Quest for Alexis

by Nancy Buckingham

  I bit my lip, keeping back tears. Being in the United States, I had missed Christmas at Deer’s Leap this year, but it was always the same. A solemn ritual. Alexis had broadcast the Wenceslas Message each Christmas Eve since his escape to freedom.

  Brett went on in the same bitter voice, “It’s all very fine you having this crazy idea of talking Alexis around and making him see the error of his ways—but I doubt if I will ever forgive him. And I reckon that goes for a great many people.”

  Out of my despair came a flash of anger. “You shouldn’t be so quick to pass judgment. What right have you to condemn Alexis before you’ve heard his side of the story?”

  Brett’s dark eyes were flinty. “Look who’s talking about fairness. I never remember you being ready to give me the benefit of the doubt.”

  I almost snapped back at him, but I checked myself in time. There was no use in our bickering, no sense in fighting past battles again and reopening old wounds. A log fell to the stone hearth with a crash of sparks, and it gave me an excuse to kneel down and attend to the fire.

  Later, for supper, I made a large ham omelet, using Harriet Shackleton’s heavy iron skillet. We had more of the Camembert and some grapes to follow. Brett opened another bottle of wine.

  We sat opposite each other at the round table, in the pool of light cast by a figured brass oil lamp. My mind leaped back across the months. It had often been like this in my apartment in London—just the two of us in a softly lit room.

  But it was different now. Everything was changed. Brett and I sat and made polite talk, empty words and phrases strung together. Whenever a possible danger point loomed, we both drew back hastily into the safety of platitudes.

  Brett got up from the table and began to prowl about the room restlessly. He seemed just as much on edge as I was.

  “The moon’s up,” he said, stopping by the window and drawing aside the curtain. “It looks beautiful. Get your coat on, Gail, and we’ll go outside for a few minutes.”

  The wind had dropped and the air was crisp. The moon was low in the sky, just a half circle, and its pure clear light made a landscape of vivid contrasts. The distant snow-capped peaks were etched silver against an indigo sky, while nearby a massive outcrop of rock rose like a miniature mountain, the limestone glowing a translucent bluish white. The shadows were deep, black, mysterious.

  Brett said, pointing, “I remember there’s a path leading around that big crag. From the farther side you get a terrific view right down the entire length of the valley. It’s fantastic.”

  “Can we go and look?”

  “Not now. The path is too narrow to be safe at night, even when there’s a moon. Besides, one of us must stay close to the phone. If we’re still here in the morning, you can go and have a look then.”

  The cold was striking through my coat, but I had no urge to go back inside. Not yet. There was a strange enchantment about this silent, silver world of moonlight. Nothing seemed quite real. I felt a fluttering within me that was almost panic.

  It plucked a chord of memory. Some time, some place, this had happened to me before. Suddenly, I recalled the occasion vividly—the Ivory Room at Deer’s Leap, when I had met Brett again after an interval of more than ten years. That evening I had experienced this same curious sensation, as if everything was without substance and I was floating adrift, drowning, having no say in my own destiny.

  I shivered, from the cold, from the remembrance. Brett’s fingers reached out to me, and I let my hand stay in his. It seemed so natural, so utterly right. The misty vapor of our breathing mingled and hung in a little cloud, scarcely moving in the stillness of the night.

  I don’t remember if there was a moment of decision. I only remember going into Brett’s arms, being held, clinging to him. I remember the feel of his lips on mine —ice-cold, then warm.

  “Gail,” he murmured softly. “Darling Gail.”

  Without any more words being spoken, as if the silence was somehow too precious to break, we turned and went back inside. Brett tossed logs onto the fire, and I stood very still, watching him, watching the golden, leaping flames, conscious of the flames that leaped within me.

  There were no explanations, no apologies, no forgiveness. That night it was as if Brett and I had never been apart.

  Chapter Eleven

  This time when I awoke, the fire had almost died, but the room still felt warm from the glowing embers and the stored-up heat of the massive hearthstone. The lamp had burned itself out, leaving a slight tang of kerosene in the air. Around the edges of the curtains the first gray light of morning was showing.

  I had spent the night on the couch, wrapped in blankets, cushions under my head. Brett lay within touch of my outstretched fingers, rolled in more blankets on the hearthrug. He seemed to be deeply asleep, not even stirring when I leaned down and drew back the blankets so that I could see the luminous dial of his wristwatch.

  Five minutes to eight. Over twenty-four hours had gone by, and still no further news of Alexis. The realization wiped away my exalted mood of the night. Yesterday’s problems were still with me, I thought bleakly.

  I rose from the couch and went out to the freezing kitchen, washing as best I could in icy water. I longed for a good hot bath and clean clothes.

  I considered whether to start getting breakfast but decided not to. Brett might as well have his sleep undisturbed.

  I went back to the living room and stood for a moment looking down at him, feeling my heartbeat quicken. He lay on his back with his head turned to one side, so that I saw the outline of his profile, the firm contours of his neck and shoulder. I had an urge to sink down on my knees and fondle his tousled dark-brown hair.

  I made myself move away. After a moment, I slipped on my coat and went quietly to the door, letting myself out.

  It was an overcast morning, the distant peaks cut off from view by banks of snow clouds, slate-gray and threatening. Hands thrust deeply into the pockets of my coat, I paced moodily along the track that led to the road, while I thought about Brett. Last night, what had it meant? Nothing had really changed. There was still the question of Elspeth. Brett had made me no promises. He had shown no regret for the time we had been apart, those long wasted months. Perhaps last night had been just an interlude for him, without any feeling of commitment. Perhaps he had merely taken what he sensed I was only too eager to give. My face burned as I recalled how easy I had made it for him.

  And yet, how insistent he had been to come with me on my quest for Alexis. He had done everything possible to help me, taking me on a trail I could never have followed alone.

  Why had he done all this?

  Last night I believed I had found the answer. But the cold gray light of morning, the cold light of reason, told me it was only wishful thinking.

  Why, then?

  Ahead, the track ran through the clump of pine trees. It looked dark in there and somehow ominous. With a shudder, I turned back.

  Retracing my steps, I came to where a path led off to the right, curving away toward the massive limestone crag. I remembered that Brett had spoken of a viewpoint from the farther side. This wasn’t really the morning for distant views, but I. might be able to see something. And it would kill time.

  On my left, the scrubby ground fell away sharply. The path, like a corniche road in miniature, followed every convolution of the clifflike rockface. Soon, I found myself on a ledge only a couple of feet wide.

  I walked on, perfectly confident, until suddenly I felt my foot slip under me. It wasn’t much but enough to unnerve me. Looking down, I saw there were patches of frozen snow on the path, almost invisible against the white of the limestone.

  I decided it would be foolish to go on and risk a bad fall. On a narrow path like this I could so easily slip over the edge. Even at this point the drop was about fifteen feet, and farther along it looked considerably more, sheer to jagged rocks below.

  As I turned to go back, I heard a slight noise from somewhere above me. It sounded l
ike a scrabble of small loose stones.

  I paused to listen. A bird? But I’d seen and heard no birds this morning. Some small animal, perhaps? I had a vague idea that chamois were to be found in this part of Provence. Or it could be something as ordinary as a rabbit.

  After a few moments when the only break in the silence was the sighing of the wind through the pine trees, I started to move again. But at once I jerked to a halt, really startled. This time the sound I heard was quite different. A human voice. A cry of distress. Faint, muffled, but unmistakably a man’s voice.

  “Help! Help!”

  I stared up at the rockface above me, wondering what to do. It was very steep and looked dangerously crumbly. And anyway, I couldn’t be sure whether the cry had come from up there or farther along toward the end of the crag.

  “Where are you?” I cried.

  “Here.”

  It sounded fainter than before and definitely seemed to come from farther on.

  I started along the path but almost at once slipped again on the ice and realized I would have to take care.

  “I’m coming,” I called out. “As quickly as I can.”

  “Hurry. For God’s sake, hurry.”

  He sounded close to exhaustion. Despite the danger, I put on an extra spurt, trailing a hand against the rough rock wall as an illusion of support. Then suddenly my foot trod ice again and skidded from under me. My fingers clutched wildly, frantically, but there was nothing to grip. I was slipping over the edge, falling into empty space. I felt my head hit rock with a crack, and momentarily I blacked out.

  It was a bush that had saved me. A spiny, prickly, half-dead bush, growing from a crevice in the rock. I’d clung to it instinctively, desperately. Dazed, I looked up and saw that the edge of the path was two or three feet above my head. But the instant I moved in an effort to reach it, the dry twiggy bush I clung to cracked ominously. Stretching out my leg, I found a tiny foothold, but it gave way when I tried it, sending down a shower of crumbled rock as a chastening warning.

  I tried to keep calm, to make myself think. Clutching my slender support, I scanned the face of the rock and took careful note. There was another crack within reach of my left foot. Gingerly, I pushed in my toe and this time it held.

  The bush, relieved of my weight as I let go, sprang up and tore at my face. With a reaching grabbing movement, I got a hand over the edge. Then, laboriously, terrified every moment that I would lose my grip, I hauled myself upward. It seemed an eternity before I was safely back on the path.

  Crouched on my knees, I remained motionless for several seconds, breathing heavily. It was a miracle to be alive.

  At last I stood up. The wind seemed to be rising, and a few tiny flakes of snow whirled by. I listened, but I heard no repetition of the cry for help.

  I was in no state now to offer help to anyone. But I couldn’t stand here doing nothing. I had to rouse Brett, quickly. I started back along the path, stumbling, terrified every second of another fall.

  But before I came within sight of the house I heard him calling me.

  “Gail. Gail, where are you?”

  “I’m here,” I shouted in relief. “Here on the path.”

  I stood still, waiting for him to come. As he appeared around the curve, he stopped and stared at me in astonishment.

  “What the devil?”

  “Oh, Brett,” I gasped and flung myself into his arms.

  “Darling, what’s happened? You look in a terrible mess, your slacks torn and your coat all smeared with dirt.”

  “I fell. But there’s no time to tell you about it now. Brett, I heard someone calling for help!”

  “You what?”

  “It was a man. He sounded dreadfully weak. He must be in real trouble. We’ve got to go to him.”

  “Don’t be silly, darling. You’re imagining things. How could there be anyone here?”

  I pushed back from him and looked up into his face. “There was, I tell you. There was. Up on the top.”

  Suddenly something caught my attention. A footprint. It was level with my eyes, a yard or so along a faintly defined path that led up steeply through the scrubby, tufty grass toward the top of the great crag. Clear and sharp in a small patch of soft snow, the imprint of a man’s shoe.

  “Brett, look.”

  “What is it?”

  But then some instinct warned me. A torrent of suspicions came swamping my mind. Disconnected things, connecting up. Terrors past and present merging into a single rushing stream. Springing from that footprint in the snow.

  It was the mark of a rubber sole with a distinctive, deep-patterned tread. I had noticed it before, that same all-over design of triangles. Last night.

  Brett’s shoe.

  Brett had been up there on top of the crag—from where I had heard a voice calling for help. A man’s voice, muffled, but in English? Amazingly, that had not struck me as odd at the time.

  Brett had expressed doubt that someone could be up there. Not someone—but Brett himself. He had been up there.

  Other strange, unexplained incidents stabbed my brain. A fast-driven car, steered at me deliberately by some unknown driver in a dark, deserted back street of Palma, and Brett on the scene soon after. And in the Hôtel de l’Etoile in Nice yesterday morning, another car mysteriously blocking the hired Renault when we needed to get out quickly, and Brett not hurrying, refusing to abandon our car and find a taxi—that delay had caused us to miss Alexis. My mind winged back to London Airport—my handbag, containing my passport, snatched by someone I had thought at the time was just an ordinary sneak thief.

  And now here. A cry for help which had made me press on along the path when I had been on the point of turning back. Suppose I had reached the viewpoint high above the valley, what then? A push from a hidden hand, a boulder crashing down? It wouldn’t have taken much to send me hurtling to the rocks below.

  My accident just now had been a mercy in disguise. A small fall had saved me from a worse one—a deadly one.

  Could this man I had loved be my enemy? Why, why? I could only think of one possible explanation— that Brett was a Communist or a fellow traveler.

  Only the Communists would wish Alexis to go on behaving as he was, destroying his reputation and alienating those who supported him. Only the Communists would want to stop me from reaching my uncle. And they were ruthless. To achieve a tactical advantage in their endless propaganda war, they would go to any lengths. Even murder meant nothing to them.

  What did I really know about Brett Warrender? In our brief passionate love affair there had been so little time to explore ideas. So little time for me to get any hint of secret recesses in his mind.

  Brett, had been a rebel once—that was common knowledge. On leaving Cambridge, he had rejected the idea of following Sir Ralph into the diplomatic service. For two or three years he had knocked around the world, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Was it then that he had been won over to the Communist ideology? Had he, all the while since, been a “sleeper,” slowly, insidiously infiltrating himself, working into a position where he would be of maximum use to the people he served, whenever and wherever the occasion arose? Awaiting his orders. Orders that he would obey with blind dedication.

  I backed away from Brett, staring up at him in horror. Even now he might...

  “What is it?” he asked, frowning. “Why are you looking at me like that, Gail?”

  With an immense effort, I took a grip on myself. Brett mustn’t see that I was afraid of him. I mustn’t let him guess. I said huskily, forcing out the words, “I’m all right. Just a bit shaken up, that’s all.”

  “It’s not surprising.” He reached out to me again, but I evaded his arms.

  I was suddenly seized by a violent fit of shivering. “I’m cold,” I muttered by way of explanation and turned back toward the house. But I kept glancing over my shoulder, scared to take my eyes off Brett.

  “Careful, Gail,” he warned. “Watch where you’re going, or you’ll fall agai
n.”

  When we reached the track, it was wider and we could walk two abreast. Brett said, “What was all that about thinking you heard someone shout for help?”

  I shrugged, somehow managing a nervous smile. “As you said, I must have imagined it. The wind, I suppose.”

  He nodded. “The wind can play tricks in a wild place like this. You ought not to have come out on your own, you know.”

  And yet, last night, he had suggested that I should do exactly that. To see the view.

  Had it been Brett’s plan to murder me all along, right from the moment I’d announced that I was going after Alexis? Was he still intending to kill me even now, at any moment—quite openly and without any pretense? In this wild place where he had contrived to bring me so cunningly, so calculatingly, it would be easy to make my death look like an accident.

  But perhaps Brett might not kill me if he saw another way of keeping me from Alexis. At Nice he had merely delayed me. At London Airport he had tried to stop me from leaving the country by having my passport snatched.

  Suppose ... suppose now, even at this late hour, I pretended that I was taking his advice and giving up my quest for Alexis. If I told him I was going back home, would that save me?

  I needed time to think. Think.

  Back at the mas, I stood trembling and afraid while Brett raked the ashes and rebuilt the fire. After a moment, he turned to look up at me, an expression of concern on his face.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Gail? Shall I make some coffee? That will help warm you up.”

  “Er... thanks.”

  I sat down on the couch where I had spent the night and held my coat open to the fire, trying to get warm, trying to shake off the feeling of panic that clogged my brain. Somehow, I had to get away from here.

  When Brett came back from the kitchen and handed me a mug of coffee, I shrank away from him instinctively. But I mustn’t let him see my revulsion. I mustn’t let him guess that I suspected anything. I drove myself to respond to what he was saying—something about being sorry if he looked scruffy, but he had no razor with him. I said it didn’t matter, that I must look just as scruffy myself.