Above Suspicion (21 page)

Von Aschenhausen smiled his disbelief. “They are too emotional. They are limited in reasoning power. They are weaker, both physically and mentally. They can never be equal to men. Compromise, adjustment, matter of time… You couldn’t be more English, Richard.” The use of Richard’s first name carried all three of them back, back to a time when suspicion and hatred had only brooded in the hearts of a few vengeful men. In the silence that followed, they looked at each other. There was no need to translate their thoughts into words; they were clear in their eyes.

The German spoke first. “You need not reproach me. What Mrs. Myles said at that sherry party was true. Our countries have gone different ways. And I have my work to do. But I think as I said already that you have been mistaken about me. It is a compliment, I suppose, to my powers of acting. I never knew they were so good as that.” He shrugged his shoulders again and gave a rueful smile. You are not making a bad job of it, right now, thought Richard. Von Aschenhausen had been well cast for the part he had to play. To anyone who did not know that he was German he would appear to be the authentic Mespelbrunn. Now, he was making the best of a very bad piece of luck: here were two people who could know that he was no Englishman. His hints at anti-Nazi feeling were just enough to win their sympathy, disarm their suspicions. He didn’t protest too much, either; he had to pretend that their visit was innocent—in case it really was. He couldn’t make any declarations; he had to give them confidence, and perhaps they would show their hand once that was established. His difficulty was that they might very well be only interested in chessmen. Considering everything that was at stake, he was not making a bad job of it at all, thought Richard.

Von Aschenhausen suddenly rose and walked over to the small table which was used as a bar. His voice was charmingly ingenuous.

“You used to play well. Why don’t you now, while I mix some drinks?” As he measured out the whisky, Frances was aware that he was watching Richard move to the piano with more than friendly interest.

“Hello,” Richard said casually, “what’s this you’ve got? Do you sing?”

“Only for myself. You go ahead.”

Richard noted the soprano setting of the song, and smiled gently.

“It’s a good song, but not my cup of tea. What about
The Two Grenadiers
or something with hair on its chest? I’ll need the music, though. I’m very bad at playing things by ear.” He turned to a pile of music and started to look through it.

Frances rose and went over to the piano.

“You are both so modest. I’ll sing for you instead.” She saw Richard stiffen slightly and give her a blank look. Von

Aschenhausen was watching her now. She returned his smile sweetly and sat down on the piano stool. Richard cursed silently to himself; surely Frances had not been duped by an earnest pair of blue eyes. Surely she couldn’t… He cursed to himself. If he could only reach that little table and upset it by accident before she started to sing… But as he moved, the first notes sounded through the room, and the words of the song gathered strength as her voice grew more confident. Richard looked at von Aschenhausen. His politeness had vanished. The duelling scars on his face were very noticeable.

Frances finished the last melancholy chords. She stood up and faced von Aschenhausen. She spoke directly to him.

“It’s called
The Slaughter of the Innocents
—one of the old Coventry Carols. Do you know it?” Her voice still held the sadness of the song, but there was a challenge in her eyes.

“Sentimentalising history, isn’t it?” His accent was less English.

“Maybe. But it’s only when you think of history as blood and tears that you can ever learn from it.” She saw he understood the meaning underlying her words just as he had understood the application of the song. The cap fitted. Let it, she thought savagely.

There was a sudden crash upstairs and then the thuds of hollow blows. The noises ceased as startlingly as they had begun. Von Aschenhausen saw the surprise on their faces. He was suddenly casual and polite again; he smiled easily.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “That’s the dog. We keep him out of the way when we have visitors. He’s very savage with strangers. He is just about due for his exercise, and he always lets me know very forcibly when it’s time to take him out for a walk.”

“Oh, we mustn’t keep you, then,” Frances said. “I am sure we have stayed too long, in any case.”

“I am sorry I had to disappoint you about the chessmen. They may be back by Sunday. Come and see them, then.”

Richard, still listening for further sounds, said they would be delighted to come, perhaps at the beginning of next week. He was thinking about the dog. It was strange to keep an animal locked up inside a room upstairs; that would hardly improve its temper— But of one thing he was certain: von Aschenhausen was determined to get them out of the house, as quickly as possible.

Frances had already reached the door. As von Aschenhausen opened it for them they heard two other sounds from upstairs. Weaker sounds, much weaker. But they ignored them, and said their goodbyes as if nothing had happened. And they equally ignored the dark man with the hoarse voice, who stood astride outside the front door, his thumbs tucked inside his belt. At a nod directed from von Aschenhausen, he sprang quickly past them, mounting the steps three at a time. Von Aschenhausen had regained his usual composure, but his smile was too fixed. He stood at the door and watched them until they had reached the trees. Frances hated the feeling of his eyes on her back; she forced herself to walk naturally, as if she were strolling down Holywell. Only now would she admit to herself what she had first known at a sherry party in Oxford. The man who had once been numbered among their friends had long since become an enemy. It was a painful admission.

When they gained the road, Frances took a deep breath.

“Well, I’ve made another step in my education,” she said. Richard did not answer. He was lost in thought.

“What’s wrong? You haven’t forgotten the Geneva address, have you? Or what?”

Richard shook his head. He seemed to be paying little attention; rather, he was watching the road as if he were trying to remember something.

“It’s just about here, I think,” he said, as if to himself. He saw Frances looking at him curiously. “Just about here that the shoulder of the hill stopped hiding the house. We’ll give it another twenty yards.”

The road twisted farther behind the jutting hill; and as it passed through a fringe of trees Richard suddenly pulled Frances up the short steep bank into the shelter of the branches. It was all so quick that Frances did not have time to say anything; her surprise held her silent. Richard looked back over his shoulder, and then relaxed his grip on her arm.

“The shoulder hid us, and they couldn’t follow us yet. Not with the road so open as it is.”

“What’s wrong?” Frances asked again.

“Something. Haven’t quite made up my mind.”

He advanced into the small wood, and Frances followed; the feeling of confidence which had come to her as they left the path and reached the road quickly evaporated. Von Aschenhausen had discovered nothing, except that they didn’t like the politics of his country—and that couldn’t have surprised him, even if it angered him. What worried Richard? He had reached a large tree which had sheltered the ground from the morning rain. There they regained their breath. It had only taken them two minutes to reach here from the road.

The wood had grown over a large mound, and from this
elevation they had a clear view of one part of the road, neatly focused for them by the way in which the trees grew. They could see without being seen. Richard moved slightly to the left to get a better sight of the one visible patch of road. From this point it could be seen even if they sat down. He seemed satisfied—but not with Frances’ dress. He pulled off the red silk handkerchief which she wore tucked into the neckline of her white blouse.

“Put on your cardigan properly,” he advised, “and button it right up to cover that white collar. I don’t like the red socks: they shine up miles away. Here—” He reached for a handful of earth mould, and covered the red wool with an efficient layer of clinging brown earth.

“Here yourself,” said Frances with a good touch of annoyance.

“My pet, you aren’t in this for the benefit of your colour schemes.” He kept his voice low, but there was enough sharpness in it to tell her he was worried.

“Well, I’m glad that the cardigan is green, or I’d be rolling in the mud at this moment, I suppose… What’s
wrong?”

Richard put one arm round her shoulders, and kept his eyes fixed on the road.

“Frances, what did you think when you heard the noises upstairs?”

So that was the trouble, She looked at him in surprise.

“Well, it could have been a dog,” she said.

“Forget about that dog. What were the noises like? As you heard them, and not as they were explained away?”

Frances studied her muddied socks for some moments. She had been standing beside the piano; the drinks they hadn’t
touched had gleamed amber in a ray of sunlight.

“Well, candidly, the first sound seemed a crash, as if something heavy like a piece of furniture, something solid, had fallen. And then came some thumps.”

“Well?”

“They might have been a fist, but I don’t think any fist could have hammered loudly enough for us to hear, even allowing for wooden floors and ceilings. No, I don’t think those thumping sounds came from a fist. They were too powerful for that. I thought afterwards that it
could
have been a dog leaping against a heavy door. A big dog.”

“But those thuds were clear-cut. They were very sharply defined. There were no scrabbling noises, which generally end a dog’s jump against a door. Even when we were leaving, and we were standing at the foot of the staircase, there were no whines, no pawing sounds. Peculiar kind of dog it must have been.”

Frances looked at Richard, who kept his eyes fixed on the road. She was beginning to see the reason for his worry.

“Yes,” she agreed. “There were only clear-cut thuds. Sort of staccato thuds.”

“And the last two, which we heard at the bottom of the stairs, and which should have sounded clearer to us if anything, were actually weaker.”

“Yes.” Something haunted her memory. “Wait,” she added. If only she could think of what it was that had that kind of sound. Something she had heard that afternoon… in that room.

“Richard”—her voice was excited now, and Richard laid a finger on his lips warningly—“Richard, if a dog jumped at the door as we are supposed to believe, the thud on the door would have a different sound from a thud on the floor, wouldn’t it? Well,
do you remember when that bull-necked man left us to go and tell Mespelbrunn that we had arrived? He swaggered across the floor and his heels made that same flat sound. The thumping was not against a door, it was on the ground. And I don’t believe it was made by anything so soft as a hand or a dog’s paw. You were perfectly right, Richard.”

“You are more right, still. Good for you, Fran. Now for a spot of reconstruction. We heard a crash, as if a piece of furniture or something solid had hit the ground. What about a chair? And what about someone tied to the chair? That would make the crash quite as heavy as we heard it. Then there were the thumpings, harder and stronger than the blows from a fist. What about two legs tied together? Then they would have to be brought slowly up and allowed to fall on the floor. That would give the kind of noise we heard, all right; for with the legs or ankles tied the heels would strike the ground together. It also accounts for the fact that the blows got weaker. It’s pretty difficult and tiring to attract anyone’s attention that way.”

“But everything was so quiet in that house until those last five minutes.”

“Yes, until after you had finished your song.”

“Whoever it was recognised it?”

Richard nodded. “Yes… He couldn’t have made out our voices when we were talking. And there would have been no hope for him if he had heard a German song sung by a German voice. But there was hope enough to try to attract our attention when he heard an English voice and a song which practically only an Englishman would recognise.”

“So he may be our man? What on earth can we do, Richard? We’ve found him and we haven’t found him.” This was something
which Peter Galt had not thought of; they should either have met an Englishman, or found he was dead. Something nice and straightforward, and not a hopeless complication like this.

“What’s our next step?” she asked dismally.

Richard drew a slab of chocolate from his pocket. “Eat some of this,” he suggested. He looked at his watch. “It’s well after five now. We had better wait a bit. If any chance comes, we’ll seize it. If no chance comes I’ll take you back to Frau Schichtl’s, and come back here myself tonight. I’d like to look around.”

“You’ve no gun,” said Frances in a very low voice; her fears stifled her. “Perhaps he isn’t our man after all,” she added persuadingly.

“It’s some man, anyway. I’d still like to look around. Henry may carry a gun. If so, I’ll borrow it. If not, then I’ve always got my stick.” He patted the
makhila
which lay beside them. Frances looked at the Basque stick of rough wood, with its round leather handle and its sharply pointed ferrule. It didn’t look much protection; the iron point on the end was only good for helping you up a steep hill. Richard noticed her expression. He unscrewed the handle with a suspicion of a smile.

“I never showed you this. It’s rather gruesome.” The head of the stick and part of the top of it slipped off, and a wicked eight inches of pointed steel emerged. It was firmly fixed to the rest of the stick, and transformed it into an ominous weapon.

“I’m not really bloodthirsty,” he added. “I bought it on that Pyrenees trip when I was an undergraduate because I liked the way the Basques swung these sticks with the leather thong of the handle fixed round the wrist, when they were returning from market. Going to the town, they kept their cattle in order with the steel point. Coming from the town, they screwed the handle
back in place and slipped the thong over their wrist, and swung it jauntily—with their jacket over one shoulder, and money in their pocket, and a smile for all the girls. I liked the contrast.”