After the Fine Weather

by Michael Gilbert

  “It’s far from wise, but we’ve got so little time.”

  Jensen shook his head sadly. “There is always time to do things properly,” he said. He got up and went into his bedroom. Evelyn heard him dialling, heard the murmur of voices, punctuated by Jensen’s time-signal cough. The conversation went on for a long time. He moved to the window. The pigeon had flown onto the head of the nymph, the child was chasing one of the dogs, and the old woman had cleared three more yards of path.

  Jensen reappeared, and said, “Engermeyer didn’t sound very keen, but he said that if you go round in about half an hour he will see what he can do for you.”

  “It’s very good of you.”

  “I hope it will prove to be good. Do you carry a gun?”

  “I’ve got one somewhere. I don’t carry it round with me. Why?”

  “I think that for the next few days a gun is likely to be more useful than a clear conscience.”

  Outside, the red sun was curtsying to the Hochgrabe and the Gölbnerjoch. The sky was mother-of-pearl. In an hour it would be dusk. Evelyn walked slowly through the town. His mind, which should have been devoted to the problems in hand, was running on quite different matters. He was thinking of a villa, which he had rented two years before in the outskirts of Innsbruck and which he had now been told was up for sale. It had a garden, cut out of the side of the hill. And a flat roof on which a couple of wicker chairs could stand, with a table between them, and from which you got a breathtaking view of the mountain peaks running up toward the Brenner.

  The address which Jensen had given him was in the suburb of Bad Leopoldsruhe, at the western end of the town. It turned out to be a five-storey block of white-stone flats, standing between two other blocks, all built since the end of the war but already beginning to reflect their age and the inferior materials out of which they had been constructed. It was the sort of building, thought Evelyn, in which the central heating constantly broke down, none of the doors fitted properly, and the lift was always getting stuck.

  In this last particular he was proved wrong. There was no lift, and Herr Engermeyer, as he discovered from the tablet in the hall, lived on the fourth floor. He climbed eight short, steep flights of stairs and rang the bell. There was no response. He rang again. The bell was working all right. It gave a harsh, purring note, like a cat about to spring. Evelyn bent down, opened the letter flap, and looked through. No light in the hall; no sound.

  It was at this moment that he heard footsteps coming up the stairs which he had just climbed. They were coming up cautiously, but quite steadily. There were two, or perhaps three, men walking close together.

  In the seconds that followed, Evelyn found time to marvel at his own inefficiency. He had let people know where he was going. He had given them time to prepare for his arrival, and he had come out without a gun.

  The footsteps continued to mount.

  Evelyn looked again at the door of Engermeyer’s flat. It offered no way of escape. Engermeyer, having betrayed him, had either taken himself off or was sitting smugly in the darkness waiting for the executioners to arrive.

  Behind him, the stairs led to a fifth storey. Evelyn turned, and ran up them. His heavy, English rubber-soled walking shoes made little noise.

  There were two doors on the top landing. One led to the roof, and was locked. The other belonged to the flat above Engermeyer. Evelyn bent forward, in the gloom, to read the visiting card pinned to the doorpost. It said “Falwasser”. Evelyn pressed the bell. This one had a tinkle, like fairy bells or a cascade of ice going into a long glass.

  The steps had reached the landing below and had stopped. A muttered discussion started.

  Evelyn came to a quick decision. Herr Falwasser was either out or deaf. Whatever happened, he would be safer inside that front door. He bent down, and pulled off his shoe. There was a square of toughened glass in the door above the latch. He reckoned that if he hit it properly, with the heel of his shoe, he could reach inside and turn the latch.

  The noise would bring the opposition running, but he might just have time to get through the door and shut it.

  He straightened up, to find the door open and a large, square, grey-haired woman looking down at him.

  “Good evening.”

  “Good evening, Frau Falwasser,” said Evelyn in his soft German. “Your cousin Franz sends his kind regards. He told me to be sure and call on you.” By this time he had insinuated himself into the front hall. “We must not leave the door open. There are desperate folk about these days.” He shut it gently, but firmly. “Let us go into your sitting-room, and talk of the old days in Bavaria.”

  He led the way. After a moment’s hesitation, Frau Falwasser followed. She shut the door behind her, and indicated an upright chair, of figured mahogany bolstered with horsehair. Evelyn sat down on it. It would have been a contradiction in terms to call it an easy chair, but it gave him an opportunity to replace his shoe.

  “You walk habitually with one shoe off?” inquired Frau Falwasser.

  “Not habitually. I detected a stone in it, and was removing it.”

  “A stone in the shoe can be painful. And how is Cousin Franz?”

  “He is in good health, considering all things.”

  “Considering which things?”

  “Considering the bad attack of gout which afflicted him last winter.”

  “For a man with one leg,” said Frau Falwasser, “gout must be a crippling infirmity.”

  The front doorbell tinkled.

  “If I might give you some advice,” said Evelyn, “I should not open the door. As I came up, I noticed three very doubtful characters hanging about near the entrance. I expect they followed me up.”

  “What would doubtful characters want with me?”

  The doorbell tinkled again.

  “They might try to sell you something,” said Evelyn. There was a telephone in the corner. If Frau Falwasser made any move to let the men in, he would have to restrain her until help had been summoned. He was glad to note that she made no attempt to get up. It was all very well to talk about restraining her. Frau Falwasser would have boxed in a heavier division than he and looked twice as fit.

  “Door-to-door salesmen can be a nuisance,” she said. “You must meet my husband.”

  Evelyn had not heard a sound, but when he turned his head, a small man with a beard was standing immediately behind him.

  “Do not trouble to rise,” said Herr Falwasser. He limped round, and perched himself on the edge of the table. “You must tell us your name, and all about yourself. And why,” he went on, before Evelyn could speak, “you have intruded here, and told us such terrible lies.”

  “I must apologize.”

  “Your apologies will be made to the police authorities.”

  Evelyn was devoting the smaller part of his attention to Frau Falwasser. Most of it was concentrated on the hallway. Had it been his imagination that he had heard footsteps going back down the stairs? There had been no noise outside the door for some minutes now.

  “I do not think,” he said, “that we should trouble the police too soon. I can explain everything.”

  “Even Cousin Franz, with gout in one leg.”

  “I think you had better telephone for the police now,” said Frau Falwasser. “And I think that you had better sit quite still while he does so.”

  Evelyn turned his head and found that his hostess was now holding a small, pearl-handled revolver, which was pointing straight at his stomach.

  14

  The Schatzmann Gambit

  Evelyn was clear about two things: that the gun was loaded and that, if he made so much as a move to blow his nose, Frau Falwasser would pull the trigger.

  “Certainly telephone for the police,” he said. “An excellent idea. If I were to promise not to move from this chair, would you mind pointing your revolver, just for the moment, at the floor? A sudden noise, you understand – anything which startled you–”

  “I am not easily startled,”
said Frau Falwasser. Nevertheless, she lowered her pistol a few inches.

  “I detect from his accent,” said her husband, “that the gentleman is American. In which case he undoubtedly carries a gun himself, and may surprise you.”

  “Have no fear,” said his wife. “Nothing the gentleman does will surprise me.”

  It took five minutes to summon a police car. Evelyn was glad to hear himself described on the telephone as a sneak-thief. It was the criminal, not the political, police that he wanted on the scene.

  The Feldwebel who came in was not a man who believed in wasting time or words. He listened in silence to Frau Falwasser’s story: the thief surprised with his shoe actually raised to break the glass – the devices by which she had enticed him inside – the skill with which she had led him on to give himself away. At the end of it, he said, “In the morning, at police headquarters, at nine o’clock, for a deposition, in writing.” Then he jerked his head at Evelyn, and stalked out without waiting for him. The Falwassers looked so deflated that Evelyn was impelled to pat the lady of the house on the shoulders. He said, “Fate moves in a mysterious way her wonders to perform,” and left them staring after him.

  As he walked toward the police car, he recognized a blond head among the crowd on the pavement. It had already occurred to him that Hans Dorf would probably be on the job. As he went past he blew him a kiss.

  At the police station the sergeant in charge started by shouting, but changed gear when he saw Evelyn’s diplomatic passport and credentials.

  “You have stolen these,” he said.

  “Actually, no,” said Evelyn. “They belong to me. I am the person described. Not a flattering photograph, I admit. Now, do you think we might ring up the British Consul?”

  “I regret the telephone is out of order.”

  “You were using it when I came in,” said Evelyn.

  “If you would come this way, we shall not detain you unnecessarily.”

  “You’d better not.”

  The room he was shown to wasn’t a cell, but it had bars on the windows and bolts on the door.

  Evelyn sat on his chair, and thought about life. It seemed to get harder and harder. He took a piece of paper and pencil from his pocket, and composed himself to reflection.

  There was a flurry of shouted orders in the corridor, a stamping of feet, and a clicking of heels.

  “A herd of frenzied Indian elephants,” wrote Evelyn.

  The door opened, and Colonel Schatzmann came in. He looked at Evelyn in some surprise.

  “Are you making your will?” he said.

  “I’m writing a poem,” said Evelyn. “When the muse visits the poet, she will brook no delay. What rhymes with elephants? Pants, of course:

  A herd of frenzied Indian elephants

  Has trampled on my colleague’s stamp collection

  The doyen of the Corps has lost his pants

  The Afro-Asian bloc took grave exception.

  “You have not lost your sense of humour,” said the Colonel. He positioned himself on the chair. It was like a crane driver lowering a motor car onto a smallish ship. “I have come to discuss with you the highly unfortunate situation which has arisen.”

  Evelyn studied the Colonel’s face, under the strong, unshaded, overhead lighting. As far as the face was capable of expressing emotion, he thought that it showed faint signs of worry. He said, “Unfortunate for whom?”

  “For Mr Hart, and, even more so, for his sister.”

  “The notorious assassin.”

  “It is not a matter for joking.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” said Evelyn. “The idea of Miss Hart as an assassin, or the accomplice of an assassin, or anything even remotely connected with assassins, is so ludicrous that even Hofrat Humbold must find it difficult to stop sniggering when he suggests it.”

  “Young girls do foolish things.”

  “They don’t shoot bishops. Or even help other people shoot them.”

  “In the present atmosphere, people will believe almost anything.”

  “Quite so. But how long is the present atmosphere going to last? How long can you keep up the pressure if a court should fail to find Boschetto guilty?”

  “There is little doubt about the verdict of the court.”

  “Little doubt, perhaps. But not no doubt at all. Suppose the court says: ‘We’ve all heard some story about a shot being fired from the theatre. We’d like to postpone our verdict until the lady in question has given evidence.’ What do you do then? Postpone the invasion of the South Tyrol. You can’t keep your chaps hanging about forever on the border. They’ll get chilblains.”

  For a moment, Evelyn wondered if he had gone too far. Then he saw that the lines of worry were still present on Colonel Schatzmann’s face. They were, if anything, a little more pronounced. He leaned forward heavily and said, “You are an intelligent man, Captain Fiennes. You make a number of observations to me, some of which I have myself already made to the Landespräsident. But although you state the difficulties with great clarity you do not suggest any solution.”

  “Have you got a solution?”

  “Yes,” said Colonel Julius, “I have.”

  “And he had too,” said Evelyn to Charles and Laura. “At six o’clock tomorrow morning Laura and I are to leave by the back entrance. My car will be parked round the corner. Colonel Julius says that he can arrange to have his own man actually on guard at that time. But it must be before the guards change. He can’t guarantee their successors.”

  “Why would he do that?” said Charles.

  “It’s a sort of compromise really. What he wants Laura to do is to slip off quietly without making a confession. In fact, without saying anything to anyone. Then, if anyone refers to her during the trial, the prosecution can say, ‘Oh, yes. There was an English lady in the crowd who had some hallucinations about the shot being fired from the theatre, but since she has seen fit to leave the country, it really won’t be possible to do much about it. In any event, since she has not volunteered to give evidence – has, in fact, run away – we think you can take it that she has thought better of it. Let the trial proceed.’”

  “Is it Schatzmann’s idea or Humbold’s?”

  “According to Julius, it’s his own idea. He says he’s certain Humbold wouldn’t agree to it. Humbold wants a full confession, signed, sealed, and delivered.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “That’s a terribly difficult question,” said Evelyn. “There are such a lot of unknown factors. For all we know, Vienna may be buzzing with activity. A fall of snow needn’t stop a modern army. They may be quite determined to take Humbold by the scruff of the neck and stand no nonsense from him. And Colonel Julius might know this. He controls communications and intelligence. He might know that the Tyrol putsch was going to be a flop. And once he knew that, you can bet your last schilling that he’d swap horses. Or, at least, he’d see that he had a spare charger handy.”

  “And if he helps us, he can say afterwards, ‘I wasn’t really on Humbold’s side at all. Look how I helped Miss Hart.’”

  “That’s right.”

  Charles considered the matter. Laura continued obstinately with her jigsaw puzzle. The bottom left-hand corner was all that was undone. There were still two bodies left, but only one head.

  “What’s your other idea?”

  “My other idea,” said Evelyn, “is that Colonel Julius is in this, body and soul. All he’s planning to do is to get Laura out of the consulate so that she can be picked up trying to escape. Much neater, far easier, saves an international incident.”

  “And which idea do you think is correct?”

  “I think the Colonel’s playing this one straight. Straight with us, that is, and crooked with Humbold. He’s been backing both sides of the board, and laying off his bets, for so long that it’s second nature to him.”

  Charles sighed. “It’s Laura who’s taking the main risk. She ought to have some say in this.”

&n
bsp; “Of course,” said Laura. “What a swindle. One of the kittens has fallen off the toboggan. You can only see his body. It’s upside down, and his head’s buried in the snow.”

  “Have you been listening to anything we’ve been saying?”

  “More or less,” said Laura. “I’m willing to try it if Evelyn is.”

  At ten to six the next morning, Laura tiptoed through the dentist’s waiting room. She was warmly dressed, in windbreaker and trousers, with one of Charles’ sweaters underneath, but she was aware of a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  She had said goodbye to Charles and had been kissed by a tearful Frau Rosa. It had been difficult to tear herself away from the corner of England represented by the consular flat.

  Evelyn went ahead of her. He had breakfasted off whisky, had omitted to shave, and was in a vile temper.

  The kitchen door of the restaurant was ajar and a sleepy cook ignored them pointedly. They went through into the foyer of the restaurant. Evelyn thumbed down the latch, glanced at his wrist-watch, and edged the door open.

  An army truck was parked on the other side of the street, its back to the restaurant, its hood partly closed. A wooden-faced, middle-aged reservist, with a machine pistol over one shoulder, was sitting on the step of the truck, looking at nothing in particular.

  “I hope he’s our man,” whispered Evelyn. He opened the front door, and stepped out. Laura followed. The reservist continued to look at nothing.

  They stepped delicately along the swept paving, their feet crunching in the thin blanket of snow that had fallen overnight. When she reached the corner Laura found she had been holding her breath, and let it out with a sigh.

  The car was backed down an alleyway at the end of the street. Evelyn unlocked it, climbed in, and pressed the starter. The motor ground round three or four times, reluctantly, once very slowly, and then stopped. Evelyn collected the starting handle off the back seat, got out, kicked the car, and started to crank. After a few moments the engine roared into triumphant life.

  As they nosed up to the mouth of the alleyway, another car crossed them, going fast. Laura caught sight of the man sitting beside the driver, and for a split second his eye caught hers.