Silent Witness (Dr. Patrick Grant)

by Margaret Yorke

  She managed to occupy half an hour by walking up and down the village street and going into all the shops. Then she decided to inspect the little church. She could make a circuit behind it, passing the few private chalets overlooking it, and returning by the pedestrian alley between the buildings. She turned off the main street and walked up the road that led to the church. The snow was deeper there, for fewer people went that way to keep the track clear. Wheel-marks showed that some traffic had passed, and a small Volkswagen drove by her, chains chinking as it went. The priest came out of the church as she approached; he wore a knitted cap like a skier, and his long grey beard flowed over the front of his brown cassock.

  There was a faint smell of incense in the church; some candles burnt at a side altar, and there was a carved, brightly-painted Madonna and Child high above the chancel; otherwise it was surprisingly bare, with plain lime-washed walls. There was little to detain Liz; she inspected the few inscriptions, put some coins in the box as she left, and closed the door carefully behind her. The churchyard was covered in deep, smooth snow; what happened, she wondered, if anyone died and had to be buried? Digging a grave would be difficult.

  She pushed such thoughts away and continued up the narrow lane. It was very quiet; no one else was wandering about this part of the village. Below, Liz could see a few figures disporting themselves on the nursery slopes where the two short drags were operating, but the chair-lift was idle; the mountain was silent and menacing, veiled in the heavy clouds that held the snow. The air was warm, and the wet snow stuck to her boots, like snow in England.

  She came to the last chalet. Here the road petered out and became a footpath that wound back to the centre of the village, descending by steps cut in the side of the slope. The Volkswagen that had driven past her earlier was parked outside this final dwelling, and as Liz paused at the head of the path, a man came out of the chalet and opened the garage doors at the side of the house. Then he walked over to the car to put it away. He was tall and thick-set, wearing heavy-rimmed glasses, and his straight, dark hair was already powdered by a fine covering of snow.

  Even through the falling snow Liz recognised him instantly.

  ‘Patrick!’ she cried, amazed.

  He turned from the car to look towards her, and made out a small figure tightly encased in snow-proof garments, its anorak hood pulled close round the pale blob of its face, its eyes hidden behind yellow glasses, making identification impossible.

  ‘What are you doing in Greutz?’ continued Liz, and at these further words the mystery was solved.

  ‘Liz! My dear old thing!’ exclaimed Patrick Grant, and abandoning the car he embraced her fondly, planting a kiss on her lips, which tasted of snow. ‘I didn’t know you in your arctic kit,’ he said. ‘Come in, come in, and tell me all your news.’

  ‘Hadn’t you better finish what you were doing?’ Liz asked him, with some asperity.

  ‘What? Oh, the car, you mean? It can wait,’ said Patrick.

  ‘You won’t be able to move it soon,’ she pointed out. ‘Unless you want to use a shovel.’

  ‘Oh, won’t I? No, perhaps you’re right.’

  ‘Stop dithering, Patrick, and put it away. I won’t vanish,’ Liz said.

  ‘I’m not so sure. You’ve done it before,’ said Patrick. But he got into the car and drove it in to the garage, closing the doors upon it, while Liz waited on the porch. Then he returned to her, took her gloved hands in his and led her into the chalet.

  ‘Surely it’s term. Have you run away from Oxford?’ Liz demanded.

  ‘No. I was invited to give a paper in Innsbruck on Thursday, and Max Klocker asked me to spend the weekend here. This is his mountain retreat far from academic care,’ Patrick told her. ‘We’ve just been visiting a chum of his in Kramms; an interesting old man – used to be a concert pianist. We’d hoped to ski there, but the weather was too bad.’

  He stamped his feet on the doorstep to shed the snow that clung to his boots, and helped Liz off with her anorak. While this was going on, a short, square man with a grey spade beard and brown eyes twinkling behind thick spectacles appeared in the hall.

  ‘Another intrepid Briton, undeterred by our weather, eh Patrick?’ he remarked.

  ‘Mrs. Morris, Professor Klocker,’ Patrick introduced them. ‘Liz was up at Somerville when I was an undergraduate, Max.’

  ‘Ah ha! You were students together?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Liz. ‘For a time.’

  For a time, until she had grown tired of waiting interminably on the river bank watching Patrick stroke his college eight. To teach him a lesson, she had started to go out with Geoffrey Morris, an economics graduate. Patrick had seemed unmoved by her defection; she had married Geoffrey and gone with him to Toronto. After five years of increasing discord, they had parted; Geoffrey had gone to South America, which at least was far away. In due time they had divorced; Liz returned to England and worked as an editor in a publishing firm. There were no children. She had met Patrick again on a visit to Oxford. He had become a Fellow of St. Mark’s College, and was later appointed Dean. From time to time now, they met; if Patrick was in London and had an hour or two to spare, he rang Liz up and took her out, treating her with the same casual affection he had displayed when they were undergraduates. After a few nostalgic regrets Liz had learned to adopt a similar brisk attitude to him; she had not seen him for months until today.

  ‘Helga, Helga, we have a guest! Some tea!’ the professor called, bustling away towards the kitchen regions of his chalet.

  Liz took off her boots and stood them in the hall; better her feet in socks than pools of melted snow all over the professor’s floor.

  ‘You don’t change,’ Patrick told her with satisfaction, as he watched her.

  ‘I haven’t gone grey since our last meeting, if that’s what you mean,’ she said tartly. She had taken an afternoon off to go with him to a French film; after it, he had abandoned her in Oxford Street, hurrying back to Paddington for his train; there was a guest night at Mark’s that evening which he did not propose to miss.

  ‘Come along in, Mrs. Morris, come along,’ the professor said, returning to them and directing them with shepherding gestures towards his study. ‘No weather is too bad to daunt a British lady, I believe.’

  ‘This very nearly is,’ said Liz, who looked anything but daunted.

  ‘Helga is bringing tea,’ said Professor Klocker. ‘With rum and lemon. You will like that.’

  ‘It sounds wonderful.’

  The professor’s study was an attractive room. The timbered walls were lined with books; there were deep, leather-covered armchairs on either side of a log fire, a desk piled with papers, and more papers and books stacked about the floor.

  ‘It’s like your set at Mark’s,’ Liz said to Patrick.

  ‘She means it’s untidy, Max. Books all over the place,’ grinned Patrick.

  ‘I drive Helga to distraction with my ways,’ the professor admitted, chuckling.

  A plump woman bearing a tray laden with three steaming glasses of tea now came in. She set her burden down, then produced from a pocket in her capacious skirt a pair of goatskin slippers for Liz. When she had departed, beaming, the professor took a bottle of rum from a cupboard by the hearth and poured large dollops from it into all their glasses.

  ‘Helga will have been ungenerous,’ he declared.

  By the time Liz left the chalet it was too late to look for Sue at Ferdy’s. Patrick walked with her back to the Gentiana. Inches of snow had fallen while she was in the chalet; their feet sank into the soft new covering.

  ‘Come and have a drink,’ Liz invited when they reached the hotel. ‘Sue’ll be upstairs. We’ve got a good stock of booze from the duty-free shop at Gatwick.’

  So Patrick followed her up the creaking stairs, and waited in the passage while Liz opened the bedroom door to see if Sue was in a state to receive visitors.

  ‘Look who’s here,’ she said, standing aside and beckoning Patrick to enter
.

  Sue, in the silver thread trouser suit with which she planned to dazzle the Gentiana that evening, was busy attaching her eyelashes.

  ‘Patrick!’ she shrieked. ‘How wonderful! You can’t be staying in Greutz too! Why didn’t we know?’

  ‘Make the most of him,’ Liz recommended. ‘He’s due to leave tomorrow. But he’s coming back here after dinner tonight, with a gorgeous bearded professor.’

  When Patrick had gone, Sue gazed at Liz, marvelling.

  ‘I can’t think why you didn’t marry him, instead of that rotten Geoffrey,’ she said.

  ‘Because he never asked me,’ Liz replied. ‘As you very well know. It never even occurred to him.’

  III

  ‘The heavenly twins, oh dear,’ murmured Sue when, late because of Patrick’s visit, she and Liz joined Bernard and Sam for dinner at the table reserved for Hickson’s clients. The four of them were alone, for Penny with her new contingent had not yet arrived; and there was no sign of Fiona, who often ate in the village with one or another of her constantly-changing admirers, dashing down to the discotheque just in time to prevent Frau Scholler setting forth irately from behind the reception desk to find out why the music had not started.

  Sam looked up from his minestrone and made as if to rise; Bernard merely spooned up another mouthful and ignored them. Across the room at her solitary table, Frau Hiller, who was reading David Copperfield in English, bowed at them and smiled. Francis and Barbara Whittaker had reached the chicken course; he raised a hand in greeting to Liz, who waved at him in return and was pleased to see Barbara frown at this innocent exchange.

  Sue, as soon as she was seated, inspected the almost empty bottle of wine on the table.

  ‘It’s your turn, Bernard,’ she said, without preamble. ‘We need another bottle.’

  It had been agreed at the beginning of the week that each in turn would order a bottle of the local wine to share around the table. Liz and Sue had already bought theirs, and this was the remains of Sam’s second contribution. Bernard drank level with everyone else but so far had not subscribed at all.

  He looked now at what was in his glass.

  ‘Er—yes, it is my turn,’ he admitted.

  ‘You can order it, then, when Else brings our soup,’ Sue told him firmly.

  But when the waitress arrived with the two plates of soup Bernard would have let her go; Sue, however, detained her.

  ‘Go on, Bernard,’ she commanded, and he saw no help for it. He patted his thin, pale lips with his table-napkin.

  ‘Der wein, bitte,’ he said, indicating the bottle already on the table and carefully not looking at the pretty blonde girl with her round young breasts veiled only by a fine cotton blouse above the corseted bodice of her dirndl dress.

  ‘Bitte schon,’ Else replied, smiling.

  Sue and Liz had discovered early in the week that Bernard showed no desire to settle up for his share when anything was ordered for the group as a whole; this had happened at Ferdy’s twice, where he had left them to pay for his coffee and cake saying he had to rush off. The first time they had let it pass, but after the second incident, scrupulous themselves about their debts, however small, they determined that he should not escape again.

  After the bottle had arrived, and everyone had a full glass of wine, Liz took pity on Bernard, sitting with a sulky face eating fried chicken and beans.

  ‘Are you going to the discotheque, Bernard?’ she asked. It was most unlikely; sometimes he came in, looked anxiously around and left at once; he had never been seen to dance.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve got to meet someone after dinner,’ he replied. His voice was brusque.

  ‘Who is she, Bernard ?’ Sue inquired.

  Bernard did not answer. He munched on steadily, staring at his plate.

  Sue raised her eyebrows and tried Sam. He was always more forthcoming if remarks were thrown at him, usually finding an answer even if he never started a conversation. He had been in the discotheque several times, though not dancing, but had seemed happy enough seated at a table watching the dancers.

  ‘What about you?’ Sue asked him.

  ‘I’m joining the Whittakers. I expect we’ll all come down,’ he said.

  ‘Oh good. We’re meeting two chums of Liz’s later,’ Sue informed him. ‘Two professors. We’ll bring them along.’

  ‘Patrick isn’t a professor,’ Liz protested.

  ‘Well, he will be soon. One professor, then, and a don, since you’re so fussy,’ Sue said.

  ‘And will they dance?’ Sam inquired, sounding as if he thought it most unlikely.

  ‘Of course. Most people enjoy dancing,’ Sue said, austerely. She had spent several evenings sitting beside Sam drinking beer and dropping hints, waiting in vain for him to lead her on to the floor.

  Liz, when she suggested that Patrick and Professor Klocker should come down to the Gentiana after dinner, had not pictured them in the nightclub, although the professor had seemed eager for Patrick to witness some of Greutz’s night life.

  ‘I’m sure the professor dances beautifully,’ she said, imagining him waltzing. He would rotate in a stately style.

  ‘Perhaps we might all join up, then, when your friends arrive?’ Sam amazingly suggested.

  “Oh, do let’s. Good idea,’ Sue agreed, at once. Perhaps there was hope for Sam after all; the thaw might have begun.

  When he had risen to join the Whittakers, and Bernard had silently left on his undisclosed mission, she said as much to Liz.

  ‘Fool. He felt safe enough because he knows we’ve got two chaps lined up,’ said Liz. ‘He’s scared to bits of us.’

  ‘I can’t think why,’ Sue blandly said. Determined not to let Sam’s mellowed mood be wasted, she swept off to the cellar in his wake. Liz waited in the lounge for Patrick and Professor Klocker. She could hear the throb of the music from below, and when the two men appeared she explained, with a doubtful glance at the professor, that they were expected in the cellar.

  ‘It’s very noisy, as you can hear,’ she warned.

  ‘How about it, Max?’ asked Patrick.

  ‘It’s most kind of your friends, Mrs. Morris,’ said the professor. ‘I have not visited this nightclub before. The Silvretta is nearer, when I have guests to entertain. I should like to see what the Gentiana has to offer, and I am sure Patrick cannot wait to waltz with you.’

  Some men could still be gallant, anyhow, Liz thought, dourly; she would not look at Patrick, who was masking his impatience with superlative ease. However, he might at least dance with Sue, which would cheer her evening.

  She led the way down to the cellar, where the walls were papered in deep maroon with narrow gold stripes and the lighting was provided almost wholly by candles so that the effect was cavernous.

  Sue, Sam and the Whittakers were seated at a long table as far away as it was possible to get from the actual discotheque. With them was Frau Hiller, looking rather bemused at the scene. Behind the turntables of her machine, Fiona was enthroned, swaying to the music. She wore a purple cat-suit and her red hair was tied back in a huge purple bow. Her lips, too, were purple, and her face was white. She looked exhausted.

  Liz introduced Professor Klocker and Patrick to the others, and for the first time since they had met a week before, she saw Barbara Whittaker display some animation. Even at the bridge table, she seemed languid. Now she patted the banquette seat, indicating that Patrick should sit beside her, and soon they were deep in conversation. Liz heard Patrick say: ‘No, not medicine. English is my subject.’

  Francis summoned the waiter. Barbara ordered brandy, but everyone else, including Frau Hiller, asked for beer.

  ‘Is it still snowing, Professor Klocker?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Alas, yes. It is so unfortunate for everyone who wants to ski,’ said the professor. ‘And it is much warmer, too. That is a very bad sign.’ His English was perfect, without a trace of accent. ‘I doubt if Patrick will be able to leave tomorrow,’ he added.

&nbs
p; Liz’s reaction to this was one of delight. Patrick’s presence in Greutz would do a lot to brighten things up, although being marooned in the Alps in mid-term would hardly fit in with his plans.

  ‘You are thinking the pass will be blocked?’ Frau Hiller asked the professor.

  ‘I should expect it to be closed already,’ he replied. ‘And if it continues to snow heavily there may be other troubles.’

  ‘You mean avalanches? I heard a rumble in the distance yesterday,’ Liz said.

  ‘That was probably an artificial one. When a great quantity of snow falls in a short time and the temperature rises, the mass becomes insecure,’ the professor said. ‘Preventive measures are taken, and the snow is dislodged in small, harmless amounts by grenades, gunfire and so on. I have seen the ski instructors bring it down, too, knocking it with their poles, and roped to trees themselves in case they get swept away. But nature can still take powerful charge in the mountains. The road above Greutz is often blocked by falls, though it is usually cleared very quickly. However, don’t be alarmed, Mrs. Morris. There hasn’t been an avalanche in the village for very many years.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not frightened,’ Liz assured him. Patrick was now dancing with Barbara Whittaker; they were twisting in a dignified, manner; she wished his pupils could observe him. ‘I was just wondering whether the other people due from England today would get here. Penny Croft, the travel agent’s representative, has gone to meet them in Zurich. What will happen if they can’t get through?’

  ‘They’ll find rooms in the valley,’ Professor Klocker said. ‘The coach driver will telephone ahead to see if the road is clear, and if it isn’t there will be a barrier at the foot of the mountain. We don’t let travellers drive to the summit only to find the road closed on the other side.’

  ‘You are accustomed to dealing with these trials in the mountains,’ Frau Hiller said. Her English was slow and heavily accented, rather pedantic in style as if she had learned it from reading Victorian novels, but she seemed able to follow the quick speech of everyone else without trouble.