“Murderer!” Anna Gassner screamed at her husband.
And they turned and saw the madness blazing out of her eyes.
CHAPTER 51
Zurich.
Thursday, December 4.
Eight p.m.
The cold winter night had fallen, snuffing out the brief twilight. It had begun to snow, a soft, windblown powder that dusted the city. In the administration building of Roffe and Sons, the lights of the deserted offices glowed against the darkness like pale yellow moons.
In her office Elizabeth was alone, working late, waiting for Rhys to return from Geneva, where he had gone for a meeting. She wished that he would hurry. Everyone had long since left the building. Elizabeth felt restless, unable to concentrate. She could not get Walther and Anna out of her mind. She remembered Walther as she had first met him, boyish and handsome and madly in love with Anna. Or pretending to be. It was so hard to believe that Walther was responsible for all those terrible acts. Elizabeth’s heart went out to Anna. Elizabeth had tried several times to telephone her, but there had been no answer. She would fly to Berlin, to give her whatever comfort she could. The telephone rang, startling her. She picked it up. It was Alec on the other end of the line, and Elizabeth was pleased to hear his voice.
“You’ve heard about Walther?” Alec asked.
“Yes. It’s horrible. I can’t believe it.”
“Don’t, Elizabeth.”
She thought she had misunderstood him. “What?”
“Don’t believe it. Walther’s not guilty.”
“The police said—”
“They’ve made a mistake. Walther was the first person Sam and I checked out. We cleared him. He’s not the one we were looking for.”
Elizabeth stared at the phone, filled with a sense of confusion. He’s not the one we were looking for. She said, “I—I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Alec replied hesitantly, “It’s awkward doing this over a telephone, Elizabeth, but I haven’t had an opportunity to speak to you alone.”
“Speak to me about what?” Elizabeth asked.
“For the past year,” Alec said, “someone has been sabotaging the company. There was an explosion in one of our South American factories, patents have been stolen, dangerous drugs have been mislabeled. There isn’t time to go into it all now. I went to Sam and suggested that we engage an outside investigating agency to try to find out who was behind it. We agreed not to discuss it with anyone else.”
It was as though the earth had suddenly stopped and time was frozen. A dizzying feeling of déjà vu swept through Elizabeth. Alec’s words were coming through the telephone, but it was Rhys’s voice she was hearing. Rhys saying, Someone has been sabotaging Roffe and Sons. It was done very cleverly, so that it seemed to be a series of accidents. But I began to see a pattern. I went to Sam with it and we decided to hire an outside agency to investigate.
Alec’s voice was going on. “They finished their report and Sam took it with him to Chamonix. We discussed it over the telephone.”
Elizabeth could hear Rhys’s voice saying, Sam asked me to come up to Chamonix to discuss it with him…We decided to keep it just between the two of us until we could find out who was responsible for what was happening.
Elizabeth was suddenly finding it hard to breathe. When she spoke, she tried to make her voice sound normal. “Alec, who—who else knew about the report beside you and Sam?”
“No one. That was the whole point. According to Sam, the report showed that whoever was guilty had to be someone high up in the company.”
The highest echelon. And Rhys had not mentioned being in Chamonix until the detective had brought it up.
She asked slowly, the words dragged out of her, “Could Sam have told Rhys about it?”
“No. Why?”
There was only one way Rhys could have known what was in the report. He had stolen it. There was only one reason he could have gone to Chamonix. To kill Sam. Elizabeth did not hear the rest of what Alec was saying. The roaring in her ears drowned out his words. She dropped the receiver, her head spinning, fighting off the horror that was starting to engulf her. Her mind was a series of chaotic, jumbled images. At the time she had had the Jeep accident, she had left a message for Rhys that she would be in Sardinia. The night of the elevator crash, Rhys had not been at the board meeting, but he had appeared later when she and Kate were alone. Thought I ought to give you a hand. And soon afterward he had left the building. Or had he? Her body was trembling now. It had to be some terrible mistake. Not Rhys. No! It was a scream in her mind.