They came to Baghdad - Agatha Christie [86]
And carefully, feeling her way, for here in Devonshire she knew that death might be very near, she said:
‘You are wonderful, Edward. But what about me? What can I do?’
‘You want to – help? You believe in it?’
But she was prudent. Not sudden conversion. That would be too much.
‘I think I just believe in you!’ she said. ‘Anything you tell me to do, Edward, I’ll do.’
‘Good girl,’ he said.
‘Why did you arrange for me to come out here to begin with? There must have been some reason?’
‘Of course there was. Do you remember I took a snap of you that day?’
‘I remember,’ said Victoria.
(You fool, how flattered you were, how you simpered! she thought to herself.)
‘I’d been struck by your profile – by your resemblance to someone. I took that snap to make sure.’
‘Whom do I resemble?’
‘A woman who’s been causing us a good deal of trouble – Anna Scheele.’
‘Anna Scheele.’ Victoria stared at him in blank surprise. Whatever she had expected, it was not this. ‘You mean – she looks like me?’
‘Quite remarkably so side view. The features in profile are almost exactly the same. And there’s one most extraordinary thing, you’ve got a tiny mark of a scar on your upper lip, left side –’
‘I know. It’s where I fell on a tin horse when I was a child. It had a sharp ear sticking up and it cut quite deep in. It doesn’t show much – not with powder on.’
‘Anna Scheele has a mark in just the same place. That was a most valuable point. You’re alike in height and build – she’s about four or five years older than you. The real difference is the hair, you’re a brunette and she’s a blonde. And your style of hairdressing is quite different. Your eyes are a darker blue, but that wouldn’t matter with tinted glasses.’
‘And that’s why you wanted me to come to Baghdad? Because I looked like her.’
‘Yes, I thought the resemblance might – come in useful.’
‘So you arranged the whole thing…The Clipps – who are the Clipps?’
‘They’re not important – they just do as they’re told.’
Something in Edward’s tone sent a faint shiver down Victoria’s spine. It was as though he had said with inhuman detachment, ‘They are under Obedience.’
There was a religious flavour about this mad project. ‘Edward,’ she thought, ‘is his own God. That’s what’s so frightening.’
Aloud she said:
‘You told me that Anna Scheele was the boss, the Queen Bee, in your show?’
‘I had to tell you something to put you off the scent. You had already learnt too much.’
‘And if I hadn’t happened to look like Anna Scheele that would have been the end of me,’ thought Victoria.
She said:
‘Who is she really?’
‘She’s confidential secretary to Otto Morganthal, the American and international banker. But that isn’t all she is. She has the most remarkable financial brain. We’ve reason to believe she’s traced out a lot of our financial operations. Three people have been dangerous to us – Rupert Crofton Lee, Carmichael – well they’re both wiped out. There remains Anna Scheele. She’s due in Baghdad in three days’ time. In the meantime, she’s disappeared.’
‘Disappeared? Where?’
‘In London. Vanished, apparently, off the face of the earth.’
‘And does no one know where she is?’
‘Dakin may know.’
But Dakin didn’t know. Victoria knew that, though Edward didn’t – so where was Anna Scheele?
She asked:
‘You really haven’t the least idea?’
‘We’ve an idea,’ said Edward slowly.
‘Well?’
‘It’s vital that Anna Scheele should be here in Baghdad for the Conference. That, as you know, is in five days’ time.’
‘As soon as that? I’d no idea.’
‘We’ve got every entry into this country taped. She’s certainly not coming here under her own name. And she’s not coming in on a Government service plane. We’ve our means of checking that. So we’ve investigated