by Ellis Peters
‘Auf dem Berge da wehet der Wind,
Da wiegt Maria ihr Kind.
Sie wiegt ihn mit ihrer schneeweisen Hand
Sie hat dazu kein Wiegenband—’
Susan took up the Virgin’s part, very softly, as they walked, and back came Laurence’s hesitant baritone, gruff with shyness, answering for Joseph.
‘Feel better now?’
‘Much better!’ But he was going to hate going back to the Horse in the Meadows.
They walked to the far end of the village, past the last lighted window, and came to where the track ended in a great waste of snow. The level of the ground declined, but tortuously, among faces of rock now buried and smoothed in snow, great twisted planes of lambent whiteness. Far away below, where all shapes were lost in darkness, they caught glimpses of the lights of the lower world, where Bad Schwandegg, hardly bigger than its lofty twin, squatted in its sheltered valley. They could see, but could not communicate. Between their eyrie and the world flowed the great snow ocean. They drew close together and were very still, staring across the impassable barrier.
‘You’re not cold?’ asked Laurence.
‘No, thanks, I’m fine. Let’s go and look in the church, shall we?’
All the trodden paths from all the village converged upon the church; at midnight everyone would be there, except the littlest children and the grandparents who must stay at home to mind them. They approached the open gate arm in arm, slipping and recovering in the rutted track. The building stood on an unbelievably small plot of ground, and reared up tall as the trees, almost more steeple than church. The high white walls splayed outward at the foot into thick, short buttresses, and the two tiers of windows were small and square, sunk deep into the masonry like shot windows in a fortress. The roof was very high and steep, and had already shed the day’s snow in two lateral waves. Only a thin silver glitter of frost filmed over its crimson tiles. Within, the walls were as white as without, and almost as bare of native ornament, but they were hung now with evergreens and stuck with candles, and the warmth and fragrance of the fir branches and the cones made the air heady and drunken. So short was the nave that when they entered the doorway it seemed they could stretch out their hands and touch the crucifix on the spiky little baroque altar. Someone in this very village must have carved that wooden Christ, maybe nearly three centuries ago; it had the air of a native, the rooted look, the clarity and the sturdiness. It was also beautiful, with the directness of the unself-conscious. The market for tourist carvings even now did not reach as far as Oberschwandegg. They carved for themselves here, and never stopped to wonder if their methods would tickle anyone else’s fancy.
The crib near the door was old, too, perhaps older than the altar, a little wooden stage set of a stable, a manger cradle, and small painted figures of men and angels and animals, worn glossy with long years of handling, and thickened by many renewed coats of paint. They were peasant figures, the Virgin as stout and bucolic as the shepherds, the Child miraculously free from the amorphous prettiness of later confections. A little girl, swathed to the eyes in a big shawl, had lifted the ox and the lamb out of the crib, and was nursing and petting them in her arms.
It was warm in the church. Susan and Laurence sat down in a retired corner at the back, and stayed there for a long time in silence, curiously content. When at last they rose and took the road back to the inn it was nearly midnight, and the stir of excitement was quivering through the village like a fresh wind. They met whole families marching through the snow with lanterns, and returned their greetings gladly. The little band, still invisible in some enclosed yard, was playing ‘Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen’.
‘Listen!’ said Susan, shutting her fingers on his arm. ‘A horn!’
He halted with her, smiling, to follow the solemn, lovely tune to its noble close. The horn made a beautiful, round, resonant sound in the frosty stillness.
‘The last one. They’ll stop now, and go to church.’ And as he had foretold, silence came after, and along the track they saw the muffled figures with their instruments hurrying out of a low wooden gateway and making for the church. ‘Oh, God, I wish we needn’t go in,’ said Laurence abruptly. ‘But I suppose somebody’d miss us and start a panic. And you must be tired.’
‘They’ll all have gone to bed,’ said Susan comfortingly. ‘And tomorrow’s Christmas Day. Peace on earth to men of goodwill!’
‘Between the lot of us we seem to be horribly short on goodwill,’ said Laurence bitterly, ‘so maybe we can’t expect much peace.’
At the yard gate they met Herr and Frau Mehlert and Liesl in their festival clothes, and wished them a Merry Christmas. The side door of the house, it seemed, was fastened, but the front door was still open for them. They rounded the corner with slowing steps, reluctant to go in, and the flood of light from the terrace room fell obliquely across their path and made them look up sharply.
‘There’s one who hasn’t gone to bed,’ said Laurence, ‘though it looks as if he’s fallen asleep.’
Richard was still sitting at his table, his forearms spread on either side of the empty cognac glass, his chin sunk on his breast. Old men easily nod off in comfortable chairs, and the little room was overheated, if anything, in spite of having the appearance of an aquarium tank.
‘Cognac on top of two litres of pretty good beer,’ said Laurence, shaking his head. ‘Maybe I’d better see him up to bed.’
‘If the family had come out by this way they’d have noticed him and wakened him,’ said Susan, kicking off clods of snow before mounting the steps. ‘If the door of that room’s closed they’d never see from the hall that the light was still on. This is a land where doors really fit.’
She stepped into darkness and warmth and the heavy scent of fir branches and wax candles, and halted for a moment, groping for the light switch. Laurence closed the outer door behind them, and felt for it, too, over her shoulder. Her warmth touched his breast. He felt her breath on his cheek.
It was not designed, it happened as naturally as the contact of their bodies in the dark. His arm went round her gently, his lips touched her cheek and fumbled their way inexpertly but delicately to her mouth. She neither withdrew from his kiss nor returned it; and though her groping fingers had found the switch, she did not put on the light. For a long moment they hung still, then he drew back rather clumsily, as though a sudden recoil into timidity had made him repent his act.
When she snapped on the light her face was just as he had feared it would be, placid and undisturbed, the straight stare of her dark eyes disconcerting him out of all reason. He was scarlet to the ears. One would think, said Susan to herself, that I was the one who’d been taking liberties. He really is a bit of an ass.
‘You’re not angry, are you? I’m sorry, I’d no right to do that.’
‘No, I’m not angry.’ She took one light step towards him, put her arm calmly about his neck, and drew his head down to her, kissing him firmly on the mouth. ‘Are you?’ His helpless astonishment might almost be considered a provocation, she thought as she released him. ‘I’m going up to bed now,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Do you think you’ll need any help with Richard?’
Laurence shook his head, swallowed hard, but remained speechless.
‘Good night, then! Happy Christmas!’
She was halfway up the stairs before he managed to get out a stunned and breathless: ‘Good night!’
In a daze he opened the door of the terrace room, and stepped into the glimmer of snowlight and lamplight within. The old man at the table in the window did not move. Laurence crossed the room to him very quietly, unwilling to disturb him too roughly. There was something about the midnight silence of the house that made him tread softly and hold his breath. The burning flush was still on his cheeks as he bent over Richard, and more than half his mind was still with Susan Conroy when he laid his hand gently on the old man’s thin shoulder.
‘Mr Hellier—’
Richard bowed forward from the delica
te touch, his weight collapsing slowly to the right as he fell. His forearm, sliding across the table, knocked over the empty liqueur glass and sent it rolling away towards the far edge. Laurence shot out his left hand instinctively to field it before it fell to the floor, and set it upright again with trembling fingers. His right arm was locked about the old man. He sank to his knees beside him, hoisting his weight back into the chair.
‘Mr Hellier, wake up—Richard—!’ His voice cracked absurdly, he heard the breath whistling between his lips. The old man’s arms rolled stiffly into his lap, his head lolled helplessly over the back of the chair. In the worn face, bluish and cold under the frosty night, the eyes stared half-open. No voice in this world, no touch of a living hand, was ever going to disturb Richard’s sleep again.
CHAPTER V
And who asked you to meddle, in the name of mischief?
Act 3
Laurence went up the stairs three at a time, and hammered at the doctor’s door. A startled voice, thick with sleep, demanded irritably what the devil was going on, but before the words had disentangled themselves Laurence was across the room and on his knees by the bed, shaking at a hunched shoulder, and panting into the doctor’s ear: ‘Come down, quickly! Something’s happened to Richard.’
‘What are you burbling about, boy?’ grunted the doctor. ‘He’s next door. If he wanted me he’d call me.’
‘He isn’t next door, he’s downstairs, and there’s something desperately wrong with him. I think he’s dead.’
‘Dead!’ The word brought Dr Randall out of bed in one leap. He reached for his dressing gown, pushing Laurence before him towards the door. ‘You’re probably tight or off your head, lad, but we’ll soon see. Where is he?’
‘In the little room opposite the bar, where he’s been most of the evening. I just came in. The light was still on – I thought he’d dropped off to sleep—’
‘He was all right about ten, I spoke to him then myself.’
‘Well, he isn’t now. I can’t wake him. I’m sure he isn’t breathing. When I touched him he fell over.’
The draught from the open window blew the door to on their heels with a slam. At the top of the stairs Neil stood knotting the cord of his dressing gown about him. ‘What on earth’s going on? Is something the matter?’
‘We don’t know yet,’ snapped the doctor, and plunged down the stairs without more words. Down they went on his heels, and behind them they heard other doors opening, other voices sleepily and irritably enquiring what all the noise was about. Soon they would all be trailing anxiously downstairs to see for themselves; none of them would consent to be left out of anything, even sudden death.
‘What’s happened?’ Neil was plucking at Laurence’s sleeve as they reached the hall. ‘Somebody ill? Who—?’ He saw the pool of light spilling through the open doorway, and the frail body collapsed into itself in the chair by the window. ‘Hellier! My God, what’s he done?’
The air was full of questions, upstairs and down, spoken and unspoken, and no one was answering them. The doctor swung a chair from the next table and sat down beside the old man’s body, clasped the thin wrist for a moment, and stiffened perceptibly at the feel of the chilling skin under his fingers.
‘Give me some more light, Neil, and get out of my way.’ He bent over the body, tilting the head gently back upon his arm, and the half-veiled eyes stared unmoving into the glare of the lamps. They waited, holding their breath, and the others, crowding in after them with anxious enquiries, saw the motionless face bathed in light, and fell silent in their turn. Susan was there, still fully dressed, Miranda wrapped in a brushed nylon housecoat, Trevor with his shock of grey hair on end, and a scarf tucked into the neck of his dressing gown. Last and largest, McHugh filled the doorway, yawning.
‘What’s going on here, for Pete’s sake?’
He saw Richard’s body, and his jaw dropped. He stood gaping in consternation, clutching at the back of a chair. No one spoke until the doctor lowered the heavy head gently, and pressed down the half-raised eyelids.
‘Dead?’ said Neil in a whisper.
‘Quite dead. Been dead round about half an hour, I should judge.’
‘But how? What was it, heart?’
‘Hypnotic poisoning,’ said the doctor succinctly. ‘Almost certainly morphine. Most probably taken in the brandy.’
The momentary hush was absolute, and closed on their hearts like iron. Then Trevor asked hoarsely: ‘But for God’s sake, why should he want to kill himself?’
‘We don’t know that he did,’ said the doctor in the direst of voices. ‘I said he died of hypnotic poisoning, probably morphine. I didn’t say he took it wilfully. If I’m right about the morphine, it doesn’t take too much thought to discover where it came from.’ He looked round at all the blanched faces, and selected Neil as the most detached and responsible person present. ‘Will you come up with me and see? I’d prefer to have a witness.’
‘Your drugs should be locked up,’ said Trevor bluntly.
‘My drugs were locked up. If someone has got hold of morphine from my bag – Richard or anyone else – it was not through any negligence, believe me.’ His voice was grim. He looked again at Neil.
‘Yes,’ said Neil, ‘you’re right. No one had better be alone for the time being. I don’t know if you’ve thought yet of implications, all of you, but if you don’t mind, I think it would be better if you all stay here together while we go upstairs.’
They stayed, silent and unmoving, hardly breathing. The doctor passed between them and climbed the stairs, Neil at his back.
‘Was your room locked during the day, while you weren’t in it?’ asked Neil in a low voice.
‘No, but my bag was in the wardrobe, and both bag and wardrobe were locked. Though I suppose all the wardrobes have similar keys.’
‘Do you always carry morphine?’
‘Not always. But one of my last visits was to a patient with cardiac asthma. I had some tablets in my bag for him, though in the end I didn’t use them, he was coming out of it very well.’
The unpainted wardrobe was still locked. But when the doctor turned the key and lifted out the black leather case, he saw at once that it had been slit open along the frame with a sharp knife. The cut was clean, even the edges of the silk lining unfrayed. He passed his hand through the slit, and found it large enough to let him feel his way carefully through the contents.
‘Well, is there something missing?’ asked Neil, moistening his lips.
The doctor unlocked the case, and went through it methodically, item by item. Neil put out a hand to help him, and he frowned it away warningly. ‘I shouldn’t. No need to complicate things.’
‘No,’ said Neil, paling, ‘you’re right.’ He stood for a moment staring at the array of tubes, bottles, and instruments. ‘But who could have done it?’
‘Any one of us. Even I myself, I suppose,’ said the doctor with a twisted smile, ‘if I intended to make that particular use of what I took out of here.’ He began to put back the things he had removed. ‘All right, that’s it. I had a tube of quarter-grain papaveretum tablets, ten of them. It’s a compound of the hydrochlorides of alkaloids of opium, largely morphine. They’re gone.’ He locked the case again, and then laughed mirthlessly at the useless precaution. ‘We’ll leave this here. The less any of the relevant items are touched, the better. One of us has got to explain to those people down there exactly what this implies. And in the circumstances, Neil, I think it had better be you.’
‘What difference does it make?’ said Neil. ‘We’re all in it, every one of us. All right, I’ll tell them. If they haven’t already worked it out for themselves.’
The company in the terrace room had hardly moved. Miranda was sitting on the edge of a chair, a handkerchief at her eyes; she knew what was due to death, even so inexplicable and ominous a death as this. The others were still standing in a close little huddle near to Richard’s body, and their eyes left it only to fix upon the doctor and Neil
as they entered the room.
‘A phial of tablets containing morphine has been taken from the doctor’s bag,’ said Neil in a flat voice. ‘It would appear that some of those tablets killed Richard. The bag was slit open to get them. You must all see how serious this is for every one of us. This death was certainly no accident—’
‘He could have done it himself,’ said Trevor, too strenuously for conviction.
‘He could, it’s a possibility. But there are others. Richard had just come into possession of a great deal of money. If he hasn’t left a will – I’m not his solicitor, so I can’t tell you whether he has or not – then five of us here stand to gain very substantially by his death, as you won’t have forgotten. Also, only about three hours ago some very indignant things were said about the injustice of his inheriting from Mrs Byrne. I’m not making insinuations, I’m just outlining facts, and we’d all better face them. You must understand that I shall have to give the police a full account of all that’s happened today, including the contents of Mrs Byrne’s will.’
‘Police!’ Something like a bark of laughter came out of Trevor’s lips. ‘Don’t be a fool! As far as we’re concerned the police don’t exist until the wind changes. You know as well as we do the village is completely cut off.’
There was a moment of appalled silence. Neil said at last in a shaken voice: ‘Believe it or not, I’d forgotten. It begins to look as if someone’s been counting on that. Well, that mustn’t be allowed to prevent investigation into Richard’s death. If the police can’t get to us and take the affair out of our hands, we shall have to take care of it ourselves, that’s all. Every one of us here must have relevant information. Every one of us will have to account for his movements tonight.’
