Dead Men Don't Ski Page 7

  Maria-Pia inclined her head gravely. "Thank you," she said. "I have been expecting him."

  She slid off her stool, and walked out into the hall, head high, like a martyr entering the arena. For a moment Franco made as if to follow her—then thought better of it, and edged his stool closer to the English party, as if anxious to lose himself in the anonymity of a crowd.

  "Did you say murdered?" The Colonel's voice was unusually tremulous. "Bad business. Very bad indeed. What happened?"

  "He was shot," said Henry. "On the ski-lift."

  "I don't believe it," said Mrs. Buckfast, flatly.

  "I'm afraid it's true," replied Henry. "He was coming down—the only passenger, and easily identifiable even in the snowstorm with those fur boots of his. The doctor's report isn't in yet, but I saw the wound, and I'm prepared to bet that the bullet was fired from a point about level with his body, or maybe slightly below it, and roughly ten feet to his right."

  "From one of the up-going chairs, in fact," said Roger.

  There was an endless pause.

  "I saw the fellow coming down as I went up," the Colonel said, at last. "Who else was on the lift then? All of us, I suppose."

  Henry looked round the bar. "Yes," he said. "Everybody here except Mrs. Buckfast. Plus Miss Whittaker, Mr. Passendell, the Baroness, Gerda and the children."

  "And you, Mr. Tibbett?" asked Roger, acidly.

  "No," said Henry. "My wife left her goggles at the Olympia, so we went back for them, and had another drink with Pietro. We got to the lift just as poor Hauser reached the bottom."

  "How singularly fortunate for you,"Roger gave Henry a cold, hard look. "That means that you two, Mrs. Buck-fast and the Knipfers are the only people at the Bella Vista who are in the clear? Am I right?"

  "Yes," said Henry, levelly. "You are."

  Roger stood up. "I see," he said. "Well, even a condemned murderer is allowed a meal, I understand. I'm going to eat. Coming, Franco?"

  "I'm not hungry," said Franco, who had gone surprisingly pale.

  "Please yourself," said Roger, and strode out of the bar towards the dining-room.

  "I must say you asked for that, Tibbett," said Colonel Buckfast. "Could have been more tactfully put, y'know."

  "I'm sorry," said Henry. "I just thought you'd all like to know how things stand before the police arrive and start asking questions."

  "But they can't seriously believe that any of us...?" Mrs. Buckfast's unfinished question hovered like smoke between the three men.

  "I'm afraid they may," said Henry. "After all, they know nothing about any of us, and we know precious little about each other. Still, I dare say we shall find out a great deal more very soon. Shall we eat?" he added, to Emmy.

  She nodded, and the two of them walked silently out through the almost tangible emanation of fear that eddied like mist through the home-spun Alpine cosiness of the bar.

  CHAPTER SIX

  At half-past eight, Capitano Spezzi arrived with half a dozen carabinieri, the ski-lift having been put into operation for a short time for the express purpose of conveying the majesty of the law to the Bella Vista. The bulk of the policemen started at once on a fruitless search for the missing gun, while Spezzi arranged with Signor Rossati to use his office for interviews. When he had established himself there, he dismissed his shorthand writer—a tall, gangling youth who seldom opened his mouth, but recorded conversations in his neat notebook with the precision of a well-oiled machine. Then the Capitano asked to see Henry.

  "I see that you were right in what you said this afternoon, Inspector," he began in Italian, with a rueful smile. "Things have moved even faster than you anticipated."

  "I blame myself," said Henry. "I should have come to see you sooner, but I had so little to go on. It never occurred to me that this might happen."

  "You are not in the least to blame, my friend,"protested the Capitano, warmly. "On the contrary, these unfortunate events are my responsibility, for they happened on my territory." He sighed, a touch melodramatically, and offered Henry a black, coarse-textured cigarette from a very bright orange package. Henry declined politely. There was a short silence.

  "Well, at least there's no doubt now that Hauser was our man," said Henry, at last.

  Spezzi shrugged. "In life, my dear Inspector, there is always doubt..."

  "Perhaps," said Henry. "But not in death. To my mind, Hauser's murder clinches the matter."

  "He was a bad man." The Capitano sighed again, and sat down with careless elegance at Rossati's desk, his long legs asprawl. "He was deeply concerned in dope-running, I agree. In other things, also, I suspect. Blackmail of many kinds. But thjp pattern is still far from clear."

  "It seems to me," said Henry, "that we have two problems here. The first—and in many ways the less important —is to discover who killed Fritz Hauser, a man who is undoubtedly better dead. The second is to round up the organisation which is smuggling cocaine from Tangiers to Europe. Hauser may have been only a link in the chain, or he may have been the boss of the whole outfit. The two problems may be connected, or they may not."

  "After you left this afternoon," said Spezzi, "I made a complete report for you of what is already known about this dope-ring. Would you like to hear it?"

  "Very much," said Henry.

  Spezzi drew a sheaf of papers out of his brief-case, glanced at them, and said, "I think I can summarise it for you. The police in Rome know all about the private yacht which carries the contraband from Tangiers to Sicily ... they could arrest the boat any day, but the gang would find another. I agree with you that the cocaine almost certainly travelled from Rome to Santa Chiara in Hauser's briefcase —and from here it crosses to Austria by ski in the winter, and in the rucksacks of mountain climbers in the summer: that is the obvious way. But we have not been able to discover who is taking it, or the method used, even though we have checked up carefully on all skiers. Then it is known to your people that the stuff also reaches London: and here again we are completely in the dark as to the gang's operations, although I have a few ideas of my own on the subject. However, all this explains why we have not acted sooner. We wished to smash the whole organization, to identify the leader. Hauser's death is a great misfortune."

  "Then you don't think the dope traffic will stop, now that he is out of the way?" Henry asked.

  "Frankly, Inspector, I do not know. If he was only a hireling, it certainly won't stop, but the plan of operation will be changed and we shall have to start all over again. If he was the leader—"The quick, brown hands gesticulated meaningfully. "I would rather have a live dope-peddler in prison than a dead one in his grave—and some poor wretch sentenced for an act of public benefaction. However—let us get to work."

  "You have the doctor's report?" Henry asked.

  Spezzi pushed a sheet of closely-typed foolscap paper across the table. From a thicket of medical terminology, the simple facts emerged clearly enough. Hauser had been killed by a bullet from a .32 pistol, fired from a distance of about ten feet to the right of the victim, and slightly below him. The bullet had entered the heart, and death—which was instantaneous—had taken place less than an hour before the doctor's examination. There were no other injuries.

  "No sign of the gun, of course," Henry remarked, rubbing the back of his sandy head in an abstracted way which always indicated impatience.

  "Of course not. My men are searching the hotel now, and they will search below the ski-lift to-morrow. But it is a waste of time. A revolver tossed from the ski-lift into a ravine, and covered at once with falling snow ... it may be summertime before we find it."

  Henry nodded. "What I'd really like to know," he said, "is Hauser's background—his history, all you know about him."

  Spezzi inhaled deeply. "It's all here," he said, tapping the bundle of papers, "but I can tell you quite simply. Our knowledge is still not complete. Inquiries were started as soon as he came under suspicion, naturally—but that was not long ago. I am still waiting for final reports f
rom Rome. You know, of course, that he was Italian?"

  "Italian?"

  "He was born in 1901, in Santa Chiara."

  "Here—in this valley?"

  Spezzi smiled. "Yes. He was, of course, born Austrian —but like everybody else, his nationality changed to Italian in 1919. His family were simple village people, but he was clever—you might say brilliant. From the village school, he won a scholarship to a university in Vienna, where he qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1927. He obtained permission to work in Austria, and set up a practice in a poor quarter of Vienna, where he became prosperous—almost suspiciously so. With all that has happened since "—Spezzi dismissed the cataclysms of history with a wave of the hand—"it is difficult to trace records exactly, but it is certain that he came under suspicion for illegal traffic in drugs. The case never came to court—one imagines that there was not sufficient evidence. In any case, Hauser apparently got worried, for he sold his practice in 1924, and left Vienna. Here there is a gap in his history which we have not yet filled—we may never do so. He turns up next in 1936, in Munich."

  "His politics?" Henry asked.

  "That is the interesting thing. He was apparently a man without politics."

  "Was that possible—in Germany just before the war?"

  "One would say—no. Let us say that he could not have been actively anti-Nazi, or he would never have survived, let alone been allowed to work—even though relations between our two countries were undoubtedly ... cordial... at that time." Spezzi paused, in some embarrassment, and then went on quickly. "Anyway, Hauser steered carefully clear of politics in public. He practised in Munich until late 1938, when he moved to Berlin. By now he was a rich man. He had become a fashionable doctor ... a big house, two cars..."

  "And no connections with the party?"

  "None that could be proved. Some of his patients were Nazis, of course—that goes without saying. But a doctor can hardly be held responsible for the politics of his patients. He never treated any of the hierarchy. His practice was divided between old aristocratic and army families, and the entertainment world—actors and actresses, musicians, film producers. His fees were high, and he lived well."

  "What happened to him when war broke out?" Henry asked

  "He returned to Italy. In all those years, he had never changed his Italian nationality. He came to live in Rome, and started up a practice there."

  "And was he equally successful?"

  "My friend—our two countries were closely-knit. The world of entertainment is international. With his recommendations from Berlin, he soon acquired clients in Rome. When Italy entered the war, he joined the staff of a large hospital, and so escaped military service."

  "Was he a Fascist?" Henry asked, somewhat diffidently.

  Spezzi shrugged his shoulders. "Who wasn't?" he replied. "I can assure you, Inspector, that to talk to us Italians now, you would think that Mussolini had not one single supporter—and yet, it is evident that he had many. A certain party was in power—very well. Most of us wanted nothing more than to live our lives in peace ... and for that, one did not make demonstrations against Fascism. As I told you, Hauser had no interest in politics ... like a great number of us."

  "I see," said Henry.

  Spezzi went on, hastily. "Until four years ago, we have no record of his activities—our men in Rome are working on it now. He left the hospital after the war, and was to all intents and purposes a successful, law-abiding doctor. Only when the Caroni case broke did a breath ... the merest breath ... of suspicion come his way. You remember the affair?"

  "I certainly do," said Henry, " and I remember what a meal the press made of it, all over the world ... a drug-scandal involving prominent social personalities in Rome. The girl who died was an actress, wasn't she? Sofia Caroni ... Wait a minute. An actress. You mean she was one of Hauser's patients?"

  "She was," said Spezzi. "So, inevitably, suspicious eyes were turned on Hauser—as they would have been on any doctor who attended her, innocent or not. There was no proof—no proof of any kind. But Hauser was the soul of discretion. Before the case ever came to court, he announced his intention of retiring and devoting himself to research. He set up a small laboratory, where he worked on perfectly legitimate* experiments connected with virus diseases. Occasionally he published an undistinguished article in a medical journal. He travelled widely. He declared that his income came from investments."

  "What I don't understand," said Henry, "is that he spoke nothing but German, and was always referred to as Herr Hauser—not even Doctor Hauser. If he was Italian, and lived and worked in Rome "

  With a smile, Spezzi said, "My dear Inspector, do you not have in England the snobbism of the foreign doctor? Hauser had worked in Austria and Germany—it was part of his stock-in-trade to pass as a great Viennese doctor. His patients did not ask to see his passport. As for being known as Herr Hauser—that was only in Santa Chiara, where he never laid stress on being a doctor. In Rome, he was always Doctor Hauser."

  "Was it his real name?"

  "Oh, yes. Many families in this district had Austrian names, and still have. Some of them changed to Italian names when the region changed hands—just as the towns and villages were re-christened. Montelunga, for instance, used to be Langenberg—to some people, it still is."

  "What about the rest of Hauser's family—the ones who stayed here?"

  "None of them are left now," said Spezzi. "His parents died many years ago, and his only brother was killed in the war."

  "I see," said Henry. "What was it, then, that first aroused suspicions against Hauser in Rome—apart from the Caroni case?"

  "There were no suspicions," said Spezzi, "until a few weeks ago. That was when he made his first mistake—or rather, somebody made it for him."

  "What was that?"

  Spezzi paused. "There are," he said, "there always will be certain young men of an adventurous turn of mind who find smuggling irresistibly attractive. After a war, in particular, they turn up, these young pirates. They have been in the Navy ... they have learned to live dangerously and to handle boats. So they get hold of a ship of some sort, and run contraband in it. For many of them Tangiers is a convenient jumping-off ground."

  Henry nodded. "Don't I know it," he said. "It starts as a great lark, with cigarettes and brandy, and then—" He suddenly stopped dead. Spezzi looked up at him, and grinned.

  "Aha, you have it now, Inspector?"

  "Roger Staines," said Henry, slowly. "The Nancy Maud. Three years ago. It was his boat..."

  "Your memory is very good."

  "My memory's rotten," said Henry, annoyed. "I should have placed him at once. Let me see how much I can remember now. The Nancy Maud was arrested landing a cargo of contraband cigarettes in Sicily, with two young Italians aboard. Staines had sailed her out singlehanded from the Solent to Tangiers, and was staying with friends there. He insisted that the boat had been stolen—he had not been near her for ten days, he said, and so he knew nothing about her disappearance. The Italians, on the other hand, maintained that Staines had hired them to do the trip for him. They went much too far, however, and denied that they knew what the cargo was—which was pretty thin, considering that they were caught rowing it ashore to a lonely creek at two o'clock in the morning. The police believed Staines, and the Italian lads went to prison. Am I right?"

  "Absolutely. I don't suppose you remember the boy's name—the ringleader?"

  Henry shook his head. "You have me there," he admitted.

  "It is not important. He was called Donati—known to his friends by the endearing nickname of Lupo—the wolf. He was—he still is—a criminal type. A bad criminal type."

  "But that was only cigarettes," said Henry. "That wasn't "

  "Certainly, it was only cigarettes—that time. Lupo Donati came out of prison two years ago. He went back to sea, on a merchant ship, but that was much too much like hard work, and he quit. Then, last year, he bought a boat of his own—a nice little motor craft called Caris
sima. You can imagine that she was closely watched, especially since she made frequent trips to Tangiers. It was obvious that Lupo could not have had the money to buy her himself— somebody was financing him. A few weeks ago, we got definite proof that the Carissima was running dope—but what was the use of arresting Lupo again? We wanted to find the people behind him. So, when he came to Rome, he was called in for questioning. At first, he was very frightened. Then, the police appeared to believe his stories, and he thought he had bluffed them. He is a very conceited young man. He left police headquarters very pleased with himself indeed. He was careless. He took a taxi straight to Hauser's laboratory."

  "Did he indeed?" said Henry.

  "Hauser himself answered the door. He was very angry. He pretended not to know Lupo, and sent him away. But it was enough. Inquiries were started. The Rome police became interested in Hauser's frequent visits to Santa Chiara. Perhaps it is natural that he should visit his birthplace—but again, perhaps it is not. And why should he stay at the Bella Vista when he does not ski? That is the pattern that begins to take shape. And now some fool kills him."

  "You said something about blackmail—" Henry began.

  u That is a suspicion only. In Rome, they investigated his sources of income. True, he has many investments.

  But also, much money is paid into his bank account, always in cash, regular sums at regular intervals. That can mean blackmail—no?"

  "No—I mean yes," said Henry.

  "So—now you know all that I know."

  "Thank you, Capitano." Henry was thoughtful. "Rome, Vienna, Berlin ... but not London. And yet, there must be a connection with London, because we know the stuff has been getting through—from somewhere. Maybe not from here. The whole thing is very vague at our end. In any case, it's difficult to associate any of the English people here with such goings-on—with the possible exception of Roger Staines. And somehow I don't think ... Oh, well, there's no use guessing. By the way," he added,. "what about Hauser's luggage?"