Ellis Peters - George Felse 05 - The Piper On The Mountain (8 page)

At Liptovsky Hradok there was a promising fork, where the left-hand road seemed to set course directly for the roots of the mountains.

“Don’t take it,” warned Tossa, “keep on towards Poprad. It doesn’t join the Freedom Road, it goes straight over into Poland, and we can’t go, and anyhow I think the frontier’s closed there. It’s a broken line on this map. There’s a left fork from this road, oh, twenty kilometres on, that takes us up on to this Freedom Road, and then it runs on along the range all the rest of the way.”

All of which Dominic knew as well as she did; he’d been doing his homework even more industriously. He also knew that the first-class route up to the Freedom Road was nearer forty kilometres ahead than twenty, and joined the shelf highway in mid-course; but the turning to which she was directing them, short, second-class and quite certainly extremely steep to make the gradient in the distance, would lead them to the western end of the upper road, and straight to the lake of Strba.

That didn’t take much accounting for, of course; so much she had learned from Dana. What he was waiting to see was what she would do and where she would lead them when they got there. Because she wouldn’t know precisely where to look for her stepfather’s traces in the lake resort, unless she had information Dana didn’t possess.

The road streamed eastward along the floor of the great valley, threading the cobbled streets and spacious squares of small towns, and emerging again into the empty, verdant fields, that fantastic back-drop of peaks still unrolling steadily beside it.

Two main streams combine to form the river Váh, the White Váh the white mountain water from the High Tatras, the Black Váh from the district of Mount Royal in the Low Tatras. Their road crossed the White Váh for the last time, not many miles from its source, and they were over an imperceptible water-shed, no more than the heaving of a sigh from the valley’s great green heart, that separated the westward-flowing Váh from the eastward-flowing tributaries of the Poprad, which is itself a tributary of the Dunajec, and joins it to wander away northward into Poland beyond the Tatra range. Those tiny streams they were leaving were the last of the Danube basin. This new and even tinier one, crossed soon after they turned on to Tossa’s climbing road and headed precipitately towards the foothills, was the first innocent trickle of the vast drainage area of the Vistula. A couple of miles and a slight heave in the level of the plain determined their eternal separation.

The van climbed dizzily, on a roughly-surfaced but adequate road, left the viridian levels of the river plain, and wound its way between slopes of forest and cascades of rock rich with mountain flowers. The gradient increased steadily. The peaks had abandoned them, they were tangled in the intimacy of the foothills, and there were no longer any distances before them or behind.

They emerged at last on to a broad, well-made road that crossed them at right-angles, and went snaking away left and right along the shoulder of the range.

“Which way now?”

“Whichever you like,” offered Tossa with deceptive impartiality. “This must be the Freedom Road. Left is the highest end, and we’re quite near it here. How about going up there to Strba Lake for lunch, and then we can drive the length of the road to Tatranská Lomnice at the other end, and see if we can go up the funicular?”

It sounded a reasonable programme, and they accepted it readily. The great road climbed still, between slopes of noble pines, until it brought them out suddenly on a broad, open terrace, and the whole panorama of the plain below expanded before them, an Olympian view of earth. They parked the van in a large ground thoughtfully provided opposite the terrace, and rushed to lean over the railing, and marvel at the pigmy world from which they had climbed.

The whole flat green valley of the Váh lay like a velvet carpet beneath them, shimmering coils of cloud drifting between. Through this wispy veil they could see clearly the white ribbon of the road, and the silver ribbon of the river, threading the emerald field, and the little towns splayed like daisies in the grass of a meadow.

“But wait till we go up to the Lomnice Peak!” Tossa promised them, and the magic of joy had penetrated even Tossa’s absorption, and made her eyes shine and her voice vibrate. “This, and another leap on top of it—an enormous one, it looks in photographs. Quick, lock the van, and let’s go in to the lake.”

The snow-peaks, exquisitely shaped, bone-clean, polished granite and gneiss, reappeared as soon as they turned inward to the heart of the range, head beyond beautiful head materialising as they walked the curves of the road towards the blue gleam of the lake in its oval bowl. First there were white villas and large modern hotels, and then as the water opened before them broad and gracious, the older hotels, partly timbered, marking their age by their wooden towers and little lantern turrets, an element of fantasy that turned out later, surprisingly, to be traditional; for these towers for tourists were the lineal descendants of the timber churches and belfries of Slovakia, some as old as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

There were hotels round almost a quarter of the lake shore, but above and beyond rose the mountains, forested in their lower reaches, sharpened to steel above, etched with piercing patterns of ice, and snowfields radiant as flowers. Across the water, not far from the shore, towered the timber structure of a ski-jump, like an out-of-season shrub barren in summer and simulating death.

They walked the whole circuit of the lake, staring, exclaiming, photographing, as hordes of other holiday-makers, probably of a dozen nationalities at least, were also doing all round them. And Tossa took stock of every hotel they passed, and gave no sign of seeking or finding.

Not until they came to the Hotel Sokolie, built out to the very edge of the lake, with a terrace overhanging the clear, chill shallows, a sunken garden between its walls and the road, and its name on a wooden sign by the gate.

“This looks nice,” said Tossa, loitering. “And not too posh, either, so it won’t be frantically dear. Anybody but me hungry yet?”

She was learning how to do it. She had the tone just right, happily casual, attracted but easy, willing to go along with the general vote. She had known all along which hotel she was looking for; and that was information she could not have got from Dana.

Not one of the luxury models, just as she had said. Not even new. Half its structure was in wood, with a shingled steeple on one corner. But it had a pleasant, welcoming foyer, and a pine-panelled dining-room with a view over the terrace and the lake. And it was very easy to get the twins compliantly through the swing doors after her, and heading, on the head waiter’s prompt and agile heels, towards a table near the window, where the mountains leaned to them in silver outline against a sapphire sky, and the ice-cold mountain water mirrored that blue with a deeper, gentian tone, drowning their senses, soothing them into hungry complacence.

There wasn’t a hotel anywhere round the lake that couldn’t have provided them with an equally wonderful prospect and a comparable menu; but only this one would do for Tossa. For this was undoubtedly the hotel where Herbert Terrell had stayed for his few meagre days, before he removed to the Low Tatras, to Zbojská Dolina, and the death that was waiting for him there.

“I knew it!” said Toddy, groaning. “We’re going to get the English expert let loose on us wherever we go, I can see that. And I’ll swear we never actually said a word in the head man’s hearing, he just looked us over. How
do
they know?”

“You’d be even more annoyed,” said Christine with certainty, “if they took you for something else, instead. Like all the English!”

The head waiter had led them to their table himself, but having weighed them up in one shrewd glance he had thereupon withdrawn, and despatched to them a short, square, good-humoured citizen who greeted them, inevitably, in very competent English. Pretence was useless; they were immediately recognisable, it seemed, wherever they went.

Tossa followed the waiter’s bouncing passage through the service doors with a narrowed and speculative glance, the gleam of purpose in her eye. She was here after information, she had an obvious use for an English-speaking waiter. The chief difficulty confronting her now must be how to slip her three companions long enough and adroitly enough to be able to talk to the man alone.

“We could have our coffee on the terrace,” she suggested, her eyes dwelling dreamily on the blue, radiant water outside.

Of course, coffee on the terrace! And then, when they were comfortable and somnolent in the sun, half drunk with mountain air even before they succumbed to the “Divcí Hrozen,” Tossa would begin delving into that all-purpose bag of hers for her powder compact, and wander off demurely into the hotel, ostensibly in search of a mirror and privacy, but in reality in pursuit of the English-speaking waiter.

Everything happened just as he had foreseen. At the edge of the terrace, leaning over the brilliant clarity of the water, Tossa was the first to finish her coffee, and the first to excuse herself.

“Oh, lord, what do I look like?” She peered into an inadequate mirror, and scowled horribly. “You might
tell
a girl!” She gathered up her bag in that armed, belligerent way women have, and pushed back her chair. “I’ll be right back.”

He gave her three minutes before he followed her in through the now almost deserted dining-room, and into the foyer. The sunken garden must, he calculated, continue past all the rooms on the landward side of the house, including lounge and bar, and not a window would be closed on a day like this. The English-speaking waiter was not in the dining-room; he might be in the bar, he might be in the kitchen, he might be almost anywhere, and out of Tossa’s reach, but at least the available rooms could be covered. Dominic was launched on a course from which he could not and would not turn back. If he had to listen from hiding he would do it, yes, or at keyholes if necessary, anything to feel that he had the knowledge to help Tossa when the need arose. If it never arose, so much the better, she need never know; and nobody else ever should.

The garden was green, shrubby and wild, its lawns scythed instead of mown, as was the custom here. The thick, clovery grass swallowed his footsteps, and the level of the windows just cleared his head. He walked softly the length of the wall, listening for Tossa’s voice; and suddenly there it was, clear, urgent and low, sailing out from the open window above him.

“But
why
should he leave like that?
Something
must have happened. Didn’t he say anything to account for it?”

“No, madame, nothing at all.” A slightly beery bass, rich and willing to please. “All was as usual with him that morning, only the rain kept him indoors. Here he sat and waited, and read the English papers. There was nothing.”

“But there were other people here. Did he talk to anyone?”

“Only to me, madame. I was on duty here.” The waiter’s voice was patient, puzzled and reserved. Did she really think she could run round the district like this, asking fierce questions about the sudden death of a foreigner, and not call attention to herself? “We had not many callers, because of the rain. Only residents. There were a few, of course. Some herdsmen came in, local people, and drank coffee. They were playing cards, the English gentleman went over and watched them for a while. He was asking me about the pack they used, and the game they played. You have other games, this was strange to him. When the men left he picked up the paper on which they had been keeping the score, and examined it. But what is there in that?”

“But then very soon he packed and left?”

“About half an hour afterwards I saw him come down with his bag, and go to pay his account. He asked me about getting a car.” The note of constraint had become a softer, more deliberate intonation of wonder and interest. He went on answering questions almost experimentally. To see what she would ask next?

“But he was interested? In these herdsmen and their game? Did you see this paper with the score on it? Was there anything special about it? But how could there be!” said Tossa hopelessly, and heaved a long, frustrated sigh.

“I did not see it, madame. He put it in his pocket and took it away with him.”

The silence was abrupt and deep, like a fall down a well, but not into darkness. After a moment Tossa said, in an eased voice: “I believe his widow came and collected all his things. You don’t know…” She drew back suddenly and warily from what she had been about to ask him, and said instead: “He asked you about the men, too? What about them?”

“Simply who they were, from what place they came. I think he was interested in the dress. The two older men wore the old, traditional dress from Zdiar.”

“And which of them was the one keeping the score?”

“Oh, that was a young man I know well, but not from here, he comes from across the valley.”

“Did you tell Mr. Terrell about him, too?”

“I think he asked me his name, and where he came from, yes.”

In the same muted voice, but now curiously slowed, as though she had reached the end of one stage of her journey,

Tossa asked: “And what
was
his name?”

“His name,” said the English-speaking waiter simply, “is Ivo Martínek. His father keeps a hut, over there in the Low Tatras.”

to sec reached the hall in a frenzied dash, just in time to saunter convincingly into Tossa’s sight as she emerged from the deserted bar. He hoped she wouldn’t notice his slightly quickened breathing. Looking back from the doorway as they went out to join the twins on the terrace, he caught a glimpse of the English-speaking waiter gazing after them with a wooden face and blank eyes. He was glad to let the door swing closed between them, and hustle Tossa almost crossly away from that look.

He did not, therefore, linger to take another quick glance into the hall, or he might have seen the waiter shut himself firmly into the telephone box and begin dialling a number. But even if he had been within earshot he would not have learned much, for it was not in English that the English-speaking waiter began: