Ellis Peters - George Felse 05 - The Piper On The Mountain (3 page)

His reaction, if she could have known it, was not one of shock, but of honest surprise. His own mother was a gay, sensible extrovert, who caused him nothing but pleasure, satisfaction and security, so all-pervading that it had never even occurred to him to notice them at all. The revelation that this sullen, bright, brown imp of a girl had no such serene relationship with her mother came as an eye-opener, no matter how open eyes and mind had always been, in theory, to the infinite variety of humankind.

She might, he conceded, studying her covertly as she scowled down at Central Europe, be quite capable of contributing her fair share to any friction that was hanging around. He wasn’t sure yet whether he was going to like her, though any friend of the Mathers was practically guaranteed in advance. But he was quite sure she was the most delightful thing to look at that had come his way since he’d arrived in Oxford.

Tossa would have been staggered to hear it. Brought up on the legend of her mother’s charm, she had never been able to see anything in herself but the
laide
, and nothing at all of the
belle
. That hadn’t soured her, she had sighed and accepted it as her fate. She had even convinced those of her friends who had known her from childhood, like the Mathers, that her view of herself was a true one. But you can’t fool a young man you are meeting for the first time, without a preconception in his head about you, or any predisposition to take you at your own valuation.

So Dominic Felse saw Tossa as
belle
, and not at all as
laide
. Chloe’s pale golden complexion became olive-bronze in her daughter, and smoother than cream. Chloe’s rounded slenderness was refined in Tossa to the delicate, ardent tension of something built for racing, and anguished with its own almost uncontainable energy. Tossa still was like a coiled spring. It would be nice to teach her relaxation, but it was nice to watch her quiver and vibrate, too. Her face was a regular oval with wonderfully irregular features, lips thoughtful and wry, so that you missed the sensitivity of their moulding unless some sudden change in her caused you to look more closely; huge, luminous, very dark brown eyes. Her hair was a straight bob, just long enough to curve in smoothly to touch her neck; very dark brown like her eyes, heavy and soft and smooth, with a short, unfashionable fringe that left her olive forehead large and plaintive to view, an intelligent child’s knotty, troubled forehead, braced squarely against a probably inimical world.

No, Dominic was in no doubt at all about Tossa, she was beautiful enough to stop any sane man in his tracks for another look, before she vanished and he lost his chance for ever. All the more effective because she didn’t even know it. She might have a pretty good opinion of herself in other ways, for all he knew, but she hadn’t the faintest notion that she was lovely to look at.

“She won’t go and muck this trip up at the last moment, will she?” asked Christine, suddenly sitting bolt upright and abandoning the map, her grey eyes narrowing with suspicion.

Well, that was sound evidence, in its way. Christine had known Tossa’s family almost since her infant school days.

“Oh, no, that’s all right! She gave me her blessing. Don’t worry about her, she’s going abroad herself, anyhow.” Tossa scowled even more fiercely, and stooped her weighted brow nearer to the map, only too plainly annoyed, thought Dominic, that she had volunteered something she needn’t have volunteered. “How far did we get?”

“Oh, we needn’t plan all that closely. As long as we’ve got all the papers we even
may
need, we can go where we like, and see how the time works out.” Toddy drew up his long legs and hugged his knees. He was his sister’s senior by an hour, and a good year ahead of the other two, and inevitably, or so it seemed to him, he was cast as the leader of the expedition. “Everybody’s got valid passports, and I’ve applied for the insurance card. Anything else we need?”

Tossa stooped her head even lower towards the map. The heavy curtain of hair swung low and hid her cheek, drooping like a broken wing. She followed the west-east road through Nuremberg, and on towards the border, over the border and on through Pilsen and Prague, until the edge of the map brought her up short of the Slovak border, baulked of her objective. What was the use, anyhow? His death was an accident, and no fault of hers. If she’d somehow failed him, that was incurable now.

But if she’d only given him a chance to be liked! Not everybody can do that by warm instinct, most of us have to be helped.

She hadn’t done much to help him, had she?

With a sense of wonder and disbelief, as if her mind had taken action without her will, she heard her own voice saying with careful casualness: “It wouldn’t do any
harm
to have a carnet for the van, would it? Just in case we wanted to go farther afield? After all, we might—mightn’t we?”

The person who was to put the cat fairly and squarely among the pigeons presented himself at the gatehouse of the Marrion Institute on a Thursday morning, just two days after Chloe Terrell and Paul Newcombe had flown to Prague. He was of an unexceptionable appearance, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, and carried upon him the indefinable stamp of the public servant. The ex-sergeant-major in command of the Institute’s blocking squad used towards him a manner one degree on the friendly side of his normal one, recognising him as one of
us
. That didn’t help him, however, to penetrate even the outer defences.

He asked to see Sir Broughton Phelps, and in his innocence really seemed to expect to be haled through the barriers on sight. He would not state his business, except to stress that it was urgent. When he was told that no one got to see Sir Broughton without a Ministry permit, he adjusted promptly and without undue surprise to this check, but he did not go away, nor did he withdraw his demand. Instead, he asked if a message could be taken in to the Director or his Chief Security Officer, so that they might make up their own minds whether to see him or not. The ex-sergeant-major saw nothing against this; and the stranger scribbled a few words on his visiting-card, sealed it down in an envelope, in a way which might have been slightly offensive if he had not just had it impressed upon him how stringent security arrangements round here were, and handed it over.

The messenger delivered this billet to Adrian Blagrove’s secretary, who preferred, understandably, to hand it over to his chief unopened. So it happened that Blagrove was the first to withdraw the card and read what the stranger had written.

Robert Bencroft Welland (said the card)

Assistant Commercial Secretary

British Embassy, Prague I,

Thunovská 14,

CSSR.

And above the name was scribbled in a vehement, cornery hand:

Terrell’s accident was no accident.

Robert Bencroft Welland came in gravely, displaying no signs of elation at having penetrated the first protective layers, and no haste about completing the feat. He accepted a chair and a cigarette, and settled his brief-case conveniently on the carpet beside his feet. Shut in together, they contemplated each other across the desk which had been Terrell’s.

“Mr. Welland,” began Blagrove very soberly, “you appear to be suggesting something which doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone else, even as a possibility. The Slovak police were quite satisfied of the facts of poor Terrell’s case, and made very full and correct reports which apparently convinced our authorities just as completely. I take it this is an unofficial approach, or you would have been sent here already provided with the means of reaching me, and wouldn’t have had to write me—this little billet.” It glanced coyly between his closed fingers for an instant, and vanished again. “May I ask if you’ve confided your doubts to anyone in Prague? Any of your superiors?”

“No, I haven’t. I came to the Marrion Institute because it seemed to be the party most affected by Terrell’s death, and what I believe to be the facts about it. I came over only yesterday, on a week of my leave, and I had some enquiries to make before I was ready to come to you.”

“Presumably, since you’re here,” said Blagrove drily, “your enquiries produced positive results. You realise you’re the
only
person who has questioned the circumstances of Terrell’s accident?”

“I could hardly let that influence me, could I?” said the young man mildly, with such simplicity that Blagrove took another and closer look at him. Under thirty, probably, of medium height and lightly built, neat, tow-coloured hair, all very presentable, all very ordinary. Put him among an office-full of civil servants, and you could lose him in a moment. Except that the good-natured face, earnest and dutiful to the point of caricature, had a little too much jaw for comfort, and confronted his seniors with a pair of wide-set blue eyes of startling directness and obstinacy. He looked, at first glance, like all the others of his class and profession; but at second glance it was clear that being on his own wouldn’t stop him from doing whatever he felt he had to do.

“Perhaps,” suggested Blagrove carefully, “you’d better tell me just why you’re not satisfied.”

“In the first place, because I knew Terrell, and I’ve seen the place where he was found. Oh, I didn’t know him well, but it so happens I’ve climbed with him, last year in the Zillertal, so I know his class. He was an excellent climber, on a rope or alone. The Zillertaler Alps were his proper league. But the Low Tatras, where he was found, are walking country. Not alpine stuff at all, but open, grassy slopes and rounded summits, with wooded valleys. You could find a few practice pitches there, rock outcrops, scrambles, that kind of thing. But nothing to tempt a man like Terrell. So the first question, even if I’d known nothing more, is: “
What was he doing there at all
?”

“I see nothing to prevent even a climbing man from fancying a walking holiday now and again, for a change,” objected Blagrove reasonably.

“Nothing whatever. Except that they just don’t do it. Hardly any of them, and certainly not Terrell. Once you’re as proficient as he was, you lose interest in the mild stuff. The climbs have to get harder all the time, and higher. Failing that, you just go somewhere new, where at least they’re different, unknown. But you don’t go back to walking and scrambling. And for that matter, even if you did go back, you certainly wouldn’t fall off a perfectly good traverse path, even at a blind corner, like the place where they found him.”

“I shouldn’t like to be so sure it couldn’t happen. The skilled and experienced sometimes fail to give all their attention to the easy bits.” Blagrove was playing somewhat irritably with the card he held in his fingers. “Unless you have something more than that to go on….”

“Oh, I have. You see, Terrell got in touch with me early this year, and asked my advice about good climbing country in the
High
Tatras. You don’t know that part of the world? There’s this great, open valley of the river Váh, running east-west, and to the south of it these broad, rolling crests of the Low Tatras. Then to the north, sickle-shaped, like this, and much more concentrated, there’s the cluster of the High Tatras, the highest peaks in the whole Carpathian range.
These
are for climbers. Anything up to nearly nine thousand feet, granite, three hundred or so peaks packed into about fifteen miles length, and magnificent country. I advised him to book in at Strba Lake, or at Tatranská Lomnice. And he did. He booked for two weeks at the lake. So what was he doing across the Váh valley in the Low Tatras?”

Blagrove raised his brows. “He could surely have changed his mind. How do you know he went ahead with his booking?”

“For the best reason in the world,” said Welland flatly. “Because
I
made the reservation for him, as long ago as April. And I know he turned up on time at the hotel, because he dropped me a card on arrival. He said nothing then about moving. On the contrary, he confirmed the arrangement we’d made by letter earlier. I was supposed to go along and spend the week-end climbing with him on Krivan. Only, you see, before the week-end came we got the news at the embassy that he’d been found dead—fifty kilometres away across the valley, in the Low Tatras, where he’d never intended going. He’d checked out from Strba Lake on the third day, and gone away to a small inn in one of the valleys in the other range. No mystery about
what
he did, up to that point. The only mystery is
why
?”

“And you think,” said Blagrove, his hands still and alert before him on the desk, “that you know why?”

“No, not yet. All I have is certain indications that may suggest reasons. As, for instance, that at some time after his arrival at the lake, something happened within his knowledge, something that caused him to pay his bill there and then, and go rushing off across the valley. No one at the hotel could account for it. He just left. But something happened that made him leave. If it had been simply something that disinclined him to stay where he was, made him dislike the place or con-struct uncomfortable there, he’d most probably have transferred to another hotel, somewhere along the range, or come back to Prague! Instead, he made his way for some reason to this one particular valley in the Low Tatras, not even a very frequented place. Whatever it was that happened didn’t just drive him away from Strba Lake—it led him to Zbojská Dolina. And believe me, it can have had nothing to do with climbing. Do I interest you, Mr. Bla-grove?”

“You interest me, yes, up to a point. You didn’t say any of this to your superiors in Prague?”

“No, I didn’t. One doesn’t like to start hares of that kind without making sure first of as many facts as possible. I had some leave to come, and I used it to come over here. Whatever drew Terrell to the Low Tatras, it can’t have been something private and personal from his own past, because he had no connections there, this was his first visit. He knew nothing of the country, he knew none of the people. I thought, knowing what his work was, and what it might sometimes involve, that there might be a link with something he’d handled or known about in the course of his duty. I hoped to get an interview with his widow, but she wasn’t in when I called at her flat.”

“She’s in Slovakia at this moment,” said Blagrove, “seeing about having her husband brought home.”

“Ah, so that’s it, I see. Well, since I could get nothing from her I spent the afternoon and evening among the press files, going back over the details—only the published details that are open to everybody, of course, but you’d be surprised how much that covers—the details of any reportable work handled by Terrell during the last few years. I have friends among the pressmen. I didn’t tell them what I wanted, I didn’t know myself. I just picked over their memories and then worked backwards through the files. I thought somewhere there must be something to dig up, something that would tie in at one end to Terrell, and at the other end to Slovakia—with a lot of luck, even to that part of Slovakia.”

Blagrove let out his breath in a soft, cautious hiss, and braced his shoulders against the back of his chair. “And you found something?”

“I found,” said Welland with deliberation, “the unfinished case of Charles Alder.”

In the moment of silence they stared steadily at each other.

“Or of course,” said Welland, “if you prefer it, the case of Karo Alda.”

It was a pity. It was really a pity. To have the whole affair tucked away peacefully in its coffin as an accident would have been so much simpler and more satisfactory; but there were two good reasons for abandoning, here and now, any attempt to dissuade this young man from pursuing his enquiries further. First, he wouldn’t be dissuaded; the supererogatory jaw was set, and the uncompromising eyes expected and would countenance only a zeal for justice the equal of his own. And second, to assume the responsibility for smothering a matter as serious as this was too great a risk. It would have to go to higher authority, however vexatious the results might be.

“I think,” said Adrian Blagrove, pushing back his chair, “I really think you’d better come with me to the Director, and tell him the whole story.”

Sir Broughton Phelps sat forward at his desk with his lean jaw propped broodingly on a closed fist, and scarcely took his eyes from the visitor’s face as Welland repeated the tale of his reservations and his discoveries, until he reached Charles Alder’s name.

There was an expectant pause there. Welland looked a little pale and a little anxious when it prolonged itself beyond his expectations. He would have liked someone else to contribute something, a hint of appreciation, or at least belief; better still, a grain of confirmation. But when no one obliged, he did not look any the less convinced or any the less obstinate.

“I know you must be much better informed than I am, sir, about this case of Alder’s. But if you want me to sum up everything as I find it, I’ll willingly go on.”

“Please do,” said the Director, fingering the clipped silvery hair at his temple. “I assure you you have my very serious attention.”

“What I found, of course, was the dossier—or the published part of it—compiled by Terrell after Alder’s disappearance. Otherwise I wasn’t conscious of ever having heard of the man before. So my information comes, virtually, from Terrell himself. Alder was a refugee who came over here with his parents in 1940, and settled in England. He was then fifteen years old, and already something of an infant prodigy, musically and mathematically. I believe they often go together. His father was a physicist, and after a probationary period he was allowed to work here. He proved valuable, and before the end of the war all three of them were naturalised. The boy had studied physics, too, but soon began to distinguish himself in his own special fields, as composer and performer, and in the world of pure mathematics. Perhaps he was even a genius. After the war he did quite a lot of experimental flying, and originated some minor improvements in aircraft, ending up in this Institute, where he was associated with a number of important modifications in aircraft and car design. Also, it seems, he sometimes had differences with the government and his superiors. He objected to the exclusively military use of innovations which he seems to have considered could be beneficial in civil life. And he didn’t like techniques of his evolving to be kept under wraps, when he believed they could be adapted to help with necessary processes in underdeveloped countries. He seems to have been a difficult colleague of individual views, insubordinate, unwilling to conform against his judgment. And he must have been really brilliant, because according to a
Guardian
article I found, about the time he vanished he was definitely in the running for the directorship of this Institute, and at his age that was fantastic.” The young man raised his direct and daunting eyes, and looked the present Director full in the face. “Can you confirm that, sir?”

“I can and I do.” Phelps committed himself without hesitation. “The man was brilliant. He was a computer that thought and reasoned. No programming, no minding, no servicing necessary. We spend millions trying to construct an Alder, and then wear out bright young men feeding it. When we get a genuine one as a free gift from heaven we usually fail to recognise him. But difficult he certainly was. Go on, finish your exposition.”