by Ellis Peters
Trevor’s most urgent need of a telephone line was almost invariably connected with money. She wondered if Laurence had been right in saying that Trevor ‘could use a little margin at the moment’. Had he really been hoping for a large windfall from Antonia to tide him over a risky patch? It was not impossible. Once she had heard Antonia scolding him, in a manner almost maternal, for being an incorrigible gambler, and it had seemed to her a strange accusation to make against one who guarded the affairs of his client so scrupulously. But apparently he was less orthodox in handling his own. There was, after all, something of the natural adventurer about him, and he had flirted with danger in every other field. Both his marriages, for instance, doomed from the start but dazzling while they lasted, both contracted with cometlike figures from the most hectic circles of the entertainment world. His three race horses had lost plenty for him, too, as well as bringing him in the occasional big win. No, he hadn’t hoarded his own assets as he had Antonia’s.
‘Where are the others?’ she asked, pouring coffee.
‘Randall’s with Mrs Quayne.’ He did not look round, but she saw the lines of his mobile mouth tighten wryly. ‘Someone had to tell her about the boy, and – if you’ll forgive the observation – we could hardly ask you to do the womanly office, could we? In any case, it was a certainty Randall would be wanted as soon as she heard the worst. She’ll be under sedatives again by now, nothing else for it. I don’t suppose we shall see her today.’
‘She’ll want to see him,’ said Susan, staring into her cup. At the thought of the meeting between mother and son she shivered. ‘And I don’t see how they can refuse.’
‘Poor devil!’ said Trevor, and it was by no means clear which of the two he meant.
‘Where’s Neil? And Mr McHugh?’
‘I don’t know. Gone before I got up, apparently. Neil may be through in the kitchen. The undertaker came a little while ago. We don’t know how long we may be here, they’ll have to coffin him, even if we can’t bury him – Oh, God, I’m sorry, Susan!’ he said, aghast. ‘I could have spared you that over the breakfast table. This business has played hell with my wits.’
‘That’s all right. It has with all of us. After the fact it would be a bit phony to object to the wording, wouldn’t it?’
‘And McHugh – I don’t know, he must be out somewhere. I’ve no doubt he came down early and ate a hearty breakfast. He’s probably borrowed some boots and skis by now, and is out on the slopes with the kids. He’s got to do something with his energy.’
He came back to the table, and stood turning the pages of his magazine. ‘Did you see this? I bought it at Schwechat just before we took off, but I never opened it until this morning. There’s an obituary. Done in a hurry, but it’s good. The pictures must be from the Opera House files, they never came to me for them. Some very fine ones, too.’ He lingered over them sombrely, and over the rim of her cup she studied them with him, upside down. The costumes made them all identifiable. There was one of Antonia as Astrofiammante, marvellously royal and sinister, with a coronal of stars, and one, inevitably, as the Marschallin in her third-act splendour, with a waist Susan could have spanned in her two hands, and breasts half-uncovered, and her own hair dressed in a glittering jewelled tower on her head.
‘Would you believe,’ said Trevor, ‘that she was fifty-six when that was taken? Do you know how old Marie Therese was supposed to be? Thirty. And she played that role when she was twenty-two, and she played it when she was sixty, and every time magnificently. There was never another like her, and now there never will be.’
The hand that held open the magazine moved gently upon the page, smoothing it with an involuntary gesture of tenderness, as though he touched the silken whiteness of the exposed breast. His hands were imaginative and expressive while his face was elderly and sceptical, but it was the hands she believed. He must always have been in love with Antonia, ever since he came to her twenty years ago. He in his late thirties, with two discarded wives and two worn-out marriages behind him, and she in her middle fifties, and yet she could take him by the heart like that, and he was hers irrecoverably, hers for ever. Not just until death parted them, either, but until death put an end to him.
And there in the picture with the Princess von Werdenberg was her almost equally famous Baron Ochs von Lerchenau, just blustering out his hopeless case to the last before her imperious eyes, at once patrician and boorish, shrewd and gullible, graceless and yet with a disarming twinkle in his eye. Richard in well-padded waistcoats – for he had never had the bulk for Baron Ochs, though he had every other felicity – carried even his humiliating defeat and the loss of his Sophie with a flash of style no other bass-baritone would ever match. Trevor’s eyes rested on him for a long time, and sombrely. Was it possible to be jealous, painfully, murderously jealous, of an old man who had never even asserted his preeminence with her in her lifetime, nor exulted in the proof of it after she was dead?
And where did Dr Randall stand? He was a very different person from Trevor; he had a wife and a grown-up family, and his life had been as orderly and consistent as Trevor’s had been flamboyant and changeable. And yet if he came in now he would bristle like a terrier raising his hackles at scent of an enemy, and his sharp eyes under their beetling brows would flash from the woman in the magazine to the caressing hand and the veiled glance that lingered upon her, and his mouth would compress its folded lines into obstinate hostility. They were men mad north-north-west only, but Antonia was the magnetic force that disorientated them from their pole. Maybe Trevor was right. There would be no more women like that, never again; the modern world with its monstrous, cumulative complexity could no longer find a place for such prodigies of personality. Look how much room they took up, crowding into the wings all these cramped creatures who should have been people in their own right.
‘And she turned her back on the lot of us,’ said Trevor, in a light, considering voice, without apparent bitterness. ‘All except Richard.’
Richard had paid heavily for that. Susan drank her coffee, and tried to eat, but every morsel stuck in her throat. The whole appalling busines stuck in her throat.
She caught a glimpse of McHugh when she left the dining room. He passed through the hall from the outer door in a gust of frosty air, glowing with vigour and pleasure, and she saw that Trevor had been right. He had already managed to borrow ski trousers and boots from somewhere, and he left dykes of powdery snow outlining his footmarks on the scrubbed boards. The great sweater must have been borrowed, too. He was a man who knew how to acquire what he wanted, wherever he might find himself. She saw him push open the door of the bar and stride in, and presently heard a woman’s voice raised between laughter and scolding. That was neither Frau Mehlert nor Liesl; a higher-pitched voice than theirs, with an indefinable impudence about it. McHugh answered in German which was probably execrable and far from extensive, but served his purpose very well, and was used with his invariable brazen confidence.
He came out again as she was passing, and grinned at her amiably, as though they were meeting after a perfectly normal night, untouched by death or crime.
‘Hullo, how do you feel this morning? You ought to come out and get some fresh air, do you good. Do you ski? But even if you don’t, now’s your chance to learn.’
An extraordinary young man, come to think of it, energetic, able, animal; last night, as far as he was concerned, was as dead as Richard.
‘I’ve got no kit,’ she said automatically, taking the easiest way of escape.
‘Liesl would lend you hers, if you asked her. She’s bigger than you, but not so very much, you’d get by in her things. The boots might be a problem, though.’
‘Thanks,’ said Susan, ‘but I won’t bother her. I see you managed all right.’
‘These?’ He laughed, stamping the handsome boots lightly on the scrubbed floor, and smoothing the close black cloth of the trousers. ‘I’m lucky. I turned out to be just about the same size as Frau Agathe’s husband.
And he isn’t going to want his things until the road’s open again – he’s a policeman, stationed down in Bad Schwandegg, and the big fall caught him down there, so he can’t get home. Seems it happens to somebody almost every year.’
‘You’re using his skis, too?’ She had always thought that skis were rather personal things, treasured and cared for so fastidiously that lending them was rather like confiding your favourite dog to the care of a stranger. Evidently Frau Agathe was not afraid to make free with her husband’s possessions. But then, McHugh was the sort of man who would extract them from her almost before she knew she was being manipulated.
The girl came out of the bar with her plastic pail of hot water, and smiled at them a bright, comprehensive smile which nevertheless contrived to concentrate its brilliance more particularly upon McHugh. She was very fair and extremely pretty, with a great plait of yellow hair coiled up on top of her head. She might have been about twenty-eight years old, and had the poise of all mountain women, and a magnificent, erect walk that made her look taller than in fact she was. Even at walking, thought Susan, let alone skiing, I couldn’t compete.
Frau Agathe pointed to the snowy prints left melting along the hall, and laughed, and shook an admonitory finger at the culprit. It was early in the day to spoil her clean floors, and he could very easily have stamped off the powdery snow before he came into the house. He hung his head and made a guilty face, and then, with the insolence which might have been expected of him, caught her raised hand by the wrist, and boxed his own ears with it. The understanding between them was good; the girl opened her fingers and lent him her palm for the purpose with perfect complacency. Who but McHugh could do a thing like that and get away with it?
‘I’d borrow her things for you,’ he said, as Agathe walked smiling away into the kitchen, ‘but she’ll be wanting them herself when she’s finished here. She promised to show me the best slopes. Why don’t you ask Liesl?’
‘I shouldn’t be any good. And I was looking for Neil, actually. I want to talk to him.’
‘Oh, well, see you at lunch, then.’ And off he went and from the doorway she watched him slide his feet into the grips of the policeman’s skis, and clip the springs into the grooves of his boot heels. He launched himself inexpertly but unconcernedly, as though his lack of experience was more than compensated for by his excellent physical coordination and boundless self-confidence.
When he was gone she set out purposefully to look for Neil, and found him in the terrace room where Richard’s body had been discovered. He had buried himself at a table in the far corner, as though he must have the wall at his back and the whole room spread before him in order to fend off the recollections which pressed in upon him. He had papers spread over the table in front of him, and was poring over them with his face gripped between his hands. She had never seen him look so drawn and grey. McHugh might be immune from doubt or responsibility, but very certainly Neil Everard was not.
She closed the door, and he looked up sharply from his reading. ‘Oh, Susan, I was wondering about you.’ His eyes went over her in one quick, considerate glance. ‘You didn’t sleep,’ he said with resigned reproach.
‘No, I couldn’t. I don’t think you did much better yourself.’ She looked down at the table, and recognised her own handwriting on one of the scattered sheets. ‘Have you – seen him this morning? Have they taken him any food?’
He was stung by that, perhaps because of his weariness betrayed into an irritability unusual in him. ‘Of course they have,’ he said stiffly. ‘What do you think I am? Franz took up his breakfast to him. I’ve been up myself, too, and offered him a bath—’
‘Under guard, of course! And he told you to go to hell.’
‘He did not. He accepted the chance when it was offered, like a sensible chap.’
Yes, she thought, from you I suppose he might. He’s got nothing personal against you.
‘Are those the statements we wrote yesterday – this morning? I wanted to ask you about them. I felt we ought to go on considering everything.’
‘So did I,’ he said, and sighed, averting his eyes. ‘Even if there isn’t much doubt. There isn’t, you know, Susan. No good blinking it.’
‘All the same,’ she said, ‘I’d like to look at them.’
‘Of course!’ He slid a cushion along the fixed bench by the wall to raise the seat a little for her, and they sat shoulder to shoulder over the sheets of note-paper, tracing the movements of seven people on Christmas Eve.
‘No need to tell you about your own movements. Straight from the dining room to the bar after Laurence. You suggested a walk, he went upstairs for his coat, you waited for him below. In the hall you met McHugh coming out from this room – that’s about twenty-five past nine to half-past. Laurence came in here and stood talking to Richard for a few moments, then he rejoined you, and the two of you were out until nearly midnight, when you came back and saw Richard still sitting here. Laurence tells much the same story. Naturally he swears he put nothing in Richard’s glass, but it’s clear he did have the opportunity. Actually in these written statements neither of you went into details about exactly where he stood, how soon Richard looked up, and so on. I suppose it wouldn’t occur to you to try to sort out all that until the question was raised.
‘Now for me. I went up to my room – in a bit of a huff, I may as well admit – after Mrs Quayne lost her head and went for me. I put away the will safely, and simmered down, and went and had a long, leisurely bath. But it was too early to go to bed. I came down into the bar round about ten, I suppose. The doctor was just going up to bed, we met on the stairs; and according to him he did go to bed, and was there until Laurence woke him just after midnight. I stayed in the bar talking to some of the locals, and had two drinks, and packed up about eleven, when everyone went off to get ready for church.’
‘Was McHugh in the bar then?’ asked Susan.
‘Yes, all the time I was there, and looked as if he had been all the evening. He drinks as well as he does everything else, and it takes as little out of him. He was shooting a very nice line with that pretty girl who helps here – Frau Klostermann.’
‘He still is, between ski runs.’
‘Then I went to bed, and that’s all about me. McHugh himself says he was in the bar all the evening after dinner – with allowance for one trip out to the yard, and one in here with the brandy to Richard. He left the door wide open, as he seems to have found it – it was closed when I came down, by the way, you’ll see presently who closed it. As McHugh says, he walked in here with both hands occupied, and it seems pretty certain he really was in the bar all the evening from then on. Not that he could possibly have any motive for wanting Richard out of the way, anyhow.’
Susan read and said nothing, her brows drawn together in an intent frown.
‘Three more to go. And they were all in the dining room together, arguing hammer and tongs, until after half-past nine, when you and Laurence went out. Mrs Quayne shot her last bolt about twenty to ten, and flounced out. According to her she went up to bed and stayed there, and her light was out by ten. She says she was asleep when the alarm was given. None of that time can be vouched for absolutely, since she was alone. But so far nobody has mentioned seeing her around, either. She could have come down without being seen. She could have come into this room to have it out with Richard. She’d made it pretty plain she thought somebody ought to, and as I’d refused—Well, there it is.
‘Then Randall. He isn’t a man for bars. After Miranda left he says Mason came through and fetched some beer, and they sat and drank it in the dining room. Just before ten he announced his intention of going to bed, and they put out the lights in the dining room and walked through the hall together. Through the door of this room, which was still open, they saw Richard sitting here writing. Randall stopped to call good night to him, Mason went on into the bar. He didn’t look back, so he didn’t see whether Randall went into the room or not. Randall says he didn’t, but he very well co
uld have done. What’s evident by his own account is that when he came away he closed the door. As far as we know it remained closed the rest of the evening.’
‘Why didn’t Laurence?’ asked Susan abruptly.
‘Mmmm?’ He looked up at her, momentarily bewildered.
‘Why didn’t Laurence close the door? If he’d put morphine in Richard’s drink, he wouldn’t want him left in full view of anybody who passed, would he? Suppose he fell out of his chair when the coma came on? Suppose someone went by and saw him sprawled on the table? There was every chance of an alarm being given far too soon, and then the doctor would have been called to treat him, and most probably he would have been saved. A murderer would have shut the door to keep him quietly out of sight until it was too late. Why didn’t Laurence?’
‘Isn’t that presupposing that murderers make no mistakes? They probably make more than the rest of us – more than they themselves would in their everyday occupations. You were there waiting for him. Maybe it would have been too pointed to close a door he’d found standing wide open. Maybe he just didn’t think of it until later. He wouldn’t be at his coolest, would he?’
‘No, maybe not. Though it took some nerve, wouldn’t you say, to go away and walk about the village with me until midnight, and chance the will being finished and signed before the poison took effect, or somebody finding Richard too soon?’
‘Well, he could hardly snatch it away while Richard was alive, could he? He had to do some gambling, one way or another. And by going out with you he hoped to provide himself with an alibi for the whole time, so that provided the will wasn’t signed and valid it wouldn’t mattter to him whether it was found or not. He had to take the risk that Richard might live to sign it. But that may well have seemed a lesser risk than staying close to the scene of the crime, or coming back to it too soon.’
