Pray for a Brave Heart (24 page)

“No,” Waysmith answered. “Just admiring the view.” He waved a hand towards the village. “Very fine view.” It was a word which lost its charm rapidly.

“Wonderful,” Paula said, with her brightest smile.

There was a pause. Again the foreign words came from the last group of trees, and the man nodded.

“To be sure,” he said unconvincingly to Paula, and turned abruptly away. He slipped on the grass, and slipped again. His companion stepped out from the trees to catch him by his wrist and pull him on to the earthy ground where his footing was surer.

“Come on,” Waysmith said. “Let’s go and take some photographs of the village.” He helped Paula into the car, had a last defiant look at the view, and then followed her.

The car started towards Falken. “Take it slowly,” Denning advised. “We are being watched.”

“Not exactly country folks,” Waysmith said. Who were they? he wondered, Denning seemed to know. He waited. But Denning only looked back at the house. “Handsome cuff links, if your taste runs to glittering stones,” Waysmith tried. “Did you see them flash when he put out a hand to grab the tree?”

Denning nodded. He was looking now at the rough driveway to
Waldesruhe,
which twisted down through hilly ground between scattered boulders and trees. It entered the road ahead of them, just beyond a high bank formed by the abrupt drop of
Waldesruhe’s
hill.

Paula said, “What language was that, anyway? Russian?”

“Not quite,” Denning said. He was remembering the few Bulgarian refugees he had interviewed back in Berlin. “Sounded like Bulgarian.” Bulgarian…with an overlay of travel. It had been many years since those two men had spoken Bulgarian in Bulgaria. “Stop again, Andy,” he said. “Just under the shelter of this bank.”

“I refuse to look at any more views,” Waysmith said. But he halted the car. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked suddenly, as Denning reached into the back seat for one of the newspapers lying on top of the piled luggage, and then opened the car door.

“I’m going house-hunting,” Denning said, with a smile.“Just a moment—” Waysmith’s voice had sharpened, as it always did when he was worried. “Who were those two men?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

“Friends of Rauch?”

“No.”

“Then, why—”

“I thought I recognised one of them.”

“Look,” Waysmith said angrily, “have I got to drag every piece of information—”

“You’ve got to get Paula to Falken,” Denning reminded him. “Drop my things at the inn. And if you see your friend Inspector Bohren, let him know I’m around here, will you?”

“There’s a bus,” Paula reported, “leaving the bridge.” She had been sitting very still, unhappily watching the road ahead of them. She had sensed Andy’s battle with himself: he wanted to go with Denning, he had to stay with her. “I want to see the house,” she said in a low voice. I wish I were in Falken, she thought miserably, I wish I were in Falken and all this trouble over and Francesca safe and no more threats and nothing to do but enjoy ourselves.

“I’ll wait until the bus passes,” Denning said, ignoring Paula’s last remark, but he gripped her wrist for a moment as he got out of the car. “You’re my witness,” he said lightly. “Get to the village as soon as you can.”

“We’ll take you up to
Waldesruhe,”
Andrew Waysmith said. “We can at least drop you at the front door.”

“You take Paula to the village and leave her there. Then, if you’ve any surplus energy left, you can come to
Waldesruhe
and collect me. I never did like walking back. See you soon, then?” He stepped quickly on to the roadway. He heard Waysmith saying something which sounded very much like “stubborn bastard”. “Same to you,” he called after the moving car. Then he began walking to the entrance to
Waldesruhe’s
private road.

He paused there to light a cigarette and wave to the bus as it passed him. Plenty of witnesses, he thought as he noticed the curious faces looking out at him. He glanced at his watch. When last seen, William Denning was walking smartly towards the house known as
Waldesruhe
… He smiled at his self-dramatisation. If he used the right approach, the next
hour—although tricky—could be harmless enough. And the right approach was certainly this, walking quite openly, by the front driveway, straight up to
Waldesruhe
itself. The right approach was simple-minded stupidity, naive trust, a state of mind which a man like Nikolaides always confused with innocence.

Paula Waysmith glanced worriedly at her husband, as he drove towards the Falken bridge. She restrained herself, with a considerable effort, from looking back towards
Waldesruhe
, from talking about Bill Denning or speculating about the two men who aroused his interest. For Andy was wearing what she privately called his near-mutiny look. When he set his brows and jaw that way, it meant he was doing something completely opposite to what he wanted to do.

Beyond the bridge, on the road that branched up into Falken itself, there was a group of men. “An accident, or something?” Paula asked, glad of distraction. Waysmith said nothing; he eased the car over the narrow stone bridge, avoiding some children who were more interested in the working men than in traffic, and brought it to a halt. “What now?” he asked angrily. For the road into Falken was being torn up and resurfaced. “It’s a fine time to dig up the pavement.”

“Reminds me of New York.”

“Where do we go from here?” He waited impatiently for one of the men, who was walking slowly towards them, his heavy boots slipping on the pile of debris he had been helping to create, his face and arms red from a day’s work in the sun. “If it isn’t one damned thing, it’s another,” Waysmith said, reconciling himself to more trouble.

The man had almost reached them. “Going into Falken?” he called.

“That was the idea.”

“You can’t go this way.”

“So I see.”

The man was standing by the car window now. He pointed along the other road. “Follow that route until you reach the trees. There’s a back road there that will take you into Falken. It’s rough. Go slowly.”

“The first group of trees to the left of that road?” Waysmith verified. But he was studying the man’s face. I’ve seen him somewhere, he thought.

“That’s right.” The man ran a crumpled red cotton handkerchief round the back of his neck. He was young, fresh-complexioned, fair haired. He lowered his voice. “Go to the inn,” he said. Then he turned away with a wave of his hand, and climbed back over the fragments of road.

“Thanks,” Waysmith called after him, and turned the car’s nose along the valley road.

“That was our young policeman,” Paula said. “Last night. Remember?” This small excitement and Andy’s relaxed face sent her spirits soaring again.

“A nice natural road-block,” Waysmith commented. “Someone’s in charge here, after all.” He felt better, too.

He felt still better when they had entered a rough road shielded by trees, and started climbing a short hill into the back of Falken. For there, too, was a little trouble. A long, low-slung lumber cart had tilted over towards a ditch, its side wheels embedded dangerously in the narrow road’s soft shoulder. Its load of logs was being lightened. Not very neatly. It took considerable care to ease the Citroën past the precariously balanced cart, the two nervous horses which had been unharnessed, and the four foresters who were working slowly. Again, appearances were noted and the contents of the car quietly examined in the time-space of half a sentence, with that same impersonal trained eye.

“Are they
all
policemen?” Paula asked, as they skirted the last log lying askew on the road.

Waysmith shook his head. “I doubt that. Bohren can’t have a whole army up here. He must have recruited some allies.” He smiled, then. “I begin to like Falken,” he said with some surprise. Then he put out a hand and gripped Paula’s arm gently. “Sorry. I just hate being treated like a twelve-year-old mind.”

“But Bill would have told you more if I hadn’t been there. Blame it on me. If you had been alone with Bill, you’d have been driving up to
Waldesruhe
right now.”

“I doubt that.” But his smile had broadened. “Paula, why the hell do you love a bad-tempered bastard like me?”

“Because you ask such a disarming question, darling. Careful, Andy, careful! Two hands are needed for the road.”

That was true enough. The road was narrow and rough, and it twisted between the houses which were set down on broad meadows with complete independence, brown wood houses
on firm stone foundations, white plastered houses with fretted balconies, red-brown roofs spreading wide, windows climbing up the broad gables to hide under the eaves themselves. Wood smoke drifted from the chimneys. Somewhere a cock mistimed the day, and crowed triumphantly. There was the steady sound of rushing water from the stream that wandered down the hill, a soft perpetual background to the intermittent tinkling from off-tone bells.

“What’s that?” Waysmith asked, listening.

“Cows, darling.”

“Do these houses all have farms in their back yards?” He took a deep breath of air. “Yes,” he said, answering his own question, “I guess they do.” Peace, and plenty of it. Even here, on the street which they had suddenly entered, there was nothing but peace. And there was the inn with
Gastof zu d. Hirschen
painted in spiky black picture lettering across one white wall, and a stiff wooden sign (a picture of two stags gazing off, in complete harmony, towards the upper windows) suspended over its entrance.

“Now, that’s what I like,” Waysmith said, as he halted the car against a two-foot-broad sidewalk opposite the inn. He looked at the name and the sign. “Grammatical accuracy, economy, and idealism,” and he nodded with approval. “What more does a journalist need?” Then he noticed the wooden bench at the side of the inn’s doorway. There sat two red-faced elderly men, with black waistcoats opened comfortably over white shirts, pipes cupped in their hands, their white heads gravely nodding as they listened to a tall man who looked more like a schoolteacher with a passion for climbing than a policeman. But it was Inspector Bohren, all right.

Paula hadn’t noticed. She was too busy looking up at the inn’s name and its sign. ‘I don’t get it,” she said frankly. “Accuracy and economy—that’s in the name, yes. But idealism?”

“You can think that one out while you’re waiting. Give me two minutes. I’ll just leave these”—he reached energetically for Denning’s two bags, golf clubs, hat, and coat—“and then we can get to Francesca’s house.”

She looked at him, both amused and relieved at his sudden enthusiasm. “You do like Falken, then?”

“Quaint as all get-out. But it looks real enough. No fancy dress among the inhabitants, at least.” He shook his head over three visitors, beplumed and caparisoned for at least an eighty-mile walk, who were looking hungrily into the window of a pastry shop next door to a small display of postcards and climbing tackle. But the concessions to tourists had been kept to a minimum. The end of the wedge was still very thin; apart from the short-trousered hikers and a couple of wild dirndls loose on this narrow street—and a regrettable tall white box of a café-restaurant with three striped umbrellas on its side patch of field—the rest of Falken concentrated on itself. A horse-drawn cart rumbled, without benefit of axle, across the street from one side lane to another; three bright-faced women carried their bundles of wet wash back from the stream; a deeply tanned man cycled to a job with a saw over his shoulders; tow-headed children, busy or curious, stopped to stare at the car. No policemen anywhere—except for some special visitors like Bohren. Not even a possible police station in sight. Nor a locksmith’s shop. Falken probably never even bolted its doors at night, and if windows were closed tight it was against night air and not marauders.

“I’ll give you a tip,” he said, pointing up at the two amiable stags over the doorway. “A woman painted that.”

He crossed the street. The two elderly men and schoolteacher Bohren only interrupted their serious discussion long enough to give him a nod and a civil good day. “And another thing,” Bohren was saying, as Waysmith stepped over the threshold, “all that early rain…”

At least I’ve been checked in, Waysmith thought, even if I’ll never learn what the early rain did or did not do. Then he became aware of the sudden silence which had fallen over the room he had entered.

It was a low-ceilinged room, smelling not unpleasantly of good beer and spiced sausage, a room dimly lighted from a row of four close-packed windows where stiff-starched lace was drawn above precise geraniums on a broad stone sill. A shaft of sunlight from the bright street struck obliquely towards the scrubbed wood floor, cutting through the room’s stillness with its beam of dancing motes. They were the only movement in the room. The ticking of a clock against a pine wall was the only sound. For that moment. Seemingly long. Yet brief. And so intense that Waysmith felt he and the eight people who sat at the long dark tables round the room’s edge, were frozen into a still life, inanimate objects arranged in a painter’s pattern.

Then, just as suddenly, everything clicked back into normal sound and movement as a white-haired woman put down her knitting needles, pushed back her chair, made an apology to the two men who were sitting at her table, and came towards Waysmith. A third man, sitting by himself, smoking a placid cigar, was scanning the pages of a newspaper. Two more men were at another table—walkers, by their rucksacks and sticks. In a far corner, a bearded man faced a fair-haired girl, whose back was once more turned to the room. Waysmith gave that well-shaped head, with its smoothly knotted blonde hair, a second look. But it couldn’t be Francesca. Not here, sitting so casually as if she had nothing to do but pass a pleasant hour. And certainly she would have recognised him. He laid Denning’s belongings neatly at the foot of the staircase beside him—not much privacy here, the steep stairs climbed quite openly up one side of the room—and then faced the inn’s owner.

“I am Frau Welti,” she said, and waited. Her smile was strained. Her pale grey eyes were worried. There was a little nervous frown drawing her brow into a polite question. She smoothed down the embroidered apron over her black dress, and touched the tight braids of her hair as she waited.