‘Her husband,’ explained the Professor simply. ‘It seems very quiet without him,’ he added.
‘Why, who is he?’ asked Edward.
‘Oh, just one of those people with over-active glands. We always call him the Lion. The rest run after him making adoring noises. They’re all from the same place – somewhere in the Veneto; I think it’s Padua.’
He sniffed; his opinion of the Paduan party was plainly not a very high one. Probably none of them climbed.
‘Pretty wife he’s got, at any rate,’ said Edward, watching her look sadly from her watch to the empty chair beside her. ‘Fond of him, too!’
‘Best-looking of the whole bunch, and the only one he never takes any notice of. There isn’t a woman in the place he hasn’t made a pass at – most of them successful! Until Olimpia arrived, he didn’t mind handling three or four at a time. But, of course, with Olimpia in sight, the rest more or less vanish.’ He lifted his long nose, sniffing appreciatively in the direction of the door. ‘Speak of the angel! Now there’s a woman!’
The golden girl from the Langkofelkar came in slowly, and moved to her place on the other side of the room. She had changed into a black silk skirt, and sandals, and a matt white blouse cut very low on the shoulders, and out of its thick opaque whiteness her golden shoulders sailed with the aplomb of a lily growing. Her arms were long, rounded and beautiful. Her skin was as sleekly smooth as polished bronze.
The only disquieting thing about her was the presence at her shoulder of a large man in an expensive summer suiting, a bulky blond of impressive physique and indeterminate age. Somewhere between thirty and forty, clean-shaven, heavy-featured, one of those inert faces behind which a formidable temper can sometimes conceal itself. Worst of all, his hand at the girl’s elbow was casual and possessive.
Edward’s eyes followed her steadily until she was seated. He swallowed hard, and asked as casually as he could:
‘Who is she?’
‘That’s Olimpia! Signora Montesanto – I’m afraid!’ Edward caught Professor Lacey’s too penetrating eye, and quickly averted his own.
‘Yes,’ said the Professor with candid sympathy, ‘he’s her husband. Sometimes I’m not sure that she’s any better pleased about it than the rest of us. A lovely creature, isn’t she? There isn’t a man in the place who hasn’t made a play for her.’
‘Including your Lion,’ said Edward, struggling manfully to look no more concerned about Signor Montesanto’s unwelcome existence than the next man.
‘Oh, he can’t understand that any woman could resist him.’
‘She’d have made a magnificent lioness,’ said Edward, on an irresponsible impulse.
‘So the Lion seems to think. I must say, she hasn’t shown any sign of thinking so herself, for all the success he’s had elsewhere. No doubt she’s found out that it’s the only way to keep the peace, with a possessive person like her husband around.’
Some of the tables were already emptying. Giulia Leoni was twisting a handkerchief between her anxious fingers, and looking over her shoulder towards the door at every sound of a step entering the wooden hall. She was certainly no lioness. A charming little black kitten, perhaps, nothing more deadly than that.
They were halfway through coffee when a red head was thrust in at the door, and dark young eyes in a dirty face signalled across to them imperatively.
‘Young Crowther,’ said Professor Lacey, stubbing out his cigarette without hesitation. ‘Something wrong!’ he added in the same quiet tone, and got up and made for the door. Edward went after him, because the boy’s eyes had seemed to include him in the summons. He began to talk, in a soft, laborious voice of shock, the moment they were within range.
‘Prof, something ghastly’s happened! He would climb alone! My God, of all the idiots! And who’s going to tell his wife?’
The big, brown, quiet woman who was kneeling in the middle of the floor said kindly, but firmly: ‘Shut up, Bill! Go and get a drink, and bring one for Tony, too.’
There were four of them grouped round something on the floor; the woman, who must be Mrs Palgrave, and a shaggy middle-aged man in a dark green sweater, who was most probably her husband; the other undergraduate, a thickset boy in an ex-army windproof jacket; and the guide Johann, who was slight and wiry, and looked the part rather less perfectly than Lacey did.
They were bending over a long bundle, the unmistakable shape of a man, from which Johann was just carefully unwinding the nylon rope which had afforded a means of carrying the burden.
‘Took us all this time to get him down the scree,’ said Palgrave, looking up sombrely into Lacey’s face. ‘We marked out the position we found him in, in case they can make anything of it, but Bill’s right, it looks as if he was fooling about on the Grohmann by himself. Betty tried some photographs, too, in what was left of the light.’
‘We’d better get the doctor, at any rate. He’s in the dining-room now.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Tony promptly, and made for the door.
‘And the manager! Ask Sabina to find him.’ Lacey watched the layers of padding fall away with the rope, and asked: ‘Dead?’
‘Stone dead! Dead when we found him.’
The figure took shape, seemed to grow larger. Edward saw the body of a big and shapely man, a young, lusty, arrogant body, in well-made mountain clothes of a rough light cloth, good boots, a white silk shirt open about a brown, brawny throat. A sweater was peeled away gently from the face. One of those bold, over-pronounced faces, full of bone, with large, deep eyelids, half-open upon dark eyes, a strong jaw, and a mouth whose forward thrust suggested large and immaculate teeth. He had a short russet beard, nicely trimmed about the full and passionate mouth.
They stood looking down at him for an instant in awed silence. ‘Better a live dog!’ said Professor Lacey, and added upon a sharper tone: ‘He doesn’t seem to have had much of a fall!’
He fell on his knees beside Johann, who was already unbuttoning the tweed jacket. ‘Not a mark on him! No obvious fractures! What the devil did happen to him?’
They had all drawn closer, Edward fascinated but silent on the fringe of the circle.
‘The snow under him,’ said Mrs Palgrave suddenly, ‘it was hardly dented! Close to the rocks, too – if he’d fallen far he’d have been embedded in it feet deep. There must be nearly two metres of snow there—’
Johann turned back the jacket. There was a thick pullover under it; he felt at it above the dead man’s heart, and drew back his fingers faintly stained. He turned up the pullover to disclose the soft white shirt. Close above the heart was a small, neat, unmistakable hole, so small that in the dark wool they had failed to see it at all. There was hardly any blood, only a few stained inches of silk. The wool had absorbed the rest as it oozed out from the wound.
‘No,’ said Professor Lacey, softly out of the stunned silence. ‘He didn’t fall far – just off his own two feet. Somebody put a bullet in him at pretty short range. I think,’ he said, ‘I’d better go and break it to the manager that we’re going to need the police.’
Edward never knew how far the police had to come but by nine o’clock they were there and in possession. The small points of light moving about high in the air to westward were the torches of the policemen plying up the traverses to the col. Within the house the little office was given over to the use of two more officers, the only refuge anywhere within doors from Giulia’s tears and despair.
The English party told their story first, and it was brief enough. They had been all day up on the Langkofelkar. They had been entirely absorbed in the pitches of their climb and the coaching of the novices, and had seen no human beings below them, nor heard anything which could make them think of a revolver shot. Descending, in light considerably worse than they had expected, they had found the body. They had thought it best to bring it down with them, but had marked out its position with stones, and left a coloured handkerchief wedged flaglike into a cleft of the rock above to make discovery easy.
&n
bsp; The deceptive light had prevented them from seeing too clearly, and the very meagre flow of blood had all been absorbed within his clothes. Moreover, as they realised now, his jacket had been buttoned after he was shot, for the cloth was not marked by any hole over the spot where his pullover and shirt were perforated. Not until they had eased him laboriously all the way down the scree, and brought him into the light of the hotel, did they discover how he had died.
Edward, for his part, had come from Pordoi the long but easy way. At the top, about a quarter to seven, he had encountered Signora Montesanto, who had advised him to turn back to Sella because of the bad weather and the fading light, and after a very brief pause for consideration he had done so. That was all he knew.
When they had made their statements, which Professor Lacey translated into Italian, they were dismissed from the office. The dining-room was a chaos, the boxer pups unchecked under everybody’s feet, the doctor, an inoffensive little man on holiday from a practice in Cremona, in weary attendance on Giulia. As soon as she was fit to answer questions the police would see her, so that she could be put to bed, and escape something, at least, of the horror of the evening. Meantime, she sat clutching at the nearest friendly arm, her handkerchief at her lips, the tears raining effortlessly from her large, purple-black eyes.
Several of the other Paduan women were also in tears, but voluble between their bouts of weeping, and the noise they produced sounded to Edward as bitter and angry as it was shrill. The men of the party were nervous and sullen, padding backwards and forwards between the bar and their table, and accosting one another in sudden explosive outbursts as they drank.
‘They sound as if they’re quarrelling,’ said Edward, in Professor Lacey’s pricked and capacious ear.
‘They are. Not much comradeship left in that little fraternity now. All the women were jealous of the least attention the Lion paid to any other woman, and the husbands divided their time between envying him, being scared of him, and hating his guts. He was an eminently murderable person,’ sighed Professor Lacey, almost with respect, almost with regret, ‘in spite of being irrepressibly likeable.’
‘How did a man like that manage to get into the Langkofelkar entirely alone? I suppose he did! I should have thought there’d always be a few of the faithful under his feet.’
‘Oh, he could kick when he liked. People didn’t hang around the Lion when he told them to go to hell! Everybody claims to have been miles away all afternoon, and they’re all busy casting doubts on the claims of all the others. Nobody seems to have seen the Lion turn back from Rodella and go up into the Langkofelkar.’
‘That could be true enough,’ said Palgrave, looking up from his belated dinner. ‘In country on this fantastic scale it’s amazing how you can lose a hundred people – all still within sight.’
‘Oh, it could be true! So he came back alone and unnoticed – or maybe he didn’t come back, but worked up along the contour from Rodella, and on to the scree from there.’
‘Did he leave his wife with as little ceremony as the rest of the party?’ asked Edward.
‘With a damned sight less. Why should he waste finesse on her? He already had her. Besides, Giulia doesn’t walk. Everybody knows it. No, he brought her here, and after that she had to fend for herself. It would have been rather a sensation if he had been seen out with her, as a matter of fact.’
‘Then where did she spend her afternoon? I suppose they’ll have to ask her, too.’ She was gone from the dining-room, as he saw when he looked round again; she must be in the office with the police at this moment.
‘She took one of the cars, and went off down the valley by herself after breakfast. It seems she’s been down in Santa Cristina, shopping. I saw her bringing the parcels in when she got back, about twenty past seven or somewhere around that time.’
The red-headed Bill said, somewhat uncomfortably: ‘There’s a path up from Santa Cristina – it works up round the back of the Langkofel.’
‘It’s two good hours’ walking, and the scramble at the end,’ said Tony. ‘And Giulia doesn’t walk. And even if she really could tackle ground like that, she couldn’t have got back to pick up her car in the time.’
‘How do you know she couldn’t? We don’t know what time he was shot.’
Edward looked at the Professor, who certainly would not have forgotten to sound the doctor upon the subject. ‘What time was he shot?’
‘He’s too cautious to commit himself too deeply. Probably between half-past four and half-past six, he says.’
‘So, on the earlier limit, it would be a possibility for her to walk back to Santa Cristina, pick up the car, and still be back here by twenty-past seven.’
‘It would for anyone but Giulia. Maybe she’s not so helpless on her feet as she claims, but no one’s ever seen her take more than a peaceful little promenade on the grass verge along the road.’
‘You didn’t notice her shoes?’ asked Mrs Palgrave.
‘No, I can’t say I did. She wears good stout walking shoes. They’re the thing here, and you can trust all that party to do whatever is the thing.’
‘She wouldn’t have hurt him!’ said Tony, suddenly laying down his fork as if his appetite had suffered a serious check. ‘She’s crazy about him. And look what she’s put up with already, without a murmur of complaint!’
Giulia came out of the office, her handkerchief to her eyes, the sympathetic arm of one of her friends supporting her tenderly towards the stairs. It was curious that they all looked at her shoes now. They saw foolish little sandals, with three-inch heels. Exactly the shoes one would bring to Sella to support a reputation for never walking anywhere.
The manager, hovering anxiously upon the threshold of the office, lifted an imploring finger, and whispered: ‘Signora Montesanto!’
Olimpia rose, smiled at him reassuringly across the room, and crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray. She walked towards the open door and the waiting policemen with the beautiful, alert vehemence with which she had launched herself down the snowfield.
Edward said: ‘I suppose there wouldn’t be any objection to our getting a breath of air, would there, provided we stay within call?’
He went towards the door, and since no one attempted to stop him, opened it and went out into the night. He took the path which lay between the hotel and the little chapel, and walked into the cold, pale, stony borders of the rock town. Far above him the vague shape of the Langkofel, fantastically high and close, blotted out whole galaxies of stars.
He lit a cigarette, and found himself a sheltered corner among the rocks. The air had almost the snap of frost, and he was shivering by the time he turned back slowly towards the rifugio.
Out of the dimness something white moved vaguely towards him upon the path. His senses leaped to recognition as if he had willed her rather than merely encountered her. After the whiteness of her blouse he was aware of the light, amber gleam of her eyes. They had not kept her long; but then, she had nothing to tell them. He heard her sudden, indrawn breath, the long, soft sigh.
‘Oh, it’s you!’
The high, clear voice could be almost as still as silence itself.
‘You’ll be very cold!’ said Edward, disturbingly aware of her naked golden shoulders so close to him. ‘I’ll go and get you a coat – or, if you’ll have mine—’
The short hair tossed violently as she shook her head. ‘No, not cold! May I have a cigarette, please?’ As he sheltered the little flame of the lighter assiduously between their bodies, his heart thumping at her nearness, she shut her hand suddenly over his, and clung to it with cool, tremulous fingers. In the pure oval of her face her eyes clung to his as fiercely. ‘Not cold – just afraid!’
‘You’re very kind,’ she added softly, ‘and I am glad you are here. But there is nothing you can do for me except be here, and be kind.’
He did not know how it had happened, but his arm was about her shoulders, and he was trembling as violently as she, and stammering incohere
nt reassurances into her ear. They clung together in the hushed and magical night.
‘You can tell me,’ he said vaingloriously. ‘You can trust me! If there’s something frightening you—’
He held her to his swelling heart, and waited.
‘If I’d known – if we could know what people will do – I wouldn’t have let him out of my sight today! Ever since I married him it has been like this! He looks for wrongs, wrongs, wrongs, everywhere, always. But I have grown used to that,’ she said in a shuddering whisper, ‘and I thought it would just go on like that always. I never thought that something bad would happen – like this!’
‘You think your husband may have – may know something about Leoni’s death?’ Edward baulked at the word ‘murder’. She lifted her beautiful face, so softly and deeply moulded in the darkness, and he saw the fixed golden shining of her eyes.
‘We were out together all morning on the Cir. We went at dawn. When we came back to lunch I was tired, and so was he, and I went to my room and slept. When I dressed and came down to look for him I could not find him. I thought I would just go up to the col before dinner. It was after five o’clock, I know, when I went out, but I am not sure how much after – perhaps Sabina will know, she saw me go out. When I came back – you know when that was – Tonino still had not come in. He did not come until almost eight o’clock.’
‘But he must be able to prove where he was all the afternoon,’ said Edward reasonably.
‘He says that he took the meadow path over the pass, by Valentini’s Inn, and went down towards Ganazei. You know that path? For a long way it is so open you could see and recognise a man on it as much as half a mile away from you. There are huts, too, and part of the meadow is only just being mown. Do you think a man could go that way, and meet nobody? Oh, it is possible, it could happen to one man in a thousand men, but—’
‘But you’re afraid he was up there in the Langkofelkar with Leoni! Is that it? You think he was there when you climbed up the same path, and that he waited until we’d both gone before he ventured down?’
Murder in Midsummer Page 21
