After the Fine Weather (7 page)

“If you will look closely you can see the marked similarities. The striations in the soft driving band – you observe how their sequence is repeated in both cases.” He produced another photograph. “This is the base of the cartridge that I fired, compared with the base of a cartridge found by the police in the gutter, under the lamp-post.”

Laura looked again. Even to her eye, this time, the similarity was apparent.

“You observe how the firing pin has struck noticeably to the left of the centre point, and with a slight inclination toward the circumference.”

“You’re telling us,” said Charles, “that the two bullets – one of which lodged in the body of the Bishop and one of which struck him in the shoulder and ended up in the pillar behind him – that they were both, definitely, fired from the gun taken from Boschetto.”

“That is the inescapable deduction,” said the doctor.

“You must, I think, see the force of this,” said the Colonel to Laura.

“I suppose so.”

“If the assassin was, indeed, a man who secreted himself in the theatre and fired from the window, as you have described, how did he transfer his gun into the possession of a man standing twenty yards away, in full view, in the middle of the square?”

“Couldn’t two different guns make the same sort of mark?”

The Colonel turned to Dr Kippinger, who shook his head so emphatically that his glasses nearly fell off.

“That is quite impossible,” he said. “Rifling marks are as distinct as fingerprints. And as reliable. I have never examined bullets from different guns which have appeared even superficially alike. A modern comparison microscope measures similarities – and dissimilarities – to a thousandth of a millimetre.”

“Reflect also,” said the Colonel, “that the first bullet lodged in the pillar eight feet above ground level. The window is – what? I have not measured it exactly, but should we say ten feet up? For the bullet to have struck the Bishop in the shoulder he must have been at least nine feet high.”

“Unless it was deflected,” said Laura.

“Possible. But unlikely, don’t you think?”

“Well–” said Charles.

Laura detected the weakening in his voice. She said, “Has anyone looked at the window?”

There was a very slight pause. Then the Colonel said, “I am not sure what you mean, Miss Hart.”

“I suppose it opens into some sort of room or staircase inside the turret. Has anyone been up there to see if the window has been tampered with?”

The Colonel said something to Inspector Moll, who seemed, like his superior officer, to be taken off balance by the question. It was momentary only.

“You have caught us out, Miss Hart,” said the Colonel. “As you perceive, we attached so little weight to your story that we did not take the very elementary step you have suggested. It can easily be remedied. Come along.”

A police car took the four of them to the theatre.

“I have had the caretaker telephoned. He will let us in by the stage door. The front of the theatre is still cordoned.”

The caretaker, a sad-faced little man, met them at the stage door. He bowed to the Colonel and conducted them along passages which twisted and turned back on themselves like the larger intestine of a whale; down breakneck stairs; through a fireproof door, and out through the sheeted auditorium, into the foyer.

Here he unlocked a small door beside the box office.

“This leads, you understand, Herr Oberst, only to the electricians’ gallery.”

“Understood,” said the Colonel. “Have you any lights?”

“A moment.”

The caretaker went into the box office, fumbled in the half-darkness, and found the right switch. A pale bulb showed them the interior of the turret, with the stairs leading upward.

The air was stale, and there was a very faint smell of dry rot.

At the first landing the Colonel halted. In front of him was a door. He tried it, and found it locked.

“What is in here?”

“It is a small room, Herr Oberst. The electricians use it for their stuff.”

“Open it, please.”

After some searching the caretaker found the key that fitted the lock, and pushed open the door. It was, as he had said, a very small room, opening into an embrasure in the turret.

“Would this be the window?”

“I think it must be,” said Laura. She stepped forward, and the Colonel said, “I should advise care.”

It was a timely warning. The floor, the window ledge, and the window itself were thick with dust.

The caretaker said apologetically, “Had I known you wished to come here, I would have had the room cleaned. It is a long time since it has been used.”

As Charles drove into the forecourt of the municipal buildings his headlights, probing the swirling snow, picked out some of the significant changes that had been made in the past twenty-four hours. Barbed wire, in concertina rolls, now confined approaching traffic to one double lane. Across the approach stretched a counterweighted steel girder, operated from a sandbagged, loop-holed barrier. Two troop carriers had been backed behind the barrier, and from their dark interiors he caught a metallic flash as a machine-gun swung on its tripod mounting.

Charles produced his diplomatic pass, the sentry raised the pole, and he drove into the inner courtyard.

When he got out he found the sergeant of the guard standing beside him.

“Kindly not to lock your car.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Orders.”

Charles stared at him. He recognized the sergeant, an old regular soldier.

“What’s it all about?” he said.

“We had trouble here earlier in the day. All cars have to be left open, so that they can, if necessary, be searched.”

“If anyone searches my car there’s going to be twenty different sorts of trouble.”

“I do not imagine that it will be necessary in your case, Herr Konsul. Come with me, please.”

The building seemed full of soldiers. Some of them were regulars, but most of them were wearing the armbands of the auxiliary forces.

When Charles was shown into his office, Hofrat Humbold indicated a chair and came to the point without further preliminary.

“I gather,” he said, “that you are now convinced that the story being put about by your sister has no foundation in fact.”

Charles blinked. The friendly dinner guest had, indeed, disappeared. It was the head of state talking, and talking to a very junior vice-consul.

“I’m not sure that I’ve reached any conclusion on the point yet.”

“You have been shown the evidence.”

“I have been shown some evidence.”

“What other conclusion can there be than that his Eminence was assassinated by the Italian Boschetto?”

“I should like to correct the record in one particular,” said Charles. “My sister’s story – as you call it – is not being put about by her, or by anyone. She talked, in confidence, to me and to my Italian colleague. For reasons best known to himself, Dr Pisoni passed the information on to Colonel Schatzmann. If anyone has publicized her story, it would appear to be your officials.”

“She has repeated it to no one else?”

“So far as I am aware, no.”

“Then how do you account for the fact that one of my personal aides learned of this fiction from Herr Helmut Angel?”

“I imagine he heard it from Colonel Schatzmann or Dr Pisoni.”

“Within thirty minutes of the shooting.”

Charles hoped that he did not look as shaken as he felt. He decided to counter-attack.

“Herr Hofrat,” he said, “if you, and your police, are perfectly convinced that my sister’s story is incorrect, why do you attach any importance to it at all?”

“Do you really wish to know, or is the question a rhetorical one?”

“I certainly wish to know.”

Dr Humbold rose to his feet, walked across to the long window that overlooked the inner courtyard, and stood for a full minute in the shadows, looking out at the falling snow. Charles waited. Experience had inured him to the Hofrat’s theatrical devices. Nevertheless, when he finally turned and came back into the light, Charles was startled by the expression on his face.

(He said afterward to Laura, “If you were walking with a man you didn’t know very well along the edge of a cliff, and looked up suddenly, and saw that he had just made up his mind to push you over – you’d have some sort of idea of the way he looked.”)

“This morning,” said Humbold, “just after midday, a private car drove into the inner courtyard. The driver had a pass, and gave the name of one of our medical officers, of the Health Department. The sentry let him in. He entered the building and, as we found out later, walked straight out of it on the other side, and disappeared. By chance the sentry mentioned the matter to the guard commander, who happened to know that the medical officer in question was in Vienna. He examined the car, and found the back and the luggage compartment packed with explosives, attached to a firing and timing device in the front seat. The sergeant disconnected the firing apparatus and our experts took over the car. It was parked” – Humbold indicated the window – “immediately outside there. It contained sufficient explosives to bring down this part of the building.”

“Allow me to congratulate you,” said Charles, “both personally and on behalf of Her Majesty’s government, on your fortunate escape.”

“Thank you,” said Humbold. “I gave you this information in answer to your question. You will perhaps see its relevance now.”

“You mean that you are expecting further trouble.”

“I mean that we are in a very grave state of emergency. All the graver, that there has been no communication with Vienna since nightfall.”

“Snow?”

“It might be snow, but that seems unlikely. The cable through the mountains goes underground. The snow would not affect it.”

“Sabotage?”

“I think it very probable. At all events, I am taking no chances. While we are isolated from the capital, I have a responsibility to the state.”

“Yes,” said Charles. He wondered what was coming.

“A decree has been drafted, declaring a state of emergency in the district. I am signing it tonight. Cases of sabotage and incitement to disorder will be punishable before a military tribunal. I am restoring the death penalty – for crimes against the state.”

“Surely,” said Charles, “such very stringent measures are not called for – yet. As soon as communications are restored–”

“Last winter we were cut off from the rest of the country for eight weeks. It was not serious, because we had easy access through the South Tyrol and the Brenner. That is not now the case.”

“No.”

“Are you questioning my measures?”

“The responsibility for public order rests entirely on the shoulders of the Herr Hofrat,” said Charles.

“I do not welcome it,” said Humbold. “Neither do I shirk it.” He added, “I am telling you this so that you will understand why your sister has to leave Lienz at once.”

“How?”

“She has a British passport. She may be delayed at the Italian frontier, but I hardly think she will be stopped.”

“Yes,” said Charles. “But–” He broke off.

“You were about to add, ‘but why?’” said Humbold. “Then you perceived that the question was a stupid one, and you refrained from asking it. I am glad that you are beginning to appreciate the realities of the situation. Would you kindly return now and make arrangements for your sister? The express train for Rome leaves at ten minutes to midnight.”

Laura had made her own way back to the flat from the theatre. She had walked slowly. She wanted time to think.

The condition of the room in the theatre – the thick dust on the floor, the cobwebs on the windows, the general air of a room which has stood undisturbed for months or years – had been convincing. It had been extremely convincing. Had it not been almost too convincing?

When had the theatre last been used? A week – perhaps a fortnight – earlier. The posters were still up. Then should the room be quite as dusty as that? It had electricians’ stuff in it. It might not be used a lot, but it would be used occasionally. Yet the depth of dust on the floor suggested a room which hadn’t been opened for a century. It looked as if someone had taken a giant insufflator – something like a vacuum cleaner in reverse – and blown dust over everything, spreading it thick and even, like icing on a cake.

If that was so, there was a considerable organization at work: an organization able to put a man into that room with a gun which – she had no idea how – but which, somehow, matched the bullets in Boschetto’s gun, and get him away afterward, and clear away all signs of his presence under a coating of dust, and, probably, square the janitor.

Charles had given her a key to the flat and she let herself in. The noise of the front door brought Frau Rosa from the kitchen. She said, in her slow, careful German, “There is a gentleman in the front room.”

“Who is he, Frau Rosa?”

“A diplomatic gentleman. His name I do not know.”

Laura got rid of her hat and coat, executed some quick repairs to her face, and made her way along to the sitting room. She hoped that the representative of the Diplomatic-Corps would not stay too long or prove too talkative.

Sprawled on the sofa, reading The Times, was a man in his early forties. He had the sort of stubborn, black beard that needs to be shaved twice a day; dark eyebrows which ran toward each other and then, at the last moment, turned upward, like two men on a pavement trying to avoid each other, and stepping the same way; a thick nose, and a rounded chin.

Despite the dark hair he was quite clearly English. His manners alone guaranteed that.

He made a minimal gesture of one starting to get to his feet, found the effort too much for him, and said, “Good evening. My name is Fiennes. Evelyn Fiennes. You must be the problem child.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It is Miss Hart, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“And it was you who put out the story about a hidden assassin in the theatre?”

Laura said, “I didn’t put out anything. I told my brother what I had seen. And I’m not at all sure I ought to discuss it with you.”

“Oh, I’m all right. I’m on your side. You can talk to me.”

“How do I know that?”

“You don’t, really, that’s true. I might be one of Colonel Julius’ undercover boys, trying to lure you on to further indiscretions. Or I might be a reporter from the Lienz Herald, out for a scoop.”

“If you had been,” said Laura, “I don’t imagine you’d have helped yourself to quite so much of my brother’s whisky.”

“I needed it,” said Fiennes. “I have come fast and far. Like young Lochinvar, who, you will remember, came out of the west. In all the wide border his steed was the best. I came from Vienna in a pre-war Austin, with chains on the wheels, and I don’t mind betting that not many people got over the Grossglockner after me.”

“Wonderful,” said Laura. “What was all the hurry a bout?”

“You.”

“Why should Vienna be worried about me?”

“To be honest, I don’t really know. Like the Light Brigade, I never question my orders, however apparently fatuous.”

“I see.”

“I was once sent all the way from Athens to meet a certain lady at the Gare du Nord, and escort her across Paris to the Gare de Lyon. It transpired that my chiefs thought I was in Paris at the time. And sent me a top-secret signal, which was, of course, forwarded to me in Ankara, and reforwarded to me in Athens. I caught the Qantas jet to Rome and reached the Gare du Nord with five minutes to spare. It was a waste of effort. The lady had died at Calais.”

“What of?” asked Laura politely.

“Old age.”

“I see. What an exciting life you must lead. Now. I wonder if you could answer my question. Why did you have to come all this way, in such a hurry?”

“You really want to know? Then I suggest you pour yourself a drink – I’d do it for you, but I expect you know exactly how you like it. And while you’re at it a small one for me. Not quite as small as that. Thank you. The truth is, you’re in rather a delicate situation.”

I’m afraid I can’t see it.”

“Well, I expect you haven’t really tried yet.”

Laura gave him a freezing look, but the effort was wasted. He was engrossed in extracting ice cubes for his own whisky.

“Humbold,” said Fiennes, having arranged his drink to his satisfaction, “is three-quarters of a great man. He’s got patience, drive, and imagination. He’s a good organizer. And he’s ruthless. The Austrian government think they sent him out here to get rid of him. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Humbold didn’t arrange the whole thing. Lienz is an ideal base for an unscrupulous man. For months at a time it’s very difficult to get at – particularly if the Italian border’s shut. Accessibility. That’s one of the drawbacks of your up-and-coming dictator. Before he’s really got underway with his dictating, some interfering person from higher up comes along and calls time.”

“What could he do?”

“Ultimately, you mean. I don’t think anyone knows that for sure. If he gets the temperature high enough, I suppose he could move in and liberate the South Tyrol – join it to Lienz – declare an independent state.”

“He couldn’t do that.”

“Who’d stop him?”

“Italy – Austria – no, Italy.”

“Make your mind up. If Italy moved against him they’d have Austria to cope with. And not only Austria. Germany as well. There are a lot of Nazis in the Tiroler Boden Bund.”

“But – an independent state – it’d be much too small.”

“No smaller than Albania. Bigger than Luxembourg or Liechtenstein.”

“I don’t believe the UN would allow it.”

“You mustn’t make me laugh,” said Fiennes. “I’ve got a weak heart. Why should the Afro-Asian bloc countries stop the Tyrolese doing what they’re doing themselves? Self-determination! Down with the stinking colonialists from Vienna! The UN wouldn’t stop them. Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t. It’d be against Rule One in the United Nations Charter. Never interfere with a fait accompli.”

“Even if he wanted to do it, how could he possibly?”

“Ah! Now you’re asking. I don’t know the answer to that. But it’s wonderful what you can do when you get people excited enough.”

“He hasn’t got an army.”

“He’s got what he calls a Security Force. It’s a mixture of police and reservists. And they’ve got tanks and artillery. They could take over the South Tyrol like picking an apple. They’d only have a handful of Italian police to deal with. And once they’re in, with three-quarters of the population backing them, I don’t see who’s going to get them out again. Do you?”

Laura said nothing. She was seeing the face of the frightened little Italian in the grip of the three bullies. It wasn’t going to be much fun for the Italian minority in the Tyrol if Humbold really was planning a private Anschluss.