Travers checked in to the hotel an hour later.
I waited until the early evening before I joined him at the bar for a drink. He seemed a little nervous when he first saw me, but I quickly put him at ease. His old self-confidence soon returned, which only made me more determined to carry out my plan. I left him at the bar a few minutes before Caroline came down for dinner so that she would not see the two of us together. Innocent surprise would be necessary once the deed had been done.
‘Unlike you to eat so little, especially as you missed your lunch,’ Caroline commented as we left the dining room that night.
I made no comment as we passed Travers seated at the bar, his hand on the knee of another innocent middle-aged woman.
I did not sleep for one second that night and I crept out of bed just before six the next morning, careful not to wake Caroline. Everything was laid out on the bathroom floor just as I had left it the night before. A few moments later I was dressed and ready. I walked down the back stairs of the hotel, avoiding the lift, and crept out by the ‘fire exit,’ realizing for the first time what a thief must feel like. I had a woolen cap pulled well down over my ears and a pair of snow goggles covering my eyes to ensure that not even Caroline would have recognized me.
I arrived at the bottom of the ski lift forty minutes before it was due to open. As I stood alone behind the little shed that housed the electrical machinery to work the lift I realized that everything now depended on Travers’ sticking to his routine. I wasn’t sure I could go through with it if my plan had to be moved on to the following day. As I waited, I stamped my feet in the freshly fallen snow, and slapped my arms around my chest to keep warm. Every few moments I kept peering round the corner of the building in the hope that I would see him striding toward me. At last a speck appeared at the bottom of the hilt by the side of the road, a pair of skis resting on his shoulders. But what if it didn’t turn out to be Travers?
I stepped out from behind the shed a few moments later to join the warmly wrapped man. It was Travers and he could not hide his surprise at seeing me standing there. I started up a casual conversation about being unable to sleep, and how I thought I might as well put in a few runs before the rush began. Now all I needed was the ski lift to start up on time. A few minutes after seven an engineer arrived and the vast oily mechanism cranked into action.
We were the first two to take our places on those little seats before heading up and over the deep ravine. I kept turning back to check there was still no one else in sight.
‘I usually manage to complete a full run even before the second person arrives,’ Travers told me when the lift had reached its highest point. I looked back again to be sure we were now well out of sight of the engineer working the lift, then peered down some two hundred feet and wondered what it would be like to land headfirst in the ravine. I began to feel dizzy and wished I hadn’t looked down.
The ski lift jerked slowly on up the icy wire until we finally reached the landing point.
‘Damn,’ I said, as we jumped off our little seats. ‘Marcel isn’t here.’
‘Never is at this time,’ said Travers, making off toward the advanced slope. ‘Far too early for him.’
‘I don’t suppose you would come down with me?’ I said, calling after Travers.
He stopped and looked back suspiciously.
‘Caroline thinks I’m ready to join you,’ I explained, ‘but I’m not so sure and would value a second opinion. I’ve broken my own record for the B-slope several times, but I wouldn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of my wife.’
‘Well, I—’
‘I’d ask Marcel if he were here. And in any case you’re the best skier I know.’
‘Well, if you—’ he began.
‘Just the once, then you can spend the rest of your holiday on the A-slope. You could even treat the run as a warm-up.’
‘Might make a change, I suppose,’ he said.
‘Just the once,’ I repeated. ‘That’s all I’ll need. Then you’ll be able to tell me if I’m good enough.’
‘Shall we make a race of it?’ he said, taking me by surprise just as I began clamping on my skis. I couldn’t complain; all the books on murder had warned me to be prepared for the unexpected. ‘That’s one way we can find out if you’re ready,’ he added cockily.
‘If you insist. Don’t forget, I’m older and less experienced than you,’ I reminded him. I checked my skis quickly because I knew I had to start off in front of him.
‘But you know the B-course backward,’ he retorted. ‘I’ve never even seen it before.’
‘I’ll agree to a race, but only if you’ll consider a wager,’ I replied.
For the first time I could see I had caught his interest. ‘How much?’ he asked.
‘Oh, nothing so vulgar as money,’ I said. ‘The winner gets to tell Caroline the truth.’
‘The truth?’ he said, looking puzzled.
‘Yes,’ I replied, and shot off down the hill before he could respond. I got a good start as I skied in and out of the red flags, but looking back over my shoulder I could see he had recovered quickly and was already chasing hard after me. I realized that it was vital for me to stay in front of him for the first third of the course, but I could already feel him cutting down my lead.
After half a mile of swerving and driving he shouted, ‘You’ll have to go a lot faster than that if you hope to beat me.’ His arrogant boast only pushed me to stay ahead but I kept the lead only because of my advantage of knowing every twist and turn during that first mile. Once I was sure that I would reach the vital slope before he could I began to relax. After all, I had practiced over the next stretch fifty times a day for the last ten days, but I was only too aware that this time was the only one that mattered.
I glanced over my shoulder to see that he was now only a hundred feet behind me. I began to slow slightly as we approached the prepared ice patch, hoping he wouldn’t notice or would think I’d lost my nerve. I held back even more when I reached the top of the patch until I could almost feel the sound of his breathing. Then, quite suddenly the moment before I would have hit the ice I plowed my skis and came to a complete halt in the mound of snow I had built the previous night. Travers sailed past me at about forty miles an hour, and seconds later flew high into the air over the ravine with a scream I will never forget. I couldn’t get myself to look over the edge as I knew he must have broken every bone in his body the moment he hit the snow some hundred feet below.
I carefully leveled the mound of snow that had saved my life and then clambered back up the mountain as fast as I could go until I reached a large group of fir trees. I grabbed the red flags that I had hidden behind one of them the night before. Then I skied from side to side replacing them in their correct positions on the B-slope, some three hundred feet above my carefully prepared ice patch. Once each one was back in place I skied on down the hill, feeling like an Olympic champion. When I reached the base of the slope I pulled up my hood to cover my head and didn’t remove my snow goggles. I unstrapped my skis and walked casually toward the hotel. I reentered the building by the back door and was back in bed by seven forty.
I tried to control my breathing but it was some time before my pulse had returned to normal. Caroline woke a few minutes later, turned over and put her arms around me.
‘Ugh,’ she said, ‘you’re frozen. Have you been sleeping without the covers on?’
I laughed. ‘You must have pulled them off during the night.’
‘Go and have a hot bath.’
After I had had a quick bath we made love and I dressed a second time, double checking that I had left no clues of my early flight before going down to breakfast.