Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie [83]
‘Oh, no, no.’
‘Yes. There were no suspicions at the time. Betterton appeared heartbroken, threw himself with renewed ardour into his work and then announced the ZE Fission discovery as his own. It brought him what he wanted. Fame and the recognition of being a first-class scientist. He thought it prudent after that to leave America and come to England. He went to Harwell and worked there.
‘I was tied up in Europe for some time after the war ended. Since I had a good knowledge of German, Russian and Polish, I could do very useful work there. The letter that Elsa had written to me before she died disquieted me. The illness from which she was suffering and from which she died seemed to me mysterious and unaccounted for. When at last I got back to the U.S.A. I started instituting inquiries. We won’t go into it all, but I found what I was looking for. Enough, that is, to apply for an order for exhumation of the body. There was a young fellow in the District Attorney’s office who had been a great friend of Betterton. He was going over on a trip to Europe about that time, and I think that he visited Betterton and in the course of his visit mentioned the exhumation. Betterton got the wind up. I imagine that he’d been already approached by agents of our friend, Mr Aristides. Anyway, he now saw that there lay his best chance to avoid being arrested and tried for murder. He accepted the terms, stipulating that his facial appearance was to be completely changed. What actually happened, of course, was that he found himself in a very real captivity. Moreover, he found himself in a dangerous position there since he was quite unable to deliver the goods–the scientific goods, that is to say. He was not and never had been a man of genius.’
‘And you followed him?’
‘Yes. When the newspapers were full of the sensational disappearance of the scientist, Thomas Betterton, I came over to England. A rather brilliant scientist friend of mine had had certain overtures made to him by a woman, a Mrs Speeder, who worked for U.N.O. I discovered on arriving in England that she had had a meeting with Betterton. I played up to her, expressing Left Wing views, rather exaggerating perhaps my scientific abilities. I thought, you see, that Betterton had gone behind the Iron Curtain where no one could reach him. Well, if nobody else could reach him, I was going to reach him.’ His lips set in a grim line. ‘Elsa was a first-class scientist and she was a beautiful and gentle woman. She’d been killed and robbed by the man whom she loved and trusted. If necessary I was going to kill Betterton with my own hands.’
‘I see,’ said Hilary, ‘oh, I see now.’
‘I wrote to you,’ said Peters, ‘when I got to England. Wrote to you, that is, in my Polish name, telling you the facts.’ He looked at her. ‘I suppose you didn’t believe me. You never answered.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then I went to the Intelligence people. At first I went there putting on an act. Polish officer. Stiff, foreign and correctly formal. I was suspicious just then of everybody. However, in the end Jessop and I got together.’ He paused. ‘This morning my quest has come to an end. Extradition will be applied for, Betterton will go to the U.S.A. and will stand his trial there. If he’s acquitted, I have no more to say.’ He added grimly, ‘But he won’t be acquitted. The evidence is too strong.’
He paused, staring down over the sunlit gardens towards the sea.
‘The hell of it is,’ he said, ‘that you came out there to join him and I met you and fell