by Ann Bridge
‘Yes, it does matter,’ Antrobus said, rather severely. ‘However, I am satisfied; you’re so near the mark as makes no difference, anyhow. Well our people, unlike the Swiss, aren’t worrying very much about the late Mr. Thalassides’ fortune, or whether the real Miss Armitage recovers it or not; but they do want those blue-prints—and they don’t want anyone else, not even the good neutral Swiss, to see them. That’s why your cousin’s outfit must do the pouncing themselves; the Swiss police can have the cash, but the important thing is that Colin and Co. should get what they want first.’
‘I see.’ She summed it up aloud. ‘You find out all you can from your local contacts, and pass the proceeds on to Berne; but after that your main job is to hold off the locals while Berne pounces. Correct?’
‘Perfectly correct.’ Again he got up.
‘No—sit down.’ Grinning a little, he obediently sat down once more. ‘We still haven’t settled about June,’ the girl said. ‘You rode off onto all this stuff about your separate branches. But when Colin’s lot do pounce, what will happen to June?’
‘My dear, how can I answer that one? I probably shan’t be there. Can’t you get your cousin to deal with that?’
‘No!’ Julia said. ‘That’s absurd, and you know it. As you yourself said, Colin is very junior, and presumably cuts no ice at all. We’ve got to do something about June.’
He looked at his watch.
‘I am so sorry,’ he said rather formally, ‘but I positively must go and telephone now, or I shall be falling down on my job. Where can I find you? Where shall you lunch?’
‘Nowhere!—here; I haven’t thought.’
‘Well lunch here, or anyhow stay here for the next half-hour. I should be back by then; we might lunch together, and try to plan something for your little stand-in.’ Julia agreed to this, and Antrobus went off.
Julia ordered a Cinzano—beer made one so sleepy—and sat on behind the hedge, thinking where June could be stowed, or parked, if it were possible to get her away from the Golden Bear. The Silberhorn was not much use: it was too close, for one thing, and June’s presence wouldn’t really help Mrs. Hathaway’s convalescence, while Watkins would probably despise her to the point of hatefulness. Then where? Gersau? No—Herr Waechter was too old to have that sort of thing put on him. After a moment it came to her—La Cure would be the ideal place, if Jean-Pierre and Germaine would take the job on; and she believed they might. She went along to the little hotel, which was even humbler than the Bear; the telephone was in the hall, but she had the good fortune to get Jean-Pierre himself, so the conversation could be in English. Julia explained, with calculated vagueness and no names, what her idea was.
‘I see,’ the Pastor said at the end. ‘You wish us to house for an indefinite time a very uneducated English girl, who is connected with criminals. Yes, of course we will; gladly.’
‘You’re an angel!’
‘Not in the least. I am supposed to preach Christianity and what is Christianity about, but things like this? When do you want her to come?’
‘I don’t know yet. It may be at rather short notice, I’m afraid.’
‘Ah well, Germaine always has rooms ready.’ He paused, and then said, ‘Do not answer if I am being indiscreet, but could this be la jeune personne who has recently purported to be my god-daughter?’
‘Yes—who else?’
‘Then raison de plus for my entertaining her!’ the Pastor said, with his infectious laugh. ‘A god-child is probably still a god-child, even at one remove! Alors très-bien; I shall await your coup de téléphone’.
Julia went out in to the garden again. This was marvellous. But as she sat looking up at the window on the extreme right of the Bear’s front door, which she knew to be June’s, she wondered how on earth she was to extract the girl from that innocent-looking little hotel, which was now her prison. Perhaps Antrobus could help—if he would. He wasn’t very sympathetic about June.
Before she expected him he reappeared through the garden, and stood beside her.
‘Goodness, I never saw you come.’
‘No. Back entrance—no need to be seen too often. Now let’s go and eat something; you must be starving.’
‘Did they leave the papers at Merligen?’ Julia asked, as he led her out through another garden gate into a small alley.
‘No—you fixed them there. Most useful. The local police were lurking in the next-door garden, and they saw them and cleared off. That was rather inspired of you.’
‘Where do we eat?’ Julia asked, turning the compliment off.
‘Oh, a nice little place, in the main street.’
They did not, however, walk to it along the main street. Antrobus shepherded her down to that delightful hidden feature of Interlaken, the narrow path leading almost from one end of the town to the other along the river-bank, flanked on one side by back-yards, gardens, walls, and orchards, and on the other by the broad viridian-green current of the Aar, twisted into swirling patterns by its own speed. Close above the surface of the great river swifts skimmed to and fro, the bronze of their slender bodies and back-curved wings vivid in the sun, in exquisite contrast with the colour of the water—Julia exclaimed with pleasure. A little farther on, where trees overhung a back-water with a private landing-stage, a loud alarmed chittering of birds’ voices brought her to a halt.
‘Oh do look! There’s a whole family of young redstarts —see? Let’s hurry on; Papa and Mamma are in such a fuss, poor sweets.’
‘Birds, too?’ the man asked.
‘No, only the commonest.’
At that moment a train, which had crossed by the bridge across the river from the East-Station, crashed along the farther bank opposite them on its way to recross the Aar farther down to reach the West-Station.
‘So like the Swiss to have the intelligence to keep the railway outside the town,’ Antrobus said. ‘Their sense for the amenities is quite extraordinary.’
‘I was thinking that in Schuhs this morning,’ Julia replied. ‘God knows what they must have sacrificed in ground-rents to keep that lovely open space right in the heart of the town.’
‘The Hohe-Matte? Yes, simply inspired. Of course you may say it’s an enlightened self-interest, because of the turismo —but how unenlightened our own self-interest is! Can you imagine the humblest Swiss municipality allowing Adelphi Terrace to be destroyed, simply to get inflated rents for office buildings? But London allowed it. People sometimes say the Swiss are dull, but at least they aren’t idiotic, which in aesthetic matters we are. Up here.’
A small road led from the river to the main street, where Antrobus led Julia into the garden of a small restaurant, as usual with tables set on gravel in the shade of trees. A waitress brought the menu. ‘Have you eaten Brienzerli?’ he asked.
‘No—what’s that?’
‘A strange little fish from the Lake of Brienz—rather like smelts. They’re delicious—care to try them? All right, we’ll have those—and Wiener Schnitzel, do you think? They do them quite well here; the chef is a Czech refugee. What for an apéritif?’
Julia asked for White Cinzano.
‘How comes it that you know that? It suits this climate so much better than anything else.’ He gave the order, insisting in Berner-Deutsch that the Cinzano was to come instantly; the waitress giggled, but in fact brought it within sixty seconds. While they smoked and sipped the fragrant aromatic stuff—‘Now,’ Antrobus said, ‘let us make plans for your little protégée.’
‘In fact I’ve made mine.’
‘Already? Oh very well. May I know what your scheme is?’
‘Of course. You’ll have to help with the preliminaries, but she’s to go to La Cure at Bellardon.’
‘Good Heavens! Will they have her there?’
‘Yes—as soon as I telephone.’
‘Do they know she’s the fraud?’
‘But naturally. Jean-Pierre said a god-child was a godchild, even at one remove,’ Julia said, with her slow laugh.
/> ‘He must be a remarkable person,’ Antrobus said slowly.
‘Oh he is. Such a charmer, and absolutely boiling with Kafka and Rilke and all that.’
‘Kafka and Rilke don’t by themselves necessarily produce actions like this,’ he said.
‘Not? I’ve never read them,’ Julia confessed. ‘But you see he’s a Christian, too; when I thanked him he said— “This is what Christianity is about.”’
‘Extraordinary,’ Antrobus muttered broodingly.
‘Oh, is it? I don’t see why. Don’t you know any Christians? I know several, and this sort of thing is really common form with them,’ Julia pronounced, thinking of the Duke of Ericeira and other people in Portugal. ‘Anyhow, have you never read the New Testament?’
While he was laughing the Brienzerli appeared; crisp little fish fried a golden brown, but with much bigger heads than smelts. Julia tucked into them eagerly. ‘Goodness, I am hungry. And these are delicious.’ Antrobus was hungry too, and they ate practically in silence; having finished her fish Julia asked— ‘Did you get Berne?’
‘Yes.’
‘When do they pounce?’
‘Not today.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they rather hope that if they wait till “the principals” come—the higher-ups in the organisation that is after the papers—it might be possible to snaffle them too. It’s not certain, of course; that’s part of the complication.’
‘Any idea who these principals are? Sheiks or Emirs, one supposes; but they would be rather noticeable if they turned up in long robes and a silver-plated aeroplane, or a solid gold Cadillac.’
He laughed.
‘They won’t do that. The principals almost certainly represent a particular financial—and political—interest which supplies the gold Cadillacs to the Sheiks and Emirs.’
‘I see.’ She paused, frowning. ‘Yes, I see. Look, John, we ought to get that child away before all this starts.’ She stopped as the little waitress removed the remains of the Brienzerli and put the veal and salad before them.
‘Have you a plan for her actual removal?’ he asked.
‘Not yet. It was no good trying to arrange anything till I had somewhere to put her; which I hadn’t, this morning—and anyhow I should be rather frightened of letting her know of a plan in advance.’
‘Why? Is she unreliable?’ His voice was cold; Julia realised that for Antrobus June was still simply one of a gang of criminals, a willing accessory to a fraud.
‘Yes, completely unreliable,’ she replied readily. ‘Not from vice; it’s simply that she’s so frightfully silly—she’s really almost an institutional case. It’s not her character I distrust, it’s her I.Q.!’
He accorded the phrase a frosty smile.
‘Then what do you propose to do? Just walk in and sweep her off?’
‘Not unless those two murky characters are out of the way. I’m sure they’d shoot us both for tuppence. No, I think this is where you come in. You’re in touch with the local police, who I presume will now be hovering nonstop in the Gemsbock garden. Can’t you arrange for them to give me a ring when B. and K. go out, so that I can hustle down and collect June?’
‘No. I’m sorry, but that wouldn’t work. You see, for one thing you are now on their list of suspects.’ He grinned at her.
‘Oh how unfair! They ought to be grateful to me; and so ought you, and Colin and his lot.’
‘I am,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘And so will your cousin’s superiors be when they have digested the facts— which I shall give them. But I don’t propose to furnish those facts to the Swiss at this stage.’
Julia munched her veal.
‘I don’t suppose Chambertin told them, either,’ she said, forking salad into her mouth.
‘Chambertin of the Banque Républicaine? What might he, or might he not, have told them?’
‘Only that it was I who sent him the photograph of the real Aglaia Armitage, from Paris-Match, which was reproduced and circulated to all the Swiss police. That’s why Borovali and Co. fled from the Fluss to the Bear.’
‘How do you know that?—apart from having so usefully furnished the photograph, a fact I didn’t know myself.’
‘Oh, the porter at the Fluss told me why they left—Mr. B. came down at the very moment when the photograph was lying on his desk, with the Bumbles enquiring. And the Super or whatever you call them here at Merligen had a copy too—he showed it to me.’
He shouted with laughter.
‘Oh Fatima, Fatima! You don’t need to open doors; everyone tells you everything, seemingly. Not that I’m in the least surprised, mind you—if I were a Swiss policeman or a hotel porter I should tell you everything myself!’
‘Well I do think it’s hard that at least one Swiss policeman can’t be organised to let me know when Messrs. B. and W. go on their next little trip, so that I could twitch June away,’ Julia persisted. ‘But if they can’t, can’t you? I do think you might.’
‘My dear, if I possibly can, I will. Of course I ought not to, and I can’t altogether share your affection for the little impersonator. Probably I shall be compounding a felony, or some crime like that. But she can always be picked up at the good Pastor’s, and I agree that anyone would be better away from B. and K.’
‘Well give me all the notice you can,’ Julia said, with her usual practicality. ‘Bellardon is a long way away.’
A clock struck from one of the towers of the two churches, the Catholic and the Protestant, which stand side by side at the eastern end of the Hohe Matte, the chime ringing out through the sunny hay-scented air.
‘Goodness, it’s a quarter to three! I must simply race, or I shall miss my bus,’ Julia exclaimed.
‘But you’ve had no coffee.’
‘Can’t be helped,’ she said, rising. ‘Thank you for the lovely lunch—and be sure to let me know when Mr. B. goes to have his beard trimmed at the coiffeurs, or whatever.’
Antrobus had risen too.
‘Would it be a great nuisance to take this with you to Mrs. Hathaway?’ he asked, holding out the now rather drooping bunch of Waldmeister, which during lunch had lain on the gravel under his chair, in the shade.
A chill of dismay struck Julia.
‘No, of course. But does that mean you aren’t coming to dine?’
‘Yes, please God I am—with this pause I think I can get away all right. But the longer this little herb is steeped in the white wine, the better our Mai-Kop will be.’ As he spoke an empty horse-carriage came clopping along outside the open garden—Antrobus hailed it, paid the driver, and handed Julia in.
‘There—now you won’t have to race,’ he said. Julia leaned out towards him.
‘Why on earth did you tell that frightfully silly story about being a journalist to Mrs. H.?’ she asked, rather anxiously.
‘To tell you the truth, I lost my head. I do occasionally —in fact quite often!’ he said, grinning at her; if a grin can express a double-entendre, that one did.
‘Well keep it tonight—and think up some corroborative detail,’ Julia said urgently. ‘You can’t fool Mrs. Hathaway at all easily.’
‘I’m sure not! I’ll do my best.’ He spoke to the driver. ‘Beatenberg Post-Auto, Bahnhof-Platz.’ As she drove off ‘Auf wiederluoge! Sorry about the coffee,’ he called after her.
Julia enjoyed the drive, short though it was. Her over-mastering feeling was of relief at the knowledge that Antrobus was on their side; this coloured her own feelings towards him. It would have been impossible to—well, to let oneself go at all with a person who was in league with crooks; but as it was—. She didn’t finish that sentence in her head; anyhow, he was coming to dinner tonight.
On the broad sunny Bahnhof-Platz the Interlaken Post-Autos always draw up next to a long set of roofed open-sided platforms, through which trains clank across the street on their way back from the far side of the river. These huge buses carry both mail and passengers to places not served by the railway—hence their n
ame. The Beaten-berg bus was still nearly empty when she drove up; she got in and took the front seat, disposing the soggy bunch of Waldmeister on the floor. The blond driver was fussing about at the rear of the great machine, attaching a trailer full of luggage; presently he got in.
‘You found the Golden Bear?’ he asked, as he clipped her book of vouchers and gave her a ticket.
‘Yes. It seems a nice little place.’
‘It is very small,’ der Chrigl said disparagingly.
‘The personnel are very agreeable; in big hotels this is not always the case,’ Julia said, faintly irritated by his contempt.
‘Oh, the old Frau Göttinger is all right, and she gets good girls to serve her—that is quite true. She is my aunt! I expect you saw her; she is never off duty. Old, and wearing black.’
‘With grey flowers on her apron?’ Julia asked, instantly intrigued by the possibility of a link with the Golden Bear through der Chrigl; conceivably this might come in useful.
The fair man laughed.
‘Oh, those old black aprons with the grey flowers! She will never wear anything else. They aren’t made any more, but I believe she has two dozen of them! You have friends staying there?’ he asked rather curiously.
‘One friend, yes.’
At this point a gaggle of passengers arrived to board the bus; a train from Berne had just come in. The driver busied himself with their tickets, while Julia looked on idly, wondering how, if at all, she could use him and his aunt for information about Borovali’s movements. Suddenly, among the group waiting to get in she caught sight of Colin, most oddly accoutred: shorts, a beret, and a hideous tartan wind-cheater, with an outsize rucksack on his back and heavily-nailed climbing boots—the very picture of the native tourist on holiday. She grinned at the sight, and at that moment he saw her too; he gestured over his shoulder towards the rear of the bus. Julia turned and deliberately looked the other way. Drawn up on one of the further platforms was an empty Wagons-Lits coach with black-and-white placards at both ends; these, to her great surprise, read—‘Dortmund—Interlaken’.