The Reichenbach Problem, Page 29

  He was perhaps considering denying that anything at all had taken place. But he was also an honest fellow and such untruths were simply beyond him. Moreover, I suspect that my own honesty perhaps offered him the chance to unburden something of the great troubles through which he had struggled these many years and, most particularly, these past few days. Who knows? Perhaps the fact that I was wearing a Franciscan habit had something to do with it also. For all he knew, this was my customary clothing and I had merely spent the past week in mufti for my own reasons.

  “It has not been… too ‘charming’ these recent days. But I love my parents and my parents love me. We shall get along. Eva has been wonderful.”

  “I do not doubt that she has. But would you consider leaving here, perhaps? Living somewhere where you are less… exposed, I suppose is the word?”

  “At risk of word getting out? I long ago realized that I can never escape this place. And anyway, it is my home and I like my work. If people find out – and maybe they already have, which is why I am not included in the gossip and rumour circle – they shall have to concern themselves with their own worries. I belong here.”

  “If you want, I can see what I can do. Perhaps we may find a passage for you to England? That is all I am saying.”

  “I do not want charity.”

  He was a very stubborn, very human young man. And brave. I did not know whether it was the case here in Switzerland, but in Britain to practise as a homosexual was a criminal offence, as my friend and Lippincott colleague Oscar Wilde knew only too well.

  “But you have not come here to talk about me, surely, doctor? The last I heard you had left to explore further afield for a day or two. Which was why your cases are still in your room. I assumed you would return shortly. And, of course, pay your bill.”

  “I thought nobody talked to you in the village?”

  “I take it that you are innocent of all that they are saying about you?”

  “Of course.”

  “I did not doubt it.” For the first time for quite a while, he smiled. I was grateful for that.

  I told him that I had been hounded and that someone was intent on driving me out of the area. This had led me to suspect that I was closer to the truth than I knew. I told him how I had decided to unravel the mystery; that the Franciscan habit was a disguise, and that he should hold on to any telegrams addressed to someone called Ignatius.

  He readily agreed to assist and promised me that my secret would be safe with him.

  “I am sure it will be. It would seem that you are very good at keeping secrets.”

  I thanked Anton for his help; we smiled and shook hands.

  Outside, I saw the boy from the telegram office. My initial thought was that he was bearing Flemyng’s response to my wire. However, it was far too soon for that to have arrived. This was confirmed when he passed the hotel and continued along the main street. I do not know what came over me, but I purposed to follow him and discover where that particular missive was headed.

  He approached and went into the café.

  I took a seat upon a low wall along the street a short way. I began filling my pipe.

  The boy departed a minute or so later and disappeared back towards the telegraph office.

  I began to light my pipe. After a few puffs, Francesca appeared. This was something of a surprise, as I had assumed the wire had been for Holloway. Why I had thought that he had taken up residence at the café, I do not know. Nevertheless, Francesca was an interesting enough development, for all that.

  Sitting upon that low wall and puffing, seemingly absentmindedly, I followed her out of the corner of my eye. I was about to drop off my perch and follow when, to my surprise, I noted she entered the Hotel Eiger. As there was no need to move, my position affording me the greatest advantage in terms of surveillance, I remained where I was, puffing away.

  After a short while, Francesca appeared upon Frau von Denecker’s balcony, talking animatedly. She remained there only for an instant, however. Presumably called, she looked startled and moved back inside quickly. Was she afraid of being seen by someone?

  If so, it was too late: I was that someone.

  It was only then that it occurred to me. I had been in disguise and had sent my telegram under the pseudonym of Ignatius. However, the recipient’s name, Flemyng, would be well known to whomever it was intercepting my messages. The wire delivered by the telegraph boy into Francesca’s hand at the café was most probably a note of the message I had sent to London. If that were the case, at the very least it proved to them that someone, if not myself, was still in the village. Someone who was still asking questions of Whitehall.

  I made a strategic withdrawal to my hayloft.

  What I had just seen on the balcony, and what I had concluded concerning the wire, told me that I could not wait a moment longer. Plans were very likely being made. Plans that required that these two otherwise unconnected and up until now unconnectable people had to take necessary risks. Risks such as talking together, being seen together. Why did I think that? Because possibly, up until now, they had felt safe. They had not had any urgency in their transactions. But I had disappeared, and with my disappearance came their loss of control over me. Then came the wire asking about Brown. Further possibilities began to present themselves to my mind. They forced themselves more and more firmly into the shape of a realization. A conclusion, even. Of sorts.

  I felt sure that if I were to deliberate on all of this for a little longer, this would be my “dog that barked in the night” moment.

  I climbed out of my disguise and back into my own clothes, thinking all the while.

  Why were these two people connected?

  The aristocratic Austro-German and the Italian waitress?

  They had to be connected.

  They were connected, for I had seen Francesca on Frau von Denecker’s balcony. Frau von Denecker would never have concerned herself with petty matters. Matters of state were her stock-in-trade; they were her raison d’être.

  But why here, the middle of nowhere? What were matters of great moment doing tucked away in a tiny unconsidered corner of Europe?

  Precisely because it was the middle of nowhere; like a doctor in a haystack.

  Here, in the middle of nowhere, where there weren’t even policemen permanently stationed, anything could happen. Because everyone knew that nothing happened. Peace had reigned supreme in this backwater for centuries. People falling down mountains may be remarkable, but since it was well known that nothing happened here, the locals would just shrug, turn their backs and declare it was an accident. Since only accidents happened around here. And then they would get on with their daily round, quickly forgetting all about it.

  It occurred to me at that moment that the whole village was the dog that did not bark in the night.

  EIGHTEEN

  Father Vernon returned a while later. He was quite agitated. Absorbed in my own thoughts, I failed initially to note that he was carrying my own knapsack plus my hat, gloves and ice axe. Before he could speak, I began to air my own concerns.

  “Father, what do you know of Francesca?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The man alone in a foreign country is sadly prone to many temptations. There is, as it were, a valve inside his head, which the hormones that trigger the sexual drive pass through. They consequently swill around, increasing the sexual urge until their victim either conquers them, or succumbs. People as dry as a stick, like Brown, for example, I believe, are no less prone to this irresistible drive within them than anyone else.”

  “I have often believed this myself. Why, for example, did Samson, despite all the evidence, repeatedly allow Delilah to trick him?”

  “As anyone who has been in a railway accident would confirm, even if one is only travelling at twenty miles an hour, when the impact comes, one cannot prevent oneself lurching forward.”

  “This temptation we Franciscans learn to struggle with on a daily basis… hourly. Mi
nute by minute sometimes.”

  “And do you win?”

  “I have to.”

  “A man who is not called like you does not have such strength of purpose. If a woman is giving off signals that she is interested in him, and he does not suspect her motives, then he is unable to resist her.”

  “Someone seduced him? It is all right, my son, there is no need to be shy. I am a man of the world. When we Franciscans take the habit, we do it because we are realistic about the world and all its fallenness. Our novitiate is all about finding out whether we live in a make-believe world or a real one. If it is make-believe we may not enter the Order. A friar who existed on make-believe would slowly but surely be driven mad, or worse, to violence.”

  “Then you understand perfectly.”

  “I understand perhaps more perfectly than you may give me credit for. It is Francesca of whom we speak, yes?”

  I barely dared admit it to myself, but yes, it was that lady I was accusing. Much to my regret and torment. I nodded. “She possibly plied him with absinthe. She works in a café, after all. Then took him up the hill. Even if she had no more absinthe to hand, she might wear him out upon the high trails until he became thirsty. Then he might drink from a mountain stream. Absinthe, if water is added quickly enough, inebriates a man again. With an unusually high alcohol content, it is possible. Especially since it also contains wormwood.”

  “Is that not a poison? He was poisoned and thrown over the cliff?”

  “Possibly. This is what I believe we are on the verge of finding out.”

  “But why? I mean… sexual attraction I understand, but I cannot see Francesca… No… I cannot see her, or even her husband Hugo, reaching as far as murder. For whatever motive.”

  “You do not see the real person. Just suppose that Brown was an intelligence agent, pursuing her for some reason…”

  “What reason?”

  “Imagine, if you will, Francesca’s ‘gift’ in the wrong hands. Her allure and her skill in divination. Or rather, her ability to convince others that she can divine things. She befriends young men with connections to the governments of their countries, and she seduces them. Not physically, necessarily, but with her supposedly supernatural powers. In the course of these interviews, perhaps she does a reading for them? The more she intuitively tells them about themselves, the more they fall in love with her, the more they believe she really can see through into their deepest secrets. The more they believe this, the more they might reveal the true secrets of themselves, and with these reveal whatever work they are undertaking for their governments. For an enemy power, she would be a very potent weapon indeed, do you not agree?”

  “Well, yes, but… this is so far-fetched, my son. I cannot imagine for one moment…”

  “Neither can I. But look at the facts. I have just recently seen her in interview with Frau von Denecker. Have you ever noticed any such association?”

  “No, I confess that I have not.”

  “Just imagine, therefore, if Frau von Denecker were actually her contact. Perhaps they are both working for the Austrian government. They are preparing for another war, maybe. For some reason, they have had to lie low here in Switzerland for a time. Take cover and regroup. But in due course, Francesca could be brought back out of storage and encouraged to continue operations in some European capital city or other.”

  “Francesca!” Father Vernon exclaimed.

  “Yes, that is who…” I began, but he interrupted me.

  “No – don’t you see? Like Francesco. St Francis, the little French man? Francesca: ‘The French girl’. Frau von Denecker is a Catholic, is she not? It is her little Franciscan joke.”

  “You mean Francesca is a false name? An assumed identity?”

  “Why not? Perhaps she is French really. I always thought she had an unusual Italian accent. This would explain it. She maybe had a role, as you described, in Paris. Not the Franco-Prussian war perhaps. She would have been too young. But in the military, diplomatic, political intrigues that have gone on ever since. Maybe something went wrong, she had to be taken out of there… found somewhere else to go for safety. For the time being.”

  “Yes, Switzerland.”

  “No – Italy. She came here with her husband from Italy.”

  “Which is why she was given the name. French girl living in Italy.”

  “Which is why she was given a husband.”

  “You suggest that even her marriage was arranged to conceal her true identity and purpose?”

  “I do not know what I mean any more. The enormity of it. I cannot take it all in.”

  “But perhaps Hugo, rather than a convenience, became a liability. There was talk that he violently assaulted a fellow in Italy who was making unseemly advances towards Francesca, which is why they had to move here.”

  “Somewhere quiet and out of the way?”

  “Switzerland. Its very peacefulness and isolation is perfect for hiding peoples’ money… and people themselves.”

  “And now they bide their time, waiting for whatever new development on the world stage will require their secret weapon to be brought back into active service in some enemy city somewhere…”

  We sat in silence for a long while, awash with many a thought. The extraordinary implications of what we had discussed grew larger and ever more monstrous by the second.

  “With her Italian background as the perfect disguise, she did not just act the part. She lived it,” I said, at length.

  “But why did she kill Brown?”

  “I don’t know. Was he on the trail of Frau von Denecker? Or maybe on her trail? Or maybe they fell in love and she found out who he was? Or maybe they fell in love and he got too close to her, became a risk, and had to be excised. She was a woman whose whole life was service to her masters, so much so that she would marry in order to conceal her identity. Someone who would think nothing of moving countries to escape justice? This is what we need to smoke out. Their cosy nest has been disturbed, and we need to keep prodding them now, until they make a mistake.”

  “The thing is, if they killed Brown because he came too close, why would they not want to kill you, too?”

  My eyes widened. He continued.

  “Surely they would reason that the mind that could come up with the sort of plots it comes up with would begin working these sorts of things out eventually.”

  I put that alarming thought out of my mind. “Something still puzzles me, though. Why would she set about planting clues? No matter how hard I try, if she were a professional, someone who would even marry a boor and a bully to protect her identity, I cannot believe she would expose herself in such a way. So then, they must have been planted by someone else.”

  It was clear that I was becoming befuddled once more. I would be misleading myself again over these two women, if I wasn’t careful. Time to review matters. I related to the friar my deliberations, some days previously, when I had first properly tried to wrestle with this whole affair. I related to him the simple equation I had put before myself in order to try to make sense of the business. I told him that I had put the basic elements to myself as propositions, like van Engels’s Euclid:

  A man is killed.

  There seems to be evidence that it was no accident.

  A person or persons unknown have connected my presence with it.

  Their behaviour implies that they are afraid of something being discovered.

  I, for some reason, am in a position to solve the case.

  It all still appeared a perfectly sound hypothesis upon which to base my enquiries. However, reviewing it all with Father Vernon in the light of my current situation, I now realized that the last postulate was faulty. I had used the expression “the case” and had foundered upon that false principle ever since. There was no such thing as a “case”. Singular. Were there perhaps two cases? At the very least. On the one hand, there was Brown’s demise, and on the other there was… what…? Matters related to the sad death of the man. Possibly some
elements directly connected with it. But most importantly, not everything that had occurred in these past few days could necessarily be ascribed exclusively to it. There was other mischief going on. And it was that realization which now exercised me. Someone had used the occasion of the tragedy in order to play their own sordid games with me.

  “Well, all of this is, I am afraid, now academic,” Father Vernon suddenly declared, remembering the true purpose of his visit.

  “Why?”

  “I was talking to one of the influential folk in the village after lunch, as I said I would, to settle the rumours about you. He told me something that has disturbed me a great deal.”

  “What?”

  “Essentially, my friend, it is too late. The village worthies sent word to the police in the valley. They are already on their way and may well arrest you on arrival.”

  “So be it. I am sure that I can justify everything I have done to their satisfaction.”

  “No, you do not understand. It is beyond your justifying yourself to them now. They are coming for you on suspicion of Brown’s murder.”

  “But why?” I had already begun to suspect the answer.

  “It appears that your Mr Holloway has approached one or two folk here with some fairly substantial theories. These make it clear that, at the very least, you need to be detained.”

  “Well, the village worthies might care to check Holloway’s ‘facts’ with me before they go chasing wild geese and unnecessarily involving the law. Holloway is my alibi. Certainly at the time of Brown’s death.”

  “Not according to Holloway. It appears that while he could vouch for your presence at certain times of the day, he could not vouch that you had been inseparable the whole day and night. The fact remains, doctor, that you are at very real risk of being arrested for murder.”