After the Fine Weather

by Michael Gilbert

  He was back on top of her, but now he felt quite different. He was a dead weight. The black eyes were open, but they had stopped flickering and shifting. They had a look of serenity, as if their owner had, at long last, found what he had been seeking.

  Blood was dripping, warm, onto her bare skin. It seemed to take her hours to get out from underneath his weight. Further hours to saw through the rope round her ankles. Then she was at the door of the cave, crouching and looking out.

  It was still light enough for her to see the path. It lay directly below her. She started to slither down toward it, catching her foot and wrenching her ankle, and crying out; but going on.

  Then she was on the path, going forward at a stumbling run. She passed Rudi, stepping over his outstretched legs with scarcely a glance. Her full meal of horrors had left her no room for the least morsel more.

  Ahead of her the last, red light of the dying sun slanted along the crest, marking it as sharply as if it had been the end of the world.

  Then she was looking down, into a great pit of luminous darkness. Below her, far, far below her, lights were winking, the friendly lights of Italy. She knew that she could never get there. They were as distant as the stars.

  It was the cold that drove her on; the cold, and the instinctive feeling that if she stopped moving she would be finished.

  Time lost its meaning. She remembered falling twice, and on the second occasion finding it difficult to get up; she remained on her knees, the tears rolling down her cheeks. Then, placing the palms of her hands on the snow and forcing herself to her feet, she staggered on once more.

  It was after this, but how long after it she had no idea, that a small, dark figure seemed to rise from the ground in front of her, and a sharp voice said, “Dove andate? Da dove venite?” After that things became confused. There were voices, and there were lights, bright lights, which hurt her eyes, but soft voices which spoke the Italian she understood.

  Then she was in a different place. Two soldiers in green uniform were holding her under the arms, supporting her. They lowered her into a chair, beside a table. On the other side of the table sat a stout major. She recognized the uniform he was wearing. Lorenz had once pointed it out to her. She was pleased with her cleverness in recognizing it and said, out loud, “Alpini.”

  The officer looked surprised. Then he stopped talking and rose to his feet, and came round the table. She thought he was going to hit her, and flinched back into the arms of the soldiers. He peered intently at her face and said, in stiff English, “Your name, please.”

  She had forgotten a great deal, but she could manage that.

  “I’m Laura,” she said. “Laura Hart.”

  The Major said, “So?” Then he leaned forward and kissed her, first on one cheek, then on the other. It was an accolade. Then he started shouting, and men came running, and things became very confused. And then she was in a car, and then she was in a bedroom and a woman was helping her to strip off the filthy tattered remnants of her clothes and was giving her some tablets to swallow.

  Hours, days, months later she was brought up out of the abyss of sleep by the sound of knocking. She lay there, with her eyes shut. There was something she had to do. Of course. She was going to stay with her brother, Charles, in Lienz, and she had asked the night porter to wake her, so that she could catch the Rome-Vienna express. What a party they had had the night before. How persistent Lorenz had been. How her head ached.

  She opened her eyes, and the present came rushing back. She was in a neat little bedroom, panelled with pinewood. The knocker had opened the door and come in. It was a woman she remembered seeing vaguely the night before. And she had a pile of clothes in her arms. She said, in slow Italian, “We have hot water for you. The signora must hurry. The car comes in an hour.”

  In her bath, which was a long iron coffin in a sort of box-room, Laura examined her body. Her feet and legs were cut, and her right ankle was still swollen. There were bruises on her stomach and breasts, which were beginning to turn black, and there was caked blood down the front of her body. The blood, as she discovered when she had washed it off, did not belong to her.

  The clothes were an approximate fit. She had a feeling that they had belonged at one time to the Major’s wife or, possibly, to one of his girlfriends. She was finishing the coffee that had been brought to her room when she heard a car draw up.

  As she hurried down she suddenly remembered that she had no means of paying for anything. Her money, her passport, and a few personal possessions had been in a satchel, which might now be lying anywhere, in ten miles of mountain. It seemed odd to own nothing at all, not even the clothes she stood up in; odd, and curiously refreshing, like being born again.

  The Major was waiting for her, and she tried to say something about money, but he waved it away and handed her into the car. He was driving himself, and he took her, fast, down miles of descending roads, into a town which she saw was called Tolmezzo.

  There was a crowd at the railway station, and when she got out they started clapping and waving hands. She thought, at first, that the Major must be a very popular character, and then it seemed that she was the object of their attention.

  She was still puzzling over this when the Major reappeared, forced a way through the crowd, which was growing thicker every moment, and handed her up into the train.

  It was an empty, first-class carriage, and the guard was smiling at her, and locking the door on the corridor side. On the seat was a lunch basket and a pile of newspapers.

  As if it had been waiting only for her, the train whistled and started. Laura lowered the window to wave to the kindly Major, and was surprised at the roar of welcome that greeted her. She continued to wave, since it seemed to be the thing to do, until the figures on the platform were a blur, whirled away as the train swung round a curve.

  She took up the first paper, and found she was looking at her own face, enormously enlarged.

  She recognized the photograph. It had been taken in the garden at home. She could see the French windows half open, and the handle of the garden roller. She wondered how an Italian newspaper could possibly have got hold of it, and then remembered that she had given a copy to Lorenz. There was another photograph below it. It showed the front of the theatre and it showed too, clear enough even in the fuzzy reproduction, a gun sticking through the bottom of the turret window. As Laura read the story, it dawned on her that she was a heroine. Alone, and threatened by the powers of a police state, she had stood up for the truth, and vindicated it. More, by her courageous stand she had delayed the plans of a dictator, had delayed them fatally; had given the central power in Vienna time to restore control.

  “The safety of the South Tyrol,” said Il Popolo, “lay in her small hands, and she did not let it fall.”

  Laura looked at her small hands. They were cleaner than they had been, but they were still grubby, and the nails badly needed attention. Small hands. Black hands. Hands like the pad of a dog.

  The newspaper slipped off her lap, and onto the floor.

  When she woke up she realized she had been asleep for a very long time indeed. Her mouth was dry, and her head was swimming with sleep. It felt like late afternoon, or early evening.

  The guard reappeared with a carton of coffee. She gathered that she was now alone in the coach, which had been switched twice while she slept, once at Udine onto the Carinthia Express and again at Bologna onto the Rapide.

  “Like the dead, you are asleep,” said the guard. “Like the dead.” Laura was astonished to see that there was a tear in the corner of each of his brown eyes.

  She asked where they were, and gathered that they would be in Rome before long. “Una mezoretta,” said the guard.

  It was twenty minutes after this, and they were running through streets, when the train slowed and stopped. The door swung open, and Joe jumped in.

  “Am I glad to see you!” he said, and kissed her warmly. She was happy to listen to him, and felt no desire to talk,
until she remembered something, and said, “Did you kill them?”

  Joe, who was describing a press reception planned for that evening, looked at her blankly.

  “The photographer. The one whose shop was burnt down. And the frontier guard.”

  “Certainly not,” said Joe. “The photographer was dead when I got there. And if his shop was burned down, it was done after I left. As for the frontier guard, he fell down and got his skis crossed. He may have broken an ankle. Why?”

  But Laura found it difficult to say that she had seen so many violent deaths, four in the last two days, that even a single life spared, a single person alive who might have been dead, was a comforting item on the credit account. Being unable to explain this, she said nothing, and the train slid into the echoing cavern of Rome Central Station.

  After that things got telescoped. There was a huge crowd. There were civic dignitaries. There was a colonel of carabinieri in a cocked hat. There were scores of newspapermen and hundreds of photographers. There were lights, and shouts, and a good deal of jostling, and over all the steady whirring of newsreel cameras. Then she was safe, in an enormous car, and a young man, in a neatly cut tweed suit who looked like a much younger version of Evelyn, was sitting on the seat beside her.

  “We’re going to the Embassy,” he said. “Sir Harry wants to have a word with you before you make a statement.”

  “Have I got to make a statement?”

  “I think it’ll be expected of you. The thing Sir Harry wants to impress on you is that we don’t want to offend the Austrian central government, or the Lienzers. They’ve settled all their differences now, and the last thing we want to do is to exacerbate them.”

  He looked absurdly young; younger even than Charles. And rather nice.

  “If I’m going to give a press conference,” she said, “I shall have to have some proper clothes. Do you think you could get me some?”

  He said, “I think I could manage, if you could let me have your – er – particulars.”

  He, looked so splendidly correct as he said this that Laura couldn’t help laughing. And after a moment he laughed too. They were both laughing as the car turned in at the gates of the British Embassy.

  Michael Gilbert Titles in order of first publication

  All Series titles can be read in order, or randomly as standalone novels

  Inspector Hazlerigg

  1. Close Quarters 1947

  2. They Never Looked Inside alt: He Didn’t Mind Danger 1948

  3. The Doors Open 1949

  4. Smallbone Deceased 1950

  5. Death has Deep Roots 1951

  6. Fear To Tread (in part) 1953

  7. The Young Petrella (included) (short stories) 1988

  8. The Man Who Hated Banks and Other My (included) (short stories) 1997

  Patrick Petrella

  1. Blood and Judgement 1959

  2. Amateur in Violence (included) (short stories) 1973

  3. Petrella at Q (short stories) 1977

  4. The Young Petrella (short stories) 1988

  5. Roller Coaster 1993

  6. The Man Who Hated Banks and Other Mysteries (included) (short stories) 1997

  Luke Pagan

  1. Ring of Terror 1995

  2. Into Battle 1997

  3. Over and Out 1998

  Calder & Behrens

  1. Game Without Rules (short stories) 1967

  2. Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens (short stories) 1982

  Non-Series

  1. Death in Captivity alt: The Danger Within 1952

  2. Sky High alt: The Country House Burglar 1955

  3. Be Shot for Sixpence 1956

  4. After the Fine Weather 1963

  5. The Crack in the Teacup 1966

  6. The Dust and the Heat alt: Overdrive 1967

  7. The Etruscan Net alt: The Family Tomb 1969

  8. Stay of Execution and Other Stories (short stories) 1971

  9. The Body of a Girl 1972

  10. The Ninety-Second Tiger 1973

  11. Flash Point 1974

  12. The Night of the Twelfth 1976

  13. The Empty House 1979

  14. The Killing of Katie Steelstock alt: Death of a Favourite Girl 1980

  15. The Final Throw alt: End Game 1982

  16. The Black Seraphim 1984

  17. The Long Journey Home 1985

  18. Trouble 1987

  19. Paint, Gold, and Blood 1989

  20. Anything for a Quiet Life (short stories) 1990

  21. The Queen against Karl Mullen 1992

  Synopses (Both Series & ‘Stand-alone’ Titles)

  Published by House of Stratus

  After The Fine Weather

  When Laura Hart travels to Austria to visit her brother, vice-consul of Lienz in the Tyrol, she briefly meets an American who warns her of the mounting political tension. Neo-Nazis are stirring trouble in the province, and xenophobia is rife between the Austrians who control the area and the Italian locals. Then Laura experiences the troubles first-hand, a shocking incident that suggests Hofrat Humbold, leader of the Lienz government is using some heavy-handed tactics. Somewhat unsurprisingly, he is unwilling to let one little English girl destroy his plans for the largest Nazi move since the war, and Laura makes a dangerous enemy.

  Anything For A Quiet Life

  Jonas Pickett, lawyer and commissioner of oaths is nearing retirement, but still has lots of energy. However, he leaves the pressure of a London practice behind to set up a new modest office in a quiet seaside resort. He soon finds that he is overwhelmed with clients and some of them involve him in very odd and sometimes dangerous cases. This collection of inter-linked stories tells how these are brought to a conclusion; ranging from an incredible courtroom drama involving a gipsy queen to terrorist thugs who make their demands at gunpoint.

  Be Shot For Sixpence

  A gripping spy thriller with a deserved reputation. Philip sees an announcement in The Times from an old school friend who has instructed the newspaper to publish only if they don’t hear from him. This sets a trail running through Europe, with much of the action taking place on the Austro-Hungarian border. The Kremlin, defectors, agitators and the People’s Court set the background to a very realistic story that could well have happened …

  The Black Seraphim

  James Scotland, a young pathologist, decides on a quiet holiday in Melchester, but amid the cathedral town’s quiet medieval atmosphere, he finds a hornet’s nest of church politics, town and country rivalries, and murder. He is called upon to investigate and finds that some very curious alliances between the church, state and business exist. With modern forensic pathology he unravels the unvarnished truth about Melchester, but not before a spot of unexpected romance intervenes.

  Blood & Judgement

  When the wife of a recently escaped prisoner is found murdered and partially buried near a reservoir, Patrick Petrella, a Metropolitan Police Inspector, is called in. Suspicion falls on the escaped convict, but what could have been his motive? Petrella meets resistance from top detectives at the Yard who would prefer to keep the inspector out of the limelight, but he is determined to solve the mystery with or without their approval.

  The Body Of A Girl

  Detective Chief Inspector Mercer is called to the scene when a skeleton of a girl is found on Westlaugh Island in the upper reaches of the River Thames. What appears to be a straightforward and routine investigation, however, leads to unexpected events and a string of unlikely characters, including a lawyer and a one armed garage proprietor. Nothing seems to fit together and it seems the sleepy town holds many secrets. The finale involves two nights of dramatic violence and it isn’t until this stage is reached that the twisted truth finally emerges.

  Close Quarters

  It has been more than a year since Cannon Whyte fell 103 feet from the cathedral gallery, yet unease still casts a shadow over the peaceful lives of the Close’s inhabitants. In an apparently separate incident, head verger Appledown is being pers
ecuted: a spate of anonymous letters and random acts of vandalism imply that he is inefficient and immoral. But then the notes turn threatening, and when Appledown is found dead, Inspector Hazlerigg is called in. Investigations suggest that someone directly connected to the cathedral is responsible, and it is up to Hazlerigg to get to the heart of the corruption.

  The Crack In The Teacup

  Barhaven is on the south coast within commuting distance from London. It is, however, a fairly sleepy place and it seems incredulous that it could be the kind of town where the local councillors could manage to line their own pockets. However, there is something odd about the borough engineers behaviour, and it seems strange that the owner of the local amusement park is unknown, and the Town Clerk himself is acting peculiarly. Enter a young lawyer, who finds himself at the centre of a major campaign against racketeering. The public and the press become involved and it ends with a twist that is totally unexpected.

  Death Has Deep Roots

  This is a detective and trial story with a complicated plot that will grip the reader. Victoria Lamartine is on trial for the murder of her supposed lover, whom she is accused of having stabbed. There are only five suspects including Lamartine. But evidence that doesn’t fit the police theory of the crime has been ignored, whilst all of the damming evidence is presented in isolation. Intriguingly, whilst the murder was committed in England, all of the suspects somehow have a past connection with France and its wartime underground. However, there now appears to be links to gold smuggling and it is not immediately clear how all of the different pieces of evidence fit together. As always, Gilbert neatly takes the reader to a satisfying final twist and conclusion.

  Death In Captivity

  A suspected informer is found dead in a collapsed section of an escape tunnel being dug in a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy. So as to protect the tunnel the prisoners decide to move the body to another that has already been abandoned. But then the fascist captors declare the death to be murder and determine to investigate and execute the officer they suspect was responsible. It therefore becomes a race against time to find the true culprit and Captain Henry "Cuckoo" Goyles, a former headmaster, master tunneller and sometime amateur detective takes on the case.