‘I wonder why he did choose the Weisses Kreuz, when this one is so well-placed for keeping an eye on her?’
‘He couldn’t know she’d have that room, could he? And the Weisses Kreuz is on the corner where all the roads meet, all traffic going up to the Goldener Hirsch has to pass it. He was there on the terrace,’ said George, ‘waiting for her to arrive. When the car went by, he paid and strolled off in the same direction.’
‘You think he’ll try to see her?’
‘No, I think he’ll want to see without being seen himself. He won’t want her to know he’s spying on her, not if you’re right about his feelings for her.’
‘So we wait for him to move,’ said Bunty, ‘and he waits for her. And she, I shouldn’t be surprised, waits for somebody else, I wonder who?’
Maggie, on her way down to breakfast, met a woman on the broad white spiral of the back stairs, a tall woman in traditional dress, with black hair plaited into two great, shining braids and coiled high on her head. She was carrying two heavy cases as she climbed, so that her head was bent, and that tower of glistening hair was the first thing about her to catch Maggie’s attention. She drew aside to where the steps were narrowest, to let the burdened woman by, and because she was still a little shaky and hesitant from the fatigue of the previous day, she halted and held by the wall rather than risk proceeding on the tapering treads. The woman’s eyes travelled upwards steadily from the narrow, elegant black shoes to the smooth russet-amber hair. Her head came up like the head of a deer scenting man. For a moment she halted, motionless and silent, and the sidelong light from a window accentuated the cleft in her lip, scoring the shadow there cruelly deep.
Maggie and Friedl stood mute and intent, gazing at each other. Thirteen years is a long time, but a hare-lip on an otherwise good-looking girl is bitterly memorable, and to be world-famous is to have one’s photograph penetrate everywhere, if any reminder was needed. And even more surely, there stood between them the shadow of an absent third, at once a link between them and an impassable barrier.
‘You are the lady from Number One?’ said Friedl, with a gaunt smile in which her eyes played no part. ‘Franz and Joachim will bring up the piano for you this morning.’
‘Thank you!’ Maggie hesitated for a moment only. ‘You are Fraulein Friedl?’
‘How kind of the gracious lady,’ said Friedl, ‘to remember me.’ The smile, returning, hollowed her brown cheeks and raised a hungry gleam in her eye that was neither gracious nor kind. ‘It is a long time ago.’
‘I must speak to you,’ said Maggie.
‘Not here. Not now.’ Friedl watched the colour ebb and flow on the too-prominent cheekbones, and slow, burning resentment gathered about her heart and ached insatiably. This was the woman who had and did not value the devotion of every man who set eyes on her, while she, Friedl, beautiful of body but marred of face, provided a passing interest for such men as had nothing better to do, but was never noticed, never regarded, as a woman in her own right. Wait, she thought, there is always a price on everything, and you’ve had so much and paid so little yet! ‘I have my work to do,’ she said. ‘I am not a daughter of the house.’
The tone was mild and even servile, but the eyes were inimical, and even the note of self-abasement had its implicit reverse of smouldering arrogance. Maggie shrank. If she could have turned back now she would have done it, but there was no way of turning back. It was even possible that this woman knew no more than she had told Francis; but if she did, Maggie had to know it. There might be no comfort in knowing, but not to know was to be balked of her own identity. She had come here, tidying up her affairs behind her, and leaving no dependent of hers unprovided, simply in the determination to know; there was no other thought or ambition left in her mind.
‘When may I have a talk with you?’ she asked patiently.
‘I am not free until after dinner. And even then, if we wish to be undisturbed, better it should not be in the house.’
‘I will come wherever you choose.’
‘This evening, when I am free, I will go along the path to the wood, under your verandah. Come out by that way, please, after me. They do not like it if I mix too much with the guests.’ It was a lie, but so well did it fit into the picture she was composing of an oppressed poor relation that she almost felt it to be true. I will make you follow me, she thought, as I followed him. I will take you where I took him, and make use of you as he made use of me. And I’ll hurt you as he hurt me, and with interest. When I’m done with you, you shall have one man round your neck for life, and go the rest of your way ringing him like a leper’s bell to keep every other man off, for fear of bringing him to the same end. I know your kind!
‘Very well,’ said Maggie. ‘I shall be watching for you. I’ll come.’
‘What more do you want?’ said Friedl harshly. ‘He told you all this, didn’t he? That man you sent here. Here in this very place he asked me what you have asked me, and I told him. And what did you need with either of us to tell you? Who knew better than you what sent Robin rushing down the slope there and into the lake? Yes, you had the right to refuse him, if you didn’t want him, yes, you could tell him to go away—am I blaming you? What was it to you if somebody else loved him, and wanted what you didn’t want? But you cannot have it both ways. If you think you did him no wrong, why do you come weeping back like a penitent, asking to be forgiven for killing him? If you did nothing shameful to him, why are you ashamed?’
In the half-circle of bushes, with the night deepening round them, all colours on the landward side had become an opaque wash of olive green. Against the faintly luminous shimmer of lake and sky, thinly veiled by a lace of branches, Friedl in her black dress prowled restlessly. The slight rustle of her feet in the grass frayed at the silence when her voice ceased. Somewhere a twig cracked. She reared her head to listen, frozen in mid-stride. The moment she was still the ultimate silence flooded in and possessed the world.
‘No… Nothing! No, nobody else ever comes here at night.’
She came a step nearer, turning her back on the lake, and stood black and tense against the pallor of the sky.
‘I loved him. You understand? For two days, just two days, I was his mistress. But he never thought seriously of me. What man ever did? You were there, you with everything. How could he even see me for long? You don’t believe me?’
‘I believe you,’ said Maggie. ‘I am sorry!’
The sense she had had on the staircase of something rank and bitter and unprovoked assaulting her had become here an emanation of horror, unrelieved by the breeze or the cool of the air. For the first time in her life she knew it for hate, and was helpless in face of it. The tall darkness seemed to grow taller, hanging over her malignant and assured. It was not fear that held her paralysed, but a sick revulsion from the proximity of such hatred, an intuition that if it touched her she would never feel clean again.
‘It is late to be sorry. Why did you not call him back then? Why did you never tell what you knew?’
‘Why didn’t you?’ said Maggie. ‘After we were gone, when they waited for him to come back for his things, and still he didn’t come?’
‘Why should I? What would have been the good? What did I care about his things? Could I have brought him back from the dead by telling?’
‘You are quite sure, then—you were quite sure all the time—that he is dead?’
It was the only question that remained, whether she asked it of herself or Friedl.
‘His body,’ she said, ‘never came ashore. I don’t say that is proof of anything, I only say it is so. If there is anything more that you know, anything final, please tell me.’