‘Four of them to take care of the man,’ he mused, eyeing the damp patch now barely visible on the floorboards, ‘and one to account for the woman. You are sure he did not come back to the lake later?’
Bunty glanced towards the window. The strains of ‘Du kannst nicht treu sein’ were borne bravely across the water. ‘How could he?’ she said simply.
‘Yes… I think first we must make contact with our friends there, and make sure that they remain effective, all night if need be. That will make any drowning “accident” impossible, and any retreat by water, also. From what you tell me it seems that this man must be still somewhere close, perhaps still in the woods. Also, we hope, the lady… And now, Frau Felse, if you would wish to get some sleep…’
‘I’d rather stay,’ said Bunty. ‘At least until we get word from my husband.’ But she meant rather, until we recover those two alive, and find out what this thing is all about. She had begun this hunt, she wanted to see it ended. There were police converging on Scheidenau from all directions, methodically threading the woodland along the lake-shore, a small army mustering because of what George and she had loosed in this quiet village. She intended to see finished what they had begun.
‘Then of course you may stay. Where should we have been without you? You can rest here in your friend’s room, why not?’
But he showed neither surprise nor disapproval when she followed him down to the office where he had set up his headquarters.
The telephone was busy almost every moment for the next hour, but they found no further trace of Maggie Tressider. The revellers on the lake sang and rowed on unflagging, which in its way was as astonishing as it was admirable. It would have been only human to tire and long for sleep as soon as they were officially requested to go on celebrating. Outside among the trees the search proceeded, inside here Oberkofler directed and co-ordinated. The Waldmeister parents, philosophical and phlegmatic, not to say faced with their usual working day in a few hours’ time, accounted for themselves and went back to bed, the sons volunteered their services and went to join in the hunt. And Bunty watched and listened and waited, and harried her memory for any submerged detail or any hopeful idea; and worried now not only about those two hapless people lost, but also about George, from whom there had been no word.
A call from Werner Frankel, over in Felsenbach. The Dodge must have got through before they had an effective block-up. They were getting out a general call on it, and hoped to pick it up somewhere near Regenheim.
Another call from Werner, half an hour later. They had returned now to the scene of the abduction, and found in the ditch where the attack took place a wallet containing the papers of Francis Killian, together with several photographs of a certain gravestone in the cemetery at Felsenbach.
‘Of which,’ said Oberkofler, ‘perhaps you have heard from the Herr Inspektor?’
‘He told me about it yesterday,’ said Bunty. ‘The day before yesterday, I mean.’ She was a little lightheaded with so much waiting and thinking, and so little sleep. ‘But I haven’t seen it. George didn’t have a camera. Our mistake!’
And at last, just before one o’clock, another telephone call which Oberkofler answered in voluble German, to switch suddenly and wonderfully into English.
‘Yes… yes, good, I will send you every man I can, and more as they come in. Yes, your wife is here. Please, only a word…’ He held out the receiver to Bunty with a smile as wide and deep as the sea. ‘Your husband, Frau Felse.’
‘George?’ said Bunty, heaving a deep sigh. ‘Did he tell you? We’ve lost Maggie as well.’
‘Yes, I know. That makes us quits, love, I lost the car they had Killian in. We had a mile of road to comb for whatever hole they dived into, but it turned out there’s only one, apart from farm-tracks. This one’s blind, too, it goes to the lake and stops, so they tell me. Doesn’t even pass anything, except that rubble that used to be Scheidenau Castle. But somewhere up there is where they must be. There isn’t anywhere else. We’re off to hunt for the car now.’
‘George, isn’t there anything I can do to help?’
‘From all I hear you’ve done it,’ said George. ‘They also serve…! If we find him, the odds are we find her, too. This is all one set-up. Keep hoping! Sorry, got to clear this line, it may be wanted.’
‘Yes, of course. See you, then!’
She held out the receiver to Oberkofler, but he shook his head at her and smiled. She hung up. She was suddenly shaking with reaction, and dared not try to guess how the night would end.
Distantly, inexhaustibly, across the lake and in at the window came the thunder of the guns of Helmut’s navy:
Es war einmal ein treuer Hussar,
Der liebt sein Mädchen ein ganzes Jahr,
Ein ganzes Jahr, und noch viel mehr…
CHAPTER TWELVE
« ^ »
Two voices were discussing her above her head. They didn’t know that dead people can hear. Quite dispassionate voices, cool, leisurely and low, discussing her in terms of life and death. Either they had no bodies, or dead people can’t see. She was dangling just below the level of consciousness clinging to the surface tension like the air-breathing nymph of some water creature.
‘So schön auch,’ said the first voice critically.
‘Nobody’s beautiful who gets in my way,’ said the second voice in plain English and without overtones; a light, pleasant, untroubled tenor voice without a care in the world.
‘Aber schön,’ the first voice insisted with detached approval. ‘She has everything!’
‘Except immortality.’
‘What are you going to do with her?’
The second voice was silent long enough to indicate a shrug of the shoulders. ‘Did I make her wade in here so far out of her depth? She had a death wish.’
‘Waste of a girl!’ said the first voice with impersonal regret.
‘There are others. Even some with perfect pitch.’ And in a blithe half-tone the second voice began to sing to itself dreamily:
Mein Eigen sollst du werden gewiss,
Wie’s Keine sonst auf Erden ist,
O Lieb… auf grüner Erden…
Any moment now she would feel the prick of the needle in her thigh, and submerge again. So this must be hell. What could be more absolute hell than to have to go on living and reliving these few weeks to eternity, trying to escape from the net, believing she had escaped, only to find herself back at the beginning and trapped as fast as ever? Everything to do again, everything to suffer again, everything to lose again. No, not quite a duplication, this time the dialogue had changed. The decision last time had been for life. This time it was for death.
Then, in the moment that she broke surface and knew herself conscious, miraculously the burden was gone. Last time she had awakened alone, oppressed and appalled by the horror of guilt without a source. Now that the verdict was for death she awoke to the calm and lightness of deliverance. She had not been deceived, after all, her guilt had been only a delusion, a sickness of which she was healed at last. Even if she died now, it would be as a whole, a sane person.
For this second voice she knew very well, and it belonged firmly in this world and no other. It was no poor injured ghost that had come to fetch her away, but a living and dangerous man, and he had come not because she owed him a death, but because she was a threat to him alive. Her probing had begun to uncover him of the carefully cultivated invisibility of years, he could not afford to let her go on with it. Grave or no grave, memorial or no memorial, Robert Aylwin was alive. She had neither killed him nor done him any wrong; and even if he killed her, she would never again be truly in his power, never his victim as she had been all these years. Neither living nor dead would Robin ever stand between her and love again.