play up to her. 'But how did you know her address?'

`Marshal, the idiot, had scribbled it down at the end of one of the secret cheque-books'

`Why had Leo to be removed?'

`Oh, Leo.' She grinned, a sadistic grin. 'He overheard a call I made to Calouste warning him you'd all left the manor. I knew he'd gabble so he had to go.'

`Again logical,' Tweed agreed in the same quiet voice. 'And now Marshal?'

`Again obvious. He inherited the bank. He was standing in the way of my taking it over. Bella has left a final will naming me as owner if Marshal and Warner are no longer alive.'

`You know that because you took the will Bella handed to you, sealed when I first visited her.'

`Really?' She tossed her head. 'Solicitors are not allowed to reveal such documents. So how do you know that?' she asked, her curiosity aroused.

`You pretended to have a long lunch at the Pike's Peak Hotel in Gladworth. Actually, you were busy seducing the solicitor so he'd show you the will and then put it in a legal envelope and re-seal it. How do I know that? I took the trouble to phone the hotel proprietor and ask him if you had lunch there that day. He told me no one had had lunch there that day. I began to. wonder what you had been up to.

`Clever Mr Tweed.'

`And Calouste Doubenkian is dead. Drowned when his château was flooded.'

`Really?' She raised her eyebrows. "Then I can sell to the Sultan. They crave gold in the Far East.'

`Gold?' He gazed into the deep-blue pools of her eyes. He could read her now. A hint of pure evil in the blank eyes.

`You'd have made a very first-rate detective, Mr Tweed,' she observed as she levelled the shotgun.

There was a loud explosion which echoed in the brief silence.

41

Marler had landed his plane earlier, risking flying down through the mist, parking it on the small private airfield hidden behind the cottages.

For some time he had lain full length on the sloping roof on the inland side of Marshal's cottage. He had summed up the critical situation and for some time his Armalite had rested, out of sight on the rooftop.

He had heard every word in the oppressive silence hanging over the beach. His cross-hairs had had Lavinia's profile for the whole period. He had realized Tweed was extracting as much confirmation from Lavinia as he could, that he was desperately but skilfully keeping her talking.

When he heard her last remark, saw her level the shotgun, he pressed the trigger. He was using an explosive bullet.

42

The bullet had removed half Lavinia's head. Blood streamed out of her. She was so close to the hull she fell backwards, legs in the air as she collapsed heavily on the far side of the hull, her body pressing heavily on the starting lever.

The engine burst into full power. She had pressed the lever fully down, to top speed. The shotgun had fallen with her onto the deck. Marler joined them and Paula flung her arms round him.

`You always turn up in the nick of time, Marler,' Tweed said. 'Thank you.'

He was watching the progress of the vessel with both bodies aboard. It had raced down the ramp, just in time to catch the crest of a monster wave. It carried the vessel across Oyster Bay, a rolling leviathan.

`It does appear to be headed for the exit from the bay,' Marler remarked.

Paula stared at the sea beyond the two capes enclosing the bay. A fresh and very violent storm had arrived. Immense waves were colliding with each other, hurling up tons of water. Nothing could survive in that maelstrom.

The remnants of the yacht were still perched on the crest of the wave moving at extraordinary speed. It carried the yacht exactly between the capes and entered the Atlantic. Tweed was using his binoculars.

`Both bodies are still on board. They appear to be trapped amid a huge coil of rope anchored to the deck.'

The craft was hurled from the crest of its wave into the churning sea. Through his binoculars Tweed saw it tossed from one wave to another, amazingly still upright with the corpses entangled in the ropes. Then at great speed, it plunged downwards, deep, deep, deep. It did not reappear.

`The bodies are still aboard,' reported Marler, who had been using his own binoculars. 'The Coastguard will never find anything.'

`And,' Tweed said, 'the remnants of the forward section which hit Pindle have already been carried into the Atlantic.'

`It's over,' said Paula, who suddenly realized her hands had remained clenched fists inside her windcheater pockets.

`
No!
' Tweed warned. 'It's not quite over yet. Back to Hengistbury now.'

*
         
*
        
*

Marler flew back to the private airfield he had found near Leaminster. It was the second time he had watched over his friends during their two visits to Seacove.

Later, her mind full of the traumatic events she had witnessed, Paula could never remember the long drive back. Crystal, who had opened the gates, met them at the entrance to the hall. She stood very erect and managed a smile of welcome.

`I need to see your father urgently,' Tweed told her. `He's working in his apartment.'

Warner Chance was seated at his desk, a pile of accounts on the wide surface. Tweed immediately gave him a censored version of what had happened — how Marshal had taken Lavinia out in the yacht, how they were in the Atlantic when a storm of great violence had blown up and sunk the yacht. No survivors. Entering the apartment, Tweed had noticed a crumpled handkerchief on the desk. He could learn the truth later.

`Now, Mr Chance...' Tweed began.

`Please call me Warner.'

`Now, Warner — the gold.

`Gold?'

`Paula:Tweed continued, 'show Warner those newspaper clippings we obtained from Peg-Leg Pete.'

She arranged them in sequence on the desk in front of Warner.

MURDEROUS BANK ROBBERY

Last night three men were murdered when raiders attacked Klempner's, a subsidiary of the great Kreditanstalt in Vienna. The Director and his two assistants, still on the premises at midnight, were shot dead by two masked men. £800,000 of gold bullion was then loaded onto waiting lorries which then vanished. The police have as yet no clue as to the identity of the murderers.

Paula next produced a photograph of the complete sheet from which the report had been extracted.

`Note the date,' Tweed said, '6 November 1912.'

Paula then produced the second extract from the
Clarion
.

THE MAIN CHANCE BANK ESTABLISHED TODAY

Ezra Main and Pitt Chance have founded a new powerful and important bank, the Main Chance. The Banking Authority has confirmed this new addition has more than adequate resources to conduct national and international business.

`Now look at the date,' Tweed demanded as Paula spread the second sheet. '12 December 1912. Just about a month after the bullion raid. The "adequate assets".'

`I didn't know.' Warner held his head in his hands. `And I'm sure Bella never knew.'

`Earlier,' Tweed drummed on, 'on my instructions Paula went to the Land Registry in Gladworth. She obtained a copy of the plans of Hengistbury, different from the ones we were shown for searching the manor. The ones she obtained show a vast labyrinth of cellars under the manor. May we visit them now? It's the brown button, so-called for emergencies, in the lift, I suspect …'

The three of them were inside the lift when Warner pressed the brown button. They descended. When the doors opened again they walked out into a complex of stone-walled cellars. Warner stopped before a massive steel door, consulted a small black notebook he had discovered inside one of Bella's secret drawers. Operating the combination, he stood back as the door swung open.

They walked inside a large steel chamber with strong shelves. They had entered an Aladdin's cave. All around them gold bars were piled up to the ceiling. A strong wheeled trolley stood at the far end.

`What the hell am I going to do with all this?' Warner asked wearily. 'I don't want it. The bank is, incredibly, solvent on the cash deposits alone.'

`Klempner's was a subsidiary of the Kreditanstalt in Vienna,' Tweed said as though talking to himself.

`When it — the Kreditanstalt — crashed, bankrupt, few people know that was what triggered Wall Street's
 
Black Monday, followed by the slump. So this gold no longer belongs to anyone. Surely it could be sold, a few bars at a time to bullion collectors. That's not advice. If necessary, I'll deny I ever said it. I'm sure that the bank will flourish in your hands.'

Now Lavinia is gone,' Warner said, 'I'm appointing Crystal as Chief Accountant. Maybe it's the shock of Leo's death, but she has suddenly grown up.'

`And she'll be a great ally for you,' said Paula. `We must be off now,' announced Tweed.

Epilogue

At Park Crescent the whole team, which had assembled earlier, had rushed off home to put on evening dress. Except for Paula.

Tweed had told them he was taking them to dinner at Mungano's, the most expensive restaurant in town. Paula opened a clothes cupboard.

`I've got a new outfit, protectively covered, in here. They will appreciate your gesture.'

`It's what all of you deserve.'

`You're sitting there like a statue looking so incredibly thoughtful. Why?'

`I'm really wondering whether I got this case right.' `What? I don't understand.'

`A phrase someone uttered keeps singing through my mind.'

`What phrase?' she asked, perching on his desk.

`You remember they were playing roulette in the library? And Marshal got furious, lifted the wheel off the table, threw it out onto the terrace.'

`Yes.'

`Do you recall what Warner Chance then said?' `No, I don't. What did he say?'

"
Winner takes all
."'