The Liar

by Stephen Fry

  ‘Is that a zeugma or a syllepsis?’

  ‘It was an impertinence and an inconvenience.’

  ‘It was in a convenience certainly … But you can hardly blame them. I mean, two men kissing in a lavatory and then one of them getting down on his knees … what was he thinking of?’

  ‘The job in hand,’ said Trefusis coldly.

  ‘Oo-er!’

  ‘Adrian, it is a long walk back to England. I suggest you keep your putrid sense of humour in check.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Adrian clamped his mouth shut.

  ‘It is possible, I grant you,’ Trefusis continued, ‘that a person stumbling upon such a tableau might be tempted to place constructions of a deleterious nature upon it, but only if their minds were already composed of stuff so gross and rank in nature as to be themselves guilty of as much impropriety as the most shameless erotic miscreant in the land. Stefan, at any rate, found himself wholly perplexed by events. I managed to communicate to him in Hungarian, however, as we awaited the police van. I … er … created a scene and he was able to grab his briefcase and “make good his escape” as the newspapers have it.’

  ‘What sort of a scene?’

  ‘A scene-y sort of a scene. Just a general, you know, scene.’

  ‘What sort of a scene?’

  ‘Does it matter what sort of a scene?’

  ‘Come on, Donald. What sort of a scene?’

  ‘Oh very well. If you must know, I let out a screech of animal lust and attempted to remove the trousers of the officer detaining me.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘Well I have no doubt you could have dreamt up a dozen more appropriate schemes, Adrian, but it was all that occurred to me under the duress of the moment. I scrabbled at the unfortunate man’s trouserings and while his companion leapt forward to rescue him from this parlous circumstance, Stefan found himself temporarily deoppilated. He returned to the Shoulder of Lamb where he left the item he had come up expressly to deliver and which I have with me now. Bob then arranged for his safe return to Hastings.’

  ‘Yes, I was meaning to ask you. How come Bob is involved in all this?’

  ‘Bob is a friend.’

  ‘Bletchley?’

  ‘Bob has been involved in all kinds of things in his time. He had his tongue ripped out by the Japanese.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, but he doesn’t talk about it.’

  ‘Oh ha frigging ha. You still haven’t told me who the enemy is.’

  Trefusis reached for a figgy oatcake.

  ‘Enemy?’

  ‘Yes, enemy. The people who robbed us in Germany and stole your briefcase. The people who killed Moltaj and who are,’ Adrian craned his neck round, ‘still hot on our arses.’

  ‘Well now, it would seem we have two “enemies”, Adrian. Moltaj was killed by a servant of the Magyar Republic of Hungary, I think there is no doubt of that. Bela’s employers have no intention of letting his invention leave their country.’

  ‘And now they are following us?’

  ‘No, we are being followed by enemy number two. It was they who robbed us in Germany last year.’

  ‘And who are they?’

  ‘Well,’ said Trefusis, ‘I was rather hoping you might know that, Adrian.’

  11

  I

  IN THE CORRIDOR, Rudi nearly collided with an enormously fat man with a small head and lank hair. Rudi managed, with a supreme effort of balance and co-ordination, learnt on the ski-slopes of Innsbruck, to avoid the calamity of dropping the drinks tray he was carrying and proceeded, trembling, on his way, cursing under his breath the rudeness and clumsiness of the guests as he went. Probably a music journalist in Salzburg for the Festival; such gracelessness was to be expected from the press.

  Rudi tapped gently on the door to the sitting room of the Franz-Josef Suite and listened for a reply. This was his first week at the Österreichischer Hof and he was not certain if it was done simply to knock and enter as he would have done at the Hotel der Post in Fuschl-am-See where he had learnt his trade. The Österreichischer Hof was altogether smarter than the Hotel der Post and things were done here on the international scale, with taste, style, courtliness, discretion and just a Schluck of Austrian Gemütlichkeit.

  There was no reply from within. Yet someone had ordered a bottle of Absolut lemon vodka and three glasses, someone had commanded room-service. Surely it was reasonable to suppose that someone was in the room? He knocked again and waited.

  Still nothing. Most puzzling.

  Rudi balanced the tray on his shoulder, leant forward towards the door, and coughed purposefully.

  From inside he heard a voice. An English voice.

  ‘Entschuldigen Sie …’ Rudi called through the keyhole.

  He could sense that his husky tones were not penetrating the thick wood of the door. Rudi was a little nervous. In the kitchens yesterday he had caused a beautiful puff-ball of Salzburger Nockerl, the hotel’s speciality, to deflate by dropping a fork into it by mistake, and two days ago – Rudi blushed at the memory – two days ago in the dining room he had spilt some kirsch down the shirt-front of Signor Muti, the famous conductor. Fortunately the maestro had been wearing one of his famous black polo-neck shirts and the stain had not shown up so much, but the memory was painful to Rudi.

  English people. Were they deaf?

  ‘Excusing me!’

  Rudi knocked again, his head leaning against the door. He heard the voice still.

  ‘… incontinently and savagely beautiful, not unlike a small chaffinch, but much larger and with less of a salty after-tang …’

  This Rudi could not understand. The word ‘beautiful’ was familiar certainly. English girls who came to stay with their families at the Hotel der Post liked to say that it was ‘a very beautiful morning this morning, Rudi’, that the mountain and the lake and the Schloss were ‘simply beautiful’ and sometimes, when he had been lucky, that his hair and eyes and his legs and his Schwanz were so ‘beautiful’. Beautiful he knew, but what was this ‘chaffinch’? Of course! a green vegetable, like Kohl or Kraut, that was chaffinch. A strange conversation this man was having.

  ‘… a certain degree of Schadenfreude under the circumstances is inevitable perhaps …’

  ‘Schadenfreude!’ He could speak German.

  Rudi knocked until his knuckles were raw.

  ‘Entschuldigen Sie bitte, mein Herr. Hier ist der Kellner mit Ihren Getränken!’

  ‘… a message delivered by motor-bicycle. A curious new phenomenon these despatch riders …’

  Rudi could wait no longer. He swallowed twice, turned the handle and entered.

  A beautiful suite, the Franz-Josef. Herr Brendel the pianist had stayed there last week and the Bösendorfer Grand that had been installed for him had not yet been collected. They should keep the piano here always, Rudi thought. With the flowers and the cigarette boxes and long flowing curtains, it conspired to give the room the look of a film set from the nineteen-thirties. With great care he set down his drinks tray on top of the piano and listened again to the English voice.

  ‘… this rider, standing in the threshold holding out a clipboard to be signed, reminded me at first of a copy of Izaac Walton’s Compleat Angler that I have in my possession. Bound in leather, lavishly tooled and a lasting joy …’

  ‘Your drinks are arrived, my sir.’

  ‘… of the package that he delivered I can say only this …’

  The voice was coming through from the bedroom. Rudi approached nervously.

  ‘… it shocked me right down to my foundation garments. From stem to stern I quivered …’

  Rudi straightened his bow-tie and tapped loosely on the half-open bedroom door with the back of his hand.

  ‘Sir, your drinks that you have ordered …’

  Rudi broke off.

  The door he had knocked on so lightly had swung open to reveal a man sitting on the end of the bed, soaked from head to foot in blood. He faced a writing tab
le on which stood a small radio.

  ‘… I suppose there are degrees of startlement, much as there are degrees of anything. If there is an official scale comparable to, for example, the Beaufort, Moh or Richter Scales and if that scale be measured from one to ten, I would say that on this Trefusian Scale of Abject Bestartlement I scored at least a creditable 9.7, certainly from the European judges. The East Germans would probably have been less generous, but even they could not have failed to give me 9.5 for artistic impression …’

  Rudi hugged the door-handle and half swung from the door, staring at the dead man with innocent surprise and wonder, like a child watching donkeys copulate.

  A knock on the sitting-room door brought him to his senses.

  A high English voice called through the sitting room.

  ‘Martin! Are you there? Martin!’

  Rudi jumped. This was witchcraft.

  Two men had entered the sitting room, one silver-haired, the other closer to Rudi’s age. They were smiling.

  ‘Ah, lemon vodka on the piano. Very much Martin’s poison.’

  Rudi gasped.

  ‘Sie sind … sie sind!’ said Rudi, pointing at the older man.

  ‘Was bin ich?’ the man asked in surprise.

  So he was German, this man. But the voice. The voice was …

  Rudi pointed to the bedroom.

  ‘Da drinnen sitzt ein Mann!’

  ‘Is there something wrong with him, Donald?’

  ‘Er ist tot!’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Trefusis, hurrying forwards. ‘Please not. Please not!’

  Adrian followed him into the bedroom.

  ‘… I will let you know, those of you who are interested, of course, the others will simply have to guess. Meanwhile if you have been, then continue to and don’t even think of stopping.’

  ‘Well, as the Professor has just told us, that was the last of the current series of Wireless Essays from the Desk of Donald Trefusis. Half an hour of World News in a moment, followed by Meridian. BBC World Service. This is Lond –’

  Adrian switched off the radio and brought his gaze to bear upon the young man on the bed.

  His throat had been cut in a wide crescent from one ear to the other. It was as if a second mouth had been cut beneath the chin. Even the lining of the poor man’s jacket had been ripped open. As with Moltaj the previous year, the flap of skin had a gruesomely false, plastic, made-up appearance. Adrian supposed that just as genuine gunfire was said not to sound realistic, so genuine death had a falser air than the gore of the movies.

  Rudi gestured towards the radio: ‘Das waren Sie, nicht wahr?’

  Trefusis nodded vaguely. ‘Jawohl, das war ich.’

  ‘Sind Sie Österreicher oder Deutscher?’

  ‘Engländer.’

  ‘Echt?’

  ‘Echt,’ said Trefusis. ‘Hast du die Polizei schon telefoniert?’

  ‘Nein … ich bin nur zwei Minuten da …’

  ‘Also.’

  Trefusis crossed over to the writing table and picked up the radio.

  ‘Und bast du jemanden gesehen?’

  ‘Nein … nie – Moment! Ja, ein dicker Mann … sehr dick …’

  ‘Mit kleinem Kopf and schlichten Haaren?’

  ‘Ganz genau!’

  ‘This young gentleman and I will await the police, Adrian.’

  Adrian nodded. He felt sick, deeply sick. Sicker than when he had witnessed the death of Moltaj in Mozart’s house, sicker than he had ever felt in his life. It was his fault. It was all his fault. From liar to murderer, like in the Æsop fable.

  Trefusis had sat at the table and was scribbling on a sheet of hotel writing-paper. Adrian steeled himself to turn and look at the dead man again. The torn throat and the blood soaking into the sheets were disgusting enough, but somehow the savage shredding of the viscose lining of the jacket seemed a world more obscene. It revealed a wanton animal fury that struck fear into Adrian’s soul.

  ‘Adrian, I want you to deliver this note to the British Consulate,’ said Trefusis. ‘It is to be placed into the hands of the addressee himself. None other.’

  Adrian looked at the name written on the envelope.

  ‘Are you sure, Donald?’

  ‘Quite sure, thank you. The Consulate is situated in number four Alter Markt. This has all gone quite far enough.’

  II

  Adrian made his way across the Makart Steg bridge that connected the Österreichischer Hof with the old town. The Salzach flowed beneath him, traffic flowed past him on the Staatsbrücke, crowds of holiday-makers flowed around him and dark, dreadful thoughts flowed within him.

  Some of the shops on the Franz-Josef Kai had begun to place posters in their windows of the conductors and soloists due to appear in the Festival. An umbrella and luggage shop by the taxi-rank where Adrian waited was tricolated in the yellow and black livery of the Deutsche Gramophon Gesellschaft. A huge photograph of von Karajan glowered out at him, distrust apparent in the deep frown and clenched brows, contempt all too clear in the upward thrust of the chin and the sour wrinkle about the mouth. Two-horse fiacres flicked past him, bearing tourists and Festival-goers along the Müllner Hauptstraße. A bruised sky bore down. Adrian saw an image of the whole scene through a camera that was zooming outwards and outwards with himself in the centre diminishing and diminishing until he was a frozen part of a postcard pinned to a cork noticeboard in a warm suburban kitchen in England, eternally trapped, blessedly unable to move forwards or backwards in time or space.

  At last, after twenty minutes, just as he was preparing to go in the shop and ask about buses, a Mercedes taxi drew up into the empty rank beside him.

  ‘Britisches Konsulat, bitte. Alter Markt vier.’

  ‘Aber man kann es in zwei Minuten spazieren.’

  ‘Scheiße. Never mind. Das macht nichts. Take me there anyway. Es sieht nach Regen aus.’

  Indeed, as Adrian spoke, the first drops began to fall, and by the time the cab drew up outside the Alter Markt, which would indeed have taken only a few minutes to reach on foot, the rain was pouring heavily. The taxi had not been able to go right to the door of the Consulate, so Adrian had to thread his way through the market itself, where people were gathering for shelter under a stall that sold artificial flowers. Number four itself was a small doorway next to the Oberbank a few doors down from Holzermayer’s, which sold the Mozartkugeln, small chocolate marzipans wrapped in silver-foil portraits of Salzburg’s most famous son. Adrian had bought a box for his mother there the previous summer.

  ‘Sir David who?’

  The woman at the desk was not helpful.

  ‘Pearce. I know he’s here, could you just tell him that … hang on.’ Adrian took a Festival brochure from a pile on the desk and wrote in a white space on the back. ‘Just show him that. I’m sure he’ll see me.’

  ‘Well I’m sorry, Mr … Telemackles, does it say?’

  ‘Telemachus.’

  ‘No one called Sir David anything at the Consulate. Never has been.’

  ‘He’s here. He must be here.’

  ‘You’re in trouble, I suppose? Want to borrow money?’

  ‘No, no, no. Look, could you call the Consul and tell him that Telemachus insists on seeing Sir David Pearce. Just tell him that.’

  ‘I’ll try his secretary,’ she said, with a sniff.

  Adrian tapped the desk with his fingers.

  ‘Hello, Mitzi? It’s Dinah at the front desk. Have a young gentleman here who says he wants to see a Sir David Pearce. I told him we … oh … I’ll ask him.’

  The receptionist favoured Adrian with a combative scowl.

  ‘What was that name again, please?’

  ‘Oh, Healey. Adrian Healey.’

  ‘That’s not what you said.’

  ‘Never mind, just say Adrian Healey.’

  ‘Mitzi? He says Adrian Healey … yes, I’ll hold.’

  She turned to Adrian again. ‘Could you not do that?’

  Adrian smiled. His fingers stop
ped tapping against the desk.

  ‘Yes, dear? All right. You’ll send someone down will you?’

  ‘Everything all right?’ Adrian asked.

  ‘You’re to wait. Chair over there.’

  The words had hardly left her lips before Adrian heard a door closing upstairs and footsteps descending the stairs. A greasy-haired man in a powder-blue safari suit bounded towards him with hand outstretched.

  ‘Adrian Healey?’

  ‘We’ve met before, I think,’ Adrian said. ‘On the Stuttgart to Karlsruhe Autobahn.’

  ‘Dickon Lister. Simply delighted. Come on up, why don’t you?’

  Adrian followed Lister up the central staircase and into a vast reception room. Sitting on a sofa, hunched over a small radio set, an earpiece plugged into his left ear, was a man in a Savile Row suit and St Matthew’s College tie. Dickon Lister winked at Adrian and left the room.

  ‘Hello, Uncle David.’

  ‘It’s unbelievable, Adrian, simply unbelievable!’

  ‘I really don’t see how …’

  Uncle David waved him to silence.

  ‘That’s it! That must be it. Lillee has gone, that must be it.’

  ‘What …’

  ‘Haven’t you heard? Headingley, man! Botham and Dilley put on one hundred and seventeen for the eighth wicket yesterday. Simply unbelievable. And now …’ He clapped his thighs ecstatically. ‘You won’t believe this, Adrian, but Australia needed only one hundred and thirty to win today and they went from fifty-six for one to seventy-five for eight. Willis has run through them like a tornado. What? No … Chilly, you cunt!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Chris Old has just dropped Bright. Wake up man!’ he boomed at the radio. ‘It was five hundred to one against an England victory in the betting tent today, can you credit it? And if it wasn’t for you and your bloody Trefusis I’d be up there now watching the most exciting Test Match in history. But oh no …’

  He relapsed into silence again, wincing and grimacing at the radio.