He broke the spell of his thoughts, started across the soft
grass. As he came closer to the boulders, he could see the black line of shadow where two met. Nothing could be hidden there. It was only a narrow cleft, a miniature crevasse. His excitement ebbed, and he was left with the hollow feeling of the man who has deluded himself.
He was turning away when he noticed the withered flowers and the rose bush. Their shadow wasn’t as heavy as all that. He knelt, pulling them roughly aside, and found the cleft had spread as it reached the ground. He took out his flashlight and aimed its beam into the black hole. He saw the straps of a rucksack, and pulled. He had to lay aside the flashlight and pull with both hands. Pull heavily, pull slowly. The rucksack crushed the flower stalks, caught in the brambles. He tore it free. It was the chest, all right.
He knelt there for a long minute, not even touching the chest. And then he moved quickly. He hoisted the rucksack on his back, covering it with his cape. He pocketed the flashlight, pushed the dried stalks of grass and flowers back into place with his foot, and made for the nearest group of trees. From there, he reached the sparse edge of forest and slipped into its depths. There was no need to worry about cover now, only about direction, and his sense of that was built into him. Before he neared the back of the inn, he began a wide circle to avoid the village, making a long detour around the farthest stretch of fields. By the time he reached Trudi’s house, he could feel sure that no one had seen him.
His jeep was standing in the deep shadows of the western side of the Seidl house. He hesitated. His first impulse was to drop the rucksack into the back seat and take off. But he was exhausted, although he’d recover quickly enough with some
food and warmth; and he was hungry. His last meal had been breakfast. And Trudi would be waiting.
The heavy door was unlatched. He pushed it open carefully—it was old like the house itself and groaned easily. He stepped over the raised stone threshold that kept the kitchen free of any floor draughts, closed the door slowly, and paused. Trudi had left one small lamp, well trimmed, on the big table that stood in the centre of the scrubbed wooden floor. There was food there, too, and the wood ashes in the old-fashioned fireplace glowed warmly. It was more friendly than any stove, he had to admit, although he had often been amused by the way Trudi’s father had insisted on keeping that open fireplace, wide and black and smoke-stained, just because his grandfather and great-grandfather and their great-grandfathers had used it. Yes, it was an old house, all right, one of the oldest in the village. The wonder was it held together and kept the winter wind out—better than his own new house down at Bad Aussee. Gently he lowered the rucksack on to the floor at the bottom of the stairs that led up to Trudi’s room. Her mother slept in a room at the back of the kitchen (once it had been part of the barn when Trudi’s father farmed here); he could hear her steady breathing through the wall. He eased off his shoes as he unfastened his cape, and left them beside the rucksack. He moved silently towards the table and its covered plates. This was Trudi’s way of saying, “Here’s something to eat, and if you are too tired to see me, don’t bother. I waited long enough, and I’m fast asleep anyway.” She never meant it, of course. It was just to remind him that if he was an independent type, so was she. Or at least tried to be. But not very successfully, he thought with a happy grin.
He ate everything she had left for him. There had been enough for two men, and he needed it all. He sat for a while, his back comfortably near the warm hearth, and almost fell asleep. He roused himself. At least he had decided what to do with the rucksack. He had even answered the question why he had not left it in its hiding place. It was only safe there as long as Dick had been alive. His death meant that someone like Grell had been suspicious of him; and Grell wasn’t the man to let suspicions wither away without a search. If I could find the hiding place, Johann reasoned, so could Grell. So could the American, the lawyer fellow, who studied the photographs so intently. Yes, once anyone guessed the chest was no longer sunk in the lake, the hunt would be on.
He rose, blew out the lamp, and moved quietly to the staircase. He lifted the rucksack and began his cautious climb, avoiding the third and ninth steps that creaked badly. He was careful with the upper landing too. Inside Trudi’s door, he could relax and move without such exaggerated caution. It always amused him, but it was part of the gamble and added to the fun of the chase. She had left her curtains undrawn so that the moonlight would keep him from falling over the heavy furniture. He laid the rucksack beside a low chest that stored all her carefully embroidered linens collecting for the day she would marry. He looked at the rucksack and then back at the sleeping girl, dark hair loose on the soft pillow. Marriage was something he could now afford. The thought nearly drove him out the door and back down the staircase.
Then she turned in her sleep, sighing a little, stretching her body under the white mound of eiderdown. He stripped off his clothes, dropping them on the floor. He bent over her,
half wakening her with small light kisses. He bit her ear lobe gently. “Anyone at home?” he asked softly as he pulled the eiderdown aside.
Trudi awakened him at four o’clock as she always did. “Time to go,” she whispered. She was already out of bed, wrapped in the heavy dressing gown he had given her last Christmas. The curtains had been tightly drawn and a candle lit.
“Too early,” he grumbled, but she was shaking out his clothes, handing them to him one by one. He dressed slowly, longing for another hour of soft warm sleep. But Trudi was right. Time to leave before the village was stirring. Then he saw the rucksack and became wide awake. “Look, Trudi—I’ve got to go to Salzburg. I won’t have time to stop off at my place. Would you keep this for me until I get back?” He nodded to the rucksack.
“Of course.” She looked at it curiously. “What is it?”
“Just some equipment. It belonged to Dick. It was thrown clear of the car.” He looked around the room, frowning. “We don’t want your mother to find it and start asking questions about how it got here. Does she come up here much?”
“No, her leg hurts her badly. The stairs—”
“Even so, we’d better be careful. We don’t want people to start talking.”
She agreed with that. She watched him as he tried to draw the chest out of the rucksack, and then stared in horror as he took out his knife and slashed the canvas sides. “What a waste—” she began. “Oh, it’s filthy!” She stared at the metal box with distaste.
“Get an old towel, will you? It will soon clean off.”
“It needs a good scrub,” she told him, but together they began to get most of the dried green slime removed. “It must be valuable; look at the way he had it padlocked.”
“I hope it’s very valuable. For Anna’s sake. She’ll need every penny she can get for it. Look, love—once the funeral is over, I’ll bring Anna out to my place, and she can get this box then. We’ll keep it a secret between us. Right?”
“Won’t the police want—”
“It isn’t their business. It’s Anna’s. Now where will we put it?”
“Under the bed.”
The suggestion was so simple, so typical, that he almost smiled. “In here,” he said, and lifted the lid of her linen chest.
“No!”
“Trudi,” he said gently, catching her around the waist with his free arm, “do you know that’s the very first ‘No’ you’ve ever given me? And just when I need your help most. Please, Trudi. We’ll wrap it in a sheet. It can lie underneath. It won’t dirty or crush anything. Come on, love.” He kissed her neck, her chin, her lips. She still strained away from him. “All right. I’ll just have to take Dick’s equipment to my place and try to hide it safely there.” He let go of her completely.
“Is it as valuable as that?” she asked slowly. “But surely no one would want to steal it.”
“Wouldn’t they? Do you know how much one of Dick’s cameras cost him? Fifteen thousand schillings, and that was at a discount too.”
She looked at him, completely shocked.
“So that box means money. Money for Anna. I won’t have to worry about her future. I can think of my own. I can think
of getting married, settling down.” He hesitated, branched off to the main problem. “Oh, well—I must take the box down to my own house, try to find a—”
Trudi said briskly, “You are so careless about your place, Johann. Nothing is properly locked, the door key is where everyone can find it, and people keep wandering in and out to see you. No, no, that wouldn’t do. Not if this box is so valuable.”
“It is.”
She began lifting embroidered mats and bolster cases and eiderdown covers and stacks of towels on to her bed.
The green-stained metal box was hidden. The linen was replaced after some rearrangement by Trudi to allow for the addition to her hope chest. “Meine eigene Aussteuer,” she said softly, sadly, as she closed its lid.
Johann caught her up in a massive hug. “It could be part of your trousseau,” he said in his relief. “Once Anna is settled—” He could have bitten his tongue, but the promise was half out, and Trudi had seized it.
Her arms went around his shoulders. “Oh, Johann!” She kissed him over and over again. “We’ll get married. Anna will have her box and we can get married!”
“Trudi, Trudi, we’re late. Your mother will soon—”
She released him with a laugh. “That doesn’t matter now.”
“Oh, yes, it does. We’ll keep things just as they are. Meanwhile. Our secret. Right?” He picked up the rucksack. That must leave with him. Trudi would wash it and try to mend it. Better not have it lying around here.
“Our secret,” she promised him. Her eyes were bright, her face glowing with happiness.
He gave her a last kiss. “You really are my best girl,” he said softly.
Johann dropped the rucksack, covered by his folded cape, on to the front seat of the jeep and released its brake. He began pushing it away from the wall of the Seidl house. It was an easy and quiet exit, for the ground sloped downward to the road.
“Very efficient,” Felix Zauner’s low voice said at his elbow. “Need some help?” He was bundled up warmly, but he looked peaked and cold. “This would have to be the morning you overslept by twenty minutes.”
“I tell you too much,” Johann said, recovering himself as they both pushed. Quickly, the jeep swung on to the dark road that ran downhill to Bad Aussee. “Do you want a lift?”
“No. I am going back to my bed at Frau Hitz’s place. She put me up for the night. Grell had only two rooms prepared at the inn.”
“I thought you sounded a bit sharp-set.”
“You sound on edge yourself. Anything wrong?”
Johann stared at Zauner through the cold bleak shadows. “I think I just asked her to marry me.”
Zauner whistled softly. “And what is Elisabetha going to say about that?”
Johann shrugged. Elisabetha was not the kind of girl who married. “I’m just a change from her Salzburg friends, that’s all.”
For a moment, Zauner said nothing. Johann had more sense than he had realised. Elisabetha, for all her charm and good looks, was a girl who brought misery. He clapped Johann’s shoulder. “You will be better off with Trudi Seidl.”
Johann said nothing.
“You love her, don’t you?”
“I guess I do.” There was a touch of amazement in Johann’s voice.
Zauner was amused. “I don’t see you as a married man.”
“Neither do I.”
Zauner’s grin widened. “Let’s get out of the cold,” he said and climbed into the jeep, pushing the cape aside to make room. “Take me down as far as that first tree. I’ve got some news for you.” He waited until Johann started up the engine, and once it was running smoothly enough he began talking.
“It’s about Anna. She didn’t stay with the Dietrichs. They thought she was safely asleep, and she slipped out when Frieda and the children were having supper. She went home. She phoned them from there—at least, the American phoned them. He waited until Frieda came around to spend the night with Anna. So she’s all right. But—” Felix Zauner’s lips closed tight, and he said no more.
“The American was with her?” Johann stopped the jeep. They were almost at the tree anyway. “That lawyer fellow?”
“Mathison.”
“What in hell is going on?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. What are your plans?”
“I was going to wash and change and then drive into Salzburg.”
“Do that. As far as we know, they met accidentally. But—” Again there was that silence.
“
Is
he a lawyer?”
“We are finding that out. You know—” Zauner was choosing his words carefully—“there seems to be a lot of interest in
Unterwald. That Frenchman, for instance, who stayed last night with Frau Hitz. She tells me he asked a lot of questions about visitors to the village. And three days ago, she gave a midday meal to two inquisitive foreigners who were also on a walking tour. She thought they were either Czech or Polish. They asked about visitors, too.”
“Well, they weren’t asking about Finstersee.” But in spite of his cockiness, Johann was worried.
“They will do more than ask about the lake if they hear of a violent death—”
“Murder,” Johann said determinedly.
“What motive was there?”
Johann had the impulse to say, “Plenty. You are sitting against Dick’s rucksack right now—yes, it’s under my cape. I found it where he had hidden it.” But he clamped his lips shut. There was a brief silence. He gave Felix one last chance. “You don’t want to name it murder, is that it? You want it to be an accident.”
“We’ll get Grell and his friends—if they are connected with it.”
So this is where we part, Johann thought. He said angrily, “But not as murderers.”
“You’re a vindictive son of a bitch,” Felix said lightly, and opened the jeep door. “I’ll be staying up here for a day or so. I may yet persuade Grell to keep his inn open as a ski lodge. I didn’t learn much last night. They are a careful trio; they talk a lot and say nothing. But I had one small triumph. I rather think I have established peaceful relations with Frau Hitz. She should be a most valuable ally.” He got out of the car, looked around him. The stars were almost gone; the moon was a pale ghost. “The most god-forsaken hour in the whole day.”