Dead Men Don't Ski Page 11

At the mention of Franco's name, Maria-Pia had stiffened slightly. But her voice was perfectly level as she answered, still in Italian, "That is correct."

  "I want you," said Spezzi, a little surer of himself now, though still acutely aware of the absurdity of an interview conducted in two languages—"I want you to describe to me exactly how you remember Hauser looking when he came down past you."

  Maria-Pia frowned. "I hardly noticed him at all," she said. "It was dark and snowing and very cold. I just remarked to myself that it was him—he was wearing those terrible boots. He was huddled up in his chair, which seemed perfectly natural under the circumstances."

  "Did you know that Hauser possessed a gun?"

  Maria-Pia looked scared. "A gun?" she said. "Yes ... yes, I did."

  At once, the Baron intervened. "Nonsense," he said. "How could my wife have known such a thing?"

  Maria-Pia ignored him, and addressed Spezzi earnestly. "Everybody must have known," she said. "The other evening—I think it was Wednesday—he was sitting in the bar with his briefcase on the table. He pushed it to one side to make room for his drink, and a gun fell out of it on to the floor. I had a funny sort of feeling " She stopped, and then said quickly, "I had a funny sort of feeling that he did it on purpose."

  "Who else was in the bar?" Spezzi asked.

  "Nearly everybody."Maria-Pia wrinkled her pretty nose in concentration. "Henry and Emmy weren't there," she said, "but I think everyone else was. I remember Mrs. Buckfast making some very acid remarks." She smiled.

  "Were you surprised to see this gun?" Spezzi asked.

  "Yes, I was. Very. I didn't know that people carried weapons about with them these days."

  "This seems to be very much off the point," said the Baron, grimly. "Please get back to relevant questions."

  Spezzi shuffled his papers. "To return to the events of yesterday, Baronet," he said. u Did you see Hauser at all earlier in the day?"

  "I think I saw him after breakfast for a moment. But I was going'off to ski, and I was in a hurry."

  "I see." Spezzi paused. "Now, Baroness I have a few questions I must ask you concerning another person. I do not want to distress you in any way..."

  Maria-Pia went from white to pale green, and gripped the arm of her chair. The Baron leant forward, tense. Spezzi went on, "It concerns Fraulein Gerda Braun."

  Maria-Pia's hand, which had been picking at the cording of the arm-chair, relaxed like a dead bird. The Baron, however, remained tense.

  "Gerda?" she said. There was real surprise in her voice. "What do you want to know about her?"

  "Was she in the bar when Hauser dropped his gun?"

  "No, of course not. She was putting the children to bed."

  "What sort of a girl is she?" asked Spezzi, and it seemed to Henry that his voice trembled slightly.

  "Charming."Maria-Pia spoke firmly. "Very quiet and reserved, and thoroughly efficient. The children love her, and yet they respect her—and it is difficult to fool children, you know."

  "You would not say that she had a violent nature?"

  "Violent?" Maria-Pia's voice grew more and more astonished. "Gerda?"

  "After all," said Spezzi, carefully, "when you consider her background and her parents..."

  "But she lived all her life on her father's farm in Bavaria," said Maria-Pia. "That is, until she went to Munich to take her training. Then she answered my advertisement and came to me, three years ago."

  "You never met her parents."

  "Yes, as a matter of fact, I did, once. Wait a moment"— Maria-Pia paused, thoughtfully—"I believe she did tell me that they were not her real parents: that they had adopted her when she was tiny. I never thought about it."

  "Who is she, then?"The Baron rapped out the question.

  Bravely, Spezzi ignored it. "Thank you very much, Baroness. It is not important. I just thought that "

  "If this girl has lied to us, we have a right to know," said the Baron, coldly.

  "No, no, Hermann."Maria-Pia spoke in German, for the first time. "She hasn't lied to us—has she, Capitano? She told me that the Brauns were not her parents."

  The Baron kept his eyes on Spezzi. "Who is 'she?" he asked again.

  Spezzi was obviously uncomfortable, but he stood his ground. "I assure you, Herr Baron, it is of no consequence at all," he said.

  The Baron glared at him. "I shall take steps to find out," he said. There was a short pause. "If you have nothing further to ask concerning the crime, perhaps you would leave us now. My wife is very tired."

  Spezzi stood up. "Thank you for your co-operation, Baroness... Herr Baron ... I am very sorry I had to trouble you."

  He bowed briefly to both Maria-Pia and the Baron, and made for the door, followed hastily by the shorthand writer, Henry stood up slowly.

  "Later on," he said, "I would welcome an opportunity for a word with you, Baroness."For the last week he had been calling her Maria-Pia, but it did not seem the moment for familiarity.

  Before the Baron could speak, she said eagerly, "Of course, Henry. Whenever you like."

  "Thank you," said Henry, gravely. He followed the two Italians down the stairs.

  Back in Rossati's office, Spezzi wiped his brow with a white silk handkerchief. Henry gave him a sympathetic grin, but the Canitano was in no mood to be consoled.

  "The sooner we can arrest that girl and get it over," he muttered, miserably, "the happier I shall be."Then he sat down at the desk again, and sent for Franco.

  Franco was pale, with deep circles of sleeplessness under his dark brown eyes. He told Spezzi in a quiet, unhappy voice that he was a sculptor, that he lived in Rome and was in Santa Chiara on holiday. He had been coming to the Bella Vista regularly for the last three years. He knew Hauser very slightly, he said. He had first met him at the house of an actor-friend in Rome three years ago, and it was, in fact, Hauser who had recommended the Bella Vista to him as a pleasant place for a skiing holiday. Since then he had met him at the hotel as a fellow-guest, but had never pursued the acquaintanceship further.

  "Frankly, Capitano, he did not seem to me to be a very pleasant character," he said, but would not elaborate on this statement. He agreed that he had seen the gun fall out of Hauser's briefcase on Wednesday evening. "It struck me," he said, contemptuously, "that he did it on purpose to create a cheap effect."

  Franco confirmed that he had preceded the Baroness up on the chair-lift the previous evening, but said that he had not noticed Hauser at all.

  "I had my eyes shut," he said, briefly. "It was an uncomfortable ride, and I had other things to think of."

  That concluded Franco's contribution to the evidence, and Henry, glancing at his watch, remarked that it was half-past twelve, and suggested a break for lunch. He had noticed Emmy coming up the path from the ski-lift, and so pointed out that the interrogation of the English could begin after lunch.

  "Unless you want to see the Knipfers first," he added, to Spezzi.

  "I will talk to them, of course," said the Capitano, "but they seem to me to be unimportant. None of them were on the chair-lift at the time of the murder."

  "On the other hand," said Henry, "I think they may be able to tell us quite a lot about Hauser. They spent a lot of time with him."And he went on to tell Spezzi about Frau Knipfer's outburst in the bar the' previous evening.

  Henry found Emmy in their bedroom, combing her hair.

  "Your cable's gone off, safe and sound," she said. "You owe me the monstrous sum of five thousand lire. How did you get on this morning?"

  Henry told her, briefly.

  "I don't really believe it, do you?" she said slowly, when he had finished. "I can't see Gerda as homicidal."

  "She's perfectly capable of killing," said Henry. "And she had both the motive and the opportunity. Don't forget that she was the last to get on to the lift, so there was nobody in the chair behind to see what she was doing. But all the same..." He paused.

  "Your nose tells you..." Emmy teased him gently.

  "
No," said Henry. "I don't know enough about this case to bring the old nose into it yet. It's just that it seems out of character..." He paused, and then went on, "Oh f well, we shall see. Spezzi's made up his mind already—poor chap, he's obviously very taken with the girl, and that makes him all the more determined to do his duty ruthlessly. I do hope he's wrong."

  "Let's go down to lunch," said Emmy.

  Lunch was not a cheerful meal. Spezzi and his aide sat at Hauser's old table, casting the long shadow of the law over the whole room. The Knipfers ate silently and gloomily, as usual. Franco was back at a table by himself, and Henry was not surprised to see Gerda also sitting alone. The Baron's two children, who had been allowed to go out skiing with a private instructor that morning, had clattered noisily into the hall some minutes earlier, and been escorted firmly upstairs by Anna. Presumably they were having a family lunch with their parents in their private sitting-room —a procession of large trays had disappeared in that direction —while Gerda had been cast into the outer darkness of the dining-room. If she resented this, she did not show it Not a flicker of emotion crossed her face.

  The English party were already seated when Henry and Emmy came in. Emmy had felt serious qualms about taking their usual place at the communal table, in view of Henry's present embarrassing position, so she was delighted when Roger jumped to his feet and pulled out her chair for her. He seemed determined to do his best to atone for his rudeness of the night before.

  "Here you are at last," he said. "We were beginning to give you up for lost. Come on, Henry—we've all ordered. How's the sleuthing?"

  "Dull," said Henry. They both sat down, "I warn you, it's your turn afterwards."

  "Thank goodness for that," said Jimmy. "The strain was becoming unbearable. Are you going to drive us into corners by brilliantly ruthless cross-examination, until the guilty party breaks down and confesses?"

  "Heavens," said Henry, "I do hope not. No, all we're doing at the moment is working out a sort of time-table of everybody's movements yesterday. It's plodding, routine stuff, but it has to be done."

  A silence laden with palpable disbelief followed this remark. Lunch arrived, and was eaten in a gloomy atmosphere of strain, broken only by Jimmy spilling his soup over the tablecloth. Henry came to the conclusion that young Passendell, for all his veneer of insouciance, was in fact in a bad state of nerves, and decided to put him out of his misery as swiftly as possible.

  "Like to come first, Jimmy?" he asked.

  Jimmy looked sick, but he said, bravely enough, "O.K. Try anything once."

  They adjourned to the office, where Spezzi and his aide were already waiting.

  As it happened, the interview was uneventful, and added very little to what Henry already knew. Jimmy admitted his identity, declared that he had never seen or heard of Hauser before he arrived at the Bella Vista, and was emphatic that he had not set eyes on the murdered man between breakfast-time and the moment when he had noticed the huddled figure, dead or alive, going down on the lift.

  "Dead or alive," he added, reflectively. "I wonder. Now that I come to think of it, I'd say probably dead—though of course it never occurred to me at the time. He looked sort of ... limp. I thought he might be asleep."

  "You were the first of the Bella Vista party to get on to the lift, weren't you?" said Henry.

  "Was I? Yes, I suppose I was. I can't really remember."

  "One more thing," said Henry. "Hauser had the room next to yours on the second floor. Did you ever see or hear anything suspicious going on there?"

  Jimmy looked worried. "I don't quite know what you mean," he said.

  "I mean conversation, or quarrelling, with anybody else in the hotel. I mean the gun, left about carelessly where anybody could see it."

  "By Jove, yes, I did see the gun once," said Jimmy, eagerly. "That is, apart from when it fell out of his briefcase on Wednesday. When I came in from skiing one evening, Hauser's door was open, and the gun was lying on the table. It was acting as a sort of paperweight for some letters, or something. It must have been ... yes, it was the day before he was—before he died."

  "I see. Well, I think that's the lot. Thank you."

  Jimmy had risen to go when Henry added, suddenly, "There's just one more thing. Whose idea was it—this holiday of yours at the Bella Vista?"

  Jimmy looked a little uncomfortable. "It was Roger's, actually," he said. "He'd been here before, you see."

  "It struck me as a little strange from the beginning," Henry added, "that you and Caro should come to such a tiny place, and travel by a cut-price second-class train. Forgive me for saying this, but I should have thought that St. Moritz would have been more your mark."

  Jimmy grinned. "You're absolutely right," he said. * The journey was hell, wasn't it? But you see, poor old Roger isn't as well-oiled as the rest of us, and Caro was mad to go with him, so..."

  "I see," said Henry. "Yes, I guessed it was something like that."

  Caro was next on the list, and Henry did not enjoy interviewing her. She was in an obvious state of nerves, and looked as though she had been crying, and she evaded practically every question with, "I don't know," or "I can't remember." Henry, hating his job, led the questions round to the subject of Roger. After much hedging, Caro admitted that the holiday had been his idea.

  "How long have you known him?" Henry asked, casually.

  "I can't remember. Ages. Well, no ... not ages, really. Six months. I don't know."

  "Less than three years, in any case?"

  "What do you mean? Why shouldn't I have known him three years?"

  "Have you any idea why he suggested the Bella Vista for a holiday?"

  "No. Yes. He'd been here before. Anyway, it was cheap."

  "Yes," said Henry. "I imagine that had quite a lot to do with it, didn't it?"

  "Well, what does it matter if it did? Roger can't help not being rich. Why does everyone pick on him?"

  Henry took the plunge. "Did you know, Caro, that Roger had once been mixed up in a case of smuggling?"

  Caro went as white as a sheet. "It's not true," she said. "I don't believe you. You've got no right to make accusations like that."

  "I'm not making accusations," said Henry. "I'm asking you a question. Did you know?"

  "No!" Caro almost shouted the word. "No, I didn't. And I still don't. You mustn't believe what people say."

  Henry said, very gently, "Why are you so worried about him?"

  "I'm not. I'm ... oh, you've got it all wrong. I'm not going to say any more. It's none of your business."

  "What did you mean, in the bar yesterday, when you said that Hauser was a vile man?"

  "I didn't mean it."

  "But you said it. You must have had some reason."

  "I just didn't like him."

  "Is that all?"

  "Of course it's all. I've got a right to dislike somebody, haven't I?"

  "Without any reason?"

  "Of course, if I want to. Why do you keep on about it?"

  "I'm sorry," said Henry. "I'm only trying to get at the truth, you know."

  "The truth..." said Caro, and it was like a sigh. "Oh God, aren't we all...?"

  "Oh, help," thought Henry, "She's going to cry." Quickly, he said aloud, "All right. That's ail for the moment. You'd better run along and have a cup of tea."

  Caro nodded, dumbly, and walked out of the room with a great effort at composure.

  "Very interesting," said Henry, to Spezzi. "Now we'll see what Mr. Staines has to say for himself."

  "Yes," Spezzi smiled slowly. "That will be quite a revelation, I imagine."

  Roger appeared completely at ease. Henry led him expertly and quickly through the events of the previous day— Hauser's announcement at breakfast, his own day's skiing to Immenfeld with Colonel Buckfast.

  "That was the run that Giulio Vespi was killed on, wasn't it?" Henry asked.

  Roger's face clouded. "Poor old Giulio," he said. "He was a good chap. But the run must have been bloody impossib
le when he tried it. It wasn't easy yesterday, but there's new snow now, and even though the piste is nonexistent, it's clearly marked."

  "You've been to the Bella Vista before, haven't you?"

  "Last year. Last three weeks in January."

  "So you know quite a few of the local people?"

  "I wouldn't say that. Most of the ski instructors, and Rossati, of course ... and the Buckfasts and Hauser were here for part of the time. I gather they're more or less permanent fixtures."

  "Was that your only previous meeting with Hauser?"

  "Of course. Where else could I have met him?"

  Henry let this pass. "Did you like him?" he said. To Henry's considerable surprise, Roger threw back his head and laughed aloud. "Oh, you coppers—you're unbelievable! 'Did I like him?' indeed, when you know perfectly well he was trying to blackmail me!"

  "Blackmail you?" Henry's astonishment was perfectly genuine. "What about?"

  "Don't let's be silly, old man," said Roger, easily. "You must have found the note by now. Where was it? In his wallet?"

  Henry turned to Spezzi, and said in Italian, "Mr. Staines seems to think you might have found an incriminating note in Hauser's wallet. Did you?"

  Spezzi's dismay and disappointment were quite pathetic. Shamefacedly, he fumbled in the breast pocket of his resplendent uniform, and produced a small piece of paper, torn from a diary, which he handed to Henry. On it was scrawled, in Italian. "Lupo. The stores you are expecting are at the cafe. Collect them and load up tonight. jR.S."

  "Why didn't you show me this before?" said Henry, very sternly.

  Spezzi looked profoundly unhappy. "I wished to take him by surprise," he said. "You are a friend of his, and..."An eloquent gesture completed the insinuation. "But now what happens? He mentions it himself before I can make my effect. I do not," added Spezzi gloomily, "understand the English."

  Henry turned to Roger. "Well?" he said. "What about it?"

  Roger was sitting back, relaxed, and watching the others with visible amusement. "I'm not worried about that," he said. "It's a clumsy forgery."

  "That we shall see," snapped Spezzi.

  "I don't know," Roger went on, "how Hauser found out about the Nancy Maud. We had a few chats together last year, and I suppose he must have got my address in London from the hotel register. Anyway, in October I got a letter from him. I couldn't have been more surprised."