Faint surprise lightened the load of his wretchedness at that. What on earth had the friendliness or hostility of the press to do with the lacerations its embrace left on his flesh? It was almost worse to be caressed than to be clawed.
‘Hostile? No more hostile than a Rugby scrum is to the ball. They’re not for or against, just hungry for a row, and they think they’re on to one. Oh, no, it went all right, I suppose. I answered everything they asked me, I can’t do any more.’
‘You could have been a little less deprecating,’ said Graf with displeasure, grinding out his long cheroot in the ashtray with unnecessary violence. ‘I’m doing my best for you, Mr Corinth, in very difficult circumstances. I understand that you’re unwilling to parade your achievements. But you must realise that Gries has been looking upon you as a hero of the underground movement during the war, not simply as a gifted composer. There was no need to refuse laurels quite so ungraciously.’
Una closed her eyes for a second in mute resignation. She could see it all, the avid correspondents peppering him with questions, some provocative, some sympathetic, some probably malevolent, Graf offering him lead after lead, prompting him to an appropriately large performance, and Lucas stubbornly refusing every opening, with that expression of incredulous distaste on his face, and those deliberate, curt understatements in his mouth. If they hadn’t been hostile at the beginning, ten to one they were at the end. The press doesn’t like having its standards publicly disdained. Who does?
Once, long ago, in the days of her first motherly devotion, she remembered packing him off to clinch his application for the post of conductor to some provincial orchestra, and threatening to send him there with a label round his neck: Caution! Does not interview well! And when he had failed to ingratiate himself and come back without the job she had scolded him bitterly for an arrogance calculated to put up even the most insensitive provincial back. That was at eleven years old; now that she was turned twenty she was resigned to taking him as he was, and making the best of it.
‘If you’ve represented me as any sort of hero,’ said Lucas, colouring hotly, ‘you’ve done so without my knowledge or consent, and I can’t be responsible for the results. I’ve told my side of the story, and I’ve no reason to believe that it won’t be fairly reported. But I won’t lay myself out to court favour by pretending to be what I’m not.’
‘More important now,’ said Wehrle, in the voice of unmistakable and undisputed authority, ‘is to make all possible dispositions for your safety, Mr Corinth.’ He flashed one glance of his sharp eyes at Una. ‘I am not sure if Miss Corinth knows the exact position …?’
‘She knows.’
‘Including the threats to your life?’
‘If we are to look upon them as that, yes. Please do sit down. I’m neglecting my duty. Will you drink something? Whisky? Or would you prefer tea?’
‘Whisky will be ideal.’ Wehrle sat back in the offered chair, and spread his large hands on his knees. ‘I think we are to look upon them as precisely that. Threats are made, even in bizarre circumstances, without any serious intent or ability to carry them out. We know it happens. I see no symptoms here of the kind of histrionic or hysteric personality that looks for fulfilment in that way. The letter, you must have observed, is remarkably lucid, literate and precise. The intent rings only too true. And I think even the ability may not be lacking. But even if I did not see so much in the threat itself to impress me, I could not possibly assume that it was not to be taken seriously.’
‘I suppose not,’ Lucas agreed dubiously.
‘The first consideration, therefore, is to take good care of you, and make a criminal approach, as nearly as we can, impossible. The second is to try and trace Frau Gelder’s movements after she left Gries, and find out what happened to her son, and run him to earth if we can. But it’s going to take us some days, at least. I have already set things in motion on the obvious lines open to us, beginning in Linz, where she came from.’
‘Nobody knows what the boy looks like?’ Lucas asked.
‘As far as we know he has never been in Gries, or at least never under his own name. No one has seen him, no one knows what he looks like. All we know is that he would now be around twenty-seven years old. He may be here in the town at this moment, calling himself Schmidt or Müller. The only other lead we have to him is this letter to the Zeitung. Naturally that is being carefully examined, and any leads we can get out of it will be followed up. Then there is also the matter of providing all possible confirmation of your story. If he could be convinced, he might – surely he would if he is not mad – abandon his purpose. It is perfectly understandable that you avoided encountering anyone who might know you, that evening you came back from Innsbruck, but it leaves us few opportunities. There was the other man you took over the border with you. Yes, yes, I know you told me he was old, and is dead many years ago, but nevertheless there must be records of your arrival with him in Switzerland, where everything is so orderly – even of his movements afterwards. Every grain of corroboration is valuable. I am contacting the Swiss authorities about him. Did he stay there, or did he also go to England?’
‘He died in Zurich,’ said Lucas. ‘I hadn’t been in touch with him for years, I heard about it only when I received a notice of his funeral. They must have found my name and address among his papers. There was a widow – he’d married again in his old age.’
‘Then there are threads to be found, and we shall find them.’
Late, and at second hand, thought Una practically. An old woman, widowed fourteen years ago, asked to remember something her husband may have mentioned another fourteen years before that. No, why give a thought to that faint and feeble possibility?
‘Then there is the man to whom you spoke in the woods, and to whom you committed the legitimation that was meant for Gelder. And the colleague to whom this stranger was to deliver it.’
That will hardly get us far,’ said Lucas wearily. ‘Bruchmann is also dead. Nor can he ever have received the message. We’d already thought of that line of inquiry. Fräulein Lohr rang the saw-mill and asked about him this morning. He was arrested in that same drive. He died in a concentration camp.’
‘Which leaves only the stranger. Oh, I know you’ve already told this incident in detail – or you think you have. But I need every grain of evidence I can get about him, if I’m to look for him with any hope of finding him. And there are certain limited guides already. Not a native, you thought. More than that, not a settled man – all the indications were of a travelling man. The regulars come year after year to the fair. I shall have men on the fairground all day tomorrow, and I myself shall be there tonight. We have a limitation of age – a man, if not exactly as you estimated, nevertheless considerably older than yourself. We need not look at anyone below fifty-five. Also some indication of stature. You say he was taller than you, and you are by no means a short man, though perhaps then you had not quite all your growth. In the dark there is no colouring, I know. He could stand abnormally still when needful. And he had a sack with him.’
‘I took him to be a poacher,’ said Lucas simply.
‘Which also goes with the fairground,’ agreed Wehrle drily. ‘Tell me again what he told you. No, don’t elaborate, the same words will do – the words you used instinctively may even be very significant.’
‘He said he had heard a man grappled with and overpowered, heard him challenged by the name of Valentine Gelder, and heard him admit to his identity. He didn’t recognise the voice, and didn’t know the name. He simply reported what he heard.’
‘Anything else you recall? However trivial?’
‘He never looked directly at me. In the dark one strains to see. He stood all the time with his head turned sideways to me. But that didn’t surprise me. The times were like that. He didn’t want to show his face too clearly to anyone, even another fugitive. Even in the dark.’
‘Yet you did trust each other. You gave him the message to carry. And he accepted it an
d promised to deliver it.’
‘Yes. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t do it.’
‘Nothing more?’
Lucas shook his head. ‘I can think of nothing.’
‘Very well, we must make the best of what we have.’ He had made no notes on paper, but he had been storing away details methodically in that weather-beaten skull of his. ‘And now to make the best arrangements we can for your protection meantime. Herr Graf has made a suggestion which may serve very well.’
‘I am responsible for your safety,’ said Graf heavily, ‘since I brought you here.’ His tone said that he was still pondering whether to repent the move or no; for after all, if public opinion veered in Lucas’s direction the whole affair might yet record a credit balance. ‘We’re all agreed that the festival must go on according to plan. There’s too much at stake to cancel it now. There’s only one course open to us, to go ahead as though nothing had happened, as though it’s taken for granted that the public will accept our side of the story. But you must cooperate in the additional precautions we’re forced to take for your protection against this crazy young man. I suggest that you and Miss Una shall move from this hotel at once – of course without giving up these rooms and without any publicity – and take up residence on my island. It need not inconvenience you at all. I have a boat which shall be always at your disposal. One wing of the hotel is already habitable, there is power, and the telephone, and I am arranging that the kitchen there shall be provisioned with everything you will need for a short stay. The conversion work has ceased for the time being, because of the festival, there is no one resident there. I would give you a housekeeper, but the fewer people who know where you are, the better. If Miss Una will be able to manage the household …?’
Una looked out at the green and white pyramid of rocks and rose-coloured roofs across the water of the lake, the long finger of rock and jetty that pointed towards it from the foundations of the castle, and the blue moat that surrounded it.
‘I can manage, I’m sure. It sounds to me a very good idea.’
‘I will send Fräulein Lohr over there with you, since she already knows so much about this affair, and she can get in touch immediately with me or with Herr Wehrle here. She accepted the special assignment to act as your personal secretary during your visit, as all my office knows, it will look better if she continues in the same capacity. I shall be much happier when I know you have the Himmelsee all round you. An attacker would have to swim or take a boat to reach you, he could hardly do so without being seen. I should like you to make the move this evening,’ he said briskly. ‘Please be ready in about one hour, and I will have the boat pick you up then.’
The tone was enough to raise Lucas’s hackles and make him refuse to move, but he was too deeply aware of the trouble he was already causing, however involuntarily, to wish to add to it, and he could feel Una’s eagerness and relief. He agreed stiffly: ‘Very well! Naturally I want to do what I can to help.’
‘You could have done that rather more effectively,’ said Wehrle, good-humouredly enough, ‘if you’d reported those telephone calls to me as soon as you received them. There might have been a chance of tracing them if we’d known in time. I doubt if there’ll be any more from now on. But I propose to send two of my young men over to the island with you, if you’ll humour me. They’ll be in plain clothes, and I’ve no doubt they’ll find the assignment as good as a holiday. But they’ll also be armed. And efficient. You’ll oblige me by co-operating with them, even if you don’t enjoy the experience of having a bodyguard. I’m merely doing my job. For the moment, Mr Corinth, you are my job.’
‘The boat will be below at the hotel stage in one hour,’ said Graf, rising. ‘You can leave part of your luggage here, I will see that it’s safe.’
They were already withdrawing when he turned in the doorway to say, almost apologetically, as if in conciliation for all his minor offences: ‘You will like the villa. It’s a beautiful property – it used to be the summer residence belonging to the castle. But of course, you’re a native, you must remember it well. Did you know it used to be known as the Himmelhof?’
‘Charming!’ said Lucas, the faint glitter of a real smile kindling in his eyes. ‘But not, I hope, to be taken as an omen!’
CHAPTER SIX
It was Jörg-Erich who came for them at the end of their hour of grace, tapping discreetly at the door of their suite, with one of Dieter Wehrle’s young men at his heels.
‘The boat is down at the stage, and Fräulein Lohr is there already, with Herr Geestler’s colleague. May I present Hugo Geestler? Mr Corinth – Miss Una. We can go down from the balcony to the terraces, and so to the jetty. It will be more unobtrusive. Though of course, to take a boat out across the lake in the early evening is most usual – not at all for comment. Let me take your bag, Miss Una. Believe me, we shall do everything to take the best care of you.’
He was as handsome, as smooth, as sunny as ever, his deference towards Lucas and his patent admiration for Una had not changed in the slightest degree. He was, Una thought, the silky side of Graf’s rough and forceful proprietorship, and groomed for that very purpose; but exactly how much of him was real she could no longer estimate. He acted rather like an heir apparent. Yet she doubted if Graf himself knew half of what went on inside that beautifully barbered blond head. Or anyone else, for that matter, except Jörg-Erich Fischer. But she was grateful for his surface kindness.
Hugo Geestler was a stocky young man, thick set and powerful, like most of the locals, but quick and neat of movement, with the massively boned face and loose, easy bearing of mountain-dwellers everywhere. If he had luggage for his stay, he had already stowed it in the boat, for he was dressed in good grey slacks and a short-sleeved sports-shirt, like any nice girl’s boating escort on a summer evening, and hid his wide-set brown eyes, when they emerged into sunlight, behind the trendy square-rimmed dark glasses of the season. He hoisted Lucas’s modest bag under one arm, turning it into the mere repository for an evening picnic, or something equally transient. He smiled, but so far he had said nothing beyond a shy murmur of greeting in the universal bass-baritone of the valley, cavernous even when venting a sigh.
‘Do you speak English?’ Una asked him on the steps leading down to the terrace. She hardly knew why, for her German was coming to life now, and emergency had given her the vigour to pursue it without tiring. Perhaps she needed to know how much this young man was going to understand of what she might have to say to Lu in their withdrawn moments. For after all, Valentine Gelder the Younger was – must be – twenty-seven years old, and how many months on either side of twenty-seven could Hugo Geestler be?
‘A little,’ he said modestly. ‘Richard knows it better. But I understand.’
‘And you know all about us? About what’s happened?’
‘I know,’ said the deep voice.
Lucas was in front with Jörg-Erich; she had this unknown young man with the screened eyes to herself for these few moments, and felt an urgent need to probe deeper than his skin. She looked sidelong at him as they descended the steps, and saw a profile like the severe weathering of rock, very clean and hard and pure. The trouble was that she could envisage Valentine Gelder in just such an image, aloof and unassailable within his delusion, adamant in his judgement, proof against all appeal in his rocky certainty.
‘And you like this assignment?’
She had forgotten, or some intuitive sensitivity had told her to forget, and she spoke this time in German, a shock question that somehow did not shock.
‘I like,’ said Hugo Geestler, still and imperviously in English, though he had to filter his words in that strange language one by one through his deliberate mind, ‘music.’ It was a declaration of faith. ‘I play – not well – piano, organ, any keyboard. Yes, I like.’
She had her answer. And here they were on the white flags of the hotel jetty, the slanting evening light sending up splinters of radiance from the quivering wavelets into their
eyes. The Himmelsee was a very placid lake, sheltered and immune. The wind played with it; never assaulted it. The aloof Silvretta saw to that. The motorboat that rode silkily under the steps did no more than finger the stone frontage with its round nylon fenders. Crista was in it, and the second young man.
‘Richard Schwalbe,’ introduced Jörg-Erich amiably, handing down first Una, and then Lucas, into the boat.
‘Charmed!’ said Richard Schwalbe, with something of a flourish, gripping Una’s hand firmly and warmly. And he wore no sun-glasses, and his eyes were black and bright and happily appreciative, not missing the movement of her long, agile legs as she dropped aboard, or a curve of her body as she moved to a seat beside Crista in the stern. He was an inch or two taller than Geestler, but a good many pounds lighter, a long, athletic youngster with a lively face ready to laugh, and a bush of curling dark hair. He received the bags airily, one-handed, and stowed them with economic movements, rather like calculated moves in a game. He was in shorts and a bright tee-shirt. Una had never seen anyone who looked less like a police officer.
Jörg-Erich hovered, attentive to the last, as they seated themselves and turned their eyes expectantly towards the lofty islet over half a mile away.
‘I have been out there and checked that there are plenty of provisions and bedding, everything you will need. Oh, yes, and you’ll find the letters from the afternoon post in the drawing-room, Mr Corinth. I collected them from the festival office and took them straight over with me, as I was going across.’
‘You’ve been very kind,’ Lucas said.
‘Not at all! If there is anything you need, anything I’ve forgotten, please call me, don’t hesitate. I will come out at any time.’
Schwalbe started the engine, and shoved off lightly from the landing-stage, and the boat turned and drew away steadily towards the island. As they neared it they lost sight of the coronal of rose-red roof tiles, white walls and foaming green trees, and were left facing, on this townward side, a sheer face of pleated and striated cliff with a reef of rocks at its foot. A short, narrow spur jutted out from the centre, and a small view-tower crowned it, arching rococo brows to stare across at the castle.