Above Suspicion (14 page)

On Friday they arrived in Innsbruck, and succumbed, as they always did, to its outward charm. They left their luggage at the station, and walked towards the Maria-Theresien-Strasse through busy streets bathed in the soft yellow light of the late afternoon sun. As Frances said to Richard, it was always difficult to tell who was on holiday or who was at work in Innsbruck. There were as many short leather trousers, green-feathered hats, and peasant-pinafored dresses among the young men and women at work as there were among the groups of holidaymakers; but two changes became more and more evident. The holidaymakers had the hard German accent of the North, and there was the Uniform.

The cafes were busy at this hour. The tourist shops, with their colourful peasant clothes, little wood carvings, flower charms and vermilion-tinted postcards, looked gay to the passing glance. Frances knew from experience not to stop and
look at them. Most of the articles were less imposing, were even crude, close at hand. They had a sort of present-from-Brighton touch. It was pathetic, she thought, that “Tyrolean” clothes, bought in the smart shops of large cities far away from the Tyrol, should be better-looking than the originals they copied. It was the tragedy of city hands being more skilful in cutting better material, of colours more carefully blended with the sophisticated designer’s eye.

And now they were approaching the Herzog-Friedrich-Strasse. Frances was looking at the people, at the way in which the towers and steeples around them were super-imposed on the background of jagged mountains. One of the chief attractions of this country was its White Horse Inn quality. It could be felt even in a town with tramcars and tourist buses. If this region were to lose that, it would lose much. Frances wondered whether the people prized the asset of charm which lay in their countryside, or would they ever be persuaded into thinking it was effete or sentimental or valueless, persuaded into an ill-fitting imitation of the hard Northerner?

Richard’s thoughts were already at the Gasthof Bozen. The best thing to do on this job, he decided, was to have a general idea of what he was going to do while he still kept his eyes open for any possible short cuts. A girl, carrying a basket filled with flowers, had paused before them to rest for a moment. She was almost a child, and the flowers were simple garden flowers arranged into rough bunches. Richard stopped Frances. He returned the girl’s smile.

“From our garden,” she said, holding out a bunch.

“They are lovely,” said Richard. “But I think I like this bunch better. How much?” He lifted a bunch with some roses
in it: two were red. They paid the girl, and crossed over into the narrow Herzog-Friedrich-Strasse with its arcades and balconies. As they approached No. 37, Richard took Frances’ arm. They entered the insignificant doorway with its worn sign. On either side of the doorway were busy little shops with overcrowded windows, as if everything they had for sale must be displayed. Still, they had been comforting, thought Frances, as the heavy door swung behind them shutting them off from the cheery babel of the busy arcade, and left her gripping Richard with one hand and the bunch of flowers with the other.

For it was dark in the entrance hall, dark and silent. It was narrow and unfurnished; it contained only the staircase which lay in front of them. The faint light which broke the darkness came from above, possibly from a landing. It reminded Frances of some of the older houses in Oxford, except for the stuffy, sickly smell of stale beer and tobacco. She noticed that Richard brightened. His dislike was the cafes with cream cakes. As he moved towards the stairs, she broke off a red rose and fastened it through the lapel buttonhole of her flannel suit. She wished she felt as confident as her heels sounded on the wooden staircase. It twisted in an uneven curve to the left and they had reached the landing, fairly broad and square in shape. This was where the light came from. It hung over a desk which faced the staircase. There was a man at the desk watching them through his small half-closed eyes. Or it might have been the largeness of his face which gave his eyes the appearance of smallness. Like two bullet holes in a lump of dough, thought Frances. He was middle-aged, his figure had spread with his years, his square-shaped head bristled with cropped grey hair.

At either end of the landing which seemed to be the real
entrance hall to the hotel were swing doors. They led to two rooms, one which must be at the back, the other at the front, of the house. From the front room came the surge of men’s voices, whenever a waitress pushed open the swing doors. The back room seemed to be the kitchen or the taproom, or perhaps both. The two waitresses hurried towards it with empty beer mugs, and returned to the restaurant with them filled again. The two women were so busy that they hardly glanced at Frances, as she waited for Richard to finish his arrangements with the square-headed man. As the swing doors were pushed open she could see some of the nearest tables. The men round them were middle-aged, bulky, with faces red from arguing or laughing or drinking beer or all three. Blue tobacco haze coiled over bald heads. There were uniforms everywhere. Once a waitress swung the door wide open, and held it that way with her shoulder and hip, so that another woman could pass through with carefully held tankards of beer. Then Frances saw the flags and the outsize photograph. She looked at the desk where Richard was signing all the usual papers. It had a photograph, too, smiling benevolently down on a row of keys hanging on numbered hooks. They seemed to have landed in one of the Party’s own particular haunts.

Richard had finished writing. He beckoned to Frances. Perhaps the square-headed man had looked for a moment at her buttonhole, but Frances couldn’t be sure of that. His eyes had a way of wandering vaguely, as if he were ill or very tired… And then a green-aproned boy appeared, and she concentrated on filling in the details in the printed form. Now the signing was all finished, the man handed Richard a key, and abandoned them to the boy in his slow-moving, disinterested way. As they were
led up the wooden stairs, irregular and creaking, he sank heavily back into his seat and resumed his occupation of staring into the middle distance.

Frances glanced at Richard. He gave no sign of disappointment. He was talking to the boy and was giving him the tickets for their luggage at the station. The boy would collect it, Innsbruck fashion. Clever of Richard, she thought, to remember that. An arrival by taxi in this narrow street, with its mixture of medieval houses and small shops, would have been pretentious and stupidly conspicuous.

The way to their room led them up two flights of wooden stairs. Frances had the sudden alarming feeling of being suspended in mid-air. The only support of the stairs seemed to be the wall on her left. On her right was a large well sinking into the hall landing below. There were banisters of course, but they were thinly spaced and quivered to her touch. After that she climbed the rest of the stairs well towards the wall side, and tried to ignore the way in which the steps sagged gently towards the well of the staircase. She wished she wouldn’t imagine at such moments what a fire would be like. Probably one could make a spectacular, if undignified, exit by scrambling down the front of the house from balcony to oriel window…probably.

The boy replied eagerly to Richard’s questions. He seemed a friendly kind of person. Frances suddenly realised that this was the first really friendly smile and voice they had met in two weeks. Except, of course, for the American. She thought of a London bus conductor or policeman, and felt a wave of homesickness strike her. This was the first time she had ever felt like this, abroad. Perhaps she was noticing too much this year, but then this year you couldn’t be blamed for being coldly
analytical. It would have been more comfortable to have visited Germany as a guest, to have been taken out and around by friends. Then you might not have the time to notice or compare policeman and bus conductors. Then you wouldn’t take a late evening stroll past a Jews’ Alley. But somehow, in spite of the grimness, Frances preferred this way; there was less chloroform, this way.

Their room faced the street and was pleasant in its simplicity. No massive furniture here, thank heaven, to smother you in bad taste. Clean poverty had its virtues. Frances went over to one of the windows. Along the street the varied house fronts rose tall and narrow over the arcades where the shops hid. At the open windows, she could see women in their dirndl dresses looking down on the street. It was as if she were in a theatre, one of those little opera theatres where white patches of faces look out of the boxes rising in tiers like those of a wedding cake. Ghardis would have enjoyed detailing this scene.

Someone was standing behind her. She turned quickly. Richard was gone. It was the thin dark boy in the green apron. He held out a vase of water to her and pointed to the flowers which she still carried in her arms.

“Thank you. That is very thoughtful.”

He relaxed with a smile as he heard she could speak German.

“The gentleman has gone to the lavatory,” he explained carefully.

“Oh…” said Frances, suddenly stymied.

“Where would the lady like the flowers?”

“Could we move that small table near that mirror and place them there?” He approved of the decision and watched her arrange the flowers.

“I think that is pretty,” she said, to break the silence.

“Very pretty, gracious lady.” His brown eyes were friendly. “I shall go for the luggage now, and I shall come back with it as quickly as possible.” His smile was infectious. He might have been going to play a game of tennis instead of pushing a cart with luggage through busy streets.

“Thank you.” Frances paused. “What is your name?”

“Johann, gracious lady.”

“Thank you, Johann.”

He paused at the door. “Is there anything the lady needs? The maid is having her supper. She will be here soon.” Frances shook her head but he still stood at the door, his eyes watching the corridor. Suddenly he turned with a smile.

“Here is the gentleman,” he said. “Good evening,
gnädige Frau.”

“Good evening, Johann.” So he had been staying with her until Richard came back, as a sort of watchdog. Was the hotel as peculiar as all that? She heard Richard’s voice, and there was a smile on his face as he entered the room.

“Thank God for a friendly face and a kind word,” he said.

“Yes, I like Johann.”

“His name is Johann?” Richard’s voice had changed: it was tighter, quicker. Frances raised her eyebrows, and watched Richard sit down on the bed, his eyes fixed on the scrap of rug at his feet. Johann—Hans—Johann. No; it probably wasn’t… probably. He looked up to see Frances standing beside him, looking puzzled. He caught her arm, and pulled her down beside him.

“Anything wrong?”

“I don’t think so.” He lowered his voice, although the walls
in this old house must have been thick enough for safety. “I was just thinking… What was Johann like? Chatty? I noticed he hovered about here until I got back.”

“Politeness, and really good manners. That’s all. What people used to call a well-brought-up boy. You know, I had the funniest feeling that he didn’t approve of this hotel and wanted to… Oh, it’s silly. I am going all romantic.”

Richard remained serious. He was still half lost in his own thoughts.

“Frances, it’s the rummiest place. I went to see where the bathroom was, and I took the chance of having a look round, in general. Most of the rooms on this floor seem empty, but I was almost run over by three expensive uniforms on their way downstairs to join the party. You noticed it, by the way?”

“Yes; it looked like an old boys’ club.”

“It probably is. All I’ve seen so far are middle-aged men looking rather pleased with themselves. It may be one of those pubs where Nazi meetings were held secretly when Austria was still banning them. Either we’ve arrived in the middle of a reunion of some kind or they always are reuniting.”

“That’s cheery, I must say.”

“I don’t know if it is as bad as it looks for us. Our friends wouldn’t quite expect us to come here if we had a guilty conscience, right into the spider’s parlour, as it were. And then Johann told me that they used to have a lot of English and American tourists here, students who were having an inexpensive holiday; that some Americans turned up earlier this summer, but that so far we are the first Britishers. He noticed I had written Oxford University on that form at the desk downstairs, so we fit in, in a kind of way. University
people are generally thought to be odd.”

Frances noted that he looked strained and tired.

“What about a spot of food and some beer?” She smiled as she saw him brighten at the idea. She stood up and smoothed her skirt. “I’ll wash first. Where’s the bathroom?”

Richard grinned. “It’s absolutely unique, Frances. You’ll love it.” She knew from his tone that she wouldn’t.

“Where?” she asked philosophically.

“Straight along the corridor, past the staircase, to the back of the building. You’ll find it on the balcony there. It’s a square box to one side. You can wave to all the people sitting out on their balconies round the back courtyard. It’s really very matey.”

Frances said very slowly, “Richard, you are pulling my leg. I’ll see for myself.”

She walked quickly along the corridor. Apart from the additional local colour of two pairs of large black boots outside one quiet room—Richard had been surprisingly discreet about that—everything was exactly as he had described it.

As they went downstairs Richard was whistling softly to himself in a preoccupied way. Frances paid little attention; he often did that—but as they reached the desk she suddenly realised that the last few bars had taken shape into something she knew.
O My Love’s Like a Red, Red Rose.
Richard was laying their key on the desk, in front of the large, shapeless man. Without rising from his chair, he nodded his square head with its bristling hair, and grunted in reply to their good evening. He only looked for a moment at Frances’ hat.

When they came in he was still sitting there. He rose slowly and grudgingly to hand them their key. All his movements were
those of a lethargic and not particularly amiable man.