breakfast.”
I stood for a moment, stretching creaking muscles and looking around. The ruined building had been stripped of all portable objects, but even in its prime it had lacked the exuberant charm of the local Catholic churches. There was nothing to be seen except a bare floor littered with pieces of the fallen pews, bare stone walls, and boarded-up windows. Sunlight stretched long fingers through the cracks, and drifts of snow marked breaks in windows and roof. The fire had died to coals.
I pushed through the swinging doors and found myself in a narrow vestibule. The outer door was ajar, held open by a heap of drifted snow. John must have had to force it. No small feat, in that howling storm, with muscles already half frozen and my dead weight encumbering him. His footprints led up and over the drift. Shrugging into my jacket, I followed.
I had to shield my eyes with both hands. The world had changed overnight, into something so beautiful I forgot physical discomfort in sheer wonder. The sky overhead was a pure, cold blue, but behind the eastern mountains the bright shades of dawn framed the frosty peaks. The shadows on the white slopes were not gray but ravishing tints of pastel—pale rose, blue, lavender. The blanket of new snow dazzled like cold fire—swan-white, angel-white, glittering with billions of tiny sparkles.
My sunglasses were in the pocket of my jacket. After I put them on, I dared to open my eyes, and then I saw John. He was knee-deep in snow, even though he stood under the porch eaves where the snow was less deeply drifted. It undulated across the open courtyard in lovely dimpled dunes. My poor precious Audi was only an elephant-sized lump.
John stared dispiritedly at the scene, his hands shielding his eyes, and I decided this was not an appropriate moment to comment on the splendor of the view. “Where are your sunglasses?” I asked.
“In my car,” John said, snapping the words off like icicles.
“And your car is…”
“Halfway down the slippery slope beyond, under a foot of snow,” said John. “Were you aware that just over the hill the road drops straight down at a forty-five-degree angle?”
“Surely—” I began.
“I didn’t see the church until I had passed it. I had no idea where you were going. I’ve never driven this road before. I was going too fast—as were you—”
From across the valley came a far-off, elfin chiming of bells. “‘Oh sweet and far, from cliff and scar,’” I quoted. “Merry Christmas, John.”
“So what shall we do?” I asked brightly. We had gone back inside, and John was doggedly feeding the fire, as if he meant to settle down for a long stay. “You should put it out,” I went on. “We can’t leave—”
“That is the situation in a nutshell,” said John. “We can’t leave. Not unless you plan to spend the rest of the winter in a snowdrift between here and Bad Steinbach.”
“Oh, come on, don’t be a sissy. It’s a beautiful day and it can’t be more than a couple of miles—”
“Just a nice little downhill run on skis,” said John. “Unfortunately we don’t have any.”
“I do, actually. On top of the car. I never got a chance to use them. Hell of a vacation.”
His expression lightened briefly as he considered this new information, but it quickly closed down again. “The plows and the Ski Patrol will be out before long—”
“On Christmas Day?”
“Yes, I should think so. This is an emergency, and there are bound to be idiots like us who were caught in the storm.”
“We can’t just sit here and wait to be found.”
“Oh, do use your head,” John said crossly. “Even if we could dig one of the cars out, the road is impassible. I don’t fancy a two-mile hike through drifts that are up to my neck, either.”
“I could ski down and get help.”
“It’s too risky. If you got in trouble there’d be no one to bail you out. It doesn’t take long to freeze to death when you’re lying helpless with a broken leg.”
“Are you always like this in the morning?” I demanded.
“No, it’s just a performance I put on in order to discourage long-term relationships.”
“I can’t sit around here all day! I’ve got to get poor Tony out of the slammer—”
“Tony?”
“I walked out on him,” I admitted guiltily. “The killer set him up—one of the maids found him standing over Friedl’s freshly slaughtered body, and raised the alarm. He was surrounded by what looked like the beginning of a lynch mob when I left.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think they’d lynch him,” John said coolly. “They’re very law-abiding in these parts, and Friedl didn’t inspire that variety of devoted affection.”
“Even so—”
“I’ll tell you what we could do.” John stroked his stubbly chin. “Start a fire outside—smoke signal.”
“On Frau Hoffman’s grave?” I asked.
He wasn’t abashed. “Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Just as well to have a look before you call the cops,” John went on. “If you’re wrong, you’ll look a bloody fool—Did you say yes?”
“I said okay. Same thing.”
We used scraps of the broken pews for shovels. The air was cold but utterly still; John had no trouble getting the fire started. It burned clear and bright until we piled pine boughs on it. As we worked, the chiming of distant Christmas bells made a macabre accompaniment. I hated what I was doing, even though I felt Hoffman wouldn’t mind.
In between hauling wood from the church, I tackled my buried car. Clearing the ski rack wasn’t difficult; there was only a foot of snow on top. On the lee side, away from the wind, a lonely fender protruded, and I was able to dig my way into the door. My emergency kit produced some dried fruit—“petrified” would be more accurate. I carried it to John, like a dog offering a bone, but this time he was not amused.
Smeared with smuts from the fire, his eyes sunken and shadowed, he continued to tend the flames while he chewed.
I sat down on a snowbank a little distance away and watched. The moment I had resolutely refused to consider was approaching. It would take hours of slow heat to soften the ground. We would need shovels, trowels. And then…
Neither of us had discussed what we intended to do if we found the gold. There was no need. John knew what I would do.
I didn’t know what he would do. The trouble with John—one of the troubles with John—was that he wasn’t a cold-blooded villain. He wouldn’t kill to gain his prize. At least he wouldn’t kill me. I thought he was rather fond of me—as a person, I mean, not just as an enthusiastic lover. He might even have wavered, at odd moments, and toyed with the idea of letting me have the treasure. But I knew that when the time came, when the glittering thing was actually before him, there was a ninety-to-one chance that old habits would prevail over…call it friendship.
His lean cheeks were flushed with exercise and heat, but the underlying color was a pale gray. He was short on sleep and on food, burning calories like crazy—but it never occurred to me that I could defeat him in a hand-to- hand fight. Surreptitiously, my hand sneaked into my backpack. The gun was still there. Thank God I hadn’t dropped it in the snow.
I don’t know how long we were there. Sometimes John sat down by the fire to rest; sometimes I went inside to get more wood. The plume of smoke had been rising darkly for a long time before he came, schussing straight down the final slope between the trees and stopping in a spray of driven snow, skis almost touching in a perfect parallel. He wore ordinary ski clothing, but the face that looked out from under the hood of the parka was muzzled and fanged and dark with rank fur. In his right hand, instead of a pole, he carried one of the long pikes the
I was bent over, adding wood to the fire when the apparition appeared, and it is a wonder I didn’t fall face down into the flames. As the snarling muzzle turned toward me, I went reeling back. Even John the imperturbable was taken off guard. He had been perched impiously on the tombstone; struggling to rise, he slipped and sat down
