Presumed Dead (9 page)

.

The shopping trip to Nîmes city center was
going well. Alice had managed to get toiletries, plenty of underwear, two
dresses, two shirts, a jacket, a pair of black jeans, a handbag, some open toed
shoes and a pair of black boots. For a few hours, she’d allowed herself to
forget her troubles and to enjoy shopping with a man, something she did very
rarely.

She kept trying things on in the shops then
coming out of the dressing rooms to get his reaction. Sometimes it was a nod of
approval, and other times it was a shake of the head. She soon realized that he
had an eye for fashion and knew what he liked. She suddenly realized she’d
never had this kind of companionship before and couldn’t remember when she’d
enjoyed herself more

By lunchtime, they were both tired and
hungry, so Philippe suggested a bistro he knew called Le Lisita, opposite the
huge Roman amphitheater, right in the middle of the city. They sat in the afternoon
sun at a table on the sidewalk, from where they could admire the magnificent
architecture of the amphitheater. She allowed him to order for her, again,
something she hadn’t done for years, and they enjoyed the bistro’s specialty,
capon in a delicious white wine and cream sauce. After the meal, they had
coffee and Alice sat back in her chair, quietly content.

‘This has been the nicest day I’ve spent in
a long time,’ she said with a sigh.

‘For me also,’ Philippe said. ‘What a pity
we will soon have to come down to earth and face reality.’

‘Can’t we leave that for now?’ she pleaded,
‘I’d like to pretend for a just little longer.’

‘And just what is it you are pretending?’
he asked softly.

Alice thought for a moment, then looking
down at the table she said almost timidly, ‘That this is my real life, here,
with you, and that everything that has happened over the last few days has just
been a bad dream.’

Philippe reached over and ran his
fingertips down her cheek saying slowly, ‘Maybe when the bad dream is over and
everything is sorted out, this could be your real life… our real life.’

Alice sat with her head bowed for a few
moments longer then looked up, smiling through her tears. ‘If only I was that
lucky,’ she said.

They finished their coffee, and after Philippe
had paid the bill, set off along Boulevard Victor Hugo to get some last bits
and pieces of shopping, before returning to the car.

Later, on the way home, Philippe suggested
they stop at the Carrefour hypermarket on the outskirts of the city for some
groceries. He parked the BMW, collected a trolley, and they strolled happily
through the entrance, chatting about what they would like for dinner. The
supermarket was laid out so that the initial point of entry was the electrical
section, with rows of television sets and stereo units on display. They had
only been in the shop a few seconds when Alice stopped dead, put her hand to
her mouth and staring at the bright row of live television sets groaned, ‘Oh my
God!’

Philippe followed her line of vision and saw
immediately what had caused her reaction. All the televisions were tuned to the
same station and were all showing the image of a body, wrapped in a red
blanked, strapped to an aluminum stretcher. Half a dozen men wearing climbing
gear and helmets were manhandling the stretcher up a steep mountain path in
what looked like a blinding snowstorm. The words Live from Chamonix were
printed across the top of the screen, and although there was no sound coming
from the televisions, they both knew exactly what they were looking at.

Philippe abandoned the trolley in the
middle of the isle and ran to the nearest set. Kneeling down and fumbling with
the controls, he managed to turn the volume up just in time to hear a
commentator say, in a sad, melodramatic voice, ‘So here they come, those brave
rescuers who have been scouring the Charpoua Glacier in appalling conditions
since dawn this morning. They bring with them the body of a woman, believed to
be Alice Webley, the American heiress who went missing while out walking on
Monday.’

Philippe’s mouth dropped open and the color
drained from his face. ‘They’ve found her,’ he said incredulously, staring at
the screen. ‘They’ve found Louisa.’

Alice put her arm around his shoulder and
hugged him tightly. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s get out of here.’

Philippe let her lead him to the exit like
a zombie, but as soon as they were outside, he broke into a run for the car. He
was inside with the engine running before Alice caught up and jumped in beside
him. ‘I’ve got to get over there,’ he said as they sped out of the car park.
‘I’ve got to get to Chamonix and claim her body before they release it to your
husband.’

‘Slow down a minute,’ Alice said firmly,
‘there’s no rush. I’ll just make a couple of phone calls, tell them it’s not me
they’ve found, and once they realize there’s been a mistake they’ll hold on to
her until you get there.’

Philippe hit the brakes and pulled the car
into the side of the road. ‘No, I can not allow you to do that,’ he said
resolutely. ‘It would ruin your reputation and your chances of a fair divorce.
I will go to Chamonix and claim Louisa’s body without bringing you into it.
Then we will decide together what to do to get you free of your husband.’

‘I don’t give a damn about my reputation,’
Alice started vehemently, ‘This is more important than…’

Philippe held his hand up cutting her off.
‘No, my mind is made up. I am going to drop you at the house where you will
promise me not to make any telephone calls. Then I am going directly to
Chamonix.’

As the stretcher-bearers reached the top of
the path in semi-darkness and driving snow, they were blinded by camera flashes
and the arc lamps mounted on top of television cameras. Batard was waiting for
his men on the observation terrace and had to fend off the jostling reporters
who were all shouting questions and trying to shove dictaphones and furry
microphones under the stretcher bearers’ noses.

The gang of rescue workers who had been
bringing up the rear, helped him by surging forward and linking arms to form a
safe corridor for the stretcher party who were making their way to the train.
Batard saw the stretcher safely onto the train, had a few words with his men,
then made his way back to the Montenvers Hotel, where Ross was waiting.

Louisa Dulac’s body had been found around
noon under two feet of snow, roughly half way up the Charpoua Glacier, not far
above the refuge hut where Philippe had nursed Alice. Louisa had been carried
down onto the glacier during the night by an avalanche from her former resting
place, high on the mountainside, where she had lain buried, undisturbed and
frozen in the snow for three months.

A yellow Labrador named Miel had first
detected her. He’d been working his way up the glacier in near blizzard
conditions with his owner, Christian Lochet, a mountain guide from Chamonix,
when he’d caught a faint scent of her under a freshly deposited mound of snow.
He’d snuffled and pawed at the spot to indicate that there was something there
until his master noticed and went over with his pole. Carefully probing the
pile of snow, Lochet had soon found there was an area about the size of a human
body where his pole would only go a little way in. He’d dropped to his knees
and had dug the snow away by hand until he’d uncovered Louisa’s frozen corpse.

After that, he’d used his whistle to
attract the attention of the other searchers, and together, they’d signaled for
a stretcher to be brought up and had loaded her onto it, after first wrapping
her in a red blanket.

Ross had heard the news on Jacques Batard’s
radio along with everyone else who was crowded into the Montenvers Hotel. When
the news came, there had been a mass exodus from the hotel and a stampede to
the observation terrace, but they need not have rushed. It had taken the
stretcher-bearers followed, by the rest of the search team, nearly three hours
to bring Louisa up to the terminus.

Ross had been asked by Batard not to come
to the observation terrace, and had been happy to comply with the Captain’s
request. Instead, he’d gone to his comfortable room on the top floor of the
hotel, from where he could see the action both through his window and on the
television. As the stretcher came into view, he stood at the window and raised
his brandy glass in a toast. ‘To you, my dear,’ he said aloud, before gulping
down the neat liquor. After that, he turned the television off and sat down
quietly to wait for Batard.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on
the door. Ross called, ‘Come in.’

Jacques Batard opened the door and walked
into the room with his hat in his hand and a somber look on his face. ‘Well
Monsieur, that is that. My men are taking her down to the hospital now. I am
very sorry.’

Ross was giving his best impression of a
man devastated by bad news. ‘Did you see her?’ he asked quietly.

‘Yes Monsieur.’

‘How did she die?’ Ross asked earnestly.
‘She didn’t suffer at all, did she?’

‘From what I could see, Monsieur,’ Batard
said gently, ‘she must have fallen. Her head and face are badly injured.’

Ross buried his face in his hands and
wailed, ‘Oh my God.’

‘Please Monsieur, I do not think she would
have suffered.’

‘But how could it have happened?’ Ross
pleaded, ‘Why did it happen?’

‘All we can think is that Madame must have
decided to follow the path up the glacier and that she slipped and fell.’

Ross considered this for a moment then
said, ‘So you are saying it was just a simple accident, an act of God?’

‘Yes, Monsieur, sadly we have many such
accidents in the mountains every year,’ Batard said, shaking his head.

Ross made a great display of sobbing into
his hands for a while longer, then looked up again and asked, ‘What happens
now?’

‘Madame’s body will be taken to the
mortuary at the hospital in Chamonix.’

‘Will there be an autopsy?’ Ross asked.

‘No Monsieur, that will not be necessary. A
doctor will carry out a brief examination, write a report, then sign the death
certificate, that is all.’

‘Thank God for that,’ Ross sighed. ‘I
wouldn’t want her mutilated any more than she has been already.’

‘I understand Monsieur. Do not worry, in
cases like this where the cause of death is obvious and there is no suspicion
of anyone else being involved, we do not request an autopsy.’

‘When will I be able to take her home?’
Ross asked. ‘I’d like to get her away from here as soon as possible.’

‘As soon as the doctor has made his report
and you have signed all the necessary paperwork, she can be released to you. We
will try to get it all done tonight so you can take her first thing in the
morning,’ Batard said.

‘I would be very grateful,’ Ross said with
a brave smile.

‘There is just one other thing, Monsieur.’

A spasm of fear went through Ross. ‘What’s
that?’ he asked, outwardly calm.

‘You must make a formal identification of
the body.’

Ross relaxed and said, ‘Of course, I was
forgetting. When do you want me to do that?’

‘As soon as you can, Monsieur. The doctor
can not complete the death certificate without it.’

‘I’ll just pack up my things here and go
straight down to the hospital then,’ Ross said. ‘Better to get it over and done
with.’

‘Quite right Monsieur. I actually need to
be there myself when you make the identification, so why don’t you go back to
the Jardin du Mont Blanc and I will pick you up from there in about two hours,
say at six?’

‘Six would be fine,’ Ross said. ‘I’ll be
waiting.’

Batard saluted and was halfway out of the
door when he stopped and turned back saying, ‘Oh, I nearly forgot!’ He came
back into the room looking rather embarrassed and shut the door. ‘I hate to
mention money at a time like this, but what arrangements have you made for
paying the reward?’

‘The reward?’ Ross asked blankly.

‘Yes Monsieur, the reward you offered for
finding Madame.’

‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten all about that,’
Ross said. ‘I’ve lodged the money with the Credit Agricole des Savoie bank in
Chamonix. If you give me the name of the chap who found her, I’ll phone an
authorization through, then he can go along and pick it up.’

‘Thank you Monsieur, I will write his name
down for you. When can I tell him to go to the bank?’

‘I’ll phone them straight away,’ Ross
promised. ‘He can go any time.’

Batard wrote Christian Lochet’s name on a
piece of paper torn from his notebook, then saluted again and was gone.

As soon as the door was closed, Ross stood
up and locked it, then he got his cell phone out. First he called the bank and
gave them Lochet’s name and the authority to release the money. He thought it
better to get that settled before he forgot it, because he didn’t want any
trouble from Batard. The next call he made was to Alex, who was by now back in
London. He answered it on the first ring.

‘We’re in business,’ Ross said simply.

‘Yes, I know, I’ve just been watching it on
BBC News twenty-four, they were showing it live. Where did they find her?’

‘Exactly where I thought she would be,’
Ross said triumphantly, ‘half way up the glacier.’

‘Weren’t they suspicious as to how she got
that high up?’ Alex asked with concern.

‘Not a bit. They reckon she walked up
there, then slipped and fell. What else could they think… that she flew?’ Ross
laughed at his own joke.

‘Very funny,’ Alex said. ‘What’s the next
step?’

‘I’ve got to identify the body and sign a
few forms, then they’ll release her. You know what to do your end, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I’ve already got a medevac plane on
standby at Biggin, ready to fly out to Geneva.’

‘Good, get back to them and tell them to be
down here first thing in the morning. After you’ve done that, find an
undertaker and get them to meet the plane at Biggin tomorrow around noon.’

‘Check.’

‘Then book me a seat with British Airways
to New York on Saturday morning and tell Scott Carver, the C.E.O. of
Sanderson’s, to call an emergency meeting of the board of directors at their
head office at midday on Saturday.’

‘Okay, will do. What about the funeral?’
Alex asked.

‘I’ll organize that when I get back from
the States. I’ll have to go up and see the vicar at Minster at Stone personally
to arrange for the family vault to be opened so she can be buried there.
There’s no rush, we’ve got all the time in the world to give her a good
sentimental send-off once we’ve got her home. The important thing is getting
that death certificate and getting her away from here before they look too
closely at her injuries and start asking questions.’

‘You think they might get suspicious then?’

‘I doubt it, but I don’t want to take any
chances. Tripping over and banging your head is a bit different from being
dropped three thousand feet onto solid ice. I’m hoping they’re not going to
look at her too closely.’

‘Let me know how you get on,’ Alex said.
‘When are you planning on coming back?’

‘As soon as I’ve got her loaded on the
medevac plane in the morning, I’ll fly straight back to the farm and then drive
up to town. I should be with you shortly after lunch.’

‘Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow then… don’t
forget to call me again later on, will you?’

‘I won’t. Speak to you later, bye.’

Once Ross had hung up, he quickly packed
the few things he’d brought with him into his small overnight bag then made his
way downstairs. He reached the ground floor and was about to walk into the
lobby when he realized that it was packed with reporters, no doubt waiting to
ambush him for his reaction to the discovery of his wife’s body. Having had to
duck out the back way from many a casino in the past, Ross put his experience
to good use and scooted down the hall and out through the kitchens. When he got
to the railway terminus, there was a train about to leave with the last few
rescue workers on board. He found a seat on his own and rode down the mountain
to Chamonix, lost in the thought of half a billion dollars.

.

David Wiseman had been having a tough day
driving on the English roads. The trip from Dover to Central London, where he
had a room booked at the County Hall Premier Inn, next to the London Eye, was
only seventy-six miles and should have taken him around two hours, but he’d got
hopelessly lost. He’d started out all right and had found his way onto the M20
motorway without any problem, but then he took a wrong turn and ended up on the
M25 London orbital motorway, or, as the locals called it, the biggest parking
lot in Britain.

He’d crawled clockwise around the M25 for
over three hours and had done one and a half circuits of London before the
awful truth that he was going in circles had dawned on him. He’d then decided
to abandon the motorway and had taken the next exit, which happened to be for
Watford, in north London, and had started asking for directions. He’d been
directed virtually street by street through Harrow, Wembley, Ealing, Chiswick,
Kensington, Brompton, Westminster and eventually to his hotel in Southwark, where
he’d just arrived, after nearly six hours on the road, completely exhausted.

During the drive up from Dover, he’d
managed to totally confuse and bewilder the two men who were tailing him. They
had been tearing their hair out with frustration as David had taken wrong
turning after wrong turning, doubled back on himself, gone the wrong way up one
way streets and even, at one stage, driven the wrong side of a keep-left sign.
By the time they reached the hotel and saw him check in, they were both
considering a change of career.

David had intended to drive out to Minster
at Stone, which was near Hereford, that afternoon, but since he’d only just
arrived at his hotel and it was starting to get dark, he decided to postpone
the visit to his aunt’s final resting place until the following day. Instead,
he grabbed an early dinner in the hotel’s restaurant, then fell asleep in front
of the television set in his room.

.

Philippe’s journey had been going a lot
better. He’d dropped Alice off at his house at around three-thirty and was now
well on his way to Chamonix, where he expected to arrive by eight p.m. at the
latest. Ever since he’d set off, he’d been thinking about Louisa. The shock of
seeing her body being stretchered off the mountain had soon been replaced by a deep
sorrow. He’d told himself over and over again during the past three months that
she was dead, and he thought he’d come to terms with it, but now, actually
knowing for sure, was like losing her all over again. The only balm he had was
Alice. The way she had come into his life just three days ago, and everything
that had happened since, seemed to him to be nothing short of a miracle.