House of Green Turf

‘I must tell you,’ she said, raising upon him eyes no longer blind, but brilliant with apprehension and resolve. ‘I did see her… I was with her…’

‘I’ve asked you nothing,’ he said roughly. ‘I don’t want to know.’

‘I want to tell you. There was more, something she didn’t tell you…’

‘Quickly, then!’ He eyed the paling light, and shook with anxiety for her.

She had caught the sting of his urgency at last. She told him what she had to tell in a few words. He held fast to her all the while, afraid that she might relapse into her border world of despair if he took his hands from her.

‘Felsenbach! That’s over in the Allgau. And this photograph… you’re in no doubt that it is Aylwin?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s Robin. There isn’t any doubt.’

‘You went out by the verandah here… No one saw you? No one was about, when you left or when you returned?’

‘No, no one.’

‘Good, that makes it easier. If people saw you come upstairs after dinner, so much the better. Understand, you went to bed, and you’ve been here ever since. You’ve been ill, you’re under orders to get plenty of rest.’ They’ll believe that, he thought, his heart aching over the pale spectre he held between his hands. ‘You understand? You went early to bed, and slept, and you know nothing about any happenings in the night. That’s what you have to tell the police, when they ask, and for God’s sake get it right and stick to it.’

‘I won’t forget,’ she said submissively.

‘And listen, stay close to the hotel all to-day. Maybe they’ll insist on that, but do it in any case. But to-morrow come to the restaurant in the village, for lunch, and I’ll meet you there. The one next to the church, The Bear. Make it about noon. By then we may be able to see how the land lies. We’re acquaintances in England, running into each other here by chance. Have you got that clear?’

In a whisper she said: ‘Yes,’ and let it be taken for a promise, though she had promised nothing. All she wanted now was for him to go away quickly, before the shadow fell upon him as it had fallen on Robin and on Friedl.

‘I must get out of here, it’ll be broad daylight soon. When I’ve gone, go to bed, sleep if you can, but go to bed anyhow, and when it’s time, get up and go down to breakfast as if nothing had happened. As far as you’re concerned, nothing has happened! That’s all you have to remember.’

He left her there sitting on the edge of her bed, looking after him. Soundlessly he turned the latch of the door, and silently let it relax into its place again under his hand. The pre-dawn light was now dove-grey, but the woodland below, the invisible shore, the gardens, still drowsed in obscurity and silence. Quicksilver, dully shining, the lake lay in its bowl asleep; when the sun rose there would be faint curls of mist drifting across its surface on the south-west wind. Towards the north-east, and the dwindling corner where the Rulenbach flowed out on its detour across the German border. Towards Felsenbach, where, if Friedl had been telling the truth, Robin Aylwin was buried in a grave without a name.

When he was gone, she did as he had told her to do. She went to bed, and by some curious process of subconscious obedience she even fell asleep. She slept until the sun was high, and the usual morning noises had come to life all round her, the normal echoes of an old, spacious house with bare wooden floors. She rose and dressed herself with care, and made up her face as scrupulously as for a stage performance, which in a way this day was going to be.

She went down the stairs slowly, straining her ears at every step. There was a changed quality in the bustle of sound within the house, a high, soft, hysterical note of tension. From the staircase windows that looked into the courtyard she saw a police car and an ambulance standing on the cobbles. Within the broad double doorway of the hall Herr Waldmeister stood conversing earnestly and in low tones with a middle-aged police officer. Frau Waldmeister, in the doorway of the office, talked volubly to someone within, in a cataract of excited dialect supplemented with a frenzy of shoulder-heaving, and head-wagging, and when Maggie passed by she could see another, younger policeman busy clearing the office desk for his own use. Two or three guests hovered just within the doorway of the dining-room, peering and whispering in delighted horror.

Gisela, hunched over her adding machine, punched out figures blindly with one hand, and held a handkerchief to her nose with the other. Not to question or comment would in itself be ground for comment. Maggie turned towards the reception desk.

‘Whatever’s the matter? What is it? Has something happened?’

Gisela looked up with brimming eyes. ‘Oh, Miss Tressider, isn’t it terrible? The police are here, they want to talk to everybody. Friedl… she’s dead! She drowned herself in the lake!’

It was late in the afternoon before the police got round to Maggie. By then it was quite simply a relief to be called into the office, and it seemed to her that in closing the door behind her on entering she shut herself into a quiet island, immune to all the agitation and gossip and rumours that were convulsing the household. There was excitement, disquiet and awe abroad in the Goldener Hirsch; but there was no grief. Only Gisela, in love with living and genuinely sorry that anyone should have to surrender it, much less feel wretched enough to want to opt out of it, had shed tears.

In the office it was very quiet. The young man behind the desk, thickset, solid and tanned, looked up from the list he had before him, and smiled briefly and perfunctorily in tribute to a good-looking woman. Off-duty, he would have had more time to appreciate her.

‘Sit down, please. You are Miss Maggie Tressider?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s my name.’

‘And you occupy room Number One. You know what our business is here?’

‘Gisela told me, this morning. One of the maids has been drowned in the lake.’

‘Friedl Schiffer… yes. We took her body from the water very early this morning.’ He did not say what had brought them looking for her there at such an hour, but the rumours were already circulating, and by this time there were not many people in Scheidenau who did not know that a celebrated local poacher, out before daylight after his night-lines, had sighted the body in the water and given the alarm. ‘Did you know her well?’