“I’ll give you a tip,” he said, pointing up at the two amiable stags over the doorway. “A woman painted that.”
He crossed the street. The two elderly men and schoolteacher Bohren only interrupted their serious discussion long enough to give him a nod and a civil good day. “And another thing,” Bohren was saying, as Waysmith stepped over the threshold, “all that early rain…”
At least I’ve been checked in, Waysmith thought, even if I’ll never learn what the early rain did or did not do. Then he became aware of the sudden silence which had fallen over the room he had entered.
It was a low-ceilinged room, smelling not unpleasantly of good beer and spiced sausage, a room dimly lighted from a row of four close-packed windows where stiff-starched lace was drawn above precise geraniums on a broad stone sill. A shaft of sunlight from the bright street struck obliquely towards the scrubbed wood floor, cutting through the room’s stillness with its beam of dancing motes. They were the only movement in the room. The ticking of a clock against a pine wall was the only sound. For that moment. Seemingly long. Yet brief. And so intense that Waysmith felt he and the eight people who sat at the long dark tables round the room’s edge, were frozen into a still life, inanimate objects arranged in a painter’s pattern.
Then, just as suddenly, everything clicked back into normal sound and movement as a white-haired woman put down her knitting needles, pushed back her chair, made an apology to the two men who were sitting at her table, and came towards Waysmith. A third man, sitting by himself, smoking a placid cigar, was scanning the pages of a newspaper. Two more men were at another table—walkers, by their rucksacks and sticks. In a far corner, a bearded man faced a fair-haired girl, whose back was once more turned to the room. Waysmith gave that well-shaped head, with its smoothly knotted blonde hair, a second look. But it couldn’t be Francesca. Not here, sitting so casually as if she had nothing to do but pass a pleasant hour. And certainly she would have recognised him. He laid Denning’s belongings neatly at the foot of the staircase beside him—not much privacy here, the steep stairs climbed quite openly up one side of the room—and then faced the inn’s owner.
“I am Frau Welti,” she said, and waited. Her smile was strained. Her pale grey eyes were worried. There was a little nervous frown drawing her brow into a polite question. She smoothed down the embroidered apron over her black dress, and touched the tight braids of her hair as she waited.
“Good afternoon. My name is Waysmith. I’ve brought—”
“Waysmith,” she repeated carefully. Her smile became real, now. “We have your room all ready. This way—” She took a step towards the staircase.
“But I—”
“Andrew Waysmith?” The fair-haired girl had risen from her table, and was walking towards him, slowly, a little hesitantly. “Is this Mr. Waysmith?” she asked, quite seriously.
You know damn well it is, he thought as he put out his hand. He could play along with a joke any time, even with a variation on that old Stanley-Livingstone theme. But before he could make his reply, she was saying gravely, “I am Francesca.” It was the first time she had ever given him a limp two-fingered handshake.
“Francesca,” he repeated, staring at her. Was everything then solved? Was all the danger over, to let Francesca walk around her village without one worry showing? Certainly, there was no feeling that she was being guarded—unless you counted the tall bearded man who had risen and then hesitated and now was walking over to the newspaper rack near the door.
“Yes,” she was saying, “Francesca Vivenzio. I went to school with your wife.” She wasn’t even smiling.
“Oh! That Francesca.” And the joke has gone far enough, he thought.
“Gregor!” she called in the direction of the newspaper rack. “Won’t you come and meet Mr. Waysmith?” He came slowly, politely, but with no enthusiasm—indeed, there was no emotion at all—on his strong broad face, furrowed, heavily bearded. He had a large hand with a strong quick grasp, and intelligent grey eyes. But his smile was brief. He seemed a taciturn individual.
“Gregor is gloomy today—it’s his birthday.” Francesca explained. “But where is Paula?” The use of the first name was only an old school habit, obviously: her voice was casually polite, no more, no less.
“In the car. Waiting.” Waysmith had become stilted. He felt unreal and strangely uncomfortable. He glanced over at the three men who sat at the window table. The two who were friends, apparently, had reached a lull in their desultory conversation. One lit a cigarette—he was dark-haired, prematurely balding, with a thin, worried face that was a little too pale (compared to Gregor, he was almost ghost-like), a little too set in perpetual earnestness; his friend was small and plump, a quiet round-faced man whose lips smiled gently at the glass of beer in front of him. The third man, at the other end of the long table, seemed engrossed by his newspaper; his round head, with its close-cropped grey hair, was slightly tilted, one heavily rounded eyebrow was lifted with interest in what he read; he had a long chin, a determined-looking nose, tanned skin, and a steady hand, for the ash on his cigar was unbroken. Across the room, the two men on a walking tour were now discussing a map spread before them.
Francesca was saying, “Then I’d better go out and welcome her back to Falken. I suppose she’s anxious to see it again after all those years.”
“Your room, Herr Waysmith—” Frau Weld said impatiently, one foot already on the bottom step of the staircase.
“But what I wanted was a room—”
“There really isn’t much choice,” Francesca interrupted him. She looked down at Denning’s suitcase with its neatly printed label clearly visible from where she stood. Then she smiled at Waysmith. “While you take your luggage upstairs, I’ll show Mrs. Waysmith where to leave the car. Our street is too narrow for parking.” Her blue eyes were serious, almost pleading, and her smile became only a pathetic piece of play acting. She wasn’t enjoying it, but she was obeying orders even if she felt they were unnecessary. He could see that by the way she turned and walked towards the door.
Frau Welti began protesting. He didn’t have to carry up the bags. Emil would soon be on duty again—this was his afternoon off. And Willy was sick. And Minna was at a christening. Such complications, with the week-end beginning, such complications.
“That’s all right,” Waysmith said, picking up Denning’s belongings, cutting short the protests. He followed Frau Welti up the scrubbed wooden stairs.
Down in the room, Gregor walked slowly over to the door. The grey-haired man laid aside his newspaper and studied the end of his cigar. “Americans are discovering Falken, it seems,” he said genially to the two men at the other end of his table.
“I hope not,” one of them answered, speaking German with an American accent. “After all, I came here to forget about them.” He laughed, pleasantly enough. His voice was pleasant enough, too, except for an odd touch of defiance. Not defiance exactly, Waysmith decided as he glanced down from the top of the stairs, more a defensiveness, a kind of and-what-do-you-think-you-think-of-that? The silent friend was still smiling politely. Or was it obediently?
“Who is the man with the dark hair?” Waysmith asked quietly as he followed Frau Welti’s majestic stride down the narrow passage which ran the full length of the inn’s upper floor.
“Herr Broach. He lives in Falken now. Very rich. Very pleasant, too.” But she spoke without much enthusiasm.
Broach. It had a sound he recognised. Where had he heard the name?
Frau Welti went on, “And with him is his secretary.”
“He looks well tamed.”
“Please?”
“And the man with the cigar?”
“A visitor. He comes to climb the mountains.” She stopped at the last door in the corridor. But as she opened it, she pointed across the passage to a narrow back staircase. “Emergency,” she said, with a proud little nod of the head.
“Useful,” Waysmith conceded. “For fires?”
�
��Yes,” she said, smiling. “For fires.” And as he stepped over the threshold, she closed him quietly into the room.
“Well!” Waysmith said, facing Inspector Bohren. “That’s a useful staircase, indeed.” He laid down Denning’s bags and clubs, dropped the hat and coat near them, and rubbed his reddening palms. He looked round the room: it was clean and bright, with plenty of view. “Well…” he said again, this time smiling.
“We have to be quick,” Bohren said, as crisp and business-like as ever in spite of his holiday clothes. “First, you are staying here. Second, your wife is only a casual school friend of Francesca Vivenzio; you yourself have never met her before.”
“I gathered that.”
“Just making sure,” Bohren said equably. “Third point is this: your wife met Miss Vivenzio by chance yesterday in Bern. So they dined together. That’s all.”
“In other words, we know nothing about anything?”
“Precisely. Your wife is simply revisiting a village she knew well when she was a girl. Possible?”
“Yes. But our idea in coming here—”
“—was to show that Miss Vivenzio has friends?”
“I thought a show of solidarity might be discouraging to her enemies.”
“Discouraging. Yes. But for how long? Until you had to move away. Then what?”
“By that time, I had heard you’d have this trouble settled.”
“We cannot settle it until it starts.” The quiet emphasis on Bohren’s last three words, so gravely spoken, made them all the more ominous.
“You’re enticing them into their next move against Francesca?”
“As quickly as possible.”
Waysmith said worriedly, “She’s taking a chance.”
“She knows that.”
“And meanwhile she’s walking around with only Gregor as watch dog? And what about her aunt, Fräulein Lüthi? Are these two women to be left in a lonely house?”
Suddenly Bohren was worried. “Was he too obvious?”
“Gregor? Far from it. I thought he and Francesca had been quarrelling.”
“Good.” Bohren relaxed. “Don’t worry so much,” he said. “We have made many arrangements.”
“So I noticed as we entered Falken. Getting some cooperation from the village?”
“The Lüthi family have lived here for more than three hundred years,” Bohren reminded him.
“Can you give me an idea of the arrangements you have made? I was never good at walking blindfolded.” Bohren looked at him for a moment. Then, talking quickly in his hushed voice, “Roughly, we have at least three problems to face: Andrássy’s disappearance; the protection of Francesca Vivenzio; the elimination of the threat of the Committee. Three separate problems, needing three separate teams of searchers and helpers. We’ve enlisted aid from all the men we consider most reliable. We need plenty of help, I assure you.”
And Bohren is linking the three separate problems into one overall plan, Waysmith thought. “Suppose I have to get in touch with you?”
“Not directly. If you need me, then you’ll find the journalist downstairs a reliable sort of man. He has volunteered to be a kind of errand boy. His name is Keppler. A crime reporter, normally.”
“And what’s my role?” Waysmith asked, with a smile. “Do
I join the play-acting team downstairs, or do I start searching the woods?”
“Neither the woods, nor the houses, nor the alpine huts,” Bohren said. “I want you to interview someone. For your magazine. He’s a man called Broach.”
Broach… And now Waysmith remembered. “Richard van Meeren Broach, who’s just given up his American citizenship?”
“That Broach and no other.” Bohren stepped around the suitcase to reach the door. He stopped, looking down at the labels, and then glanced up questioningly at Waysmith.
“They belong to a friend of mine. We gave him a lift from Bern.”
“Where is he now?”
“At a house called Waldesruhe.”
Bohren said quickly, “Why?”
“We stopped for a view. Two men from Waldesruhe seemed interested in our car. Bill got interested in them.”
“Who were they?”
“City boys. From Bulgaria, I gathered.”
Bohren stood very still. “Start work on that interview,” he said. “We want it soon.”
“It won’t be easy.”
There was a brief smile. “Your problem, Mr. Waysmith.” And he was gone, leaving the door open, to reveal Frau Welti still outside in the corridor. Considering his height and solid substance, he was a quiet descender of stairs.
“Useful staircase,” Waysmith said to Frau Welti. “For fires.”
It seemed the kind of simple joke that appealed to her— perhaps because she had helped to create it—for she began to laugh in brief little bursts of high-pitched giggles which were just as surprising as her sense of humour. They sounded like a soprano machine-gun, muted, all the way along the corridor. Waysmith thought of the men downstairs as, worriedly, he followed her swift footsteps. A disastrous joke, he decided, in every way. Yet it wasn’t the joke alone that was responsible for this sudden merriment: probably it was Frau Welti’s sense of relief. It was only now he realised the nervous strain which must have racked her all that afternoon as she had sat knitting, waiting, talking, waiting for Paula and him to arrive.
Downstairs, against all his hopes, the three men still sat at the table, although the hikers had left. They had been talking, and now they looked at the cheerful Frau Welti. The man with the close-cut grey hair smiled, stroked his long chin, and said, “That reminds me of the old days, Anna.”
“Ah…” Frau Welti said. She was in control of herself again.
“Come and have some beer,” the grey-haired man suggested to Waysmith. “My name is Keppler. And these gentlemen—” He smiled benignly on the two gentlemen who were studying Waysmith with a considerable display of negligence, and left them to introduce themselves. They hesitated, exchanged a brief glance.
“Broach,” the dark-haired man said. “My secretary, Mr. Walters.”
Mr. Walters had half-risen. He looked at his watch. “The afternoon mail must have arrived by this time,” he told Broach. He wasn’t American. Or English, although he spoke the language with a carefully cultivated accent.
“Must you run away?” Keppler asked with his simple-minded politeness. “There’s still plenty of time before the mail is sorted. Sit down, sit down. Anna, we’ll all have some more beer.” He watched her hurry away, and shook his head. “Once, Anna Welti had the merriest laugh between here and Bern. That was before her husband was killed trying to get a couple of stranded climbers off the face of the Fernhorn. He ran the inn then. Never worried about complaints.” He smiled over at Waysmith. “If guests didn’t like their rooms, they could go and sleep with the cows, for all he cared.”
“You know Falken well?” Broach asked, settling back in his chair. He at least wasn’t going to give the appearance of running away.
“In the old days, yes. Used to come here each spring. Then Fritz got killed—he was one of the best guides around here, climbed with me a lot. So I stopped coming. This year, I suddenly wanted to see it again. Perhaps try an easy climb or two. Getting old in my joints.” He shook his head sadly. “And are you here for the climbing, too?”
“I live here.” Broach glanced over at Waysmith.
“You do? And here I am, thinking you are an American.”
“I was an American.” Broach now looked Waysmith full in the face. The defensive note had crept back into his voice. But the effect was lost, for Waysmith’s attention switched to the door, where Paula and Francesca had entered, and he went forward to meet them.
That was the comfortable thing about Paula, he thought, as she interpreted the question in his eyes and gave him a nod and a smile. Yes, she was saying silently, I’ve been told what to do; I don’t like this, but I’ll try it anyway. “I couldn’t get the car started,” she said c
heerfully enough, although she was holding on to his hand with too tight a grasp as he brought her and Francesca over to the table. “But this nice man with the beard came and took charge. Gregor?” She looked at Francesca for confirmation.
Francesca nodded. She barely acknowledged the introductions, and chose a chair farthest from Broach, quietly, unnoticeably, but definitely. Broach knew that too. He looked at her, kept looking at her, as if her coldness, her elusiveness fascinated him, attracted him against his will. That, at least, was Waysmith’s guess, and he was sure that Paula had noticed the tension too. Interesting, he thought… Then he had to say, “Beg pardon?” for Francesca was concentrating on talking to him.
“How was the room? No complaints?” she was asking.
“On the contrary,” Keppler said, “Mr. Waysmith seems to have delighted Frau Welti. We could hear her laughing all the way down here.”
“It was my German that delighted her, I’m afraid.” Waysmith shook his head. Mr. Walters, he noted, had interested eyes above that gentle smile. “What’s the word for ‘nice’ anyway? Gemütlich, isn’t it?”
Francesca nodded.
“Well that’s all I said. I looked at the bathroom, and said gemutlich. What’s so funny about that?”
Even Mr. Walters thought that was at least amusing. Broach thought it was hilarious. And his next question showed why. “Are you the Andrew Waysmith who is European editor of Policy?” he asked.
“That’s right,” said Waysmith, and rose to help Frau Welti with her tray of beer glasses.
“I read your editorials occasionally for the pleasure of disagreeing with them,” Broach said.
“There’s nothing like a good argument,” Waysmith said evenly, “to keep the blood circulating. Prevents atrophy of the brain.” He pulled out a chair for Frau Welti.
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