“No, you haven’t.”
He held his hands up to his face. There was no blood. He lifted up his shirt and looked underneath. There were no bullet holes. Now he was blushing. “Sorry . . .” he muttered.
Gott had watched this performance with strange, empty eyes. Suddenly he toppled forward. There were two holes in the back of his jacket. He hadn’t had time to fire his own gun.
A figure appeared behind him, moving toward us. And that was the biggest surprise of the day.
It was Betty Charlady.
“ ’Ello, Mr. Nicholas,” she gurgled. She was still in her fluffy bedroom slippers, with a forest of artificial flowers on her head. “Wotcha, Mr. Timothy. Blimey! What a turn-up . . . innit!”
“Betty!” Herbert exclaimed. “What are you doing—” But then he plugged his mouth with his thumb, stopping himself in midsentence.
Betty was holding a gun. The gun had just killed Gott.
With a smile, she pulled off her hat and threw it onto the grass. Her wig, with the electric curls, went next. Once more her hand reached up and this time it pulled at the very skin of her face. It stretched, then tore loose, carrying the wrinkles and makeup with it. The gun in her other hand remained steady, but otherwise, in front of our eyes, she was changing.
Betty Charlady was gone. Another woman stood in her place.
“Who is she?” Herbert whispered.
“Beatrice von Falkenberg,” I said. “The Falcon’s widow. Snape told us that she used to be a great actress. It looks like Mrs. Charlady was one of her performances.”
“That’s right, boys,” Beatrice said.
I took a quick look around the cemetery. The way things were going, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the alligator had turned up—perhaps disguised as a hedgehog.
“But . . . but why?” Herbert asked.
“I had to find the diamonds,” she said. “My late husband’s fortune. When the dwarf gave you the package, I had to get close to you—to find out what you knew. Then I saw your advertisement for a cleaning woman. That gave me the idea.”
“And Gott and Himmell were working for you,” I said.
“That’s very clever of you, Nicholas,” she muttered. “How do you know?”
I shrugged. “I told you we were going to the Casablanca Club. You were the only person who knew. But somehow Gott and Himmell managed to turn up just in time to snatch Lauren Bacardi. We led them to her.”
Herbert looked at me in astonishment. “That’s brilliant,” he said.
“There’s more. They learned about the Maltesers from Lauren and they told you, Beatrice. That’s how you knew what to ask for when I visited you in Hampstead. You were all in it together.”
“Until their use ran out,” Beatrice said.
“It’s incredible,” Herbert said.
“Not really,” I said. “I almost guessed when I visited Beatrice. She knew your real name. She called you Herbert—not Timothy. And she was wearing the same perfume as Betty. Lavender. That was something she forgot to change.”
“You’re very clever,” Beatrice said.
“Maybe. But there’s one thing I don’t get. Why did you kill Johnny Naples in the first place?”
She shrugged. “It was an accident. Gott and Himmell had tracked him down to the Hotel Splendide. They were going to snatch him, but I went to see him first. I walked in as Betty Charlady. Nobody looked twice. I wanted to persuade him to share what he’d found with me. I told him I was his only hope. I could keep Gott and Himmell off his back. And I could use them to stay ahead of the Fat Man. But he was greedy. He wouldn’t listen. He had a gun. There was a fight. Like I say, it was an accident.” She sighed. “There can’t be any more accidents. You two can’t leave the cemetery. No witnesses.” For a moment she slipped back into her Betty Charlady voice. “Cheerio, then, Mr. Nicholas. Ta, ta, Mr. ’erbert.”
She lifted the gun.
“Oh no!” Herbert whimpered.
“I don’t think so, Beatrice,” I said.
She looked beyond me and her face jerked back like she’d been slapped. But then she lowered the gun and laughed. Suddenly the cemetery was full of uniformed policemen. They were springing up everywhere—out of the long grass and from behind the gravestones. At their head, running to be the first ones to reach us, were Snape and Boyle.
“Well . . . that’s a lucky coincidence,” Herbert said.
“What do you mean—coincidence?” I said. “I called Snape last night. I told him everything.” Herbert’s mouth fell open. “Well, I wasn’t going to come here alone.”
By this time Boyle had reached Beatrice von Falkenberg. She stretched out her hands elegantly for the cuffs, but he threw himself at her anyway—a flying tackle that sent her crashing to the ground.
“You could have come out sooner, Chief Inspector,” I said as Snape arrived. “We were nearly killed.”
“That’s true, laddie,” Snape agreed. “But . . . well, it was Boyle. He wanted to see what would happen. He asked me to hold back. And as it’s Christmas . . .”
The policemen began to clear away bodies. Snape leaned down and picked up the Maltesers box.
“Now let’s see about this,” he said.
The three of us gathered around the memorial. The stone falcon waited, its wings spread, its beak open, its glass eyes blinking in the sun. Carefully, Snape tore off the bar code. He threw the rest of the box away. Then he laid the strip faceup in the falcon’s beak and pulled it through.
Behind the eyes, inside the falcon’s head, a lens focused the sun’s beams onto the bar code. The white stripes reflected some of them back onto a photodetector hidden inside the falcon’s body. We heard the click as a connection was made. There was a soft hum. A solar-powered generator had sprung to life. It activated a motor. There was another click and the entire front of the memorial—along with the inscription—swung open to reveal a solid metal container.
And that was the last surprise of the day. There was to be no Christmas bonus for Snape, no reward for us. Because there weren’t any diamonds. There wasn’t even a lump of coal. The container was empty. We were looking at five million dollars’ worth of nothing.
THE FALCON’S MALTESER
“But, Nicholas, I still don’t understand.”
“I’ve gone through it all twice, Herbert.”
“Well, if you wrote it all down . . . That might help.”
“Maybe I will.”
It was the second day of the New Year. It didn’t feel much different from the old year. It was cold. There wasn’t any gas in the apartment. And, as usual, we were down to the last handful of change. We’d had a great Christmas, Herbert and me. Two frozen turkey croquettes and the Queen’s speech—only we’d missed the Queen’s speech. Mum and Dad had sent us a card and a couple of presents, but they hadn’t cheered us up. The card showed two koalas in a Christmas tree. The presents were a boomerang for me and a hat with corks for Herbert.
I threw the boomerang away. It came back.
There were still a couple of weeks until school began and I’d have liked to have gone skiing. A lot of the guys in my class had made it to Switzerland or Austria or wherever and they’d be full of it when they got back. It didn’t seem fair. After all I’d been through I couldn’t even afford the bus fare to the travel agent.
And then the parcel came. Special delivery. From the South of France. It was addressed to me.
I think I knew who it was from before I opened it. There was only one reason I could think of why the Falcon’s safe had been empty. I hadn’t mentioned it to Snape or Boyle. I hadn’t even mentioned it to Herbert.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, open it.”
I opened it. Inside the brown wrapping paper there was a carton about the same shape and size as a film
