by Morris West
When the big men came to Bad Quellenberg he entertained them lavishly. When they were recalled to duty he seduced their wives and their daughters and their mistresses with a calculated passion that left them gasping at first—and afterwards strangely afraid.
In Bad Quellenberg itself he played the same game, easily and with discretion. He held liens on the best building land, notes against the biggest hotels. The contractors were in his pocket and the councillors followed the policies he drew for them.
The web that was spun in the Spiderhouse spread more widely and intricately as the years went on and its threads were anchored in the most unlikely places. There was a man in Zürich named John Winter to whom he had sought an introduction through a close-mouthed Swiss banker. Whenever he came to Switzerland they met by appointment in the banker’s private office and Kunzli passed on to him information that ranged from troop movements on the Tauern line, to the latest indiscretions of a Reichsminister’s wife. He always refused payments for this information, presenting himself as a patriot who had the interests of his country at heart. The closest scrutiny in London had failed to find any flaws in the information or any suggestion of double dealing by the donor. Kunzli was written down as a safe agent, a man to be remembered in later days.
It was the biggest of his gambles, but without it there could be no triumph. There was no point in ruining an enemy if you too were involved in his downfall. Now the gamble seemed to have paid off. The Allies had won the war. The men who had killed his wife were coming, each in his turn, to their proper end. Out of their fear and greed he had made a fortune. At last the flies were struggling in the web and the spider could sit and smile and eat them at his leisure.…
So, on this winter afternoon, while the first snowfall settled on the hills and on the black pines, he sat in his study and pondered his diplomatic approaches to the Occupying Power.
He smiled bleakly when he thought of Holzinger called in like a messenger, and Fischer trounced into activity, and even the Church hauled up for discipline.
Mayer had telephoned him from the Sonnblick with a series of commentaries on their comings and goings. A useful man, Mayer, admirably placed for inside tips on the market. Mayer had been his personal appointee and had covered his salary ten times over with bedroom gossip and indiscretions from the conference room.
The new commander was something of an enigma. He talked perfect German. He acted like a man who knew his own mind. He would need to be approached carefully. Cooperation, on equal terms: that should be the keynote. The occasion would present itself soon enough.
The murder was already the talk of the town. Holzinger and Fischer were in a neat dilemma. If they caught the boy the whole population would be at their throats. If they didn’t, they fell foul of the new authority. It would be interesting to know whether the English wanted him caught or whether they would prefer to forget the business after a decent interval. They were a subtle people, with a great respect for law and a singular talent for interpreting it to suit themselves.
He wondered if the killer had been named yet, and whether he came from the hills or from the town. These things were important too. If he belonged to one of the old families, the peasants would hide him for years, fending off all investigations with a blank, animal stubbornness. If he were from the town, one of the immigrant stock from Salzburg or Vienna or Graz, they might be happier to let him go to save themselves trouble. The tribal instinct was still strong in the upland valleys.
One thing was certain. Whatever happened, Sepp Kunzli would make a profit. Both sides would need a mediator. Both would pay, in their own coin, for his skilled services.
He was still chewing on this sweet thought, when the door opened and his niece came into the room.
She was dressed, mountain fashion, in ski trousers and walking boots and a long greatcoat with a fur collar. Her blonde hair was braided and wound into a coronet, and her green Tyrolean hat was tipped at a jaunty angle over a face bright as a porcelain doll’s.
She crossed the room quickly and kissed her uncle lightly on the forehead. He made no response to the gesture but asked her calmly:
“Are you going out?”
“Yes. To the hospital first. There’s an hour’s therapy with the amputees.”
“How are they getting along?”
He had no interest in the answer, but he asked the question with the cool impersonal courtesy which seemed necessary to maintain a comfortable relationship.
“Some of them are doing very well. Young Dietrich starts with his sticks today. And Heinzi Reitlinger can light a cigarette with his artificial hand. I’m quite proud of them.”
“I’m glad.”
“I—I was wondering. Uncle…” She faltered and broke off.
“What were you wondering, Anna?”
“Whether you’d mind if I invited a few of them to the house one evening. The ambulance would bring them and…”
“I’m sorry, my dear. I’ve spent a good deal of money to provide recreation facilities in the town. I see no reason why my privacy should be invaded.”
“Just as you say, Uncle.” If she was disappointed, she gave no sign of it. Her voice was as calm as his own, but warm still and friendly. “By the way, I shan’t be back to tea.”
“Why not?”
“Father Albertus telephoned. He’s asked for choir practice this evening. The English soldier is to be buried tomorrow. We’re to sing the requiem.”
For the first time a flicker of interest showed in Kunzli’s dark, dead eyes. He said, with mild sarcasm: “We don’t have requiems sung for our own boys. I wonder why.”
“Perhaps because there are too many of them.”
He looked up sharply, but there was nothing in her face but that frank, bewildering innocence which she had brought with her into his house and against which all his ironies blunted themselves. At first it had annoyed him. He thought it the kind of careful insolence which children use on people they dislike. He had tried to goad her out of it, until one day she faced him, a leggy, gangling schoolgirl, and said quite gently: “You mustn’t be cruel to me, Uncle; you will only hurt yourself more and make me unhappy. Then we couldn’t live together, could we?”
It was then he had made his first surrender to an innocence he didn’t believe in. He made it again now. He shrugged and said: “Don’t be late for dinner.”
“I won’t; Auf Wiedersehn, Uncle.”
“Wiedersehn, Anna.”
She brushed her hand lightly across his hair and was gone. Sepp Kunzli wondered, for the thousandth time, what folly had made him admit her into his life.
She was his brother’s child, but after his departure from Vienna he had neither seen nor heard of her until one day she turned up on his doorstep, scared and red eyed, accompanied by a brawny peasant woman from the Burgenland.
The Burgenländerin came with a poor opinion of Sepp and a determination to see justice done to her chick.
In her thick, raw dialect she told him that Anna’s father was dead—shot down over England—and that the mother was coughing her heart out in a Vienna sanatorium and likely to die in weeks. The old people were dead and Sepp was the last surviving relative. Was he going to do his duty or wasn’t he? How in the name of the seven saints could he live in this big barn of a place while his own kin were left lonely? It didn’t matter to her, she’d take the child happily and bring her up in the Burgenland. Come to that, she’d probably be better off with a good God-fearing family. But she had rights didn’t she? And if the feine Mann didn’t want to look after her, he should be ashamed of himself.
Ten minutes of this and Sepp Kunzli was beaten. He took the girl—an awkward fifteen-year-old—into his house and consigned her to the care of his housekeeper and tried to forget her. Both the housekeeper and Anna herself seemed happy to help him do it. When her mother died it was the housekeeper who soothed her out of her grief, while Kunzli took himself off to Switzerland, oblivious of a lonely teenager moping through the big
house.
It was the housekeeper who bought her clothes and encouraged her to meet other girls and had Father Albertus introduce her into the choir and the Church Guilds and the Hospital Auxiliary.
One day, with a shock of surprise, Kunzli realised that he had a woman in the house, a young and beautiful woman, with a curious, tolerant affection for him and a critical eye for his calculated follies. He couldn’t ignore her any more—nor did he want any longer to dispense with her. She was as familiar as an article of furniture, and as comforting.
When she suggested, quite simply, that he should make her a small allowance to save repeated demands for clothing and feminine necessaries, he agreed without question and doubled what she asked. He was even prepared to commend her common sense. She bought him small, useless gifts for his birthday and for the feasts; and he was forced to return the courtesy. He had never once kissed her, nor taken her in his arms, but she showed no resentment at his lack of love. His barbed humour left her untouched. If she disapproved of his seductions, she said nothing, and she was impervious to the strutting gallantries of his male guests. In a world gone mad she seemed to carry with her the springtime sanity of Eden. But Sepp Kunzli’s Eden was so long lost, he lacked the wit to recognise it.
The girl was there. She would probably stay there until some man asked her to marry him—and the sooner one did, the better. Meanwhile she was an uncomfortable reminder that little girls grow up and rich men grow old, and that revenge and money are the dustiest triumphs of all.
The sudden shrilling of the desk phone cut across his reverie. He lifted the receiver and heard an unfamiliar Viennese voice:
“Doktor Kunzli?”
“This is Kunzli. Yes?”
“This is Mark Hanlon, Occupation Commander.”
Kunzli was instantly cordial.
“My dear Major Hanlon! Nice of you to ring. I was waiting until you’d settled in before coming to pay respects. I knew you would have much to do and…”
“I’ve had word about you from Klagenfurt,” Hanlon cut in crisply. “I’d like to see you as soon as possible.”
“Certainly, Major. Perhaps you would care to dine with me tonight; I could send a car…”
“I’m sorry. That’s not possible. I’d like to see you in my office about five this afternoon. Can you manage that?”
“Well…it’s somewhat short notice, but…”
“Thank you, Doktor. I’ll expect you. Auf Wiedersehn.”
“Auf Wiedersehn, Major,” said Sepp Kunzli, but the line was already dead. He replaced the receiver slowly on its cradle and sat back in his chair, cupping his chin on his hand and staring out at the noiseless, tumbling snowflakes and the grey mist gathering in the valley.
As the first day of his command wore itself out, Hanlon lapsed deeper and deeper into a black temper. The visit of Father Albertus had revived memories he preferred to leave buried, and had raised issues, personal and public, which promised new problems in his already complex task. The attitude of the local authority was already defining itself as one of passive resistance and Captain Johnson was showing himself an amiable cynic apt enough for military command but too young to lend either moral support or useful counsel to his senior officer.
Quicker than he had dreamed, Mark Hanlon was coming to the conclusion that sentimental journeys were always a mistake, and that old loves, like old kisses, should be left to fade gracefully in the memory chest. Love was a shared thing. It demanded an equality, a confession of mutual need. When there was one who kissed and another who turned the cheek, love died of quick starvation. He had found that in his private life. It was being thrust upon him now in his public one. If he wanted to lie comfortably in his bed, he must sleep alone, with bayonets at the door and the sword of office always at his hand. And if there came those who talked the language of love and offered a little more than the cold coin of tribute, he must mistrust them. If he made commerce with them it must be the commerce of the bawdy house—money paid for value received. And a pox on the careless who picked the wrong bedfellow!
Which explains why Karl Adalbert Fischer got a poor welcome and the rough edge of the Major’s tongue when he came to make his first report. Hanlon kept him standing, like a junior, in front of the desk and questioned him with cool precision.
“The car is wrecked you say?”
“That’s right, Major. The roads are icy, as you know. The tyres were worn and the steering has always been slightly defective. A tyre burst and the car skidded off the road and down the embankment. It was lucky my men were not killed.”
“Odd that this should have happened only five miles from town.”
Fischer shrugged and spread his hands helplessly.
Who can say where an accident will happen? My men’s behaviour was quite exemplary. One of them came back to report to me. The other two went forward on foot to the scene of the crime. By the time they got there, the snow was falling heavily. All tracks had been obliterated. Questions at the nearest farmhouses revealed nothing.”
“Very convenient.”
“If the Major insinuates…” Fischer flushed and wagged his head in comical indignation.
“Save it!” Hanlon cut him off curtly. “How do you propose to function without a car?”
“We can’t.”
“Then use your private vehicle. Pay yourself petrol and maintenance, and I’ll give you one of my men to drive it. He speaks German and will be able to assist you in your investigations.”
Fischer gulped and stammered uneasily. “We—we will welcome any assistance you can give us.”
“I’m sure you will. You’ll be sending out ski parties daily to question the outlying farmers. I have four good skiers among my troops. I’ll appoint one to each party.”
“Ski parties!” Fischer’s eyes widened in surprise. “Does the Major know how many men I have? Six! I still have to maintain order in the town—and you ask me to search the mountains and the valleys with ski parties!”
“There are four Alpine guides and at least ten foresters who are out of work in the winter. Use them to make up your parties. They’ll report here each morning for their orders. I’d hate to think that advance information was circulated in the search areas.”
“Major, I did not come here to be insulted! I must ask you to…”
Hanlon went on with the same unhurried irony: “You will have in the town records a nominal roll of the members of the Quellenberg Regiment. You will also have a casualty list showing those dead and missing, and those already repatriated. We take out the dead—who are the majority—and we have a first list of families who may know something about the soldier with the scar. Does that make sense to you Fischer?”
“No!” said the little policeman, with sudden anger. “I cannot work with a man who mistrusts me.”
Hanlon leaned back in his chair and looked at him with sardonic amusement.
“You’re mistaken, my friend, I do trust you—to hold up this search in every way possible! I’m not sure that I blame you either. In your place I’d probably do the same. I hope to convince you you’ll be making a mistake.” He straightened again and opened the folder that lay in front of him. His tone was deceptively mild. “It’s in my competence to dismiss you, Fischer; the grounds are: Party associations, incompetence, or unwillingness to co-operate. I could even trump up a case to have you detained for investigation by the War Crimes people. Your salary would stop. You’d lose all pension rights. Your name would be circulated on a black list to other Occupation areas. You’d find it very hard to get another job even as a snow sweeper.”
“Why do you want to keep me, then?”
“I’m a practical fellow.” Hanlon smiled at him blandly. “I think a town functions better under its normal administrators. This place has a fairly clean record. If it were kept clean, everyone would profit. There’d be a better chance of getting food and coal rations and penicillin for the hospital. There’d be a good case to put up to Klagenfurt for turning it into a res
t area for Occupation troops—which would bring revenue into the town and make a beginning for the old tourist trade. We could make a showpiece of it, Fischer, a model for the rest of Austria—if we could co-operate.”
“You mean, if I hand you an Austrian soldier for hanging”
“Put it that way if you like.”
“How else should I put it, Major?”
“There are two ways,” said Hanlon deliberately. “You can call it recognition of common law, a recognition that murder is crime and deserves punishment to protect the community. You can’t change that principle because the victim happens to wear a British uniform. If you don’t like the taste of that, try this one.” He quoted in the old German of the Bible—”It is expedient that one man should die for the people.”
“Too many men have died already ‘for the people’,” said Fischer with surprising bitterness. “The people! The nation I Greater Germany! Millions died for them. And you demand yet another victim.”
“I don’t want victims,” said Hanlon quietly. “I’m trying to point out that you can’t live in two worlds. If you want to live by law you’ve got to accept the codes. If you want to live in the jungle you can do that too, at a price. It’s up to you.”
“Have you ever killed a man, Major?”
The question took him by surprise. He stared at the little policeman, who stood, stiff and impassive, clothed with a new, curious dignity. He hesitated a moment, then gave him the answer.
“Yes. I’ve killed several in five years of war.”
“Then why do you talk like God Almighty on Judgment Day?”
Hanlon crashed his fist on the desk so that the inkstand jumped and the papers fluttered wildly to the floor.