Dead Men Don't Ski

by Patricia Moyes

  "So," said Henry, "you told her you'd dearly love to back out, but you couldn't, because Hauser was blackmailing you."

  Roger had the grace to look ashamed of himself. "What else could I do?" he said. "That was why she had her knife into poor old Fritz to such a marked extent."

  "And what," said Henry, "were you doing in Hauser's room the night before he was killed?"

  "By God, you know everything, don't you?" said Roger, admiringly. "As a matter of fact, that was a perfectly innocent visit. I went in to pick up a book he'd promised to lend me."

  "What book?"

  "Cora Teresa^ by Renato Lucano," said Roger promptly. "It's marvellously sordid, and it hasn't been published in England yet. I read Italian pretty fluently, you see. The book's in my room now, if you want to see it."

  Henry looked inquiringly at Spezzi, who nodded, and said, "Yes, the book is there."

  "Did you see the gun?" Henry asked Roger.

  "Yes. It was on the table."

  Henry looked at Roger quizzically. The young man's face was a picture of honest ingenuousness, and he said, "Actually, I'm immensely relieved to have got all that off my chest. As it turns out, I'm damn glad I didn't get mixed up with Hauser and his smuggling."

  "Talking of smuggling," said Henry, "what was your cargo supposed to consist of?"

  "Watches," said Roger, without hesitation.

  "You're sure of that?"

  "Of course I'm sure. The arrangement was that I came out here twice a year on holiday—summer and winter. Hauser said I must always come with a party, on the cheap train—it was good cover, he said. I was to take back a fairly big consignment each time. Then I was going to bring stuff out of England, too, but we hadn't got around to discussing that. There wouldn't have been a fortune in it, of course, but it would have made me a nice steady little bit."

  "You can count yourself extremely lucky that Hauser didn't live long enough to get you involved," said Henry, grimly. "It wouldn't have been watches for long, you know. And there'd have been no going back. I sincerely hope you've learnt your lesson."

  "You can say that again," said Roger, ruefully. "Strictly legal activities for Staines from now on."

  "And now that you've made your confession," Henry proceeded, with a slight edge of irony, "let's talk about the second murder. I'd like as detailed as possible an account of your movements today."

  "You know most of them," said Roger. "I went out with old Buckfast in the morning, and we did Run Three and the Alpe Rosa, where we collected Gerda. We lunched at the Olympia, as you know, and came up in the lift as soon as it started, to have another shot at Run Three before it got too crowded." He paused, and then went on. "I may as well tell you straight out that all three of us knew that Mario was coming to see you tonight."

  "You did?" Henry was surprised. "How?"

  "Well, we came up on the lift just behind Pietro, who was coming to collect his class, and while we were putting our skis on at the top, I heard him talking to Mario. He must have been worried about the old man—I must say, I thought myself that he looked pretty ghastly. Anyway, I heard Pietro say, 'You're a stubborn old fool, father. Why don't you just go home quietly?' and Mario said, 'I've already told you I'm seeing Signor Tibbett tonight, and nothing's going to stop me' Of course," Roger went on, sombrely, "I was the only one who understood what they were saying—at least, I don't think Gerda speaks Italian. Certainly the Colonel doesn't. But like an idiot I repeated it to them."

  "What did they say?"

  "Nothing much." Roger frowned. "We'd agreed to make a race of it down Run Three, and Buckfast started fussing about not having got the right goggles. He insisted on going off to the hotel to get them—thereby holding us up to such an extent that the bloody run was jam-packed with people by the time we took off, and the whole thing was ruined. However ... where was I? Oh yes. Mario. Well, Gerda and I speculated a bit about what Mario wanted with you, and then the Colonel came back, and we set off: but, as I said, the piste was like Piccadilly Circus at rush-hour, so after one run we legged it over to the Alpe Rosa again. We packed in at about a quarter to five, and went to the Olympia for tea. The Baron was there, too, incidentally."

  "Did you speak to him?"

  "Not really. He's an unsociable sort of cove. Just nodded in a markedly chilly manner when we came in. He left several minutes before we did. When we got to the lift, Carlo told us we were the last, as the Baron had just gone up."

  "What time was that?"

  "I don't honestly know," said Roger. "Just before half-past five, I suppose. We didn't stay long over tea."

  "You were the last to go up on the lift, I understand."

  "Yes. Gerda went first, then the Colonel, then me."

  "And you saw Mario coming down?"

  "Yes—at least, as I said, I didn't know it was him. It never occurred to me until we found he wasn't at the top."

  "How far up were you when you passed him?"

  Roger considered. "Something over half-way, I think," he said. "Difficult to be sure."

  "Now," said Henry, "think hard, because this is important. Did you see anything drop from the ski-lift—as if one of the people in front of you had thrown, or dropped?"

  "The gun?" Roger smiled faintly. "No," he said. "I've been considering that possibility myself. Mind you, I can't swear to anything, but I'm pretty darn sure I would have noticed it."

  That seemed to be all that Roger could tell them, so Henry sent him off to join the others, who had already started dinner. He suggested that he and Emmy, with Spezzi and his aide, should have their meal brought to them in the office, so that he could translate the gist of Roger's interview to Spezzi while they ate. They had nearly finished their main course when the telephone rang, and Henry answered it.

  It was the doctor from Santa Chiara. "Preliminary report, Inspector," he said, cheerfully. "Death caused by .32 bullet in the heart—wound almost identical with Hauser's, though I would say that the range this time was slightly shorter—though of course one can't fix it to within inches. Death instantaneous, and within an hour of my examination. With your permission, I'll send the two bullets off for testing straight away. It should be simple to establish whether they came from the same gun."

  Henry had only just put the receiver back into place when the phone shrilled again. This time it was for Spezzi, who answered it with his mouth full of cheese. He listened for a moment, then swallowed hastily, said, "Hold on I..." and turned to Henry, his eyes sparkling with excitement.

  "Enrico I..." he cried, "They have found the gun!"

  "Thank God," said Henry, piously. "Where?"

  There was another brief conversation, and then Spezzi put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, and said, "Under the ski-lift—at the foot of a pylon, about three-quarters of the way down. They want to know what to do with it."

  "Take down all its details—number, make and so on," said Henry, " and let us have them over the phone. Then send the gun straight away for testing with the bullets, and for fingerprinting.". ^

  Spezzi relayed these instructions, with many more of his own about care in handling the weapon for fear of spoiling any prints. Then he rang off, and said, triumphantly, "Now we are getting somewhere 1 This time the murderer has been careless!"

  "There's one thing that occurs to me," said Emmy. "If both bullets were fired from the same gun, that surely lets poor Franco out."

  "Yes," said Spezzi, with undisguised relief, when Henry had translated this for him. "I expect to be able to release him to-morrow. It was certainly fortunate for the young man, as it turned out, that he was safely in prison today. Even the Baron can hardly maintain that he could have killed Mario: and the Baroness will be grateful, I hope, that his innocence is proved. So all will be happy. Yes," he went on, lighting a cigarette, "the case narrows down at last. It is clear that we have only three suspects now— the Colonel, young Staines, and Fraulein Gerda. From what you have told me, I should say that it is most unlikely that Staines killed Ha
user. The Colonel had no motive, and is a thoroughly upright character. Which leaves us with Fraulein Gerda, as I have said all along."

  "None of that is proof," said Henry, "and psychologically speaking..."

  Spezzi waved an airy hand. "Your trouble, my dear Enrico," he said, with what Henry considered insufferable smugness, "is that you look for complications where none exist. You say, 'This person could have committed the crime, but it is not in their character to do so.' What sort of reasoning is that? And then you are sentimental. You wish to exonerate the girl because she is beautiful and tragic.

  But I tell you, when it comes to murder, there is no predicting what people will do. I am straightforward. I look for the obvious explanation, the logical explanation, and you sneer, but you will see that I am right. In this case, I wish with all my heart that I could be wrong, for Fraulein Gerda is..." He stopped, sighed, and then said, "But we have to face facts."

  "That," said Henry, "is exactly what I'm trying to do. All the facts," he added, "not just the convenient ones."

  "I do not understand."

  But Henry, who had been touched on the raw of his pride both by Spezzi's self-satisfaction and by the allegation of sentimentality (which he knew only too well to contain a grain of truth), became stubbornly silent, and devoted himself to the demolition of a tangerine.

  After dinner, they bearded the Baron in his suite. The latter, already nettled by the ignominy of being searched, was unhelpful in the extreme.

  He had driven to Montelunga after lunch, he said, on private business which was no concern of Spezzi's. He had returned at half-past four and taken tea at the Olympia. Shortly before half-past five, he had taken the ski-lift up to the hotel. He had noticed somebody coming down when he was about two-thirds of the way up. Of course he had not speculated as to who it might be. Some peasant, he presumed. The matter did not interest him in the least. He had also been extremely irritated to find no attendant at the top, and had made up his mind to report the matter to the authorities. He hoped sincerely that it would not happen again: but he supposed that laxness of discipline was only to be expected from the Italians.

  Rattled, Spezzi asked if the Baron had seen Gerda, Roger and the Colonel in the Olympia. Coldly, the Baron replied that he had. No, he had not spoken to them: he could hardly be expected to carry on a social conversation with a domestic servant whom he had recently dismissed. If the English visitors liked to keep such company, that was entirely their affair.

  So far, the Baron had run exactly true to form. But at the end of the interview, he made a surprising remark.

  "I presume," he said, with no amelioration of his bitter expression, "that you will now see fit to release di Santi."

  Spezzi hedged, murmuring something about positive identification of the bullets. The Baron smiled, without humour.

  "I am, I hope, a just man," he said. "I acknowledge that it was largely on my instigation that the young man was arrested, and clearly I was mistaken. You will do me a favour by setting him free at the earliest possible moment."

  With that, the interview terminated, and Henry and Spezzi turned with relief to the more congenial business of interrogating Colonel Buckfast.

  Roger's words in the hall had evidently made a deep impression on the Colonel. He was as nervous as a cat, and started off by demanding the presence of his own lawyer and the British Consul.

  "My dear Colonel," said Henry, "nobody is accusing you of anything. We're only trying to get a clear picture of what happened."

  "My position... delicate... extremely delicate," said the Colonel, redly. "Extremely. I know my rights as a citizen."

  Henry sighed. "So do I," he said. "But it really would be a whole lot simpler if you'd just confirm a few facts that Staines has given us."

  "What has he been saying?"demanded the Colonel, sharply.

  So Henry read him Roger's account of the day's skiing, and grudgingly the Colonel admitted that it was accurate. When Henry reached the bit about the goggles, Colonel Buckfast grew more voluble.

  "Staines was quite shirty about being held up," he said, "but it's extremely unwise to take risks with the eyes. Snow blindness. Not as uncommon as people think. Always impressed on us in The Team."

  "The sun had got brighter, had it?" Henry asked.

  The Colonel gave him a pitying look. "It is apt to at midday," he said, with elephantine sarcasm. "I have goggles with interchangeable eye-pieces—you know the things. Last time I wore them, it was snowing, so the yellow eye-piece was in place. Stupidly left the green one in my room. Didn't take me more than five minutes. The fuss young Staines made, you'd have thought I'd committed a crime." He realised too late the unfortunate implication of this turn of phrase, and reddened. "That is to say "

  "I know what you mean," said Henry, smiling. "The young are apt to be impatient."

  The Colonel could not fix the time of the party's ascent on the lift any more accurately than Roger had done, but he stuck to his earlier statement that he had recognised Mario in the down-going chair, when he himself was nearing the top, and that he thought the old man looked ill.

  "What made you think that?" Henry asked.

  But the Colonel could not find words to explain his impression. Mario had been looking seedy for several days, he said. They had all remarked it.

  "You knew he was planning to come and see me?" Henry asked.

  "So Staines said. I didn't pay much attention. I thought we'd heard the last of the murder with di Santi's arrest."

  After affirming that he had most certainly not seen anything falling from the ski-lift—and then admitting that he had had his eyes closed for most of the ride—the Colonel withdrew, a study in profoundly rattled dignity.

  Spezzi said, "And now—we will see the Fraulein."

  Henry never forgot the interview that followed. Gerda and Spezzi faced each other across the polished expanse of the desk in an atmosphere charged with pent-up emotion. Spezzi, determined to fulfil his duty in spite of his personal feelings, was harsher than Henry had ever seen him. Gerda, quiet and calm, wore a look of anguish which wrung Henry's heart. "If only they could have met under different circumstances ..." he reflected. As it was, the tension seemed to Henry to make the encounter a grim and tragic equivalent of a hard-fought final on the Centre Court at Wimbledon.

  Spezzi tried every tactic he knew, working from the suave springing of unexpected questions, through quiet menace to eventual bullying and shouting. Gerda parried every attack like a tennis player who wears down a more volatile opponent with steadily consistent drives from the back-line. Again and again it was Spezzi who was caught out of position as he tried, metaphorically, to storm the net. The final score was set and match to the German girl. Spezzi, however, didn't know when he was beaten, and continued to slam down aces.

  "It may interest you to know," he barked, "that we have found the gun 1 "

  "I am very glad," said Gerda.

  "You took it from Hauser's briefcase at the Olympia I H thundered Spezzi. "Admit it!"

  Gerda flinched as if she had been hit, but she said, quietly, "I am very sorry, Capitano. I did not. I did not know the gun existed."

  "You went to the cloakroom that day I Don't attempt to deny it! "

  "I am not denying it. I went to hang up my anorak."

  "And you hid the gun in the pocket."

  "No."

  "You waited until you saw Hauser coming down."

  "Forgive me, Capitano, but I must point out that I thought Hauser had left the hotel many hours earlier."

  "So! You were interested in his movements!"

  "Not specially. But he said at breakfast time that he was going to the village for lunch and did not expect to return to the hotel."

  "But when you saw his luggage in the Olympia, you knew he had not left Santa Chiara I..."

  "Of course. He had said he was leaving by the last train."'

  "It's no use trying to bluff me," cried Spezzi. "You killed Mario because he knew you were Hauser's m
urderer and he was going to tell the Inspector!"

  "How could he have known such a thing, Capitano?"

  "He saw you with the gun!" Spezzi shouted. "He found where you had hidden it!"

  "Oh? And where had I hidden it?"

  "How do I know, now Mario is dead?" screamed the exasperated Capitano. "But you knew that he knew that you knew..." He paused for breath, and to untangle his phrasing.

  "How strange, then," said Gerda, "that Mario did not tell you sooner."

  And so it went on. When Spezzi had finally exhausted himself, he reluctantly dismissed the girl, with a curt warning that she had no hope of concealing her crime, and that it would be better for her to confess. The door closed quietly behind her, and Spezzi mopped his brow. Then he shot a suspicious look at Henry, and said, "Oh, she's clever, all right—and a cool one, too. Don't think I have made the mistake of underestimating her."

  Henry said nothing.

  Goaded, the unfortunate Spezzi burst out, "Very well, if she didn't do it, who did? God knows, I would like more than anything to see her proved innocent. But do you help me? Yesterday you thought you had solved the case, but we don't hear any more about that now, I notice. It's easy to criticise! Where's your solution?"

  "I'll tell you soon enough," said Henry. The sight of Spezzi's distress had made him considerably ashamed of his previous childish irritation. "Just because we work by different methods," he went on, "there's no reason why we shouldn't both come to the same conclusion in the end. 1 am sure that we will do so."