doctors that she was fit to travel, and assuring them that her intention was to take a leisurely, convalescent holiday at a resort she already knew well, where she would be comfortable and well-cared-for, a complete rest that would set her up to tackle life again. Turning her head on the pillow and catching sight of her own drawn face in the glass, she felt certain she had not looked like this when they agreed to let her go. She must remember to send Mr. Rice a card full of reassurances to-morrow. Everything to-morrow!
She had done certain other things during those five days: cancelled a few more forward engagements, answered all her letters, arranged a transfer of money to the accounts of Alec and Dione, in case they found themselves in difficulties while she was absent.
‘While she was absent’ was how she phrased it in her own mind; but before she left England she had also made her will.
Across the water, in a room on the second floor of the Alte Post, Bunty Felse lowered the field-glasses from her eyes with a crow of satisfaction, and turned to meet George as he came into the doorway behind her.
‘She’s here, all right,’ he reported. ‘Came up in a car from Bregenz not a quarter of an hour ago, and turned up towards the Goldener Hirsch.’
‘I know,’ said Bunty, ‘I’ve just seen her. Those are her windows, almost opposite to us, see? With the flowers and the balcony. The curtains are drawn now, but when the girl brought her up and put the lights on they were open. It was the lights that made me look there. I might have mistaken the face at this distance, even with glasses, but I couldn’t mistake that hat.’
She had never been quite easy in her mind since they had taken their eyes off that hat, a thin gold halo in the back window of the taxi, on the road from Zurich airport, and allowed Maggie to be carried away towards the town without them. George had had to make a snap decision which of the two to follow, for the middle-aged hired Dodge with Francis Killian at the wheel had swung unhesitatingly north-east on the fast road to Winterthur.
‘He knew where she was heading, all right,’ said George, focusing the glasses on the pattern of lights over the water. ‘And which hotel she’d make for when she got here. Lucky we followed him in by road or we wouldn’t have known which one he’d picked for himself. As it is, you’ll be able to keep out of his sight here without any trouble.’
‘I wonder why he did choose the Weisses Kreuz, when this one is so well-placed for keeping an eye on her?’
‘He couldn’t know she’d have that room, could he? And the Weisses Kreuz is on the corner where all the roads meet, all traffic going up to the Goldener Hirsch has to pass it. He was there on the terrace,’ said George, ‘waiting for her to arrive. When the car went by, he paid and strolled off in the same direction.’
‘You think he’ll try to see her?’
‘No, I think he’ll want to see without being seen himself. He won’t want her to know he’s spying on her, not if you’re right about his feelings for her.’
‘So we wait for him to move,’ said Bunty, ‘and
Maggie, on her way down to breakfast, met a woman on the broad white spiral of the back stairs, a tall woman in traditional dress, with black hair plaited into two great, shining braids and coiled high on her head. She was carrying two heavy cases as she climbed, so that her head was bent, and that tower of glistening hair was the first thing about her to catch Maggie’s attention. She drew aside to where the steps were narrowest, to let the burdened woman by, and because she was still a little shaky and hesitant from the fatigue of the previous day, she halted and held by the wall rather than risk proceeding on the tapering treads. The woman’s eyes travelled upwards steadily from the narrow, elegant black shoes to the smooth russet-amber hair. Her head came up like the head of a deer scenting man. For a moment she halted, motionless and silent, and the sidelong light from a window accentuated the cleft in her lip, scoring the shadow there cruelly deep.
Maggie and Friedl stood mute and intent, gazing at each other. Thirteen years is a long time, but a hare-lip on an otherwise good-looking girl is bitterly memorable, and to be world-famous is to have one’s photograph penetrate everywhere, if any reminder was needed. And even more surely, there stood between them the shadow of an absent third, at once a link between them and an impassable barrier.
‘You are the lady from Number One?’ said Friedl, with a gaunt smile in which her eyes played no part. ‘Franz and Joachim will bring up the piano for you this morning.’
‘Thank you!’ Maggie hesitated for a moment only. ‘You are Fraulein Friedl?’
‘How kind of the gracious lady,’ said Friedl, ‘to remember me.’ The smile, returning, hollowed her brown cheeks and raised a hungry gleam in her eye that was neither gracious nor kind. ‘It is a long time ago.’
‘I must speak to you,’ said Maggie.
‘Not here. Not now.’ Friedl watched the colour ebb and flow on the too-prominent cheekbones, and slow, burning resentment gathered about her heart and ached insatiably. This was the woman who had and did not value the devotion of every man who set eyes on her, while she, Friedl, beautiful of body but marred of face, provided a passing interest for such men as had nothing better to do, but was never noticed, never regarded, as a woman in her own right. Wait, she thought, there is always a price on everything, and you’ve had so much and paid so little yet! ‘I have my work to do,’ she said. ‘I am not a daughter of the house.’
The tone was mild and even servile, but the eyes were inimical, and even the note of self-abasement had its implicit reverse of smouldering arrogance. Maggie shrank. If she could have turned back now she would have done it, but there was no way of turning back. It was even possible that this woman knew no more than she had told Francis; but if she did, Maggie had to know it. There might be no comfort in knowing, but not to know was to be balked of her own identity. She had come here, tidying up her affairs behind her, and leaving no dependent of hers unprovided, simply in the determination to know; there was no other thought or ambition left in her mind.
‘When may I have a talk with you?’ she asked patiently.
‘I am not free until after dinner. And even then, if we wish to be undisturbed, better it should not be in the house.’
‘I will come wherever you choose.’
‘This evening, when I am free, I will go along the path to the wood, under your verandah. Come out by that way, please, after me. They do not like it if I mix too much with the guests.’ It was a lie, but so well did it fit into the picture she was composing of an oppressed poor relation that she almost felt it to be true. I will make you
