The Grave of Truth (28 page)

‘I'm fine too.' The stilted exchange continued while she told him about Peter and Francine. They liked London; their friends had taken them sightseeing, to the Tower and the waxworks at Madame Tussaud's. They were going to take a picnic and visit Windsor Castle the next day. He had a vision of the family party going down in the car with sandwiches and flasks of coffee, and the inevitable cans of Coke for his son and daughter. Ellie driving them before her on the tour, determined to improve their minds, while they squabbled and she refereed, being as always scrupulously fair.… It was like a scene from somebody else's boring home movie. He cut it short because the brandy had made him tactless.

‘Ellie—listen, never mind the children for a minute. I want to talk to you about something important.'

‘So far as I'm concerned, the children
are
important.' The reply was curt.

‘I know they are,' he despised himself for placating her, but he wanted to tell her and get it over. ‘It concerns them too. Ellie, I've been thinking while we've been apart.'

‘Funny, so have I.'

‘I think we're in a mess,' he said. ‘It's probably my fault, but I can't just go back and take up the old life.' There was a pause, and then she said,

‘I can't either, Max. That's what I've been thinking too. I've talked it over with Tim and Angela and they agree with me. Peter and Francine are so much happier than they were in Paris.'

He didn't mean to lose his temper but he did. ‘To hell with Peter and Francine! That's all you ever think about—the children, the children—I'll bet they're happy, doing just what they like and running circles round you. I called you to tell you something.' He took a deep breath to calm himself, and wished he hadn't lost control.

‘You've met someone else,' his wife said. ‘That's it, isn't it? That's why you've rung exactly once since we left, and now you have the gall to wake me up and disturb my friends at this hour—you're drunk, too, I can tell—'

‘Ellie, please,' he begged in desperation; it shouldn't have developed into a row. If he hadn't said what he did about the children she wouldn't be so angry.… ‘Ellie, I'm terribly sorry. I should have called or written but I couldn't. Can't you see I didn't want to spring this on you, when you came home? I wanted to warn you about the way I felt.…'

‘You didn't have to warn me. I knew it was over when you walked out on us and went off on your own. I hope you do a great piece for your magazine. I hope you'll find it's worth losing your family. I'm going to get a divorce. If you can't be a father to the children, I'll find someone else who can!'

He felt a horrible mixture of anguish and relief.

‘If that's what you want,' he said. ‘Don't be angry, Ellie, please.…'

‘Oh, go to hell! Go back to your Kraut girlfriend!' The line went clear.

Kraut. She had never used that word before, even when they quarrelled seriously. Kraut. Hun. Boche. The scornful epithets of enemies; he was more drunk than he realized, because he looked furiously at the telephone and said loudly in English, ‘To hell with you, too.' The lounge was empty; or nearly so; two men were still sitting drinking beer in a corner table. He supposed they were residents. Reception was closed, and a night porter sat in a cubicle reading a paperback. Max began to walk to the lift. His anger had disappeared, leaving a sick unhappy feeling in which there was more guilt than regret. He'd done it so badly, so crudely, just because he wanted to make sure of Minna and tear down the last obstacle to full possession of her. Because he had never possessed her, except in sexual climax. She had eluded him, keeping some part of herself in reserve. Even when she said she loved him, he sensed an area of privacy that excluded him. He weaved a little on his way to the lift, and one of the two residents in the lounge watched him and frowned. Max went into the lift, and the man hurried across to go up with him. ‘Which floor?' he asked.

‘Second.' Max scowled at him. He wanted to go to Minna, to take her in his arms and tell her his wife wanted a divorce, there was nothing to stop them—but she hadn't wanted him to come. She was tired, she said. In the early morning if he woke.…

The lift stopped, and the doors opened. He stepped out. The lights were dimmed slightly in the long corridor during the night. The man watched him walk towards his bedroom door and, satisfied, pressed the button to descend. Room 43, room 44, 45, 46, Minna's room, 47. Max stopped suddenly. The door was ajar.

Maurice Franconi found that the bedroom door was not locked. The latch had been put up; all he had to do was turn the handle. He wore cotton gloves, easy to pull on and off. Very gently he eased the door open a crack, and saw there was no light inside. A glance over his shoulder showed the corridor empty. He pushed the door and eased himself inside. It took a minute or more before he became accustomed to the faint light showing from inside, and could distinguish objects in the darkened room and move towards the bed. He had a very acute sense of another human being's presence; he could tell in the pitch dark if a place was occupied, like an animal prowling for prey. He didn't hear Minna Walther breathing, but he knew she was there before he could see the outline of her body in the bed.

He walked carefully across the floor, testing it for loose boards at every step; there was one creak and he froze. Nothing changed; the woman didn't stir. Franconi reached the side of the bed. He could see perfectly by now; her head was dark against the white pillow. She was lying on her side, one arm outside the covers. He smelt gardenias, and recognized the scent she was wearing. He made a little grimace of disgust. Sickly, cloying smell. Women turned him over; much more than they did Kesler, who didn't seem to mind them. He put his right hand in his pocket and found the pen. He brought it out slowly. He would have to lean across to get it close to her face. Then he heard the sound of the lift doors opening in the corridor. He hesitated; he had left the door of the room wide enough to give himself light. If anyone passed and saw it—it only needed a few seconds to puff the deadly gas into the sleeping woman's face, a few more to close the door and keep it shut till the latecomer had gone. If it were the journalist come to visit his lover, Franconi would be ready for him. The pen would dispose of him too. He moved very quickly, leaning over and towards Minna, and that was when she brought her arm up to rest above her head.

Franconi started back and dropped the pen. He saw the door push open and knew that he had no chance to hide. He didn't carry a gun, and the pen was gone. He was across the floor in seconds, and as Max Steiner stepped into the room, Franconi crashed against him, and sent him reeling sideways with a savage elbow chop. He didn't wait to strike again and kill him, because he heard Minna's scream behind him. He swerved into the corridor, and ran for the stairs. He cursed in breathless Italian, skipping down the flights to the ground floor, and there he stopped and waited. He had to get out of the hotel, but not to be seen. To be seen would identify him as the attacker. He had to walk out unobserved, or hide until he could slip out in the morning.

He opened the door leading into the lounge and heard the telephone at the porter's desk ringing. He saw two men in the lounge race towards the lift, and he flattened himself in the shadows. From the office behind the reception desk, two more men appeared, and Franconi broke out into a sweat of fear. They were detectives; the hotel was staked out, and he had walked into the trap set for him. The exits would be closed; he couldn't get away. He opened the door again and peered out. He couldn't stay where he was, the stairs would be searched immediately. He had to place himself somewhere that didn't excite suspicion. His initial panic was fading; his sharp intelligence raced through every possibility and settled on the one that Kesler had always taught him to use in an emergency. Never run. Never draw attention to yourself. Blend into the scenery.

The scenery was the residents' TV lounge, which was in semi-darkness and close enough to the stairs exit for him to slip through to it. He bent low and hurried across the little space to the big, dimly lit area with its sofas and tables and chairs. He made his way to a far corner, and stretched himself out in a deep armchair in front of the set. He peeled off the cotton gloves, cursing them for their loose fit and the loss of the cyanide pen. But leather gloves were difficult to use delicately, and a man wearing them in a hotel at night would be instantly suspicious. He rammed the gloves down the side of the chair. There, with his hands folded across his chest, and his mouth ajar snoring, he was found by Holler's security men twenty minutes later.

In the bedroom upstairs Max held Minna in his arms. She was trembling; he could feel it, but apart from her extreme paleness, she was calm. Holler was expected at any moment; a detective was on guard outside the door. The hotel was being searched and the registers checked for anyone resembling Max's muddled description. He had the vaguest impression of a man, glimpsed as he lay half dazed on the ground. Not too tall and not very big. Dark or fair, old or young—he couldn't tell them anything more. No weapon had been found, nothing but a fountain pen which had rolled under the bed; it didn't belong to Minna but it could have been lost by the previous occupant of the room.

‘Oh God,' Max kept saying, ‘if I'd been a few minutes later—'

It was Minna who comforted him. ‘But you weren't,' she said gently. ‘And nothing happened to me. I'm quite all right, darling. I was just shaken, that's all. It might have been a rape—someone who'd seen the door wasn't locked, I may not have shut it properly, and they came in and saw a woman in bed—'

‘It was the man who killed Kramer and the others,' Max said. ‘He was going to kill you. Just like Holler said. I'll never forgive myself for letting you stay here and not taking his advice.'

‘You couldn't have made me go,' Minna said. ‘I make my own decisions, darling. And there's one thing we can be thankful for; they'll catch the man. Then we'll know we're safe.'

‘We're leaving first thing in the morning,' Max insisted.

She shook her head. She disengaged herself and moved away from him. ‘No,' she said quietly. ‘I'm staying to the end. Nothing can alter that.'

There was a knock on the door and, before Max could reply, Heinrich Holler came in.

In the sitting room of her friends' Putney house, Ellie Steiner sat and cried. There was a cup of tea beside her which she couldn't drink, and Angela had an arm round her shoulders and was trying to calm her.

‘Try to be sensible,' she was saying. ‘You said he was drunk—you can't take that call seriously. He'll probably ring tomorrow full of apologies.'

‘Oh no, he won't.' Ellie blew her nose and wiped her eyes. ‘He wasn't drunk when he wouldn't come with us after we'd been threatened. He's a bastard, Angela. The more I think of the way he's treated me and the children, the more I see what a bastard he is! I think he got drunk so he'd have the courage to tell me—'

‘But you've been thinking on these lines yourself,' the other woman pointed out. She was a practical girl, and she had never seen Ellie's marriage to Max as a permanent relationship. He was too volatile, too obviously irritated by his family; she personally didn't like him much, whereas she was deeply fond of Ellie. She liked Ellie's earnestness and sense of responsibility; she shared the same enlightened views on child rearing and the priorities of motherhood. She would never have admitted to prejudice, but she didn't like Germans.

‘You haven't been happy,' she said. ‘Never mind him, think of yourself. Now face it, Ellie, you said so the other evening to Tim. That's what matters—how you and the children feel. I think this may be a blessing in disguise.'

‘I don't want to lose him,' Ellie Steiner said. ‘A broken home is terribly bad for children—'

‘Not as bad as parents' quarrelling,' Angela said firmly. ‘If he wants to go, then let him. Only you see that you get what's due to you and he provides properly for Peter and Francine. We'll find you a nice little flat, near us, and you'll meet lots of people—' She was working herself up to anger. ‘You're a damn sight too good for him,' she said. ‘You'll meet someone else, and be really happy. Now drink that tea, and come up to bed. I'll give you a Mogadon, and you'll sleep right through.'

Angela had a square little English face and her jaw set aggressively. ‘If he rings again, you let me answer him. He won't do this sort of thing in a hurry when I've had my say. Come on, Ellie dear. Upstairs.'

She led Max's wife up to her room, and made her swallow a sleeping pill. Then she tucked her in solicitously, and went back to her own bed and her husband.

‘Bloody Germans,' she said, settling down beside him. ‘The sooner she gets rid of him, the better for all of them.' Her husband made a sound of agreement.

There were 218 people staying in the Kaiserhof; apart from the guests there were twelve men who were not registered and had been in bed with lady guests or were on their way out when they were stopped by the police, one drunk found snoring in the TV lounge, who turned out to be staying at another hotel, and the night staff of thirteen men.

Holler interviewed every male considered physically capable through age or proximity of making the attack upon Minna Walther. The married men registered with their wives were excluded. That left the twelve who had remained in the hotel surreptitiously, four homosexuals staying in adjoining rooms, who immediately attracted Holler's interest, the drunken Italian found in front of the TV, and the night staff. The thirteen night staff were all in their late middle age, all with
bona fide
backgrounds as residents of the city and established employees of the hotel. He interviewed the remaining suspects in the manager's office; the hotel remained closed and no one was allowed to leave.