by Ellis Peters
It was then that she heard the sound. Not loud, if the measure of the preceding silence had not newly alerted her spirit, not even significant, if it had been the first time she had heard it. But this was time returning, experience rounding on itself to celebrate her destruction. This she had heard before, a long time ago, and pushed away from her strenuously into the limbo of disbelief because it must not be true. Some way behind her, distantly but clearly, echoed the mute, remembered splash of a body into water. She was mad, or damned, or both, she was the quarry of a specific retribution. History had dragged back a September night of many years ago, so that she should not be able to forget, or find it possible to mistake her hour.
When she could breathe again she crept on, mindless, exhausted, sunk now into the indifference of despair. The comfortable brown bulk of the hotel rose before her out of the trees. She dragged herself up the wooden steps to her own verandah, and let herself in by the curtained door. The furies were hard on her heels, but she could not run any more, and it was not from them she was in flight. Without putting on the light she fell face-upwards on her bed, and lay with spread arms, staring up at the high ceiling, waiting to embrace the judgment.
She knew, she acknowledged, her mortal guilt. A fellow-creature had leaned upon her in his extreme need, and she had shrugged him off and let him fall. She admitted to her consciousness at last the truth of what she was. She was Robin Aylwin’s murderess.
She was roused from her timeless, aimless waiting before the first light of dawn had turned the sky from velvet black to smoke-grey. Something was pecking irritably at her senses, a small, insistent, nagging thing that hurt, and meant to hurt. With infinite labour her mind gathered its abandoned powers to locate and understand. Someone was tapping, tapping, softly and tirelessly at the glass of the door in her sitting-room, the door that led to the verandah and the lake.
She rose like a sleepwalker, and felt her way across the bedroom. All the shapes within the room were defined in shades of grey. The sky framed in the window was metallic and bluish, like steel, and the outline of the figure pressed into the angle of the door-frame was black, sexless, without identity, one edge of it merged into the wall. Only the hand that tapped and tapped at the glass with some small hard object had a perceptible shape and size. A man’s hand, tapping out that minute but penetrating sound with his keys to wake her.
She had no thoughts, no curiosity, and no fear. She drew back the bolt. The cool of the outer air gushed in before him as he slid into the room quickly and silently, and closed the door behind him. Her hand had gone up automatically to the light switch, but he caught her by the wrist before she could reach it.
‘No, don’t! No lights! They’d see them.’
She passed a hand confusedly over her eyes, for she was surely seeing and hearing things that could have no reality. The voice she knew, and the face, so close to her own in the dimness. If he had not been many miles away in England, she would have said this was Francis Killian in the flesh, so solid did the apparition seem. She stood passive, not trying to free herself, not even recoiling from being handled, from having her haunted solitude trampled, from having to experience at close quarters his love and rage and fear for her. The force that frowned off the world to a respectful distance had deserted her and left her a shell.
He stood between her and the paling light from outside, and turned her about in his hands, saw the grass stains on her skirt, the torn stockings, the deep bruises under her eyes. He took her by the chin and turned her face up to him with a groan of exasperation.
‘My God, my God, what have you done?’ he said, hardly audibly, but that was to himself, not to her. ‘Oh, God, why did I ever take my eyes off you? Even at night! I thought you were safe in your bed…’
‘It is you!’ she said, with distant wonder. ‘How did you get here?’
‘I followed you. Did you think I could just wash my hands of you and let you go to hell alone? Why, for God’s sake,’ he demanded his enforced whisper shaken and thick with fury, ‘did you have to do this crazy thing? Couldn’t you trust me and take my word for it? Why did you have to come here and expose yourself to this? And what were your damned fools of doctors doing to let you?’
She had nothing to say. He held her by the shoulders and she stood silent and submissive, looking at him, looking through him, with eyes huge and dulled, as though she still dreamed of him and had no interest in waking. Her passivity terrified him. He shook her between his hands, too frightened to be gentle.
‘Don’t you understand? Don’t you realise your position? Don’t you know that Friedl never came in last night? That they’ve just fished her body out of the lake?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
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Something came to life again in the dull depths of her eyes, a quivering intelligence that proved she was still within reach of argument and persuasion, if only he had had time for either. But it was growing lighter every moment, and he had to get out of there quickly, or she would have no chance at all. There was no time to question her. He made one attempt, and she said nothing, merely stood withdrawn into some remote dream of horror. There was nothing he could do but take charge of her, and hope to God she would do what he told her, and be too numbed to realise what a tightrope she was walking until she was safely over.
He drew her across the room in his arm, and thrust her into her bedroom.
‘Get those clothes off, quickly! Give me the stockings and the dress… Hurry, I’ll get them out of here.’
She went where he urged her and did what she was told like an automaton. In a few moments she emerged in her housecoat, the torn stockings and stained dress in her hands. He bundled them into his pockets, and drew her to the bed, and sitting her down there, held her by the shoulders eye to eye with him.
‘Listen to me! The police will be here all day, asking questions of everybody. You, too! You’ve got to be ready for them. You know nothing about Friedl, you understand? You didn’t see her last night, you weren’t with her…’
It was then that her face awoke suddenly, stirred into agitation and pain, for it was then that it dawned on her that he half-believed she had killed Friedl. And in a sense so she had. There was a doom on her. People who came too near her died, without any motion of her will. And so might he, if she did not send him away from her.
‘I must tell you,’ she said, raising upon him eyes no longer blind, but brilliant with apprehension and resolve. ‘I did see her… I was with her…’
‘I’ve asked you nothing,’ he said roughly. ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘I want to tell you. There was more, something she didn’t tell you…’
‘Quickly, then!’ He eyed the paling light, and shook with anxiety for her.
She had caught the sting of his urgency at last. She told him what she had to tell in a few words. He held fast to her all the while, afraid that she might relapse into her border world of despair if he took his hands from her.
‘Felsenbach! That’s over in the Allgau. And this photograph… you’re in no doubt that it is Aylwin?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s Robin. There isn’t any doubt.’
‘You went out by the verandah here… No one saw you? No one was about, when you left or when you returned?’
‘No, no one.’
‘Good, that makes it easier. If people saw you come upstairs after dinner, so much the better. Understand, you went to bed, and you’ve been here ever since. You’ve been ill, you’re under orders to get plenty of rest.’ They’ll believe that, he thought, his heart aching over the pale spectre he held between his hands. ‘You understand? You went early to bed, and slept, and you know nothing about any happenings in the night. That’s what you have to tell the police, when they ask, and for God’s sake get it right and stick to it.’
‘I won’t forget,’ she said submissively.
‘And listen, stay close to the hotel all to-day. Maybe they’ll insist on that, but do it in any case. But to-morrow co
me to the restaurant in the village, for lunch, and I’ll meet you there. The one next to the church, The Bear. Make it about noon. By then we may be able to see how the land lies. We’re acquaintances in England, running into each other here by chance. Have you got that clear?’
In a whisper she said: ‘Yes,’ and let it be taken for a promise, though she had promised nothing. All she wanted now was for him to go away quickly, before the shadow fell upon him as it had fallen on Robin and on Friedl.
‘I must get out of here, it’ll be broad daylight soon. When I’ve gone, go to bed, sleep if you can, but go to bed anyhow, and when it’s time, get up and go down to breakfast as if nothing had happened. As far as you’re concerned, nothing has happened! That’s all you have to remember.’
He left her there sitting on the edge of her bed, looking after him. Soundlessly he turned the latch of the door, and silently let it relax into its place again under his hand. The pre-dawn light was now dove-grey, but the woodland below, the invisible shore, the gardens, still drowsed in obscurity and silence. Quicksilver, dully shining, the lake lay in its bowl asleep; when the sun rose there would be faint curls of mist drifting across its surface on the south-west wind. Towards the north-east, and the dwindling corner where the Rulenbach flowed out on its detour across the German border. Towards Felsenbach, where, if Friedl had been telling the truth, Robin Aylwin was buried in a grave without a name.
When he was gone, she did as he had told her to do. She went to bed, and by some curious process of subconscious obedience she even fell asleep. She slept until the sun was high, and the usual morning noises had come to life all round her, the normal echoes of an old, spacious house with bare wooden floors. She rose and dressed herself with care, and made up her face as scrupulously as for a stage performance, which in a way this day was going to be.
She went down the stairs slowly, straining her ears at every step. There was a changed quality in the bustle of sound within the house, a high, soft, hysterical note of tension. From the staircase windows that looked into the courtyard she saw a police car and an ambulance standing on the cobbles. Within the broad double doorway of the hall Herr Waldmeister stood conversing earnestly and in low tones with a middle-aged police officer. Frau Waldmeister, in the doorway of the office, talked volubly to someone within, in a cataract of excited dialect supplemented with a frenzy of shoulder-heaving, and head-wagging, and when Maggie passed by she could see another, younger policeman busy clearing the office desk for his own use. Two or three guests hovered just within the doorway of the dining-room, peering and whispering in delighted horror.
Gisela, hunched over her adding machine, punched out figures blindly with one hand, and held a handkerchief to her nose with the other. Not to question or comment would in itself be ground for comment. Maggie turned towards the reception desk.
‘Whatever’s the matter? What is it? Has something happened?’
Gisela looked up with brimming eyes. ‘Oh, Miss Tressider, isn’t it terrible? The police are here, they want to talk to everybody. Friedl… she’s dead! She drowned herself in the lake!’
It was late in the afternoon before the police got round to Maggie. By then it was quite simply a relief to be called into the office, and it seemed to her that in closing the door behind her on entering she shut herself into a quiet island, immune to all the agitation and gossip and rumours that were convulsing the household. There was excitement, disquiet and awe abroad in the Goldener Hirsch; but there was no grief. Only Gisela, in love with living and genuinely sorry that anyone should have to surrender it, much less feel wretched enough to want to opt out of it, had shed tears.
In the office it was very quiet. The young man behind the desk, thickset, solid and tanned, looked up from the list he had before him, and smiled briefly and perfunctorily in tribute to a good-looking woman. Off-duty, he would have had more time to appreciate her.
‘Sit down, please. You are Miss Maggie Tressider?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s my name.’
‘And you occupy room Number One. You know what our business is here?’
‘Gisela told me, this morning. One of the maids has been drowned in the lake.’
‘Friedl Schiffer… yes. We took her body from the water very early this morning.’ He did not say what had brought them looking for her there at such an hour, but the rumours were already circulating, and by this time there were not many people in Scheidenau who did not know that a celebrated local poacher, out before daylight after his night-lines, had sighted the body in the water and given the alarm. ‘Did you know her well?’
‘I’ve been here only two days,’ said Maggie simply. ‘I knew her by name and by sight, of course, I’ve talked to her once or twice, but that’s all.’
‘We are anxious to find out when she was last seen alive. Can you help us? When was the last time that you saw her?’
‘She helped to serve dinner. After that I didn’t see her again. I went up to bed very shortly afterwards.’ She caught his shrewd brown eye on her, and smiled faintly. ‘I am not exactly on holiday. About a month ago I was involved in a car crash, and had some rather troublesome but not dangerous injuries, which required surgery. I came here for a complete change and rest during convalescence.’
He nodded sympathy; it had already dawned on her that he knew quite well who Maggie Tressider was, and in spite of all his professional impartiality he would find it very easy to treat her as a privileged person. It made her almost ashamed of pleading illness, however truthfully. ‘I am almost well,’ she said quickly, ‘only not yet quite strong again.’
‘May I say that I hope this tragedy will not upset you too much? You must try to put it out of your mind once this enquiry is over, and I trust the air of Scheidenau will restore you to health. We are hoping to have the pleasure of hearing you at Salzburg again next year.’ He turned back to the business in hand without hesitation and without embarrassment. ‘Your room is on the lake side of the house. Did you hear or see anything out of the way? During the evening or in the night?’
‘No. I have sleeping tablets,’ she said apologetically. It was not even a lie; she had them, though she never took them. They were the doctors’ idea, not hers. ‘When I came down this morning you were already here, and Gisela told me what had happened.’
It seemed that he was satisfied; he was marking off her name in his list. ‘One more thing. I would like you to look at this.’
He took it from under the papers on the desk; she knew it as soon as her eyes lit upon it, and it went to her heart like an invisible arrow, reminding her that she was herself the instrument not of one death only, but of two. She put out a hand that astonished her by not trembling—perhaps there was nothing left to make her tremble, if she accepted that sentence of damnation—to take the photograph he was offering her. She bent her head over it dutifully, and the passion with which she studied it was no lie.
It was the one thing for which she had not been prepared, and for a moment she did not know what to do. The boy in the photograph, head bent like hers, brow furrowed like hers, braced hands fleetingly happy in making music, bowed away at his ’cello and ignored her. No one could have cared less what she did about him; that was her affair. A stain of damp from the dewy grass had dried across one corner, a smear of green marked the neck of the ’cello. Suddenly she wanted with all her heart to acknowledge this boy, to declare her interest in him and her grief for him, and above all her endless and inescapable responsibility for his death. But she could not do it. If she dealt herself in, how long would it be before Francis Killian was dragged in beside her?
She shook her head helplessly, and looked up at the man behind the desk. ‘Who is he? Is it something to do with Friedl?’
‘We should be interested to have him identified. Do you know him?’
So all the Waldmeister family had either genuinely not remembered Robin Aylwin, or else preferred not to know him, not to be drawn in any deeper. She wondered which? ‘No,’ she sa
id, ‘I don’t know him.’
‘You never saw this before?’
‘I’m sorry!’ That at least was no lie; she was sorry that she could not lay down the load that was again crushing her, but if she did, someone else would find himself carrying it.
‘Thank you, Miss Tressider, that is all. Don’t worry, we shall try not to disturb you any more. Rest and relax, and think about other things.’
‘You’re very kind,’ she said, and meant it. At the door she hesitated, looking back. It was without premeditation that she asked: ‘Did Friedl fall in? Or… do you think she did it herself?’
She was never quite sure, afterwards, why he answered her, and apparently so unguardedly. Perhaps the directness of the question had surprised an answer out of him before he was aware; but that she could hardly believe. Or perhaps it was a deliberate concession on his part to a person he held to be above suspicion. She hoped it was not that. Or perhaps, and most probable of all, he chose her to fly a little kite for him, to put a small and deceptively innocent cat among the pigeons, in order to see what birds, if any, took flight, and what feathers flew.
‘Hardly either,’ he said with a hollow smile, ‘if the fingermarks round her throat mean anything. Goodday, Miss Tressider!’
She walked out of the office and up the staircase like a creature in a dream. She saw no one, she heard nothing but that matter-of-fact voice repeating its calculated, its miraculous indiscretion. A huge, clean, boisterous wind was blowing through her mind and spirit, blowing the sickness from her soul and the corruption from her will. She closed the door of her room, and sat down before the mirror to stare into her own face, and saw it marvellously changed. She felt cold and pure, scoured into her ultimate clarity, like a Himalayan peak honed diamond-clear and diamond-hard by the withering winds of the heights. She saw herself bright and positive and brave in the mirror, and wondered where this self of hers had been hiding so long.
