After the Fine Weather

by Michael Gilbert

  “I will show you to the reserved section,” he said. “It would have been better had you arrived at eleven o’clock.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” said Laura.

  “It’s quite an organization you’ve got going here,” said Joe. “I’ve been to parades all over the world, but I’ve never seen such a security turnout. Are you expecting trouble?”

  “You are with this lady?”

  “I happen to be an acquaintance of this lady. I’m not with her. I’m here on a press ticket.”

  “There is a section reserved for newspaper reporters. It is between the Andreas Hofer memorial and the public convenience.”

  One by one the soldiers in their dark-green uniforms raised their hands; one by one they gave a strangled shout which Laura took to be their declaration of loyalty to their new colours. With an English regiment the ceremonial would have seemed ridiculous; with these people, in that setting, it suddenly became impressive. She remembered her brother’s saying, “If the Russians march into Europe we shall have one front line on the Alps and another on the Pyrenees.” These men would fight on the Alps.

  The band struck up the Tyrolese national anthem, the “Landeshymne”. The long pennants rippled on the flagstaffs. The sun shone out of a pale-blue sky. It was a perfect setting for the ceremonial.

  The two wings of the stage were the old Imperial Palace, the long frontage of which formed the left-hand side of the square; and the State Theatre, on the steps of which the dignitaries were standing.

  The backcloth was the mountains; a symphony of colour, form, and movement which would have baffled a painter but might have inspired a musician.

  The spectators reseated themselves, and the first guest of honour rose to the microphone.

  Bundesminister Miller was a tall, thin, dry man who might have stepped from a boardroom in any capital city of the Western world. He was well but unemphatically dressed. His face was not exactly expressionless. It possessed, rather, a number of well-organized expressions, each one suitable for a specific occasion.

  Laura was unable to understand anything that he said, but she did realize that he was failing to grip his audience.

  The official guests sat in attitudes of polite attention, but those Lienzers who had reached the square early enough to take up a position inside the cordon, and who formed a sort of bright inner circle round the lines of chairs, were beginning to stir and chatter gently among themselves. Feet began to shift, heads were turned. The politically balanced thesis and antithesis of Dr Miller, previously drafted and agreed upon with his Cabinet colleagues, laid on a dozen editorial desks, cut and dried to a point where words meant anything that you wished them to mean, or nothing at all, drifted like thistledown over the holiday crowd. Laura transferred her attention to the theatre. It was an ugly but striking building. Builders of theatres, she reflected, having to be economical within, usually let themselves go when it comes to exteriors. This one was no exception.

  It had a massive portico, supported by three Doric columns on each side. It had two shallow flights of steps, separated by a spacious platform on which the official guests were now seated. Deserting the classical idiom, the architect had then added, at either side of the portico, a turret of a type commoner in grand opera than in life, topped by a machicolated roof and pierced by three circular windows, one above the other. The façade was coated with plaster, painted light yellow and flaking in places.

  Dr Miller reached his peroration, worked himself into a carefully regulated outburst of fury, blew his nose, ceased being furious, and sat down. Hofrat Humbold, who was seated beside him, smiled, and the guests applauded politely. At a signal from the master of ceremonies the band struck up a brisk marching tune and Laura imagined that this was the signal for dispersal. However, she noticed that no one seemed to be moving, and when the marching tune finished the crowd had lost its restlessness. Even the noisiest group, which she had observed clustered around a lamp standard immediately in front of her, had fallen silent and attentive.

  “Aussprache,” she read on her programme, “des Militärvikar Sc: Eminenz Kardinal Bischof Hubert.” And as she looked up again the Bishop was rising to his feet.

  The first surprise was that he was not an old man. The lines of austerity and self-will cut into his pale face made it difficult to judge accurately, but he was a man, she thought, of no more than fifty. The nose was thin and straight; the mouth an uncompromising slit. From under thick eyebrows a pair of burning eyes looked out at a world of lesser men. Here was no holy dotard. Here was a fighter. A man who had discarded the easy shield of compromise and tact and soft dealing; a man who, when he hit his enemies, intended to hurt them.

  At his first few words a low murmuring ran through the crowd. Laura, who had been brought up almost inside a hunt kennels, thought of hounds. The quarry was not in sight but a hint, a faint and illusive hint, of his presence had reached the keener noses of the pack.

  And in some curious way, and still without understanding more than isolated words, she knew what he was saying. He was speaking of the glories of “Heiliges Land Tirol”; of the traditions of the hardy mountain folk who lived there, a small, but very precious, fragment of the human family, isolated, in difficulties, alone – betrayed. Betrayed. She felt certain he had used that word, and as he spoke it the crowd broke into a deep, baying roar of applause.

  Laura looked at the platform. On one side of the Bishop, Dr Miller sat, impassive. On the other, Hofrat Humbold was stirring. He cast a glance, first toward the crowd, then at the other distinguished guests, a chief secretary from Vienna, the honorary colonel of the regiment, and a number of other people whose functions she could only dimly guess.

  The Diplomatic Corps was concentrating with the painful attention of men who would have to summarize and pass on to their superiors, in Paris, Berlin, London and The Hague, every word that was now being spoken.

  Laura’s attention was again attracted to the crowd. It was undoubtedly enthusiastic, but it was not entirely unanimous. References to the virtues and sufferings of the Tyrolese were applauded, but when the speaker, his eyes burning in his white face, turned his artillery on the oppressors, when he spoke – and she could hear the venom in his voice – of the “Joch der Italiener” she could sense a restlessness in some parts of the crowd.

  The group that she had noticed before, standing under the lamp-post immediately opposite to her, appeared to be conducting a private debate in counterpoint to the Bishop’s speech.

  She looked at them more closely. There were four or five men, the most noticeable of whom was a tall, black-haired character in the middle who had his back to the speaker and appeared to be haranguing the group. A smaller man had hold of his left arm and the rest were either restraining him or egging him on. Behind them the crowd swayed in sympathy. It was as if in a deep, strong-flowing current a movement of opposition had made itself felt. There was a centre of turbulence, tiny as yet but significant.

  The Bishop stood for a few seconds without speaking. It was Merlin, brooding over the spirits he had raised; an unforgettable figure, tall, aesthetic, and mischievous, a pillar of ivory topped by the scarlet flame of a cardinal’s hat.

  The eyes of every man and woman in the crowd were fixed on him; except Laura’s. She was looking at a point above and to the right of the Bishop. There, as she had noticed before, was a circular window in one of the turrets that flanked the portico. When she had first looked at it she had imagined that it was a fixed window, but she saw that this was not so. The top half, a semicircle of frosted glass in an iron frame, opened outward on a ratchet. And it was opening now, slowly but quite steadily. And through the opening something protruded, something dull black, which gave back a glint of metal.

  A voice shouted from the group in front of her. It was the tall black-haired man, who was tearing himself free from his neighbours and was waving his arm and shouting. Women screamed.

  Laura’s eyes were on the black gun barrel protruding from the w
indow. She saw it jump once, twice, as the shots came.

  The Bishop swung round in a violent gesture. It was as if he turned to face an interruption from an unexpected source. Then he went down onto his knees, and pitched slowly forward onto his face. His scarlet hat tumbled from his head and rolled down the shallow steps.

  5

  The Last of the Fine Weather

  Laura was one of the first to move. Jumping to her feet, she kicked her chair over and started out at a stumbling run toward the section where the Diplomatic Corps was seated. Her one idea was to get close to Charles.

  Then the paralysis of affront and shock snapped like an overtight string. There was a roar as the crowd surged forward, in an unreasoning reaction, a desire to move, to stamp, to grab. It was the instinct of a huge animal, wounded in one of its extremities, rolling and threshing.

  The ropes that separated the standing crowd from the seats burst, seats went over as the audience jumped up, there was a smashing of wood, and a wave of bodies lapped up against the steps of the theatre. Above the roar of the crowd rose the steady screaming of women.

  Laura missed Charles but reached the steps and found shelter behind one of the pillars. She looked down at the square. It was as though a gust of hurricane force had picked up a section of the crowd and thrown it against the steps. But in that forward surge there were already two countermovements. At one point, under the lamp-post, a private war was being waged. She glimpsed the tall, black-haired man, his arms flailing, shot up for a moment like a log in a mill-race, then submerged under the bodies of his attackers.

  In the middle of the crowd, directly opposite the steps, another and stronger movement was developing. The troops were coming in; small but determined men in green, butting, pushing and boring. As she watched, the head of the column reached the front of the steps, the officer in charge shouted, and the men turned outward, forming a cordon.

  Overhead a loudspeaker crackled and boomed, and a voice started giving orders.

  Laura found Charles beside her. His black Homburg hat was over one eye, but he looked comfortingly matter-of-fact.

  “I think you’d better get back to the flat,” he said. “There’s still a way out behind the theatre, if you jump to it.”

  “Charles, I saw it–”

  “We all saw it,” said Charles. “It was a bestial thing. They’ve got the man, that’s one comfort. I expect they’ve torn him to pieces by now.”

  “But, Charles–”

  “It was that tall black-haired man under the lamp-post. I caught a glimpse of him as he fired. He looked like an Italian. There’s going to be trouble if he was.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but Charles was already hustling her across the steps and down the side of the theatre. There was a hooped-iron fence, shoulder high.

  “I’ll give you a leg up,” he said. “See if you can work your way round to the back of the theatre. The crowd isn’t right round yet. I’ve got to get back.”

  Laura ran along the strip of lawn. The crowd, packed against the outside of the fence, had no eyes for her. They were craning and pressing toward the square, infected by a common excitement but uncertain of what had happened.

  Ahead of Laura was a second fence, flanking a path leading to one of the side doors of the theatre. She was actually climbing the fence when the door opened and someone came out. It was the pretty, blond-haired boy she had seen the night before attacking the Italian. And, as she was immediately and completely certain, it was the murderer of the Bishop.

  It was this certainty, which had no basis in logic but was the stronger for being illogical, that made her scream.

  The boy looked at her, and for a second she saw in his eyes a mixture of alarm and hatred that turned her blood cold. Then he turned on his heel, ran the few yards to the end of the path, and started to shoulder his way through the crowd.

  She found herself running after him, shouting “Stop him! Murderer!” Faces turned and looked blankly at her. Then she was herself in the crowd. A man grabbed her. She shook herself loose, hitting him in the face as she did so. Behind her someone growled out something. The boy was well ahead of her now, working his way through the crowd. As she tried to push after him a foot came out and tripped her. She went down on her knees. Two hands came down, grabbed her arms, and hauled her to her feet.

  “Better get out of here before they start getting rough,” said the voice of Helmut.

  He kept hold of her wrists and started to back out, pulling her after him in a series of jerks. People were shouting. A face looked down at her, stupid with fear and excitement. A hand grabbed her dress near the shoulder, and she heard the tearing noise as the stuff went. The next moment they were clear.

  “No need to run,” said Helmut. “They won’t chase you. They just didn’t like you treading on their toes. They’re a bit worked up.”

  They walked down one of the passages at the rear of the theatre and came out into a street of shops. Behind them they could hear the roar of the crowd, dominated by the booming of the loudspeaker.

  She said, “Would you mind stopping for a moment? I can’t–”

  She was trembling so violently that she couldn’t speak.

  Helmut put an arm under hers and steered her through a doorway. She found herself seated at a table.

  “What you need is a drink.” He shouted, and the solitary waiter, who was out in the street listening to the uproar, came reluctantly back to take the order.

  Laura took a mouthful from the glass that was put in front of her, and spluttered. It was neat schnapps. It tasted like incandescent hair oil.

  “Finish it,” said Helmut. “You won’t like it, but it will do you good.”

  “I’m all right now.”

  “What were you crashing about in the crowd for? They were beginning to get angry about it.”

  “It was the man,” said Laura.

  “Which man?”

  “He was quite young. He had fair hair, and a – rather pretty face. You know – sort of weak, but pretty. He was coming out of the theatre.”

  “And you suddenly felt an overmastering desire to chase this – what would you say? – an actor or perhaps a pop singer.”

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “It would have been no joke for him if you had caught him, I can see.”

  Laura said angrily, “Will you stop making fun of me? The man was a murderer.”

  Helmut stared at her.

  “I told you. He was slipping out of the theatre by a side door. And I recognized him.”

  “You recognized him?”

  “You remember my telling you, at dinner last night, about that gang of bullies that was beating up an Italian. Well, he was the leader of them.”

  Helmut signalled to the waiter and ordered more schnapps.

  “I’d rather have coffee,” said Laura.

  “And coffee. Now see if I can set this straight. Because you recognized this man as someone you had seen assaulting an Italian the night before, you came to the conclusion that he had had a hand in shooting the Bishop.”

  “I saw him do it.”

  “You–?”

  “No, that’s not quite right. I saw a gun being pointed at the Bishop through a gap in one of the circular windows in the turret beside the porch.”

  “Then what – a flash – smoke.”

  What had she seen? She shut her eyes. Had the gun barrel jumped just a little, as the shots rang out? When she opened her eyes again Helmut was looking at her, his head cocked, the eighth of a smile on his lips.

  “You don’t believe it, do you?” she said. “You don’t believe a single word of it.”

  “The idea in my part of the crowd,” said Helmut, “was that the shooting was done by an Italian. I didn’t see him myself, but lots of people seem to have seen him. A big man, with black hair. He was shouting and waving while the Bishop was speaking; then he pulled out a gun and shot him.”

  “There was a man.”

  “Yo
u saw him, then?”

  “He was with a group of people under a lamp-post opposite where I was sitting. But he didn’t do the shooting. That was done from the theatre.”

  “By your blond friend?”

  “Well – of course, I don’t know it was him. But if he wasn’t mixed up in it, why was he sneaking out of the theatre by the back way?”

  “Maybe he works there,” said Helmut. “He sounds a bit theatrical. Suppose he was watching the parade from one of the theatre windows.”

  “Why did he run away when he saw me?”

  “That,” said Helmut, “I agree is quite inexplicable. Hello. What’s all this?”

  There was a crescendo of noise in the street outside, and three open lorries rocketed past. Each of them was full of uniformed, steel-helmeted men.

  “Reservists,” said Helmut. “Colonel Julius is doing his stuff.”

  “Colonel Julius?”

  “Julius Schatzmann, otherwise the Grey Bear, our respected Sicherheitsdirektor, or chief of security. It was Julius himself who got onto the microphone after the shooting. Didn’t you hear him?”

  “I heard someone bellowing. I didn’t understand it.”

  The man who had served them with drinks came up and said something to Helmut.

  “He’s turning us out.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s from Italy himself. He thinks there’s going to be trouble.”

  The man, stocky and black-haired, was clearly on edge for them to go. A boy – his son, she guessed – was already swinging a heavy shutter across one of the windows.

  “It mightn’t be a bad idea,” said Helmut. He seemed in no hurry to move, however, but was lying back in his chair, feeling in his pocket for money. “I should think that the consulate would be the safest place for you.”

  “What sort of trouble?” said Laura. “What do you mean?”

  Outside, from the direction of the square, came a sharp rattling. It was as if someone had drawn a walking stick along a section of iron railing. The sound ceased as abruptly as it had started.