Borrower of the Night: The First Vicky Bliss Mystery (8 page)

“Well, you saw the girl’s nightgown—God save us. I also saw her dressing gown, or housecoat, or whatever you call it. It was lying across the foot of her bed.”

“And it, I suppose, was black,” said Tony.

“Navy blue,” I said. “With small light-colored flowers. Very unflattering, with her coloring…. That doesn’t prove anything. She could have a closetful of long white robes, and she had plenty of time to change.”

Tony stood up.

“This is a waste of time. You think that girl was faking. Well, I don’t. Come on, Nolan, let’s be off.”

George sipped his drink.

“You two kill me,” he said conversationally. “Why don’t we put our cards on the table?”

“What cards?” I asked. “You know why we are here and vice versa. If I judge your sneaky character accurately, you probably know by now as much as Tony does. But you don’t know any more than that; and if you did, you wouldn’t tell us. You must be crazy if you think I’m going to give you any information.”

George reached for the bottle. I moved it away from his hand. Good Scotch is expensive. Unperturbed, he grinned at me.

“You’re quite a girl. If you find the shrine, I might revise my long-seated hostility toward marriage.”

“That’s big of you. But my hostility is just as deep-seated, if not as long established.”

George stood up. Still smiling, he stretched lazily. Muscles rippled all over him.

“I’m noted for getting what I want,” he murmured.

Tony, who had been swelling like a turkey, couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Play your hot love scenes in private, why don’t you?”

“If you’d take the hint and leave, we would,” said George.

“Oh, no, we wouldn’t,” I said. “Out, both of you. I need my beauty sleep. Who knows, I may not find the shrine. Then I would have to rely on sheer sex appeal to catch myself a husband.”

“I’m betting on you,” said George. He glanced at Tony, who said shortly,

“It’s all for none and one for each in this game. We’ll see. Come on, Nolan. Good night, Vicky.”

The undercurrents in that conversation set my teeth on edge, and I was still thinking about them the next morning. When I reached the dining room, Tony was the only one at our table. He grunted at me, but didn’t look up.

“Where’s George?” I asked.

“Been and gone.”

“Did you two exchange any meaningful remarks after you left me?”

“Define ‘meaningful.’” Tony looked at me. “You know what that crook is planning, don’t you? He’ll follow us until we find — uh — something, then jump in and grab it.”

“Time to worry about that if and when we find it. At the moment we aren’t even warm.”

“Wrong. The time to worry is now, before Nolan pops out of a dark corner and hits somebody over the head.”

“He won’t hit me over the head,” I said smugly.

“Are you sure?”

Come to think of it, I wasn’t at all sure. I wouldn’t give Tony the satisfaction of agreeing with him in his assessment of George’s scruples, or lack thereof; but I didn’t object when Tony proposed that we make a joint expedition out to the old
Wachtturm
. As he said, it wasn’t a good place for solitary exploring. A lot of nasty accidents could occur in a crumbling, deserted place like that.

Before we had finished breakfast, Irma came to the table. She was wan and pale, with dark circles under her eyes. On her, even baggy eyes looked good. Tony got to his feet so fast he almost turned his chair over.

“My aunt wishes you — both of you — to have tea with her this afternoon,” she said.

“How nice,” I said, since Tony was too preoccupied with his tottering chair to be coherent. “What time?”

“Four o’clock.” She didn’t look at me; she was watching Tony from under those long lashes. His confusion seemed to amuse her; she gave him a small but effective smile before she turned away.

“I suppose,” Tony said, capturing the chair and sitting on it, “she’s going to bawl us out.”

“Who, the
Gräfin
?” There was only one
Gräfin
in that house; it was impossible to think of Irma by her title. The word, with its guttural
r
and flat, hard vowel, suited the old lady.

“Let her complain,” I went on. “If she gives me a hard time, I’ll report her to the SPCC, or whatever the German equivalent may be.”

“Irma’s no child,” Tony murmured.

“If you want to explore ruins, let’s go,” I said, rising.

The going was rough. The undergrowth between the castle and the keep was ninety percent brambles. They had the longest thorns I’ve ever seen on any plant. Tony kept falling into them; I gathered he was still preoccupied with Irma, because after a while he said,

“What makes you think the old lady is hassling Irma? We haven’t seen her do anything particularly vicious.”

“You don’t call that performance last night vicious? The girl is scared to death about something. She works like a drudge, of course, while the old bat sits in her tower drinking tea; but it’s more than that.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s hard to put into words, but there is something between the two of them…. I hate to think of handing the shrine over to an old witch like that.”

An unwary step took me off the path, such as it was. I stopped, and unwound barbed-wire brambles from my ankle.

“So you’re going to hand the shrine over, are you?” I said. “Aside from comments on overconfidence, which I have already made, may I compliment you on your ethics? I assumed you were going to tuck the treasure under your arm and steal away.”

“You’re getting me confused with Nolan. I think he plans just that. I admit, when I started on this deal I hadn’t thought the problem through. I was excited about the hunt itself. Back in Ohio the whole thing was sort of unreal, you know what I mean? I never really thought we’d succeed. It’s different now…. But I’m sure of one thing. The shrine doesn’t belong to us. All we can do is turn it over to the rightful owner. I never had any intention of doing anything else. And don’t try to kid me; you never did, either.”

“No, but I’ve been thinking.” I unwound the last bramble and stepped back onto the path. “The shrine wouldn’t be considered treasure trove, would it? That is strictly defined legally; depending on local laws, it belongs either to the state or to the state and the finder, half and half. But the shrine belongs to the Drachensteins; that can be proved by means of the documents we’ve been using. And—listen. The old lady is only a Drachenstein by marriage. If Irma is the count’s brother’s child, wouldn’t she be the heiress?”

“Good point,” said Tony, brightening visibly. “We might try to find out about the late count’s will. Not that it has any bearing on our search….”

“But it would add to your zeal to think that Irma would enjoy the fruits of your brilliance?”

We had reached the keep and stood beside the high walls. Tony ignored my last remark and its tone of heavy sarcasm.

“Behold the
Wachtturm
,” he said, gesturing. “It was built in A.D. eight hundred seven by Count Meninguad von und zu Drachenstein, fondly known to his contemporaries as the Black Devil of the Tauber Valley. The keep was abandoned in thirteen hundred eighty-three when the present castle was built. In fifteen hundred five—”

“All right, all right. I’ve read the guidebook too. Let’s go in.”

There was no door. Rusted iron hinges, each a couple of feet long, hung futilely from the doorframe. The interior of the first floor was a single circular room, dimly lit by the four narrow slits that pierced the walls. Since said walls were over eight feet thick, the sunlight didn’t have much of a chance. The floor was of stone, but so overlaid with dirt that the original surface was virtually invisible.

Tony made a circuit of the walls, peering at the huge stones.

“When they built in those days, they built to last.” He spoke in hushed tones, as if something might be listening. “I can’t see anything unusual here. Let’s go up.”

Narrow stairs were cut into the stones of the wall. They were treacherous to climb; each step had a deep trench in the center, worn by generations of feet.

The second floor had been the hall. The windows were a little wider than those below. Across one quadrant of the room lay the remains of a half-wall, or screen, of stone, behind a low dais. The big stone fireplace, with the family arms on its hood, was the only feature in the room, which was littered with chips of fallen stone.

“The count and his lady dined there,” Tony muttered, looking at the dais. “Their sleeping quarters were behind the screen. Rushes underfoot, and the dogs fighting over table scraps….”

“Gracious living,” I agreed. “According to the guidebook, this place was abandoned long before fifteen hundred twenty-five. It wouldn’t be a bad spot to hide something.”

Tony shook his head.

“It may have been abandoned as living quarters, but I’ll bet it was still in use as a guard tower. Anyhow, if I were the count, I’d prefer to have my valuables closer at hand, so I could keep an eye on them. Way out here—”

He stopped speaking. He was opposite one of the window slits, and a narrow shaft of sunlight lay across the section of the floor at which he was staring.

“What—” But I didn’t have to finish the question. I saw them too—footprints, clearly marked in the thick dust. The footprints of a man—a big man.

Tony knelt down. He thumped the floor with his fist, and sneezed as a cloud of dust enveloped his head.

“If anything has been hidden under these boards, I’ll eat it,” he announced, between sneezes. “Feel them. You’d expect wood so old to be rotten and crumbling, but these boards are practically petrified.”

I joined him on the floor. As my fingers touched the rock-hard surface of the wood, I felt weighted down by the sheer over-whelming age of the place.

“They wouldn’t have been this hard four hundred years ago,” I said.

“That’s not what I meant. Look at the construction of the floor. There’s only one thickness of wood—each plank is a foot thick, sure, but there’s no space for a hiding place in between them. The beams in the ceiling below support these planks.”

“How big is the shrine, anyhow?”

“No dimensions were given.” Tony went to the wall and thumped ineffectually at the stones. “But I should think it would have to be a meter or so high. Maybe bigger.”

Okay, I thought to myself; if you don’t want to talk about those footprints, we won’t talk about them. And I won’t mention the light I saw here last night. For all I knew, it might have been Tony who had carried that light, and this expedition might be a blind, to convince me of the futility of the
Wachtturm
as a hiding place. I watched Tony idiotically bruising his hands on impenetrable stone, and winced. If he had come here alone in the small hours of the night, I had to admire his nerve. The place was sinister enough in broad daylight. I tried to remember how much time had elapsed between my seeing the light, and leaving my room. I couldn’t estimate accurately. Tony might have had time to get back from the keep and accost me in the corridor.

Tony turned from the wall.

“These stones look solid to me. We’d have to demolish the place to make sure nothing was hidden here.”

“So why are we wasting our time?”

“Let’s have a look at the top floor, just in case.”

I got to the stairs ahead of him. When I came out onto the next floor, I stopped short, swaying with a sudden attack of vertigo. There was no top floor. The roofless walls were waist high at some points; mostly there was no wall at all, only a sudden drop into the thorny brambles far below. The view across the green valley was sensational, but I didn’t linger to look at it. I backed cautiously toward the stairs, and Tony went with me. It was unnecessary to speak; there was no hiding place up there.

When we were out in the sunlight again, Tony drew a deep breath.

“That takes care of that. The
Schloss
is the place for us.”

“It’s so damned big. Where do we start looking?”

“I think more research is indicated.”

“You just want to sit around and read books,” I said unreasonably. “I want to
do
something. Even if we don’t know where Burckhardt’s room was, there are other possibilities. The crypt, for instance—”

“How do you know there is a crypt?”

“There’s a chapel.”

“Okay, I’ll give you the crypt. I still want a detailed plan of the
Schloss
.”

“And where do you expect to find it?”

“Two possibilities. The town archives, for one. Also the library, or muniment room of the
Schloss
. There may be other letters or useful documents there too.”

“Okay,” I said grumpily. “If you’re going to be the honest, candid little fellow, I can do no less. You take the archives, I’ll take the library. We share any information we find.”

“Agreed.”

When we reached the courtyard, we found an unexpected duo sitting at one of the tables in the garden. George Nolan and Professor Schmidt were deep in conversation — or rather, Schmidt was talking and George was listening. I thought he looked bored. He brightened when he saw us.

“Exploring, on a hot day like this?” he inquired.

“You know us.” I dropped into a chair and smiled affably at him. “Nothing in the
Wachtturm
but dust and decay.”

“But I thought Americans admired the old and decayed,” said Schmidt.

I was getting a little tired of hearing that sentiment expressed, but I said only, “That place is too old.”

“You should see the town. It is not too old. It is very nice.”

“I’ve been here before,” I said.

“But not with me,” George said. “Let’s go sightseeing. Harmless occupation,” he added.

“
Gut, gut
,” said Schmidt eagerly. “I know Rothenburg well. There is a
Gasthaus
where we will lunch.”

“We have to be back here by four,” Tony said, regarding Schmidt unfavorably. “The countess has invited us—”

“But I also! I also have tea with the
Gräfin
. We can easily return by four.”

There was no way of ditching him, short of deliberate rudeness. He turned out to be a rather pleasant companion, and an absolute mine of useless information. My half-formed doubts about him faded as the morning passed; he seemed harmless and rather endearing.