A sense of dread filled Clemmie. Maybe that was what had happened to Oliver, a rock had fallen and he’d been taken by surprise, and hadn’t been able to get away quick enough. Oh, she hoped not. “That is truly terrifying,” Clemmie agreed.
“I should get back,” Miss Juno said. “To be honest, I loath to walk through the corridors now. But I hate being in our room with Miss Marnier’s constant vigilance. I think she fears they will return. And now it seems suits of armor are haunting these halls.” The last was said with more jest. “I wish we hadn’t left Germany. Nothing like this happens there. Although my skin can’t tolerate the sun, but Italy is pleasant, I think. At least I’ll feel better when we move on from here.”
With a smile, she nodded and walked toward the hallway. For a moment, she paused before marching with firm strides down the hallway until she was out of Clemmie’s sight.
With a deep sigh, Clemmie sat down again and sipped her tea, which was now definitely on the cool side.
An odd distraction, but also an unsettling one, particularly hearing about Miss Marnier’s distress and constant searching. The girl had to be terrified. More disturbing was that this appeared to be completely out of character.
For a moment, she tried to recreate the noise in her mind, to see if she could attribute it to something logical. Maybe someone was carrying a number of coal buckets in a basket. That would have to be some gingerly walking to make such a ruckus.
And the words, she tried to recreate them too. It hadn’t been Italian. Miss Marnier’s words returned to her, language like in church. That was it. It had been Latin. The pleasure of identification flared through her for a second, then the confusion of there being Latin spoken in the halls of this hotel. Maybe someone had been practicing their Latin while carrying coal buckets.
Hotel staff did not learn Latin. It was only a language pursued by the highly educated.
Again she tried to think of the sounds she’d heard, tried to distinguish specific words. The only one she could pinpoint was ‘proditor’. That was what it had sounded like, but she wasn’t sure that was simply part of a word, or a whole word. And she had no idea what it meant. What could it mean? No association came to mind. Latin did have a lot of associations with English, and the romantic languages, but she didn’t know what ‘proditor’ meant. The things that ended with ‘tor’ were typically people, or beings. Like predator. What a cheery association.
Rising from her seat again, she walked into the library, which was close enough to the main entrance that she would hear someone coming in. With her fingers, she searched the spines of the book, but it wasn’t perhaps surprising that there were no Latin lexicons in the Belvedere hotel’s library.
Oliver must have done some Latin, but Clemmie suspected it hadn’t been something he’d excelled at. And he wasn’t around to answer. Mr. Coleridge would have been the perfect person to ask, but he was gone.
Returning to her seat, she wondered if any of the guests had a good comprehension of Latin. As far as she knew, there wasn’t a doctor or botanist currently residing.
It wasn’t important, and she put the thought to side as she returned to her worry, and constant prayer that the search party would return with Oliver. Perhaps he had simply been lost, and all would be well. Maybe that was even the likely scenario.
Chapter 10
THE SEARCH PARTY RETURNED piecemeal, going immediately to the breakfast room where they were served tea and biscuits. Their sorrowful looks told her that they hadn’t found Oliver. Parties were still out there, so all hope was not lost. It was getting close to dark and the search would finish soon.
Finally Mr. Weber returned, wearing a gray wool tramping suit. It was different from how she normally saw him.
As he returned, he took her hand. “I am sorry. We have not found him. We have searched all areas within walking distance. He is not on the mountain. There is still the woods down in the valley, but we cannot search them today. Also the glacier. The experts will have to search for him. It is too dangerous for us to walk it.”
Clemmie searched for something to say. “Are you sure?”
“Unless he rode further afield, then we should have found him. No horses appear to be missing. Nor carriages.”
“He could have gotten a ride with someone.”
“In that case, it would be impossible for us to know where he’s gone.”
For a moment, Clemmie wanted to argue, to urge him to do more, but she had a hard time logically justifying it. How far could they search? If he’d accepted a ride with someone, he could have gone far. But why would he? Nothing indicated that he’d want to search for something away from here. The harsh truth was that the glacier was more likely to have interested him. No, surely he couldn’t have been silly enough to try to traverse it on his own? They had both been told it was dangerous.
The Schonbergs returned as well, and they both looked at her pityingly, which showed they suspected something had gone badly wrong. That he was either lost down a deep crevasse in the glacier, which apparently moved and closed like a living thing, or he could have deserted her.
The thought pierced through her. There had been no indication he would. They hadn’t quarreled, and she hadn’t been disagreeable in any way. It wasn’t like him, or at least not in her estimation of him. And the carriage was here. The ornery part of her mind suggested that he would leave the carriage for her if he’d chosen to desert her.
How many of the people here wondered the same thing? The bride being deserted on her honeymoon. No, that wasn’t like Oliver. He was kind and caring. He wouldn’t
