After the Fine Weather

by Michael Gilbert

“We would not for a moment imagine that you would do anything else,” said Charles.

  “I am a policeman. You are a diplomat. We are both used to being misinterpreted. Now, Miss Hart. You were a witness of the shocking affair this morning. I understand that you have important evidence to offer.”

  Laura took her courage into her hands.

  “When you say you understand that, Colonel, do you mean that you have had some report about me?”

  “Yes, I have had a report.”

  “Am I allowed to ask from whom?”

  “You are allowed to ask.” The Colonel’s face broke into an alarming smile. “And I will tell you. It was your brother’s Italian colleague, Dr Pisoni.”

  Charles said, “It was quite improper of him to repeat a private conversation. If I had wished him to make a statement to you, we should have done it through the ordinary channels.”

  “Most improper,” agreed the Colonel. “But I doubt if Dr Pisoni was troubling about the niceties of diplomatic procedure. He was concerned with the fate of the assassin. Boschetto is an Italian-speaking citizen of the South Tyrol, and as such it is Dr Pisoni’s duty to assist him – if he can.”

  “All the same–”

  “But we are allowing ourselves to be diverted.” He turned back to Laura. “Have you any objection to repeating, officially, in front of us, what you have already said, unofficially, to Dr Pisoni?”

  She took a quick look at Charles, but there was no help there. The decision was hers.

  “No,” she said, “I have no objection.”

  “Very well, then–”

  “Just before the shots were fired, I happened to be looking at the theatre. There are three circular windows in the left-hand turret – the left-hand as you look at it, that is.”

  “Yes?” said the Colonel.

  The flat-faced policeman was writing steadily.

  “As I looked at it, it was opened a fraction, and I saw the barrel of a gun come through.”

  “What colour is the paint on the window?”

  “What – I’m not sure. Yellow, I think. Why?”

  “You were sitting – what? – thirty yards away from a window – the paint is dark green, in fact – it opened a fraction – and you saw the barrel of a gun coming through. Saw it, and were able, in a flash, to identify it. Really, Miss Hart. How did you identify it?”

  “The light was reflected from it.”

  “And if the light is reflected from an object–” the Colonel absent-mindedly picked up a silver pencil from his desk as he spoke – “it follows that it must be a gun barrel?”

  “I have quite exceptional eyesight.”

  “Most exceptional,” agreed the Colonel. “Did you see the bullets leaving the gun and flying toward the Bishop?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I think,” said Charles, “that you would be well advised to take my sister’s story seriously. Whether what she says is correct or not, she certainly saw something. It is, to put it at its lowest, an odd coincidence that it should have happened when it did. And I think it should be investigated.”

  “If I did not take it seriously,” said the Colonel, “I should not have asked you to come here. And the story has been investigated, to the best of our ability. I shall hope to be able to convince your sister that what she saw was an optical illusion – an effect of light and shade – not a reality at all.” He turned to his right-hand companion. “Inspector Moll, would you be good enough to tell Miss Hart the result of your investigations so far?”

  Inspector Moll spoke quietly. After three or four sentences the Colonel held his hand up.

  “Allow Mr Hart to translate,” he said.

  “The inspector says that immediately after the shooting he ran across, himself, to the centre of disturbance, under the lamp-post. Three men were hanging onto a fourth – Boschetto – and Boschetto had, actually in his hand – an automatic pistol, which the others were preventing him from firing. He says that he took the pistol from him and, after Boschetto had been arrested, handed the pistol straight over to the head of the police laboratory for testing.”

  “Proceed, Inspector,” said the Colonel.

  “After that,” said Charles, “he says he had a thorough search of the scene made and one bullet was found embedded in the woodwork of the pillar, about eight feet up from the base point of the pillar. The inspector says he – I didn’t quite get that bit.”

  Inspector Moll spoke at length, demonstrating with his hands.

  “Yes, I see. He cut out a small, cubic section of the woodwork of the pillar, containing the bullet, and handed it over to Dr Kippinger here. The doctor is in charge of the forensic science department.”

  Dr Kippinger said, in rusty, unaccented English, “I have the bullets.” He extracted from a briefcase a large envelope and shook from it two smaller, transparent containers.

  “This I designate ‘A’. It is the bullet that lodged near the spine of the Bishop. It was taken from the body by our pathologist, Dr Krauss, and you will see that he has identified it by his initials on the envelope. This I designate ‘B’. It is the bullet handed to me by Inspector Moll.”

  “Had he taken it out of the wood?” asked Charles.

  “No. It was still embedded in the wood, which it had penetrated in an upward direction.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I do not follow.”

  “If the inspector gave you a small square of wood with a bullet in it, how do you know what angle the bullet came from? Unless you, yourself, went back to the pillar and fitted the piece of wood into it, to see which way up it went.”

  The doctor looked surprised, and spoke to Inspector Moll, who answered him in rapid German.

  The Colonel said with a smile, “Your point was well made, Mr Hart. But it appears that the inspector, being a careful police officer, when he cut the piece of wood from the pillar, marked the top.”

  “All right,” said Charles. “I just wanted to know.”

  “I then,” said the doctor, “fired a bullet from the gun which had been removed from the prisoner Boschetto. The bullet was fired into a closed box, and recovered. I placed it with exhibit A, in a comparison microscope, and I have here photographs – they are six times enlarged–”

  He laid on the table a mounted photograph. Laura and Charles peered down at it. It looked like a stereoscopic slide, except that the two halves of the photograph were nearly, not precisely, identical.

  “If you will look closely you can see the marked similarities. The striations in the soft driving band – you observe how their sequence is repeated in both cases.” He produced another photograph. “This is the base of the cartridge that I fired, compared with the base of a cartridge found by the police in the gutter, under the lamp-post.”

  Laura looked again. Even to her eye, this time, the similarity was apparent.

  “You observe how the firing pin has struck noticeably to the left of the centre point, and with a slight inclination toward the circumference.”

  “You’re telling us,” said Charles, “that the two bullets – one of which lodged in the body of the Bishop and one of which struck him in the shoulder and ended up in the pillar behind him – that they were both, definitely, fired from the gun taken from Boschetto.”

  “That is the inescapable deduction,” said the doctor.

  “You must, I think, see the force of this,” said the Colonel to Laura.

  “I suppose so.”

  “If the assassin was, indeed, a man who secreted himself in the theatre and fired from the window, as you have described, how did he transfer his gun into the possession of a man standing twenty yards away, in full view, in the middle of the square?”

  “Couldn’t two different guns make the same sort of mark?”

  The Colonel turned to Dr Kippinger, who shook his head so emphatically that his glasses nearly fell off.

  “That is quite impossible,” he said. “Rifling marks are as distinct as fingerprints. A
nd as reliable. I have never examined bullets from different guns which have appeared even superficially alike. A modern comparison microscope measures similarities – and dissimilarities – to a thousandth of a millimetre.”

  “Reflect also,” said the Colonel, “that the first bullet lodged in the pillar eight feet above ground level. The window is – what? I have not measured it exactly, but should we say ten feet up? For the bullet to have struck the Bishop in the shoulder he must have been at least nine feet high.”

  “Unless it was deflected,” said Laura.

  “Possible. But unlikely, don’t you think?”

  “Well–” said Charles.

  Laura detected the weakening in his voice. She said, “Has anyone looked at the window?”

  There was a very slight pause. Then the Colonel said, “I am not sure what you mean, Miss Hart.”

  “I suppose it opens into some sort of room or staircase inside the turret. Has anyone been up there to see if the window has been tampered with?”

  The Colonel said something to Inspector Moll, who seemed, like his superior officer, to be taken off balance by the question. It was momentary only.

  “You have caught us out, Miss Hart,” said the Colonel. “As you perceive, we attached so little weight to your story that we did not take the very elementary step you have suggested. It can easily be remedied. Come along.”

  A police car took the four of them to the theatre.

  “I have had the caretaker telephoned. He will let us in by the stage door. The front of the theatre is still cordoned.”

  The caretaker, a sad-faced little man, met them at the stage door. He bowed to the Colonel and conducted them along passages which twisted and turned back on themselves like the larger intestine of a whale; down breakneck stairs; through a fireproof door, and out through the sheeted auditorium, into the foyer.

  Here he unlocked a small door beside the box office.

  “This leads, you understand, Herr Oberst, only to the electricians’ gallery.”

  “Understood,” said the Colonel. “Have you any lights?”

  “A moment.”

  The caretaker went into the box office, fumbled in the half-darkness, and found the right switch. A pale bulb showed them the interior of the turret, with the stairs leading upward.

  The air was stale, and there was a very faint smell of dry rot.

  At the first landing the Colonel halted. In front of him was a door. He tried it, and found it locked.

  “What is in here?”

  “It is a small room, Herr Oberst. The electricians use it for their stuff.”

  “Open it, please.”

  After some searching the caretaker found the key that fitted the lock, and pushed open the door. It was, as he had said, a very small room, opening into an embrasure in the turret.

  “Would this be the window?”

  “I think it must be,” said Laura. She stepped forward, and the Colonel said, “I should advise care.”

  It was a timely warning. The floor, the window ledge, and the window itself were thick with dust.

  The caretaker said apologetically, “Had I known you wished to come here, I would have had the room cleaned. It is a long time since it has been used.”

  7

  Evelyn Fiennes

  As Charles drove into the forecourt of the municipal buildings his headlights, probing the swirling snow, picked out some of the significant changes that had been made in the past twenty-four hours. Barbed wire, in concertina rolls, now confined approaching traffic to one double lane. Across the approach stretched a counterweighted steel girder, operated from a sandbagged, loop-holed barrier. Two troop carriers had been backed behind the barrier, and from their dark interiors he caught a metallic flash as a machine-gun swung on its tripod mounting.

  Charles produced his diplomatic pass, the sentry raised the pole, and he drove into the inner courtyard.

  When he got out he found the sergeant of the guard standing beside him.

  “Kindly not to lock your car.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Orders.”

  Charles stared at him. He recognized the sergeant, an old regular soldier.

  “What’s it all about?” he said.

  “We had trouble here earlier in the day. All cars have to be left open, so that they can, if necessary, be searched.”

  “If anyone searches my car there’s going to be twenty different sorts of trouble.”

  “I do not imagine that it will be necessary in your case, Herr Konsul. Come with me, please.”

  The building seemed full of soldiers. Some of them were regulars, but most of them were wearing the armbands of the auxiliary forces.

  When Charles was shown into his office, Hofrat Humbold indicated a chair and came to the point without further preliminary.

  “I gather,” he said, “that you are now convinced that the story being put about by your sister has no foundation in fact.”

  Charles blinked. The friendly dinner guest had, indeed, disappeared. It was the head of state talking, and talking to a very junior vice-consul.

  “I’m not sure that I’ve reached any conclusion on the point yet.”

  “You have been shown the evidence.”

  “I have been shown some evidence.”

  “What other conclusion can there be than that his Eminence was assassinated by the Italian Boschetto?”

  “I should like to correct the record in one particular,” said Charles. “My sister’s story – as you call it – is not being put about by her, or by anyone. She talked, in confidence, to me and to my Italian colleague. For reasons best known to himself, Dr Pisoni passed the information on to Colonel Schatzmann. If anyone has publicized her story, it would appear to be your officials.”

  “She has repeated it to no one else?”

  “So far as I am aware, no.”

  “Then how do you account for the fact that one of my personal aides learned of this fiction from Herr Helmut Angel?”

  “I imagine he heard it from Colonel Schatzmann or Dr Pisoni.”

  “Within thirty minutes of the shooting.”

  Charles hoped that he did not look as shaken as he felt. He decided to counter-attack.

  “Herr Hofrat,” he said, “if you, and your police, are perfectly convinced that my sister’s story is incorrect, why do you attach any importance to it at all?”

  “Do you really wish to know, or is the question a rhetorical one?”

  “I certainly wish to know.”

  Dr Humbold rose to his feet, walked across to the long window that overlooked the inner courtyard, and stood for a full minute in the shadows, looking out at the falling snow. Charles waited. Experience had inured him to the Hofrat’s theatrical devices. Nevertheless, when he finally turned and came back into the light, Charles was startled by the expression on his face.

  (He said afterward to Laura, “If you were walking with a man you didn’t know very well along the edge of a cliff, and looked up suddenly, and saw that he had just made up his mind to push you over – you’d have some sort of idea of the way he looked.”)

  “This morning,” said Humbold, “just after midday, a private car drove into the inner courtyard. The driver had a pass, and gave the name of one of our medical officers, of the Health Department. The sentry let him in. He entered the building and, as we found out later, walked straight out of it on the other side, and disappeared. By chance the sentry mentioned the matter to the guard commander, who happened to know that the medical officer in question was in Vienna. He examined the car, and found the back and the luggage compartment packed with explosives, attached to a firing and timing device in the front seat. The sergeant disconnected the firing apparatus and our experts took over the car. It was parked” – Humbold indicated the window – “immediately outside there. It contained sufficient explosives to bring down this part of the building.”

  “Allow me to congratulate you,” said Charles, “both personally and on behalf
of Her Majesty’s government, on your fortunate escape.”

  “Thank you,” said Humbold. “I gave you this information in answer to your question. You will perhaps see its relevance now.”

  “You mean that you are expecting further trouble.”

  “I mean that we are in a very grave state of emergency. All the graver, that there has been no communication with Vienna since nightfall.”

  “Snow?”

  “It might be snow, but that seems unlikely. The cable through the mountains goes underground. The snow would not affect it.”

  “Sabotage?”

  “I think it very probable. At all events, I am taking no chances. While we are isolated from the capital, I have a responsibility to the state.”

  “Yes,” said Charles. He wondered what was coming.

  “A decree has been drafted, declaring a state of emergency in the district. I am signing it tonight. Cases of sabotage and incitement to disorder will be punishable before a military tribunal. I am restoring the death penalty – for crimes against the state.”

  “Surely,” said Charles, “such very stringent measures are not called for – yet. As soon as communications are restored–”

  “Last winter we were cut off from the rest of the country for eight weeks. It was not serious, because we had easy access through the South Tyrol and the Brenner. That is not now the case.”

  “No.”

  “Are you questioning my measures?”

  “The responsibility for public order rests entirely on the shoulders of the Herr Hofrat,” said Charles.

  “I do not welcome it,” said Humbold. “Neither do I shirk it.” He added, “I am telling you this so that you will understand why your sister has to leave Lienz at once.”

  “How?”

  “She has a British passport. She may be delayed at the Italian frontier, but I hardly think she will be stopped.”

  “Yes,” said Charles. “But–” He broke off.

  “You were about to add, ‘but why?’” said Humbold. “Then you perceived that the question was a stupid one, and you refrained from asking it. I am glad that you are beginning to appreciate the realities of the situation. Would you kindly return now and make arrangements for your sister? The express train for Rome leaves at ten minutes to midnight.”