Ellis Peters - George Felse 05 - The Piper On The Mountain (15 page)

The pause of glee and consternation was abruptly interrupted by a loud, peremptory voice in the outer room, speaking unmistakable English. Tossa pricked up her ears apprehensively, unwilling to trust what they told her. She looked round for someone who would be quick to understand, and found herself appealing directly to Ondrejov.

“That’s somebody else for me, I’m afraid. I know him, he’s—he’s a friend of my mother’s.” How could she say, with these people still employing the mourning note when they spoke of Terrell: “He’s going to marry my mother.”?

Ondrejov got up and went into the outer room, closing the door between; and presently reappeared with a wooden face, ushering in before him a large, angry, black-avised man in an incongruous business suit, who descended upon Tossa like a perturbed thundercloud.

“For God’s sake, girl,” demanded Paul Newcombe, “what have you been up to? Here’s your mother phoning me in Vienna to say she’s had word from some chap called Welland that you’re prowling round the regions where poor old Herbert got killed, and will I please find out what you’re up to, and tell you to stop it. And when I come in from Austria to the address she says you put on your card home—and a hell of a job I had finding the place!—I’m told you and your friends have gone, and I’ll find you here.
Here, at the police station
! What in the world’s been happening?”

Tossa sat shaken and pale. It was going to begin all over again, every one of them worse than the one before. She was going to hate this one as she’d hated Terrell; there was no escape. She looked past the looming shape that was without authority, straight at the two Slovaks who were looking on with such narrow and considering interest.

“Major Kriebel, this is Paul Newcombe. He is not related to me, but as a friend of my mother’s I suppose he feels responsible for me. Mr. Newcombe, I was just going to make a statement to Major Kriebel and Lieutenant Ondrejov. It ought to answer all your questions. And with their permission I should still like to make it.”

“By all means.” Kriebel was moving now partly by guesswork, but not entirely; he had exchanged one rapid glance with Ondrejov, and though nothing appeared to be communicated, something had certainly been understood. “Gentlemen, if you will allow Miss Barber to speak without interruption, you may remain. It is a concession I need not make, but I will make it.” Ondrejov’s aloof expression and slightly raised brows had said eloquently: “Please yourself, it’s your funeral. But
I
wouldn’t!”

“Comrade Lieutenant, will you take down Miss Barber’s voluntary statement?”

“The reason I told some untruths last night, and persuaded Mr. Felse to tell them, too, against his advice, was because I was afraid of becoming more deeply involved if I told the truth. I thought I could give you all the relevant details about Mr. Welland’s death, without coming right out and saying that I came here for a special purpose of my own. I persuaded my friends to come, too, and spend the holiday here with me, because my stepfather had died in Zbojská Dolina, and I wasn’t satisfied about his death, and wanted to see the place for myself. I met Mr. Welland when he was on leave in London, and we talked about it, and he promised me to look into it himself. But I still wanted to come. I didn’t tell him that, and he knew nothing about it until he saw us at Zilina, on our way here. Evidently he didn’t approve, since it seems he notified my mother.”

She told it exactly as Dominic had suggested yesterday, faithfully admitting Welland’s telephone call and her appointment with him, and describing the circumstances of his death. But everything that touched on the Marrion Institute, or national security, or the defection of Karol Alda, still had to be suppressed, and that effectively censored Welland’s last cryptic words to her. Had they meant anything, in any case? They stuck in her mind curiously, but their suggestions were too enormous and too vague, she could not trust herself to make a judgment upon them.

There was too much at stake. There sat the Director, listening to her with an anxious and sympathetic face, and willing her to be discreet if it killed her; and the Security Officer, brightly inscrutable, taking her in with cautious approval as she skirted delicately round the establishment that was his charge. She felt it when they began to breathe again. Compared with the secret activities and preoccupations they had to protect, both she and Welland were equally expendable.

Carefully she covered from sight the whole background of the death she most sincerely wanted solved. Right behaviour, she thought sadly, is always a compromise at best.

Ondrejov took down her statement, and presently transcribed it briskly, still in English, on the typewriter in the outer room, and brought it back for her to read and sign. No one tried to prevent her from signing. They were unspeakably relieved by the content of the statement. Her predicament hardly mattered, by comparison; but they gave her to understand, by encouraging glances, that in return for her services they would exert themselves to deliver her.

“I’m only terribly sorry,” she said suddenly, her voice a muted cry of protest, “for poor Robert Welland!”

“Of course, of course, so are we all. But I’m sure the affair will soon be cleared up,” said Freeling soothingly. “It occurs to me, Major, that as you have no facilities here in Pavol, and it may not be very convenient to move her elsewhere, perhaps you would agree to Miss Barber’s being discharged into my custody, pending further enquiries? On the strict understanding, of course, that she shall be made available to you whenever required, and shall not leave the town? I would pledge myself to produce her on demand at any time.”

“I hardly think,” suggested Sir Broughton Phelps rather drily, “that such a proposition can be entertained if it comes from your people. But as one who had the greatest respect for Miss Barber’s stepfather, I should be very glad to abandon my holiday and remain here, if you’ll allow
me
to make myself responsible for her? And for her friends, too, though they are not, I believe, in custody?”

Paul Newcombe bristled. “I am representing Mrs. Terrell here, and if Tossa can be released I think it should be into my care.”

Ondrejov thumbed through the stapled sheets of Tossa’s statement, and hummed a little tune to himself, modal, like the pipe-tunes of Zbojská Dolina. He looked inordinately placid and content, like a fed infant.

“Her friends are quite at liberty, here within Liptovsky Pavol, but I am restricting their movements to the town for the time being. Miss Barber, I regret, must remain my charge. She can be held available to you at any time which is suitable,” said Kriebel firmly, “but she is my responsibility. You have heard for yourselves the grounds on which I think it necessary to hold her, and they speak for themselves. Only Miss Barber had the opportunity of committing the murder, so far as we yet know. Of the others, only the boy Felse was also present at the chapel, the others clearly knew nothing about it until afterwards. They will all be invited to record statements, but they will not be held. Miss Barber did have the opportunity, and as you have heard on her own admission, she gave a false account of what happened. She must be held. I have my duty to do.”

It was at this moment that Ondrejov chose to look up at his chief and say ingenuously: “Perhaps, Comrade Major, it would be as well if young Felse made his statement next. Then I can start him off to collect their things from the Riavka, while the other two tell us what little they do know. They’ll be wanting their clothes and night things.”

“Certainly,” said Kriebel. “Call him in. And gentlemen, if you wish to remain…?”

Now why did he make them that gratuitous offer, she wondered? Not because he owed it to them, not because he felt pressed; on the contrary, he was more at ease every moment. He wanted to see what their response would be, whether they would jump at the chance of staying to make sure that Dominic’s account would bear out Tossa’s, and frowning him away from any undesirable revelations; and he wanted to observe their reactions if there were indiscretions—and indeed, even if there were none.

Three of them relaxed, cautiously but perceptibly. “That’s very considerate of you,” said Freeling. “We have a duty to all four of these youngsters, we shall be glad to stay.”

Only Paul Newcombe got to his feet, thick and glossy and lowering like a prize bull. “My job is to look after Miss Barber. Do I understand that she must continue in custody?”

“I regret that she must,” said Kriebel crisply.

“I would remind you that I’ve had no opportunity yet to talk to her, and that I’m here at her mother’s request. May I have a quarter of an hour with her, at least?”

The glance that flickered back and forth between Ondrejov and his superior was almost too rapid to be visible, but Tossa caught it.

“If you go down with her now, you may have a short interview with her, by all means.”

Paul jumped at it, was even surprised into expressions of appreciation; they were being almost excessively correct. Tossa wondered about these concessions herself, until she had been led helplessly past the anxious three fidgeting in the outer room, and down the stairs to her cell. Then she understood. The plain-clothes escort who opened the door for them and followed them in was Miroslav Zachar; if Paul had anything of interest to say to her, it certainly wasn’t going to be missed.

Ondrejov, ushering Dominic into the inner office, smiled fatly to himself, and sharpened his pencil with a leisurely, enjoying deliberation.

The twins, frayed into nervous silence, were admitted together into the inner room, and Dominic went down the stairs with Ondrejov’s hand on his shoulder. Every step seemed to him to be on eggs; or else there was a slack rope under him. He didn’t even know whether he’d said the right things, telling half the truth like that, suppressing the other half, with one eye cocked on the anxious, dignified, admonitory English faces, and the other on this gross, earthy, ordinary soul who tramped solidly at his heels. He hadn’t even known who they were, those three hanging on his words. They couldn’t all be from the embassy, could they?

Mirek had made it necessary to tell the truth about the actual circumstances of Welland’s death, to admit that Tossa had gone there to meet him, and had expected him to have something to tell her about her stepfather’s accident. As for the rest, he had objected to answering for anything that wasn’t known to him personally; hearsay evidence wasn’t good in English law, anyhow.

The van was standing in front of the Hotel Slovan, a small, decrepit, gabled house, its portal withdrawn under the arcade of the square.

“Drive carefully,” said Ondrejov at his shoulder. “You know the road?”

“I drove here. I know the road.”

“You’d do well to eat your dinner there, it’ll be time. And on the way back,
drive briskly
. Understand? Don’t stop for anything or anyone, keep going, and keep a good pace. Your friends will be waiting for you,” said Ondrejov soothingly. “Don’t worry about them, they’ll be all right. Miss Barber, too. I’ll take care of her.”

“Who was the other one?” Dominic asked abruptly. “The one who went off with Tossa?”

“You don’t know? A Mr. Newcombe. It seems he feels himself to be in the place of a father. I assume her mother is thinking of marrying him.”

“Oh! I see!” His tone indicated that he did not see very clearly. He climbed into the driving seat of the van, and inserted the key. The engine quivered into life. “She isn’t alone, is she?” he asked, his mind suddenly very clear and very calm. “She won’t be alone?”

“She won’t be alone at all. I have two daughters, my boy. I have a grand-daughter. You can be easy.”

The miracle was that he instantly felt easy. He started the van moving. It rolled across the cobbles of the square, towards the neatly patterned width of roadway, sailed decorously into it, and vanished between the step-gabled façades at the far end.

Mirek Zachar materialised at Ondrejov’s elbow, large and placid from the shadow of the arcades, buckling his crash-helmet under his chin.

“This man Newcombe’s booked in here, at the Slovan. All right, I can keep the kid in sight, don’t worry. I know these roads better than he does. You’ll be at the bend by Král’s, in case?”

“Or someone else will. We’ll be keeping constant watch there. If anything goes wrong, if there’s anything even questionable, telephone.”

“Surely!” said Mirek, and straddled his Jawa and kicked it into life before it was out of the arcade.

“If you lose him,” threatened Ondrejov, raising his voice peremptorily above the din, “I’ll have your hide for a jacket!”

Now that he was on his own he could think; he had a lot of thinking to do, and seven miles of driving to help him to do it. The one thing he knew for certain was that everything rested on him. They might come running from all directions to Tossa’s aid; the responsibility for her, nevertheless, belonged simply to herself and Dominic, no one else. And Tossa was a prisoner, and immobilised; so there was no one left but Dominic.

Unless, perhaps Ondrejov…? His actions were apparently orthodox, but there was something about him that continually indicated the possibility of deception, as though he enjoyed making all the signposts point the opposite way. But the trouble was that one couldn’t be sure, and there wasn’t time to wait and watch developments. So that left the answer the same as before; it was up to Dominic.

The details of Welland’s murder had to make sense, every murder must make sense. A distorted sense sometimes, where a distorted mind is involved, but Dominic had a feeling that there was nothing in the least deranged in this killing. Therefore, if he had all the facts at his disposal, he ought to be able to work it out; but since he had not all the facts, he must be prepared to fill in some of the gaps with intelligent speculation.

Start with something positive: someone was prepared to kill in order to ensure that people from Karol Alda’s English past should not contact him. First Terrell, then Welland, as soon as they got too near to finding Alda, and both of them within the same small valley. Therefore Alda was there to be found, either in person, or in such strong indications as could not fail to lead directly to him elsewhere. But because of the urgency which apparently had attached to removing the hunters at short notice, it seemed to Dominic more likely that the man himself was there. Not certain, but for present purposes a reasonable assumption.

Was it therefore necessarily true that Alda himself had done the killing? He was wary of thinking so; if he and his work were now vitally important to this country, and had to be kept secret, far more likely that the necessary killing would be undertaken by professionals experienced in the art, leaving the genius to work undisturbed. That was assuming that this was really national business, of course. If it was a personal murder with a personal motive behind it, then Alda was, presumably, taking care of his own privacy.

In either case, if it was as vital as all that, the next move was already implied. Because whoever had shot Welland had also got in a second shot at Dominic on that occasion. He knew, all too well, that there had been one witness there, probably he knew there had been two, and who they were. He could not know whether Welland had had time to give up his secrets to them before he died, and he could not afford to take risks. They were both dangerous to him, and due for removal. If he knew enough, Tossa would be his chosen target. But Tossa was safely out of circulation and out of his reach. And who had put her there? Ondrejov, that inscrutable, innocent countryman.

The striped fields under the hills danced by outside the windows of the van, and he was back at the enigma of Ondrejov once again. Was Tossa really being held because he—or his superior, or both—suspected her? Or because, like a true policeman, he refused to let her run free and be used for bait?

Either way, that left Dominic Felse next in line; and Dominic Felse was not out of circulation; he was here in the van, driving along a mountain road, alone.

Was there anything else positive to go on? Too much speculation was only beginning to confuse the issue. Yes, there remained, if nothing else, the few words Robert Welland had left behind him in dying. Tossa had reported them as: “But he couldn’t have known—nobody else knew!” And then, furiously: “Impossible!” Welland had almost certainly been convinced that Alda had killed Terrell. Therefore Alda must be the “he” who couldn’t have known, presumably, that Welland had actually located him. How, then, could he have acted on the knowledge? And then: “Impossible!” What was impossible in Welland’s eyes? Certainly not that Alda should attempt to kill him; that was something he could, by his own theory, have expected.

He had reached the curve of the road where the rutted track turned off to the right, into Zbojská Dolina. The van rounded the bend, and began to climb. Another mile, and the low roof and deep eaves of the Riavka hut budded suddenly like a mushroom out of the meadow grass, with the bluish, fragrant darkness of the firs behind.

Somehow he had arrived at a totally unexpected conclusion, and no matter how much he walked round it and looked for other ways, they all brought him back to this one need. In the tangle of secrecy, suspicion and subtlety they had all been hunting for one person, but without ever speaking his name, ever asking after him, ever pausing to consider that he might not even know they wanted him. Never had it occurred to them that he might not be hiding or avoiding them at all, but only quite oblivious of them, because they were too sure of their sophistication to ask their way to him, and let him speak for himself. It is the only thing the twentieth-century spy must not do, go straight towards his objective. But how if this wasn’t a real-life spy story at all, but something at once simpler and deeper?

He still didn’t know what he was going to do when he brought the van lumbering to a standstill on the stony level outside the Riavka gate. All he was sure about was that there was no time left for going roundabout. The police could hardly hold Tossa, once the ballistics report proved they had a rifle to hunt for, and how long would that be? Could he rely on more than this one day?

He needed immediate action; he needed an open, honest solution, however inconvenient to however many people, because only such a solution could deliver Tossa. Not simply free her from custody, but deliver her from her own complex captivities, and make her look forward into the world with the same wonder and clarity he had seen in her eyes just once, when she had believed she might be going to die.

What he needed, and needed desperately, was Karol Alda.

The Martíneks were a little constrained, but genuinely kind. Even Ivo came down from the pastures to hazard his few halting words of English. Dana helped by packing the girls’ things, and her brother loaded the van, while Dominic ate the lunch Mrs. Martínek laid for him on the corner table in the bar. He paid the bill, rather shyly contriving to avoid picking up the change; and Dana, ambassador for the family, went out to the doorstep with him to say goodbye. But the slight constraint was still there, and her words were still carefully chosen. He couldn’t blame her. Nobody, in any country, wants to be mixed up with crime and possible treason. If he asked her, now, the questions that should have been asked at the beginning, she would not answer them.

He took the van far enough down the track to be out of sight, and then drove it aside at a relatively level spot, and parked it among the trees, where it would not be immediately noticed. Then, making a detour in cover about the Riavka clearing, he set out to climb the valley.

It was just past one o’clock, fine and clear and warm, with a fresh breeze that made walking pleasant. There was no one stirring but himself; Zbojská Dolina was not high enough to be fashionable, and at midday the herdsmen were eating and sleeping by turns, somewhere out of sight. It occurred to him, when he came to the defile where the chapel loomed on its shelf of limestone, that he was still wearing the dark-red sweater he had worn the previous evening, and that it was as conspicuous at noon against the greens of grass and bushes, as it had been unobtrusive in the dusk, where all dark things were parts of the general darkness. There might well be policemen working here, combing the tumbled, bushy ground below the shelf, for the nonexistent pistol Tossa might conceivably have had about her and tossed through the window after the murder. But it was too late to do anything about it now. He drew aside into the trees wherever he could; but he saw no one, and heard nothing but the chirring of crickets and the vibration of the conifers in the breeze.

He came into the upper bowl of the valley, where the huts clustered at the edge of the brilliant bog grass. They were silent, too. On such a warm and settled afternoon everyone would be up in the high pastures, drowsing among the folds of crest-country where an army could scatter and vanish. It wasn’t easy to distinguish sheep here, they fused with the pale, stony colours and sometimes refused to be detected even in motion. Only the chestnut goats burned like tiny, active jewels in the bleached grass.

He was ranging slowly up the slope, in an easy spiral, when he saw them dancing daintily along the contour path high above him, towards the outcrop rocks that contained the northern col. Behind him and a little below him lay the isolated hut, the highest in the valley; before him was the corrugated, sidelong fall of grass, and then the long grey scar of the rock chute that poured the debris of the heights down to the talus on the ledge. He stood on a level with the upper face of the talus, and not fifty yards from where its first spilled stones welled over into the grass and peppered the slope. It didn’t look so terrible from here, or so steep; it looked almost like a very rough and irregular path, a replica of the one above, but built up ten feet high with stones. The sheep-path on which he stood led vaguely up to it, and there turned to the right, and climbed the staircase of terraced tracks, tread by tread.

And high above him, mincing delicately towards the col, the dark-red goats made a dotted line of colour, with the tall brigand-figure of their herd striding at the head of the line. This time there was no frieze cloak, and no hat glittering with a band of fine chains. But there were the cream felt trousers, the wide-sleeved white shirt, the dappling of embroideries, the length and looseness of that mysterious body, the only one in Zbojská Dolina he had not seen at close quarters. The only one!

Dominic cupped his hands about his mouth, and sent a high, yodelling shout up towards the crests. The goats bounded on, unperturbed. The man halted, two full seconds later, as though the sound had only just risen to him, and looked at leisure about the valley below him. Dominic knew the moment when he was seen. He was the only alien creature there to be found, and the practised eye could not choose but find him. He waved an arm, and an arm was waved casually in return, before the remote figure turned to climb higher.

He would go; there was nothing to keep him, and only fifty yards or so to climb before he slipped through the pass and was lost. And even if pursued, would he be found again? He had time to vanish utterly before Dominic could reach the crests.

There was no moment when he consciously chose what he would do. All he was aware of was of doing it, without hesitation and without argument. Afterwards he did remember feeling glad, after all, about the dark-red sweater that made him a land-mark; and he recalled a sort of logical thought-process which he had probably adopted after the event, to rationalise his actions. If he could not reach the stranger in time, then the stranger must be drawn back to him. Mountain men are for ever suspicious of the folly of visitors, and their unbelievable innocence in dangerous places. It is their instinct to pull novices out of trouble. They can no more ignore the challenge than a fireman can pass by a fire.

He was on the stony edges of the talus almost before he realised it himself; straight ahead, from the dead end of the contour path that turned and climbed here sensibly on solid ground, straight on to the giant’s causeway of boulders. And it was too late to yodel again now, and too late to look up and make sure that he was observed. It was suddenly a wonderfully simple world, and there was only one enemy, and only one issue, whether he survived or died.

If he had really been an innocent, it would have been an easy thing to start on that journey; but if he had been an innocent he would never have done it, because he would not have known that it could serve his purpose. And because he was no raw novice, he began to suffer even before the first solid boulder shivered like jelly under his foot, and brought him up in tense balance, his breath held, his arms spread for stability. It was even more difficult because he had to look sure of himself until he had gone far enough to drag the goat-herd down from his heights. If he looked a fraud, who would bother to come to his rescue, even when he really needed it?

He was still poised, waiting to take the next step, when he heard the long, peremptory shout above him, and his heart turned over and melted in crazy gratitude. He dared not look up. Sweat broke on his body as he raised one arm and waved briefly and precariously in acknowledgment, like a cheerful fool completely misunderstanding the warning. He had to go on. How long would it take the herdsman to drop down the slope to him? How much farther must he go on this quaking, lurching, insecure pathway, that led nowhere except, in a ruinous fall, down to the bottom of the bowl?

He couldn’t look up, and he couldn’t look down. He had read Norman Douglas, too; he wanted to take his grim advice, and drop sensibly on to all fours, to lower his centre of gravity as far as possible, and avoid the shifts of weight that would roll the first stone onward over the ledge, and set the whole appalling mass in motion. There wouldn’t be much left to identify, if he went overboard with this lot. A coffee-grinder couldn’t do a better job on the bean that slid down into its teeth, than these stones would do on his body.

And now he couldn’t look round, either. Absolute balance was everything. One more step, short and steady, sliding the weight gradually from foot to foot, eyes fixed ahead. He felt like a beach-spider scuttling over a quicksand, but in slow-motion; his sense of proportion was suddenly invaded by the monstrous illusion that every honed rock under his foot was a polished grain of sand slithering away and sucking him under. The quiver of insecurity was everywhere, under him, round him, in the air that embraced him. The temptation to lean inward and clutch at the rock face on his right hand was almost irresistible, but he knew he must not do it. That was the quickest way to urge the first stone gently outwards, and loose the avalanche, himself one grain among the many, and the most vulnerable. The grained grey rock leaned to him invitingly. He drew his hand back fastidiously, steadied his breath, and felt with an outstretched toe for the next precarious and shuddering plane on which he could rest.