He stood between her and the paling light from outside, and turned her about in his hands, saw the grass stains on her skirt, the torn stockings, the deep bruises under her eyes. He took her by the chin and turned her face up to him with a groan of exasperation.
‘My God, my God, what have you done?’ he said, hardly audibly, but that was to himself, not to her. ‘Oh, God, why did I ever take my eyes off you? Even at night! I thought you were safe in your bed…’
‘It is you!’ she said, with distant wonder. ‘How did you get here?’
‘I followed you. Did you think I could just wash my hands of you and let you go to hell alone? Why, for God’s sake,’ he demanded his enforced whisper shaken and thick with fury, ‘did you have to do this crazy thing? Couldn’t you trust me and take my word for it? Why did you have to come here and expose yourself to this? And what were your damned fools of doctors doing to let you?’
She had nothing to say. He held her by the shoulders and she stood silent and submissive, looking at him, looking through him, with eyes huge and dulled, as though she still dreamed of him and had no interest in waking. Her passivity terrified him. He shook her between his hands, too frightened to be gentle.
‘Don’t you understand? Don’t you realise your position? Don’t you know that Friedl never came in last night? That they’ve just fished her body out of the lake?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
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Something came to life again in the dull depths of her eyes, a quivering intelligence that proved she was still within reach of argument and persuasion, if only he had had time for either. But it was growing lighter every moment, and he had to get out of there quickly, or she would have no chance at all. There was no time to question her. He made one attempt, and she said nothing, merely stood withdrawn into some remote dream of horror. There was nothing he could do but take charge of her, and hope to God she would do what he told her, and be too numbed to realise what a tightrope she was walking until she was safely over.
He drew her across the room in his arm, and thrust her into her bedroom.
‘Get those clothes off, quickly! Give me the stockings and the dress… Hurry, I’ll get them out of here.’
She went where he urged her and did what she was told like an automaton. In a few moments she emerged in her housecoat, the torn stockings and stained dress in her hands. He bundled them into his pockets, and drew her to the bed, and sitting her down there, held her by the shoulders eye to eye with him.
‘Listen to me! The police will be here all day, asking questions of everybody. You, too! You’ve got to be ready for them. You know nothing about Friedl, you understand? You didn’t see her last night, you weren’t with her…’
It was then that her face awoke suddenly, stirred into agitation and pain, for it was then that it dawned on her that he half-believed she had killed Friedl. And in a sense so she had. There was a doom on her. People who came too near her died, without any motion of her will. And so might he, if she did not send him away from her.
‘I must tell you,’ she said, raising upon him eyes no longer blind, but brilliant with apprehension and resolve. ‘I did see her… I was with her…’
‘I’ve asked you nothing,’ he said roughly. ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘I want to tell you. There was more, something she didn’t tell you…’
‘Quickly, then!’ He eyed the paling light, and shook with anxiety for her.
She had caught the sting of his urgency at last. She told him what she had to tell in a few words. He held fast to her all the while, afraid that she might relapse into her border world of despair if he took his hands from her.
‘Felsenbach! That’s over in the Allgau. And this photograph… you’re in no doubt that it is Aylwin?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s Robin. There isn’t any doubt.’
‘You went out by the verandah here… No one saw you? No one was about, when you left or when you returned?’
‘No, no one.’
‘Good, that makes it easier. If people saw you come upstairs after dinner, so much the better. Understand, you went to bed, and you’ve been here ever since. You’ve been ill, you’re under orders to get plenty of rest.’ They’ll believe that, he thought, his heart aching over the pale spectre he held between his hands. ‘You understand? You went early to bed, and slept, and you know nothing about any happenings in the night. That’s what you have to tell the police, when they ask, and for God’s sake get it right and stick to it.’
‘I won’t forget,’ she said submissively.
‘And listen, stay close to the hotel all to-day. Maybe they’ll insist on that, but do it in any case. But to-morrow come to the restaurant in the village, for lunch, and I’ll meet you there. The one next to the church, The Bear. Make it about noon. By then we may be able to see how the land lies. We’re acquaintances in England, running into each other here by chance. Have you got that clear?’
In a whisper she said: ‘Yes,’ and let it be taken for a promise, though she had promised nothing. All she wanted now was for him to go away quickly, before the shadow fell upon him as it had fallen on Robin and on Friedl.
‘I must get out of here, it’ll be broad daylight soon. When I’ve gone, go to bed, sleep if you can, but go to bed anyhow, and when it’s time, get up and go down to breakfast as if nothing had happened. As far as you’re concerned, nothing has happened! That’s all you have to remember.’
He left her there sitting on the edge of her bed, looking after him. Soundlessly he turned the latch of the door, and silently let it relax into its place again under his hand. The pre-dawn light was now dove-grey, but the woodland below, the invisible shore, the gardens, still drowsed in obscurity and silence. Quicksilver, dully shining, the lake lay in its bowl asleep; when the sun rose there would be faint curls of mist drifting across its surface on the south-west wind. Towards the north-east, and the dwindling corner where the Rulenbach flowed out on its detour across the German border. Towards Felsenbach, where, if Friedl had been telling the truth, Robin Aylwin was buried in a grave without a name.
When he was gone, she did as he had told her to do. She went to bed, and by some curious process of subconscious obedience she even fell asleep. She slept until the sun was high, and the usual morning noises had come to life all round her, the normal echoes of an old, spacious house with bare wooden floors. She rose and dressed herself with care, and made up her face as scrupulously as for a stage performance, which in a way this day was going to be.
She went down the stairs slowly, straining her ears at every step. There was a changed quality in the bustle of sound within the house, a high, soft, hysterical note of tension. From the staircase windows that looked into the courtyard she saw a police car and an ambulance standing on the cobbles. Within the broad double doorway of the hall Herr Waldmeister stood conversing earnestly and in low tones with a middle-aged police officer. Frau Waldmeister, in the doorway of the office, talked volubly to someone within, in a cataract of excited dialect supplemented with a frenzy of shoulder-heaving, and head-wagging, and when Maggie passed by she could see another, younger policeman busy clearing the office desk for his own use. Two or three guests hovered just within the doorway of the dining-room, peering and whispering in delighted horror.
Gisela, hunched over her adding machine, punched out figures blindly with one hand, and held a handkerchief to her nose with the other. Not to question or comment would in itself be ground for comment. Maggie turned towards the reception desk.