“What do you mean?”
“The police.”
“No. What are they doing?”
“They’ve been in and out all day.”
“What’s everybody waiting for?”
“They want to see him brought out.”
“Who?”
“Herr Koch.” It occurred vaguely to Martins that somebody besides himself had discovered Herr Koch’s failure to give evidence, though that was hardly a police matter. He said, “What’s he done?”
“Nobody knows that yet. They can’t make their minds up in there-it might be suicide, you see, and it might be murder.”
“Herr Koch?”
“Of course.”
A small child came up to his informant and pulled at his hand, “Papa, Papa.” He wore a wool cap on his head like a gnome, and his face was pinched and blue with cold.
“Yes, my dear, what is it?”
“I heard them talking through the grating, Papa.”
“Oh, you cunning little one. Tell us what you heard, Hansel?”
“I heard Frau Koch crying, Papa.”
“Was that all, Hansel?”
“No. I heard the big man talking, Papa.”
“Ah, you cunning little Hansel. Tell Papa what he said.”
“He said, ‘Can you tell me, Frau Koch, what the foreigner looked like?’”
“Ha, ha, you see they think it’s murder. And who’s to say they are wrong. Why should Herr Koch cut his own throat in the basement?”
“Papa, Papa.”
“Yes, little Hansel?”
“When I looked through the grating, I could see some blood on the coke.”
“What a child you are. How could you tell it was blood? The snow leaks everywhere.” The man turned to Martins and said, “The child has such an imagination. Maybe he will be a writer when he grows up.”
The pinched face stared solemnly up at Martins. The child said, “Papa.”
“Yes, Hansel?”
“He’s a foreigner too.”
The man gave a big laugh that caused a dozen heads to turn. “Listen to him, sir, listen,” he said proudly. “He thinks you did it just because you are a foreigner. As though there weren’t more foreigners here these days than Viennese.”
“Papa, Papa.”
“Yes, Hansel?”
“They are coming out.”
A knot of police surrounded the covered stretcher which they lowered carefully down the steps for fear of sliding on the trodden snow. The man said, “They can’t get an ambulance into this street because of the ruins. They have to carry it round the corner.” Frau Koch came out at the tail of the procession: she had a shawl over her head and an old sackcloth coat. Her thick shape looked like a snowman as she sank in a drift at the pavement edge. Someone gave her a hand and she looked round with a lost hopeless gaze at this crowd of strangers. If there were friends there she did not recognise them looking from face to face. Martins bent as she passed, fumbling at his shoelace, but looking up from the ground he saw at his own eyes’ level the scrutinising cold-blooded gnome gaze of little Hansel.
Walking back down the street towards Anna, he looked back once. The child was pulling at his father’s hand and he could see the lips forming round those syllables like the refrain of a grim ballad, “Papa, Papa.”
He said to Anna: “Koch has been murdered. Come away from here.” He walked as rapidly as the snow would let him, turning this corner and that. The child’s suspicion and alertness seemed to spread like a cloud over the city-they could not walk fast enough to evade its shadow. He paid no attention when Anna said to him, “Then what Koch said was true. There was a third man,” nor a little later when she said, “It must have been murder. You don’t kill a man to hide anything less.”
The tram cars flashed like icicles at the end of the street: they were back at the Ring. Martins said, “You had better go home alone. I’ll keep away from you awhile till things have sorted out.”
“But nobody can suspect you.”
“They are asking about the foreigner who called on Koch yesterday. There may be some unpleasantness for a while.”
“Why don’t you go to the police?”
“They are so stupid. I don’t trust them. See what they’ve pinned on Harry. And then I tried to hit this man Callaghan. They’ll have it in for me. The least they’ll do is send me away from Vienna. But if I stay quiet… there’s only one person who can give me away. Cooler.”
“And he won’t want to.”
“Not if he’s guilty. But then I can’t believe he’s guilty.”
Before she left him, she said, “Be careful. Koch knew so very little and they murdered him. You know as much as Koch.”
The warning stayed in his brain all the way to Sacher’s: after nine o’clock the streets are very empty, and he would turn his head at every padding step coming up the street behind him, as though that third man whom they had protected so ruthlessly was following him like an executioner. The Russian sentry outside the Grand Hotel looked rigid with the cold, but he was human, he had a face, an honest peasant face with Mongol eyes. The third man had no face: only the top of a head seen from a window. At Sacher’s Mr Schmidt said, “Colonel Calloway has been in, asking after you, sir. I think you’ll find him in the bar.”
“Back in a moment,” Martins said and walked straight out of the hotel again: he wanted time to think. But immediately he stepped outside a man came forward, touched his cap and said firmly, “Please, sir.” He flung open the door of a khaki painted truck with a union jack on the windscreen and firmly urged Martins within. He surrendered without protest; sooner or later he felt sure inquiries would be made: he had only pretended optimism to Anna Schmidt.
The driver drove too fast for safety on the frozen road, and Martins protested. All he got in reply was a sullen grunt and a muttered sentence containing the word “orders.”
“Gave you orders to kill me?” Martins said and got no reply at all. He caught sight of the Titans on the Hofburg balancing great globes of snow above their heads, and then they plunged into ill-lit streets beyond where he lost all sense of direction.
“Is it far?” But the driver paid him no attention at all. At least, Martins thought, I am not under arrest: they have not sent a guard; I am being invited, wasn’t that the word they used? to visit the station to make a statement.
The car drew up and the driver led the way up two nights of stairs: he rang the bell of a great double door, and Martins was aware beyond it of many voices. He turned sharply to the driver and said, “Where the hell…? ” but the driver was already halfway down the stairs, and already the door was opening. His eyes were dazzled from the darkness by the lights inside: he heard but he could hardly see the advance of Crabbin. “Oh, Mr Dexter, we have been so anxious, but better late than never. Let me introduce you to Miss Wilbraham and the Grafin von Meyersdorf.”
A buffet laden with coffee cups: an urn steamed: a woman’s face shiny with exertion: two young men with the happy intelligent faces of sixth formers, and huddled in the background, like faces in a family album, a multitude of the old-fashioned, the dingy, the earnest and cheery features of constant readers. Martins looked behind him, but the door had closed.
He said desperately to Mr Crabbin, “I’m sorry, but…”
“Don’t think any more about it,” Mr Crabbin said. “One cup of coffee and then let’s go on to the discussion. We have a very good gathering tonight. They’ll put you on your mettle, Mr Dexter.” One of the young men placed a cup in his hand, the other shovelled in sugar before he could say he preferred his coffee unsweetened. The youngest man breathed into his ear, “Afterwards would you mind signing one of your books, Mr Dexter? ” A large woman in black silk bore down upon him and said, “I don’t mind if the Grafin does hear me, Mr Dexter, but I don’t like your books, I don’t approve of them. I think a novel should tell a good story.”
“So do I,” Martins said hopelessly.
“Now Mrs. Bannock, wait for question time.”