Gently Continental

by Alan Hunter

  Well, Gently says, having drunk his coffee, have you had statements from the waiters? Befagged Shelton coughs, says hastily, Not yet, though I’ve talked to them of course. And it happens again: he has an irresistible persuasion that high significance is resting here, and that the waiters, far from being mere routine, are really what the case is about. I thought I’d have them in next, he adds apologetically, I thought I’d wait till you were here too. Oh, just go ahead, Gently says, I shan’t have much to ask them myself. Which conjures up for Shelton a terrible picture of himself mishandling this very rich material while the great man watches and blows rings to his gallery of Walters and Sally Dicks. He says fiercely to Sally, Go and get hold of one of them. Which one sir? Sally asks. The nearest one, Shelton says, I’m not particular (trying to sound like a man who can make grist of anything). Sally goes and returns with Friml, surely the least promising of the quartet: a withered and resigned man of fifty who looks pathetic in baggy Lederhosen. Johann Friml? Yes, is me, sir. Take that chair, will you Friml? Friml sits with a curious caution, as though expecting his nobbly knees to creak. He has a narrow, grey, fleshless face with deep straight lines at each side of his mouth and small faded grey eyes and a pendulous nose and invisible lips. Friml would never have looked young and at fifty Friml looks very old. If there is sense in Friml, you begin to think, it would extend no further than to picking a loser. Shelton goes about him cannily, remembering the Wicked Uncle in the background. Name, age, profession, birthplace (pause); Where were you in the war, Friml? Friml peers at Shelton palely. In the war? That’s what I said. Friml shrugs wanly. I am in Vienna, I work in the cafés, oh, the shortages, the American bombers . . . Were you a party member? Friml is perplexed. A party, yes? Is it the union? No, Shelton says, not the union, the Nazi Party, were you a member? Friml gives a sort of choking chuckle and his eyes twinkle at Shelton: as though Shelton, in his British innocence, had tumbled on some incommunicable national joke. It makes Friml jolly in his misty way. He cannot share it, but he cannot resist it. He wags his head from side to side and his invisible mouth works and creases. Well, Shelton says, were you or weren’t you? I am a waiter only, Friml tries to explain. So? So, what use would they have for Johann Friml, who moreover has only one lung, and arthritic joints? Just answer the question, Shelton raps. Friml repeats his choking chuckle. No, no. No, no. This angry Englander must see it is funny. Shelton glares and does not see it, but he can get nothing more positive out of Friml. The more Shelton tries, the more Friml chuckles, till moisture trickles from his merry eyes. Well, answer this, Shelton thunders, you were in Vienna under the Nazis: did you know a certain Gauleiter Tichtel, a relative of your present employer? Gauleiter Tichtel? Friml wipes his eyes. Yes, once, certainly, he knew a Tichtel, a Walter Tichtel, that was his name, he worked as a soap-boiler in Salzburg. Walter Tichtel. It brings back memories. Friml remembers him quite plainly. He married a chambermaid called Herta Schnitzen and went to live at Klagenfurt . . . A Gauleiter Tichtel! Shelton bawls. Friml shakes his head: not this one, no. He was a soap-boiler, that is quite sure, and his wife was a Schnitzen from Wiener Neustadt . . . And there is much more about the Salzburg soap-boiler which now comes trippingly to Friml’s mind, so that if an entry: Tichtel, W. (soap-boiler), had been required for a National Biography, Friml, at this happy moment, could have supplied it extempore. Shelton stares venom at the waiter. By now he knows he’ll make nothing of Friml. The man is a fool, he is beyond interrogation, his mind has no straw with which to begin. Idiocy and wisdom alike are the foils of inquisition. Shelton draws breath. Never mind, he says, never mind about soap-boilers and chambermaids, let’s hear what you know about Wilbur Clooney and what you were up to on the night he died. And so they bumble and fumble through Friml’s statement of which the best part, after all, was probably his reminiscences of W. Tichtel.

  Rudi Dorfmann comes next and makes better carving for savage Shelton. Rudi, blushing and plump, in all things Fool Friml’s antithesis. Rudi is bright. He is Mrs Breske’s favourite, acknowledged to be more than a drudging servitor, is, in fact, an apprentice caterer from a good Hochstadt-bei-Zoom family. Mrs Breske is acquainted with that family and has been entrusted with Rudi’s education – in the catering line, though Frau Dorfmann has not excluded more general departments of knowledge. Rudi has a future. Rudi at last will be model hotelier. You may trace it already in his intelligence and his smiles and his comfortable build. Twenty years on Rudi will meet you at the door of a recommended hotel and his smile and embonpoint will assure you immediately that comfort and attention must be yours. He has the knack and instinct of hospitality. Only, just now he is a little shy with it. Just now he blushes and his brown eyes roll and his Cupid’s lips tremble and stammer. He wants to please you, wants to please Shelton, and above all, Herr Inspektor, but he is aware, and his blushes stem from it, that as yet he doesn’t quite know what will please. Sit down, Dorfmann, Shelton says. Rudi jams his tight trousers into a chair. He has a broad, moist face with a button nose and fine light brown hair that disarrays romantically. The hair is disarrayed at present and a lock lies limply across his forehead. He rolls his eyes at Sally Dicks who stares waspishly then turns to her pad. Shelton hurries through the preliminaries. Rudi is earnest in his replies. He speaks in hasty but good English and in a voice that sounds as though it broke but lately. Good, Shelton says, good, and stares at Rudi for some long seconds, at the end of which Rudi is very red and smiling all round the Aquarium. So where were you when it happened? Shelton says gruffly, his voice vibrant with disbelief. I, Rudi says, I, I, I am in bed, yes, I believe. How do you know that? Shelton says. I, I don’t know it, Rudi gasps. Then why do you say it? Shelton asks. I, I, Rudi says, it is just what I think. We don’t care what you think, Shelton says, we can do our own thinking, Dorfmann. What we want from you is the truth, and the truth we are going to have. Now start again. And in this way Shelton bullies and browbeats unhappy Rudi, whose only desire, did Shelton but know it, is to please Shelton in all things. But alas, Shelton cannot be pleased. Rudi is transparently an innocent. He knows nothing that can be of service to Shelton in the mystic progress of his wrath. He splutters and stammers and blushes and writhes and pummels his mind for minute details, for the telling trifle, the key to it all, the one phrase that will delight. No good. He fails utterly. His angry customer remains angry. A lonely spark, good for a minute, is all the light he can stumble upon. Shelton says, He drank plenty, didn’t he? – referring of course to X(Clooney). I, yes, it is so, Rudi gulps, he had an arrangement with Mrs Breske. An arrangement? Yes, it is arranged. How arranged? demands Shelton. I do not know, I, I, I am told of this, I do not know. Mrs Breske told you they had an arrangement? Naturally, yes, Mrs Breske. Something like he didn’t pay for his drinks? Yes, that is so, he does not pay for them. But you chalked them up to his room number? I, no, is not required. But you chalked them up? Rudi shakes his head. He sort of drank on the house? Rudi nods. Well, well, Shelton says, glancing at Gently, and then he does it, he actually smiles, and Rudi blushes in sheer relief at this tiny frank of his honest endeavour. From the molten slag-heaps of Shelton’s ire he has picked a rose, just one.

  So his drinks were free, Shelton says to Gently, after Rudi has blushed his way out of the Aquarium, well, that’s an arrangement I’d like to have somewhere with a cellar as good as Edith Breske’s. It may have been a genuine arrangement, Gently says, with Clooney staying here en pension. She’d know within a little what his drink bill would come to so she could add a margin and make a flat charge. Did you ever hear of it being done? Shelton inquires. I don’t stop much in Hotel Continentals, Gently says, but I dare say if we question Mrs Breske she will have this explanation ready for us. Shelton gives Gently a look. I’d say it’s more like he’s one of the family, he says. The harder you look at this so-called Clooney the less he adds up to being a guest. Gently nods, says, Yes, a strange guest, but still not behaving like one of the family; much more like a fugitive, Gently says, though from wha
t remains open. A fugitive being sheltered by Mrs Breske, Shelton says. Gently nods again, says, Let’s have Gordini.

  Gordini comes. He is Mrs Breske’s taste, and Sally Dicks views him with interest. He is not exactly the taste of Sally Dicks, but Sally allows he might be acquired. For Carlo is mightily, southernly handsome. His Austrian garb sits splendid upon him. He has shoulders, and knees, and hands, and a nape, and hips, and a chest, and black curling hair. He has a statuesque neck that moulds and ripples and a head that sits heroically upon it and his swarthy skin is goldeny swarth and his black eyes smoulder on a trigger. He has a Grecian nose of surprising straightness that ends in a tip of blunt power, a full-lipped mouth, incandescent teeth, a smooth, rounded, dictatorial chin. So handsome is Carlo, Mrs Breske’s taste, that one could forgive him for a trace of swagger, but swagger he has not, he is quiet and obsequious, very parfait, very serviceable. Only that glitter in Carlo’s eyes suggests that Carlo is ever otherwise. Sally sees it, or rather feels it, and shivers, and sulkily sharpens one of her pencils. The play begins. Carlo sits. He sits grandly with parted knees. He too speaks English with a quick fluency and in a pleasant pure baritone. He is from Milan? Well, no, Milan is not his home town, he comes from a village near Marsala, but where, of course, there is no work. He has worked in Naples and Ventimiglia, then for five years in Milan. So he’s a Sicilian? Carlo shows his teeth. But nobody can make a living down there. His family, man, they are so poor, they would catch a cat and boil it for dinner. Carlo sends them a small allowance without which they would starve. He visits them. They are so thin. They live on a spaghetti that scours them like pigs. Here Gently clears his throat and asks a question: When was Carlo in America? Carlo swivels his head on his magnificent neck to face Gently, says, Never at all. Where, then, did you learn English? Carlo laughs with all his teeth. Man, all the Italians speak yankee English, how else would the tourists understand them? You learned yours from tourists? Gently asks. Partly from the tourists, Carlo says, but in the first place from Giovanni, Giovanni Montelli, who is a cousin who has emigrated. Giovanni is rich, Carlo says wistfully, America is a wonderful place for a Sicilian, he comes back to the village like a millionaire, man, that wad of notes he has in his pocket. Why haven’t you joined him in America? Gently asks. Carlo shrugs, says, Someday, maybe. But I am just a poor peasant boy and Giovanni is someone else again. What sort of someone? Gently asks. Carlo shows his teeth, says, You wouldn’t understand, man. To understand you have to be born there. Just say Giovanni had some influence. And that influence helped him in America? You may say that, yes, Carlo replies. It is all tied up, this side, that side, the right people go over there and make good. It’s not just money, you understand, but whatever it is, Carlo doesn’t have it. Though Carlo is lucky, too, in his way, he is earning big money by the standards of San Antioco. You see Giovanni often? Gently asks. Carlo shakes his head. It was but that one time. Giovanni had come back, like most successful Sicilians, to show his fine clothes in his native village. He had bought a villa for Uncle Pietro and a vineyard to go with it, and he had taught Carlo some waiter’s English and paid his fare to Naples. It was enough. He had behaved handsomely. He had set Carlo free from his prison of poverty. Carlo speaks his name, Giovanni, with reverence, as of a noble thing, a strength, an inspiration. And Gently asks no more about America or Giovanni but lets Shelton proceed on the old worn trail. The dead man, Clooney, Shelton resumes, what can you tell us about him, Gordini? Gordini can tell them very little that they haven’t heard ten times already. Was he an American? He speaks like one, but man, his accent was terrible. He wasn’t Italian? Shelton has to be joking. In Gordini’s opinion, Clooney was German. German or Austrian? Shelton demands. German or Austrian, he could be either. What did Mrs Breske think he was? Gordini looks angry, says she never spoke of him. Not even to you? Shelton says unbelievingly. Gordini looks daggers and won’t answer. Shelton likes this and keeps needling him, Shelton is adroit at using the needle, he stabs Gordini through detail after detail of the evening and night of Clooney’s dying. But perhaps he is wasting his talent after all, though he stabs out every fact he goes for, because he is shutting Carlo up like a night-safe and getting just and only what he demands. He has offended Carlo. Carlo is proud. He is not a swaggerer, but he is proud. And at last even Shelton begins to realize that he may be mishandling a useful card. Look, Gordini, he says, you don’t have to fight us, we’re not trying to hang something on you, all we want is to get at the facts, for chrissake give us co-operation. But now it’s too late. Carlo is shut up, sitting straight and splay-kneed, chin at an angle, not like, as he claims to be, a peasant boy, but more like a grandee suffering affront. An interesting character, this Gordini. Sally Dicks thinks so, whatever her taste.

  He goes. Shelton lights a cigarette. He is only too conscious of having fumbled that one: he searches his brain for some twist, some gimmick to raise his stock a little with Gently. Suppose, he says, Gordini’s lying, and Mrs Breske, she’s lying – collusion, in fact – a mutual alibi – giving Gordini opportunity . . . Miss Breske would need to be in it too, Gently says, if Gordini was not to be locked out of the hotel. I’d say that checked pretty well, Shelton said, I don’t trust that girl further than I could throw her. Yes, it adds up, a little family conspiracy, with the Eyetie lover as hatchet-man. He’d probably do anything for Mrs Breske – and every Eyetie can use a knife. But what was it about? Gently says. Shelton hisses smoke, says, Does it matter? If he’s a Nazi uncle with a nasty secret or some other chiseller trying it on? It’d still be nice to know, Gently says, especially as we don’t have any, what you might call, proof. Yeah, Shelton says, hissing still, but it’s a nice idea. I like the idea. And he frowns profoundly over his idea as though he, if not Gently, can appreciate its significance, as if he sees a hundred subtle correspondences, each worth a tumbril-load of proof. No Eyetie lover-boy with curls can make a monkey of English Shelton. Fetch Klapper in, he says suddenly, ringingly, in a tone that proclaims his mind is made up.

  Klapper comes then behind, fourth and lastly, Franz Klapper, from Ischl he, town whose name alone is affront sufficient to tease Shelton: one does not find a vowel supporting such a train of consonants in countries respectably placed with Greenwich. But Klapper, coming last, and it appears grudgingly, has a quality denied to his predecessors, namely that he alone, like the grass growing, wears and ornaments his national dress. It sits upon him. He is born to it. Not the alpenhorn outside is more truly Austrian. Aryan Franz, blond, loose-limbed, gentian-eyed, fair-cheeked, strong of bone, springy of step, he walks in off the mountains. He is Austria: you could engrave him for a stamp or a coin, set him to music for a national song, carve him in stone for a monument. He is sifting snow and spring blossom and heroism and a waltz and the sleeping valleys and the gay towns and the mirror lakes and the white sun. That is, until he opens his mouth. Then Shelton pins him in a moment. It needs not Gently’s delicate ear to assess the origin of Klapper’s English. Where, Shelton demands, did you learn English? And Klapper is suitably, encouragingly, confused. He moves his square shoulders awkwardly and would rather not understand Shelton. But he does understand him, so at last he says, Sure, when I was in the States. So you’ve been in the States? Shelton purrs. Yes, Klapper was over there for a while. Doing his job there are chances for travel, and Klapper enjoys seeing the world. When were you there? Shelton says softly. For the last two years, until January. Then Klapper felt restless for a breath of Europe and he came first to London, afterwards here. Two years, Shelton says, making it sound damnatory, and certainly Klapper takes his meaning: if a sojourn in the States is not precisely criminal, still, it can be to nobody’s credit. And you were in one place? Shelton murmurs. Yes, no, that is to say, in several situations, as, a season at the Waldorf-Astoria, then other places, that is usual. But in one town? Yes, in one town. Which was? Klapper babbles it out: New York. New York, Shelton smiles, isn’t that a coincidence, Clooney coming from New York and all? Why, Shelton says, reduci
ng New York to the size, if he knew it, of barbaric Ischl, you probably ran across him while you were over there, in a couple of years you’d meet lots of people. Did you meet him? Klapper wants to escape, his eyes dart this side and that of Shelton. Did you? Shelton repeats, in a wild surmise. And Klapper, in a panic, blurts out . . . Yes! Yes! It explodes among them! It explodes in Shelton! He can scarcely speak! Not daring to look at Gently, he sits crouching, hearing triumphal music on the hills. Yes, Klapper said, Yes, in answer to Shelton’s question, Yes, as a result of Shelton’s technique and Shelton’s handling, Yes, he’d said, Yes, Yes. No statesmen, labouring to gain approval at a convocation of all nations, wrought from Russia that sacred word with such brave joy as Shelton now knew. Well, well, he says, when he can say anything, well, Klapper, well, well, and looks almost lovingly at Aryan Franz, who, notwithstanding, seems far from well. But fancy, Shelton continues, fancy your not telling us you were acquainted with the late Clooney, especially, Shelton says, when we’ve been breaking our necks two days trying to find out who in hell he was – that, Shelton says, wasn’t very nice, Klapper, not, as we say, very co-operative, in fact, Shelton says, we may throw the bloody book at you, just for that if for no other – and, Shelton says, you can put your shammy trousers on it, if there is some other, we shall find it. Then he breathes in and out with great ferocity, and Austria wilts before the man. Now, Shelton says, who was he? But sir, I don’t know! Klapper exclaims. If I knew anything I would tell you, sir, I sure would, I want to co-operate. Yes, it looks so like it, Shelton says. Where did you meet him? What was he doing? Sir, Klapper says, he was only a customer, I just don’t know anything about him at all. He comes, he and one or two others, to the restaurant I work at for a while – that is Cassidy’s, off Fifth Avenue – a few times he comes there. And you wait on him, talk to him, Shelton says. No sir, no, Klapper says, they never sit at my table, I never spoke to him at all. There are three, four of them come in together, one is an Irishman called Pat, one is a little dark man called Toni, then there is Mr Clooney, who they call Heifiz. Who they call what? Shelton yaps. Klapper winces, says, Heifiz, sir. That surely is what it sounds like, though Klapper didn’t pay much attention. Heifiz, or Heifitz, the z German. Or possibly Heifetz, Gently suggests. Or possibly Heifetz, Klapper allows, willing to keep the matter open. Heifiz, Heifitz or Heifetz is how the others referred to Clooney, while they ate and drank, not inexpensively, in a toney joint off Fifth Avenue. And that was his first name, Shelton pursues. Klapper thinks no, sir, it was just a nickname, as for instance the fourth man, in appearance Armenian, was always referred to as Abdul: Pat, Toni, Heifiz and Abdul, they were all nicknames, Klapper opines. So what sort of people were they? What sort? Did they seem like honest citizens? Klapper wrestles with this one, says, It sure is difficult, I never could tell with Americans. They dress and act, you know? – without taste, without manners. Maybe you’re talking to a millionaire, maybe a hoodlum fresh out of Sing-Sing. Unless you’re born there, Klapper thinks, you goddam cannot tell the difference, and with regard to Pat, Toni, Heifiz and Abdul, he would not like to venture an opinion: except they were noisy, rather ugly men, who it would have been no pleasure for Klapper to have served. But you served Clooney here, Shelton snaps, how come you said nothing to him about having seen him before. Sir, he is a stranger, Klapper shrugs, I had no desire to be familiar with him. But you said nothing to anybody, Shelton snaps. Nobody has said to us, Klapper knows him. What was all the mystery about? Sir, he just meant nothing to me, Klapper says. He wriggles his shoulders and then explains: I sure didn’t want to get mixed up in this. I didn’t have anything important to tell you, sir, and I thought you would certainly know all about him. It’s just I’ve seen him before, nothing else. I don’t know anything about who killed him. And neither does he, for all Shelton can extract in half an hour of sinewy question: he finishes up where he began with those shadowy figures dining in Cassidy’s. Pat, Toni, Heifiz and Abdul, a brood of mixed nationalities, foreign to Klapper, who actually saw them, and hopelessly foreign to Shelton, who didn’t: foreign and worse, because over the rawness, the primary colour of their alienship, was scumbled this secondary glaze of Americanization, levelling, greying-out, rendering shapeless. Wouldn’t it have been better, after all, if Shelton had failed to uncover this tantalizing glimpse, which leaves Clooney, Wilbur or Heifiz, even more enigmatic than before? Pat, Toni, Heifiz and Abdul. They dance like motes before Shelton’s eyes. He has got them, but doesn’t know what to do with them. Or maybe they have got him.