‘Surely counting heads isn’t among your duties?’ Liz remarked. ‘It’s a reflection on him that we didn’t realise earlier; he’s so insignificant.’
‘There’s always someone like him on a tour,’ Penny said. ‘A bachelor, not young any more, who won’t join in anything. One wonders why they come.’
‘To be able to talk about it afterwards,’ said Liz. ‘Boasting at the office. He probably makes out that he’s a hell of a chap away from home.’
‘Do you think that’s it?’ said Penny. ‘How peculiar. It can’t be much fun.’
‘Some people don’t know how to be happy,’ Francis said.
‘Or how to recognise it if they are,’ amplified Liz.
‘Or haven’t learned to equate absence of misery with contentment,’ Sam contributed, hunching his lean shoulders and staring out of the huge lounge window where they were all gathered having coffee.
‘That’s rather a negative view, isn’t it?’ said Francis.
‘Most of us have to settle for it, don’t we?’ Sam replied. ‘It’s the only way to live.’
‘It sounds a rather dismal recipe to me, if you want my opinion,’ Sue declared.
‘I agree with Sam,’ said Liz. ‘Most of us start out with impossible expectations.’
‘It’s horrible to think Bernard may be somewhere up there on the mountain,’ Penny said, more concerned with the immediate problem. ‘Even if he was a bit of a drip, it’s still awful.’
‘Yes, it is,’ agreed Barbara. Even she, who had so far seemed unaffected by the weather, now looked pale and drawn.
‘Let’s go down to the village. At least we’ll be on the spot there if there’s any news,’ said Sue. ‘We can’t stay here brooding and philosophising till it’s time for tea.’
All agreed that this was a good idea, and went away to fetch coats and boots. Frau Hiller, who had been listening to their conversation without joining in, said she would stay behind; the others all set off in a group.
The sight of the chair-lift working had filled some other visitors with hope that skiing was to be allowed after all, and they had gone hopefully to the terminus, only to be turned back. Apart from them, few people were about.
‘We shouldn’t be being so discreet,’ Liz said, suddenly. ‘We ought to ask every single person we meet if they’ve seen him. I know all the hotels have been questioned, but there are lots of chalets and things. Someone may have noticed him.’
‘An Englishman, not very young, yet not old, about five foot ten, with glasses, in a dark anorak and ski-pants. There are fifty of them here,’ said Sam. ‘I’m one – you’re another,’ he added to Francis. ‘You’re taller,’ he said to Freddie Derrington, who was with them. ‘But it comes to much the same thing. With hats on, we all look alike, and everyone must have been wearing goggles yesterday.’
It was true.
They reached the bridge and stood beside it, staring up at the mountain. It was impossible to make out through the murk the figures of the men searching up there. They had taken long slender poles to prod into the deep snow at the side of the piste, such as were used after an avalanche to find the buried victims.
Penny went off to the burgomeister’s house. Liz, looking across at the row of chalets above the church, saw a solitary figure on the professor’s balcony. She had telephoned Patrick before leaving the Gentiana to tell him that Bernard had not been found.
Penny came back and told them that if it were not for the avalanche risk, the burgomeister would have asked for a helicopter to help in the search, but the vibration might be all that was needed to start a fall. In any case, the weather was too bad and the visibility too poor for a helicopter to fly in the mountains.
Sue and Barbara decided, since they were so near, to visit June in the clinic. The Derringtons, who clearly hated to be idle, said they would walk up to the Grand for a swim. Liz, left with Francis, Sam and Penny, turned abruptly from them, saying she was going back to the hotel. She walked rapidly away before any of them could offer to go with her, head down, and gloved hands thrust into her pockets. She stared at the grimy snow forming the surface of the road as she went, and would have walked straight past Patrick if he had not hailed her.
‘Why isn’t your anorak red?’ she demanded without preamble, for he, too, fitted the description of Bernard, although he was a much bigger man, in fact.
‘I don’t want to be mistaken for a ski-instructor, and I like to be garbed as the Dark Blue that I am,’ he replied at once. ‘But why do you ask?’
She told him.
‘How shrewd of Irwin,’ Patrick observed. ‘What else is known about friend Bernard?’
‘Not much. He’s older than I thought at first. I put him down at about thirty-five, but he once said something about being nearly twice as old as Penny, which makes him over forty. He doesn’t look it – a few frown lines on the brow, but no others much.’
‘Life hasn’t etched its careworn furrows yet, you imply?’
‘More or less. He scuttled about so, maybe he never stopped long enough in one place for them to form.’
‘Where’s his room? Near yours?’
‘No. It’s in the annexe beyond the hotel.’
Patrick walked silently past the main building of the Gentiana, brushed his snowy boots on the annexe doorstep with the stiff broom provided, and went inside.
‘Where are you going?’ Liz demanded, following.
‘Which is his room. Do you know?’
‘You can’t go into it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Someone may see you. And you’ve got no right.’
‘Everyone’s out, or asleep. And I’m going to look for him. He may have come back,’ said Patrick. ‘Which is it? Or must I try each one?’
He was perfectly capable of doing just that, and of getting away with it too.
‘I think it’s number three, on the first floor,’ Liz said. ‘I know Sam’s is four, and they’re next to each other. But I wish you wouldn’t, Patrick.’
He ignored her protests, merely walking firmly up the steep stairs which were covered with coconut matting. Liz followed, muttering under her breath. The key of Bernard’s room hung, as in so many mountain hotels, on a hook over the door. Patrick took it down and let himself into the room; Liz went in too, and he closed the door behind them.
It was the usual small slit of a room, perfectly adequate but not luxurious. There was a washbasin, a varnished pine wardrobe, a bedside cabinet, a table covered with a white cloth, and an upright chair. There were big double windows, but no balcony.
‘They never give you a dressing-table, do they? Must be tough on you girls with all your pots and jars,’ said Patrick. On Bernard’s table was a pair of brushes with yellowed ivory backs and dingy bristles. They bore a monogram: DBW.
‘His Dad’s, at a guess,’ said Patrick.
There were a book of crossword puzzles, two picture postcards addressed and stamped but with the correspondence side still blank, and a week-old copy of the Sunday Telegraph also on the table. On the shelf over the basin, there were a bottle of Steradent, a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste and some shaving cream, a piece of old soap, a worn shaving-brush and a safety razor. Patrick opened the wardrobe. One side of it was fitted with shelves, and here, tidily arranged, was a rather grubby pale blue polo-necked cotton shirt, a Norwegian-knit sweater in grey and white, a woollen vest and a pair of pants, two pairs of socks and some white cotton handkerchiefs. A pair of grey flannels hung on a hanger.
‘He wasn’t wearing this sweater on Saturday evening?’ Patrick asked.
‘No. He’s got another, black and white, it looks new. This is his day-time one.’
‘Shoes,’ said Patrick, looking down. On the floor of the cupboard stood Bernard’s ski-boots. There were no other shoes, not even a pair of bedroom slippers.
‘You realise what this means?’ Patrick said.
Liz stared at him. Then she understood.
‘He’s not on the Schneid
erhorn. He couldn’t have gone skiing without his boots. He must be somewhere in the village.’
‘Right. All those men are wasting their time and risking their necks unnecessarily. I suppose the rest of your party were too British to think of poking about in here,’ said Patrick grimly. ‘He had another pair of shoes, presumably. Whatever he wore under his galoshes.’
‘He had a pair of ordinary laced shoes, black ones. I never noticed the galoshes.’
Patrick closed the wardrobe and opened the drawer of the bedside chest. In it were a packet of corn plasters, three foil-wrapped individual doses of Eno’s salts, a bottle of Disprin and a packet of indigestion tablets.
‘No letters. No photographs. No papers,’ said Patrick. He lifted down Bernard’s case from the top of the wardrobe and looked inside. It was empty. ‘He must have carried his passport and all his money on him. A suspicious nature,’ said Patrick. ‘What a sad little room. What a drab little life. Why weren’t his ski-boots put out for cleaning, I wonder? They do look clean. We would then have known he was not wearing them, for the maid would have noticed.’
‘They do them early here, I mean at night, not in the morning. The maid who turns down the beds does them,’ Liz said. ‘He could have put them away before coming down to the discotheque.’ Something else struck her, and her heart sank. ‘Of course, he can’t have gone skiing. We should have known.’ She told Patrick what the maid had said about Bernard’s pyjamas.
‘Dear, dear,’ said Patrick. ‘And even that didn’t prompt anyone to see if his boots were here?’ He shook his head, sadly. ‘Well, we must get those men down from the mountain without delay. I’ll just make a quick note of these addresses.’ He took out his wallet, extracted a small pocket diary from it, and scribbled down the names and addresses on the two postcards. Liz watched him in a stunned way.
‘Why are you doing that?’ she asked.
‘We may find it useful to know them. Mrs. D. B. Walker in Woking, that will be his mother, and R. J. Fisher Esq., the Town Clerk’s Office, Wapshot. His colleague, perhaps. Right.’ Patrick replaced the cards, put his wallet away, and turned to Liz. ‘Come and vouch for me with Frau Scholler,’ he said. ‘That will be the quickest way to get the search switched from the mountain.’
It had to be done. Liz presented him formally to Frau Scholler as a lecturer from the University of Oxford and a guest of Professor Klocker. Patrick then said, with perfect truth, that since no one remembered seeing the missing man on the Schneiderhorn the day before he had wondered if in fact he had gone skiing after all, and so he had looked for the boots.
Frau Scholler did not seem to think him over-zealous. She was grateful.
‘The men will be brought down,’ she said, after speaking on the telephone. ‘Thank you, Dr. Grant.’
‘Now I’m going to make a telephone call,’ Patrick said. ‘But first, I’m going to look for the galoshes.’
And he left Liz gaping after him as he disappeared into the men’s cloakroom.
III
Penny, working on the maxim that the show must at all costs go on, decided to divert her clients with a fondue party that night at the Gentiana, instead of the normal dinner. She co-opted the party at the Silvretta, who, since none of them had met Bernard, were affected only in an academic sense by his disappearance. It was out of the question to plead another engagement; all were obliged to accept. By this time, the village was being systematically searched for Bernard; the ski instructors, brought down from the mountain without calamity, were going from house to house inquiring for him, but since his passport was not available they had no photograph and their task was, as Sam had foreseen, difficult.
‘He’ll turn up, he’s the sort of person nothing ever happens to,’ said Sue. ‘He could even be hiding on purpose to cause a stir.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ Liz contradicted. ‘He may be dim, but he’s not as stupid as that.’ They were in the Whittakers’ room, where they had been invited for drinks before the fondue party together with Sam and the Derringtons; they were all drinking gin and mineral water out of toothmugs, and nibbling peanuts from paper packets.
‘Where can he have gone after he left the discotheque?’ Barbara asked. ‘One would have expected him to go straight to bed. But obviously he didn’t, from what the maid said.’
‘You mean about his pyjamas? I suppose you’re right.’ It wouldn’t be so bad if Bernard had disappeared on Sunday morning; his chances of survival would be much greater. No one could have survived outside during Saturday night when there was such a heavy snowfall.
‘He was pretty embarrassingly involved with Fiona,’ Sam said. ‘Maybe he took her for a walk to cool down.’
‘You mean he may have thought that safer than going with her back to the annexe?’ Sue asked.
‘I wouldn’t pass up a chance to go back to the annexe with Fiona,’ Freddie remarked.
‘No, I bet you wouldn’t,’ said his wife.
Sam answered Sue: ‘Yes. Or he may have wanted to give her time to get back, without the risk of running into her. I mean he may have hung about till he thought she’d gone.’
Liz had been over all this ground with Patrick already. He had found Bernard’s galoshes in the cloakroom. B. Walker was written neatly in indelible ink inside them, as in a schoolboy’s shoes. Patrick had left them where they were.
‘Let’s change the subject,’ she said, shifting her position on the window sill so that she was not facing Francis. ‘Going over all this isn’t going to find Bernard.’
‘Well, I for one wish we were having an ordinary dinner tonight,’ Freddie declared. ‘Fondue’s all very well, but when you’ve had one, you’ve had them all. Give me a decent four-course meal every time.’
‘We must make an effort for Penny’s sake,’ said Barbara. She seemed very shaken by Bernard’s disappearance and had tossed down two strong drinks in the minimum time. ‘Poor girl, she’s so conscientious that she thinks keeping us busy is part of her job.’
‘So it is,’ said Hilda. ‘But not all couriers are like her. Some get you out, more by luck than organisation, and just dump you, and you don’t see them again till it’s time to leave a fortnight later. Not that it matters to us, we just use the tour for cheap travel, but it’s hard on people who don’t know the ropes.’
‘It must be a simply frightful job,’ said Barbara. She was dressed in emerald green this evening, with her blonde hair piled high; several bracelets chinked on her wrist. ‘I suppose these girls do it for an opportunity to travel.’
‘Or for the men. They must meet plenty,’ said Hilda.
‘Maybe they just like skiing,’ said Francis, mildly.
‘Fiona does all right, anyway,’ Sue said. ‘Her wounds seem pretty well healed.’
‘What wounds?’
‘She had some unhappy affaire – thought she was going to marry this chap and he chucked her for no reason. Penny persuaded her to come out here to get over it, and found this job for her. That’s why she feels so responsible for her.’
‘She certainly wasted no time in getting her hooks into Roy,’ said Barbara. ‘The classic rebound, probably.’
‘Well, she might have rebounded in some other direction, not his,’ said Liz. ‘There must be plenty of unattached men in Greutz.’
‘June was in tears this afternoon when Barbara and I went to see her, wasn’t she, Barbara?’ Sue looked at the other woman for confirmation, and Barbara nodded.
‘Roy’d only been in for five minutes this morning,’ she said.
‘Perhaps he can’t bear to see anyone ill,’ said Sam. ‘Some people are like that.’
‘Maybe, but in sickness and health and all that, and she isn’t ill, only battered,’ Sue said roundly.
‘Oh, I’m not excusing him, only trying to find a reason,’ said Sam hastily. Sue was formidable when roused.
‘Well, I’d rather have an armful of Fiona, however plastered, than the pale June, drunk or sober,’ stated Freddie. He and Sam sat side by side
on one of the beds, while Hilda and Sue occupied the only chairs in the room. ‘We travelled out with them, remember. She was nervous on the flight and felt sick in the bus. Very much the old-fashioned pure English virgin. An odd match, isn’t it? I’d have expected Foster to go for something a bit more mettlesome.’ As he spoke, his eyes were on Barbara, stretched out on the other bed, slim and graceful.
Liz had been watching them all the while they talked; she felt so tense herself that it seemed to her the air was crackling. Now she noticed that Francis was looking at his wife with a speculative expression on his face. Barbara was a very attractive woman, Liz could see; she looked at Freddie once again, and then at Hilda, and in Hilda’s eyes she saw mirrored her own thoughts. She was not imagining all the tensions she could sense; they were real.
She stood up.
‘Let’s go down,’ she said. ‘It’s after eight. Penny will be afraid someone else is lost.’
The stube where the fondue was to be held was arranged with three round tables each set for eight people. Penny and her clients from the Silvretta were already there; the other group consisted of ten young people, none over thirty. Judging by the noise, they were all in party humour. Among them were Fiona and Roy. Standing a little apart, looking dignified despite their informal garments, were Patrick, Professor Klocker, and Jan.
‘We are joining you. Penny invited us all,’ said Patrick.
‘Surprise, surprise. I might have known,’ muttered Liz.
‘Why? Aren’t you pleased?’ he asked her. ‘I thought you needed me.’
She gave him a look.
‘You know I’m pleased, dope,’ she said. ‘And just look at those two.’ For Jan and Sue were already whispering together.
Penny took charge, getting everyone to the tables, and the waitresses came in with spirit stoves, setting them in position and adjusting the flames. Six people from the Silvretta, with Roy and Fiona, filled one table; the other four went to a second, where Penny clearly proposed to join them.
‘We need three more here to make the table up,’ she said. ‘What about you and Jan, Sue? And Sam?’
Silent Witness (Dr. Patrick Grant) Page 9