Ellis Peters - George Felse 05 - The Piper On The Mountain (4 page)

“Finally, after both his parents were dead, Alder wished and offered to resign from here. I don’t know exactly why, I suppose he was disturbed by a feeling of alienation from the aims of this place, and maybe he felt out of sympathy with policy in general. Anyhow, he was obviously valuable, and he was persuaded to think it over while he took some leave that was due him. I take it the authorities here hoped he would change his mind and stay on. He went off into Savoy alone. And he never came back.

“When he failed to return on time, there were rumours and an alarm, and Terrell was sent to France to follow up his tracks, until they ended without further trace in Dauphiné. It was automatically assumed that he’d departed behind the Iron Curtain, but no more was ever heard of him from any quarter. He
could
have come to grief somewhere in the mountains, being alone there. But the obvious inference was that he’d turned traitor. And Terrell was the man who followed up his case, and compiled a very damning dossier out of all those small unorthodoxies in Alder’s professional life and attitudes. I’d say that that dossier made it impossible for him ever to come back—supposing, of course, that he’d wanted to change his mind.”

“Happily we have no reason to suppose anything of the kind,” said the Director tartly. “You don’t seem to have wasted your time, Mr. Welland. You find all this relevant?”

“I think it becomes very relevant, sir, when you remember that Charles Alder was born Karol Alda, of a Czech father and a Slovak mother. Especially when you add to that the fact that the mother’s birth was registered at Liptovsky Mikulás, not twenty miles from Zbojská Dolina.”

“Let me understand you clearly. You are suggesting, I take it, that Alder may be there in those parts now—that he may have gone back to his old country and his old allegiance?”

“I am suggesting that it is more than a possibility. I should also hazard that that is exactly what you must have believed he would do.”

“And you’d be right, naturally. But the fact remains that there has never been any indication, not the slightest hint, that he did so.” He got up abruptly from his desk and began to walk the room, not restlessly, but with a controlled, energetic step, like a man starved of proper exercise making the most of cramped quarters. The two younger men followed his pacing with alert eyes, and waited. “You think Terrell may actually have
seen
Alda?”

“Something unexpected happened to him, something that drew him across the river valley to Zbojská Dolina. It could be connected with Alda. I don’t claim more than that.”

“But you imagine more, much more. You think, don’t you, that either he saw Alda, or picked up somehow a clue to his whereabouts? And that he followed it up, and got himself pushed off a mountainside when he got too close for comfort. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

Welland paled a little at seeing it posed before him in this pointblank fashion; even he had a trace of the diplomat’s dislike of formulating anything too exactly. But he stared back gallantly, and said emphatically: “Yes.”

Blagrove stirred protestingly. “But, good lord, the case is six years old now! It’s no longer important. Times have changed, the cold war’s a dead issue, or dying, trade’s developing. Even if Terrell did turn up unexpectedly on his trail, why should Alda even care any more? Neither Terrell nor any of us could be any threat to him there. And would it be worth killing the man just for plain spite?”

“But isn’t that missing the point of what Sir Broughton said a minute ago?” argued Welland intently. “You expected him to turn up in Czechoslovakia. Word of where they are always leaks out eventually, doesn’t it? But not a word ever leaked out about Alda. So wherever he is, secrecy is vital—to him, and to whoever is cashing in on his work now. Six years of successful concealment argues it’s important enough to murder for. I believe there’s something going on right now, right there in the Low Tatras, that has to be kept absolutely secret, and that Alda is at the heart of it. I believe Terrell found out, or they thought he had found out, what he couldn’t be allowed to report.”

“If there is anything in this,” began Phelps, after a long and pregnant pause, “and I’m not admitting yet that there necessarily is, but
if
there is—then you realise it’s happened in a place and in circumstances which practically put it out of our power to investigate. If he
is
there, and if he is being kept as tightly wrapped as all that, then we must assume that this is national business. In which case we must also assume that the Czech authorities, if not the police on the spot, know all there is to be known about this death.”

“I’m convinced,” said Welland vehemently, “that they do. The local police know about mountains, they can’t have failed to see what a queer sort of accident it was for an experienced man. Yet within a day they’d closed the case. I think they’ve had their orders.”

“Even if you believed in their honesty,” said the Director drily, “our position would be the same. I can’t impress upon you too strongly, Mr. Welland, that everything to do with this Institute is top secret. In this case or any case that involves us in any way, nothing whatever may be confided to foreign authorities, friendly or otherwise. There can be
no
overt enquiries.”

“No, sir, I realise that. But I’m there on the spot. I week-end in the mountains quite frequently, they’re used to me. I move about quite freely, I speak the language a little. I could look into it myself, without alerting anyone.”

He offered them a dutiful silence, but neither of them, it seemed, had anything to say. They looked at him narrowly, with unwinking concentration, and he found it unnerving that he had not the least idea what either of them was thinking. They were the product of the closed establishment, closed men, each in his own air-tight, suspicious, ambitious, narrow world, specialising in ever more attenuated expertise. The horrific thought visited him that he might live to be like them. He found it absolutely vital to give utterance again to the realities that still existed in him, while they existed.

“I intend to find out if Terrell was murdered. I can’t help it. If he was killed for activities that seemed to him in line of duty, then I believe we owe it to him to investigate, and to see that justice is done. He’s entitled to justice. Quite apart from the possibility that something is going on there that affects our national interests and security. We can’t just let murder go by default. It isn’t right.”

He produced this final simplicity with an authority that restored its lustre. He said with dignity: “I would much rather proceed with your approval, of course. I hope I have it.”

But he would proceed with or without it. He was committed by his conscience. An interesting survival, but there he was in the flesh, determined and distressed, perfectly conscious of what he was saying and doing, and prepared to be judged by it.

“My dear boy!” said Sir Broughton, for the first time warming into the charming smile that transformed his professionally austere face into something human and likeable. “Proceed with our blessing, of course, but with our warnings, too. One man, according to your theory, has already been killed. I beg you to take care of yourself. That’s the first essential. The second is the preservation of complete secrecy for this establishment. That I can’t over-stress. And the third thing is something I feel I ought to tell you. If you’re going into this at all, you must go with your eyes open. Nobody knows this, outside this Institute and its parent Ministry.”

He came back slowly to his desk, and leaned on his hands there, pondering. For a moment he looked more than his age, an elderly man bowed by his responsibilities.

“When Charles Alder vanished, his current working notebooks vanished with him. They contained all his projects at the experimental stage, and at that stage they were so completely his own brain-children that no one could continue his work on them. No other sketches, no other outlines existed. We don’t know, apart from a few preliminary ideas, what was in them. But he was at the height of his powers, and working like a demon, mainly on problems of aerodynamics. If he’s been pursuing the same lines of research elsewhere, there could be sensational developments. There could be more than enough at stake to invoke murder. You understand that?”

“Yes, sir,” said Welland, weak with relief and gratitude, “I understand.”

“And you understand the absolute need for secrecy? You must not say one word to anyone about this. You haven’t taken anyone into your confidence? The press men, your friends?”

“I didn’t tell them anything, beyond showing curiosity over Terrell’s record. Knowing I’m stationed in Prague, they wouldn’t wonder at that.” He was all eagerness now, dazzled and exhilarated by the Director’s energy.

“And no one else, either?”

If Welland hesitated at all, it was so briefly that the instant passed unnoticed. “No, sir, no one knows anything about this from me.”

“Good! Then go ahead, but take care of yourself. If you do hit upon a lead to Alda, you must report at once to us. Don’t go on alone and take risks, just report back and wait for orders, you understand? I’ll see that the Minister is kept informed, otherwise no one must know of this except the three of us here. I’ll arrange with the embassy in Prague, and have any message from you transmitted direct to us here by telephone. We’ll have a code signal agreed before you leave here. If you locate Alda, then send it. When we receive it, it may be advisable for Mr. Blagrove to come to Prague on some pretext, to be on hand—and to help you,” he said, the human smile reappearing for one abstracted instant, “in case of need. Even you may need help sometimes, Mr. Welland. Who knows?”

“I’ll be very careful, sir. You can rely on me.”

“We are relying on you, my boy. You’ll report to nobody else but this Institute. Not even our people in Prague. You understand?
Nobody
else!”

He had accomplished all and more than he had hoped for. At the edge of an adventure, with the water cold and mysterious before his plunge, Robert Welland was a vindicated, even a happy, man.

Or he would have been happy, but for one small scruple.

As soon as he left the conference in Sir Broughton’s room he hurried to the Underground station, and made his way back into London, to the Chelsea street where Chloe Terrell had her top-floor flat. It hadn’t, of course, been absolutely honest of him not to tell Sir Broughton about the note he’d dropped through Mrs. Terrell’s letter-box, when he found her out. The note certainly did confide something, more than he should have said, even to the suggestion of murder. But there was no harm done, after all, because Mrs. Terrell was not merely away from home, but out of the country. He had Blagrove’s own word for that. So no one would have read the note he should never have been so indiscreet as to write, and what he had said was not, in fact, a lie. No one knew anything about this affair from him. And no one would.

There wasn’t even any hurry about it, his sense of anxiety and impatience was folly. She was in Czechoslovakia, and she wouldn’t, couldn’t be back yet. He had plenty of time to dig out the porter of the service flats, explain that he’d left a vital paper by mistake, not knowing Mrs. Terrell was out of the country, and must recover it and get word to her elsewhere at once. The porter would have keys, and it wouldn’t be difficult to establish his own good faith. When he’d burned that note he would feel better, because his shadow of a lie wouldn’t exist, then, and there would be no leakages through him. He liked to have everything above-board, and that was how it would be.

All the same, his mind was not quite easy. Better just have a look at the top-floor flat first, before he tackled the porter, and make sure that it was still closed and empty. Just to reassure himself.

The lift was creaking its way slowly upward as he stood in the hall; he had caught a glimpse of the door closing upon a dark, slender girl with her arms full of parcels, and to judge by the time that elapsed before the lift-cable was still and the door clashed open, high up the shaft, she was disentangling her purchases at least four floors up. He pressed the call button, and nothing whatever happened. A woman with both hands full doesn’t stop to close the lift doors after her. He would have to walk up.

He didn’t know why he was hurrying as he tackled the stairs. Hadn’t he already told himself that there was no haste, no possibility that Mrs. Terrell would have returned and read his note? But he began taking the steps two at a time before he reached the second landing, and by the fourth he was running, his heart pounding and his breath short. He came to the corner from which he could see Chloe Terrell’s door, and baulked as if he had run his nose into a brick wall. For the outside door of the flat stood open. And the pretty girl with the parcels stood in the hall with her burdens dropped unceremoniously about her feet, and his letter open and unfolded in her hands.

She was still as a statue until his rush of movement ended in abrupt stillness, and then she was aware of him, and looked up at him over the spread sheet of paper with great dark eyes blank with horror. For a moment they stared at each other in fascination and dread. He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know what to think.

She couldn’t possibly be, she wasn’t more than eighteen or nineteen! But women did marry as young as that. How was he to know that the wife would be a mere child? Horrified, he lifted his leaden feet up the last few steps, and moved towards her like a hypnotised rabbit, utterly helpless.

“Mrs. Terrell…?”

She stared back at him as if she had heard nothing, following her own fixed channel of consciousness. She looked down at the sheet of paper in her hand, and back at him.

“You’re Robert Welland? It was you who left this note?”

She had a voice that startled, an octave deeper than anyone would have expected; a gruff whisper, like an adolescent boy not yet used to his new instrument. She took a small step back from him, warily and wildly, and stumbled over her own parcels discarded on the floor.

“Yes, I’m Robert Welland. I didn’t mean….I didn’t realise…. Mrs. Terrell, I must apologise and explain….”