RATING: GOOD
SPOILERS!!!
Julian and his team manage to track down a man carrying ski sticks in Victoria Station and joining a party to go skiing in Austria. Julian and Lancing learn that Biddy Manners as the woman organising the trip, and they manage to find out that she lives in a club. There they talk to the girls who live in the building, and Julian pretend to want information about a car crash which Biddy was witness to. The women are agreeable but they don’t believe him, and then they tell Biddy, who grows suspicious.
Julian also brings Cyd, Mrs Stein’s son, for questioning, and when they show him how they have evidence that he was in the house, Cyd breaks down. He says that he sometimes did jobs for Gray, and then he told him to come to the house at 3 on New Year’s Day. When Cyd went there, he found a body in Gray’s room and the place on fire, so he legged it, fearing that the police would go after him.
Julian gets confirmation that Gray is in Austria when he gets a partial fingerprint in a note that Biddy and the other fifteen sent to Nigel, one of the men who couldn’t go on the trip because he was getting his appendix removed, and everyone signed that note. He is given the go-ahead to travel to Austria, but there is a terrible fog, so the trip gets delayed.
When he and Lancing get to Austria, they run into Biddy and Kate on the bus, and the two women suspect that they are the policemen who enquired about the car crash. That day some members of the party had gone to St Anton, and most of them were returning on the train, but Robert and Helston decided to ski despite the bad weather conditions. Those who opted for the train return, and when Robert and Helston fail to turn up, Julien and Lancing and a rescue party go out to find the two men. There is a blizzard, and they can hardly see. Robert is eventually found, and he says that Helston lagged behind and he was trying to return and look for him.
Robert is taken to a shelter, and Julien and Lancing keep looking for Helston, and they eventually find him. He has run into a tree and he is dead. We discover then that Gray is not Robert, as we believed, but Helton. iJulien explains to Frank, Kate and Biddy that Helston was Gray, a conman and a thief, and he was friends with Helston, who he asked him to visit him. There he drugged him and then set fire to the room, killing him. Then he asked Cyd Stein to come, so that he could be his scapegoat. What he didn’t foresee is that the police would find his fingerprints on the coins in the meter. As for the matter of the money Robert lost, Helston must have stolen it, and the pounds he later found in a book were actually Helston’s. The thing is that Helston needed Austrian money to be able to flee, but exchanging money would leave a lead to the police.
I enjoyed the book, and it was a good mystery. The only problem is that there were too many characters and I got them confused.
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