by Tom Savage
Nora wasn’t Marianne Lanier at the moment; she was Nora Baron. The wig lay on the dresser back in the room; her age makeup had been washed down the drain. She was standing here naked, as it were, for all the world to see. But this wasn’t the world—far from it; she knew that she was being studied by a single pair of eyes. She turned from the rail and hurried inside, shutting the glass door and locking it before closing the curtains over it. She slipped into bed and switched off the lamp, but sleep didn’t come for a long time.
Chapter 33
Nora was awakened on Thursday morning by a shaft of light slanting in through a gap in the curtains. She’d finally fallen asleep sometime after midnight, and she opened her eyes just after six o’clock. The overstuffed bed was so warm and comfortable that she toyed with the idea of skipping breakfast and sleeping late, but then she remembered with a jolt exactly where she was and what she was doing here.
She slipped into the bathroom next door as silently as possible, opting for a quick shower rather than a long bath. She emerged ten minutes later with a towel wrapped around her wet hair, and she was nearly caught without her makeup by a pretty young woman coming out of one of the other rooms down the hallway. Nora smiled briefly at the girl—the local bride waiting out the home renovation, she guessed—and ducked back inside her bedroom. The blond wig and age makeup were quickly applied. She put on her black pantsuit over a fresh blouse, then opened the curtains and stepped out onto the balcony.
As she had suspected last night, the advent of sunlight had upgraded the view from dramatic to spectacular. The wide meadow and pine forest below the road were so green, the lake and stream so sparkling, and the distant mountains and city so vivid against the azure sky that for a moment she almost forgot to breathe. She heard birds chirping above the cascade of the waterfall, and these were augmented by another sound so soft and strange that she couldn’t place it until she looked more closely at the valley.
Sheep. A fat white flock of them bustled and grazed near the lakeshore, overseen by a barefoot, shirtless young man in overalls and a Tyrolean hat, and a gorgeous black-and-tan German shepherd. The dog was earning its breakfast, dashing here and there among the writhing sheep and barking the strays back into formation. Nora laughed aloud at its antics, and the young man looked up at her balcony and tipped his hat to her.
“Guten Morgen!” he called before whistling sharply to the dog and moving his charges away around the lake.
All this beauty didn’t prepare her for Pilatus. She turned at last to look in the northwest direction where she’d seen the looming dark shape last night, and there it was. Nora knew that it was multipeaked, with the peaks connected by ridges, and that its foothills sprawled endlessly in all directions. She’d been on it, and she’d seen it from Lucerne. But looking over at it from this great height at this great distance was staggering. She felt acutely small in a world that could include anything of that size and scope.
She reluctantly tore her gaze from the view and looked down at the ground directly below the balcony. The other side of the building faced the hill above the square where the church and other houses were spread out across a curved indentation of the mountain. This side had the road, then the steep slope down to the meadow and lake. There was a narrow pathway running between the edge of the road and the low guardrail that ran along it, at the top of the slope. Now, in the morning light, she saw that the path was paved with loose gray gravel. Yes, someone had been down there last night, looking up at her as she dreamed on the balcony. Nora thought of the obvious theatrical reference—Shakespeare—but she knew her watcher was no Romeo.
She went back inside. She had much to do today, and she must get started on it, but the first thing she required was food.
The cuckoo in the clock sprang out and chirped seven times to the accompaniment of seven loud chimes when Nora came down the stairs to the lobby. Two old men were negotiating their way across the lobby toward the dining room as she arrived at the bottom; actually, it was more accurate to say that a tall, older man was supporting a bent, ancient man as he tottered along. Nora followed them to the long table and sat across from them. The newlyweds were already there, close together at one end.
“Guten Morgen,” the tall man said to Nora as he helped his elderly friend lower himself into a chair. “I mean, good morrow, yes? You are Madame Lanier, and this is Herr Shuler.” He indicated the old gentleman, who was too busy negotiating himself into his chair to notice them. “The jung Herr und Frau are being called Lars and Anna Weber, and I am Haller Kleiss, but please call me Hall. Everyone calls me that. My wife is your host, and I am your policeman.”
“Policeman?” Nora smiled, noting that the plain gray suit and tie he wore were actually more in the line of a casual uniform. A silver badge gleamed on his top pocket. Sixtyish, muscular, tan, and capable-looking: Nora’s smile widened.
“Ja, I am Polizeichef for this region, Alpenberg and Gans.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Hall,” Nora said, and she meant it. “Please call me Marianne. Is there a police station in the village? Do you have assistants, or…?”
Hall Kleiss laughed. “Assistants? That is my assistant, that young one there.” He pointed to the groom at the other end of the table, who grinned. “Lars is the Wachtmeister—the constable. It is the two of us, alone. We have an office in the square that we share with the fire brigade and the town council. There are not many crimes up here.”
Nora nodded, stifling an urge to say Stick around. “That’s good to know.” She smiled at the others. “Good morning, everyone. Please call me Marianne.”
Three new people arrived at this point. Trina Kleiss and a dignified-looking older woman in a black dress came in from the lobby as a big woman with a big tray appeared from the kitchen. The server was Frau Gund, Nora remembered, and the woman in black would be Frau Leydon, whose brother was a patient at the clinic. Frau Leydon took the seat next to Nora as Frau Gund lowered plates piled high with fried eggs, sliced tomatoes, cheese, mushrooms, homemade rye bread, and two different kinds of sausage. She then placed pots of coffee and tea at each end of the table and vanished back into the kitchen.
Breakfast in farm country. Nora worked on the deliciously rich meal, listening to the foreign chat of the regulars. When Hall Kleiss said something to Frau Leydon, the woman nodded and whispered, “Danke.” The police chief then asked Nora in English if she’d like a ride to the clinic this morning, as he was driving Frau Leydon there.
“Ah, the clinic,” Nora said, grateful that someone other than herself had introduced the subject. “I am to call the sister at nine o’clock to make an appointment to see my friend. I was wondering, are there any cars for rent in the village? I’d like to have the use of one while I’m here.”
Hall Kleiss grinned at her request. “This is excellent! Yes, there are two vehicles to be rented from Frau Martens, an Opel sedan and a Volkswagen Beetle. She is a widow, and it is always welcome when she is able to rent her cars.”
“The Volkswagen would be fine for me,” Nora said.
His grin became a laugh. “This is a good choice, Marianne. The Opel is most unreliable. I will take you there when we finish here.”
It occurred to Nora that the police chief’s offer to drive Frau Leydon to the clinic might have been a polite necessity. “Hall, could you ask Frau Leydon if she would care to ride with me to the clinic? Since I will be going anyway…”
The lady beside Nora surprised her by replying for herself in soft, careful English. “This is most kind of you, Marianne. I would be grateful for the riding—and please to call me Ida.”
Nora realized that she’d scored points with Hall Kleiss; he was beaming at the new arrangement. Now he wouldn’t have to interrupt his day to act as chauffeur for a widow visiting her dying brother. Nora might need to use those points to her advantage in the very near future.
Chapter 34
The town square didn’t seem as big in the daylight as it had the night before. T
he two inns served as far boundaries, enclosing the space at either end, and between them were eight two-story buildings, four on each side of the cobblestone plaza. Five of the buildings were the homes of some of Alpenberg’s oldest inhabitants; three of these families dated back to the village’s formation in the seventeenth century.
The other three buildings were businesses. The Town Hall, where Chief Kleiss and his assistant had their one-room police station on the ground floor, was in the center of the row on one side. Next to it was a general store that had everything from clothing to groceries to a post office to toiletries and medications; the proprietor was also the local pharmacist. Across from the Town Hall was the village’s only restaurant, a café with two tables inside and two out in the square. It was owned and operated by Frau Martens, the widow who also rented two old cars to visitors in need of transportation.
Frau Martens was delighted and grateful when Hall Kleiss brought Nora into the café, where she was having breakfast with two women who were clearly close friends of hers. The gossip session was interrupted long enough for Nora to fill out a form and pay for a two-day rental on the VW. Nora used Marianne Lanier’s Visa card, and the electronic transaction was handled by Frau Martens’s sullen daughter, who was also her waitress and—Nora suspected—chief cook and bottle-washer. The young woman handed Nora a set of keys and told her in halting English that the car was parked in the lot by the entrance to the square.
With broad urging from Hall Kleiss, Nora also made a reservation for dinner this evening in the café. Frau Gund didn’t offer meals in the Gasthof on Thursday nights, he explained, Thursday being Bingo Night at the parish hall beside the church. Nora laughed at this and asked the sullen daughter to please hold the smaller of the two outdoor tables for her at seven o’clock.
As they were leaving the town square, Hall Kleiss pointed toward the pink Gasthof Wunderbar. “Our competitors, a local couple with no taste and no head for business. They bought the old storage barn and turned it into that, and the council let them do it because it was cheaper than tearing it down. The rooms are ugly and the food is terrible, and they are always trying to steal our guests away. Trina hates them.”
He showed her the lot outside the square where the old green VW was parked with seven other vehicles, including the unreliable Opel, an ancient fire truck, and a white sedan with POLIZEI in blue lettering on the side. He pointed toward roughly thirty buildings dotting the hillside above the square, the most prominent ones being the steepled church and a big red barn that included the grain and feed store for the livestock. He said there was only one doctor in the village, who doubled as the veterinarian when needed. And that was it, he concluded; Madame Lanier had now seen the entire village of Alpenberg.
They were walking back into the square when a rumbling in the distance caught Nora’s attention. It seemed to be coming from down the main road that passed by the village. She moved toward the road, peering down it. The rumbling became louder, accompanied by the grinding of hydraulic gears. After a moment a large white van emerged from the trees and rushed past them in the direction of the clinic and the other village, Gans. Nora saw that it was a refrigerated truck with a logo on its side: SCHULTZ LEBENSMITTEL. The deafening noise faded as the truck rolled over the little bridge and vanished around the bend.
“Wow,” Nora said. “For a moment there, I thought I was back in the city!”
Hall Kleiss laughed. “Ah, yes, the grocery truck for the clinic. Every Monday and Thursday, without fail. Even way up here, we sometimes have the noises of the modern world!”
Nora thanked him for the tour, and he strode off to his office to start his exciting day policing the region.
Back in her room at Gasthof Kleiss, Nora went out onto the balcony to place her call at exactly nine o’clock.
“Brandtklinik. Guten Morgen,” said an efficient young female voice.
“Good morning,” Nora said. “My name is Marianne Lanier, and I would like to speak to Sister Wäldchen.”
“One moment, please.”
Nora waited, listening to music that she thought might be Brahms. She clapped a hand over her free ear as the noisy grocery truck from the clinic drove past below the balcony, heading back down the mountain. After a moment, the music stopped and she heard a low, clear voice speaking in slightly accented English.
“Good morning, Madame Lanier. Frau Hoffman told me to expect your call. You wish to visit Julie Campbell; is that correct?”
“Yes, Sister. I’d like to see her as soon as possible. I’m in Alpenberg, at Gasthof Kleiss. I’m bringing a fellow guest there this morning to see her brother, and I—”
“You must mean Frau Leydon; she is scheduled for eleven o’clock. May I ask, what is your relation to Ms. Campbell?”
“My rela—um, I’m a friend.”
“Do you know her well, madame?”
Nora thought swiftly. She hadn’t expected this sort of question, and one bad answer could make things difficult for her. She opted for honesty.
“No, I don’t know her well, Sister. In fact, I’ve never met her. I have a message for her from her husband.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line; Nora almost expected to hear the Brahms again. Then Sister Wäldchen said, “Very well; I will expect you with Frau Leydon at eleven o’clock.”
The flood of relief was overwhelming. “Thank you, Sister! I look forward to meeting—” Nora stopped when she realized that the line was already dead.
She switched off the phone and stood gazing off at the distant city. Her actor’s instincts had just gone on high alert again, as they had last night in this very spot, when she’d felt the eyes on her in the dark. She could feel it. She’d heard it in the voice of the head nurse. The woman hadn’t lied to her, but—just as Nora had done—she hadn’t exactly told the truth, either. She’d spoken slowly, deliberately, as though she were reading lines from a script. There was something that Sister Wäldchen had carefully not told her about Julie Campbell.
Something was wrong.
Chapter 35
Nora drove the ancient VW out of the lot and down to the main road. She made a right turn, and the car puttered past the town square, under Nora’s balcony, and away from the village. They crossed the little bridge above the waterfall and headed east on an upward gradient around the side of the mountain. As soon as they were past the end of the lake meadow and a brief forest, they saw a sheer drop beyond the guardrail on the opposite side of the road.
Her passenger sat quietly beside her, buckled in and hands in lap, looking out at the view. Nora wondered if she should broach the subject of Frau Leydon’s ailing brother, then decided against it. Intimacies of that nature demanded to be exchanged, tit for tat, and Nora could never tell Ida Leydon—or anyone else—exactly what she was doing there.
It was Ida who finally broke the silence. “Have you been to the clinic before today?”
“No, Ida, I’ve never been there. Have you?”
“Oh, yes, several times, but not of late. I visited my oldest friend every week last autumn until November, when we lost her. This is how I knew to tell my brother’s wife where he could go. He has just arrived there this week; I am seeing him there for the first time today.”
Nora didn’t know what to say to that, so she tried changing the subject. “What is it like?”
Ida Leydon emitted a soft sigh. “It is very sad—first my husband, then my friend, and now my brother. But at my age, I must expect—”
“Oh dear, no,” Nora said. “I didn’t mean that—I meant, what do you think of the Brandt Clinic?”
“Ah? Oh, I see!” To Nora’s great surprise—and relief—the woman laughed. “I did not understand your question! The clinic is very well run, and I like that it is small. Only sixteen rooms, so all will have a good amount of attention from the staff.”
Nora raised an eyebrow. “Is it very expensive?”
“Ja—if you are one who can afford it. But if you are not, the rates
are adjusted. This was the legacy of Mr. Brandt when he died, a fund for people who want to be here at the end but cannot pay so much—but only if they are Swiss, you understand, national citizens. He built the clinic for his wife. She was Swiss, a mountain girl, and she wanted to spend her last days looking out at her country. She did not want to be alone; she wanted to be with others who were also going to make the journey. That is how it began. It is a gemeinschaft, a—I do not know the English word—a group of people together.”
“A community,” Nora said.
“Yes, that is right.” Ida pointed toward the windshield. “You want to go slow through the tunnel. The turn into the clinic is just after it.”
Nora stared. Directly ahead of the car, the mountain itself suddenly blocked their path. What had just been open road in front of them was now a wall of rock, a prominent lateral ridge as high as she could see. Where the road met the wall she saw a looming black archway. Nora drove straight toward the arch, and in a flash the car was swallowed by the mountain. The walls on both sides of the dark passage were lined with single rows of yellow lights to mark the way, and for a long moment Nora felt that she’d entered a spaceship. Then daylight arrived ahead of them, dazzling after the darkness, and they were out the other side, in the open air again.
And there it was, on their left—a high stone wall with a brass plaque beside wrought-iron gates: BRANDTKLINIK. Nora slowed for the turn, making sure the oncoming lane was empty. It was, of course; they hadn’t passed a single vehicle since they’d left Alpenberg. She turned in through the gates onto a smooth roadway and stopped the car, gazing down at the sight before them.
Until the tunnel, there had been a sheer drop on this side of the road. At this end of it was a hanging valley nestled between the ridge above the tunnel and the mountain’s next prominence a hundred yards beyond it. The drive rolled gently down into a green landscape of lawns, hedges, pines, and cypresses: a garden suspended in the air. The valley was the shape of an equilateral triangle, with one edge being the road behind them. Nora saw a gazebo on the left, and off to the right through the trees were a tennis court, a swimming pool, and a long, low structure that looked like a horse stable. Sidewalks crisscrossed the lawns between the rows of trees.
