The Strange Story of Linda Lee (15 page)

The man grinned at her. ‘Very well, lady. To make it really straight will take a bit of time, but I’ll do the best I can.’

Systematically he adjusted the apparatus and went to work. Linda thought he would never be done. But by
twenty-five past twelve, he had finished; she paid him and gave him the handsome tip.

Dashing up to the ground floor, she asked for her luggage to be brought down, paid her bill and retrieved the precious brief-case. To her fury another quarter of an hour went by before her luggage appeared in the hall. One of the suitcases she had collected that morning was missing. The porter went back upstairs. He was away ten minutes. She had just made up her mind that she must abandon the missing case when he returned with it. By the time all her things had been loaded on to a taxi it was five past one. She promised the man double fare if he could get her to Heathrow by a quarter to two. As he snapped down his flag, he replied laconically:

‘Depends on the state of the traffic; but I doubt it.’

Her heart sank. If she missed the plane, it would be all up with her. Within two or three hours the police would be circulating her description. She would not dare attempt to get on another plane the next day. Where could she go into hiding? Within a week or two, some sharp-eyed policeman would recognise her from the photographs of wanted people that they pinned up in all police stations. Arrest would follow, the shame of a trial, then prison. She could now only hope against hope.

The drive seemed interminable. It seemed that every light was against them. Just past South Kensington Station a lorry was delivering coal, so narrowed the way to single-line traffic. In Barons Court, opposite the old playing fields of St. Paul’s School, the road was up for a hundred yards—single line again, so another delay. Fidgeting in her seat, Linda thought they would never make it, but at last they were out on the broad motor-way
and the driver got her to the airport by ten minutes to two.

She paid him double fare, her luggage was piled on a trolley. Glancing at the cases, she suddenly realised that she had forgotten to label them. But at the desk everyone was most helpful. Her ticket was checked, the luggage labelled and weighed. To her distress she had to pay out seventy-two pounds seventy-five pence excess, but it was no time to worry about the amount. She dared not ask them to take a cheque, as she would have had to sign it Chatterton. Hurriedly fumbling under her skirt she produced the money from her pochette. Her well-tipped porter ran alongside her to show her the right barrier.

Holding her breath, she gave her passport to the immigration official. He only glanced at it, waved her through and said, ‘You’ll have to hurry, Miss. The aircraft is just about due to take off.’

Clutching her handbag in one hand and the briefcase in the other, she raced down the long, enclosed passage, with its side-ports for boarding. At last she reached the one with a sign up reading AC.853, and turned into it. Breathlessly she boarded the plane. The steward gave her a quick grin and closed the door behind her. A hostess led her to her seat. She had only just taken it when the plane began to taxi out. After going no more than a hundred yards, it stopped. She seemed to freeze where she sat. The police had caught up with her after all! With closed eyes, for five minutes she sat in mental agony. Then the aircraft began to move again, and she realised that the delay had been caused by putting her luggage on board.

Lying back, she closed her eyes and breathed again. She had made it. She was still free and they were off.
She had crossed the last hurdle, and got away with a fortune.

The hostess made the usual speech over the loudspeaker to the passengers. The aircraft reached the end of the runway and halted. Its jets roared. Linda thought complacently, ‘They may have opened that accursed safe by now. Anyway they will have within an hour or two. When Elsie finds it empty she’ll telephone Cabouchon’s, on the off chance that Rowley had placed the jewels with them for safe-keeping. They will tell her at once about my having sold them the two rings. So she’ll know then, without a doubt, that it was I who cleared the safe before I left. But they can’t get me now. It’s too late. So what the hell do I care?’

Then she was seized with sudden consternation. Another thought had struck her. She had not, after all, yet crossed the last hurdle. The first criminals ever caught by a wireless message had been Dr. Crippen with Miss le Neve. Since then hundreds of others had been caught by the same means. There were nearly nine hours to go before she landed at Edmonton. Would the police be waiting for her there?

On the Saturday morning Linda awoke in an eighth-floor bedroom of the Hotel Sheraton Summit in Calgary. It was a curiously-shaped room, for the hotel was a large, round tower, so all its rooms formed segments of a great circle.

When Linda realised where she was, she stretched luxuriously, smiled and gave a sigh of happiness. She had pulled it off. The likelihood of her now being traced was comparatively remote, and she had got away with a fortune. Her mind ran back over the journey of the preceding day.

Extraordinary as it seemed, she had left Heathrow at five minutes past two in the afternoon and had been carried the thousands of miles over Scotland, Greenland, Baffin Island and five-sixths of the vast territory of Canada to arrive at Edmonton only forty minutes later according to local time. In fact, however, the flight had actually taken nearly nine hours. Owing to her fear of being arrested at the other end, those hours had seemed interminable, the more so on account of the unvarying daylight as the aircraft virtually kept pace with the apparently western-travelling sun. In a vague way she had realised that Air Canada provided excellent service and tempting food, but worry had prevented her from enjoying them.

At Edmonton she nerved herself to face the worst, but no official accosted her as she left the aircraft and reached the Immigration desk. On entering the Customs hall she almost choked with fear. Ladies do not often travel with twenty-five thousand pounds’ worth of jewels in their luggage. The officer might well have been warned to look out for such a hoard. In any event it seemed certain that he would question her and make notes describing the most valuable pieces.

Asked if she had anything to declare, she replied, ‘No, I’ve come to Canada only for a holiday,’ and, her heart beating wildly, unlocked the brief-case.

The officer barely glanced at the toilet things under which lay the tissue-paper-wrapped jewel cases. Smiling at her, he said, ‘You’ve brought a lot of luggage for a vacation,’ and told her to open two of her suitcases. Finding only clothes in them, he chalked all her baggage, wished her a happy time and turned away.

It was through a remark made by a man nearby she learned that the plane, after refuelling, was flying on to Calgary. That offered a chance to cover her tracks still further, so she bought a ticket for the onward flight, had her luggage relabelled and went back on board. Soon after seven o’clock a Calgary taxi-driver set her down at the Sheraton Summit. She had booked in there as Miss Lily Carter, then, too exhausted by the strain of the past day to face a meal, gone straight to bed.

Getting up, she drew back the curtains sufficiently to see the view from the window. At least half the area she could see consisted of several vast car parks. Later she learned that Calgary was said to have more cars per head of population than any other city in Canada. Here and there, among the car parks, there rose sky-scrapers, but few other buildings.

While breakfasting in bed, she thought over her next move. By now the police in London would be looking for Linda Chatterton. She had arrived in Edmonton as Linda Lee and in Calgary as Lily Carter. But to be on the safe side she must move again as quickly as possible, and take yet another name. Having flown over the endless wheat-fields of Alberta the previous afternoon, she could imagine nothing more dreary than starting a new life in such surroundings. Besides, a newcomer in any of its scattered towns was much more likely to arouse unwelcome interest than a solitary woman in a big city. To go still further west to Vancouver therefore seemed the obvious choice. That also offered the fascinating prospect of a journey through the Rockies.

She had awoken early, so by nine o’clock she had bathed, dressed and was down in the hotel lobby. There she learned that the daily train for Vancouver left Calgary at 1.40 that afternoon. Having booked a drawing-room on it, she went to a nearby bank where she exchanged enough Swiss francs to pay for her ticket, her bill and leave her nine hundred Canadian dollars over. Returning to the hotel, in the ladies’ room she stuffed eight hundred dollars into her pochette, then decided that the best way to kill the morning was to go for a drive round the city.

The hall porter produced a car with a pleasant, talkative young driver, who pointed out to her the sights of Calgary, such as they were: the tall Husky tower topped by its radio mast, the big Hudsons’ Bay Company store and the best shops that were on Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Within half a mile of them the streets grew strangely ragged. Occasional modern blocks stood with large vacant lots on either side of them or dilapidated-looking private houses with small gardens, evidently
built forty or fifty years before. They then drove through tree-lined streets of suburbs, with much more pleasant homes, to a high ridge on which stood a fine group of buildings housing the university. From the ridge there was an excellent view of the Bow River which, hundreds of miles distant, flows into the Mississippi.

Back at the hotel Linda had an early lunch in the Casa Lounge. It was a lofty, curved room, with dim lights and red walls, which gave it the atmosphere of a warm cave. The list of drinks produced by a pretty waitress surprised Linda by its size and variety. Among the recommended cocktails were El Toro, Brown Bull and Lady of Spain, all previously unheard of by her. She chose the last, which was one ounce of vodka, half an ounce of blackberry brandy, a dash of orange juice, a dash of Grenadine and a maraschino cherry. While it was being brought she wondered if the names of these strange drinks had been selected on account of the annual rodeo, for which Calgary was famous, in which tough cowboys seized young bulls by the horns and threw them on their backs.

By a quarter past one she was standing on one of the long, windy, seatless platforms of the railway station. The train was late, but at last it arrived and she clambered up into it. The drawing-room she had booked came as a pleasant surprise. It had a wardrobe next to a private washroom and, in addition to the two bunks which made up into a comfortable sofa during daytime, it had two large armchairs.

Soon after leaving the city the train went round a long curve, and she was able to appreciate its make-up. The chain of long coaches seemed endless and above several of them there were large glass domes from which passengers could get an uninterrupted view of the
scenery. As for some while it remained flattish and uninteresting, she did not bother to go along to one of them. But after about two hours they stopped at Banff, in the foothills of the Rockies, so she walked down the corridor to the nearest observation car, and went upstairs.

It was the slowest train she had ever travelled in. She assumed this was because of the gradients it had to mount, but its snail’s pace gave ample opportunity, as it crawled round curve after curve, to take in each new vista. Except for the angle from which they were seen, the views had little variety. They consisted of lakes and creeks surrounded by rising ground densely covered with Canadian pines. Each scene provided a perfect setting for befeathered Indians paddling canoes; but not a human being or an animal, let alone a Redskin, was to be seen.

Linda sat under the transparent, inverted bowl that covered the long omnibus-like coach until it was time for dinner, then she went down to the restaurant car, enjoyed an excellent meal, and went early to bed.

After breakfast next morning, she went up again. The sun was shining on a rushing river far below, to the left in a deep gorge through which the train was winding. Again the scene consisted of endless slopes of pine trees, broken only occasionally by a smallish drift of snow on the higher peaks. After a while Linda decided that the Alps were incomparably grander and went down to get her things together. Soon after ten o’clock the train pulled into Vancouver Station.

Having for so long been used to travelling de luxe with Rowley she had so far denied herself nothing and had instinctively engaged a private drawing-room on the train. But it suddenly struck her that, although she had
a large sum in cash, she might find it difficult to dispose of more of the jewels, so she ought not to fritter away money by staying at one of the big hotels.

Outside the station, when her luggage was brought out, she ripped off the labels while the porter was getting her a taxi. Then she said to the driver of the taxi, ‘I am a stranger to Vancouver and know no-one here. Can you take me to a hotel that is not too expensive? Quite a small one would do, provided it’s respectable and has passably good food.’

The man glanced at her smart suitcases, hesitated, then replied, ‘My sister runs a place, the Astley it’s called, down on the bay. But it’s on the modest side. Might not be grand enough for a lady like you.’

Linda smiled. ‘I’d be happy to try it, so please take me there.’

As she had supposed, Vancouver was very different from Calgary. There were no vacant lots or decayed-looking houses in the streets through which she was driven, but block after block of good shops, restaurants and offices. Beach Avenue proved to be not much over a mile from the centre of the city. Most of the buildings there were old-fashioned, two-storied, clapboard houses, but a few were larger, with three stucco-covered storeys, and the Hotel Astley was one of these.

The taxi-driver took her in and introduced her to his sister, Mrs. Burnaby, a plumpish, pleasant-faced woman with greying hair whose husband, it transpired, had once been a chef at the Ritz in Boston. Linda now decided to ignore the second initial on her suitcases, and said her name was Lucille Harrison, and that she had come up from Los Angeles where she had been for some time playing small parts in films. The lie was designed to allay any suspicion Mrs. Burnaby might have about
the initial, because film actresses often married but retained their maiden names. Linda added that she had recently been ill, so wanted somewhere that was very quiet where she could rest for a few weeks. Her face and figure amply supported her statement that she was a starlet and she refrained from saying whether she was British or American, hoping that in spite of her lack of accent Mrs. Burnaby would assume anyhow that she had lived in the States for several years.