by Ellis Peters
Gisela was eager. ‘If you would like it, there is a suite on the first floor which has a large sitting-room. To-morrow they could bring up a piano for you from the dining-room, there are two there. Only an upright, but it is a good tone, and in tune.’ The suite was the dearest apartment in the house, and someone who wanted a piano as part of the amenities could well afford to pay for it.
‘Upstairs?’ said Maggie doubtfully. ‘I shouldn’t like to put them to so much trouble. Won’t it be very heavy and difficult?’
‘The stairs are so wide and so shallow, there is no difficulty. Like a castle, you will see. And the suite is very nice, it looks over the lake, and has a verandah with steps down to the grounds. I will show you.’ And she whisked open the flap of her desk, picked up the two suitcases like handfuls of feathers, and started sturdily up the length of the vaulted hall.
Maggie followed the straight young back and twinkling white wool legs to the vast rear stairs, and along a broad, echoing corridor on the first floor. She had no conscious memory of anything here, yet she knew where something was changed. It was like revisiting the place of a dream, or perhaps even more like dreaming of a place so uncannily familiar as to convince her she had dreamed it before. On those long-past visits with Freddy she had slept far up on the third floor, in rooms appropriately cheap for aspiring young performers. This large blue and white room, with its verandah blazing with geraniums, the airy bedroom opening from it, the bright hand-made cover on the old, carved bed, these she had never seen before. She went out into the open air and leaned over the flowering rail, and the scent of the trees came up to her, and the glimmer of the lake refracting light to her invisible, in small, broken darts of paler green launched through the deep green dusk.
‘Dinner is over,’ said Gisela, ‘but if you would like something to eat I will tell them. You are very tired, shall we not bring you something here?’
Maggie sat down on the edge of the bed, and its firm softness drew her like a magnet. ‘I am tired. Yes, if you would be so kind, it would be very nice to eat here.’
‘And you like the room? It will do?’
‘It will do very well. But I haven’t signed, or filled in a card for you.’
‘To-morrow,’ said Gisela cheerfully. ‘And in the morning they will bring up your piano. Everything to-morrow!’ And she went darting along the corridor, in small, light thumps like a terrier running on the naked boards, and skittered down the stairs back to her switchboard.
Maggie undressed, her movements clumsy with exhaustion, wrapped herself in a housecoat, and lay down on the bed. The feather coverlet billowed round her, cool and grateful, closing her in from the world. There were no thoughts left in her at all, only this terrible weariness suddenly eased and cradled, and sleep leaning heavily on her eyelids the moment she lay down.
Only this morning she had left Comerbourne for London, picked up fresh clothes at her flat, and taken a taxi out to Heathrow in time for her flight. Then the train journey on to Bregenz, and the car to bring her up here to the border. And ever since Zurich, places and scenes familiar to her throughout the years of her fame had taken on a different, a remote familiarity, as though the nineteen-year-old Maggie had come back to savour them with another palate. A bitter taste, perhaps of poison. I am not yet well, she told herself, I see, hear, feel with distorted senses. But in her heart she knew that it was because all these places were populated now by one more person, many years forgotten.
It was five days now since she had remembered Robin living, and been brought face to face with Robin dead. Five days in which he had kept her company every step of the way.
She was discharged to her own care, she could go where she chose and take the responsibility for herself. None the less, she had gone gently and gradually about this pilgrimage, concentrating her forces to satisfy her doctors that she was fit to travel, and assuring them that her intention was to take a leisurely, convalescent holiday at a resort she already knew well, where she would be comfortable and well-cared-for, a complete rest that would set her up to tackle life again. Turning her head on the pillow and catching sight of her own drawn face in the glass, she felt certain she had not looked like this when they agreed to let her go. She must remember to send Mr. Rice a card full of reassurances to-morrow. Everything to-morrow!
She had done certain other things during those five days: cancelled a few more forward engagements, answered all her letters, arranged a transfer of money to the accounts of Alec and Dione, in case they found themselves in difficulties while she was absent.
‘While she was absent’ was how she phrased it in her own mind; but before she left England she had also made her will.
Across the water, in a room on the second floor of the Alte Post, Bunty Felse lowered the field-glasses from her eyes with a crow of satisfaction, and turned to meet George as he came into the doorway behind her.
‘She’s here, all right,’ he reported. ‘Came up in a car from Bregenz not a quarter of an hour ago, and turned up towards the Goldener Hirsch.’
‘I know,’ said Bunty, ‘I’ve just seen her. Those are her windows, almost opposite to us, see? With the flowers and the balcony. The curtains are drawn now, but when the girl brought her up and put the lights on they were open. It was the lights that made me look there. I might have mistaken the face at this distance, even with glasses, but I couldn’t mistake that hat.’
She had never been quite easy in her mind since they had taken their eyes off that hat, a thin gold halo in the back window of the taxi, on the road from Zurich airport, and allowed Maggie to be carried away towards the town without them. George had had to make a snap decision which of the two to follow, for the middle-aged hired Dodge with Francis Killian at the wheel had swung unhesitatingly north-east on the fast road to Winterthur.
‘He knew where she was heading, all right,’ said George, focusing the glasses on the pattern of lights over the water. ‘And which hotel she’d make for when she got here. Lucky we followed him in by road or we wouldn’t have known which one he’d picked for himself. As it is, you’ll be able to keep out of his sight here without any trouble.’
‘I wonder why he did choose the Weisses Kreuz, when this one is so well-placed for keeping an eye on her?’
‘He couldn’t know she’d have that room, could he? And the Weisses Kreuz is on the corner where all the roads meet, all traffic going up to the Goldener Hirsch has to pass it. He was there on the terrace,’ said George, ‘waiting for her to arrive. When the car went by, he paid and strolled off in the same direction.’
‘You think he’ll try to see her?’
‘No, I think he’ll want to see without being seen himself. He won’t want her to know he’s spying on her, not if you’re right about his feelings for her.’
‘So we wait for him to move,’ said Bunty, ‘and he waits for her. And she, I shouldn’t be surprised, waits for somebody else, I wonder who?’
Maggie, on her way down to breakfast, met a woman on the broad white spiral of the back stairs, a tall woman in traditional dress, with black hair plaited into two great, shining braids and coiled high on her head. She was carrying two heavy cases as she climbed, so that her head was bent, and that tower of glistening hair was the first thing about her to catch Maggie’s attention. She drew aside to where the steps were narrowest, to let the burdened woman by, and because she was still a little shaky and hesitant from the fatigue of the previous day, she halted and held by the wall rather than risk proceeding on the tapering treads. The woman’s eyes travelled upwards steadily from the narrow, elegant black shoes to the smooth russet-amber hair. Her head came up like the head of a deer scenting man. For a moment she halted, motionless and silent, and the sidelong light from a window accentuated the cleft in her lip, scoring the shadow there cruelly deep.
Maggie and Friedl stood mute and intent, gazing at each other. Thirteen years is a long time, but a hare-lip on an otherwise good-looking girl is bitterly memorable, and to be world-famous is to
have one’s photograph penetrate everywhere, if any reminder was needed. And even more surely, there stood between them the shadow of an absent third, at once a link between them and an impassable barrier.
‘You are the lady from Number One?’ said Friedl, with a gaunt smile in which her eyes played no part. ‘Franz and Joachim will bring up the piano for you this morning.’
‘Thank you!’ Maggie hesitated for a moment only. ‘You are Fraulein Friedl?’
‘How kind of the gracious lady,’ said Friedl, ‘to remember me.’ The smile, returning, hollowed her brown cheeks and raised a hungry gleam in her eye that was neither gracious nor kind. ‘It is a long time ago.’
‘I must speak to you,’ said Maggie.
‘Not here. Not now.’ Friedl watched the colour ebb and flow on the too-prominent cheekbones, and slow, burning resentment gathered about her heart and ached insatiably. This was the woman who had and did not value the devotion of every man who set eyes on her, while she, Friedl, beautiful of body but marred of face, provided a passing interest for such men as had nothing better to do, but was never noticed, never regarded, as a woman in her own right. Wait, she thought, there is always a price on everything, and you’ve had so much and paid so little yet! ‘I have my work to do,’ she said. ‘I am not a daughter of the house.’
The tone was mild and even servile, but the eyes were inimical, and even the note of self-abasement had its implicit reverse of smouldering arrogance. Maggie shrank. If she could have turned back now she would have done it, but there was no way of turning back. It was even possible that this woman knew no more than she had told Francis; but if she did, Maggie had to know it. There might be no comfort in knowing, but not to know was to be balked of her own identity. She had come here, tidying up her affairs behind her, and leaving no dependent of hers unprovided, simply in the determination to know; there was no other thought or ambition left in her mind.
‘When may I have a talk with you?’ she asked patiently.
‘I am not free until after dinner. And even then, if we wish to be undisturbed, better it should not be in the house.’
‘I will come wherever you choose.’
‘This evening, when I am free, I will go along the path to the wood, under your verandah. Come out by that way, please, after me. They do not like it if I mix too much with the guests.’ It was a lie, but so well did it fit into the picture she was composing of an oppressed poor relation that she almost felt it to be true. I will make you follow me, she thought, as I followed him. I will take you where I took him, and make use of you as he made use of me. And I’ll hurt you as he hurt me, and with interest. When I’m done with you, you shall have one man round your neck for life, and go the rest of your way ringing him like a leper’s bell to keep every other man off, for fear of bringing him to the same end. I know your kind!
‘Very well,’ said Maggie. ‘I shall be watching for you. I’ll come.’
‘What more do you want?’ said Friedl harshly. ‘He told you all this, didn’t he? That man you sent here. Here in this very place he asked me what you have asked me, and I told him. And what did you need with either of us to tell you? Who knew better than you what sent Robin rushing down the slope there and into the lake? Yes, you had the right to refuse him, if you didn’t want him, yes, you could tell him to go away—am I blaming you? What was it to you if somebody else loved him, and wanted what you didn’t want? But you cannot have it both ways. If you think you did him no wrong, why do you come weeping back like a penitent, asking to be forgiven for killing him? If you did nothing shameful to him, why are you ashamed?’
In the half-circle of bushes, with the night deepening round them, all colours on the landward side had become an opaque wash of olive green. Against the faintly luminous shimmer of lake and sky, thinly veiled by a lace of branches, Friedl in her black dress prowled restlessly. The slight rustle of her feet in the grass frayed at the silence when her voice ceased. Somewhere a twig cracked. She reared her head to listen, frozen in mid-stride. The moment she was still the ultimate silence flooded in and possessed the world.
‘No… Nothing! No, nobody else ever comes here at night.’
She came a step nearer, turning her back on the lake, and stood black and tense against the pallor of the sky.
‘I loved him. You understand? For two days, just two days, I was his mistress. But he never thought seriously of me. What man ever did? You were there, you with everything. How could he even see me for long? You don’t believe me?’
‘I believe you,’ said Maggie. ‘I am sorry!’
The sense she had had on the staircase of something rank and bitter and unprovoked assaulting her had become here an emanation of horror, unrelieved by the breeze or the cool of the air. For the first time in her life she knew it for hate, and was helpless in face of it. The tall darkness seemed to grow taller, hanging over her malignant and assured. It was not fear that held her paralysed, but a sick revulsion from the proximity of such hatred, an intuition that if it touched her she would never feel clean again.
‘It is late to be sorry. Why did you not call him back then? Why did you never tell what you knew?’
‘Why didn’t you?’ said Maggie. ‘After we were gone, when they waited for him to come back for his things, and still he didn’t come?’
‘Why should I? What would have been the good? What did I care about his things? Could I have brought him back from the dead by telling?’
‘You are quite sure, then—you were quite sure all the time—that he is dead?’
It was the only question that remained, whether she asked it of herself or Friedl.
‘His body,’ she said, ‘never came ashore. I don’t say that is proof of anything, I only say it is so. If there is anything more that you know, anything final, please tell me.’
There was a soundless movement in the dark, and Friedl’s face was close to hers, pale and fierce beneath the black hair.
‘Dead?’ she said softly. ‘Yes, he’s dead. You are right, I didn’t tell your Herr Killian everything I know. The body never came ashore here in Austria, no—but in Germany it did! That same winter they sent me over to help at the hotel in Felsenbach. Marianne is married to the innkeeper there, and they have a good ski season while we are quiet here. You do not know this place? Our river runs through it after it leaves the lake, before it comes back into Austria. That year there was a sudden thaw early in February, and the Rulenbach came down out of the lake in flood and brought a man ashore. What was left of a man! No, I still did not speak! Why speak? What could it do for him or for me? And after so long one would not say he was recognisable, no, not easily recognisable. He had no papers on him… how could he? Almost he had no clothes. They buried him out of charity, and put a stone over him, too, but without a name. But I knew!’ she cried, her voice rising dangerously. ‘I knew who he was! You want proof? He still had a signet ring on his finger, after all that time. I saw it, and I knew it. And so will you know it! Don’t take my word, look for yourself! Do you remember this?’
The pale claw of her hand plunged suddenly into the pocket of her dress, and plucked out a slip of white card, and something else that she fumbled wildly for a moment before her shaking fingers could control it. She had come prepared with everything she needed for the coup de grace. The torch was a tiny thing that nestled in her palm, but it produced a thin bright beam, enough for her purpose.
‘Look! Look! You wished to know—know, then, be certain! Do you remember this face?’
She thrust it before Maggie’s eyes, and held the torch-beam close. A postcard photograph, half-length, of a young man playing the ’cello. It was taken somewhat from his right side; his head was inclined in delighted concentration over his instrument, so that the eyes were veiled beneath rounded lids, and the highlight picked out the line of a smooth boyish forehead and a well-shaped jaw and chin. The lips, full and firm, curled slightly in an absorbed smile, the hair, wavy and thick, was shaken forward out of its concert-platform ne
atness by his exertions. He looked young, carefree, and as single-minded as a child. And the photographer, like every photographer who ever made studies of a string-player, had lavished his most loving care on the braced and sensitive hands. The bow hand, beautiful in its taut grace and power, occupied the forefront of the picture; and on the third finger was a heavy seal-ring with a black, oval stone. Even by this light Maggie could distinguish the curling flourishes of the letter R in reverse.
‘Can you see clearly enough? Here, take it, hold it… It was you he wanted… you who killed him. Yes, killed him! Is it the right man? Is it the right ring? You know him?’
‘Yes,’ said Maggie in a broken whisper. ‘Yes, I know him.’
Friedl snatched away her hand, and left the photograph quivering in Maggie’s hold. She had reached the end of the journey, there was nowhere beyond to go. The darkness and the watery shimmer, the pencil of torch-light, the pale glare of Friedl’s vengeful face, lurched and swirled round her in a moment of faintness, and suddenly the burden of this corrosive hate was more than she could bear. Her last refuge was gone, she could no longer hold on to any shred of doubt or hope. The photograph fluttered from her nerveless fingers. She turned and stumbled away through the bushes, blind and desperate, fending herself off from trees, tripping over roots, wild to escape from contact with this malice that pursued her with a defilement worse than guilt. Behind her she heard Friedl break into hard, breathless laughter, and swoop through the bushes to follow her victim still.
‘Run… faster, faster… He is on your heels!’ Tearlessly sobbing, half-demented, Maggie clawed her way out to the open path at last, and began to run unsteadily along it, her course wavering from one grassy edge to the other, her hands spread to ward off the leaning trees. Once she fell, and picked herself up with wincing haste and blundered on. The voice had fallen far behind now, abandoning her to her own torments. No sound pursued her. She halted for a moment, clinging to the resinous trunk of a fir tree in the fragrant darkness, her chest labouring, her ears straining, awed and soothed by the night’s huge silence.
