After the Fine Weather

by Michael Gilbert

  “I don’t imagine that anyone could answer that, except the Hofrat himself. And, possibly, Colonel Schatzmann.”

  There was an undercurrent in Helmut’s voice. An enthusiasm which he tried carefully to keep under control. Laura said, “Is it true that you are a member of the Berg Isel Bund?”

  For a moment she thought she had gone too far. Then Helmut smiled slowly.

  “Yes,” he said. “It is true. I have long been a member. How did you know?”

  “Joe told me.”

  “Joe?”

  “His name’s Joe Keller; he’s American.”

  “The newspaperman. Yes.” Helmut waved his hand, and the waiter refilled their glasses. “He is one of those Americans with baby faces. Big, blue eyes, and a little-boy nose. I must warn you. They are very dangerous. Where did you meet him?”

  “In Rome, actually.”

  “I see. We must finish our drinks, or it is possible we will lose our table.”

  “Aren’t we eating here?”

  “Certainly not. The chef here has only one idea. To smother everything with French sauce. We are going to a place where you can taste the food. It is not very far from here. It is called Mousie’s.”

  Mousie’s was delightful. It was a single room, at the back of the first floor of what looked like a delicatessen store. The room held six tables. They stood around the wall, so that each one had a broad, cushioned sofa at one side, and chairs on the sides. Laura wondered if they were going to share the sofa, but Helmut conducted her to it, and seated himself at the other side of the table.

  She found that he had no intention of consulting her as to food or drink. Everything had been arranged in advance. Except that it looked plain, and tasted delightful, Laura had no very clear recollection of what she ate, but she did remember the wine. This was brought up in a padded leather carrier by a tiny, old, humpbacked man. (Mousie himself?) It was a larger bottle than she had ever seen at close quarters before.

  “I may have said harsh things about French food,” said Helmut, as the gnome uncorked the bottle, “but it would be affectation to despise their wines. Taste it before you talk about it.”

  It tasted perfect. Softer than the Chambéry, but not sweet; indeed, it had a resinous tang which touched the back of her throat as a man’s hand will touch, for a fraction of a second, the hand of a woman he desires.

  She knew that she had never drunk wine like it before, and she was sensible enough to realize that it was a waste of words for her to praise it.

  “Lovely,” she said. “What is it?”

  “You are drinking a Clos-Blanc de Vougeot. The red Vougeot is a good, reliable wine. The white is exceptional. This is only twelve years old, but twelve is a great age for a white burgundy. Finish what was put in your glass, and Carl will fill it for you.”

  Later the talk shifted from wine to women.

  “It seems to me,” said Helmut, “that English girls suffer from one great disadvantage.”

  “What is that, Helmut?”

  “I refer to their mothers. Cast your mind back. What were the lessons your mother instilled in you?”

  Laura considered the matter, her head cocked a fraction to one side. The wine was circulating inside her, loosening strings, undoing knots which had been tied before.

  “She was very strong on good manners. She hated anyone’s being late for meals. She liked me to brush my teeth three times a day.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “She wasn’t terribly keen on education, but she saw that I went to the right sort of boarding school – the sort where one did riding and classical dancing.”

  “And the mistresses at that school, they continued your mother’s teaching – manners, punctuality, and clean teeth?”

  “I suppose they did, really, yes.”

  “And neither your mother nor any of these wise teachers taught you the only thing that matters. That a girl should be made ready for love.”

  In ordinary circumstances a remark like this would have knocked Laura off balance. Now, she simply tilted her head the other way, focused her eyes on the soft brown ones opposite her, and said, “Helmut, you’re exaggerating.”

  “I assure you I am not. No French, no Italian or Spanish mother would think otherwise. And since many Europeans go to America, I fancy that American mothers are beginning to think the same. It is only the Anglo-Saxons who still bring girls up as if they were boys.”

  “What do you mean exactly – made ready for love?”

  “I mean that a girl should be taught that she has been given a body for two purposes – for making love and bearing children. That is the biological position. Civilization has added complications. Marriage, for example, is an extra.”

  “Like ballet dancing, and milk after supper.”

  “Like? – I see. Your mind is still at school. There are, of course, women who have never made love. They are to be pitied. Like children born with one arm.”

  At that moment the table seemed to Laura to be a barrier. It was too wide. It was getting in the way of the most exciting talk she could ever remember.

  “Couldn’t you come and sit beside me?” she said.

  “I could do so,” said Helmut. The wine seemed to have had no effect on him at all. His face was unflushed, his speech was precise. “But I fear that it is too narrow to accommodate both of us. And it would cause a comment. Instead we will go dancing.”

  “Dancing?”

  “Only if you would like to.”

  “I’d love it.”

  The bill got itself paid, or waved away. Laura got up cautiously. Her coat was found. And they were outside.

  The street was cold and empty. The snow had stopped falling and the sky, for the first time in two days, was clear. A thousand diamonds, a million specks of diamond dust, glittered on black velvet. Her heart rose to greet them. How right she had been to come!

  There was ice on the pavement, and Helmut put his hand on her arm to guide her to the car. It was an awkward car to get into but, once in, it fitted you like a second skin.

  There was ice on the roads too: ice and patches of packed, frozen snow. Helmut drove with delicate precision. The first time they struck a patch of ice she drew her breath in sharply as, instead of slowing, he increased his speed, turning into the front wheel skid and correcting it at the last moment.

  He heard her gasp and said, “I apologize. I am showing off. But it is quite safe, as long as the roads are empty. There is not likely to be much traffic on a night like this.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “It is called the Winterhaus. It is about five kilometres outside Lienz, on the lake. It is a private club for people with the same enthusiasms. Sailing in summer and skiing in winter.”

  “It sounds lovely.”

  “It is a very big house, and extremely ugly. It was built by an Austrian millionaire, fifty years ago, as a residence for his Hungarian mistress. She took one look at the house, and returned to Hungary. Then it stood empty for many years. Here is the driveway.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Laura. “It doesn’t look too bad.”

  “You should see it by daylight.”

  The door was opened for them by a massive figure. Under the shaded lights Laura could not make out, for a moment, whether it was a man or a woman; then she saw that it was, in fact, a middle-aged woman, with iron-grey hair, and the solid, square-standing, chest-forward, backside-out figure of a regimental sergeant major in the Brigade of Guards.

  “Guten Abend, Tante Margarete,” said Helmut.

  The woman said something in Austrian too rapid for Laura. She gathered that Aunt Margaret was reporting on the evening’s proceedings. Helmut nodded and said, “Good, good.”

  As the lady advanced and took her wrap, Laura was aware of a close and analytical scrutiny. It brought an elusive memory back to her. It was, she thought, the look which a doctor gives his patient as he removes his coat.

  She said to Helmut, “What an extraordinary wo
man.”

  “Without her there would be no club,” said Helmut. He was guiding her between the dozen tables that fringed that side of a small dance floor. “And that would be a pity, for I know of few better clubs than this.”

  It was a big room, the drawing-room and dining-room of the original owner, leading out at the far end onto a broad terrace, now sealed by double glass windows. The walls from the squared roof beams to the polished wood of the floor were tapestry covered.

  “This is our table. You will find the service here good. We have the best waiters in Europe.”

  For the first time that evening a note of real warmth had crept into his tone. It was for a second only. Then his guard was up again.

  “I should think,” she said, “that they must all be scared stiff of Aunt Marge.”

  The waiter who was now standing beside them looked no more than eighteen. He had a smooth, brown face and light-brown hair, and moved like a dancer.

  “I am at a loss,” said Helmut, “to know what to suggest. We have liqueurs of a sort, I believe. Truly, after such a wine, we should drink brandy. But it may be a drink you do not care for at all.”

  “I think brandy would be lovely.”

  “Then, Albin, we will have two glasses of brandy. That one, I think. Two large glasses.”

  As the boy bent his head over the wine list the light glinted on the soft down on the edge of his chin. Eighteen? He could hardly be more than sixteen.

  A voice at the next table claimed her attention. A man was speaking in the hard German of the North. This was one straight out of the book, thought Laura. He had small, shrewd eyes, deep set in a huge, almost hairless head, large enough to overbalance his body, had not nature thoughtfully provided him with a neck thick enough to support it without danger; a neck, indeed, so thick that it was difficult to see where neck ended and head began.

  “Like a clothes-peg man,” said Laura.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I can’t explain.”

  “Shall we dance while we are waiting for the drinks?”

  “Yes,” said Laura. “Let’s do that.”

  When he touches me, she thought, I shall find out. Helmut took her right hand in his left, put his other hand in the small of her back, and steered her expertly across the floor. There was as much passion in it as a professional dancing master with his twelfth pupil since lunch.

  The terminals had touched, but there was no current.

  After one dance she said, “Shall we go back and sit down now?” and Helmut conducted her politely to their table.

  The brandy had arrived, and Laura picked up her glass, and emptied almost half of it down her throat. She had to do something to stop herself crying.

  Helmut was saying something, in his courteous, level voice, but she was not listening. Her glass was empty. Helmut signalled, and Albin came up again. His smile, thought Laura, was most attractive. When he opened his lips he had small, strong teeth like pearls.

  “I can see,” said Helmut, “that you liked your brandy. Might I suggest a further glass?”

  “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  Her voice was surprisingly steady. She was very nearly drunk, but one part of her mind, one lobe of her brain which the alcohol had not reached, was functioning with great clarity. She noticed, for instance, that there was a door in the tapestry on the wall, not far from their table. The handle was countersunk into the tapestry. She was curious about this door. At one moment, it opened inward for a fraction, as if someone behind it was surveying the room. Then it closed again.

  The table next to theirs, where the clothes-peg man had sat, was deserted; but the brandy glass on it had been refilled. Odd, thought the still observant part of Laura. He didn’t look like a man who would leave a drink.

  She turned to say so to Helmut, when she found that, for the first time that evening, his attention was not on her. He was listening to the sounds from the front hall. A man was shouting, in English. And Laura had a feeling that she recognized the voice.

  “If you will excuse me for one moment,” said Helmut. As he got to his feet there was a crash from the hall, and Helmut started to run.

  Without any clear reasoning to prompt her, Laura had got up too. All eyes were on the fracas in the front hall, which was growing. At least three people were shouting now. She took a quick step across to the tapestry, pushed open the door, and went through. The door shut quietly behind her on a counterweight.

  It was a bare passage. At the end of it was a short flight of stairs which invited her to climb them. She went up, and found she was in a corridor, running at right angles to the one she had quitted. There were numbered doors on either side and a window at the end. She thought a bit about this, decided that perhaps she had come far enough, and then thought, Why not? Probably the doors were all locked, anyway. She turned a handle at random and looked in.

  It was a curious sort of room, dimly lit from a cornice light, and bare of anything in the nature of ordinary furniture. At the far end, however, stood an odd-looking instrument with eyepieces, mounted on a tripod and facing the blank wall. If it had been set up at a window it might have been some sort of telescope.

  She walked across and put her eyes to the eyepieces. She found herself looking, at very close quarters, at the empty chair she had left five minutes before. As she watched, half of Helmut came back into focus. He seemed bothered about something, and spoke to a pair of legs. Laura touched the eyepieces and found that they pivoted freely on a sort of gimbals. They were very high-powered, fixed-focus lenses.

  She trained them around the room. The effect was extraordinary. The least movement blurred the scene. But as soon as the instrument came to rest, a very high-definition picture of a very small part of the room appeared.

  This time she was looking at a lady of about forty in an extremely low-cut evening dress. Indeed, viewed from this particular angle, it was cut so low that it might not have been there at all, for any useful purpose it was serving. The focus was so fine that she could see a drop of sweat gathered between the lady’s breasts. She touched the glasses gently, and nearly cried out.

  She was staring, at the closest possible quarters, at the murderer of the Cardinal Bishop.

  She straightened up. Get help of some sort. Tell somebody. Do something. Go back to Helmut. He would know what to do.

  She had almost reached the top of the stairs when she heard footsteps coming up.

  She turned, in panic, and pulled open the nearest door.

  A great, white, furious face glared at her. She had just time to recognize the clothes-peg man. Someone screamed out an oath. She jumped back into the passage, and slammed the door.

  It was Albin who had been coming up the stairs, and now he stood, smiling curiously at her.

  Laura muttered something, and tried to brush past him. An arm slid round her waist, and Albin said, “What are you doing up here?” His voice was husky.

  “Lost my way,” said Laura. She, too, was whispering. “Let me go. Please.”

  Albin’s face was very close to hers. There was a curious light in the brown eyes. The mouth, close to hers, was half open and the little tongue flicked between the lips.

  “I will find a room.”

  It was only then that she realized that Albin was not a boy at all. She was being held by a girl, and there was nothing innocent in the eyes looking into hers. For the next few moments events took on the quality of a nightmare. All movements were difficult. Sequence was disconnected. Impressions formed quickly, but dissolved slowly.

  The girl who had hold of her was older and stronger than she was. Over her shoulder she saw, without much surprise, that the passage window was open, and that a man was climbing through it. One of the girl’s arms was pinioning her, the other was pulling the front of her dress. The man was in the passage now and was coming softly toward them. She recognized Evelyn Fiennes. The girl who was holding her either heard him or, more probably, felt the draft from the open window. She tu
rned her head, but without releasing Laura. This was a mistake. It made her very vulnerable to attack. Evelyn started to tickle her.

  Albin screamed, and let go of Laura. Evelyn picked her up in both arms, a feat he could barely manage, for the girl was almost as big as he was, and said, “Open the door, quick.” He was nodding toward the room on her right.

  She opened it, and heard a second scream of rage from the fat man. Then Evelyn had thrown the girl in, and slammed die door.

  “Out of the window. Don’t dither. It’s not a long drop.”

  When she was halfway through, he pushed her, and she found herself on her knees in the snow. She gave a yelp as Evelyn landed beside her, one foot on her hand.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Into the car.”

  “I’m going to be sick.”

  “There’s no time. They’ll be round here in a minute.”

  His old Austin, which she recognized, was parked on a rockery. It seemed an odd place to put a car. Evelyn was already climbing into the driving seat, and she staggered round to the other side and tumbled in beside him.

  He put his left arm round her to slam the door while his right hand was engaging first gear. With a double jerk, which first threw her almost into the back seat and then banged her against the windshield, the car shot forward, scuttered through a snowdrift, and slid onto the frozen front drive.

  In front of the house were signs of activity. The front door was open. One man was standing on the steps and another was in one of the parked cars, trying to start the engine.

  This seemed to remind Evelyn of something. He dipped his right hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a small bag, which he threw at the man on the steps. For a moment Laura thought it might be some sort of bomb, but the bag fell softly onto the snow, and nothing else happened. Then they were in the front drive, gathering speed.

  As a driver, Evelyn wasn’t in Helmut’s class. When he went into a skid he started swearing, and went on swearing until the car righted itself. Twice they went off the drive altogether, on the second occasion slicing through a small hedge and carrying away part of it on their radiator.

  “Camouflage,” said Evelyn. At the gate he turned left.