The Numbered Account (21 page)

‘Then shall I come down to them, or were it better that they come up and see me here? There are people in the
Kleine Saal
, aren't there?' (The
Kleine Saal
was the small hall or lounge containing the telephone-box; the Bureau opened off it.)

‘Jawohl.'

‘Well then bring them up to me here, in the lift—that will be less noticeable. Don't worry,' she said, seeing the big kind woman's troubled expression. ‘You will see, there will be no unpleasantness.'

‘It is
höchst unangenehm
that they come to the trouble the Fräulein at all,' Hanna said indignantly. ‘All this nonsense about passports! But it is perhaps better so—though
das Fräulein
should not have to receive strange men in her bedroom.' She went out, and returned in a couple of minutes with two large, pink-faced, countryfied policemen, whom she ushered into that exceedingly small room, with its single wicker armchair, the two rugs on the waxed floor, and the wooden bed with its white honeycomb quilt. ‘Shall I remain?' she asked earnestly of the English girl.

‘No, dear Fräulein Hanna; I thank you, but do not give yourself this trouble,' Julia said easily. ‘Very probably I can help
diese Herren
better by myself.' This was of course said in German, and the two pink faces manifested a simple but evident relief. Hanna, casting a baleful glance at them, went out.

‘Also, meine Herren
, how can I be of service to you?' Julia asked—as she spoke she sat down in the solitary chair. ‘I wish I could ask you to be seated, but as you see there is only the bed.'

The Beatenberg police did not fancy sitting on the bed;
they stood. It was only a formality, the slightly senior one explained—could they see the Fräulein's passport? Julia produced this, and the man wrote down her name and the passport number, in a black note-book.

‘And the Fräulein entered Switzerland when?'

‘The date is
gestempelt
,' Julia said patiently. ‘Allow me to show you.' She took the passport and showed him the entry stamp, nearly four weeks previously.

‘And since then the Fräulein has been where?'

At dictation speed Julia gave him all her movements: Gersau, with her host's name and address; La Cure at Bellardon; the Hotel Bergues at Geneva; Bellardon again, Gersau again; and finally here at Beatenberg. All policemen write incredibly slowly; so did the Beatenberg worthy, poising his note-book on the small bed-table—however, at last he closed it with an elastic band.

‘And
das Fräulein
expects to remain here?'

‘For the present, yes. But,
mein Herr
, I would like to make one request of you.'

‘And that is, Fräulein?' He looked suspicious at once.

‘That you do not cause the Polizei in Gersau to disturb Herr Waechter with their enquiries. He is a very old man, and it might upset him to have the police calling at the house and asking him about his guests. This cannot really be necessary—you know that I am here, and since when, and the police at Bellardon have already verified my presence there at La Cure, on the dates I have given you.'

A slow look of surprise gradually disturbed the bland pinkness of the older policeman's face.

‘And may I ask how the Fräulein knows this?'

‘But because the Herr Pastor himself telephoned, only now, to tell me so!' Julia said merrily. ‘He asked if I had been stealing edelweiss on the Niederhorn—he has laughed very much.'

The two policemen grinned a little, though evidently shocked by such levity. ‘
Die Edelweiss
are not yet in bloom,' the younger one added seriously.

‘
Nicht?
But please hear me,' Julia pursued earnestly. ‘With the old Herr Waechter it will be otherwise; he will
not laugh, he will be greatly distressed. If it is really essential that you verify my presence in Gersau on these dates, can it not be arranged that the
Polizei
there speak only with his servant Anton—Anton Hofer? He is in the house for twenty years. I beg this favour of you.'

Julia's earnestness, and probably also the doves' eyes which she turned on the two bucolic policemen, gained her point. ‘It shall be done as the Fräulein desires,' the older one said. ‘Have no anxiety.
Schönsten Dank, Fräulein
, for your co-operation.' They bowed themselves out, rather awkwardly, past the end of the bed.

Julia was just wondering whether she ought to ring up Herr Waechter herself, and warn him, when Anni, one of the waitresses, came in to say that
die alte Dame
was about to take tea in the garden, and desired to know if the Fräulein would join her? Julia ran down, and found Mrs. Hathaway and Watkins sitting at a table on the gravel, under clipped chestnuts, which constituted the garden of the Silberhorn.

‘I thought we would have tea out here, as it's so fine,' Mrs. Hathaway said, ‘but perhaps it was a mistake. The tea Watkins makes for me upstairs is much better than this.'

‘Swiss tea is Hell,' Julia said, dispassionately—‘it was even at the Bergues. I suppose it's because it isn't their drink—coffee yes, tea no. And hadn't we better have some sandwiches or bread-and-butter instead of these ghastly
Kuchen?
' She had bitten into one of the dismal cakes supplied by the hotel, and as she spoke flung the remainder over the low terrace wall into the hayfield below. ‘Shall I go and order?' she asked—she knew that Mrs. Hathaway was now drawing an invalid's allowance, and was not limited to £100.

Mrs. Hathaway, laughing, said Yes; Watkins beamed; Julia ran in to Fräulein Hanna and asked for tongue sandwiches and bread-and-butter and honey to be sent out at once. ‘And how went it with the
Polizei
?' the Swiss woman asked.

‘Oh, they couldn't have been nicer; just a technicality,' Julia said, reassuringly.

‘They should not have come,' Hanna said. ‘The older one is my cousin—I shall speak with him at Mass on Sunday. Troubling good, polite,
excellent Herrschaften.'
Julia, laughing, returned to the garden; there she found Antrobus sitting at the table, and the tea-tray littered with botanical specimens. As he rose to greet her, she experienced an almost frightening pang of pleasure.

‘Oh, how do you do? Bringing your finds to be identified?' she asked teasingly, to conceal her delight.

‘Do look, dear child—Mr. Antrobus has brought me the Astrantia and the red Cephalanthera,' Mrs. Hathaway said exultingly. ‘And Sweet Woodruff—you know it grows in the Cotswolds; smell how fragrant it is.' She held up a small flower rather like the common Bedstraw, only larger, with frills of leaves in sixes all up its stalk.

‘Yes—delicious,' Julia said, knowingly squeezing the stem as she sniffed.

‘They make a drink of it here with white wine,' Antrobus said; ‘they call it
Mai-Kop
. And the peasants call the plant itself
Waldmeister'.

‘Master of the Forest is a much more imposing name than Sweet Woodruff,' Julia observed.

‘I've sometimes wondered if it mightn't really be the same idea,' Antrobus said—‘“Woodruff” merely a corruption of “Wood-Reive”, the Warden of the Wood.'

‘How charming; that had never occurred to me,' said Mrs. Hathaway. ‘I shall look it up when I get home. They make a drink of it in Austria too,' she added, ‘only there they call it
Mai-Bohle.'

Julia again smelled the potent scent of the small flower—she liked to think of two different nations using the delicate, precisely-shaped little plant to make a spring drink, and calling it by two such pretty names as May-cup and May-bowl. ‘I wonder if it grows here,' she said—‘if I could collect enough I'm sure Fräulein Hanna would make us a
Mai-Kop.'

‘It's rather early for it as high as this,' Antrobus replied—surprising Julia, who had not yet grasped that the seasons in Switzerland depend partly on altitude, and that
a difference of three thousand feet may also mean a delay of two or three weeks in the flowering of plants. ‘But the woods round Interlaken are full of it,' he went on; ‘if I can I'll bring up a good bunch tomorrow.'

‘Then you must bring it up in time to have the brew made, and stay and dine,' Mrs. Hathaway said happily; she was greatly taken with Antrobus.

‘I should be delighted to do that, if—if I'm not called away,' the man replied, for once showing a trace of embarrassment.

‘Oh, are you leaving?' Mrs. Hathaway asked, a note of chill coming into her voice. She belonged to a generation which was accustomed to having its invitations accepted or refused, but not left hanging in the air.

Antrobus did his best.

‘Dear Mrs. Hathaway, I hope very much both to be able to bring you the Sweet Woodruff tomorrow, and to dine with you and drink the product. But I am not altogether my own master.'

‘Oh.' A pause. ‘Then who is your master?' Mrs. Hathaway asked, implacably. Julia listened enchanted to Mrs. H. turning the heat onto the detective—what would he say? She might learn something.

What he said struck the girl at once as being a cover-story.

‘My master is one of these modern Juggernauts, the Press-Barons,' he said. ‘They are very arbitrary, and quite unpredictable.' He put this out with a rather graceful aplomb, but Mrs. Hathaway, unmollified, regarded him with a steady look which had all the quelling effect of an Edwardian dowager raising her lorgnette to her face. The very fact that she so liked and approved of this man made her all the more severe, now that his behaviour fell short of her standards.

‘Oh, you are a journalist?' she said at length. ‘I should never have suspected it.'

Nor should I, and I don't believe it for a moment, Julia thought to herself—if that was all he was, why had Nethersole made such a fuss when she asked what he did, at
lunch at the Palais des Nations? But she saw Antrobus, at the old lady's tone, actually blush; the ready unconcealable blush of a fair-skinned man. She intervened.

‘Mrs H., dear, what's wrong with being a journalist? Aren't I one?'

‘Not very seriously, my dear—and only with a very nice Press Baroness!' She turned to Antrobus. ‘Well, if Lord X., or Lord Y., or Lord Z., whichever your so needlessly ennobled “master” is'—she put a sardonic stress on the word master—‘leaves you free tomorrow evening, it will be delightful to see you at dinner. 7.30. Won't you have another cup of tea?'

Not unnaturally in the circumstances, Mr. Antrobus declined a second cup of tea; he took his leave rather hastily, striding out of the garden on his long legs, got into a large car which he had parked near the cow-stable across the street, and drove off. Watkins excused herself at the same time.

‘I never saw a car like that before,' Julia said, as she watched him go. ‘I wonder what on earth it is.'

Mrs. Hathaway was often unexpected—she was now.

‘It's a Porsche' she said. ‘I've seen them in Vienna. Porsche was the man who designed the Volkswagen, and afterwards he made this car too—on the same principle, but bigger and faster. An Austrian friend was telling me about it. Rather expensive for a journalist, I should have thought—they're practically racing cars.'

‘Mrs H., what a lot you know! But I think you were rather hard on that wretched man,' Julia said.

‘Mr. Antrobus? Why is he wretched?'

‘He wasn't, till you made him so. I expect he has quite a sunny nature really,' Julia said, trying to sound casual.

Mrs. Hathaway studied her young friend with a speculative eye. Why this concern for Mr. Antrobus?' She spoke carefully.

‘My dear, I am sorry if I have distressed you on his account. I was taken by surprise—his neither accepting nor refusing an invitation was so unexpected, in him.'

‘I daresay he really couldn't help it,' Julia said. In fact
she had learned nothing from Mrs. Hathaway's pressure except that Antrobus could lie, but not very well. And would he come to dinner tomorrow, after this? She did want him to.

They sat on for a little while, deliberately talking of other things, while the air cooled, and the white peaks across the lake turned to a richer gold; the pine-forests on the slopes in front of them assumed a quite extraordinary colour—a sort of rosy bronze, but with the deep softness of velvet. The white-and-yellow hotel cat came stalking out and sprang and clawed its way up one of the clipped horse-chestnuts, where it stretched and rolled in a broad fork among the branches; Julia laughed at the cheerful animal, and went over to rub its thick coarse fur—she was doing this when Fräulein Hanna came stumping out across the grey gravel on her thick grey-stockinged legs.

‘One demands Fräulein Probyn
am Telefon
.'

Julia abandoned the cat and went to that insecure telephone-box in the
Kleine Saal
. The voice was Colin's; he sounded cross.

‘Darling, what are you up to? You seem to have stirred up an absolute hornets' nest among the local polus, just when we wanted to do everything as quietly as possible. What goes on?'

‘I don't know for sure if anything goes on at all,' Julia said, not in the least disturbed—Colin was so often cross. ‘I just had a hunch, and acted on it. The bobbies have been here too,' she added, gurgling.

‘Hell! Whatever for?'

‘Just to check on me. They were quite sweet.'

‘Why did you send them to see the parson?'

‘Oh, as a Swiss “reference as to character”—really the only one I've got except Mrs. H.'s old boy-friend, and I made them promise not to worry him.'

‘I think you're
quite
mad,' Colin said angrily.

‘Could be. Time will show. But I hope someone is keeping an eye on that chemist's, darling darling—I really think that might pay off. Your colleague with the nice voice seemed to be willing to.'