by Ellis Peters
‘Robin!’
He would not have believed that she could ever utter such a sound, or he provoke such a sound from her. Sick and mute, he stood and stared at his work. Whether she wanted the truth or not, they both had it now, and there was no shovelling it back into its grave.
‘Robin!’ she said in a rustling whisper. ‘So he never came… But how could I have known? He wasn’t any responsibility of mine… was he? Was he?’
She had appealed to Francis, and therefore she became aware of him again, no longer as an apocalyptic voice ripping away the layers of her forgetfulness one by one, but as a man, a live human creature shut in there with her, and one who knew more about her than any man should know. All that long-buried burden of her guilt lay there in full view between them. They looked at each other across the wreckage with horror, anger and hatred. Each of them knew what the other was seeing, and each recoiled in outrage from the violation of privacy involved. Nothing was hidden any longer, everything assaulted Maggie’s lacerated senses at once, his love, his resentment of love, his humiliation and rage at the invasion of his bleak solitude. Both his love and his antagonism were unbearable, and there was nowhere to hide.
Her body, newly schooled in the use of weakness where there remains no other weapon, found the only way of escape. Francis saw her deliberately, resolutely withdraw from him into the dark, and sprang across the room towards her a second too late. She let her hands fall, and dropped like a crumpled bird.
She came round in his arms, on his heart, aware of his agony before ever she heard his voice panting and whispering her name. Fingers light and agitated and gentle smoothed back the tumbled hair from her eyes. A broken and contrite murmur entreated her:
‘Maggie, forgive me… forgive me! Oh, my God, what have I done?’
She lay like a dead woman, and made no sign. It was the only way to keep any part of her integrity free of his touch, of his love which she did not want, of his nearness which affronted her, of his pain, of which she was mortally afraid. No one must come this close to her, no one touch her with this wounding fervour. She must get rid of him. He must know no more of her, he already knew too much. So she kept her eyes fast closed and her spirit tightly withdrawn from him, even when the shadow of his face stooped between her and the light, and he kissed her on the mouth. The touch shook her to the heart with pity and panic and distress. She held her breath and remained apart.
‘Maggie, speak to me… look at me…’
Suddenly he was up from his knees and plunging away from her across the room. She heard the faint single ring as he lifted the telephone.
‘No!’ She opened her eyes and raised herself unsteadily among the cushions of the couch, where he had carried her. ‘No, please don’t! I’m all right…’
He spun on his heel, and for an instant she saw such abject hope, relief and solicitude in his eyes that her head swam again. Then she felt as a convulsion in her own flesh the effort with which he drew down over his face the austere mask of professional detachment he normally showed to the world, and hid his nakedness from her. She thought wretchedly, we’ve destroyed each other. This proud man will never forgive me for frightening him so far off-course into humility and self-betrayal, any more than I can forgive him for penetrating so far into my jungle, and caring too much about what he found. What affair am I of his, outside the terms of the agreement? And what right had I to find my way under his skin and reduce him to this?
‘I was going to call your doctor. I think I should.’
‘No, please hang up. I don’t need anyone. I don’t want anyone.’ She sat up, smoothing her dove-grey skirt. ‘I’m sorry I alarmed you,’ she said. ‘It was only a momentary weakness. I shall be all right now.’
‘I’m afraid I’ve upset you too much. I wish you’d let me call someone.’
‘Please, no, it’s quite unnecessary. Now, if you’ll be kind enough to hand me my bag… It’s there on the piano…’
He brought it, handing it to her with fastidious carefulness not to touch, not to make any claim upon her, now that she was awake and aware. Her pallor was less extreme now, her face was calm, almost cold. The fear was gone and the hope was gone; she was past the moment of impact, it seemed, and beyond there was an emptiness, an area of shock, where as yet nothing hurt and nothing comforted.
‘Don’t worry about me, I shall be quite all right now. I’ll lie down and have a rest, after you leave. Thank you for all the work you’ve put in on my case, you’ve been most efficient, and I’m very grateful.’ She was riffling through the contents of her handbag, her head bent; and in a moment she looked up at him, holding out a sheaf of notes. ‘I hope I’ve reckoned up right. This is only the fee for the actual number of days, of course, including to-day. Please let me have the amount of your expenses, they must have been considerable. Don’t trouble to itemise, I shall be quite satisfied with a round figure. And again, thank you!’ Very courteous, very low, very final, that wild-silk voice of hers, dismissing him; but so gentle that at first he hardly understood, and when he did, he could not believe.
‘You mean you’re dispensing with my services?’ His face was whiter than hers.
‘But surely, you’ve completed your assignment very successfully. I asked you to find out for me what it was I’d done… to feel that I had a death on my hands. And you’ve done it. There’s nothing else I need.’
‘You’re accepting this without examination? I should have thought we needed to go into it in detail, to satisfy you that it’s authentic. I was too brutal, I beg your pardon! I wanted to avoid mentioning names to see if there was any genuine memory of this incident…’
‘You have seen,’ she said, ‘that there is. It needed only to be uncovered. There is no mistake. And I am quite satisfied.’
He stood gazing down at her, and felt time and the world grinding to a stop, and only a blank before him. She continued to sit there, pale, resolutely withdrawn into herself, holding out the sheaf of notes patiently in a hand that trembled a little from weakness; and her eyes had become the heavy, opaque blue of Willow Pattern china. There was nothing he could do. He was not going to plead with her for a small corner somewhere in her life, and he could not force his way where she did not want him to go. He had not even the right to turn on his heel and walk out, and leave her holding the money she felt she owed him. He was a hired employee, commissioned, paid off and dismissed. What could he do but take his fee, and go?
‘I ought to point out,’ he said, in a voice almost as dry as the desert he saw ahead of him without her, ‘that what I’ve reported and what you may have remembered is not enough to prove what actually became of this man Aylwin. You yourself know that there were completely logical reasons for believing, as Dr. Fredericks certainly did, that he had simply walked out. Granted that you have additional knowledge, you still have no proof that Dr. Fredericks’ version is not the correct one. For all the real evidence anyone possesses, Aylwin may be very much alive and perfectly well. If you won’t allow me to follow up the possibilities for you, at least remember that.’
Did he for one moment believe what he had said? Certainly she did not. Perhaps now she knew more than he did. She remained marble-still, the notes extended gravely in her hand.
‘Thank you, you’re very kind. Please believe that I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but there’s no need to follow it up any farther. And now, I’m a little tired…’
He could not keep her waiting any longer. He took the money without a glance, and thrust it into his pocket.
‘May I know… what you intend to do?’
‘I have no plans,’ she said.
‘If there should be anything further to tell you, can I rely on finding you here?’
‘For a while, yes. I don’t know how long.’
‘If you should need me, you know where to reach me.’ She did not offer him her hand, and he did not expect it. He walked to the door without looking back. ‘Good-bye, Miss Tressider!’
‘Good-b
ye, Mr. Killian!’
The trouble was that he didn’t mean it, and she did. Wherever she looked for help, out of friendship or for hire, never in this world would she turn to Francis Killian again. She had crossed him out of her experience, buried him as deep as the body he’d dug up for her. After the compromising intimacy of what they’d just done to each other, he thought grimly as he walked down the stairs, it was either that or marriage.
He had taken her money, because he had had no right to refuse it, but now that he had it, it was his business what he did with it. He walked into the church opposite the hotel, and cast a sullen eye over all the almsboxes, but the combating of dry-rot and death-watch beetle and the financing of overseas missions in countries arguably more moral and likeable if not more Christian than England did not appeal to him as a job for Maggie’s money. He went down to the Salvation Army shelter by the embankment, where they had a permanent collecting-box on the wall outside, in the form of a giant tambourine, with his favourite appeal written across it in large, cheerful characters: HELP UP THE DOWN-BUT-NOT-OUTS. He pulled out the untidy wad of notes from his pocket, and stuffed them anyhow through the slot.
A disinterested-looking man sauntering past with his eyes apparently on the river took in this surprising act, and loitered to lean on the rail and the embankment and think it over, as Francis stalked away.
George Felse had been following him ever since he had shouldered his way through the revolving doors of the Lion Hotel and butted savagely through the traffic into the church opposite. It was a chance meeting only, in fact George was on his way to the car-park where he had left his car. But the apparition of Bunty’s visitor, back from Austria and striding stony-faced and hot-eyed away from an encounter with his principal, had lured him out of his course. Everybody knew from the local evening paper that Maggie Tressider had taken a suite at the Lion; and by this time George had studied Francis Killian’s photograph too thoughtfully to miss that face when he saw it cross the pavement in front of him. First the almsboxes in the church, and now this startling treatment of a fistful of money. And the desolation and rage in the worn, illusionless face. It takes a lot to wound a man without illusions. It takes a touch of madness to make most people throw money away.
George walked to his car slowly and thoughtfully. Whatever Maggie Tressider’s commission had been, it looked as if it was over. And there at the Salvation Army shelter her agent had jettisoned his pay, in anger and offence. Was it possible that Bunty had been right about him? Had he a far larger stake at risk?
And might it not be well worth while, so far as other duties allowed, continuing this unofficial watch upon him? In fact, upon both of them?
It was on Saturday, the fourteenth of September, that Laura Howard telephoned from the B.E.A. office.
‘Bunty? Something rather intriguing—if you’re still interested in your party? He looked in yesterday afternoon, and asked me to do exactly what you asked me to do! He wants to know if Maggie Tressider books a passage anywhere. He knows I shouldn’t do it but he was in dead earnest. And of course, I didn’t promise, not exactly, but remembering what you said last time… Well, I didn’t say I wouldn’t, either. I thought I’d better consult you, and see what was on. Because, you see, she has! This morning! She rang up and wanted a passage to Zurich next Wednesday, and I’ve got one for her on the 16.10 from Heathrow.’
Bunty had waved George over long before this point, and his head was inclined intently beside her own, listening to the distant clacking with ears stretched.
‘Well, I mean, Maggie Tressider! But he seems on the level, and he says he’s been working for her. Has he?’
‘Yes,’ said Bunty, ‘that’s right, he has.’
‘Then what do I do? Should I let him know?’
‘Ask her,’ hissed George, ‘if there’s another flight to Zurich the same day.’
‘Hallo… Laura? Is there another flight that same day?’
‘Lots… 10.10, 10.50, 14.10… and tourist night flights, of course…’
‘Tell him,’ breathed George, ‘and a thousand to one he’ll be on one of ’em if there’s a vacancy.’
‘Yes, Laura, tell him. He’s O.K. And Laura… let me know if he books a crossing for himself, will you?’
‘Oh, well,’ said Laura philosophically, ‘in for a penny, in for a pound. O.K., I’ll call him. And I’ll call you, double-quick, if there’s any trouble.’ She rang off.
Bunty cradled the ’phone, and gazed, round-eyed at George over it. ‘Now what’s going on? It doesn’t make sense for him to be peering round corners and suborning B.E.A. employees to find out what his own client’s up to. He can’t have been lying about working for her, because he wasn’t at all worried about the possibility that I might pop out and buy some flowers and go round to the Royal to visit her. In fact he suggested it. And plenty of people would have, especially after being told she’d remembered them. Now it seems he’s expecting her to go running out there herself, and not to say anything to him about it. So what is going on?’
‘I rather think,’ said George, ‘that they’ve parted brassrags.’ He recounted the incident of the Salvation Army shelter. ‘It looks as if he brought something back with him, and something that got him paid off and sent about his business. And somehow I don’t think it was book material about Paul Fredericks, do you? Anyhow, he wasn’t a bit happy about the result, you should have seen his face! And he certainly got rid of her money so fast it might have been scalding him. But now it does seem that he hasn’t exactly accepted his dismissal, doesn’t it? Far from it, he’s still going to be bloodhounding along after her wherever she goes, unless I miss my guess. Only this time unknown to her, and unpaid.’
‘I told you,’ said Bunty, ‘he’s in love with her. If she’s going to walk head-on into trouble, he’s going to be on the spot to pull her out of it.’
‘And you think she is going to be walking into trouble?’ demanded George, of himself at least as much as of his wife.
‘It looks as if he thinks so. And after all, he’s the only one who knows what he found there, isn’t he?’
‘You’re so right,’ agreed George ruefully. ‘I only wish he wasn’t. I’d give a good deal to be in the know myself.’ He sat mute for a few moments, his eyes fixed on Bunty in bright speculation; she knew him so well that she could almost see him making up his mind. ‘Bunty, how would you like a few days in the Vorarlberg?’
‘Us?’ she said, startled. ‘You and me? You mean follow them over and keep an eye on them?’
“If he decides to go after her. Yes, you and me—why not? I’ve still got a week of leave to take, some time, why not now and why not in Scheidenau? If nothing comes of it, we’ve lost nothing and had a holiday. And if something does come of it, if he’s turned up something about the disappearance of your young Aylwin… Well, who knows? If we roll one more stone over we may find Peter Bromwich, too. I’d give a good deal to close that case.’
‘We couldn’t travel on the same flight with either of them,’ pointed out Bunty. ‘He’d know me, for certain. And she just might.’
‘I was thinking rather of hopping over with one of the tourist night flights, ahead of them. They won’t all be fully booked not in September. And it would give us time to lay on a car from Zurich, ready to trail those two as soon as they land. Train or road, we can tag along once we’ve got them in our sights. What do you say?’
Bunty reviewed her responsibilities, and could find nothing against it. Dominic and his Tossa wouldn’t be home from their student trek in Yugoslavia for a fortnight yet, just in time to head back to Oxford.
‘I say yes, let’s!’ said Bunty with enthusiasm. ‘If he follows her, of course,’ she conceded with a sigh.
It was late afternoon when the telephone rang again.
‘Bunty? Laura here! How did you know? He’s booked on the 14.10, two hours ahead of her!’
CHAPTER SIX
« ^ »
Second Cousin Gisela, of the mini-skirt
, the blonde ponytail and the white wool knee-stockings, heard the car drive through into the courtyard of the Goldener Hirsch, and whirled her stool round to see who was arriving. The French couple from the second floor had left this morning, and most of the currency-starved English were already gone. The slight chill of approaching autumn fingered thoughtfully at the roofs of Scheidenau. A new arrival was not only profit, but entertainment, too.
The driver, a frequent visitor here during the season, brought in two cases of modest size but excellent quality, and his manner indicated that he had been more than adequately tipped. Gisela reviewed the accommodation she had to offer, and looked up with hopeful brightness as the new arrival came into the hall. English, a lady alone, very beautiful, very pale, very fragile. She wore a fashionably simple little tube of a dress in fine wool jersey, printed in rich warm tones of rust and amber and peach that did their best to reflect some colour into her face, but Gisela could see that without that reflected glow she would have been ashen, with lavender hollows in her cheeks and deeper violet shadows under her eyes. Her clothes, from the narrow black shoes to the small, gold-rimmed halo of a black hat, spoke of money. Her face, white, remote and abstracted, seemed not to belong to the picture, even though everything she wore had been carefully chosen to set it off at its best. Gisela had the feeling that she had seen that face before in magazines, and that it was famous and ought to be recognized, but the firmament of opera and the concert platform was not her world, and she had no memory for the stars that revolved in it.
The voice which asked for a room was very quiet and a little husky with fatigue, yet it was the most vital, vigorous and live thing about the visitor, as if it used and drove everything else. A voice that would make you prick up your ears and turn round to see if the face matched it, even if you heard it simply ordering beer in the bar.
‘How long will the lady be staying?’
‘I don’t know… several days. If I’m not asking for impossibilities, I should like to have a piano to myself somewhere. I have to practise,’ she explained with the shadow of a smile, ‘and I don’t want to disturb anyone.’
