House of Green Turf

‘I’ve been here only two days,’ said Maggie simply. ‘I knew her by name and by sight, of course, I’ve talked to her once or twice, but that’s all.’

‘We are anxious to find out when she was last seen alive. Can you help us? When was the last time that you saw her?’

‘She helped to serve dinner. After that I didn’t see her again. I went up to bed very shortly afterwards.’ She caught his shrewd brown eye on her, and smiled faintly. ‘I am not exactly on holiday. About a month ago I was involved in a car crash, and had some rather troublesome but not dangerous injuries, which required surgery. I came here for a complete change and rest during convalescence.’

He nodded sympathy; it had already dawned on her that he knew quite well who Maggie Tressider was, and in spite of all his professional impartiality he would find it very easy to treat her as a privileged person. It made her almost ashamed of pleading illness, however truthfully. ‘I am almost well,’ she said quickly, ‘only not yet quite strong again.’

‘May I say that I hope this tragedy will not upset you too much? You must try to put it out of your mind once this enquiry is over, and I trust the air of Scheidenau will restore you to health. We are hoping to have the pleasure of hearing you at Salzburg again next year.’ He turned back to the business in hand without hesitation and without embarrassment. ‘Your room is on the lake side of the house. Did you hear or see anything out of the way? During the evening or in the night?’

‘No. I have sleeping tablets,’ she said apologetically. It was not even a lie; she had them, though she never took them. They were the doctors’ idea, not hers. ‘When I came down this morning you were already here, and Gisela told me what had happened.’

It seemed that he was satisfied; he was marking off her name in his list. ‘One more thing. I would like you to look at this.’

He took it from under the papers on the desk; she knew it as soon as her eyes lit upon it, and it went to her heart like an invisible arrow, reminding her that she was herself the instrument not of one death only, but of two. She put out a hand that astonished her by not trembling—perhaps there was nothing left to make her tremble, if she accepted that sentence of damnation—to take the photograph he was offering her. She bent her head over it dutifully, and the passion with which she studied it was no lie.

It was the one thing for which she had not been prepared, and for a moment she did not know what to do. The boy in the photograph, head bent like hers, brow furrowed like hers, braced hands fleetingly happy in making music, bowed away at his ’cello and ignored her. No one could have cared less what she did about him; that was her affair. A stain of damp from the dewy grass had dried across one corner, a smear of green marked the neck of the ’cello. Suddenly she wanted with all her heart to acknowledge this boy, to declare her interest in him and her grief for him, and above all her endless and inescapable responsibility for his death. But she could not do it. If she dealt herself in, how long would it be before Francis Killian was dragged in beside her?

She shook her head helplessly, and looked up at the man behind the desk. ‘Who is he? Is it something to do with Friedl?’

‘We should be interested to have him identified. Do you know him?’

So all the Waldmeister family had either genuinely not remembered Robin Aylwin, or else preferred not to know him, not to be drawn in any deeper. She wondered which? ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t know him.’

‘You never saw this before?’

‘I’m sorry!’ That at least was no lie; she was sorry that she could not lay down the load that was again crushing her, but if she did, someone else would find himself carrying it.

‘Thank you, Miss Tressider, that is all. Don’t worry, we shall try not to disturb you any more. Rest and relax, and think about other things.’

‘You’re very kind,’ she said, and meant it. At the door she hesitated, looking back. It was without premeditation that she asked: ‘Did Friedl fall in? Or… do you think she did it herself?’

She was never quite sure, afterwards, why he answered her, and apparently so unguardedly. Perhaps the directness of the question had surprised an answer out of him before he was aware; but that she could hardly believe. Or perhaps it was a deliberate concession on his part to a person he held to be above suspicion. She hoped it was not that. Or perhaps, and most probable of all, he chose her to fly a little kite for him, to put a small and deceptively innocent cat among the pigeons, in order to see what birds, if any, took flight, and what feathers flew.

‘Hardly either,’ he said with a hollow smile, ‘if the fingermarks round her throat mean anything. Goodday, Miss Tressider!’

She walked out of the office and up the staircase like a creature in a dream. She saw no one, she heard nothing but that matter-of-fact voice repeating its calculated, its miraculous indiscretion. A huge, clean, boisterous wind was blowing through her mind and spirit, blowing the sickness from her soul and the corruption from her will. She closed the door of her room, and sat down before the mirror to stare into her own face, and saw it marvellously changed. She felt cold and pure, scoured into her ultimate clarity, like a Himalayan peak honed diamond-clear and diamond-hard by the withering winds of the heights. She saw herself bright and positive and brave in the mirror, and wondered where this self of hers had been hiding so long.

He would never know what he had done for her!

Friedl had died in the lake, but with the marks of hands round her throat. That meant murder! Not the obscure, malign influence of a woman who was accursed and carried death around with her against her will, but simple, physical, brutal murder, ordered by a human brain and carried out by two human hands. Not her hands, and not her brain. She was absolved; this at least she knew she had not done, nor caused to be done. Someone else had been prowling the woods at midnight, spying on them. A dead twig had cracked underfoot, and Friedl had shrugged it away as of no significance. And if this was plain, workaday murder, then surely so had Robin’s death been, long ago.

Not hers at all, never hers, neither the act nor the guilt. All she had been was the diversion, the instrument, the fool of God blundering about helplessly in the path of some other force not troubled with a conscience.

There was someone else, then, who had wanted Friedl dead. There was someone else who had wanted Robin dead. What a fool she had been, what an inflated fool, thinking herself so important that heaven would put itself out to spread its lightnings round her! Humility came to her aid now, she saw herself small and accidental, ridiculously irrelevant. Some other more urgent, more practical reason must account for these deaths. Someone else’s advantage, or profit, or threatened security.