Vince May - Presumed Dead

As if he’d read her mind, Philippe quietly got out of bed and came over to check on her. Seeing her awake, he crouched down beside her and smiled, saying, ‘Good morning, how are you feeling today?’

‘Much better thank you, still a little battered, but ready to start fighting back.’

‘That is good. Would you like a nice cup of coffee?’

‘I’d love one, but please, let me make it,’ she said, sitting up. ‘You’ve done so much for me, I’d like to do something for you.’

‘If you want to, but you must let me get the snow.’

By the time Philippe got back with the small kettle full of snow, Alice was out of bed and had put instant coffee granules into two tin mugs. It would take a while for the snow to melt, then eventually boil over the small Primus stove. While they were waiting they sat outside the hut in the early morning silence, watching the sunrise.

‘I wish I could stay here forever,’ Alice said dreamily, ‘far away from the rest of the world.’

‘You know, ever since you arrived the other night, I have been wishing the same thing,’ Philippe said, without taking his eyes from the snow-capped peaks, which were being set ablaze by the rising sun.

She looked up at him as he gazed sadly into the distance and was just about to reply when the shrill whistle of the kettle suddenly broke the mood. ‘Coffee’s up,’ she said, getting up stiffly and going back into the hut.

Philippe didn’t move, so Alice brought their coffee out and they went back to watching the sunrise, warming their hands on the steaming mugs. Finally, his distant mood seemed to pass and he said, ‘As soon as we have finished this, I think we should get started, that is if you are feeling up to it.’

‘I’m feeling fine,’ she said, ‘ready to leave whenever you are.’

The Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute-Montagne, or the Platoon of High Mountain Police in Chamonix was buzzing with activity. Jean-Paul, the manager of the Jardin du Mont Blanc Hotel, had telephoned the PGHM on their twenty-four hour emergency hotline shortly after midnight, as instructed by Ross, and reported Alice missing. They had sent an officer to the hotel within half an hour and Jean-Paul had let him into Alice’s room.

Everything in the room had looked perfectly normal to the two men. Alex had done an excellent job of hanging up clothes and laying out toiletries. They had found Alice’s yellow handbag tucked under some clothes in a drawer. In it were her cell phone and her passport, which they took away in order to copy the photograph.

Now, at just after eight a.m., the duty platoon of eight men was fully kited up and assembled in the drill hall at the PGHM headquarters for a briefing. The duty officer, Captain Jacques Batard, had distributed black and white copies of Alice’s passport photograph, which he’d blown up on the office photocopier, and was now calling for order.

‘Good morning gentlemen. Today we have a missing American woman, Madame Alice Webley, last seen at seven thirty yesterday morning leaving the Jardin du Mont Blanc Hotel dressed for walking. She did not leave word at the hotel of her intended route, but her husband has informed us that she had spoken of walking to the base of the Charpoua Glacier, so that is where we will concentrate our search today.

‘She is described as thirty-six years old, one hundred and sixty-eight centimeters tall, sixty kilos, with, as you can see from the photograph, distinctive long hair which is described as blond although it looks much darker in the picture. She was last seen wearing a white shirt, red fleece jacket, cream colored shorts and brown walking boots. She was also wearing a small rucksack, so could possibly have been carrying long trousers and a coat.

‘The helicopter is due to start making a search as soon as it is serviceable, which should be in about two or three hours when they have fixed a problem with the radio. Before then, I want every possible route from Chamonix up to the Charpoua covered on foot. I have also organized a local radio appeal for anyone who may have seen the lady in the past twenty-four hours. Any questions? No? Good, let’s get going then.’

The team split into four pairs and agreed the routes to be covered. Two pairs were assigned to walk the two steep paths, which zigzagged from the valley up to the Montenvers rack railway terminus at the Mer de Glace, frequently crossing the mountain-railway track. The other two teams were detailed to ride up the rack-railway to the Montenvers terminus and then to cover the paths leading away from there across the glacier. They checked each other’s kit before setting off at a quick march across Chamonix to the rack-railway station, where they would split-up and go their separate ways.

Down in Monaco, Ross was making a big show out of bidding his host and the other guests goodbye. He wanted to be absolutely certain that no one would forget where he’d been for the past thirty-six hours, and when he’d left. The women were all full of tearful admiration for him and the men were slapping him on the back, telling him not to worry. All the guests waved him off as he left in the launch to be transferred to the shore, where Bonatti’s chauffeur was waiting to drive him to Nice airport.

Ross had telephoned ahead with his flight plan and a request for his aircraft, a sleek, twin engine, Cessna Golden Eagle, to be refueled. When he arrived at the airport it was only a matter of minutes before he was airborne and heading for Geneva.

During the flight, Ross let his mind wander back to the time when he’d first heard about Alice through the social grapevine. Someone had mentioned that there was a beautiful, young, American heiress up at Cambridge, who’d been seen at the weekends around some of the more fashionable spots in London. He’d done his homework and had managed to find out that her name was Alice Sanderson, she was twenty-one years old and already had an annual income of several million dollars from various stocks and bonds that her multimillionaire father had given her.

He’d also found out that she was an only child and that her old man’s health wasn’t good. When he went, young Alice would become a millionairess many times over. All in all, Alice Sanderson and her old man had seemed like a very nice package indeed.

With that firmly in mind, and the fact that at his age he should really be thinking about producing an heir to the baronetcy, family duty and all that, he engineered a chance meeting with her at a country house party, then set about winning her hand in marriage. He really hadn’t had much of a problem either. By the time her course at Cambridge had finished and she was due to go back to the United States, she was putty in his hands. She flew home to talk it over with her father, then returned two weeks later with his blessing. They were married a short time afterwards.

Who’d have thought the old man was going to hang on for another fourteen years? Ross thought, shaking his head. If he’d died while Alice was still young, he’d have had no trouble parting her from her father’s money. But now she was older, wiser, and harder. He’d known for some time that the only way he’d ever get his hands on that money would be over her dead body.

Alice and Philippe, in the meantime, had been on the trail for over an hour. Philippe had found her some spare crampons and had fixed them to her boots. He’d also found her some spare trousers, a hooded jacket and some gloves, which she was glad of because although the sun was bright, a freezing wind had sprung up and as they walked over the ice, she felt cold.

The total distance from the Charpoua Hut to the Montenvers terminus on the Mer de Glace glacier was a little under three miles, but the trail was hard going and Alice was still suffering some pain and stiffness. Most of the trail was over sheer, hard ice.