“Two weeks ago.”
“Was he ill long?”
“He was not ill. It was an accident. He was struck by a car.” Freddy’s smile had passed into oblivion. “Are you by chance…Are you a friend?”
“No. I stayed here last year. He was very kind to me.”
There was no obvious reason why I should have been so cagey, yet I found myself reluctant to give him my name. I didn’t like Freddy. I had not liked his face or his muscles or his smirk, and I liked his suspicious scowl even less.
“Perhaps you would like to speak with Frau Hoffman,” he suggested.
I had been about to ask if I might. The fact that it was Freddy’s suggestion made me wonder whether I really did want to. There was no retreating now, though, so I nodded and Freddy picked up the telephone. He raised one hand to his cheek when he spoke; it muffled his words to some extent, but my hearing is excellent.
After he hung up, he informed me that Frau Hoffman would see me, and indicated where I was to go. I remembered the corridor; it led to the room where Hoffman and I had spent such a pleasant evening a year ago. I must admit I felt a little like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.
Freddy must have been under the impression that I didn’t understand German. That was stupid of him. I had not used the language when I spoke with him, but if he knew who I was, he must be aware of my proficiency in the language of the country where I presently resided. And he knew who I was. What he had said was: “She is here. Yes, the one you told me to watch out for. She is at the desk at this moment, asking for the old man.”
Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice is reported to have remarked.
The friend Freddy was helping in her time of need had to be Frau Hoffman. I would not have expected the sedate elderly woman in the photograph to hobnob with a character like Freddy, but people don’t always behave the way you expect them to. The Hoffmans were childless. Maybe Freddy had appealed to the widow’s frustrated maternal instincts. Or maybe he had a kind heart under an unprepossessing exterior. Be fair, Vicky, don’t judge people by appearances.
A door at the end of the hall opened. Sunlight from the room behind the figure blurred its outlines; I was quite close to her before I realized she was not the woman in the photograph. She was much younger, probably in her twenties. Her face was vaguely familiar, though.
“Frau Hoffman?” I asked uncertainly.
“Yes.” She stood back and motioned me to enter. “And you are the—you are a friend of my late husband?”
“I hope I may call myself that, though I only had the pleasure of meeting your husband once. You were in the hospital at the time, I believe.”
I didn’t really believe it, because I had remembered where I had seen her before. She had been a waitress in the restaurant. Friedl. The name came out of nowhere, as it does sometimes; I had heard it repeated often enough. The customers were always yelling for Friedl, especially the male customers. From waitress to wife to widow in less than a year…Quick work, and nice work if you can get it.
The promotion had not improved her looks. The waitress’s uniform of tight-waisted dirndl and low-cut blouse had suited her slight but well-developed figure. She had had thick braids of brown hair that she wore coiled over her ears, and a fresh, pink-cheeked face. Now her hair was cut short and bleached almost white. She wore an ultrasuede suit that must have cost a bundle, but it was too tight across the chest and the apricot shade didn’t flatter her complexion. She was heavily made up, and her nails were blood-red, long, and pointed.
“The hospital?” she repeated blankly. “That wasn’t me. You must be speaking of my husband’s first wife. She passed on last January.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, and again I spoke sincerely.
She had certainly done her best to efface all traces of her predecessor. The room had been charming, filled with fine old furniture and beautiful shabby rugs. The painted
“Then you are the new owner of the hotel?” I asked.
“Yes.” She snapped the word out, as if my idle question had contained a challenge. “It has not been easy,” she went on, with the same air of defiance. “But I can do it. Already I have made many improvements.”
I couldn’t bring myself to congratulate her on the improvements. Still feeling my way, I said, “I hope you have good help.”
I was thinking of the hotel staff that had kept the place running so smoothly the year before, but Friedl interpreted the comment differently. With a betraying glance at a door that I assumed led to another room of her apartment, she murmured, “Freddy—Mr. Sommers—has been a great help to me. He is my—my cousin.”
“I’ve met Mr. Sommers.”
Belatedly remembering her manners, she offered me a chair, which I accepted, and coffee, which I declined. I had decided that my smartest move was to keep my mouth shut and let her make the first move. She didn’t waste any time. “Did you get a message from my husband?”
I put on an expression of innocent bewilderment and countered with a question of my own. “Why, did he write to me?”
That was her chance. If she had said yes, and gone on to explain, I might have leveled with her.
Her eyes fled from mine. “I—uh—no, I don’t think…I wondered…Why did you come, then?”
“I just happened to be in the neighborhood. Herr Hoffman was very kind to me last year, so I thought I’d stop by and say hello.”
“I see.” She chewed on her lower lip and tried again. “He often spoke of you.”
“Did he?”
“Oh yes. Often. He admired you. Such a learned lady, so clever, so intelligent. You had talked together—of many things…”
“Yes, we did.”
She leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “What did you talk about?”
“Oh—lots of things. Art and antiques…” I paused invitingly, but the only response was a blank stare, so I went on, “Books, music—he was very fond of Brahms—cats…He had a beautiful little Siamese kitten. I hope it is flourishing?”
“Flourishing? Oh, the cat.” Her mouth twisted unpleasantly. “I got rid of it. I hate the creatures. They are so sly. Besides, it was scratching my beautiful new furniture.”
“I see.”
“Did he speak of anything else?”
If I hadn’t taken such an intense dislike to the wretched woman, I might have felt sorry for her. She was trying to find out how much I knew without giving anything away, but she was going about it so clumsily that she had betrayed more than she realized.
I said, “I see you’ve redecorated this room.”
“Yes. Yes, I could not live with such dirty old things. This is much more cheerful, don’t you think?”
“Cheerful” was not the word I would have chosen. In fact, the room was depressing, for all its bright colors and gleaming chrome. She had ruthlessly swept away not just inanimate objects, but the memories, the traditions, the long years of affectionate living they embodied. The fact that she had done it without deliberate malice only made the desecration worse; it was a symbol of the triumph of mediocrity over beauty and grace.
Ordinarily, I would not have been guilty of the bad taste of trying to buy a dead man’s belongings from his widow of barely two weeks. In this case I didn’t hesitate.
“If you haven’t sold the furniture, I’d like to buy it.”
“Buy it? All of it?”
“I was thinking of the
Again her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why would you want them?”
“Tastes differ,” I explained patiently. “You like modern, I like antiques.”
“I have already sold them.”
Couldn’t wait to get them out of the house, I thought. Two weeks…
There was a sound from the next room—a muffled thud, as if someone had stumbled, or jarred a piece of
