The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  But that was ten days away and until then we had to amuse ourselves. We skated on the rink behind the hotel. We waved good-bye to our father when he went off in the mornings with his skis and his guide. We sat on the hotel terrace drinking hot chocolate with blobs of cream on top while Mother wrote and read letters. When we thought Mother wasn’t watching, Amanda and I would compete to see if we could drink all the chocolate so that the blob of cream stayed marooned at the bottom of the cup, to be eaten in luscious and impolite spoonfuls. If she glanced up and caught us, Mother would tell us not to be so childish, which, since Amanda was eleven and I was nearly thirteen, was fair enough, but we had to get what entertainment we could out of the chocolate. The truth was that we were all of us, most of the time, bored out of our wits. Which was why we turned our attention to the affairs of the other guests and Amanda and I had our ears permanently tuned to the small dramas of the adults’ conversation.

  “I still can’t believe she will.”

  “Well, that’s what the headwaiter said, and he should know. She’s reserved the table in the corner overlooking the terrace and said they should be sure to have the Tokay.”

  “The same table as last year.”

  “The same wine, too.”

  Our parents looked at each other over the croissants, carefully not noticing the maid as she poured our coffee. (“One doesn’t notice the servants, dear, it only makes them awkward.”)

  “I’m sure it’s not true. Any woman with any feeling …”

  “What makes you think she has any?”

  Silence, as eye signals went on over our heads. I knew what was being signalled, just as I’d known what was being discussed in an overheard scrap of conversation between our parents at bedtime the night we arrived. “… effect it might have on Jessica.”

  My name. I came rapidly out of drowsiness, kept my eyes closed but listened.

  “I don’t think we need worry about that. Jessica’s tougher than you think.” My mother’s voice. She needed us to be tough so that she didn’t have to waste time worrying about us.

  “All the same, she must remember it. It is only a year ago. That sort of experience can mark a child for life.”

  “Darling, they don’t react like we do. They’re much more callous at that age.”

  Even with eyes closed I could tell from the quality of my father’s silence that he wasn’t convinced, but it was no use arguing with Mother’s certainties. They switched the light off and closed the door. For a minute or two I lay awake in the dark wondering whether I was marked for life by what I’d seen and how it would show, then I wondered instead whether I’d ever be able to do pirouettes on the ice like the girl from Paris, and fell asleep in a wistful dream of bells and the hiss of skates.

  The conversation between our parents that breakfast time over what she would or wouldn’t do was interrupted by the little stir of two other guests being shown to their table. Amanda caught my eye.

  “Silver Stick and his Square Bear are going ski-ing.”

  Both gentlemen—elderly gentlemen as it seemed to us, but they were probably no older than their late fifties—were wearing heavy wool jumpers, tweed breeches, and thick socks, just as Father was. He nodded to them across the tables, wished them good morning and received nods and good-mornings back. Even the heavy sports clothing couldn’t take away the oddity and distinction from the tall man. He was, I think, the thinnest person I’d ever seen. He didn’t stoop as so many tall older people did but walked upright and lightly. His face with its eagle’s beak of a nose was deeply tanned, like some of the older inhabitants of the village, but unlike them it was without wrinkles apart from two deep folds from the nose to the corners of his mouth. His hair was what had struck us most. It clung smoothly to his head in a cap of pure and polished silver, like the knob on an expensive walking stick. His companion, large and square shouldered in any case, looked more so in his ski-ing clothes. He shambled and tended to trip over chairs. He had a round, amiable face with pale, rather watery eyes, a clipped grey moustache but no more than a fringe of hair left on his gleaming pate. He always smiled at us when we met on the terrace or in corridors and appeared kindly. We’d noticed that he was always doing things for Silver Stick, pouring his coffee, posting his letters. For this reason we’d got it into our heads that Square Bear was Silver Stick’s keeper. Amanda said Silver Stick probably went mad at the full moon and Square Bear had to lock him up and sing loudly so that people wouldn’t hear his howling. She kept asking people when the next full moon would be, but so far nobody knew. I thought he’d probably come to Switzerland because he was dying of consumption, which explained the thinness, and Square Bear was his doctor. I listened for a coughing fit to confirm this, but so far there’d been not a sign of one. As they settled to their breakfast we watched as much as we could without being rebuked for staring. Square Bear opened the paper that had been lying beside his plate and read things out to Silver Stick, who gave the occasional little nod over his coffee, as if he’d known whatever it was all the time. It was the Times of London and must have been at least two days old because it had to come up from the station in the sleigh.

  Amanda whispered: “He eats.”

  The waiter had brought a rack of toast and a stone jar of Oxford marmalade to their table instead of croissants. Silver Stick was eating toast like any normal person.

  Father asked: “Who eats?”

  We indicated with our eyes.

  “Well, why shouldn’t he eat? You need a lot of energy for ski-ing.”

  Mother, taking an interest for once, said they seemed old for ski-ing.

  “You’d be surprised. Dr. Watson’s not bad, but as for the other one—well, he went past me like a bird in places so steep that even the guide didn’t want to try it. And stayed standing up at the end of it when most of us would have been just a big hole in the snow. The man’s so rational he’s completely without fear. It’s fear that wrecks you when you’re ski-ing. You come to a steep place, you think you’re going to fall and nine times out of ten, you do fall. Holmes comes to the same steep place, doesn’t see any reason why he can’t do it—so he does it.”

  My mother said that anybody really rational would have the sense not to go ski-ing in the first place. My ear had been caught by one word.

  “Square Bear’s a doctor? Is Silver Stick ill?”

  “Not that I know. Is there any more coffee in that pot?”

  And there we left it for the while. You might say that Amanda and I should have known at once who they were, and I suppose nine out of ten children in Europe would have known. But we’d led an unusual life, mainly on account of Mother, and although we knew many things unknown to most girls of our age, we were ignorant of a lot of others that were common currency.

  We waved off Father and his guide as they went wallowing up in the deep snow through the pine trees, skis on their shoulders, then turned back for our skates. We stopped at the driveway to let the sober black sleigh go past, the one that went down the valley to the railway. There was nobody in the back, but the rugs were ready and neatly folded.

  “Somebody new coming,” Amanda said.

  I knew Mother was looking at me, but she said nothing. Amanda and I were indoors doing our holiday reading when the sleigh came back, so we didn’t see who was in it, but when we went downstairs later there was a humming tension about the hotel, like the feeling you get when a violinist is holding his bow just above the string and the tingle of the note runs up and down your spine before you hear it. It was only mid-afternoon but dusk was already settling on the valley. We were allowed a last walk outside before it got dark, and made as usual for the skating rink. Coloured electric lights were throwing patches of yellow, red, and blue on the dark surface. The lame man with the accordion was playing a Strauss waltz and a few couples were skating to it, though not very well. More were clustered round the charcoal brazier at the edge of the rink where a waiter poured small glasses of mulled wine. Perhaps the man with the accordion
knew the dancers were getting tired or wanted to go home himself, because when the waltz ended he changed to something wild and gypsy sounding, harder to dance to. The couples on the ice tried it for a few steps, then gave up, laughing, to join the others round the brazier. For a while the ice was empty and the lame man played on to the dusk and the dark mountains.

  Then a figure came gliding onto the ice. There was a decisiveness about the way she did it that marked her out at once from the other skaters. They’d come on staggering or swaggering, depending on whether they were beginners or thought themselves expert, but staggerers and swaggerers alike had a self-conscious air, knowing that this was not their natural habitat. She took to the ice like a swan to the water or a swallow to the air. The laughter died away, the drinking stopped and we watched as she swooped and dipped and circled all alone to the gypsy music. There were no showy pirouettes like the girl from Paris, no folding of the arms and look-at-me smiles. It’s quite likely that she was not a particularly expert skater, that what was so remarkable about it was her willingness to take the rink, the music, the attention as hers by right. She wasn’t even dressed for skating. The black skirt coming to within a few inches of the instep of her skate boots, the black mink jacket, the matching cap, were probably what she’d been wearing on the journey up from the station. But she’d been ready for this, had planned to announce her return exactly this way.

  Her return. At first, absorbed by the performance, I hadn’t recognised her. I’d registered that she was not a young woman and that she was elegant. It was when a little of my attention came back to my mother that I knew. She was standing there as stiff and prickly as one of the pine trees, staring at the figure on the ice like everybody else, but it wasn’t admiration on her face, more a kind of horror. They were all looking like that, all the adults, as if she were the messenger of something dangerous. Then a woman’s voice, not my mother’s, said, “How could she? Really, how could she?”

  There was a murmuring of agreement and I could feel the horror changing to something more commonplace—social disapproval. Once the first words had been said, others followed and there was a rustling of sharp little phrases like a sledge runner grating on gravel.

  “Only a year … to come here again … no respect … lucky not to be … after what happened.”

  My mother put a firm hand on each of our shoulders. “Time for your tea.”

  Normally we’d have protested, begged for another few minutes, but we knew that this was serious. To get into the hotel from the ice rink you go up some steps to the back terrace and in at the big glass doors to the breakfast room. There were two men standing on the terrace. From there you could see the rink and they were staring down at what was happening. Silver Stick and Square Bear. I saw the thin man’s eyes in the light from the breakfast room. They were harder and more intent than anything I’d ever seen, harder than the ice itself. Normally, being properly brought up, we’d have said good evening to them as we went past, but Mother propelled us inside without speaking. As soon as she’d got us settled at the table she went to find Father, who’d be back from ski-ing by then. I knew they’d be talking about me and felt important, but concerned that I couldn’t live up to that importance. After all, what I’d seen had lasted only a few seconds and I hadn’t felt any of the things I was supposed to feel. I’d never known him before it happened, apart from seeing him across the dining room a few times and I hadn’t even known he was dead until they told me afterwards.

  What happened at dinner that evening was like the ice rink, only without gypsy music. That holiday Amanda and I were allowed to come down to dinner with our parents for the soup course. After the soup we were supposed to say good night politely and go up and put ourselves to bed. People who’d been skating and ski-ing all day were hungry by evening so usually attention was concentrated discreetly on the swing doors to the kitchen and the procession of waiters with the silver tureens. That night was different. The focus of attention was one small table in the corner of the room beside the window. A table laid like the rest of them with white linen, silver cutlery, gold-bordered plates, and a little array of crystal glasses. A table for one. An empty table.

  My father said: “Looks as if she’s funked it. Can’t say I blame her.”

  My mother gave him one of her “be quiet” looks, announced that this was our evening for speaking French and asked me in that language to pass her some bread, if I pleased.

  I had my back to the door and my hand on the breadbasket. All I knew was that the room went quiet.

  “Don’t turn round,” my mother hissed in English.

  I turned round and there she was, in black velvet and diamonds. Her hair, with more streaks of grey than I remembered from the year before, was swept up and secured with a pearl-and-diamond comb. The previous year, before the thing happened, my mother had remarked that she was surprisingly slim for a retired opera singer. This year she was thin, cheekbones and collarbones above the black velvet bodice sharp enough to cut paper. She was inclining her elegant head towards the headwaiter, probably listening to words of welcome. He was smiling, but then he smiled at everybody. Nobody else smiled as she followed him to the table in the far, the very far, corner. You could hear the creak of necks screwing themselves away from her. No entrance she ever made in her stage career could have been as nerve racking as that long walk across the hotel floor. In spite of the silent commands now radiating from my mother, I could no more have turned away from her than from Blondin crossing Niagara Falls. My disobedience was rewarded, as disobedience so often is, because I saw it happen. In the middle of that silent dining room, amid a hundred or so people pretending not to notice her, I saw Silver Stick get to his feet. Among all those seated people he looked even taller than before, his burnished silver head gleaming like snow on the Matterhorn above that rock ridge of a nose, below it the glacial white and black of his evening clothes. Square Bear hesitated for a moment, then followed his example. As in her lonely walk she came alongside their table, Silver Stick bowed with the dignity of a man who did not have to bow very often, and again Square Bear copied him, less elegantly. Square Bear’s face was red and flustered, but the other man’s hadn’t altered. She paused for a moment, gravely returned their bows with a bend of her white neck, then walked on. The silence through the room lasted until the headwaiter pulled out her chair and she sat down at her table, then, as if on cue, the waiters with their tureens came marching through the swinging doors and the babble and the clash of cutlery sounded as loud as war starting.

  At breakfast I asked Mother: “Why did they bow to her?” I knew it was a banned subject, but I knew too that I was in an obscurely privileged position, because of the effect all this was supposed to be having on me. I wondered when it would come out, like secret writing on a laurel leaf you keep close to your chest to warm it. When I was fourteen, eighteen?

  “Don’t ask silly questions. And you don’t need two lumps of sugar in your café au lait.”

  Father suggested a trip to the town down the valley after lunch, to buy Christmas presents. It was meant as a distraction and it worked to an extent, but I still couldn’t get her out of my mind. Later that morning, when I was supposed to be having a healthy snowball fight with boring children, I wandered away to the back terrace overlooking the ice rink. I hoped that I might find her there again, but it was occupied by noisy beginners, slithering and screeching. I despised them for their ordinariness.

  I’d turned away and was looking at the back of the hotel, thinking no particular thoughts, when I heard footsteps behind me and a voice said: “Was that where you were standing when it happened?”

  It was the first time I’d heard Silver Stick’s voice at close quarters. It was a pleasant voice, deep but clear, like the sea in a cave. He was standing there in his rough tweed jacket and cap with earflaps only a few yards away from me. Square Bear stood behind him, looking anxious, neck muffled in a woollen scarf. I considered, looked up at the roof again and down to my feet
.

  “Yes, it must have been about here.”

  “Holmes, don’t you think we should ask this little girl’s mother? She might …”

  “My mother wasn’t there. I was.”

  Perhaps I’d learnt something already about taking the centre of the stage. The thought came to me that it would be a great thing if he bowed to me, as he’d bowed to her.

  “Quite so.”

  He didn’t bow, but he seemed pleased.

  “You see, Watson, Miss Jessica isn’t in the least hysterical about it, are you?”

  I saw that he meant that as a compliment, so I gave him the little inclination of the head that I’d been practising in front of the mirror when Amanda wasn’t looking. He smiled, and there was more warmth in the smile than seemed likely from the height and sharpness of him.

  “I take it that you have no objection to talking about what you saw.”

  I said graciously: “Not in the very least.” Then honesty compelled me to spoil it by adding, “Only I didn’t see very much.”

  “It’s not how much you saw, but how clearly you saw it. I wonder if you’d kindly tell Dr. Watson and me exactly what you saw, in as much detail as you can remember.”

  The voice was gentle, but there was no gentleness in the dark eyes fixed on me. I don’t mean they were hard or cruel, simply that emotion of any sort had no more part in them than in the lens of a camera or telescope. They gave me an odd feeling, not fear exactly, but as if I’d become real in a way I hadn’t quite been before. I knew that being clear about what I’d seen that day a year ago mattered more than anything I’d ever done. I closed my eyes and thought hard.

  “I was standing just here. I was waiting for Mother and Amanda because we were going out for a walk and Amanda had lost one of her fur gloves as usual. I saw him falling, then he hit the roof over the dining room and came sliding down it. The snow started moving as well, so he came down with the snow. He landed just over there, where that chair is, and all the rest of the snow came down on top of him, so you could only see his arm sticking out. The arm wasn’t moving, but I didn’t know he was dead. A lot of people came running and started pushing the snow away from him, then somebody said I shouldn’t be there so they took me away to find Mother, so I wasn’t there when they got the snow off him.”