The Alps Obscure

by Oster, Camille

  “If he’s gone on the glacier and has gotten himself into trouble, it would be impossible to find him. The crevasses are deep and the glacier rarely reveals its secrets. Or victims.”

  A frown pressed together Clemmie’s eyebrows. She didn’t know what to say, wanted to argue in some way. “He knows the glacier is dangerous.”

  “Yes. Let us hope so.” Again she wanted to argue, to tell him he couldn’t have such thoughts.

  “Perhaps madame should have some tea before lunch?”

  The mundaneness of it struck her. How could they talk about tea and lunch when Oliver could potentially be hurt out on the mountain? It felt like she needed to go do something. Go look for him. Then again, she was the worst possible person to do so, having barely traversed a paddock in her life, let alone a mountain.

  “You will have someone visit the doctor to see if Oliver is there?”

  “I will send one of the boys. And this afternoon, we will organize a search party.”

  It told her that he didn’t expect Oliver to be with the doctors, which made her even more nervous.

  “Now, please sit by the fire and I will bring you some tea.”

  To be honest, she knew she needed it. Her skirts were damp and she’d overexerted herself. And there really wasn’t much else she could do. For now, she would simply have to wait and let Mr. Weber organize a search.

  Grudgingly, she took a seat, but couldn’t relax. A tea service was brought by a kitchen maid, while Mr. Weber spoke in hushed tones with some of the staff members. The tea was hot and strong, but she didn’t enjoy it like she normally would. As she cooled from the exertion, the warmth of the tea served her well.

  What could she do but to sit there and wait? Poor Oliver. He hadn’t eaten in over a day now. He had to be famished. What if he never returned? The thought was too horrifying to contemplate.

  People seemed to know about her situation, because pitying glances were cast her way by people who walked past.

  Finally, she saw Mr. Schonberg, who paused when he saw her and then came to her. Placing his gloves on the table, he sat down. “We will go search for him. I don’t think he would have gone too far, but it can be a dangerous activity. Falls are not uncommon.” It sounded as if he was preparing her for bad news.

  “You don’t think Oliver has done something silly, do you? He isn’t foolhardy.” Well, mostly that was true. She hoped that was true. To be perfectly frank, she didn’t know him all that well. They had courted and there had been a great deal of dancing and compliments involved, so to some extent, she was saying what she hoped was true. But her impression had been that he wasn’t stupidly foolish.

  “One does not have to be foolhardy to get injured on the mountain. If he has gone on the glacier, that is something different. One needs a guide to traverse a glacier.”

  Surely Oliver wouldn’t have tried to do that on his own.

  “But we can also ask people nearby if they have seen him. It might give us a better idea of the direction he went.”

  “He had no intention of going tramping yesterday. He was preparing for our departure, which was the reason he didn’t accept your offer in the first place. That would suggest that if he did go, it was for the intention of a short walk.”

  Mr. Schonberg reached over and patted her hand. “We will look.” Looking up, his gaze sought his wife, who was dressed in breeches and sturdy shoes. She was going to join them in the search. When they’d dined together, she’d said she joined her husband on walks. It must have been before they were married, or perhaps this was a delayed honeymoon.

  In light of this, Clemmie felt inadequate, but she had no clothes and shoes suited for traipsing around a mountain. That would never be expected of her. But Mrs. Schonberg saw herself differently, and it made Clemmie feel useless. Perhaps she was, because she simply wasn’t equipped to do something like that. Drawing, playing piano, flower arrangements—these were things she’d been trained in doing. Not anything practical.

  Clemmie smiled weakly. It seemed even the American and the rude Italian was going to join, and a number of local men who were meeting outside the hotel. There would be a proper search party. For this, she was infinitely grateful, but still felt useless sitting there and waiting.

  Chapter 9

  CLEMMIE PACED. A MAN she’d never seen before had replaced Mr. Weber on the desk, who had obviously joined the search party. The weather was average, but not terrible. It wasn’t a brilliantly sunny day, which would help, but the search party went ahead anyway.

  Hopefully they would return and this would be the end of it. Oliver would probably be injured, but she hoped it would be light and easily healed. Being this far from home with an injury wasn’t good, but they would have to manage. The warmth and sun of the Mediterranean was ideal for convalescing people, she had heard.

  Intermittently, she tried to sit down and drink more of her cooling tea, but she barely tasted it. Her nerves were getting the better of her. For now, she couldn’t bear being back in her room, unable to see if anyone was approaching. It felt better being in the lobby so she could be there if they brought Oliver in. When, she corrected herself, and nerves of anguish assaulted her at the mistake she’d just made, as if acknowledging the possibility of him not being found made it possible.

  A ways over, the nursery maid from the countess' party walked into the lobby, but she walked backward with her fingers to her lips. She looked around with large eyes, seeking another person, then she looked back into the hallway leading to the rooms of the hotel as if waiting for something. Clemmie listened too, but it was completely silent.

  “Did you hear that?” the nursery maid asked in German.

  “I heard nothing,” Clemmie said and stood up. With quick steps she walked over to the young woman, who was intently looking down the hallway. It was entirely empty. Lamps were lit and they cast circular pools of light along the hallway. There was nothing there.

  “I heard…” the girl started. “It sounded like someone was walking in a suit of armor.”

  “It must have been someone walking with equipment. Maybe mountaineering equipment?”

  “Did you see anyone?” the woman asked.

  “No.” No one had come out of the hallway that she’d noticed.

  Maybe it was Oliver. Had he found his way back after trying and trying? Clemmie rushed into the hallway, her eyes searching. Quickly, she took the stairs and made her way to her rooms, but was met with complete silence when she got there. Nothing had changed, no one was there.

  But no one had left or come in. If someone had been moving equipment around, they had done so from one room to another. It must have been the maids, carrying something noisy. It was hard to think what they could be carrying that sounded like someone walking in armor, which she knew had a very distinct sound. She’d seen a re-enactment of a joust once. Armor was noisy.

  No, the girl must have been mistaken. It must have been some other noise.

  With deep disappointment, Clemmie decided to return to the lobby. It felt as if she would miss something important if she stayed away.

  Silent steps carried her towards the staircase down to the floor which led back to the lobby, but she heard a squeak, the distinctive squeak of metal against metal, of jangling metal. Words carried as if on shifting wind. The direction was impossible to tell, but the words didn’t spark recognition in her. It was more the sound of them she heard, rather than the meaning. Curt, direct words, coming from far away. She tried to listen, but it dissipated.

  In a rush, she took the stairs down, thinking they had returned from their search. Returning this early meant they had to have found him. From the hallway, she could see Miss Juno still standing in the lobby looking back at her. Her light red hair curled as it escaped her braids. Her eyes were still large and searching.

  “I heard it again,” Miss Juno said when Clemmie reached her.

  “Someone was simply walking.”

  “Did you see anyone?” Miss Juno asked. “Bec
ause I didn’t hear you walking when you came. You were silent.”

  The carpet running along the corridor had kept her footsteps silent.

  “Someone must be shifting things between rooms,” Clemmie said. “The halls must echo.”

  Miss Juno’s head nodded slightly, as if she took the words on board. “It sounded very odd.” It had sounded odd. “I swear it sounded like armor.”

  “Did you hear talking?”

  “No,” the woman said and turned to her. “You heard talking? There must have been more than one. Yet we saw no one.”

  “As I said, they were probably just shifting things between rooms. Or down into the basement. There will be servants’ entrances.” Of course, why hadn’t she thought of that.

  Miss Juno seemed to shudder. “I don’t like empty hallways. I don’t like this place. After Miss Marnier had her episode, I don’t feel so comfortable here.”

  “Is she better?”

  “She’s still very frightened,” Miss Juno said quietly and then looked around to see if they were observed. “I’m worried, because Miss Marnier is not prone to fright. She’s the most sensible person I know. The countess too. They are not people who indulge in fantasy. She stares out the window incessantly as if she’s trying to see them, the men that intended on hurting her. She’s terrified, and we cannot leave because our carriage has been severely damaged. A rock toppled down the mountain and destroyed one of the wheels, bent the whole substructure. That happens, apparently, boulders just fall off the mountain. We were lucky we weren’t in it at the time.”

  A sense of dread filled Clemmie. Maybe that was what had happened to Oliver, a rock had fallen and he’d been taken by surprise, and hadn’t been able to get away quick enough. Oh, she hoped not. “That is truly terrifying,” Clemmie agreed.

  “I should get back,” Miss Juno said. “To be honest, I loath to walk through the corridors now. But I hate being in our room with Miss Marnier’s constant vigilance. I think she fears they will return. And now it seems suits of armor are haunting these halls.” The last was said with more jest. “I wish we hadn’t left Germany. Nothing like this happens there. Although my skin can’t tolerate the sun, but Italy is pleasant, I think. At least I’ll feel better when we move on from here.”

  With a smile, she nodded and walked toward the hallway. For a moment, she paused before marching with firm strides down the hallway until she was out of Clemmie’s sight.

  With a deep sigh, Clemmie sat down again and sipped her tea, which was now definitely on the cool side.

  An odd distraction, but also an unsettling one, particularly hearing about Miss Marnier’s distress and constant searching. The girl had to be terrified. More disturbing was that this appeared to be completely out of character.

  For a moment, she tried to recreate the noise in her mind, to see if she could attribute it to something logical. Maybe someone was carrying a number of coal buckets in a basket. That would have to be some gingerly walking to make such a ruckus.

  And the words, she tried to recreate them too. It hadn’t been Italian. Miss Marnier’s words returned to her, language like in church. That was it. It had been Latin. The pleasure of identification flared through her for a second, then the confusion of there being Latin spoken in the halls of this hotel. Maybe someone had been practicing their Latin while carrying coal buckets.

  Hotel staff did not learn Latin. It was only a language pursued by the highly educated.

  Again she tried to think of the sounds she’d heard, tried to distinguish specific words. The only one she could pinpoint was ‘proditor’. That was what it had sounded like, but she wasn’t sure that was simply part of a word, or a whole word. And she had no idea what it meant. What could it mean? No association came to mind. Latin did have a lot of associations with English, and the romantic languages, but she didn’t know what ‘proditor’ meant. The things that ended with ‘tor’ were typically people, or beings. Like predator. What a cheery association.

  Rising from her seat again, she walked into the library, which was close enough to the main entrance that she would hear someone coming in. With her fingers, she searched the spines of the book, but it wasn’t perhaps surprising that there were no Latin lexicons in the Belvedere hotel’s library.

  Oliver must have done some Latin, but Clemmie suspected it hadn’t been something he’d excelled at. And he wasn’t around to answer. Mr. Coleridge would have been the perfect person to ask, but he was gone.

  Returning to her seat, she wondered if any of the guests had a good comprehension of Latin. As far as she knew, there wasn’t a doctor or botanist currently residing.

  It wasn’t important, and she put the thought to side as she returned to her worry, and constant prayer that the search party would return with Oliver. Perhaps he had simply been lost, and all would be well. Maybe that was even the likely scenario.

  Chapter 10

  THE SEARCH PARTY RETURNED piecemeal, going immediately to the breakfast room where they were served tea and biscuits. Their sorrowful looks told her that they hadn’t found Oliver. Parties were still out there, so all hope was not lost. It was getting close to dark and the search would finish soon.

  Finally Mr. Weber returned, wearing a gray wool tramping suit. It was different from how she normally saw him.

  As he returned, he took her hand. “I am sorry. We have not found him. We have searched all areas within walking distance. He is not on the mountain. There is still the woods down in the valley, but we cannot search them today. Also the glacier. The experts will have to search for him. It is too dangerous for us to walk it.”

  Clemmie searched for something to say. “Are you sure?”

  “Unless he rode further afield, then we should have found him. No horses appear to be missing. Nor carriages.”

  “He could have gotten a ride with someone.”

  “In that case, it would be impossible for us to know where he’s gone.”

  For a moment, Clemmie wanted to argue, to urge him to do more, but she had a hard time logically justifying it. How far could they search? If he’d accepted a ride with someone, he could have gone far. But why would he? Nothing indicated that he’d want to search for something away from here. The harsh truth was that the glacier was more likely to have interested him. No, surely he couldn’t have been silly enough to try to traverse it on his own? They had both been told it was dangerous.

  The Schonbergs returned as well, and they both looked at her pityingly, which showed they suspected something had gone badly wrong. That he was either lost down a deep crevasse in the glacier, which apparently moved and closed like a living thing, or he could have deserted her.

  The thought pierced through her. There had been no indication he would. They hadn’t quarreled, and she hadn’t been disagreeable in any way. It wasn’t like him, or at least not in her estimation of him. And the carriage was here. The ornery part of her mind suggested that he would leave the carriage for her if he’d chosen to desert her.

  How many of the people here wondered the same thing? The bride being deserted on her honeymoon. No, that wasn’t like Oliver. He was kind and caring. He wouldn’t leave her, at least not that dramatically, requiring a search party to go seek him on the mountain. And he didn’t suffer from melancholia.

  All these thoughts raced through her mind.

  “You should eat. Supper is being served very shortly,” Mr. Weber said, drawing her out of her racing thoughts. Hunger didn’t bother her at the moment, but Mr. Weber urged her into the dining room. “You will feel worse if you don’t eat.”

  “I don’t…” she started to argue, but knew he was correct. Mr. Weber waved at one of the staff members, who came to tend to her while he walked away.

  Before long, the people from the search party were returning from changing out of their no doubt wet clothes. They were clearly famished from the day’s activities. Like the Schonbergs, pitying smiles were directed at her, but they didn’t approach.

  They treated
her like a woman who’d been widowed, or deserted. Something bad had happened to her, and they were very sorry for her. The casual attention felt awful. The worst was that she felt as though she was going to fall apart at any moment, which was what they all feared.

  A plate was put down in front of her. Two slices of beef and boiled potatoes, all covered in a sauce. Feeling people’s guarded observation, she picked up her cutlery and began eating. It was warm and filling, but she had no appetite. Still, she forced herself to eat, because she didn’t know what else to do. It seemed a reasonable way from stopping herself breaking down in tears.

  Something was very wrong. Oliver was missing, and couldn’t be found. The searchers had seemed adamant they would have found him if he was on the mountain. There was still the forest, she told herself, but equally, she couldn’t see why Oliver would have gone into the forest. He had no reason to.

  The countess and her party came into the dining room. The casual observation of the diners shifted from Clemmie to them. They all looked quiet and dour as they sat down at one of the larger tables. It was the largest party in the hotel at the moment. There was the governess, the grandchild, the nursery maid to deal with the child, and an older companion. There were servants that weren’t invited to dine with the countess, but Clemmie didn’t know how many there were.

  None of the party looked happy or amused, but Clemmie suspected that it wasn’t a joyous household in general. The countess seemed a somber person, who wasn’t impressed by much. Even the child seemed subdued.

  Looking back at her plate, Clemmie recognized that it had felt nice to be distracted from her own worries for a moment. And then there were the strange observations of the nursery maid that afternoon, the sounds in the hallway. Obviously, there had to be a logical explanation.

  The governess looked exhausted, Clemmie had to admit. There was a nervousness about her bearing.

  Desert was some kind of stewed fruit and pastry. It tasted nice, and she forced herself to eat it.