In the consular office, Evelyn was saying to Charles, “The average Lienzer simply doesn’t know what to make of it. The young Austrians are solidly behind Humbold. They’re queuing to join the Security Force. They are issued armbands and truncheons, and go round looking for people to hit on the head.”
“It sounds like Berlin during a putsch.”
“Or London during the general strike? Anyway, the arrest of Radler and Hammerle has shown people that Humbold means business. I don’t think anyone knows quite how far he intends to go.”
“Does he know himself?”
“I’m not sure. He could be a thoroughgoing, Nazi-inspired, Pan-German fanatic, with backing from Munich and the Ruhr. There’s an outfit in Munich which calls itself the Institute for Folk Culture and the Preservation of Historic Institutions in South Tyrol. They’ve got money to spare, most of it subscribed by Ruhr industrialists as a measure of tax evasion. This is the sort of lark they’d back to the hilt.”
“Or else–?”
“Or he might just be mad.”
The telephone rang, and Charles picked up the receiver. It was a one-sided conversation. After three or four minutes Charles managed to say, “I don’t think I should do anything just yet. I’m going to try to get round to all our people this afternoon and this evening, to explain the situation to them.”
“That was Colonel Cracker,” he said. “He’s one of our oldest residents. He tells me that he and his wife have a service rifle each, and a hundred and forty rounds of ammunition. He’d like to use them, too.”
Charles had not reappeared by half past one, so Laura ate a solitary lunch. The snow had stopped falling, and the sky was like a damp, grey blanket. It looked close enough to touch.
“More snow this evening,” said Frau Rosa. “Perhaps you will sleep this afternoon.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much else to do,” Laura agreed. The radiators, now at full blast, had raised the temperature of the flat to an uncomfortable degree, and she had a headache. “I might lie down.”
She was taking her shoes off when she heard the front doorbell ring; then the murmur of voices; then Frau Rosa knocked on the bedroom door.
“A visitor for you,” she said.
Laura put her shoes on again, went out, and found Joe Keller in the drawing-room.
“Am I glad to see you!” she said. “Did you have any difficulty getting in?”
“No difficulty getting in,” said Joe. “That’s the advantage of an apartment block. Anyone can slip in with the crowd.”
“You were right, weren’t you?”
“About what?”
“Your nose for trouble.”
“Oh, that. I have to confess that that wasn’t entirely intuition. We had a tip-off in Rome that there might be trouble when the Cardinal Bishop came down here. He was a hellraiser all right, wasn’t he?”
“He looked a very sincere man.”
“It’s the sincere men who are dangerous,” said Joe. “Give me insincerity and a quiet life.”
“I should have thought this was just the sort of situation you revelled in.”
“Ordinarily, yes. But there are circumstances here I hadn’t taken into account.”
“Such as?”
“Such as all the roads out being snowed up, the only available railroad track being blown up, and the wires being either cut or blocked, and the wireless under state control. You have to hand it to Colonel Julius. He got a security cordon round this state so quick – so goddam quick – you might have thought he’d got it all worked out in advance.”
Laura had not been looking at him. Now she turned her head, and found his blue eyes on her, candid and guileless.
“I suppose,” she said, “that he might have been expecting trouble – in a general sort of way, I mean.”
“It’s feasible,” said Joe. “I don’t believe it myself. But, then, no one pays much attention to what a newspaperman believes. By the way, would you care to tell me your story yourself?”
To her fury she felt the colour creeping up her neck and cheeks.
“I didn’t know it was public property.”
“It’s not as public as all that,” said Joe. “I had to pay a lot of money to get hold of it. It’s a good story. I’d say it’d be front-page news everywhere, if only we could get the damned thing out before it goes flat. What we really need’s a carrier pigeon. A flock of pigeons. Did you actually see the gun?”
“Look here,” said Laura, “I’ve been officially warned to keep my mouth shut. I’ve been unofficially deported. I’d be out of the country now if the railway was working. If I start making statements to the press, there really will be a row.”
“I most solemnly promise you that you won’t be quoted as an authority, at least not until you’re clear of this country. And me too. That’s a promise, Laura.”
She was startled, for a moment, that he should have used her Christian name. Then she recollected that he was an American. She said, “Tell me how much you know already.”
“The story is that you saw someone poke a gun out of a window in the theatre, and time his shots so that he was covered by Boschetto. The big Italian was just a stalking-horse. They needled him into waving his arms and shooting his gun off, but they knew he hadn’t a hope in hell of hitting the right man. So they took care to have someone on the spot who would hit him.”
“If you know that, you might as well know the rest,” said Laura. “When I was getting away from the crowd I saw a man coming out of the theatre. I’m as sure as I can be that he fired the shots.”
“Know him to recognize him?”
“Certainly.”
Joe pondered. “It’s a great story,” he said. “The greatest. It could even be true.”
“What do you mean? Of course it’s true.”
“I was thinking of presentation,” said Joe soothingly. “Not of essential veracity. A great newspaper story hasn’t got to be actually true. It’s got to seem possible.” He reflected. “Once the idea got about that this was a Nazi-backed plot, people’s minds would go right back to Van de Lubbe – the Reichstag fire – you remember?”
“I wasn’t born when that happened. But I know what you mean. It’s not quite as easy as that, though.” She told him about the bullets.
“You could fake evidence like that,” said Joe. “And I don’t mean that you’d have to bribe all these professors. Not necessarily. Suppose you knew beforehand just what gun Boschetto was going to be carrying. He’d been in jail. All right. You know he’s got a gun hidden somewhere. And you know that he’ll go and pick it up as soon as he gets out. Maybe you have the place where he’s hidden it under observation, to make sure he does pick it up.”
“It’s quite possible.”
“But you’ve been there before him. You’ve had the gun out, fired two or three bullets through it, and preserved them. You bury two of them in the frontage of the theatre.”
“How do you know where?”
“You’re organizing the parade. You know where the speaker’s going to stand. He can’t move away from the microphone.”
“How do you know where Boschetto’s going to be standing?”
“A certain amount of control would be needed there. My guess is, they got at his friends.”
“If only someone else had seen the gun,” said Laura.
“Someone else did,” said Joe.
Laura said, “For goodness’ sake–”
“Not a human eye. The eye of a camera. He was being photographed from half a dozen angles, remember. Cine-cameras, ordinary cameras, telescopic lenses, the lot. I had maybe a couple of hundred negatives brought to my office immediately the show was over. They knew I’d give big money for a good one. Most of them were focused sharp on the speaker, but in one of them – it was one of the first batch I looked at – the focus had slipped. The Bishop was a blur – but there was lots of lovely sharp details of the theatre. I didn’t look at it closely, because I hadn’t heard your story, but I
remember that one of the windows – it was the lowest window in the left-hand turret – it was open, a small way, at the top, and something was projecting.”
Joe paused, his eyes shut and his mouth half open. He was visualizing the photograph.
“Boy,” he said, and his voice had dropped almost to a whisper, “if we could get that photograph we could put it on every front page in the world.”
“It might be an interesting exhibit at Boschetto’s trial too.”
“It might be that.”
“Can you get hold of it?”
“I’m on the track. Luckily I wrote down the names of all the people who showed me photographs. I got them down in the order they arrived in my office. I know this was one of the first two or three batches. I’ll have to do some legwork here. Everyone’s scared of talking on the telephone.”
“If you find it, what are you going to do with it?”
“I’ll find some way of getting it out,” said Joe. “Come to think of it, though, it mightn’t be a bad idea if you were clear of the country before it appeared in the world’s press.”
“Curiously enough,” said Laura, “the identical thought had already occurred to me.”
Charles had had a busy afternoon. There were about forty English families in and around Lienz, and these he visited in turn, trailed by a Volkswagen containing two large young men in glasses. He found little alarm. The general view was that Humbold had overstepped the mark and that as soon as communications with Vienna had been restored he would be put in his place.
Colonel Crocker was not so sure. He and his wife, a small, fierce, yellow woman of sixty, had set up house together in many strange and unrestful corners of the globe.
“There’s something brewing,” said the Colonel. “I can smell it.” Unlike Joe Keller, he had a nose which had evidently been constructed for smelling out trouble, a great, long, angled beak, with tufts of white hair sprouting from each nostril like smoke from the barrel of a revolver. “Last winter, when we had less snow than this, we were cut off for six weeks. A madman can do a lot in six weeks.”
“You think he’s mad, Colonel?”
“Most foreigners are mad.”
It was not the least trying part of a stiff afternoon and evening’s work that each of the families he visited insisted on brewing him a cup of tea. It would have given offence to refuse it. By the time he reached home it was nearly seven o’clock. He was swilled and bloated with tea. He remembered reading in a medical journal that tea tasters often died, quite young, of kidney disease.
Outside the door of the block of flats a Fiat was parked which he recognized, through the gently swirling snow, as belonging to his Italian colleague, Dr Pisoni. The doctor was at the wheel himself and looked reproachful.
“I have been waiting for you,” he said.
“Was I meant to be meeting with you?”
“I spoke to a young man in your office.”
“That would be Evelyn Fiennes.”
“He sounded as if he was intoxicated.”
“I don’t think he’d be drunk quite as soon as that. And he couldn’t have got hold of me anyway. I was moving around. What’s up?”
“I sought permission to see the prisoner Boschetto. It has been granted.”
“That’s a step in the right direction.”
“I would be very happy if you would come with me.”
Charles sighed. What he desired at that moment, more than anything, was to take his sodden shoes off his aching feet, to put on his slippers, and to drink a glass of whisky. On the other hand, the half-dozen members of the Diplomatic Corps in Lienz had a tradition of acting together in moments of crisis.
“All right,” he said. “Where is he?”
“At police headquarters, in the Greitestrasse. Leave your car here, if you like. I will drive you.”
As the cell door was opened by the policeman, and Inspector Moll showed them in, Charles had in his mind various images of political prisoners – emaciated men, with straggling beards, chained to walls. What he was not prepared for was a normal-looking, apparently contented Italian, eating a dish of pasta, with a mug of wine beside his plate.
Boschetto raised his eyes when they came in, but he did not get up, nor did he discontinue his eating.
Dr Pisoni spoke to him in Italian. Charles had a serviceable knowledge of the language and could follow the opening exchanges. Yes, Boschetto had been well treated after he had been rescued from the crowd. He agreed that he had been carrying a gun – for his own protection. Many people in Austria did the same. Yes, he had heard about the death of his brother. (And seemed, Charles thought, singularly unmoved by the news.) No, he had no complaints. He had been informed that his trial would take place in a few days’ times. Yes, he had been given a lawyer to help him prepare his defence. He mentioned the name, Professor Ciresa, and Dr Pisoni nodded approvingly. The professor, himself a South Tyrolese, he explained to Charles, was a well-known jurist and would certainly do his best for the prisoner.
At the end Boschetto said something in rapid Italian. Dr Pisoni looked surprised, and said something back which Charles again missed.
“I didn’t get that.”
“He says that Professor Ciresa has advised him to speak with complete frankness. He says that it will be his best chance.”
“I suppose so.”
“Particularly, he should be frank about his accomplice.”
“Had he an accomplice?”
Dr Pisoni put the question. A long pause ensued. The prisoner’s embarrassment was evident. Then Charles caught Boschetto looking at him out of the corner of his eye, and realized that it was his presence that was troubling him.
Dr Pisoni said, “I think he does not want to answer that question.”
9
Laura Has a Night Out
In her second to last report on Laura (not the final one; that was always conceived in terms of kindly optimism) Miss Sennett had written: “Sometimes she thinks before she acts. Sometimes she does not.” After a gap, which indicated a pause in her thoughts, she had added, in her neat handwriting: “I do not really know which is the more dangerous.”
On this occasion Miss Sennett could not have accused Laura of lack of thought. She thought hard, weighing the displeasure of her brother against the delights of a night out with so accomplished a host as Helmut. She thought long; from half past four, when Frau Rosa brought in tea in a flowered china teapot and savoury toast in a plated dish, until half past seven, when there was still no sign of Charles.
If he isn’t back by a quarter to eight – she thought. And then, If he isn’t back by eight o’clock –
At ten past eight she scribbled on a piece of paper: “I am having dinner with Helmut, at the Elisabeth in Rudolf-Strasse. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be home in good time.”
Then she collected her coat and hat and started to explain things to Frau Rosa.
The old lady grasped the essentials.
“You are going out to dinner.”
“That’s right. You remember the gentleman who was here the first night–”
“With a young man.”
“He isn’t really very young.”
“You will eat good food at the Elisabeth. The cook is French.”
“Lovely,” said Laura. “See, I’ve left a note for my brother. What I wanted to know was if you could show me the back way out. You remember what you said this morning. The dentist–”
This took a little more putting across, but Frau Rosa got there in the end. Not for nothing had she served as housekeeper to four successive bachelor vice-consuls.
“You are dining with a young man, and you do not wish the police to know. I will get my key.”
It was not at all plain to Laura why Frau Rosa should have a key to the dentist’s office on the ground floor, but she undoubtedly had one. And a few minutes later they were crossing the room. The chair was swathed in a white sheet, the dread instruments locked away in a steel-and-glass cabinet. Th
e kitchen door was only bolted. It opened onto a tiny, empty courtyard containing a fig tree and walled on three sides.
A farther door was unlocked. Beyond it lay a similar courtyard, but this one was crammed with crates, boxes, cartons, and bottles. From beyond a lighted entrance came a clatter of voices.
“We go through here,” said Frau Rosa, and before Laura could protest she found herself in a crowded kitchen. Frau Rosa waved to one of the women and walked straight through. Laura thought that the occupants of the room looked at her curiously, but no one spoke to her. The next minute she was in the foyer of a restaurant.
“Very simple,” said Frau Rosa. “For the police I have contempt.”
Helmut was waiting for her inside the door of the Elisabeth. He removed her coat, handed it to a waiter, and led the way to a table. She saw at once that Helmut was a good person to go out dining with. If he had owned the Elisabeth, its staff could not have jumped more smoothly to his bidding.
“I hope you are going to like this,” he said. “With some girls I should not have dared. They would have turned up their noses at anything but gin.”
“What is it?”
“It is Chambéry. A French vermouth. It comes from the foothills of the Alps.”
It was pale, pale yellow, the colour of a young girl’s hair; and as cold as a young girl’s heart. It did not taste alcoholic.
“I am glad that you were able to get away tonight,” said Helmut. “I feared very much that your brother might forbid it.”
“I haven’t seen him since breakfast time,” said Laura. “I don’t see why he should object, do you?”
“It is true that the situation has become much calmer. As long as the people feel that their leaders are taking decisive action on their behalf, they will not be restive.”
“And do they feel that?”
“Certainly. I do not think that his worst enemy could accuse Hofrat Humbold of lack of drive.”
“He’s got drive all right. The thing is, where is he driving to?”
After the Fine Weather Page 9