Airs Above the Ground (24 page)

Or was it? If Sandor Balog had, indeed, managed a theft of this magnitude where better could he hide such jewels than among the tawdry glitter of the normal circus trappings? If – as seemed more likely – he was just a courier for the thieves, how better get them out of the country?

So my innocent interest in the horse had pushed me firmly – and right against Lewis’s orders – into the middle of this dangerous affair.

And that it was dangerous there could be no manner of doubt. If Sandor had taken my word for it and gone down again to the stable, I could have made my way to the servants’ wing for help before he found that the jewels had gone and came back to get them – and me. But he was taking me with him; I should be in the stable with him – alone with him – when he took the saddle out from the bin and found it stripped of its treasure.

One more thing was certain: for Sandor there was a great deal at stake. Tonight he had shown how ruthless he could be, and I had no doubt that he was prepared to be worse than that. This, I was sure, was a man easily capable of murder.

Murder
. . . On the thought, the last of the facts fell into place: the burnt-out wagon and the dying words of Franzl the horsekeeper; the insistent mumble (misinterpreted by Lewis and Annalisa) about ‘Neapolitano Petra’s saddle’. Franzl might (as Annalisa had imagined) have been trying to confess the theft of the horse; but the insistence on something as trivial as the saddle implied that, in the moment of dying, he had forgotten that the horse’s name meant nothing to them, and was trying desperately to pass on the discovery for which he had been murdered, and Paul Denver with him. It seemed that the Piebald story had, after all, held a hotter clue than we had dreamed of, to Lewis’s ‘mystery’.

And what had been worth two deaths to Sandor Balog then, might be worth another now.

Well, no jewels were worth a death. And every minute of delay brought Lewis closer. I said quickly: ‘Just a minute. This saddle you’re taking so much trouble for. I know why you want it.’

That stopped him. ‘What do you know?’

‘I know about the jewels you’ve stolen. That brooch that Elemer gave me that came off the saddle, that was one of them, wasn’t it?’ I would have liked to startle him further by telling him that I had recognised the jewels, but I had no wish to endanger the old Count by hinting that he had known the brooch. Nor was I going to risk my own neck by knowing too much about Franzl. I went on rapidly: ‘You gave it away when you tackled me tonight outside Annalisa’s wagon; why should you care what happens to a piece of glass off a saddle? And now coming up here after it, it’s obvious, I’d be a fool if I didn’t see. Well, it’s nothing to do with me, they’re not my jewels, and I’m certainly not going to risk anything for them. If you do drag me down to that stable now and I show you the saddle, it won’t do you much good. You don’t think I wanted to take that saddle all covered with circus stuff, do you? I took the jewels off.’

‘Jewels,’ he said. ‘Jewels. You took the jewels off the saddle?’

‘Yes, I did. I offered to put them in a box and send them back to Annalisa at Innsbruck but she said she didn’t want them. You can take them; as far as I’m concerned, you can take the lot. Only just get out of
this room and leave me alone. You’ll be across the frontier in a few hours, so why should you worry? Just go away now and take them with you.’

He was still staring as if I had taken leave of my senses. Then I saw the flicker of calculation behind the narrow dark eyes, and acted quickly, concerned not to let him begin thinking. If I could satisfy him by giving him the jewels, hustle him somehow out of the room, get that massive door locked on him . . . He might imagine himself safe, ready to cross the border within a matter of hours, with only me and Timothy – foreigners, and comparatively helpless – knowing something about him. It wasn’t much of a hope, but it was all there was. It surprised me, in the fleeting moment I had to be surprised, that Lewis and the weight of his Service should be after a crime of this nature, but if this was indeed Lewis’s quarry I wasn’t fool enough to think that I could deal with him. I knew what Lewis himself would want me to do: stay safe, wait for him, and then help him to lock himself on to Sandor’s wake.

I swung quickly round to the dressing-table, dragged open a drawer, and lifted out the glittering pile of stones which lay bundled in a clean handkerchief. I hoped he wouldn’t notice that the sapphire brooch wasn’t there.

For the first time, I approached him of my own will, and, ignoring the pistol, thrust the bundle at him. ‘Here you are. This was what was on the saddle. Now get out, and I hope it chokes you.’

He made no move to take them. Then suddenly he
laughed. It was the sound of quite spontaneous amusement.

I said, disconcerted: ‘What’s the matter? Why don’t you take them?’

He said contemptuously: ‘Jewels? Those are jewels only fit for a horse. Or perhaps a woman. Now, don’t waste my time.’

Then, as I stood with the things still cupped in my hands, gaping at him, he reached out one of those narrow calloused hands and scooped three or four of the stones from the bundle. He rolled them in his palm, so that they glittered and shone in the lamplight, green and red and something topaz yellow. He laughed again.

‘An emerald, and a ruby, and – what, a yellow diamond? Oh yes, they are very fine, these crown jewels of yours.’ Then suddenly the smile was gone, and that white-toothed animal look was back. ‘These are glass. Fool. Do you think I would waste my time over such things as these? Even if they were real, what kind of market would there be for these things in my country? People over there don’t want jewels, they want dreams, yes, dreams . . . beautiful dreams for the damned . . . You can always sell dreams.’ With a flick of the wrist he sent the stones flying. I heard them hit the floor and roll away behind the window curtain.

I said: ‘You’re crazy.’

‘Perhaps. And now we go.’

I backed away as far as I could, and came up against the dressing-table. ‘And if I refuse?’ My voice was
breathless. ‘You really think you could get away with shooting me?’

‘Oh, this.’ His glance down at the gun was almost casual. ‘I should not shoot you. That was just to frighten you.’ A twist of those strong fingers and the gun was reversed in his hand. ‘I should hit you with it, see, knock you out, and then . . .’ A gesture towards the window . . . ‘It’s a long drop, I believe.’ He smiled at me. ‘The only reason I don’t do it now is because I still want that saddle, and I don’t trust you, my pretty lady.’

He had moved over to the door while he spoke, and his hand was on the knob, ready to ease it open. He slanted his head, listening. Then the narrow black eyes glinted at me, and he said softly: ‘Now, tidy the bed and pick up your nightdress. Don’t go near the telephone . . . That’s right. And pick up those jewels. We want the room to look as though you’d dressed and gone out of your own free will, don’t we?’

I obeyed him; there seemed nothing else to do. After watching me for a moment, he pulled the door open quietly, and now was half through it, listening intently for any sound in the corridor. I could hear nothing. I stooped to pick up the red stone. The other two had rolled beyond the heavy curtains which masked the turret embrasure. For the moment, satisfied with my obedience, he wasn’t watching me; all his attention was on the silent spaces of the corridor. My shoes were light and made no sound on the carpet. I reached casually through the curtains as if to pick up the other fallen stones . . .

He didn’t turn. As silently as I could I slid between the curtains into the dark embrasure, and then like a flash I was fumbling at the catch of the little door that gave on the battlements.

. . .
Blinkin’ in the lift sae hie
.

Robert Burns:
Willie Brewed a Peck o’ Maut

It opened without a sound, and I slipped out. I could hardly hope to have more than a few seconds’ start – in fact, I think I hardly even hoped to escape this way, but my flight had been purely instinctive. There was nowhere else to go.

If I could get the key silently from the lock, and relock the door again on the outside, I could not imagine that he would risk making the noise necessary in forcing it or shooting it open. I had no idea what the time was, but if he had come up after the second house was over, most of the circus would be already on its way. He might well cut his losses, gamble on my having spoken the truth, go down for the saddle and hurry away with all speed.

But I didn’t have time to put this lightning theory to the test. Even as I grasped the key to pull it from the lock, he realised what I was doing. I heard a quick exclamation from the room beyond the curtain, and the creak of the floor as he started after me.

I whipped out, slammed the door behind me and ran along the narrow walk behind the battlements.

The moonlight was hard, brilliant, merciless. It showed me my way clearly, but as clearly it showed my running form to Sandor. I was barely two-thirds of the way along between the battlements and the steep-pitched roof to my right, when I heard the door yanked open behind me and his urgent voice, ‘Stand still or I’ll shoot!’

I don’t know whether I believed the threat or not: I didn’t take time to think about it. I could feel terror between my shoulder-blades, but I never paused. Like a bolting hare, I ran headlong for the little door that I had seen in the second tower

I heard him leap the steps, clear down to the stone walk. He landed lightly as a cat. Three more strides and I was at the tower. The door was the duplicate of the one in my own turret. I stumbled up the steps, seized the handle and pushed with all my strength. The door was locked.

I whirled, momentarily at bay, the palms of my hands pressed hard against the door behind me. He was coming. He was half way over. He had thrust the gun into his pocket and both his hands were free.

For one crazy moment I thought there was nowhere to go but straight up the steep slope of the tiles beside me. I suppose it might have been safe enough; they were dry and I was rubber shod, and if I had slipped I would only have fallen back to the walk. But Sandor was on the walk.

And below the battlements was darkness, and empty space, and the distant deep river . . .

Then I saw the steps, a little curved flight twisting up on the outside of the tower and round behind it; the stairway I had noticed earlier in the day, and had forgotten. It went up, not down, but it was the only way to go. I was flying up it, and round the curved wall of the turret and out of his sight, before he had reached the bottom step.

They talk about people being winged by fear. I suppose I was, and it must be remembered that Sandor, athlete though he was, had put in two strenuous performances that night. I know that I gained on him up that dreadful twisting spiral. On the moonlit side it was easy, and even when we twisted back into the black shadow of the side away from the moon, it seemed I couldn’t put a foot wrong, though I heard him stumble and waste his breath in an ugly expletive, and once he paused, gasping, and called out another threat or command. And then the little staircase whipped round the last curve of the turret and, it seemed, shot me out on to the open leads of the top of the castle.

I was past thinking. I didn’t even dare pause to see where I was or what was ahead of me. I had a vague impression of moonlit leads broken by peaks and slopes of tiles tilted and shining in the moon, like icy steep-sided mountains shouldering their way up at random out of a plain; of gold-crowned pinnacles and turrets, of cowled chimney-pots and carvings like great chessmen set out round the edges of the roof, and here and there the great tubes of open chimneys, like ranked cannon blindly raking the sky. In the hard
washed moonlight, it was like some nightmare world without plan or relevance.

I ran for the nearest cover, a great stack of chimney-pots, with beyond them the reassuring scarp of a steep-pitched roof.

The leads were ridged, trip-wire ridges, some two or three inches high, every six feet or so. I jumped one of them safely enough and swerved to avoid a broken chimney-pot which was lying lodged against the next.

He was near the head of the steps now. He’d seen me. He called something else in that furious breathless voice.

I could just see his head and shoulders; his feet must have still been five or six steps down. I don’t remember thinking at all; it was pure instinct that made me check, turn, stoop for the piece of chimney-pot, and with both arms and all my strength, heave it over the ridged leads and send it rolling straight for the top of the steps.

It went true. It hit the head of the steps with a clatter, and hurtled straight over them and down. It must have caught his legs and swept his feet from under him, for his head and shoulders vanished with a crash, a slithering, and a flurry of breathless oaths, and I heard the flimsy iron railing creak as his body was thrown against it.

I didn’t wait. As I dived for the shelter of the chimney-stack, I heard the pot in its turn hit the iron railing, then, seconds later, crash somewhere on the cliffs below, and later again, the dwindling crash and tinkle of the fragments falling piecemeal to the river.

Then I was past the chimney-stack and dodging quickly among the steep rooftop shadows.

I had gained time, but I certainly couldn’t hope to dodge him for long, nor hide from him for any length of time in that exposed confusion. What I had to do, and fast, was to find a way down. He would – equally certainly – make sure I couldn’t get down the way I had come, but where there was one outside stair, there might well be two . . .

Running still swiftly, but as softly as I could, I dodged past two enormous stacks, through the covering shadow thrown by a hexagonal roof, and ran for the battlements beyond. If there were any stair, I thought it would be on the outside. I had, in fact, some hazy memory of having seen such a stair, but where it was I couldn’t in my confusion and terror remember.

The turret with the stairs up which we had come had been at the south-eastern corner of the castle, at the junction of the central hotel block and the south wing occupied by the Count and Countess. As soon as I had gained the shelter of the chimneys I had turned north, for it was in the north wing that the servants slept, and where I might expect to find help. Moreover, I hoped that the other corner turret, at the north-east, would have a stairway, the twin of the first, by which I might get down into the north wing.