‘It could have been like that,’ she said, almost inaudibly.
His eyes dwelt upon hers in consternation and dismay. ‘Has he a gun?’
‘Yes. I have seen it – but I do not know about guns. It is only small, but I don’t know the … calibre? Is that right? It may be the wrong kind of gun. Only, I am afraid—’
Edward was shaken with a tremor of alarm which seemed to originate within his own heart rather than in any look or word of hers. He took her suddenly by the shoulders, aware of the silken unexpectedness of her cool skin under his palms, but past anything so trivial as embarrassment. ‘He won’t hurt you? If there’s any fear of that – if there’s any possibility—’
Olimpia smiled, slowly and wryly, with the smoke of the cigarette curling from her lips. She looked at him steadily, and he thought he saw amusement in her eyes, but was sure he saw tenderness. ‘You are very sweet,’ she said, so softly that he hardly heard the words.
‘But if he’s crazy with jealousy like that – if he thinks that – that you—’
‘He thinks I have betrayed him with Paolo Leoni,’ she said, in a voice which had strongly recovered its calm, ‘and with at least a dozen men before him. I think he has dealt with Paolo for it. But that is not the kind of thing one tells the police unless one is sure.’
She dropped the butt of her cigarette, and put her foot upon it. Her hand closed tightly over his for a moment, and she was turning abruptly away when he caught her back suddenly into his arms.
‘Olimpia—’
He didn’t know what he had wanted to say, he was groping without any words, her startled face upturned to him, glimmering in the dark, the rich, soft lips parted, the shining eyes wide. He felt for her mouth partly out of sheer desperation, because he was at a loss for anything to say which would not be utterly fatuous. Her mouth quivered, made to maintain its startled quiescence, and then could not. She fastened upon him insatiably, clinging and trembling.
Somewhere not very far distant, upon the path, a stone rolled and a foot stumbled. A voice, heavy and still like valley air, said loudly: ‘Olimpia!’
She pulled herself out of Edward’s arms. Her face was quite calm. She shook her head, forbidding him to accompany her, but she made no secret of his presence, for as she walked firmly towards her husband she called back: ‘Good night!’ over her shoulder in deliberate English.
Edward stood where she had left him. He strained his ears to catch the tone of the encounter, ready to spring to her rescue at the first hint of a threat.
The deep voice, inexpressibly weary and bitter, said with the faintest note of surprise: ‘An Englishman this time?’ copying her firm pronunciation. ‘Well, why not? I have been cuckolded in every other major language.’ It was, in its way, a blow, but it was not the voice of a man immediately dangerous.
They were gone. For an instant, when they reached the light from the windows of the dining-room, he saw them as two black shapes silhouetted on the yellow, walking apart, scrupulously drawn back from touching each other. Their careful movements infected him with a totally unexpected frenzy of pain.
Then they vanished, and he was alone. Far up the scree the torches of the police were threading a zigzag way downward, like arrested lightning flowing painfully towards the earth.
Edward watched the police thread their way through the rocks towards the rifugio, which was still blazing with lights. They had not the knowledge he had just acquired, nor his urgent reasons for wanting the case cleared up at all costs. For the only possible way to extricate Olimpia Montesanto from her unbearable situation was to prove her husband a murderer, and wrest her away from him once and for all, or prove him innocent, and set her mind at rest.
He stood looking back towards the lighted windows for a few minutes after the policemen had passed by, and then he swung round suddenly, and began to stride rapidly up through the rocks towards the base of the zigzag path which climbed the scree.
The sky had cleared, and stars, very small and pinched, pricked the dark blue expanse of sky with pinpoints of light. The rifugio was only a tiny lamp below him now, shining upon a short, lambent, pallid coil of road. Suddenly he saw himself for the incredible fool he was, charging romantically up a mountain at eleven o’clock at night to find some evidence which would put a man, hitherto unknown to him even by name, in goal, and set his wife free – free for what? Free to accept Edward Stanier’s protection and admiration? He was appalled by the unexpectedness of the vision.
The rocks soared about him quite suddenly, a sort of closing in of the arms of the mountain round his strenuously bent shoulders. The cliffs were awesome in the night, and the silence was withering.
The first glimmering snowfield fell away on his left, within the arena of rocks. He was glad that his climbing boots were Italian, and almost certainly of the same pattern as many which had passed this way already, probably including some of those worn by the policemen. He must not cut up the marked area of snow too crudely, but if he took care his tracks would pass among the rest.
It had not occurred to him until then that someone might have been left on guard there, and he halted for a moment in his reckless slide down the snow, in consternation at the possibility. But no, on second thoughts it was unlikely enough. The night was already very cold; before morning there would be several degrees of frost up here; and who was likely to invade the mountain at night, in any case?
The place was not so hard to find. There it was, the shape of a man roughly marked out on the dimpled surface and a flutter of coloured cloth above.
Stepping lightly and steadily, to leave no deeper indentations than he need, he went inch by inch over the ground where the body had lain.
One of the stones placed by Johann’s party heeled away silently. He righted it, playing his torch closely into the hollow; and in the thin beam of light he saw something black in the crumbling whiteness within.
He pulled out a soft, narrow leather strap, a bit of black kid about eight inches long, with two small steel half-hoops sewn into a loop in one end of it. He did not know what he had expected; it meant nothing to him now that he had it. Just a strip of kid, with a few frayed threads of cotton where it had been sewn to something else. And yet there was something about it that made his fingertips tingle as he held it.
The leather was fresh, supple and brightly black, and his cold hands could detect in it none of the internal stiffness of damp. It could not have kept this condition for so much as a single day in the hollow of snow. Either one of Johann’s party had shed the thing when they lifted the body or else it had been dropped by someone shortly before Leoni was shot. So shortly, thought Edward, shivering in the thin, frosty wind, that he could hardly be anyone else but the murderer.
The place was neither on nor near any path; he had had to swing inward a long way from the track to reach it. He could hardly believe that some other, some innocent person had chosen exactly the same spot to linger in, on the same day. No, what he had in his hand belonged to one of the climbing party who had moved the body, or to the murderer.
He found nothing else, though he hunted doggedly for ten minutes more about the disturbed area of snow. He was shivering violently with the cold, and it was growing very late. He pushed the strap into his pocket, for more exact examination later, and began the laborious climb back to the col.
It was past midnight when he crept quietly through the town, but the lights were still on in the hall and the office, and the doors still unfastened.
He got himself to bed and lay for a long time sleepless, trembling and trying to get warm.
Tomorrow he must somehow contrive to get a word with Olimpia alone, and show her the strap. If she could connect it with her husband, there would be something, at least, on which the police could take action.
When Edward came downstairs next morning, the dining-room curtains were still closely drawn, so he went out and strolled back and forth on the green verge of the road, where he could keep an eye upon the stairs ev
ery time he passed the door. The first sunlight, salmon pink, flushed the upper cliffs of the Langkofel. It was going to be a beautiful day.
Professor Lacey came out with the rest, hitched his shapeless hat, decorated with a frayed end of nylon rope, forward over his mahogany brow, and sniffed appreciatively at the glittering air. Then he went back to muster his party, and presently they emerged in a tight little organised knot of British efficiency, and made purposefully for the dining-room, which was now open.
They called a greeting to Edward as they approached the doorway, and lingered as though they expected him to join them at once; but he did not go in until he had seen Olimpia come down the stairs and enter the dining-room, her husband close at her elbow, his hand touching her arm. No luck there! She passed in through the little anteroom as though she had not seen Edward standing in the sunlight beside the road; but he felt in his heart that she had, that she was deeply aware of him, and would have come to him if she could have shaken off that forbidding hand.
At least from his place at the corner table he could watch her across the room. While he fended off the Professor’s efforts to inveigle him into their plans for the day’s climb, he was covertly studying the slender, erect figure, the long brown hands and the swinging honey-coloured hair. She was in knickerbockers and a white shirt this morning, her hooded windjacket hanging on the arm of her chair. So they were going out, and on an active expedition, too.
The thought terrified him. How could he let her go off into the desolate lunar craters of disintegrating rock about these mountains, alone, with a wretched unbalanced creature who had probably killed once out of his insane jealousy, and might do so again? He could not bear to think of the miles and miles of faint, bewildering greys and greens and pinks of stone and scree, unpopulated, deceptive, silent, where a body could lie for weeks and weeks undiscovered since only colour and movement together ever served to call attention even to the living.
The Professor was nudging him, urging something, he didn’t know what, he hadn’t been listening. Distrait, he parried at a venture:
‘Perhaps we shan’t be allowed to go off the premises. I mean – the police—’
‘My dear fellow! Approximately one hundred and eighty people, most of them with only the flimsiest acquaintance with the Lion! How can they all be kept here? No, we can all go where we like, as long as they’re reasonably sure we’re coming back again. You’d much better come with us.’
Edward fought them off with much more decision than he could ever have shown for his own sake. His eyes were on the silent couple across the room, the girl with her warm bronze skin exquisite against the white silk of her shirt, and her eyes cast down desultorily upon the plate she had hardly touched.
He wondered that the tension between himself and her was not as perceptible to everyone in the room as it was to him. She kept her eyes resolutely lowered because if she raised them it would be to fix their wide, golden, fearful appeal upon him, and that look would be one Tonino would read instantly, and translate into something shameful.
Edward had to let them pass through the doorway before he dared excuse himself hurriedly and follow. They were going towards the stairs again. He saw Olimpia check suddenly, heard her say something about stamps, drawing her arm from Tonino’s grasp with an easy and natural recoil towards the little shop; but instead of going up the staircase without her, he came back at her heels, stood by her at the counter, still touching her remindingly with the ends of long, inexorable fingers. He was not going to let her out of his sight, that was plain. ‘Neither will I!’ said Edward grimly to himself. ‘Not until I can get her safely away from you!’
He met her eyes full for an instant, light yellow flames of fear in the mask-like calm of her lovely face, and flashed back at her, as convincingly as he could when the greater part of himself was a molten panic of infatuation and bewilderment, his service and reassurance.
He watched them move off across the road, and take a thinly trodden path diagonally over the open meadow, heading straight for the cliffs of the Sella, which loomed immense against the washed blue sky, palest pink above, shadowy russet and bluish grey below. As soon as he was sure of their direction he went back into the equipment room, where the English party were just girding themselves with the most casual set of ropes and kletterschuhe he had ever seen.
‘Is there a quick way up into the Sella plateau this side? There’s a path that makes off directly into the cliffs just opposite here. I wondered about taking that. It must take hours off the Val Lasties route if it’s practicable.’
‘Oh yes, much the most direct way up.’ Professor Lacey knotted a pair of dingy tennis shoes at his belt, and looked round with mildly quickening interest. ‘Just across the meadows here – the path’s liable to vanish, but keep more or less on the contour, and scout along the cliff there, and you can’t miss it. Takes you up to Piz Selva in a few hours. Interesting route, too!’
‘Is it very difficult?’
‘Hardly a scramble. Where it gets rather steep and exposed there are wire ropes fixed and some hand-holds.’
‘Only you have to watch out for the ropes in places,’ supplemented Mrs Palgrave cheerfully. ‘Some of them aren’t too safe. There’s a lot of weathering on those faces.’
Edward withdrew with somewhat nervous thanks, and went out to the vast green undulation of meadow again. The two dwindling figures were walking steadily along the invisible track, some distance away now, their faces towards the mountain, but the space between was so open that he could not follow them without becoming as conspicuous as a sore finger against the empty sweep of grass.
After a few irresolute moments he set off uphill by the road, cutting the corners of the boggy grass, towards the crest of the pass. He had not thought what he could do. The first thing was to be close to her, and feel the desperate valour her eyes had given him filling his mild heart with fury and resolution.
He lost sight of them from time to time from the undulations of the cliff-face, which leaped out of the meadow almost as cleanly as a wall, with only here and there a few fallen boulders to soften its fabulous outlines. He dared not go many yards from the shelter of the rock, for fear of becoming visible to the two who were gradually converging with him across the meadow.
He slowed down, edging yard by yard along, and waiting for the first sounds of their nearness. They were not speaking at all. Presently he could hear their steps in the grass; and for a moment, before they vanished into the rock, he saw Olimpia’s face clearly, intent, aware, and very still, the eyes flaring unfocused, as though all her powers were concentrated on listening. Listening, he thought, for him.
When their leisurely, deliberate movements no longer sent him any echoes, he ventured along the cliff perhaps twenty yards more, and came upon the gully, doubling steeply backward into the rock mass. It was narrow enough to be easily missed unless one looked back at the right angle, complicated with masses of fallen stones for a while, but clear of scree, and he could move silently and fairly quickly up it, for there was plenty of cover.
From rock to rock and corner to corner he pulled strenuously upwards until he could hear them moving ahead of him and catch an occasional glimpse of them as they bent their backs in the long, easy, untiring stride of practised mountaineers.
Once they halted, and sat down where there was an open window on the pass, to smoke their first cigarette; but as soon as the ends were trodden out against the stones they were off again. He stayed in close attendance on them, dangerously close, wherever there was cover, but sometimes he had to fall back as much as a hundred yards to remain hidden, and then his fear began to beat upward in his throat urgently, tugging him onward towards her for dear life, her life, which had become so crazily dear to him.
They were well up now, and coming to some of the more exposed places, where the path, if it could be called a path, crawled outward to the exterior faces of the group.
At any other time he would have been gravely discomfited by
the plucking of the air, and the almost sheer drop of several hundred feet on his right hand; now he was too furiously intent to notice his own uneasy situation. Compared with the two people he was shadowing, he was an abject amateur. To them this was indeed an easy scramble, and nothing more. Edward watched Olimpia’s movements whenever the chance offered, envious of her ease and precision. He knew how her mind leaned back to him in its anxiety, and yet her body seemed as relaxed and competent as a cat’s.
Her husband went before her, leaning back to give her a hand occasionally where the reach was long and difficult. Now the route had tacked, and they were crossing Edward’s position on a higher level. He clung flattened against the rock, listening intently as the methodical, measured movements of their feet were stepped out above his head.
For the first time within Edward’s hearing, Tonino had spoken to her. Her high, clear voice, curiously flattened and wary, said something mildly in return; it sounded like an obedient agreement to whatever he had said. Then a foot slid suddenly along the rock, a protesting sound; there were two cries so simultaneous that they might have been only the two dominant tones of a dreadful natural disharmony. Then a shadow flung outward on the air above Edward’s head like a swooping bird, and something went by his cringing shoulders with a rushing sigh, turning, plying its arms vainly against the unsustaining wind, down, down, over the sheer edge of the cliff-face, plunging towards the meadows far below.
Crouched hard against his rock, frozen with horror, he saw something else fall with it, something tiny and thin and between black and bright, that rang on the edge of the fall with a metallic note, and bounced outward from his sight to vanish after Tonino Montesanto’s body.
His senses, recoiling in self-defence, slammed a door upon reality and left him hanging there blind and deaf for a moment, and then he tore himself out of his paralysis to hear the thin, terrifying sound of Olimpia screaming. He forgot the nine hundred feet of vertigo below him, and the thirty-seven years of physical mediocrity behind him, and clawed his way up to her with heroic haste. She was spread out against the rock, her face pressed into her shoulder, wailing like a crazy child. Not far above her right hand he could see the place where the iron staple was newly broken out of the rock.
Murder in Midsummer Page 22
