went on.
The atmosphere inside the first aid room was distinctly less cheerful: it was funereal. Present were Harper, Wrinfield, two of his associate directors, Sergius and a splendidly white-maned, white-moustached gentleman of about seventy. He and Harper were at one end of the room where Bruno, still on the stretcher, lay on a trestle table.
Harper said: “Dr Hachid, if you would care to carry out your own personal examination —” Dr Hachid smiled sadly. “I hardly think that will be necessary. “ He looked at one of the associate directors, a man by the name of Armstrong. “You have seen death before?” Armstrong nodded. “Touch his forehead.” Armstrong hesitated, advanced, laid his hand on Bruno’s forehead. He almost snatched it away. “It’s cold.” He shivered. “Already it’s gone all cold.” Dr Hachid pulled the white sheet over Bruno’s head, stepped back and pulled a curtain which obscured the stretcher. Hachid said: “As you say in America, a doctor is a doctor is a doctor, and I would not insult a colleague. But the law of our land —” “The law of every land,” Harper said. “A foreign doctor cannot sign a death certificate.”
Pen in hand, Hachid bent over a printed form. “Fracture of spine. Second and third vertebrae, you said? Severance of spinal cord.” He straightened. “If you wish me to make arrangements”
“I have already arranged for an ambulance. The hospital morgue —” Sergius said: “That will not be necessary. There is a funeral parlour not a hundred metres from here.”
“There is? That would save much trouble. But at this time of night —” “Dr Harper.”
“My apologies, Colonel. Mr Wrinfield, can I borrow one of your men, a trusted man who will not talk?” “Johnny, the night watchman.”
“Have him go down to the train. There’s a black case under my bunk. Please have him bring it here.”
The back parlour of the undertaker’s emporium was harshly lit with neon strip lighting which pointed up the coldly antiseptic hygiene of the surroundings, tiled walls, marble floor, stainless steel sinks. Upended coffins lined one wall. In the centre of the room were three more coffins on steel-legged marble tables. Two of those were empty. Dr Harper was pulling a sheet over the third. Beside him, the plump undertaker, a man with gleaming shoes and gleaming bald pate, virtually hopped from foot to foot, his professional feeling visibly outraged.
He said: “But you cannot do this. Straight into the coffin, I mean. There are things to be done —” “I will do those things. I have sent for my own equipment.” “But he has to be laid out.”
“He was my friend. I shall do it.”
“But the shroud —”
“You will be excused for not knowing that a circus performer is always buried in his circus clothes.”
“It is all wrong. We have ethics. In our profession —” “Colonel Sergius.” Harper’s voice was weary. Sergius nodded, took the undertaker by the arm, led him some way apart and spoke quietly. He was back in twenty seconds with an undertaker three shades paler and with a key, which he handed to Harper.
“The parlour is all yours, Dr Harper.” He turned to the undertaker.
“You may leave.” He left.
“I think we should leave, too,” Wrinfield said. “I have some excellent vodka in my office.”
Maria was in the office, forehead resting on crossed arms on the desk, when the men came in. She lifted her head slowly, peering through half-closed eyes as if not seeing too well. A concerned and troubled Dr Harper was standing before her, an equally concerned Wrinfield and an impassive Sergius beside him: Sergius’s facial muscles for conveying sympathy had atrophied over the years. Maria’s eyes were red and puffy and glazed and her cheeks glistened. Wrinfield looked at the grief stricken face and touched her arm awkwardly.
“Do forgive me, Maria. I had forgotten — I didn’t know — we shall go at once.”
“Please. It’s all right.” She dabbed at her face with some tissues. “Please come in.”
As the other three men rather reluctantly entered and Wrinfield brought out his bottle of vodka, Harper said to her: “How did you know? I’m so terribly sorry, Maria.” He looked at her engagement ring and looked away again. “But how did you know?”
“I don’t know. I just knew.” She dabbed at her eyes again. “Yes, I do know. I heard the announcement about his fall. I didn’t come to see — well, because I was scared to come. I was sure that if he wasn’t badly hurt he’d ask for me or you would have sent for me. But nobody came.”
In an understandably strained silence and with considerable haste the men disposed of their vodkas and filed out. Harper, the last to leave, said to Maria: “I have to see to some equipment. I’ll be back in two minutes.”
He closed the door behind him. Maria waited for some moments, rose, glanced through the window, opened the door and peered cautiously out. There was no one in the immediate vicinity. She closed the door, locked it, returned to her desk, took a tube from a drawer, removed the cap, squeezed and rubbed some more glycerine into her eyes and face. She then unlocked the door.
Dr Harper returned shortly with a suitcase. He poured himself another vodka, looked everywhere except at the girl as if uncertain how to begin. Then he cleared his throat and said apologetically: “I know you’re never going to forgive me for this but I had to do it. You see, I didn’t know how good an actress you might be. Not so good, I’m afraid. Your feelings do tend to show through.”
“My feelings tend — you know that Bruno and I —” She broke off, then said slowly: “What on earth do you mean?”
He smiled at her, broadly although albeit somewhat apprehensively.
“Dry your tears and come and see.”
The first beginnings of understanding touched her face. “Do you mean —” “I mean come and see.”
Bruno pushed back the two covering sheets and sat up in his coffin. He looked at Harper without much enthusiasm and said reproachfully: “Weren’t in too much of a hurry, were you? How would you like to lie in a coffin wondering when some enthusiastic apprentice is going to come along and start battening down the lid?”
Maria saved Harper the necessity of a reply. When Bruno had finally disentangled himself, he climbed stiffly down to the floor, reached inside the coffin, held up a limp, dripping linen bag and said: “And I’m soaking wet, too.” Maria said: “What is that?”
“A slight subterfuge, my dear.” Harper gave a deprecatory smile. “An ice-bag. It was necessary to give Bruno the cold clammy forehead of the deceased. Ice, unfortunately, melts.” Harper placed the case on the coffin and opened the lid. “And, alas, we now have to cause Bruno some more suffering: we have to transform him into a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.”
The transformation took all of twenty minutes. Harper had not necessarily mistaken his profession but clearly he would have been perfectly at home in the make-up department of any film studio. He worked swiftly and skilfully and obviously derived some satisfaction from his creative handiwork. When he was finished, Bruno looked at himself in a full-length mirror and winced. The light brown wig was just that too much long and straggly, the light brown moustache a soupcon too luxuriant: the vivid semi-circular scar that ran from his forehead round the corner of his right eye almost to his nose was the result, clearly, of an encounter with a broken bottle: for clothes he wore a blue and white striped shirt, red tie, light brown suit with red vertical stripes, mustard socks and shoes of the same appalling colour. The rings on his fingers would appear to have had their source of origin either in a fairground stall or Christmas crackers.
Bruno said: “A thing of beauty, the man says. I could always hire myself out as a scarecrow.” He bent a discouraging look on Maria, whose hand, discreetly covering her mouth, could not disguise the crinkling in her eyes. He looked back to Harper. “This makes me inconspicuous?”
“The point precisely. It makes you so conspicuous that no one will bother to take a second look at you — except for those who will do a double-take to convince themselves that their eyes weren’t deceiving them in the first place. It’s the anonymous, furtive, grey man slinking down alleyways that attracts suspicion. You are Jon Neuhaus, a machine-tool salesman from East Germany. The passport and papers are in your inside pocket.”
Bruno dug out his passport, a venerable-looking document that attested to the fact that his salesman’s duties had taken him to virtually every Iron Curtain country, some of them many times. He looked at his picture and then again at himself in the mirror. The resemblance was quite remarkable. He said: “This must have taken quite a time to prepare. Where was it made?”
“In the States.”
“You’ve had it all that time?” Harper nodded. “You might have shown it to me earlier on. Given me time to get accustomed to the awfulness of it all.”
“You would probably have refused to come.” Harper checked his watch. “The last train in tonight arrives in
