Rudi balanced the tray on his shoulder, leant forward towards the door, and coughed purposefully.
From inside he heard a voice. An English voice.
He could sense that his husky tones were not penetrating the thick wood of the door. Rudi was a little nervous. In the kitchens yesterday he had caused a beautiful puff-ball of Salz-burger Nockerl, the hotel's speciality, to deflate by dropping a fork into it by mistake, and two days ago - Rudi blushed at the memory - two days ago in the dining room he had spilt some kirsch down the shirt-front of Signor Muti, the famous conductor. Fortunately the
English people. Were they deaf?
'Excusing me!'
Rudi knocked again, his head leaning against the door. He heard the voice still.
'. . . incontinently and savagely beautiful, not unlike a small chaffinch, but much larger and with less of a salty after-tang . . .'
This Rudi could not understand. The word 'beautiful' was familiar certainly. English girls who came to stay with their families at the Hotel der Post liked to say that it was 'a very beautiful morning this morning, Rudi', that the mountain and the lake and the Schloss were 'simply beautiful' and sometimes, when he had been lucky, that his hair and eyes and his legs and his
'. . . a certain degree of
'
Rudi knocked until his knuckles were raw.
'. . . a message delivered by motor-bicycle. A curious new phenomenon these despatch riders . . .'
Rudi could wait no longer. He swallowed twice, turned the handle and entered.
A beautiful suite, the Franz-Josef. Herr Brendel the pianist had stayed there last week and the Bosendorfer Grand that had been installed for him had not yet been collected. They should keep the piano here always, Rudi thought. With the flowers and the cigarette boxes and long flowing curtains, it conspired to give the room the look of a film set from the nineteen-thirties. With great care he set down his drinks tray on top of the piano and listened again to the English voice.
'. . . this rider, standing in the threshold holding out a clipboard to be signed, reminded me at first of a copy of Izaac Walton's
'Your drinks are arrived, my sir.'
'. . . of the package that he delivered I can say only this . . .'
The voice was coming through from the bedroom. Rudi approached nervously.
'. . . it shocked me right down to my foundation garments. From stem to stern I quivered . . .'
Rudi straightened his bow-tie and tapped loosely on the half-open bedroom door with the back of his hand.
'Sir, your drinks that you have ordered . . .'
Rudi broke off.
The door he had knocked on so lightly had swung open to reveal a man sitting on the end of the bed, soaked from head to foot in blood. He faced a writing table on which stood a small radio.
'. . . I suppose there are degrees of startlement, much as there are degrees of anything. If there is an official scale comparable to, for example, the Beaufort, Moh or Richter Scales and if that scale be measured from one to ten, I would say that on this Trefusian Scale of Abject Bestartlement I scored at least a creditable 9.7, certainly from the European judges. The East Germans would probably have been less generous, but even they could not have failed to give me 9.5 for artistic impression . . .'
Rudi hugged the door-handle and half swung from the door, staring at the dead man with innocent surprise and wonder, like a child watching donkeys copulate.
A knock on the sitting-room door brought him to his senses.
A high English voice called through the sitting room.
'Martin! Are you there? Martin!'
Rudi jumped. This was witchcraft.
Two men had entered the sitting room, one silver-haired, the other closer to Rudi's age. They were smiling.
'Ah, lemon vodka on the piano. Very much Martin's poison.'
Rudi gasped.
