Aiding and Abetting Read Online Free PDF Page B

with another cactus. It was never of an equal rare status as her own ones, and yet she was obliged to have the new little plant on show at least for a while. Walker had brought her such a plant; it was good but not quite good enough. She placed it with pleased carefulness on the shelf, quite as if it was of the last rarity.
    Hildegard waved Walker to his chair.
    “There are two of you,” Hildegard said.
    Walker looked put out. “Oh, there has to be two of us,” said Walker. “One who committed the crime and one who didn’t.”
    “And which of the two is the real Lucan?” “I am,” he said. His eyes shifted from the window to the door as if entrapped.
    “Well, you’re a liar,” she said.
    “I often wonder about that,” said Walker. “After years of being me, it’s difficult, now, to conceive being him. How did you know there was a pretender?” “A man called Lucky Lucan is one of my clients. He claims to be the seventh Earl.”
    “What a sneak, what a rotter!” Walker was really upset.
    “The seventh Earl is myself.”
    “Sneaks and rotters hack children’s nurses to death, you mean?”
    “It was a mistake. Nanny Rivett was killed in error.”
    “And the hack-and-bash job on Lady Lucan?” “That was different. She should have died. I was in debt.”
    “God, I’d like to turn you over to Interpol,” said Hildegard.
    “You won’t do that, Beate Pappenheim. Don’t forget that I’m a professional gambler. I know when the odds are loaded against me. That’s why I’m on the run, that’s why I’m here, in fact. All I am asking for, Beate Pappenheim, is free psychiatric treatment. Nothing more. Just that. Your secret, your blood secret will be safe with me if mine remains safe with you.”
    “And Lucky Lucan-my other client?”
    “He shouldn’t have come to you at all. He’s a swine.”
    “He looks awfully like the original.” Hildegard opened the file she had already placed on her desk in preparation for the interview. “See here,” she said, “Lucan aged thirty eight on the beach, Lucan in his ermine robes, Lucan in his tennis clothes, Lucan at a dance, and playing cards at the Clermont Club with his notorious friends. And,” she said, “I have also a photo kit of what he should look like now, based on computer-devised photos of his parents at your age, and here’s another police identikit which allows for plastic adaptations to the jawbone and the nose. Look at it. Look.”
    “But look at me.”
    “You look the same height. Your eyes are spaced convincingly. Your English voice is very probable. Yes, but you don’t convince me. How did you get together with Lucky Lucan?”
    “I hired him. There were so many occasions when I was nearly caught, especially when collecting the funds that my friends have put at my disposal, that I thought I would take on a double. He effectively fools my friends when he goes to collect. Strangely enough Lucky, so-called, resembles me when I was in my forties more than he does now. And of course, they hardly want him to linger.” “And suppose it’s the other way round? My other client is Lucan and you are the hired substitute?” “No,” said Walker.
    “Well, I can’t take you both on as patients.”
    “You won’t need to. I’ll deal with Lucky, so-called.
    People like us know how to deal with people like him.”
    These last words of that afternoon’s conversation hovered over Hildegard’s imagination. “People like us know how to deal . . .” Of course Walker had meant to disturb her. She was aware of that. Once before he had said, when she had asked him why he had not taken the simpler course of giving himself up and standing trial for murder, “People like us don’t go to prison.” He was overfull of his aristocratic qualities, as he supposed them to be, and this was what had led Hildegard to assume he was a fake. “People like us know how to deal with people like him.” Perhaps, after all, he was the real Lord Lucan. “People