Ellis Peters - George Felse 08 - The House Of Green Turf (8 page)

‘This is his? May I look? Under your supervision, of course. All I want is to see if there is anything there to suggest a further line of enquiry. Are they locked?’

‘They are not locked.’

Of course, they would be as he had left them in his room, and in a hotel room which is itself normally locked, not everyone bothers to make doubly sure with individual keys. And the keys themselves he must have taken away with him, in his pocket.

The contents of Robin Aylwin’s luggage had little enough to say about him. He travelled light. The slacks, lambswool sweater, shirts, were good but not expensive, and kept about as carefully as most young men of twenty or so keep their clothes. Black dress shoes for concerts, a dinner jacket, shaving tackle, handkerchiefs, a Paisley dressing-gown, pyjamas, a Terylene raincoat, all folded and packed so carefully that Francis detected the hand of some female member of the Waldmeister family.

‘Had he packed these? Or were they simply lying about in his room?’

‘They were in his room, as in use. We packed everything as you see it, to wait for him.’

No passport, no documents, no wallet, no keys, no letters. All those he would most probably keep on him, whatever clothes he was wearing. The dinner jacket being here meant nothing; he almost certainly wouldn’t wear it for the evening here, when resting between engagements. Probably it was only there for the concerts. There were writing materials, a folder of stamps both English and Austrian, two local postcards, unwritten; but not one written word, to him or from him, to help to establish that he had ever really existed at all.

Francis got what he could from the remnants. The shirts were size fifteen and a half, the shoes nine, the slacks were long-legged and small-waisted and made to measure, but from a firm of mass tailors with shops everywhere. The wearer must have been nearly six feet in height, if not an inch or two over, and on the slim side, though by the evidence of the sweater, which was a forty-two inch chest, he had needed accommodation for good wide shoulders. And that was all there was to be discovered about him here. The ’cello, silent in its case, was just a ’cello, and the pockets that filled in its curves contained only resin, strings and a spare bridge in case of damage.

Francis closed the lid again and restored the case to its corner. He dusted his hands and looked at Waldmeister.

‘No, nothing. When he didn’t turn up, I expect you looked through them, too.’

‘I also told it to the Herr Doktor, when he came again. He knew nothing of the young man, either. He said keep them still, so we kept them.’

‘Herr Waldmeister, there is always the possibility that some member of your household may have talked with Aylwin while he was here, and may be in possession of some detail that might help me to find him. It’s a long time ago, and your staff may have changed, of course, but still there may be someone who remembers, and may be able to add to what we know. Will you be kind enough to tell them, all those who were here at that time, that I am trying to trace this man, and for a reason which makes it to his advantage that I should find him?’

The old man’s heavy shoulders lifted eloquently. ‘I will do so. But I do not think, after all this time, they will have anything to tell.’

‘I’m afraid you may be right. But please ask them to come to me if they do remember anything. I shall be here for two or three days.’

‘I will ask them,’ said Waldmeister.

He had reckoned on the force of curiosity to bring them to him even if they had nothing to tell, and would have bet on the women being in the lead. But the eldest Waldmeister son was the first to bring his stein over and join the newcomer in the bar, after dinner that evening. He could surely have nothing to tell about a chance guest in the hotel, since he spent all his time well outside it, running a timber business which was merely one of the multifarious Waldmeister activities. What he wanted was to have a closer look at the English solicitor, and at least offer his desire to be helpful, if he could do no better. Frau Waldmeister and two of her daughters-in-law made roundabout approaches during the next day, to the same effect. None of them knew where Aylwin might have gone, none of them knew why. Francis doubted if they really remembered anything about him at all, beyond that he had left in the attic tangible evidence of his stay. The third daughter-in-law hadn’t then been married to her Johann, and the two youngest Waldmeister girls must have been still at school.

The one person for whom he had trailed the bait held aloof. Friedl, somewhere in her mid-thirties now by his estimate, must have been turned twenty at the time, and not the girl to miss a personable young man. Aylwin had been, by Mrs. Felse’s testimony, of striking and engaging appearance, and even at twenty Friedl, the dowryless niece with the hare-lip, must have been half-way to the hungry, embittered woman she was now. Deprived enough to reach out for whatever man she could, and not yet crushed into acceptance of her lot, and schooled to limiting her reach to waifs like herself. If anyone here knew anything about the good-looking and light-minded young man who laughed a lot, the odds were it would be Friedl.

He knew she would come. She was only biding her time. He had caught her dark, sullen glance upon him several times in passing, but she had made no sign. He understood. Where the Waldmeister family was within earshot or sight, no one would get anything out of Friedl. They were perhaps hardly more the enemy to her than was the rest of the world, but she would make no move where they might get wind of it. It was not a matter of the importance of anything she might have to say, but rather of preserving the integrity of her own secret life, which had nothing to do with them. She might have nothing to tell, but she would come, all the same, given the chance, because he had, and deliberately, offered her a reason for approaching him.

There was no real difficulty. After dinner was cleared away he sat with a
kirsch
on the verandah that overlooked the tip of the lake, until she came out, off duty at last, to enjoy the luminous air of the evening. He had seen her emerge the previous night at this hour, and he felt reasonably sure that it would be the same to-night. All she had done was to stroll in the garden and talk a little with such guests as were solitary, but she had done it in a smart black wool dress, with a gold chain and cross round her neck, and her great mane of hair coiled in a glossy chignon on her nape; a manifestation at least that she did exist as a human being, like them.

She was a little later in appearing to-night, but she came. As soon as he saw her in the doorway, Francis moved away to the rail of the terrace, where the steps led down into the long slope of trees between the inn and the lake-shore. It was already dusk, but the afterglow had turned the western sky to a pale, glowing green, and its reflection from the lake, calm as a looking-glass laid down among the hills, cast a subtle radiance up through the trees. Without haste and without looking back, Francis went down the path.

The Goldener Hirsch stood on a bluff, higher than the Alte Post on the other side of the lake, but equally close to the thin yellow line of gravel that bordered the water. Sixty yards wide and gradually broadening as he penetrated deeper into it, the belt of trees wound along beneath the balconies and windows of the new wing, and the path, narrowing, wandered diagonally down it to the water. Not there, it would be too light there. Somewhere here in this curious woodland world quivering and swimming in greenish gleams, like a weedy aquarium. He had already left the evening strollers behind. There might be a pair of lovers holed up somewhere in the twilight, but there was room for them. He let the path slip right-handed away from him, towards the dappled, moon-pale water, and took to the grass beyond, moving at leisure among the trees. He didn’t know how far behind she might be, but he knew she would find him.

He lit a cigarette to simplify the process for her, and the act shook him for a moment into full consciousness of what he was doing. He was on Maggie’s business, and if there was anything here to be found he must find it. He needed Friedl’s testimony for Maggie’s sake and for his own. But Friedl had her own needs, and as good a right to make use of him as he had to make use of her. Whichever way you look at it, he told himself derisively, you’re not going to find anything to be proud of, and since when have you started breaking your heart over a bit of necessary, ambiguous disloyalty? Get what you have to get, and pay whatever you have to pay for it. That’s what Friedl will be doing. Maggie will never know.
You
will, of course, but what sort of drop will this be in the ocean of what you know already about yourself?

He felt her close to him before ever he heard or saw her. His senses homed on the awareness he had that she was there, and then he found the tall, motionless darkness, the two pale flowers of hands quiet at her sides.

‘Herr Killian…’ A muted breath hardly as loud as a whisper; and not a question, she knew who was there.

‘Fraulein Friedl…’ he said as softly.

She crossed the few yards that still separated them, and as she came the greenish, reflected light flickered over her face twice, tremulous and faint; it was like seeing a drowned face float through clear, shallow water. Thus delicately touched, Friedl achieved beauty. The flaw did not show at all, the enchanted light brushed her weatherbeaten skin with its own liquid jade.

‘Herr Killian,’ said the dream-like murmur, ‘I can tell you about the man called Aylwin… if you want to know…’

‘Yes…yes, Friedl, I want to know…’

He went the necessary, the imperative step to meet her. She walked into his arms.

‘The last time I sat here with a man,’ she said,drawing fiercely on the cigarette Francis had just lit for her, ‘it was with him. With Robert Aylwin.’

They were sitting on a felled tree in a half-circle of bushes some distance along the lake-side, looking out through a filigree of branches over the water. She had brought him there by the hand, moving like a hunting cat, silent and certain in the dark.

‘They were here three, four days. He was nice to me. We came to this place together. He was not like me, he was gay, always gay.’

No one, thought Francis, could accuse us of that particular indiscretion. Something was there with them, heavy and fatal, something of warmth and tenderness and bitterness and pity that left an indescribable, rank flavour on the night. But most surely no gaiety.

‘Aylwin had been here two or three times with Dr. Fredericks,’ he said. ‘Hadn’t you met him before?’

‘I was not here until that summer. I came when my father died. I had nothing, you understand? Not even a human face. Who would want me? But he was lively, and funny, and kind. On that last evening I was late finishing the dishes, and I saw him go out, across the terrace, down the path… as you did to-night. And when I was finished I followed him.’

‘You had an arrangement?’ asked Francis, lifting the heavy sheaves of her unbound hair in his hands.

‘No, we had no arrangement. Simply, I hoped he might come here and wait. But before I reached this place, a little way back there among the trees, I heard his voice. And another voice. A girl’s… So I drew back a little, not to break in on them, but it was quiet there, and I was among the bushes. I didn’t want them to know, and I could not get away quickly because of the branches… they would have heard me…’

His throat was dry. ‘Could you see them?’

‘No. It was also September, and a little later in the evening. No… but both voices I knew. His, of course. And hers… you could not mistake it, even speaking. She was the one from his own party, the one they said was going to be a great singer.’

He heard his own voice saying with careful concentration, for fear he should frighten her away from the issue by too great an intensity: ‘Could you hear what they were saying?’

‘No, most of the time not. All was in undertones, and it was he who talked, and she who listened, only now and again she said some few words, and with her it was impatience and disbelief…you know? He was arguing and pleading. And she did not want him, she was sending him away, but he would not go. At the end he forgot to be quiet, he cried out loudly at her: ‘… if
you
don’t want me!’ And she said, ‘Hush, don’t be a fool!’ And he said: ‘No, I won’t be fool enough to endure it.
There’s always an alternative
! That is what he said, and like that. Do you think I could imagine that?’

‘No,’ he said. His voice felt and sounded thick and muffled in his throat. ‘No, I don’t think you could.’ Carefully, carefully now, or she would catch the spark of passion and take fire, and he would get nothing more. ‘And what did
she
say?’

He never knew what it was that betrayed him.

Not the voice, that was level and light, interested but detached, under complete control now. Not even the mere fact that he should ask after
her
reactions, when it was in Robin Aylwin’s movements he was supposed to be interested. Something deeper and more fundamental than any such details, something she felt through the almost indistinguishably altered tension of the arm that circled her, a dark lightning striking from his blood into hers. This was a creature who felt with her blood and thought with her bones and flesh, and saw with some intuitive third eye under her heart like a child. For suddenly all the air was still about them, with something more than mere silence, and very slightly and stealthily all her sinews drew together, contracting into her closed being, lifting the confiding shade of her weight from his shoulder. She did not move away from him; she did not even lift her head. It would have been less frightening if she had. But all the essence of herself that she had spilled so prodigally about her on the night air, as securely as if she had been alone, drew back like ectoplasm and coiled itself defensively within her. There was a third person there, almost palpable between them.

‘She laughed,’ said Friedl in a clear hard voice.

‘No…!’ he said involuntarily. There seemed to be two Friedls there now, one of them warm against his shoulder with the black waterfall of her hair streaking across his chest, one of them standing off at the edge of the clearing, watching him narrowly, waiting to see him react in anger or pain. There was not much she did not know now, in that dark blood-knowledge of hers, about his relationship with the absent woman who had laughed.