Vorpal Blade (46 page)

It was awkward descending backwards. She shoved
the torch, the illumination still shining, under her belt.
In one hand she gripped the Browning, used the other
to grasp the rail. As she descended deeper, away from
sunlight, she detected an odour she had smelt before. In
Saafeld's morgue in Holland Park back home. In Zeitzler's
morgue in Zurich. The odour of formalin. Used to preserve
body parts.

41

Before starting her nerve-racking descent she had taken
the glove off her right hand, so now she had a firm grip
on her Browning. The torch was not a lot of help: she had
to use a foot to feel down for the next tread on the ladder.
Then, casting a brief glimpse down, the torch illuminated
the base of what she realized was a tunnel, with ancient
rails closer together than with a modern system. Her foot
trod on rock unexpectedly. She had reached the bottom.

She slowly moved the beam of her torch round and up. Yes, it was an old railway tunnel, carved out of rock with
an arched roof. To her right the rails ended at a concrete
wall covered with mould. It had been sealed off. To her
left the rails vanished round a bend. She'd go that way.

It was further to the bend than she had thought. She
tried to walk without making a sound but loose stones
between the rails rattled. She stepped to the side of the
rails, near the rock wall. The odour of formalin was
becoming stronger. She raised the angle of the torch and nearly dropped it.

By its beam she was saw on the opposite wall a level shelf of rock, about five feet above the floor. She was looking at a
large round glass laboratory jar with a lid and a round knob to lift it. The jar was occupied. Inside she gazed at the head
of someone she had never seen, covered with transparent
liquid to well above the crown. The head was of a man
probably in his fifties, the cheeks sunken and gaunt, the
open eyes glazed. Hank Foley, caretaker from Pinedale,
Maine, she guessed.

She swivelled the beam to the laboratory jar perched next to it and nearly choked. She knew this one - Adam Holgate,
blurred eyes half-closed as though asleep. Clenching her
teeth, she moved the beam to the next jar, nearly let out
a cry of misery. Abraham Scale's owl-like nose so clear, the open eyes staring at her as though trying to convey a
message. Like the previous ones his head had been severed
just below the pointed chin.

Knowing what she was going to see in the next jar she
again clenched her teeth. Her torch shone straight on Elena
Brucan's scarf. It had been missing from her decapitated
body perched in the boat by the River Sihl. Then she saw
something which was a vile obscenity. Elena's embroidered
scarf was neatly coiled below where the head would have
rested. How inhuman.

She was moving by reflex now. Her whole body was
stiff with revulsion that anyone could do all this. The next
jar contained Black Jack's head. His lower lip had slipped
open. He looked as though he were leering. She found this
almost worse than what she had seen before.

After tucking the Browning inside her belt she took off the
glove from her right hand. It was damp with perspiration.
She wiped it quickly on her trousers, then grabbed hold of the
weapon. That was when she sensed movement behind her. Someone had hidden in one of the alcoves she had passed.
She dipped her head to the right - Saafeld had said it was
the left side Holgate had been struck a hammerblow. Even so, the blunt end of the axe grazed her head, she stumbled,
twisted round, fell backwards. Her right hand had hit the
rail and she lost her grip on the automatic.

The torch had also left her grip but hadn't broken. By
its illumination she saw the tall figure clad in a black coat,
the wide-brimmed hat pulled well down so the face was
hidden. Dazed, she still realized her neck was raised up,
resting on something smooth. She glanced both sides.
She saw a white curved surface enclosing her. She had
fallen on to an execution block. The tall black-coated figure stood above her, raised the axe in its right hand.
By the illumination of the torch she saw the razor-sharp
edge of the blade, poised to slice down on her. It began
its downward sweep.

She rolled her whole body over to the left, completed
a circle as her body thudded into the tunnel's wall. Her
right hand fell on something. The Browning. She grabbed
it, aimed, fired point-blank as cold-blooded fury seized her. She was going to kill, kill,
kill.
She kept on pulling
the trigger, fired nine times.

Two more shots were fired. Tweed, awkwardly clinging
to the ladder, had fired twice. The tall figure in its long
black coat stood still as a statue, then collapsed backwards,
lay still.

Paula was hauling herself to her feet as Tweed reached
the base of the ladder, came to her. He bent over the
black-coated figure, checked the carotid pulse, looked up.

'Dead as the dodo.'

'But who is it?'

She could hear the faint sound of a helicopter landing,
then feet climbing down the ladder. A man shouted out a
command at the top of his voice.

'No one moves or I'll shoot.'

Beck's unmistakable voice. Tweed, still crouched over the
prone body, shouted back. Repeated what he said twice.

'You won't be shooting anyone. I'm here with Paula.
Shut up.'

Paula picked up the torch, shone it on the corpse Tweed
was bent over. He reached out a hand, carefully lifted off
the strange hat. The light shone on the face.

Marienetta. Cat's eyes still open. Staring up at Paula
with what seemed to be hatred.

Epilogue

STRAUB ANNOUNCES HE WON'T
RUN FOR PRESIDENT
'For Health Reasons'
COUSIN MARIENETTA MASS MURDERESS

The screaming headlines in the
Daily Nation
stared up
from Tweed's desk. Below was a long story about the
headless murders. The by-line was Robert Newman's.
In his office at Park Crescent Tweed sat in his swivel
chair, looked at all the members of his team. They had
flown back from Zurich four days after leaving Airolo.

It was evening and outside in the London streets rain
sluiced down. Paula, seated behind her desk, was the first to speak.

'Congratulations, Tweed. You got there in the end, as
you always do.'

'That was the most difficult case I've ever tackled,' he
admitted. 'But the congratulations are yours - despite
truly terrible ordeals
you
solved the case.'

He waited as everyone cheered, gave her an ovation.
She looked embarrassed, stared down at her desk top.
She spoke softly, feeling she had to say something.

'It was so close - down in that old mining tunnel. The absurd thing is I knew it was her before you pulled back
the hat. I'd remembered - rather late in the day - the
words I couldn't recall, or who said them.
I like creating
museums.
We couldn't understand why the heads were
missing. Marienetta had the idea of creating a museum
of the dead. It was even worse than that, even madder.
Remember, Tweed, before we left the mining tunnel I
walked further in, found her workshop with a complete
set of sculpture materials. She was going to use the heads
in the jars as models for sculpting their heads.'

'Beck also explained to me,' Tweed told them, 'the
secret of the execution blocks. He visited the plastics
plant at Vevey. Marienetta had a duplicate key to Sophie's
private room where Sophie invented the new, very flexible,
strong and lightweight plastic. Hidden away he found a
metal cast, size of the plastic block in the mining tunnel.
Sophie had left instructions. Marienetta mixed the plastic,
poured it into the cast, heated it. Bingo, she had an
execution block, very strong but easy to carry. He had
found two more in the mining tunnel at Airolo.'

'How the devil did she transport the heads?' Nield wondered.

'Beck,' Tweed continued, 'found a Bloomingdales car
rier in the tunnel, its interior reinforced with leather. Large
enough to take a laboratory jar - with a head inside it
and the axe. New clothes were also inside to cover the
real contents. He found another similar carrier inside the
tunnel.'

'Marienetta must have been the villain who shoved me
down onto the line at Chiasso,' Paula puzzled. 'Yet she
arrived on that express later.'

'She played the old trick,' Tweed explained. 'At the
Splendide Royal she said she wasn't coming, went up
to her room. Then she caught a much earlier train, was
waiting for you. After she tries to kill you she runs back,
boards the express when the doors are opened, walks
through several coaches, emerges into my arms as though
she's just arrived. Days earlier she plays the same trick -
leaving Zurich very early on a train stopping at Airolo.

She's carrying the trophy heads, gets off at Airolo and
takes them to start her lovely museum. Catches another
stopping train to Lugano.'

'And,' Paula suggested, looking at the newspaper, 'Bob
must have had evidence establishing she
was
Straub's cousin.'

'Arriving back in Zurich,' Tweed told her, 'I phoned Roy Buchanan. Armed with a search warrant and a large team,
he entered ACTIL's London HQ. Breaking into a steel
cabinet, they found Marienetta's birth certificate. Born
in America, her father was a brother of Straub's father
Vito, her mother English. That made her Russell Straub's first cousin. So that's it. I said power was the motive. So
Newman's story makes that point, destroying Straub's
ambition for ever. Who would elect to the Oval Office
someone with insanity in the family?'

'You think Straub knew what she was doing?'

'I now know he did. Marienetta was the mysterious
patient held in the locked room in the Pinedale asylum. The Bryans, who ran the asylum, have surfaced in Ohio, worried when more murders were committed. They've
admitted to the FBI that Straub paid the huge bill.
While waiting to come home from Zurich I phoned my
old friend, Cord Dillon of the CIA. He told me.'

'So that's why Straub was following the Arbogasts round
like a lap dog. He was becoming frantic about Marienetta
as murder followed murder. He knew his career was on
the line. And it was - he's finished politically now. And who was Mannix?'

'Marienetta,' said Tweed. 'Diabolically clever. It was a diversion she hoped would put me on the wrong track.
Mannix was nonexistent - created by Marienetta.'

'Why kill Adam Holgate?' asked Butler, who had known
him.