He waited to elicit some sort of acknowledgment, and what he got was illuminating. The first thing old Waldmeister had to say was not: ‘What was his name?’ but: ‘How much is it, this legacy?’
‘When cleared it should be in the region of fifteen hundred pounds.’ Not so great as to turn out the guard in a full-scale hunt for him, but great enough to pay the expenses of a solicitor’s clerk as far as Scheidenau, in these days of off-peak tourist bargain travel.’ The old man nodded weightily. Property is property, and the law is there to serve it.
‘How is he called, this young man?’
‘His name is Robert Aylwin.’
‘I do not remember such a name. The last record of him, you say? It is a long time ago. To remember one visitor is impossible.’
‘You will remember this one, when I recall the circumstances.’ And he recalled them, very succinctly and clearly. There were names enough to bolster everything he had to say. Fredericks had regularly used this inn on those tours of his; neither he nor his students would be so easily forgotten. ‘I understand from a man called Charles Pincher, who shared a room here with him, that Aylwin left his suitcase and his ’cello in the room when he went away, and that Dr. Fredericks gave them into your charge, expecting the owner to come back to collect them. Is that so?’
‘It is so,’ said the old man without hesitation. ‘The name I had forgotten, but this of the cases and the Herr Doktor, that I remember.’
‘In that case I’m hoping that you can help me to the next link in the chain, that he gave you at any rate a forwarding address, when he came back for them.’
‘He did not come back for them,’ said Waldmeister, and volunteered nothing more.
‘He didn’t? Then in all these years you’ve had no word from him?’ The chill at the back of his neck, like icy fingers closing there, made Francis aware that he had never believed in this. Considered it, yes; believed in it, no.
‘No word. That is right.’
‘Did you… expect to?’ What he meant was, did you know of any reason why it would be no use expecting it.
‘I expected, yes. People do not just go away and leave their belongings. You understand, it is a very long time since I have thought of this matter. No, he did not come, and I knew no way to find him. I kept the things for him, that was all I could do. But he did not fetch them.’
‘Then… you still have them?’
‘Come with me!’ said the old man, and rose and led him from the room, out to the broad stone passage-way with its homespun rugs and its home-carved antique chairs and spinning-wheels and boot-jacks, over which a London dealer would have foamed at the mouth. Up the uncarpeted, scrubbed, monumental back stairs, spiralling aloft with treads wide enough at the wall end for a horseman to negotiate. One flight, a second, a third, and they were up among the vast dark rafters, in a series of open attics that hoarded rubbish and treasure together in the roof.
‘Here,’ said Waldmeister simply, and pointed. The ’cello-case, leaning sadly against a scratched wooden box, might have been covered in grey felt, but when Francis drew a dubious finger along its surface the blanket of dust came away clean from a finely-grained black leather. Of good quality, expensive, and surely almost new when the owner abandoned it here. A medium-sized black suitcase, its upright surfaces still almost black because it was of glossy, plastic-finished fibre-glass, stood beside the ’cello.
‘This is his? May I look? Under your supervision, of course. All I want is to see if there is anything there to suggest a further line of enquiry. Are they locked?’
‘They are not locked.’
Of course, they would be as he had left them in his room, and in a hotel room which is itself normally locked, not everyone bothers to make doubly sure with individual keys. And the keys themselves he must have taken away with him, in his pocket.
The contents of Robin Aylwin’s luggage had little enough to say about him. He travelled light. The slacks, lambswool sweater, shirts, were good but not expensive, and kept about as carefully as most young men of twenty or so keep their clothes. Black dress shoes for concerts, a dinner jacket, shaving tackle, handkerchiefs, a Paisley dressing-gown, pyjamas, a Terylene raincoat, all folded and packed so carefully that Francis detected the hand of some female member of the Waldmeister family.
‘Had he packed these? Or were they simply lying about in his room?’
‘They were in his room, as in use. We packed everything as you see it, to wait for him.’
No passport, no documents, no wallet, no keys, no letters. All those he would most probably keep on him, whatever clothes he was wearing. The dinner jacket being here meant nothing; he almost certainly wouldn’t wear it for the evening here, when resting between engagements. Probably it was only there for the concerts. There were writing materials, a folder of stamps both English and Austrian, two local postcards, unwritten; but not one written word, to him or from him, to help to establish that he had ever really existed at all.
Francis got what he could from the remnants. The shirts were size fifteen and a half, the shoes nine, the slacks were long-legged and small-waisted and made to measure, but from a firm of mass tailors with shops everywhere. The wearer must have been nearly six feet in height, if not an inch or two over, and on the slim side, though by the evidence of the sweater, which was a forty-two inch chest, he had needed accommodation for good wide shoulders. And that was all there was to be discovered about him here. The ’cello, silent in its case, was just a ’cello, and the pockets that filled in its curves contained only resin, strings and a spare bridge in case of damage.
Francis closed the lid again and restored the case to its corner. He dusted his hands and looked at Waldmeister.
‘No, nothing. When he didn’t turn up, I expect you looked through them, too.’
‘I also told it to the Herr Doktor, when he came again. He knew nothing of the young man, either. He said keep them still, so we kept them.’
‘Herr Waldmeister, there is always the possibility that some member of your household may have talked with Aylwin while he was here, and may be in possession of some detail that might help me to find him. It’s a long time ago, and your staff may have changed, of course, but still there may be someone who remembers, and may be able to add to what we know. Will you be kind enough to tell them, all those who were here at that time, that I am trying to trace this man, and for a reason which makes it to his advantage that I should find him?’
The old man’s heavy shoulders lifted eloquently. ‘I will do so. But I do not think, after all this time, they will have anything to tell.’
‘I’m afraid you may be right. But please ask them to come to me if they do remember anything. I shall be here for two or three days.’
‘I will ask them,’ said Waldmeister.
He had reckoned on the force of curiosity to bring them to him even if they had nothing to tell, and would have bet on the women being in the lead. But the eldest Waldmeister son was the first to bring his stein over and join the newcomer in the bar, after dinner that evening. He could surely have nothing to tell about a chance guest in the hotel, since he spent all his time well outside it, running a timber business which was merely one of the multifarious Waldmeister activities. What he wanted was to have a closer look at the English solicitor, and at least offer his desire to be helpful, if he could do no better. Frau Waldmeister and two of her daughters-in-law made roundabout approaches during the next day, to the same effect. None of them knew where Aylwin might have gone, none of them knew why. Francis doubted if they really remembered anything about him at all, beyond that he had left in the attic tangible evidence of his stay. The third daughter-in-law hadn’t then been married to her Johann, and the two youngest Waldmeister girls must have been still at school.