The Piper on the Mountain gfaf-5

by Ellis Peters

  “It wasn’t! He was looking for you, trying to find out what you were doing here, what you were working on. He’d found a piece of scrap paper, music paper, with your handwriting on it, and that brought him here to Zbojská Dolina, searching for you. I suppose it would have been another feather in his cap if he’d been able to bring home word of something sensational.”

  He had got so far when he saw that Alda was leaning back against the wall in a convulsion of silent laughter. He sat staring, confounded.

  “Forgive me! But how baffled he’d have been if he had found out what I’m working on! Do you know what it is? Do you know why my privacy was left largely undisturbed, why things were arranged so that I did not have to come into the limelight with my story? Because of my vitally important work! Because I am at work on an opera about Comenius! How many sinister codes he’d have read into every note! Especially into the evangelical psalms! That was his profession, and his occupational hazard. It seems he died of it.”

  Every word rang true. Dominic believed him all the more readily because there was no attempt to convince; belief was taken for granted, as between honest men who recognise each other on sight. But he still did not understand.

  “But why did he fall? Even if he was startled, even if the dusk was coming on, why? He was used to mountains, he climbed the big stuff. Why did he jump back like that? Did he expect you to attack him?”

  “Possibly, though nothing was farther from my mind. If only he’d known how little ill-will I bore him, how little I thought of him at all! But more probably he suffered a reflex of conscience, a superstitious recoil. Coming face to face quite inescapably, as he did,” said Alda softly, “with a man he had, by his own standards and in his own way, murdered.”

  Alda lifted the empty glass from Dominic’s clenched fingers, and went and refilled it at the rough cupboard on the wall. “Here, it won’t hurt you. You still look as if you need it. How much do you know about myself and Terrell and the Marrion Institute? And how did you get to know? Security must be as tight as ever there.”

  “Tossa had it from a man named Welland, some sort of secretary at the embassy in Prague, who knew Terrell as a good climber, and didn’t believe his death could be an accident. He began poking into the past, and he… well, he found…”

  “He found me. Quite! A Slovak, an enemy, a possible murderer. A defecting physicist-cum-mathematician on highly secret work. A little hackneyed now, perhaps, but to him convincing, I’m sure. Do you need to know the rest of it? How much do you know?”

  Dominic told him, and blushed feverishly over the telling. It was like recapitulating the plot of a sausage-machine thriller; in this clear air he marvelled that anyone should be able to view motives and actions in such crude and unlikely ways.

  “Yes, I think you do need to know everything. After your recent effort,” he said tolerantly, “I think you’ve earned it. When I went off into Savoy for my leave, to consider whether or not I should resign, I went up alone into the highest routes I could manage, and kept in touch with no one, either at home or locally. I was trying to wear myself out, body and mind, in the hope of a revelation. And just at the end of my time I was cut off in a solitary refuge in Dauphiné by bad weather and a slight injury, and kept there for a fortnight. The place was well stocked, and I was glad of the extension. But when I got down into Briançon at last, with a fortnight’s beard, burned dark brown, and much thinner than when I went up, I found out from the first English paper I bought that the hysteria of the times had turned me into a fugitive and a traitor. The main points of Terrell’s dossier on me were already in print. They hadn’t given me even two weeks’ grace.”

  “You mean,” demanded Dominic, the glass shaking in his hand, “you never ran away at all?”

  “Never until then, certainly. After that you might say I walked away. The hue and cry was out after me as I sat reading the catalogue of my offences in the middle of it. All I did was to accept the omen. No, I didn’t run, I walked to the nearest exit. It was a work of art, that dossier. No absolute lies, you understand, only double truths. Maybe it was only the work of a suggestible, ambitious mind bent on rising in his profession, and able to convince himself in the process. Maybe it was coldly and deliberately constructed, for the same personal reasons. I gather he got the Security Office on the strength of the job he did on me. He was a junior in the secretariat when I knew him. All I know is, when we ran headlong into each other he sprang back from me, and went over the edge. How do I know what he saw, and what do I care? Why go further into it now?

  “I could have come back, of course, but it would have been to a shower of mud, and a hard fight ahead of me to clear my name. The times were against me. But that wasn’t why I walked away. It was disgust I felt, not fear. And something else, too. A sense that a gate had opened before me for a purpose, and I mustn’t hesitate to pass through it. So I simply turned, without haste, and walked away again into the blue.”

  Dominic’s teeth chattered faintly against the rim of the glass. “But you must know that you left people in England convinced that you’d changed sides in the cold war. Even your coming back here would be interpreted as backing up that view.”

  “Boy, I was born here. The old lady who has the farm just over the col is my grandmother. Her home is my home. I became English at fifteen because my parents became English, at a time when I was a minor, and went along naturally with them. Don’t misunderstand me, I have nothing against being English. I have simply recognised the fact that in spite of the filling in of papers, I am not English. The process is more complex than that. I took my time over the decision, but in the end I came home.”

  “But you did bring your gifts with you. To be used here.”

  “Gifts are to be used wherever one goes. But what gifts? That attack on me was an oracle and an opportunity. For years I’d worked earnestly in government service, trying to keep my belief in the professed ideals of government, against all the evidence, forcing myself into the mould of a life for which I was never intended. It took that crisis to make me realise I’d been using my energy in the way least suitable for me, and least effective. Every man must use his own tools for the re-shaping of the world. I’ve gone back to mine. Music, tranquillity, human affection, human dignity—they can all be used to state the political truths I believe in. Putting aside, of course, the narrower meaning of ‘political’. I came home and asked them to take me back as what I am first and foremost, a composer. And they accepted me as a Slovak again on my own terms. I chose to take my grandmother’s name, which is Veselsky, simply because I didn’t want to be an international sensation or a bone of contention, in Czechoslovakia or England or anywhere else. I refuse to be used as ammunition against either of my two countries, and I need privacy and peace in which to work. They must have thought them reasonable requests—they’ve been almost too religiously respected.”

  “Then you’re giving all your time to music?” asked Dominic doubtfully.

  “You think all my time is too much? This pastoral life is only part of the picture. For composition I find it ideal here in the mountains, but there are other aspects of my life, too. I give occasional piano recitals, I do a great deal of conducting. Oh, I assure you all my time is hardly enough.”

  “No—I suppose not. But in England,” ventured Dominic hesitantly, “you had other work as well, this work with aircraft design, and all that. And that was important, too. Tossa said Welland told her you could have been Director of the Marrion. Don’t you miss all that? Don’t you ever want to get into it again here?” He had not quite the hardihood to add: “And if you don’t, why did you bring your notebooks with you?”

  Alda smiled. “I won’t say it gave me no satisfaction. I may even take it up again some day, if I do it will be in a very different way. Meantime, with only one life to spend, I’m making sure of the first essential first. Nothing is going to elbow out music a second time. But I keep in touch,” he said, meeting Dominic’s absorbed stare with faintly i
ndulgent good-humour. “I have a friend in America who keeps me supplied with technical magazines. If I ever do decide to get back into the field I shan’t be starting under any great handicap. Not that I think it likely,” he admitted tranquilly. “If ever I thought myself indispensable, I’ve been cured of that. At least one of my undeveloped ideas went into commercial production this spring with a French company—and to better effect than if I’d worked it out for the Institute. What they’d have kept it for I daren’t imagine. Prunières have incorporated it in a light helicopter for crop-spraying in tropical countries. No secrets, reasonably cheap production, and a sensible use. They’re welcome to the profit. I’m content. No doubt somebody or other will happen on all the other ideas, too, given a few years. Simultaneous discovery in music is less likely. I’ll stick to music.”

  “Then, of course,” conceded Dominic, “I suppose it wouldn’t be liable to occur to you that Terrell might have been prowling round to spy on your work. And you couldn’t guess—how could you?—that there was likely to be another death.”

  “Another death?” Alda looked up sharply. “I’ve heard nothing about a death. Surely the police would have contacted me?”

  “They haven’t had much time, it only happened last night. And then, the Terrell case would be closed for them, and they only knew the half of it, they wouldn’t connect this with you. And we weren’t as helpful as we might have been, because we didn’t know… we thought that you…”

  “That I’d killed Terrell, and might well kill someone else? Yes, I see your point. If you’ve given up that idea now,” he said grimly, “you’d better tell me just what’s happened.”

  Dominic told him the story of Welland’s death, and all that had followed it. Alda had risen, and was pacing restlessly and silently across the patterns of sunlight and shadow in the window of the hut, which faced down the valley, away from the doorway and the smooth grey scar of rock.

  “So your friend is being held on suspicion? And you came to look for me! As a valuable witness, or as the murderer?”

  “How could I know which, then? I hadn’t met you or spoken to you, all we knew was the Terrell version. Didn’t it seem the obvious thing to think at first, that you were picking them off when they got too close? We’d seen you up on the skyline there with the goats, we saw you carried a rifle—”

  “A rifle?” Alda whirled on him with a face of blank, disdainful astonishment. “I carry a rifle? I don’t think I’ve ever even had one in my hands. You’re dreaming.”

  “But I did see you with it, up on the crests,” protested Dominic, shaken. “A great long stock sticking up over your shoulder, and the barrel…”

  He broke off, hopelessly confounded. Alda had flattened his wide shoulders against the shadowy wall of the hut beside the window, and was laughing his heart out.

  “I don’t understand.” Dominic was on his feet, his face burning, a little from the conviction that he had somehow made himself foolish, but much more from the becherovka. “In any case I’d really stopped believing it was you doing the shooting, before I came up here looking for you, but I know what I saw…”

  “But you don’t! That’s exactly what you don’t know, but I do, now. This… this is what you saw.” He crossed the dim room in three vehement strides to the corner behind the iron stove, cluttered with tools, and draped with the black felt cloak he had worn in the storm, and disentangled from behind its veiling folds a long object, which he brought forward into the light from the window, and held upright for inspection, laughing still.

  It was within three inches as tall as Alda himself, and about as thick as a child’s wrist, a tube of pale wood polished by age and handling. To the back of it, at the upper end, was secured by closely plaited hemp cords a narrower pipe about two feet long, a small round mouthpiece jutting from the back of it at the lower end. It had the conscious irregularity of hand-made things, so that there could never be an exact duplicate. It varied somewhat in thickness from end to end, and was a little bowed and twisted; when Alda lifted it and set the mouthpiece to his lips the double pipe, projecting some fifteen inches above his head, curved very slightly over his left shoulder. He held it with his left hand at waist level, and fingered below at the full stretch of his right arm; and round the finger-holes carved and painted mountain boys circled, dancing.

  A gust of breathy, rustling notes came cascading out of the pipe, twining and shaking downwards in an improvised flourish, to settle deeply and sonorously into a slow, plaintive tune. It was hardly louder here, but for the reverberations from the walls, than when they had heard it descending from the hills beyond the col, through a couple of miles of mountain air.

  “This is my rifle,” said Alda, taking his lips from the mouthpiece and turning the pipe gently in his hands. “We call it the fujara—not very portable, and a little ponderous to play, because of all the over-blowing, but the queen of the pipes, all the same. The nearest thing to a gun I’ve ever possessed, or am ever likely to. Did you never hear it, down in the valley?”

  “We heard it, yes.” Dominic stretched out his hand and took the pipe, fascinated. The wood was silken smooth under his fingers. The little bandits, axes brandished above their heads, leaped like deer, legs doubled under them. “But we didn’t know what it looked like, we’d never seen one. How could we guess?” He fitted his fingers to the holes, and held the instrument against him; and it hung lightly enough, for all its bulk. “What did you call it? A fujara? It’s beautifully made.”

  “My great-grandfather made it. For a fujara it’s on the small side, most of them run close to two metres.” He laid it back carefully in its corner, cushioned by the folds of the heavy cloak.

  “So it was you,” said Dominic. “I wasn’t imagining things, you did play ‘Bushes and Briars’.”

  “Very probably. Was that what brought you up here after me?”

  “Partly that. A musician who lived somewhere in these hills and knew English songs seemed a fair bet for Karol Alda. And by then I’d begun to think that maybe the whole business wasn’t quite so obvious as it seemed, even before I knew your side of the story. I know now that you hadn’t got anything to fear, or anything to hide, so why should you want to kill Welland? But you see, somebody else has got something to hide, somebody else is afraid. And I don’t think we were wrong about what he’s afraid of. He’s killed once to keep your case from being dug up again and re-examined, and he may kill again for the same reason.”

  “Terrell’s death was not murder,” said Alda, considering him thoughtfully.

  “No, I accept that. But it started Welland off on the same trail, and Welland’s death was murder. And now that we know where you stand, and there isn’t anything treasonable about co-operating, there’s nothing to prevent Tossa and me from telling the whole truth. Will you come down to Pavol with me, and tell your part of it, too? Between us all, we ought to be able to clear up this case, and get Tossa out of trouble.”

  “I’m ready,” said Alda. “We can go whenever you like.”

  Dominic was the first to set foot outside the open doorway, on the sunlit stone under the deep overhang.

  There was a sharp, small crack. Something sheered into the weathered wall just in front of his face, and flying splinters stung his cheek. He clapped a startled hand to the place, and brought a smear of blood away on his fingers. And in the same instant Alda flung an arm about him and hoisted him bodily back into the hut in one heave, slamming the door to between them and the second bullet, as it thudded into the thick timbers where a split second before Dominic had been standing.

  “I brought him here,” said Dominic huskily, coming out of his moment of sickening shock with quickened senses. He wiped at his stinging cheek with the back of his hand, and stared almost disbelievingly at the minute smears of blood that resulted. “I got you to come down out of your clouds to help me, and now look what I’ve done! Led him straight to you.”

  “You don’t know that. Does it matter, anyhow?” Alda drew br
eath cautiously, and looked the boy over in the warm wood-darkness within the closed door. All the lines of his face had sharpened and brightened, in what might have been merely tension, but looked strangely like pleasurable anticipation. He slid past Dominic to the small, single-paned window that let in light on this side of the hut.

  “I do know. If he’d known exactly where to find you, he’d have come for you in the first place. It’s you he wants suppressed. But he did know where I was, to a bit. All I’ve done is fetch you out of cover for him.”

  “No, you’ve done something much more useful, brought him out of cover. And if he was following you, why didn’t he pick us both off while we were out on the talus?”

  Dominic’s mind was groping its way with increasing certainty through shadowy places. “He couldn’t have been following me, not closely. But he knew where I’d gone. I think… I think he was betting on picking me up on the way back, but when I didn’t go back promptly enough he came looking for me. He must have found the van. He’d know I was still up here, somewhere. If he’d arrived while we were exposed out there, we should both have had it. Therefore he didn’t. He didn’t reach these parts until we were inside here. And he didn’t know there was anyone in here until he heard the fujara. What else could it be? That would be worth investigating, wouldn’t it? He was looking for a musician. He only had to wait and see who emerged, to find out if he was wasting his time. Now he knows he wasn’t. He knows we’re both here. He’s seen us.”

  “You’re taking it for granted,” said Alda equably, his lean cheek flattened against the wall beside the dusty pane, “that he’s someone who’ll know me on sight.”

  “He’ll know you. I’m sure.”

  “And that I’m critically dangerous to him. But I swear I know of no reason why I should be.”