“What?”
“Don’t be a brute, Richard. No one can possibly hear us.” She looked at the houses across the fields, their wide over-hanging roofs anchored with roped stones, their window boxes gay with rich-coloured petunias. Under the broad eaves sheltered neat piles of logs.
“You take a long time to think up an answer, Richard.”
“Well, darling, there’s no need, is there, for you to know more than you do already?”
“Richard, will you stop doing a Pimpernel? I don’t talk in my sleep, and anyway, I only sleep with you.”
Richard watched two distant figures cutting the grass. Their scythes flashed rhythmically. “All right,” he said. “This is all I know. We were to come to Pertisau. There is a Dr. Mespelbrunn, who has a house here. He collects chessmen. We have to see him, and tell him we heard about his collection in Innsbruck. That is what makes me think he may be the man we are looking for. None of the others knew where we came from. But here we have Dr. Mespelbrunn, who knows about Innsbruck. He is also a musician, it seems, and likes to talk music as well as chess. His love is again a red rose. If he doesn’t think we stink, he will unburden himself. And then we can have our holiday, and send old Peter his Geneva telegram ‘Arriving Friday.’ That’s all.”
“So that’s all… Now, Richard, just tell me what was written in Herr Kronsteiner’s second bill.”
“More or less as I’ve said.”
“Well, what was that?”
“You’re an exasperating creature, aren’t you?”
Frances only smiled and waited.
Richard looked at her, and then recited: “Innsbruck recommends you to Pertisau am Achensee. Dr. Mespelbrunn. Collection of chessmen, songs, flowers.”
“Thank you, my sweet. I just wanted to be quite sure you weren’t trying to do me out of some fun.”
Richard was all injured innocence. “Now, really Frances—”
“I mean, could you have possibly thought of Henry van Cortlandt and Robert Thornley as such nice bathing companions for Frances while you went—mountain climbing, for instance?”
Richard laughed. “Some day,” he said, “I’ll have to believe in woman’s intuition, or is it just woman’s suspicion?”
“Now that’s all settled,” said Frances, “let’s look at the view.”
Their road had led them clear of all the houses. The fields now lay behind them; in front lay scattered twisted trees on a stretch of green grass. It was here that the paths into the converging valleys began. They found a rough wooden seat under one of the small twisted trees beside a small stream. Only the gentle murmur of the running water broke the silence of the valleys. The mountains circled round the meadows, and the sky had arranged its high summer clouds in appropriate clusters to balance the juttings of the peaks into its clear blue.
“It’s a neat job,” said Richard, at last, “almost too neat to be natural.”
“Yes, as if a stage designer had advised nature how to make a really Tyrolean set. I expect a chorus of villagers to enter at any moment.”
“I’ve been wondering at that. It’s not exactly a hive of activity, is it? There were a few men over there working with the hay, or long grass, or whatever it is. We’ve seen one woman scrubbing a table at her door, and another woman gathering in some washing. Now and again I heard the sound of trees being felled in the forest. Perhaps they find tourists more profitable than the land.”
“Found,” emended Frances. “Here are some children, anyway.”
Three large-haunched cows ambled slowly towards them, the bells at their throat sounding a gentle melancholy with each lazy step. Behind them were the children, four of them, their straight hair sun-bleached and their bare feet and legs stained nut-brown. The cows wandered past them, flicking the flies from their dun hides carelessly. Frances, looking at them, thought of some people, she knew.
“Bored is the word, not contented. They have been bored so long that they don’t know what to do about it. Numbed into contentment.”
The children had halted. They were staring at Frances, at her suit and her silk stockings and her high-heeled shoes. When she spoke they retreated, still staring stolidly, and then when they were at a safe distance they turned and ran, whooping with laughter, after the cows.
Richard was grinning with amusement.
“Nice to be young,” said Frances. “Then you can laugh at the other fellow and leave it at that. You never think that the things which make you laugh can also strike you cold with horror.”
“Stop thinking about goose steps and a property moustache,” advised Richard.
“Don’t worry. I’m out of the dangerous stage of being mesmerised with fear. If I’m cold now it’s with anger.”
“That’s safer, anyway, when you are dealing with those birds,” Richard said, and rose. He took her arm affectionately. “Nice little avenging fury you’d make.”
They chose another road back to the shore of the lake. It led them towards a group of trees, sheltering houses more closely grouped together. As they approached this small centre, they noticed two or three little shops, and even some women and children, in the road which had almost become a village street. There was an inn and a beer garden, which looked as if the inhabitants of Pertisau might be able to enjoy themselves after all without any help from tourists in imitation dress.
“Signs of civilisation,” said Richard, but he surprised Frances by not entering the beer garden. A small shop which was part of a house seemed to attract him. They crossed the narrow street, and looked at its window filled with wood carvings. Most of them were of the present-from-the-lovely-Tyrol variety, but on the back shelf were a few carvings of really good design and careful workmanship. The finest of these were two chessmen. Frances knew Richard was pleased.
“This may be as good a way as any,” he said, and led Frances into the shop.
It had been the living-room of the house. Now there was a table facing the door, on which more carvings were displayed. Behind this under a window at the side of the room was another table covered indiscriminately with shavings, chips, blocks of wood and instruments to cut and mould them. On the bench beside the table was a man. He rose slowly, coming towards them with a half-carved piece of wood still in his hand. He looked at them keenly, and then smiled.
“Grüss Gott!” he said.
“Grüss Gott! May we look at your carvings?”
“Of course. The lady and gentleman are welcome.” He went back to his bench and started his work again. Now and again, he would look up to see what held their interest. He nodded as Frances admired some figures of the Three Kings. His best, most careful work was given to Biblical themes; to them and to the chessmen which Richard was now examining with interest.
“How much are these?” asked Richard. The man watched his face as he told the price. It was reasonable for the amount of work in the carvings.
“It takes much time,” the man said, as if trying to excuse the amount.
Frances wondered how often it had been rudely beaten down by people who had ignored the time, the skill, and the love which had gone into such work.
“The price is not high for such craftsmanship,” said Richard. “I’d like a set of these to take back to England.”
“The gentleman collects chessmen?” The woodcarver was delighted. “Then you will see something. I have still better ones; some which I do not sell.” He rose, quickly this time, and went to a heavy chest at the back of the room. He opened a drawer and took out a large box which he carried carefully to his work table.
“If the lady and gentleman would come over here…”
They went, and as they looked at the contents of the box they found it not difficult to express their admiration.
“I do not sell these; they gave me too much pleasure when I made them,” the man explained. Frances noted the large clumsy hands, knotted and gnarled with age, and wondered at their expertness, at the delicacy of their creations.
“Do you ever make c
opies of them, for anyone who wants to buy them?”
“Sometimes. But it takes a long time. A gentleman who lives here in the summer months has asked me to copy them for him during the winters. I have made him one set and here is another which I am now carving for him.”
They were suitably impressed.
“He must know a lot about chessmen,” said Richard, hoping for the best. It came.
“Herr Doktor Mespelbrunn? Yes indeed. He has a large collection. He lived in the South Tyrol before he came here, and he has some Grödnertal pieces.”
“Really?” Richard hoped his admiration of the Grödnertal woodcarvers was emphatic enough.
“But why do the lady and gentleman not go to see Herr Doktor Mespelbrunn’s collection? He shows them to people who really admire and understand.”
Richard looked doubtful. “I should like to see them very much, but after all we are complete strangers to Dr. Mespelbrunn. I shouldn’t like to disturb him, especially as I am only an amateur…” Richard’s words were cut short by the old man’s laughter.
“The lady and gentleman would not disturb the Herr Doktor. He doesn’t work; he writes music.” The woodcarver’s joke lasted him quite a long time.
“Perhaps,” said Richard, when he could, “perhaps I may have the honour of being introduced to the Doctor some day when I visit you again.”
The woodcarver pursed his lips and shook his head.
“He doesn’t come down into Pertisau much during July and August. He doesn’t like tourists. But if you pass his house—it is the large house with the red shutters on the Pletzach—you should visit him. You can say that Anton advised you to go. It is a very beautiful collection.”
“Perhaps we shall,” said Richard, and dismissed Mespelbrunn from the conversation by placing an order. He insisted on paying Anton half the price in advance, the rest to be paid when the pieces arrived in Oxford.
“That seems fair enough,” Richard said to Frances as they walked back to the lakeside. “By the time he can start work on them summer will be over and then he will know whether it is any use starting them at all. I’ve no doubt that he will be worried about the deposit, but he earned it.”
They met groups of men returning from the woods, with their axes slung over their shoulders. They were lean, weather-tanned men, slow-moving and silent. They might have been a group of Scots shepherds, with the same strong bones and rugged faces. There was even the same upward lilt in their voices as they gravely answered “Grüss Gott.” Some of the older men smiled in surprise as if they hadn’t expected the old greeting from a present-day visitor. Children had finished their task of herding cows, and were playing outside the open doors of the houses. Their clothes made them look like miniature adults. Smoke was beginning to curl up from the stone-anchored roofs. There was the smell of cooking food in the air, and the high, tight voices of women when they are hurried and tired.
Down at the lakeside, there were also preparations for supper. Here the women were changing one undistinguished dress for another, and no doubt fixing their hair as unbecomingly as possible. Those of them who had already succeeded in looking grim enough to satisfy the requirements of a superior race sat at the tables in front of the hotels, contemplating their husbands with housewifely virtue. The men talked and looked at each other. The women looked at the men. Behind them, the shadows of the mountains were mirrored in the still waters.
A gramophone played in the little cafe where the younger men were. There were not so many young men, Frances noticed, nor were there many young girls. Perhaps the new Germany had other plans for the holidays of its youth.
“A few more years of this, supposing that there was no war,” said Frances, “and no one who wasn’t a German could bear to come to the Tyrol.”
“I always know you mean what you say when your sentences run away with themselves,” teased Richard. And then he was serious again. “We had better not rush things at this stage. The ice gets thinner as we get farther out, you know, and the shore is less easy to reach. I’ve a feeling we ought to play doubly safe. Peter’s man, the one he sent out before us, must have managed Nürnberg and Innsbruck; although, to tell you the truth, I had begun to think when we were in Innsbruck that we had reached the snag. So we are going to be very innocent for a couple of days. We’ll relax. What about climbing that blighter tomorrow? It’s an easy one to begin with.” He nodded to the Bärenjoch, black with the sun behind it.
Frances smothered a smile over her husband’s idea of relaxation.
“All right, darling,” she said.
They left the quiet road and turned towards the Villa Waldesruhe. It was as peaceful as its name. There was no sign of the honeymoon couple or of Frau Schichtl. As Frances unpacked she sang. Richard dropped his book on the balcony, and listened as he looked at the steep drop of the mountains on the other side of the darkening lake. He didn’t know when Frances had stopped singing, or how long she had been watching from the door. He rose hurriedly.
“One of those adequate five minutes,” he said awkwardly. He looked at Frances’ hair and lips. “Darling, you are going to be thought most awfully decadent. The master race will disapprove.”
“Too busy eating soup,” said Frances. “Nothing, not even their principles, could ruin their appetites.” She was right.
13
REINFORCEMENTS
They did climb the Bärenjoch next day. As Richard had said, it was easy, and it was also useful. Richard spent a lot of time on the peak, studying with his map and pencil the lie of the valleys which met in the green plain of Pertisau. They could see the Pletzach, flowing at the base of the mountain opposite them like a very narrow, very loosely-tied white ribbon. If they were to follow the stream up round that jut of mountain into the valley which it sheltered, they should find Dr. Mespelbrunn with his chessmen and music books. Frances watched Richard. He was interested in the mountains, unsuspected from the lakeside, which stretched into the distance in rough-tongued waves. Two of the valleys led to paths which would lead them over that sea of jagged stone.
“Looking for a quick way out?” asked Frances.
“It wouldn’t do us much good in that direction,” said Richard. “That’s Germany. I wish to heaven that Pertisau had tucked itself near the border of a nice healthy place like Switzerland. Still, even if we have to make a dash for it, it is just as well to have a choice of directions. Yesterday I was worried because Pertisau was such a bottleneck.”
“You seem to expect fireworks. It’s difficult to think of any danger or evil lurking in this kind of place.” Frances settled down on Richard’s Burberry, and fished for a cigarette in one of its pockets. She lit it, and lay back to look at the sky.
“How are we going to do it?” she added.
Richard folded up his map carefully and put it into his pocket. He stretched down beside her and watched the clouds.
“I think Anton is our best bet. We’ll just walk in one of these days, and ask if we dare have the great honour and pleasure of seeing the chess collection. Anton’s name will get us past any servant who’s about the place. All other excuses are pretty obvious.”
“Such as?”
“Well, you could need a drink of water, but unfortunately there’s a nice mountain stream running down that valley. Or you could sprain your weak ankle and need help to get back to the village. But that’s rather a poor effort.”
“I’m glad it is.”
“So we shall blow in, probably on Thursday or Friday, when Pertisau has looked us over and accepted us. There’s no use risking everything by an enthusiastic dash. For if this Mespelbrunn is Peter’s man, then an explanation for his silence would be the fact that he was under observation. And if he is under observation, then his visitors had better be very natural indeed.”
“He must be able to speak German pretty well if Anton and the others in the village accept him.”
“It’s his job. The accent hereabouts, anyway, is so peculiar that he could easily pass himself
off as a real Berliner. When he is in Berlin he has a Viennese accent, no doubt.”
“Well, I am looking forward to meeting him.”
“Are you definite about that?”
“Quite. You aren’t going to leave me out at this stage. You know, Richard, the man in Paris was very efficient. So were the others, but they seemed simpler, somehow.”
“I should think the Paris man is second in importance to Mr. Smith himself. The beginning and the end, as it were. Fugger and Kronsteiner are just movable pawns in the game.”
“I keep worrying about poor old Fugger,” said Frances. “I wonder if he did get away? “
“If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here. Or we should have been continuously followed until they could catch us with another agent. Don’t worry about A. Fugger. He’s a wily bird.” Richard suddenly sat up and watched the mountainside.
“I thought I heard voices,” he explained. He was right. Below them were two men.
Frances rose to her feet. The two figures paused and then waved their arms and shouted.
“It’s Henry M. and Robert Thornley,” Frances announced. “You know,” she added in amazement, “I never thought they’d come.”
Richard got up. He waved and halloed back. Van Cortlandt yelled something which they couldn’t make out; but Thornley was laughing and they laughed too. The American seemed to be in good spirits. He kept calling remarks to them which sounded funny although they couldn’t hear them.
At last the two men came over the last piece of rock, and dropped on the ground beside Frances. The American regained his breath, and pointed to his face. It was crimson.
“Well,” said Frances, “if you will climb at twice the normal pace and make wisecracks to go with it—”
“This,” said van Cortlandt with as much pride as if he had been fishing for marlin, “is my first mountain.”
“We are overcome,” said Frances gravely, and handed him some sliced orange. “It was a most spectacular appearance.”
Robert Thornley explained.
Above Suspicion Page 14