Airs Above the Ground (23 page)

Then his muzzle had dropped softly into my hand
and I was caressing his ears and telling Timothy across him what the arrangements were – including those for Mr Lee Elliott – for the coming night.

I didn’t add what was very much in the forefront of my own mind regarding Mr Lee Elliott – which was that, if Timothy and Lewis and I were the only occupants of the central part of the castle, at least tonight Mr Elliott would be able to prowl into my bedroom without any fear of discovery.

I girdid up my Lions & fled the Seen.
Artemus Ward:
A Visit to Brigham Young

I must have been asleep when at last he came.

After the usual pattern of Continental hotels, my room had double doors where the bedroom, originally very large, had been reduced in size so that a bathroom could be added between it and the main corridor. I never heard the opening and closing of the outer door, but when the inner door of the room opened I was, it seemed, instantly awake.

The room was dark; the heavy curtains drawn close across the window and the turret embrasure completely shut out the moonlight. I heard the door close softly behind him, then he hesitated, presumably getting his bearings. He didn’t feel for a light switch, and he must have been able to see something, for I heard the ancient floorboards creak as he approached the bed.

I said sleepily: ‘Darling, over here,’ and turned, groping for the bed-side light.

The sound stopped abruptly.

‘Lewis?’ I said. My hand had just found the switch.

A thin pencil of light from a small pocket torch shot out to dazzle me. It caught me full in the eyes. A swift whisper came: ‘Keep still. Take your hand off that switch.’ But even as he spoke, instinctively, I had pressed the switch and the light came on.

It wasn’t Lewis. Standing about eight feet away from the foot of my bed was Sandor Balog, with the torch gripped in his hand.

‘What are you doing here? Who are you looking for?’

Shock and fright made me speak loudly and shrilly. He had stopped exactly where he was, no doubt sensing that if he had moved a single step, fright would have got the better of me and I would have screamed. Now he thrust the torch back into his pocket. ‘Keep quiet, will you? Keep your voice down, and if —’

I said furiously: ‘Get out of here! Get out at once! Do you hear me? Get out of my room immediately!’ And I rolled quickly over to reach for the bed-side telephone.

And now he did move. In two swift strides he was beside the bed, and his left hand shot out to grip my wrist just before I could touch the receiver. It was the second time that evening that I’d felt the strength of those hands, and this time the grip was both violent and cruel.

‘Stop that, I tell you!’ He wrenched my arm brutally aside, and flung me back bodily against the pillows.

I screamed then, with all my strength. I think I screamed Lewis’s name, as I tried to throw myself out the farther side of the bed away from Sandor, but he pounced again, grabbing my flying arm once more with that brutal hand, and wrenched me back on to the
pillows, and as I opened my mouth to scream again he hit me hard with his other hand across the mouth.

The blow slammed me hard back against the head of the bed. As my head and body were driven back, he hit me again. I don’t think I fought any more; I hardly remember. In any case it would have been futile. The next few moments were a daze of shock, fear and pain, in which, abandoning the attempt to call out or run for help I cowered back against the pillows trying, uselessly enough, to protect my face with my free hand. I’m not even sure if he hit me again. I think he did, but eventually when he saw that I was cowed and quiet he dropped the vicious grip on my arm and moved away from me, back to the foot of the bed.

I put both hands to my bruised face, and tried to stop my body trembling.

‘Look at me.’

I didn’t move.

His voice altered. ‘Look at me.’

Slowly, as if by doing so I would tear away the skin from my cheeks, I pulled away my hands. I looked at him. He was standing now at the foot of the bed, just at the edge of the pool of light cast by the bed-side lamp, but I knew that I was still well within reach of that lightning athlete’s pounce of his; and even without that I couldn’t have hoped to run out of range of the gun which he now held in his right hand.

The gun shifted fractionally. ‘You see this?’

I didn’t speak. I was biting my lips together to stop them shaking, but he could see that I could see it.

He said: ‘You’ve just seen how much use it is to
scream in a place like this. There are two doors to this room, and the walls are half a metre thick, I should think, and in any case there’s only that boy here, isn’t there, the other side of the corridor, and quite a long way away? He’ll be sleeping like a baby . . . but if you did manage to wake him, madame, that would be too bad for him. Do you understand?’

I understood very well. This time I nodded.

‘All right . . . and if you try to touch that telephone again it will also be too bad for you.’

‘What do you want?’ I had meant it to sound furious, but my voice came out in a sort of thin whisper, and I cleared my throat and tried again. It still didn’t sound like my own voice at all, and I saw him smile. At the smile, some tiny seed of anger stirred somewhere inside me, sending a flickering thread of warmth through the cold and the fear.

‘You were expecting someone, weren’t you?’ The smile grew. ‘Or do you welcome all comers to your room, madame?’ He lounged against the foot of the bed, holding the pistol carelessly, his look at once contemptuous and appraising. Deep inside me the little flame caught and began to burn. I said, and was pleased to hear how steady and cold my voice sounded: ‘You can see how much I welcomed you.’

‘Ah, yes, the virtuous lady. You thought the husband had managed to get here after all, yes?’

So the first remark had been no more than a thug’s routine insult. He contrived in some way to make the second sound equally offensive, and I managed to wonder fleetingly why any normal woman hates to
be called ‘virtuous’. But this was no more than a passing irony; with his mention of my husband, the immediate fears for myself had fled, and I had begun to think.

The thug knew that Lewis had been due. He had discovered that Lewis was delayed. Therefore, apparently, he had broken into my room to tackle me alone . . . Without knowing anything further, I accepted Sandor Balog at this point as the enemy in Lewis’s shadowy assignment, as the centre of the circus ‘mystery’. No doubt I should know soon enough if he had come to find out from me anything about Lewis . . .

My heart was beating in my throat somewhere. I swallowed, and said, fairly creditably:

‘You didn’t come here to be offensive. What did you come for? What is it to you when my husband is expected?’

‘Nothing, my dear lady, except that perhaps I could not have come . . . like this . . . if he had been here.’

‘How did you know he wasn’t here? If it comes to that, how did you know he was expected? I didn’t tell anyone at the circus.’

A quick shrug of the broad shoulders. He still looked very much the circus athlete. He had, of course, changed from his performer’s outfit, but he was still wearing black – tight dark trousers and a black leather jacket which looked as supple and sleek with muscle as the skin of a wild animal. ‘You don’t imagine I would come up and break into a place like this without finding all about it first, do you? Some of the servants live in the village. They were at the performance, and it was
easy to talk to them afterwards and find out who the guests were. In this part of the world it is not customary for hotels to lock their doors at night, and I imagined that, short-handed as they were, there would be no night porter on duty . . . at any rate, not all night. So there was nothing to do but walk in and look at the register to find your room number – and make sure that he had not come after all.’ That grin again. ‘So don’t try to frighten me, will you, madame, by persuading me your husband’s going to come in and catch me here. And even if he did’ – a brief gesture with the gun – ‘I could deal with him as easily as with you, no?’

‘No, you stupid animal,’ I thought, but I didn’t say it. I tried not to show the immediate relief I was feeling. Whatever he had come for, it was not Lewis, and it was apparent that he had not identified Lewis with Lee Elliott. He could hardly have found that ‘Elliott’ was expected, since I knew that Josef had only been told on his return from the circus, when the village contingent of servants had already left. So, though Balog didn’t know it, Lewis was on his way, and, in place of the bewildered and frightened tourist he presumably imagined my husband to be, he would find himself tangling with a professional at least twice as tough as himself.

I said: ‘All right. You’ve made your point. You’ve frightened me and you’ve hurt me and you’ve made it very clear that I’ve got to do what you tell me. Supposing you tell me what it is? What have you come here for? What do you want?’

‘The saddle,’ he said.

I stared at him. ‘The what?’

‘The saddle. When I saw that brooch affair on you, I never guessed . . . but then Elemer told me about the horse, and said you’d brought the saddle up here, too. Where is it?’

‘I don’t understand. What can you possibly want?’

‘You’re not asked to understand. Just answer me. Where did you put it?’

I kept my eyes on his face. Suddenly I thought I understood only too well, and it took all my self-control not to let them flicker towards the dressing-table drawer where, wrapped in a handkerchief, lay the little pile of ‘jewels’ that I had cut off the harness tonight.

‘It’s in the stable, of course,’ I said, in a tone of what I hoped was surprise. ‘Where else do you think?’

He made a quick movement of impatience, a slight gesture, but one containing so much suppressed violence that I felt myself flinch back against the pillows. ‘That’s not true. I went there first, naturally. Do you think I’m a fool? One of the servants told me the old man still kept a place for horses here, so I went straight there to look. I saw you’d put the horse to graze on the hill, and I thought the tack would be in the stable, but there was no sign of it. Did you bring it up here to tamper with it? Where is it?’

‘Why should I tamper with it? It is in the stable, it’s in the corn bin.’

‘The corn bin? What sort of story’s that? Don’t lie to me, you little fool, or—’

‘Why should I lie to you? All I want is to get you out of here as soon as possible. I don’t know what you want
with the saddle and I don’t care, and I’m not stupid enough to fight you over it when it’s quite obvious I can’t win. It’s perfectly true I put the thing in the corn bin. There are rats in that stable – I saw traces of them, and I didn’t want the saddle left out and damaged in the night. In case you didn’t know, corn bins are usually made of metal, simply to keep the rats away from the grain. You’ll find the saddle in the bin beside the door to the coach-house.’ I had been holding the bedclothes up above my breast, and now I pulled them closer round me with what I hoped was a gesture of dismissive dignity. ‘And now will you please get the hell out of here?’

But he didn’t move. There was the now familiar gesture with the pistol. ‘Get up and get dressed.’

‘
What?
’

‘You heard me. Hurry up.’

‘Why should I? What are you talking about? What are you going to do?’

‘You’re coming with me.’

I was still clutching the bedclothes tightly under my chin, but I could feel the dignity slipping from me. I felt myself begin to tremble again. ‘But I – I’ve told you the truth. What reason would I have to lie? I tell you, you’ll find the thing in the corn bin. Why can’t you just go down there and take it and go away?’

Again that impatient movement that was a threat. ‘Do you think I’m going to walk out and leave you here to raise the place? Now come along, don’t argue with me. Do as I say and get out of that bed.’ He gestured
with the gun again towards the side of the bed away from the telephone and away from the door.

There seemed to be nothing for it. Slowly I pushed back the bedclothes and got out on to the floor. My nightdress was double nylon, but I felt naked. I remember that the feeling was not so much one of shame, as of sheer helplessness, the feeling that must have driven the first naked man to fashion weapons for himself. It is possible that if it had been I who held the gun I should have felt fully clothed.

I picked up my clothes. ‘I’ll dress in the bathroom.’

‘You’ll dress here.’

‘But I wouldn’t be able to—’

‘Damn you, don’t argue. Get dressed. I’m in a hurry.’

Despising myself for the pleading note in my voice, I said: ‘All right, if you’ll please look the other way—’

‘Don’t be a fool. I’m not going to rape you. All women are the same, they think you’ve got nothing else to think about. Now get on with it and hurry up.’

I did the best I could on the principle that what we don’t see isn’t there. I turned my back on him, so I couldn’t see whether he watched me or not, but I knew that he did. If he had moved I’m not sure what I would have done, pistol or no pistol. But he didn’t stir. He stood stone still, about three yards from me, and I could feel his eyes all over me as I got clumsily, fumblingly into my clothes, and tried to fasten them with shaking fingers. I didn’t put on the dress I had worn for dinner; he let me take slacks and sweater and an anorak from the wardrobe. I dragged the things on
and zipped them up. The warm hug of the woollen clothing was marvellously comforting, and as I pulled on my shoes I was brave enough to tackle him again.

‘And when you’ve got the saddle, what then?’

‘Then we shall see.’

I stood up. My physical fear of him had been so immediate and overpowering that I had not been able to think clearly about the situation, but now, sharply faced with the prospect of leaving the lighted room that belonged to me, and going out with this brutal thug into the dark, my mind had begun to race, ticking the facts up and adding them as neatly as a cash register.

The stallion’s saddle, covered with ‘jewels’: Sandor’s solicitude for that saddle (I had been right in thinking he was not the type to run errands for Annalisa): the talk of ‘loose stitching’, yes, and the brooch which had hung loosely, and which Elemer had pulled off for me: Sandor’s eye on it . . . he had presumably tackled Elemer immediately, only to hear that the whole harness, jewels and all, had gone up to the Schloss Zechstein. And now, Sandor asking me if I had ‘tampered with it’. Yes, it all came together, with the other facts which (as yet) he didn’t know – the Count’s interest in my brooch, and the portrait of the Countess Maria wearing a sapphire that was in the museum at Munich . . .