Derek Lambert - I, Said the Spy

‘He? Who is he?’

‘A wonderful scene for a thriller. I was always very fond of Dorothy L. Sayers….’

Now Anderson was kneeling beside the bed. ‘Did you know who it was?’

‘Know? Of course I know. You see I could smell the rum on his breath.’

Anderson groaned aloud. He whispered into the priest’s ear. ‘Please father, please tell me who it was.’ An inspiration. ‘Tell Maigret….’

The priest’s eyelids were dropping. He whispered two words.

Anderson snapped up. He gripped the priest’s hand. ‘Thank you, father.’

Then he was in the corridor sprinting towards the admission desk. Holy Shit! They had double-checked every member of the staff that lived in the village. Nothing against any of them. What chance did you have of pinning anything on a madman who kept his madness to himself?

He dodged a stretcher being wheeled along the corridor by two male nurses. He slipped on the polished surface, picked himself up and raced on.

In the lobby visitors arriving to visit patients, parted as he broke through their midst.

At the desk he grabbed the telephone.

He glanced at his wristwatch.

6.25.

He had five minutes in which to stop Jules Fromont poisoning every Bilderberger in the château.

Engaged.

Shit!

Anderson dialled again.

The desk clerk was protesting. Anderson flung his ID cards at him.

A minute passed.

Engaged.

Once more.

‘Bon soir. The Château Saint-Pierre.’

Anderson said: ‘Get Gaudin. Tell him to stop the cocktail party.’ He was shouting, gabbling.

‘I’m afraid Monsieur Gaudin is attending the cocktail party.’

‘Then call the bar.’

‘I’m afraid….’

‘Call it!’

Jules Fromont picked up the telephone receiver on the bar. He spoke into it briefly, then replaced it. He placed cocktails on a silver tray and began to circulate among the few guests who hadn’t yet been given a glass.

‘I’m sorry, m’sieur, Monsieur Gaudin is not available.’

‘Then Tannoy.’ Anderson tried to control his voice. ‘Tell them the drinks are poisoned.’

‘I’m afraid that I cannot do that,’ indicating with one forefinger to her head, to the girl sitting next to her, that she had a lunatic on the other end of the line.

‘Then get me Monsieur Prentice.’

Two minutes before the toast to Bilderberg.

Prentice answered the phone in his room.

‘George. Jules Fromont is the killer. It’s my guess that he’s about to poison every bastard in the place. Get the fuck down there.’

Anderson replaced the receiver. He sat down, head between his hands. There was nothing more he could do.

Prentice grabbed the attaché case containing the submachine-gun, burst out of his room and raced down the stairs.

It was 6.29 when he reached the lobby. He sprinted across the marble floor, charged through the swing doors.

Gaudin raised his glass. ‘…we hope that one day you will consider returning to the Château Saint-Pierre. I give you a toast, Bilderberg.’

Prentice shouted from the doors: ‘Don’t drink!’

Glasses wavered, stopped in front of lips. The French President and the former American Secretary of State stared at him in amazement.

Gaudin said: ‘Monsieur Prentice, what—’

‘They’re poisoned. All those drinks are poisoned.’

Gaudin said: ‘Are you out of your mind?’

No-one drank, everyone stared at him.

Prentice strode through their ranks.

He stood at the bar in front of Jules Fromont. He turned to the guests. ‘I ask one thing. I ask that Jules Fromont, who mixed the Bilderberg Special, has the first drink.’ He turned to the barman. ‘Go on, Jules, pour yourself one.’

The barman’s face was pale, sweat was beading his forehead. ‘I never drink at work,’ he said. ‘And I think you, m’sieur, are drunk.’

Prentice took one of the two remaining glasses on the tray and handed it to Fromont. ‘Drink!’

The barman hesitated for a moment. Stared at the pinkish-coloured drink.

Then he vaulted the bar and ran for the French windows. Behind him drinks crashed to the floor.

In one smooth action, Prentice released the submachine-gun from the attaché case and ran after him, feet crushing broken glass.

Fromont hit the French windows with his shoulder. They burst open and he was in the garden. In front of him in the misty half-light, the entrance to the maze.

When Prentice reached the French windows he had disappeared.

Holding the Uzi in two hands, Prentice entered the maze. He moved cautiously. For all he knew Fromont might be armed.

The hedges were well over six foot tall, jungle thick. Somewhere ahead of him he could hear Fromont running, cannoning against the clipped foliage.

Possibly Fromont knew the formula to get out of the maze. Most of them had one. But first he would have to reach the centre.

Silence. Except for the splashing of the fountains. The light was fading fast. The misty drizzle soaked Prentice’s clothes and the machine-gun was slippery in his hands.

A movement through a gap in one of the hedges. Prentice squeezed the trigger of the machine-gun. It barked and shuddered in his hands.

No answering cry of pain.

He stalked on – and came to a dead end. He swore and retraced his footsteps. Another dead end. He went back and took another turn. And then he was in the centre. Two plane trees and a wooden bench. Fromont was slumped on the bench. Prentice approached, Uzi pointing at the crumpled figure. There was froth on Fromont’s lips. Even in the fading light Prentice could see that already it was tinged with blood.

Fromont turned his head and stared at him. ‘Filth,’ he whispered. ‘Filth!’

His face contorted.

Prentice bent down and smelled the bitter almond scent of potassium cyanide on his dying breath.

The morning of the day of departure.

A mass exodus. While Rolls-Royces, Cadillacs, Mercedes glided up to the entrance of the chȃteau and departed in a steady stream, Owen Anderson and Inspector Moitry stood in the apartment over the tabac in the village.

They had ransacked the rooms and found a wooden box. It had recently been painted brown. But through the paint they could see letters. When they scratched away the paint, they found that the letters had been indelibly stamped on the wood in black ink. ss PANZERDIVISION ‘HITLERJUGEND’.

‘One of the crack Panzer units in the German army during the last war,’ Moitry said. ‘The Germans had lost the war when these boxes were issued. Potassium cyanide capsules were supposed to be the honourable solution. But few SS men could see any honour in suicide. The Hitlerjugend must have abandoned this as they were being chased out of France.’

‘And Fromont – or Jacques Bertier as he was once known – must have found it as a kid. Either him or his twin brother. A pity we didn’t get the full details on Georges Bertier yesterday. Then we’d have known that he had a twin brother and we’d have known that the description fitted Fromont.’

‘You,’ – not we, Anderson noted – ‘can’t have been expected to realise that the reason the fingerprints checked out with a dead man’s was because he had a twin. An interesting point of criminology that – identical twins’ fingerprints matching.’

Anderson said: ‘And your men on the gate’ – not mine! – ‘can’t have been expected to know that all the bottles of liquor the barman brought into the chȃteau yesterday morning in his van, contained booze slugged with potassium cyanide.’