After the Fine Weather (10 page)

The terminals had touched, but there was no current.

After one dance she said, “Shall we go back and sit down now?” and Helmut conducted her politely to their table.

The brandy had arrived, and Laura picked up her glass, and emptied almost half of it down her throat. She had to do something to stop herself crying.

Helmut was saying something, in his courteous, level voice, but she was not listening. Her glass was empty. Helmut signalled, and Albin came up again. His smile, thought Laura, was most attractive. When he opened his lips he had small, strong teeth like pearls.

“I can see,” said Helmut, “that you liked your brandy. Might I suggest a further glass?”

“Thank you. I’d like that.”

Her voice was surprisingly steady. She was very nearly drunk, but one part of her mind, one lobe of her brain which the alcohol had not reached, was functioning with great clarity. She noticed, for instance, that there was a door in the tapestry on the wall, not far from their table. The handle was countersunk into the tapestry. She was curious about this door. At one moment, it opened inward for a fraction, as if someone behind it was surveying the room. Then it closed again.

The table next to theirs, where the clothes-peg man had sat, was deserted; but the brandy glass on it had been refilled. Odd, thought the still observant part of Laura. He didn’t look like a man who would leave a drink.

She turned to say so to Helmut, when she found that, for the first time that evening, his attention was not on her. He was listening to the sounds from the front hall. A man was shouting, in English. And Laura had a feeling that she recognized the voice.

“If you will excuse me for one moment,” said Helmut. As he got to his feet there was a crash from the hall, and Helmut started to run.

Without any clear reasoning to prompt her, Laura had got up too. All eyes were on the fracas in the front hall, which was growing. At least three people were shouting now. She took a quick step across to the tapestry, pushed open the door, and went through. The door shut quietly behind her on a counterweight.

It was a bare passage. At the end of it was a short flight of stairs which invited her to climb them. She went up, and found she was in a corridor, running at right angles to the one she had quitted. There were numbered doors on either side and a window at the end. She thought a bit about this, decided that perhaps she had come far enough, and then thought, Why not? Probably the doors were all locked, anyway. She turned a handle at random and looked in.

It was a curious sort of room, dimly lit from a cornice light, and bare of anything in the nature of ordinary furniture. At the far end, however, stood an odd-looking instrument with eyepieces, mounted on a tripod and facing the blank wall. If it had been set up at a window it might have been some sort of telescope.

She walked across and put her eyes to the eyepieces. She found herself looking, at very close quarters, at the empty chair she had left five minutes before. As she watched, half of Helmut came back into focus. He seemed bothered about something, and spoke to a pair of legs. Laura touched the eyepieces and found that they pivoted freely on a sort of gimbals. They were very high-powered, fixed-focus lenses.

She trained them around the room. The effect was extraordinary. The least movement blurred the scene. But as soon as the instrument came to rest, a very high-definition picture of a very small part of the room appeared.

This time she was looking at a lady of about forty in an extremely low-cut evening dress. Indeed, viewed from this particular angle, it was cut so low that it might not have been there at all, for any useful purpose it was serving. The focus was so fine that she could see a drop of sweat gathered between the lady’s breasts. She touched the glasses gently, and nearly cried out.

She was staring, at the closest possible quarters, at the murderer of the Cardinal Bishop.

She straightened up. Get help of some sort. Tell somebody. Do something. Go back to Helmut. He would know what to do.

She had almost reached the top of the stairs when she heard footsteps coming up.

She turned, in panic, and pulled open the nearest door.

A great, white, furious face glared at her. She had just time to recognize the clothes-peg man. Someone screamed out an oath. She jumped back into the passage, and slammed the door.

It was Albin who had been coming up the stairs, and now he stood, smiling curiously at her.

Laura muttered something, and tried to brush past him. An arm slid round her waist, and Albin said, “What are you doing up here?” His voice was husky.

“Lost my way,” said Laura. She, too, was whispering. “Let me go. Please.”

Albin’s face was very close to hers. There was a curious light in the brown eyes. The mouth, close to hers, was half open and the little tongue flicked between the lips.

“I will find a room.”

It was only then that she realized that Albin was not a boy at all. She was being held by a girl, and there was nothing innocent in the eyes looking into hers. For the next few moments events took on the quality of a nightmare. All movements were difficult. Sequence was disconnected. Impressions formed quickly, but dissolved slowly.

The girl who had hold of her was older and stronger than she was. Over her shoulder she saw, without much surprise, that the passage window was open, and that a man was climbing through it. One of the girl’s arms was pinioning her, the other was pulling the front of her dress. The man was in the passage now and was coming softly toward them. She recognized Evelyn Fiennes. The girl who was holding her either heard him or, more probably, felt the draft from the open window. She turned her head, but without releasing Laura. This was a mistake. It made her very vulnerable to attack. Evelyn started to tickle her.

Albin screamed, and let go of Laura. Evelyn picked her up in both arms, a feat he could barely manage, for the girl was almost as big as he was, and said, “Open the door, quick.” He was nodding toward the room on her right.

She opened it, and heard a second scream of rage from the fat man. Then Evelyn had thrown the girl in, and slammed die door.

“Out of the window. Don’t dither. It’s not a long drop.”

When she was halfway through, he pushed her, and she found herself on her knees in the snow. She gave a yelp as Evelyn landed beside her, one foot on her hand.

“Sorry,” he said. “Into the car.”

“I’m going to be sick.”

“There’s no time. They’ll be round here in a minute.”

His old Austin, which she recognized, was parked on a rockery. It seemed an odd place to put a car. Evelyn was already climbing into the driving seat, and she staggered round to the other side and tumbled in beside him.

He put his left arm round her to slam the door while his right hand was engaging first gear. With a double jerk, which first threw her almost into the back seat and then banged her against the windshield, the car shot forward, scuttered through a snowdrift, and slid onto the frozen front drive.

In front of the house were signs of activity. The front door was open. One man was standing on the steps and another was in one of the parked cars, trying to start the engine.

This seemed to remind Evelyn of something. He dipped his right hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a small bag, which he threw at the man on the steps. For a moment Laura thought it might be some sort of bomb, but the bag fell softly onto the snow, and nothing else happened. Then they were in the front drive, gathering speed.

As a driver, Evelyn wasn’t in Helmut’s class. When he went into a skid he started swearing, and went on swearing until the car righted itself. Twice they went off the drive altogether, on the second occasion slicing through a small hedge and carrying away part of it on their radiator.

“Camouflage,” said Evelyn. At the gate he turned left.

“The town’s the other way, beside the lake.”

“Certainly. And if you’d kept your eyes open you’d have seen two sets of headlights coming along the lake road. I can’t help feeling they’re unfriendly.”

“What could they do?”

“Arrest me for drunken driving, for a start,” said Evelyn.

In the stuffy proximity of the car she could smell the whisky on his breath. “Where does this road go?”

“Up the mountain. There’s a sort of side road off that goes back to town. If I can find it. And if it isn’t blocked by snow.”

“Now I am going to be sick.”

“Out of the window. Not over me.”

“Couldn’t you stop? Just for a minute?”

“If I did, I shouldn’t get started again. Not on this gradient.”

“What was it you threw at him?”

“At whom?”

“The man on the steps.”

“The distributor arms out of six of the eight cars. I couldn’t get the other two. The bonnets were locked. It’ll take them some time to find out which is which.”

“Was it you making a row in the hall?”

“It was. And they threw me out.”

“Then how did you get to that window?”

“You do nothing but ask questions.”

“Asking questions stops me wanting to be sick.”

“What an odd constitution you must have. When they’d slung me out, I drove away down the drive with my lights on, and came back across the lawn with my lights off. It’s as well to keep these things simple. Here we go.”

He swung the car into what looked like a snow-bank. The wheels threshed as its momentum carried it up the first, steep slope, then it was on level, frozen road, bouncing and skidding.

“Downhill now. Should do it,” said Evelyn.

The car ran into a slight depression, and the engine stalled.

“Damn and blast you, you stinking old cow,” said Evelyn to the car. “What did you want to do that for? So nearly there too.” And to Laura, “Here’s where you get out and push.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“It’s that or freeze to death.”

Somehow she dragged herself out. She pushed, slipped, sobbed, and moaned. At the last moment, when she was about to give up and lie down in the snow, the wildly rotating wheels gripped and the car pulled itself, by its bootstraps, to the top of the little depression.

“Run,”said Evelyn. “Daren’t stop. Jump.”

Then she was inside again. Oddly, she no longer felt sick. The car gathered speed, bumping on the frozen surface, slithering somehow through the softer drifts.

“Hit the main road any minute now,” said Evelyn. “Hit something, anyway,” he added, as the car splintered what seemed to be a light pole across the road and came, for a second time, to a stop.

“One more push.”

Laura climbed out, then put her head in again. “We’re on a railway,” she said.

“I thought we hit something.”

Evelyn climbed out, too, and walked forward a few yards. A second, counterweighted pole stretched across their path. For this very secondary road and branch line it was evidently considered a sufficient barrier.

“I’d better get this up. No need to do unnecessary damage. It’s probably got some sort of trick catch. Give me the torch from the glove compartment, would you?”

“Evelyn.”

“Yes. What is it?”

“You don’t think there’s any chance a train might be coming, do you?”

“Most unlikely. This is only a branch line.”

“Then what’s that noise?”

Evelyn stopped fiddling with the pole, raised his head, and said, “My God, I believe you’re right.” He looked at the car, and said, “No, I’m damned if I’m going to leave the old cow.” He stepped back, and kicked at the pole. The second kick broke the catch which he had been unable to unfasten. The pole swung up.

Blowing sparks from its funnel, a freight engine came with majestic slowness round the curve. It seemed to be towing flatcars loaded with logs.

Evelyn jumped into the driving seat, Laura jumped in beside him. He started the engine and slammed in the gear. After a breathtaking hesitation, the old car gathered herself together and shot off the railway line. The engine was still a full hundred yards away.

“What the hell did you want to get back in the car for?” said Evelyn, as they ran out onto the Lienz road.

“I wasn’t thinking,” said Laura. “It all happened so suddenly.”

“It’s when things happen suddenly,” said Evelyn, “that you need to think.”

Ten minutes later they reached the flat. The watchers in the doorway stirred, and stamped their feet, but did nothing. They had no instructions about people going in.

An anxious Charles was waiting for them in the ground-floor lobby.

“I thought I heard your car arrive,” he said. “It’s nearly four o’clock. What have you been up to?”

“Nothing, really,” said Laura. Her feet slipped on the polished floor and she fell flat on her face.

“I suppose I ought to be grateful to you,” said Laura.

It was eleven o’clock on the following morning. Her head ached, her mouth was full of grit. Her body felt as if it had been passed through a tight mangle.

“There’s no actual rule about it,” said Evelyn. “Some people do feel grateful when they’ve been saved from making thundering asses of themselves. Mostly they don’t.”

“How was I to know Helmut was on their side?”

“You first met him when Humbold brought him to dinner here, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but–”

“And you knew he was an active member of the Berg Isel Bund, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then whose side did you expect him to be on?”

“He seemed rather nice at first.” Aware that this sounded feeble, Laura added, “In fact, just the sort of man a girl does like to be taken out by.”

“It depends on the girl.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I should have thought even you would have realized by now that he was a screaming pansy.”

“Well – yes – I think I did at the end. When we were dancing together.”

“He’s got boyfriends in half the capitals of Europe.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I’m certainly not exaggerating. He’s notorious for it. His ski-team members were chosen almost entirely for their good looks. The other competitors used to call them Helmut and his Angels.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“And another thing. Do you know who his current boyfriend in Lienz is?”

“Of course I don’t.”

“Well, it’s your pal Hans.”

“Hans who?”

“Hans Dorf. Baby-face. The chap you saw coming out of the theatre. He isn’t a Tyrolese at all, incidentally. He comes from Munich.”

Laura said crossly, “If you knew all this, why didn’t you stop me going out with Helmut?”

“Because you never consulted me.”

She felt that he was being unfair, without being able to say exactly how.

“Anyway,” she said, “I still don’t see what the object was. If he didn’t want me, why did he take me out?”

“Try using those small pieces of cosmic jelly sometimes loosely referred to as your brain,” said Evelyn. “You represent a danger to the state. The state, just at this moment and until the snow melts, is Hofrat Humbold and Colonel Schatzmann. They have gone to a lot of trouble to produce a certain situation. An important part of the set-up is that Boschetto should be guilty of murder. His trial starts in two days’ time. Then, out of the blue, a witness – a highly inconvenient witness – turns up. And threatens to give evidence against them.”

Evelyn paused to stub out one cigarette and light another. Laura said nothing. She had nothing to say. In the grey light of morning, under a leaden sky, the situation which had seemed exciting, even amusing, had for a moment shown its true face. She felt in her stomach a sickness which was not entirely a legacy of the previous evening. She wished that she was a thousand miles away. She wished she was back in Rome. She was afraid.

“In the old days,” said Evelyn, “you wouldn’t have presented any problem to anyone. You would have been dropped into an oubliette and left there until people had forgotten about you. In this day and age these things aren’t so easy. There is the press. There is the UN. There is the national conscience. If a witness threatens to be inconvenient nowadays, the authorities can’t put him into an iron mask. But there are steps they can take. Other, rather more subtle, steps. They can discredit him.”

“And that was the object of last night’s manoeuvres.”

“Of course.”

“What was it – that awful place?”

“I can’t think of a single word for it,” said Evelyn. “It’s a pale carbon copy of the notorious Green House outside Berlin.”

The name stirred a faint memory. It was something an elderly diplomat had once said to Charles; some sort of masculine joke.

“The German Secret Service thought it up. It’s said to have had its origin at a time when they wanted to blackmail the Spanish Ambassador. He had – very peculiar tastes. They arranged to gratify them. And they recorded some of the more sensational moments with a concealed camera. It proved so successful that they extended it. Almost every perversion was catered to – and recorded. Sometimes the object was blackmail. Sometimes it was rather more subtle. Know your enemy and exploit his weaknesses. That sort of thing.”

“It’s just the sort of disgusting thing the Nazis would think up.”

“You can’t blame the Nazis for this one. The Green House was Bismarck’s idea.”

“Were all the waiters girls?”

“I shouldn’t think all of them, no.”

“What was meant to happen to me?”

“It depended how tight they got you. You’d have ended up in one of those little upstairs rooms.”

“I wouldn’t have gone quietly, I promise you that.”

“The harder you’d fought,” said Evelyn, “the more interesting the photographs would have been.”

Laura thought about this for a moment, and then said, “How did you know where I’d gone?”

“I bought the information. There’s nothing you can’t buy if you offer the right price. By the way, did you see that fat German – the one in the room where I shoved that waiter–”

“I saw him earlier on.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“Should I have?”

“You might have seen his picture in the papers. He’s Baron Buschli. He was Minister for Agricultural Development in the West German government. Then he resigned his post to become head man in a very curious set-up which calls itself the Institute for Rural and Cultural Studies. It’s a sort of cover name for a section of the Pan-Germanic party.”

Evelyn added, “Come to think of it, the Baron was going in for some pretty intensive cultural studies last night, wasn’t he? All the same, I’d rather deal with someone plain nasty like Buschli than someone cold crazy like Humbold.”

Joe Keller, who had called on Laura after lunch, said much the same thing. “There’s nothing nastier,” he said, “than when a ruler, or someone who’s temporarily in the position of a ruler, seems to be losing his head. When I say that, I don’t mean behaving rashly. I mean behaving madly. When he starts doing things that would get an ordinary citizen locked up.”

“It can’t last long,” said Laura. “As soon as the passes are open, they’ll bring him back to his senses.”

“As soon as – That’s what people used to say about Hitler. As soon as he goes into the Ruhr, France will bring him to heel. As soon as he touches Czechoslovakia, the world will be up in arms. What you don’t realize is that people here are still pretty primitive. And they’re right behind Humbold. A lot of them have got relatives in the South Tyrol. The difficulty was getting them started. I don’t know if you’ve ever studied chemistry?”

“Chemistry,” said Laura, “is one of lots of things I know nothing about.”

“I don’t know a lot myself. But here’s something anyone who owns a car will understand. To create an explosion, you need two things. The first is compression. The second is a spark. You got your compression when Lienz was cut off from the rest of the world.”

“And the killing was the spark.”

“That’s right. And that’s what’s making them so sore at you. Did you notice they’d doubled the guard?”

“I hadn’t looked.”

“You’ve got half a dozen men out there now. And they’ve got a field telephone, so they can call up reinforcements pretty quick.”

“They didn’t stop you coming in.”

“I don’t think they’re there to stop people coming in and out. Their primary job is to protect you.”

Laura looked at him blankly.

“I don’t suppose you realize quite how far this has gone,” said Joe. “But, getting about as I do, I hear things. People are beginning to get a bit worked up about you. What they want to do is shoot Boschetto and march into the Tyrol. In that order. Only you’re standing in the way of step number one.”

Laura said, “I haven’t done anything yet. No one’s even asked me to give evidence.” She disliked herself as she said it.

“The trouble is, such a lot of people have heard your story it’s going to look pretty funny if you don’t give evidence now.”

Laura contemplated the future glumly. “I’m beginning to wish I’d never come here,” she said.

“I wouldn’t go along with that,” said Joe. “If you hadn’t come, I should never have had the pleasure of meeting you.”

“Thank you, Joe.”

“All the same, I think it might be a sound idea, taken all round, if your brother made arrangements to evacuate you in the fairly near future.”

“You think it’s as bad as that?”

Joe said, with a careful lack of expression which Laura had begun to recognize, “I should say that, however bad things are now, they would be bound to get worse when the American and European papers start featuring my story.”

“You’ve managed to get it past the censor?”

“Not yet. No. I’m planning to take it out personally.”

“You mean my story.”

“I mean your story, yes.”

“Will people believe it? Will they publish it?”

“They’ll believe it and publish it when they see the photograph.”

“You’ve got it?”

“I’m near to it. It was taken by a local photographer called Hoffracker. I guess he knew he was onto something good. It’s costing me five hundred pounds. I had to get hold of the money in Swiss currency before he’d part with it.”

“Why Swiss?”

“I can only surmise,” said Joe, “that Hoffracker plans to be in Switzerland himself when the story breaks.”

He added, “I feel that way too, Laura.” He put his right hand around her shoulders and, as she opened her mouth in surprise, kissed her once, warmly, expertly, and with considerable passion.

Then he was gone. Laura heard the front door bang. She said, out loud, “Well, that made a nice change, anyway.”