by Ann Bridge
Julia’s earnestness, and probably also the doves’ eyes which she turned on the two bucolic policemen, gained her point. ‘It shall be done as the Fräulein desires,’ the older one said. ‘Have no anxiety. Schönsten Dank, Fräulein, for your co-operation.’ They bowed themselves out, rather awkwardly, past the end of the bed.
Julia was just wondering whether she ought to ring up Herr Waechter herself, and warn him, when Anni, one of the waitresses, came in to say that die alte Dame was about to take tea in the garden, and desired to know if the Fräulein would join her? Julia ran down, and found Mrs. Hathaway and Watkins sitting at a table on the gravel, under clipped chestnuts, which constituted the garden of the Silberhorn.
‘I thought we would have tea out here, as it’s so fine,’ Mrs. Hathaway said, ‘but perhaps it was a mistake. The tea Watkins makes for me upstairs is much better than this.’
‘Swiss tea is Hell,’ Julia said, dispassionately—‘it was even at the Bergues. I suppose it’s because it isn’t their drink—coffee yes, tea no. And hadn’t we better have some sandwiches or bread-and-butter instead of these ghastly Kuchen?’ She had bitten into one of the dismal cakes supplied by the hotel, and as she spoke flung the remainder over the low terrace wall into the hayfield below. ‘Shall I go and order?’ she asked—she knew that Mrs. Hathaway was now drawing an invalid’s allowance, and was not limited to £100.
Mrs. Hathaway, laughing, said Yes; Watkins beamed; Julia ran in to Fräulein Hanna and asked for tongue sandwiches and bread-and-butter and honey to be sent out at once. ‘And how went it with the Polizei?’ the Swiss woman asked.
‘Oh, they couldn’t have been nicer; just a technicality,’ Julia said, reassuringly.
‘They should not have come,’ Hanna said. ‘The older one is my cousin—I shall speak with him at Mass on Sunday. Troubling good, polite, excellent Herrschaften.’ Julia, laughing, returned to the garden; there she found Antrobus sitting at the table, and the tea-tray littered with botanical specimens. As he rose to greet her, she experienced an almost frightening pang of pleasure.
‘Oh, how do you do? Bringing your finds to be identified?’ she asked teasingly, to conceal her delight.
‘Do look, dear child—Mr. Antrobus has brought me the Astrantia and the red Cephalanthera,’ Mrs. Hathaway said exultingly. ‘And Sweet Woodruff—you know it grows in the Cotswolds; smell how fragrant it is.’ She held up a small flower rather like the common Bedstraw, only larger, with frills of leaves in sixes all up its stalk.
‘Yes—delicious,’ Julia said, knowingly squeezing the stem as she sniffed.
‘They make a drink of it here with white wine,’ Antrobus said; ‘they call it Mai-Kop. And the peasants call the plant itself Waldmeister’.
‘Master of the Forest is a much more imposing name than Sweet Woodruff,’ Julia observed.
‘I’ve sometimes wondered if it mightn’t really be the same idea,’ Antrobus said—‘“Woodruff” merely a corruption of “Wood-Reive”, the Warden of the Wood.’
‘How charming; that had never occurred to me,’ said Mrs. Hathaway. ‘I shall look it up when I get home. They make a drink of it in Austria too,’ she added, ‘only there they call it Mai-Bohle.’
Julia again smelled the potent scent of the small flower—she liked to think of two different nations using the delicate, precisely-shaped little plant to make a spring drink, and calling it by two such pretty names as May-cup and May-bowl. ‘I wonder if it grows here,’ she said—‘if I could collect enough I’m sure Fräulein Hanna would make us a Mai-Kop.’
‘It’s rather early for it as high as this,’ Antrobus replied—surprising Julia, who had not yet grasped that the seasons in Switzerland depend partly on altitude, and that a difference of three thousand feet may also mean a delay of two or three weeks in the flowering of plants. ‘But the woods round Interlaken are full of it,’ he went on; ‘if I can I’ll bring up a good bunch tomorrow.’
‘Then you must bring it up in time to have the brew made, and stay and dine,’ Mrs. Hathaway said happily; she was greatly taken with Antrobus.
‘I should be delighted to do that, if—if I’m not called away,’ the man replied, for once showing a trace of embarrassment.
‘Oh, are you leaving?’ Mrs. Hathaway asked, a note of chill coming into her voice. She belonged to a generation which was accustomed to having its invitations accepted or refused, but not left hanging in the air.
Antrobus did his best.
‘Dear Mrs. Hathaway, I hope very much both to be able to bring you the Sweet Woodruff tomorrow, and to dine with you and drink the product. But I am not altogether my own master.’
‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘Then who is your master?’ Mrs. Hathaway asked, implacably. Julia listened enchanted to Mrs. H. turning the heat onto the detective—what would he say? She might learn something.
What he said struck the girl at once as being a cover-story.
‘My master is one of these modern Juggernauts, the Press-Barons,’ he said. ‘They are very arbitrary, and quite unpredictable.’ He put this out with a rather graceful aplomb, but Mrs. Hathaway, unmollified, regarded him with a steady look which had all the quelling effect of an Edwardian dowager raising her lorgnette to her face. The very fact that she so liked and approved of this man made her all the more severe, now that his behaviour fell short of her standards.
‘Oh, you are a journalist?’ she said at length. ‘I should never have suspected it.’
Nor should I, and I don’t believe it for a moment, Julia thought to herself—if that was all he was, why had Nethersole made such a fuss when she asked what he did, at lunch at the Palais des Nations? But she saw Antrobus, at the old lady’s tone, actually blush; the ready unconcealable blush of a fair-skinned man. She intervened.
‘Mrs H., dear, what’s wrong with being a journalist? Aren’t I one?’
‘Not very seriously, my dear—and only with a very nice Press Baroness!’ She turned to Antrobus. ‘Well, if Lord X., or Lord Y., or Lord Z., whichever your so needlessly ennobled “master” is’—she put a sardonic stress on the word master—‘leaves you free tomorrow evening, it will be delightful to see you at dinner. 7.30. Won’t you have another cup of tea?’
Not unnaturally in the circumstances, Mr. Antrobus declined a second cup of tea; he took his leave rather hastily, striding out of the garden on his long legs, got into a large car which he had parked near the cow-stable across the street, and drove off. Watkins excused herself at the same time.
‘I never saw a car like that before,’ Julia said, as she watched him go. ‘I wonder what on earth it is.’
Mrs. Hathaway was often unexpected—she was now.
‘It’s a Porsche’ she said. ‘I’ve seen them in Vienna. Porsche was the man who designed the Volkswagen, and afterwards he made this car too—on the same principle, but bigger and faster. An Austrian friend was telling me about it. Rather expensive for a journalist, I should have thought—they’re practically racing cars.’
‘Mrs H., what a lot you know! But I think you were rather hard on that wretched man,’ Julia said.
‘Mr. Antrobus? Why is he wretched?’
‘He wasn’t, till you made him so. I expect he has quite a sunny nature really,’ Julia said, trying to sound casual.
Mrs. Hathaway studied her young friend with a speculative eye. Why this concern for Mr. Antrobus?’ She spoke carefully.
‘My dear, I am sorry if I have distressed you on his account. I was taken by surprise—his neither accepting nor refusing an invitation was so unexpected, in him.’
‘I daresay he really couldn’t help it,’ Julia said. In fact she had learned nothing from Mrs. Hathaway’s pressure except that Antrobus could lie, but not very well. And would he come to dinner tomorrow, after this? She did want him to.
They sat on for a little while, deliberately talking of other things, while the air cooled, and the white peaks across the lake turned to a richer gold; the pine-forests on the slopes in front of them assumed a quit
e extraordinary colour—a sort of rosy bronze, but with the deep softness of velvet. The white-and-yellow hotel cat came stalking out and sprang and clawed its way up one of the clipped horse-chestnuts, where it stretched and rolled in a broad fork among the branches; Julia laughed at the cheerful animal, and went over to rub its thick coarse fur—she was doing this when Fräulein Hanna came stumping out across the grey gravel on her thick grey-stockinged legs.
‘One demands Fräulein Probyn am Telefon.’
Julia abandoned the cat and went to that insecure telephone-box in the Kleine Saal. The voice was Colin’s; he sounded cross.
‘Darling, what are you up to? You seem to have stirred up an absolute hornets’ nest among the local polus, just when we wanted to do everything as quietly as possible. What goes on?’
‘I don’t know for sure if anything goes on at all,’ Julia said, not in the least disturbed—Colin was so often cross. ‘I just had a hunch, and acted on it. The bobbies have been here too,’ she added, gurgling.
‘Hell! Whatever for?’
‘Just to check on me. They were quite sweet.’
‘Why did you send them to see the parson?’
‘Oh, as a Swiss “reference as to character”—really the only one I’ve got except Mrs. H.’s old boy-friend, and I made them promise not to worry him.’
‘I think you’re quite mad,’ Colin said angrily.
‘Could be. Time will show. But I hope someone is keeping an eye on that chemist’s, darling darling—I really think that might pay off. Your colleague with the nice voice seemed to be willing to.’
‘Oh yes—that’s being taken care of. Another dead end, I expect,’ he said irritably. ‘I wish to God I knew what all this is about.’
‘Well when are you coming back to hear? I’m not going to telephone the whole story, automatic or no.’
‘I don’t know—as soon as I can. But do try to keep quiet, will you? This may be rather a crucial forty-eight hours.’ He sounded tired, anxious, and overwrought to Julia, who knew his voice so well.
‘Bless you, I’ll try to. Oh by the way’—she paused for an instant—‘What about the detective?’
A click indicated that Colin had already rung off.
Chapter 9
Interlaken—the Clinic and the Golden Bear
A Little before nine on the following morning Julia was finishing her breakfast in the restaurant, vulgarly scraping up the black-cherry jam off her plate with the delicious Beatenberg bread—the rolls, which come up from Interlaken, don’t arrive in time for breakfast—when once again she was called to the telephone. An obviously Swiss voice asked, in uncertain English—‘It is Miss Probeen who speaks?’
‘Yes.’
‘Miss Probeen herself?’
‘Aber ja, unbedingt,’ Julia said reassuringly. ‘Who wishes to speak with me?’
‘One moment please, Fräulein.’ There was a pause, a faint confused noise of voices ‘off’, and then Julia heard June’s unmistakable sub-Cockney tones—‘Is that Miss Probyn?’
‘Yes, Julia Probyn speaking. Is that June?’
‘Yes. Oh, I am glad I’ve got you. You couldn’t come down and see me, could you? I am so unhappy!—and my ankle’s so swollen, it’s terrible. The two gentlemen have gone off, so I thought you might come and see me.’
‘Of course I will. Where are you?’
‘Oh, in ever such a funny little hotel—not a bit like the Flooss! And it’s got such a silly name, the Golden Bear. Whoever heard of a golden bear?’ June demanded, with a fretful giggle.
‘But where is it? What town, I mean?’
‘Oh, poor old Interlarken! I don’t know why we had to come here; it’s ever so small, and one can’t see the steamers—well reelly one can’t see anything! And we rushed away from the Flooss in such a hurry, I couldn’t pack properly; and here there’s no room to hang anything. My dresses will be ruined, staying in the cases, and not folded right.’
‘I’ll fold them for you.’
‘Oh you are sweet!—I would be glad. But can you come soon? You see I don’t know when they’ll get back, but not before dinner-time, I don’t think.’
Julia guessed that by ‘dinner’ June meant what she called luncheon.
‘I’ll come down at once. Not to worry,’ she said, employing an idiotic phrase which she hoped would appeal to June. It did; she was rewarded by a happy giggle, and ‘Oh, lovely!’ Bye-bye—see you in no time.’
Outside the telephone-box Julia consulted the bus timetable which is such an essential feature of life in Beatenberg. The next bus for Interlaken left in five minutes; she raced upstairs, collected a jacket, looked in on Mrs. Hathaway with—‘Flying off—can’t stop—back some time—and ran down again, out through the Kleine Saal and along the gravelled garden to where the bus pulled up, between the cow-stable and a petrol-pump. She just made it, and got the front seat of all, next to the driver.
This happened to be the blond man whose goings-on had exasperated Watkins on the day they arrived. So early in the morning the passengers were mostly local Swiss; they all referred to the driver as ‘der Chrigl’, the Swiss-German diminutive for the name Christian—and from him, on the way down, Julia enquired how to find the Golden Bear? In the Cantonal-Platz, he told her: along the main street, and then a turning to the left soon after the Post-Bureau. ‘It is a very small hotel; few foreigners go there,’ der Chrigl observed, eyeing her a little curiously—and most dangerously—as he swung his vast machine round one of the hairpin bends. ‘But the Fräulein cannot miss the big golden bear over the door—it glitters.’
The Cantonal-Platz is in the old indigenous Interlaken, which few tourists ever see. Deep-eaved plastered houses line narrow streets, many of which end at the river—then the vista is closed, not by more houses but by the green wooded slopes of the Harder-Kulm, rising steeply above the farther bank. Local trades are carried on here—timber-yards, warehouses for coke and briquettes or for wine, shops for second-hand clothing; Julia paused before a very small window indeed, in which a splendid pair of climbing-boots was displayed for twelve francs, or roughly one pound. She was tempted to go in and try them on, remembering Antrobus’s suggestion that she ought to climb; but June was more important, and she walked on. Presently she found the Cantonal-Platz, a very small square, most of one side of which was occupied by the Hotel zum Goldenen Bären and its garden, as usual shaded by clipped horse-chestnuts; exactly opposite stood a rival hostelry, the Gemsbock, also with a garden. But there was no mistaking the one she sought, for in the strong sunshine a large gilt bear glittered—der Chrigl had been quite right—over the entrance. The small door stood open; Julia tapped on it—a middle-aged woman in black, wearing a grey-and-white flowered apron, emerged from the dark interior of the little hallway.
‘Grüss Gott,’ Julia said. ‘Could I speak with Miss Armitage?’
The woman, who had a pleasant kindly face, had smiled at the Swiss salutation ‘God greet you’; but at the name ‘Armitage’ her expression became troubled and hesitant. ‘I am not sure that the Fräulein is zu Hause,’ she said doubtfully.
‘Aber ja, I know she is. She has spoken with me only a short time ago am Telefon, and I wish to see about her foot,’ Julia replied firmly.
‘Ach so! —you are the friend. Ja, die Arme, it does not go so well with her foot. Please to enter.’
This interchange confirmed Julia’s suspicions about how Borovali and Wright probably dealt with June. She followed the woman along the narrow hall and up two flights of steep stairs; at the top, at the far end of a tiny corridor, the woman in the grisaille apron threw open a door, saying ‘Fräulein Armitage, you have a visitor!’
In a little, low-ceilinged room June was sitting in a small cheap armchair by a small window, looking out over the Platz, her injured foot propped on a stool; several pieces of luggage, half-opened, with clothes coming out of them, stood about the floor. Besides the bed and the inevitable commode there was a wash-stand with a ewer and basin, a slop
-pail under it; a small chest of drawers on which stood a cheap blurred mirror in a wooden frame, and a row of pegs for clothes along the wall in one corner. That was all—the Golden Bear was clearly a very simple hotel indeed. June greeted her in a way which Julia found quite upsetting.
‘Oh, you have come! Well in a way I knew you would, if you promised—but reelly sitting here, I began to think I’d have to live and die in this room. Oh, I do wish I could go home!’ As Julia went over to her the little thing stretched up her arms and gave her an almost passionate hug.
‘How is your foot?’ Julia asked. ‘Has the doctor seen it again?’
‘No, and it hurts ever so. I am so worried—if it loses its shape I shall be finished for modelling. But I’m not allowed to go out, and Mr. B. says he doesn’t want the doctor coming here just now.’
Julia could well understand Mr. B.’s attitude, wicked as she thought it. She pulled down June’s stocking; above and below the strapping the flesh was purplish and unwholesome-looking.
‘Dr. Hertz must see this,’ she said. ‘Just wait—I’ll go and arrange it.’
‘Mr. B. will be mad,’ June said, half-alarmed.
‘Let him be!’ She heard June giggle as she left the room and ran downstairs. From a tiny office off the dark hall she telephoned; Dr. Hertz was in, but could not leave his clinic.
‘Then I bring you one of your patients—Fräulein Armitage, this young English girl from the Fluss.’
‘Very good—it is time I see this foot again.’
‘Well please see her sogleich, when we come,’ Julia said firmly. ‘I think it is urgent, and we shall not have any time to spare.’
‘Agreed. Give her name when you arrive.’
Julia asked the woman in black to send for a taxi. ‘I take the Fräulein to the doctor; her foot is very bad.’
‘But she should not leave the hotel!—those were the wishes of der Herr’
‘If you do not let her go, I shall fetch the Polizei,’ Julia said sharply. ‘It is essential that she sees the doctor.’
The woman crumbled. ‘Heinrich!’ she called—from the kitchen regions a rather dirty youth appeared, and was dispatched to fetch a taxi. Julia went upstairs again, pulled a foolish velvet slipper onto June’s bad foot, unhooked the pale tweed coat which she had seen at Victoria from one of the pegs, and helped the girl into it. Then an idea struck her.