Above Suspicion (28 page)

She could not have risen if six storm troopers had come thundering up the stairs.

Frances awoke with a feeling of compulsion. She had something to do. She lay in the strange bed and looked round the room for the first time. Slowly she began to remember what had happened last night. Her hand went to her hair; it felt dry and coarse. So it hadn’t been a dream… And there was Richard, with his hair cropped like that of a child who has had fever. He was still asleep; his arms were thrown above his head; his face was relaxed: She looked at the cracked ceiling, at the limp curtains drawn over the window. Why had she awakened, what was it that had to be done?

Frances felt herself slipping into sleep again, and caught herself just in time. There was something she had to do. Her eyes fell on her handbag which Richard must have brought upstairs last night and thrown on to the rickety little table under the fly-spotted mirror. That was it, of course. The money. A sudden fear that she was already too late to meet Bob Thornley
urged her quickly from the warmth of her bed. After the first dizziness—she had probably moved too quickly—she felt all right. Her body had recovered surprisingly from yesterday’s punishment; even the shoulder was healing nicely.

Richard’s watch told her she had ample time. She washed and dressed quietly. She searched in her handbag, and powdered her face and lips so that her natural colour was hidden. Then she removed all traces of powder with her handkerchief. With the dull-brown hair and the subdued face there was quite a difference. She could do nothing about her eyes, though. They were larger and bluer than ever. However, unless she met someone who really knew her there was little chance of her being identified with the fair-haired English girl whose description was no doubt being circulated. She combed her hair with a centre parting, pinning the ends tightly into a knot at the back as the woman had done last night. Before she left the room she found Richard’s Baedeker in his jacket pocket and verified from its Innsbruck map the best way to reach the Franciscan Church. At the door of the room, she stopped. Some small change might be useful. With a suspicion of a smile she searched Richard’s pockets, and took half of what was left. It would be just enough to pay for a ride in a tramcar and the admission to the church, if there was one. She kissed Richard lightly. He didn’t even stir. She closed the door gently and went quietly downstairs.

Lisa was in the sitting-room. She seemed surprised.

“I thought you would sleep all morning.”

“I must go out.”

The woman shook her head disapprovingly.

“I must get money for the journey.”

The woman accepted that. “You had better have some coffee, first,” she said. “I’ve just had a cup. I’ll get one for you.” She went into the kitchen.

Frances waited, and looked at the little room, and the corner of the badly kept garden at the back of the house which she could just see from her seat at the table. Lisa was not unkind, but there was a certain business-like attitude which paralysed any conversation. Frances was glad of that; she was somewhat self-conscious about her Bavarian accent. She drank the coffee, and looked at the patch of garden. She felt a kind of excitement inside her. She would have liked to have given a war whoop— but Lisa was there. Her matter-of-fact kind of sanity smothered Frances’ impulse, and she contented herself with looking at the garden and having another cup of coffee. She rose to leave.

“Not that way,” said the woman. “Go out by this door: across the yard. Keep near the wall, under the trellis, and it will shelter you. Enter the door at the other end of the path. Walk through that house, and you’ll find yourself in a shoemaker’s shop. Just say as you pass that Lisa sent you. You’ll be all right.”

“Would you tell my husband that I’ll be back about twelve?”

The woman nodded, and threw a
Loden
cape lightly round Frances’ shoulders. “Leave this in the shop,” she said. She didn’t wait for Frances to thank her. She was already carrying the coffee cups into the kitchen. As she turned to push the door open with her hip bone, she smiled—a friendly, encouraging smile. And then the kitchen door closed behind her. Frances turned towards the door in the living-room which she had thought was a cupboard door. It led on to a narrow paved path beside a high wall, from which a coarse green climbing plant
stretched greedily over the trellis above her head. In front of her were the back of the houses on the next street.

Everything happened as Lisa had said it would. The cobbler in the front shop scarcely paused in his work as Frances slid the cape on to the counter. He didn’t seem to hear her words. Outside in the street, there was the usual activity of a respectable working-class neighbourhood. Housewives carried shopping bags made of knotted string. Children were grouped round doorways. Boys cycled wildly. Some of them wore a kind of uniform, others the usual short leather breeches and white stockings. She walked with increasing confidence to the end of the street. If she followed the tramlines from there, she would reach Museum-Strasse, and then it would be easy to find the church. It was the long, but the safe, way and she had plenty of time.

The walk was not unpleasant. In the busier streets she felt still safer. She was just another girl dressed in another dirndl. At the corner of the narrow street which led to the square on which the church stood, the traffic was heavy. Frances tried to avoid two women whose breadth filled the narrow pavement. She was swept against the window of a shop. Climbing boots, sports things, she noticed, and then, with her eyes still fixed on the window, she collided with a girl coming out of the shop’s doorway. She was a tall, blonde girl, her arms filled with parcels.

Frances halted in amazement, and then stepped aside with an apology. The girl remained standing, her eyes on Frances’ face, but Frances hurried on. It was Anni, looking just as she had looked in their garden at Oxford on her last night there.

“I looked at her too directly. She half recognised my eyes, or perhaps she saw that I knew her,” Frances thought. She
glanced at her reflection in another window. She couldn’t see much resemblance to herself, but she would have to watch her eyes, and her way of walking too. It was much too smooth. She would have to set her heels more firmly on the ground, in a kind of jaunty march. As she turned the corner to enter the church, she looked back over her shoulder. Anni was still there, and, as Frances looked, she made up her mind and started towards the church. Frances already regretted that afterlook. What a fool she was. She quickened her pace and hurried up the steps of the building.

Inside there was the usual crowd of Saturday-morning visitors. She paid the admission to a man with heavily pouched eyes and a drooping moustache. At least that would prevent Anni from following her inside the church: she had never spent a penny more than she could help in Oxford. Perhaps Anni was already thinking she had been mistaken.

In the nave where the Maximilian monument was she saw Thornley. He was standing, appropriately enough, in front of King Arthur’s statue, with a catalogue in his hands. It was good to see him again, looking so untroubled, so completely unconscious of everything. She wandered round the statues as the other visitors did. She didn’t look at him as she rudely passed in front of him to reach Theodoric the Terrific, King of the Ostrogoths. When she had admired sufficiently she walked slowly towards the little chapel. Thornley was seated in the shadows. As she moved slowly towards him, he rose, and they passed each other without a glance.

The catalogue had been left on a chair. She sat down beside it, her wide skirts spreading over it. She waited while the other visitors came and went. Some sat down, some tiptoed about
talking in penetrating whispers, others knelt. After long minutes she dared to move her fingers under cover of her skirt and feel for the small fat envelope inside the catalogue. Slowly, without any visible movement, her hand pulled it out and folded it into her palm. It was done. It was over.

She reached the street, and slipped the scarf off her head. As she tied it round her shoulders she slipped the envelope into the bodice of her dress. Under the fringe of scarf it wouldn’t be noticed—and it felt safe. There was no sign of Bob. But there was Anni. She had got rid of her parcels, and had been sitting in the little square of trees opposite the church. She had seen Frances; she was almost running across the street. Frances bit her lip. There were two storm troopers standing in front of the church steps. If she avoided Anni, their attention would be attracted. There wasn’t any time, anyway. The men had already noticed Anni’s haste and were watching her with casual interest.

Frances made her voice enthusiastic. “Anni! I haven’t seen you for weeks! How are you?”

Anni looked at her in amazement; she was speechless. It was the accent which had dumbfounded her. It was no longer the carefully spoken German which she had heard in Oxford. Frances was glad of the silence. She began to walk along the pavement, her hand on Anni’s arm warning her with some pressure. They were passing the two troopers, whose interest had become more anatomical.

“How are your mother and father?”

“Quite well,
gnä
—” The pressure on Anni’s arm stopped her politeness.

“And your brothers?”

“Also well.”

“And your sister?”

“The same.”

They had passed the two men safely. Frances relaxed.

“Cheer up, Anni. You look so worried.”

Anni suddenly led her across the street towards the garden in the square. In the quietness there, she faced Frances.

“O
gnädige Frau
!” She looked as if she were going to cry.

“Cheer up, Anni. It’s all right. But don’t call me that.”

Anni said, “I knew something was wrong. I have been so worried about you.”

“How?”

They were both talking in undertones, pacing slowly under the trees. Anni blinked back her tears.

“I knew you were here in Innsbruck about a week ago. One of my brothers has a friend. He is the handyman in the hotel where you stayed. He knew I had lived in Oxford, of course, and he told me about the two English guests who came from there. That was how I found out that you were here.”

“That was Johann, wasn’t it?”

Anni’s cheeks coloured. “Yes. When he learned I had lived with you I made him promise not to tell my family that you were here.”

Frances was surprised. “Why, Anni?”

Anni looked confused.

“My sister always disbelieved me about England. When I told them about your house and clothes she would only laugh. If she had learned you were staying in that place she would have made fun of me to everyone.”

“We stayed in
that
place because we like the old town, Anni,” Frances said gently. That was true. They had chosen
to live in the old town when they had last visited Innsbruck, although the hotel then had been an innocent place compared with their choice this time.

Anni looked relieved that Frau Myles was still smiling.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s what Johann told the police today.”

Frances almost stopped walking.

“Anni, tell me all you know.”

“I saw Johann this morning. We usually meet when I cycle into the town.” Anni blushed again, and hesitated, but Frances waited in silence. “Early this morning, the Gestapo came to the hotel and searched and questioned. They asked very particularly about you and the Herr Professor. Johann only knew that you came from Oxford and that you were on holiday.”

“What about the owner of the hotel?”

“He left the hotel just after a telephone call came for him very late last night. No one has seen him since. So Johann was in charge when the police came. They seemed very angry.”

Frances said nothing. Mr. Smith seemed to think of everything, she thought, even of the fact that their travels in Germany and Austria would be retracted. She would have liked to know how he had got that telephone call through to Kronsteiner without giving himself away. Possibly it had come through another agent… But if there had been a ghost of a chance left for their simple-traveller story, it had vanished along with Kronsteiner. His disappearance would confirm all the suspicions against them. Anni’s face grew more worried as she watched Frances walk so silently beside her.

At last Frances asked, “Do the police know that you were with us in Oxford?”

Anni shook her head. “Johann never said anything about
that. He didn’t want to mention my name.”

“I am sorry that we met today, Anni. I had better leave you now; it is too dangerous for you.”

“But,
gnädige Frau,
I must help. What is wrong?”

“We must leave Austria at once.”

Anni was silent. Then at last she said, “Johann could lead you over the mountains.”

“Into Germany? That’s worse still.”

“He also knows the South Tyrol. He was born there. He escaped over the mountains when the Italians were conscripting the Austrians for the war in Abyssinia.”

“That border is now heavily guarded.” What was it that Schulz had said last night when she was half-asleep…something about advising the mountains rather than the train, if she hadn’t been so exhausted… But she was all right now; Herr Schulz wouldn’t hesitate to advise them to go by the mountains if he saw her today. She disliked the idea of the train, for in a train you were trapped in a box.

Anni was. speaking again. “But there is a way, if you know the mountains. Johann knows.”

Frances was tempted. But she said, “No, Anni. Besides, Johann must not risk anything for us.”

“He would do it if I asked him.”

“No, Anni. better not. Don’t tell anyone that you have seen me; not even Johann.”

Anni was still searching for some plan. “I can’t ask you to come to our house. My sister hates the English although she has never known any. My brothers would not help. They are afraid, like my parents.”

“Thank you a thousand times, Anni. But you must not help.”

Anni began to cry. Frances watched her tears with distress.

“Please don’t, Anni…we shall be all right.”