Death of a Dormouse

by Reginald Hill

  It had been the Lewis Agency’s hand-out. It was a smallish northern business, limited mainly to large towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The Sheffield address had been underlined in red.

  The blurb claimed that the agency was based on sound scientific principles but it still relied on human judgment rather than computer print-outs for matching its clients. While not specifically a marriage bureau, it aimed at a clientele who were looking for serious relationships, rather than just casual dates.

  Trudi and Janet weren’t meeting till the first week of the New Year. Determined that her friend should not have the satisfaction of getting the expected negative response to her casual enquiry if the brochure had been of any use, Trudi had rung up the agency on New Year’s Eve. A woman called Fielding had answered in a most businesslike way and Trudi’s vague general enquiries had been swiftly translated into a firm appointment the following Wednesday morning before her lunch date with Janet. She had sat up alone that night, toasted the New Year and gone to bed, hopeful that she would wake up in the morning a new woman.

  Now here she was, the same old nervous neurotic, labouring up the last flight of stairs and wondering what the hell she was getting into.

  A few minutes later she felt rather better, mainly because Mrs Fielding was such a pleasant surprise. A comfortably plump woman of perhaps sixty with rosy cheeks and white, uncontrollably curly hair, she sat behind a desk even more untidy than her hair and cheerfully proffered a cup of tea just brewed with the help of an electric kettle and an old brown teapot. If this was a demonstration that new scientific methods had not been introduced at the expense of the personal touch, it worked.

  After some preliminary chat which may or may not have been searching, Mrs Fielding said, ‘Shall we get down to it, Mrs Adamson?’ and extracted a blank form from the autumnal heap of papers before her.

  It all proved very painless. When she hesitated about her age, Mrs Fielding said cheerfully, ‘Knock a couple of years off. Everyone does it, so if you don’t, you’ll just end up being taken for two years older than you are.’

  After her own details came the details of what she was looking for. These seemed to form a fairly bland recipe when Mrs Fielding checked through them with her.

  Age, forty-five to fifty-five. Height, not less than five feet nine inches. Build, preferably well made but not fat. Non-smoker. Social drinker. Professional man. Generally middlebrow. Should like plays and music, but not too abstract or intellectual; town dweller, country lover; knowledgeable about food and wine, but not pretentious …

  As Mrs Fielding droned on, Trudi found herself thinking with amusement how fussy a penniless widow in her mid-forties imagined she could be! She was able to feel amused because none of this seemed real, it had all assumed the dimensions of a game.

  Even when she handed over the registration fee and signed a form agreeing to the payment of a further sum for each introduction that went beyond a first meeting, she could not feel it was real.

  It was only when she had descended the now empty stairs and regained the open air that the sound of traffic and the sight of people walking along the busy pavements brought back reality. She felt a sudden inrush of panic at what she had done. What if somewhere out there was a man who fitted the pattern of her imagined requirements exactly? What if there were dozens of them?

  She didn’t have to meet anyone, she told herself firmly. That was quite clear. She didn’t have to meet anyone.

  That stemmed the panic for a moment but it came back tenfold as she walked away, running over in her mind what had been said and written during the interview, and suddenly it dawned on her with terrifying clarity that what she had drawn in the limits of that stereotyped form was a blueprint for Trent.

  Janet’s unconcealed amazement almost made it all worthwhile. Typically, however, once she got over the surprise, she launched an armada of good advice.

  ‘First time, always meet somewhere public. Don’t let him pick you up or anything like that. I did that with one and he was over the doorstep, flashing his teeth and God knows what else, before I could say hello!’

  ‘Oh Jan! Not really?’ said Trudi, amused and horrified at the same time.

  ‘No, not really,’ Janet reassured her. ‘But really enough to be worth taking care over. So, somewhere in public. Inside, not out. You don’t want to risk hanging around in the rain, catching cold. Somewhere that you can sit around without attracting notice. Hotel bar rather than a pub, perhaps, though either’s a bit chancy.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, I was approached by this chap in a hotel bar when I was waiting once; he fitted the general description, so I gave a big smile and chatted away merrily and thought that maybe I’d struck lucky till he suddenly produced the key of his room, asked me how much and whether I took American Express!’

  ‘Janet!’

  ‘Sorry. Joking again, but it was almost like that. Hey, what are we worrying about? Here. Here’s the ideal place! Lots of people, but wide open, very mixed population. And it’s familiar ground.’

  ‘Here’ was the open-plan bar-foyer of the Crucible, Sheffield’s civic theatre, where the two friends often came either for coffee or for a lunch-time drink and snack.

  ‘Now, one thing you’ve got to recognize, Trudi, is that men lie. Even more than us. We may trim our ages a bit, but men lie about everything. So you’ve got to use your eyes and your ears. He may say he’s a brain-surgeon on eighty thousand pounds per annum basic, but check his shirts for frayed cuffs. Have a close look at his shoes. Big money buys real leather. Check his mouth. If his dental jobs have been done by some NH jockey on piece-work, it shows. Ask him to spell pericranium. Tell him you’re doing a crossword or something.’

  ‘But what if he’s a radical brain-surgeon who likes gardening, has no interest in clothes and can’t spell?’ said Trudi.

  ‘Drop him,’ said Janet with a shudder. ‘You’re like me, dear. Too old for radicals. Next thing. No body contact. Shaking hands is the limit. Nudges, squeezes, accidental brushes, they deserve one warning. Hand up your skirt or erection against your bum, that’s it. Walk away.’

  ‘With his hand up my skirt?’ said Trudi. ‘That could be awkward.’

  She was still surprised to discover how lively she could be in Janet’s company. The renewal of their girlhood friendship had not after all simply meant a renewal of the dormouse – cat relationship. Perhaps those years of catatonic domesticity had been a necessary fallowness rather than a needless waste.

  Janet said, suddenly serious, ‘Trudi, joking apart, are you sure this is for you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The agency. Meeting men like this. It’s a step in the dark in a way. Are you sure you’re ready for it? I mean, it’s really no time at all …’

  ‘You mean it’s only five months since Trent died, and am I really such a callow, unfeeling cow as to put myself back on the market so quickly?’

  ‘No! I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t,’ Janet protested.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Trudi. ‘But I wonder about it myself, Jan, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t wonder it too. The way it seems to me, looking back, is that it was almost inevitable, like a good play I mean. If it had happened while I was still in Vienna, comfortable, secure, almost torpid, God knows what the effect would have been. But I’d been suddenly uprooted and dumped here at a moment’s notice, in a strange town, in a strange house, without even my own furniture to keep me company. It was like being woken up out of hibernation to find it’s still winter! And then, Trent’s death. It was as if I had been nudged towards it somehow. God help me, it almost nudged me over the edge. If you hadn’t come along …’

  ‘You’d still have spewed up and been all right,’ said Janet sensibly.

  ‘Perhaps. But it wasn’t grief that got me to that point; it was selfish terror, I think. Just as violent in its effect, but not so long-lasting.’

  She fell into an introspective silence and Janet said
, ‘Well, that wasn’t what I meant anyway. I just meant that maybe you’re not, well, tough enough to be doing this. I mean, it’s all right for the bold, brash types like me …’

  ‘But I thought that the whole idea of marriage agencies was to help the shy, the timid, the socially static?’ said Trudi ironically. ‘What you really mean is, if things go disastrously wrong, you don’t want to feel responsible.’

  ‘All right. That’s what I really mean.’

  ‘You won’t be,’ said Trudi. ‘Janet, don’t take me wrong, but a good reason for me to do this is that I want to be responsible for myself. Or rather, I can feel something in me that’s crying out desperately to find someone else who’ll take the responsibility off me, and I’ve got to be careful not to let that happen, not like it happened before. I can’t afford another twenty years, not at my age!’

  ‘But I don’t understand. Why go looking for another man at all if you’re so worried about someone taking over and making your decisions for you?’ queried Janet.

  Trudi smiled and took her friend’s hand.

  ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘At the moment I haven’t got another man, and sufficient be the evil, etc. At the moment I’m afraid I’m talking about you!’

  She squeezed Janet’s hand to remove any offence and went on, ‘And to start with, in this bold new bid for independence, I’m breaking our date on Saturday.’

  ‘Oh, hoity-toity! The Lewis Agency have fixed you up already, have they?’

  ‘Nothing so dull,’ said Trudi, smiling. ‘And I did tell you. I’m spending a couple of days in Vienna, that’s all.’

  2

  January in England was unseasonably mild, but Vienna was full of snow which a bitter east wind whipped into mini-blizzards at every corner.

  At Thomas Cook’s they had told her that the cheapest way of getting to Vienna was to go on a weekend package. When she saw that the designated hotel was the Park Hotel Schönbrunn in Hietzinger Hauptstrasse, only five minutes’ walk from her old apartment, she did not know whether to be glad or distressed.

  She arrived at the hotel late on Friday afternoon. After unpacking, she bathed the journey off her still skinny body, then got dressed and went out. She knew where she was going even though she did not admit it, and a few minutes later she was standing solitary in the snow, staring up at the line of windows in the high old building behind which she had (so it now seemed) slept away the last three years.

  Soon the chill of the pavement began to strike up into her feet and she turned away, her mind numb with more than cold.

  In a little while, she reached a small Gasthaus which she and Trent had occasionally visited for a simple meal. Confident of anonymity in her new guise, she entered and ordered a schnapps. To her horror, the owner, after regarding her curiously for a moment, said, ‘Frau Adamson, nicht wahr? We haven’t seen you for a little time. Is your husband joining you tonight?’

  Hastily she downed her drink, muttered something about being in a hurry and rushed off into the frosty night.

  Back at the hotel she went straight to the bar and had another schnapps. It seemed to her that she was involved in a test of strength with this city. It was determined to turn her into a ghost, driven palely by its cold winds down all the avenues of her old life, unable to communicate except by piteous weepings.

  But she was not a ghost; she was a living woman, here with a purpose; two purposes perhaps, or perhaps even three. It was in pursuit of these that she would establish her identity, not by drinking here at the bar or wandering aimlessly round the streets.

  She took Astrid Fischer’s last letter out of her handbag and studied the address. Then she went out of the hotel again and walked the hundred or so yards to the underground station.

  When Astrid opened the door of her flat, Trudi knew exactly the scene she was ready to play. The trouble was that instead of the cue of a guilty start which had been Astrid’s role in her mental rehearsal, the younger woman’s face expressed only a second’s surprise before breaking into a wide welcoming smile.

  ‘Trudi! This is marvellous! You should have warned me, but never mind, this is really marvellous. Come in, please!’

  It was a pleasant apartment, open-plan and opulently appointed. The sleeping area was raised a few feet above the rest. On the bed was a half-packed suitcase. Trudi pictured Trent under the chequered duvet. The picture did not hurt as much as it should have, so she tried to fan her anger by wondering how much of Trent’s money had gone into the expensive furnishings and decor.

  ‘Let me get you a drink? When did you arrive? How long are you staying?’

  Trudi shook her head, as much in bewilderment at how to begin as refusal of the drink. Astrid looked so young, so attractive, so sophisticated. It was no contest. What was she supposed to do? – scream like a fishwife in a ridiculous self-parodying jealous rage?

  Then she glimpsed herself in the glass of a framed Japanese print on the wall behind Astrid. What she saw gave her new strength. She was no longer a dumpy little Viennese hausfrau, but a slender, smartly dressed woman who might look her age but no older. And what she had to be angry about was not just the deceit of infidelity but the pretence of friendship.

  She said coldly, ‘It’s no good, Astrid. I know.’

  ‘Know what?’ The tone was politely puzzled, the smile still warm.

  ‘I know about you and Trent.’

  The smile faded. Its slow disappearance sent a feeling of triumph and also of malice surging up through Trudi.

  She said contemptuously, ‘You cow.’

  Astrid sat down, looking shattered.

  ‘Please, tell me …’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘You were with him that day. You met him there, on the road. Got in the car with him. There was a witness. You bitch.’

  Astrid’s wide blue eyes were fixed hard on Trudi’s face as though in search of some message of enlightenment.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please. I do not understand …’

  ‘How do you want it?’ mocked Trudi. ‘In English or in German? You were his mistress, his fancy woman, his tart, seine Nutte! You’d been with him a few minutes before he died. You came to the funeral, talked with me later, listened to me; acting, pretending, deceiving … bitch!’

  Astrid had sunk her face into her hands and her long blonde hair fell forward in a curtain, producing an effect of concealment and removal so complete that Trudi’s words stuttered to a halt.

  When the girl raised her head, her cheeks were wet with tears, but her expression was one of decision, almost of calculation.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I loved him. He did not love me, not so much anyway. When he left Vienna, I was broken-hearted. I followed to plead with him. He was so angry when I contacted him, he did not want to see me, would only agree to meet for a few moments somewhere quiet and remote. Nothing happened that day, believe me, Trudi. But he was there because of me. It was me who led him to his death!’

  Curiously, though not unmoved by the woman’s emotion, Trudi found herself a little piqued at her arrogation of total responsibility for Trent’s death.

  She said sharply, ‘Don’t be stupid. He died because … he died!’

  It seemed pointless to prolong the interview.

  She turned to the door.

  ‘Trudi, are you going?’

  ‘Of course I’m going,’ she said in surprise.

  Astrid brushed away her tears and said, ‘You have come all the way to Vienna just to say this to me?’

  Trudi laughed and said, ‘Don’t flatter yourself! This was just a little extra treat and I wish I hadn’t bothered.’

  ‘Trudi! Please. Do not go. Stay a little while. Let us talk.’

  Trudi looked at the Austrian woman shrewdly and said, ‘How odd. You seem almost relieved at what’s happened.’

  ‘Relieved? Yes, yes, it is true. I am glad you have come. I am glad this thing is no longer between us.’

  The assumption that to know all automatically meant t
o forgive all irritated Trudi greatly.

  ‘What do you mean it’s no longer between us?’ she demanded. ‘It will always be between us.’

  ‘But Trent is dead,’ said Astrid, with the air of one who offers an irrefutable argument.

  ‘That’s what I mean by always,’ said Trudi, once more making for the door.

  ‘Trudi! This is foolish. You must not go like this. It was nothing, please understand. It was not important!’

  ‘It was important enough to bring you halfway across Europe after him,’ retorted Trudi.

  ‘Oh yes; important for me. Of course it was important for me, but that need not bother you, need it? I loved Trent, I pursued him. I admit it. But why should what I felt bother you so much? It is what you believe Trent felt that makes you angry, and what he can never deny now he is dead. But he denied it to me. Yes, Trudi, his last words to me, to anyone, were a denial that he loved me or had ever loved me.’

  Trudi said, ‘Are you trying to tell me he wasn’t planning to go away with you?’

  Astrid said, ‘You knew he was planning to go away?’

  ‘I’ve worked it out,’ said Trudi grimly.

  She could almost see the younger woman’s mind working.

  ‘Not with me,’ she said finally.

  ‘Don’t give me that!’ exclaimed Trudi. ‘What’s the matter, Fräulein Fischer? Do you know where the money is and think you can get your hands on it?’

  This assault twisted Astrid’s face into an expression that might have been shock, incomprehension, guilt, or even fear.

  ‘What money?’ she asked.