It was the kind of thing governesses said, but he was smiling now and I had the idea that something I’d said had pleased him.
“I see your mother and sister coming, so I’m afraid we must end this very useful conversation. I am much obliged to you for your powers of observation. Will you permit me to ask you some more questions if any more occur to me?”
I nodded.
“Is it a secret?”
“Do you want it to be?”
“Holmes, I don’t think you should encourage this young lady…”
“My dear Watson, in my observation there’s nothing more precious you can give a child to keep than a secret.”
My mother came across the terrace with Amanda. Silver Stick and Square Bear touched their hats to her and hoped we enjoyed our walk. When she asked me later what we’d been talking about. I said they’d asked whether the snow was as deep last year and hugged the secret of my partnership. I became in my imagination eyes and ears for him. At the children’s party at teatime on Christmas Eve the parents talked in low tones, believing that we were absorbed in the present-giving round the hotel tree. But it would have taken more than the porter in red robe and white whiskers or his largesse of three wooden geese on a string to distract me from my work. I listened and stored up every scrap against the time when he’d ask me questions again. And I watched Mrs. McEvoy as she went round the hotel through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, pale and upright in her black and her jewels, trailing silence after her like the long train of a dress.
My call came on Boxing Day. There was another snowball fight in the hotel grounds, for parents as well this time. I stood back from it all and waited by a little clump of bare birches and, sure enough, Silver Stick and Square Bear came walking over to me.
“I’ve found out a lot about her,” I said.
“Have you indeed?”
“He was her second husband. She had another one she loved more, but he died of a fever. It was when they were visiting Egypt a long time ago.”
“Ten years ago.”
Silver Stick’s voice was remote. He wasn’t even looking at me.
“She got married to Mr. McEvoy three years ago. Most people said it was for his money, but there was an American lady at the party and she said Mr. McEvoy seemed quite nice when you first knew him and he was interested in music and singers, so perhaps it was one of those marriages where people quite like each other without being in love, you know?”
I thought I’d managed that rather well. I’d tried to make it like my mother talking to her friends and it sounded convincing in my ears. I was disappointed at the lack of reaction, so brought up my big guns.
“Only she didn’t stay liking him because after they got married she found out about his eye.”
“His eye?”
A reaction at last, but from Square Bear, not Silver Stick. I grabbed for the right word and clung to it.
“Roving. It was a roving eye. He kept looking at other ladies and she didn’t like it.”
I hoped they’d understand that it meant looking in a special way.
I didn’t know myself exactly what special way, but the adults talking among themselves at the party had certainly understood. But it seemed I’d overestimated these two because they were just standing there staring at me. Perhaps Silver Stick wasn’t as clever as I’d thought. I threw in my last little oddment of information, something anybody could understand.
“I found out her first name. It’s Irene.”
Square Bear cleared his throat. Silver Stick said nothing. He was looking over my head at the snowball fight.
“Holmes, I really think we should leave Jessica to play with her little friends.”
“Not yet. There’s something I wanted to ask her. Do you remember the staff at the hotel last Christmas?”
Here was a dreadful comedown. I’d brought him a head richly crammed with love, money, and marriages and he was asking about the domestics. Perhaps the disappointment on my face looked like stupidity because his voice became impatient.
“The people who looked after you, the porters and the waiters and the maids, especially the maids.”
“They’re the same…I think.” I was running them through my head. There was Petra with her thick plaits who brought us our cups of chocolate, fat Renata who made our beds, gray-haired Ulrike with her limp.
“None left?”
“I don’t think so.”
Then the memory came to me of blond curls escaping from a maid’s uniform cap and a clear voice singing as she swept the corridors, blithe as a bird.
“There was Eva, but she got married.”
“Who did she marry?”
“Franz, the man who’s got the sleigh.”
It was flying down the drive as I spoke, silver bells jangling, the little horse gold in the sunshine.
“A good marriage for a hotel maid.”
“Oh, he didn’t have the sleigh last year. He was only the under porter.”
“Indeed. Watson, I think we must have a ride in this sleigh. Will you see the head porter about booking it?”
I hoped he might invite me to go with them but he said nothing about that. Still, he seemed to be in a good temper again — although I couldn’t see that it was from anything I’d told him.
“Miss Jessica, again I’m obliged to you. I may have yet another favor to ask, but all in good time.”
I went reluctantly to join the snowballers as the two of them walked through the snow back to the hotel.
That afternoon, on our walk, they went past us on their way down the drive in Franz’s sleigh. It didn’t look like a pleasure trip. Franz’s handsome face was serious and Holmes was staring straight ahead.
Instead of turning up toward the forest at the end of the hotel drive they turned left for the village. Our walk also took us to the village because Father wanted to see an old man about getting a stick carved.
When we walked down the little main street we saw the sleigh and horse standing outside a neat chalet with green shutters next to the church. I knew it was Franz’s own house and wondered what had become of his passengers. About half an hour later, when we’d seen about Father’s stick, we walked back up the street and there were Holmes and Watson standing on the balcony outside the chalet with Eva, the maid from last year. Her fair hair was as curly as ever but her head was bent. She seemed to be listening intently to something that Holmes was saying and the droop of her shoulders told me she wasn’t happy.
“Why is Silver Stick talking to her?”
Amanda, very properly, was rebuked for staring and asking questions about things that didn’t concern her. Being older and wiser, I said nothing but kept my secret coiled in my heart. Was it Eva who pushed him? Would they lock her up in prison? A little guilt stirred along with the pleasure, because he wouldn’t have known about Eva if I hadn’t told him, but not enough to spoil it.
Later I watched from our window hoping to see the sleigh coming back, but it didn’t that day. Instead, just before it got dark, Holmes and Watson came back on foot up the drive, walking fast, saying nothing.
Next morning, Square Bear came up to Mother at coffee time. “I wonder if you would permit Miss Jessica to take a short walk with me on the terrace.”
Mother hesitated, but Square Bear was so obviously respectable, and anyway you could see the terrace from the coffee room. I put on my hat, cape, and gloves and walked with him out of the glass doors into the cold air. We stood looking down at the rink, in exactly the same place as I’d been standing when they first spoke to me. I knew that was no accident. Square Bear’s fussiness, the tension in his voice that he was so unsuccessful in hiding, left no doubt of it.
There was something odd about the terrace, too — far more people on it than would normally be the case on a cold morning. There must have been two dozen or so standing round in stiff little groups, talking to each other,
