“That would be most kind.”
John had retreated into the hallway, and the cat had backed him into a corner. Crouched, her tail twitching, she appeared to be on the verge of leaping. Much as the sight entertained me, I was anxious to get Müller on his way. I scooped Clara up and put her in the parlor while John made his getaway.
The back door opened onto a walled garden deep in snow. Paths had been shoveled to the gate and to a chalet-style bird feeder, obviously Müller’s own work, which hung from a pine tree. Its branches were strung with suet, bits of fruit and berries, and other scraps.
Müller hovered in the doorway, one foot in the house and one foot out. “I must make sure I turned off the fire under the glue pot.”
“It’s off,” John said firmly. “I watched you do it.”
“Fresh water for the cat—”
“I watched you do that, too.”
The old man’s eyes wandered over the dead garden. “I meant to take the Weihnachtsblumen to the grave today,” he said slowly. “Now there will be no remembrance for my poor friend.”
John was hopping from one foot to the other, whether from cold or the same formless sense of anxiety that nagged me, I did not know. “With all respect, Herr Müller—”
I slipped my arm through the old man’s. “I’ll take the flowers,” I said. “I meant to do it anyway.”
“You would be so good? For her as well—poor Amelie?”
“Of course.”
“Not flowers, they would only freeze. Green boughs as for Weihnachten—berries and wreaths—”
“I know,” I said gently. “They still do that in my home town in Minnesota. I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”
That promise got him out of the house. While he was locking the door, he told me how to find the cemetery. “The church is abandoned now, no one goes there except to tend the graves, and there are few left who care; Anton’s grave will be the last, I think. For generations, the family of his wife was buried there, so he was given permission to rest alongside her; but one day the mountain will crumble and cover church and graves alike. The fools have cut away the trees for their sports, tampering with God’s work—they don’t know or care….”
Between us, we urged him down the path to the gate and through it, into a roofless corridor of an alleyway lined for its entire length with high fences. These people liked their privacy. I could see that John approved of it, too. He wrestled the suitcase from Müller and put it in the back of his car.
Impulsively I threw my arm around the old man and gave him a hearty smack on the cheek. “Happy Christmas, Herr Müller.”
“The blessings of the good God to you, Fräulein.” I didn’t kiss John. District inspectors don’t get fresh with their superiors.
That was one load off my mind. Grudgingly I gave John credit, not only for seeing the obvious without explanation, but for caring enough about the old boy to get him to a safe place. I’d have given him even more credit if I had not known he had an ulterior motive. Why he thought he could find a clue the searchers had overlooked, I could not imagine; but if anyone could, it was John. His natural bent toward chicanery had been developed by years of experience.
The lower end of the alley debouched into the Marktplatz. When I reached the hotel, I found Tony lying in wait. “Where the hell did you go?” he demanded.
“Out,” I said shortly. “What’s the matter, couldn’t you get a room?”
“I got a room all right.” He took my arm and pulled me aside. People passed us, going in and out and giving us curious looks as we stood nose to nose glaring at each other. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Tony snapped.
“Tell you what?”
“Anything. Something. That Friedl was the new owner—”
“You know Friedl?”
“Well, sure. We all…” He grinned self-consciously. “Not me, of course.”
“Of course. I’m sure she would have worked all of you in if she had had time.”
Once again I had been caught with my pants down, figuratively speaking. (Obviously the metaphor applied more accurately to some of my former colleagues.) I had only been gone for half an hour; it was symptomatic of the luck I was having that Tony should have latched onto Friedl during that brief interval. Hoping against hope she hadn’t spilled her guts, I murmured, “I didn’t think you’d be interested, Tony.”
“Not interested in somebody trying to kill you?”
“Oh, Schiesse,” I said. “What did she tell you?”
A Bavarian teenager trying to stash his skis in the rack beside the door narrowly missed decapitating Tony. Bawling the boy out relieved some of Tony’s spleen; he turned back to me and said in a milder voice, “Suppose we have a beer and a little heart-to-heart talk. Friedl is anxious to see you, but not as anxious as I am.”
The bar was crowded; we wedged ourselves into a quiet corner, mugs in hand. Sunset reddened the slopes of the Zugspitze and draped the sky with gaudy cloths of scarlet and purple, but Tony wasn’t moved by the beauty of the scenery. I let him talk. I wanted to find out how much he knew before I contributed to his store of information. That was fine with Tony, who seldom got a chance to conduct a monologue when he was with me. As I recall, the lecture went something like this:
“I don’t mind participating in these mad extravaganzas of yours. Not at all. I’m always happy to give a friend the benefit of my superior expertise. A lesser man might resent being shoved into a mess like the one you’ve obviously got yourself into without some warning; I mean, the words ‘sitting duck’ come to mind. Or possibly ‘decoy.’ What I really resent is the insult to my intelligence. I knew something was going on. You and Schmidt and that—that effeminate character, with your heads together…who is that guy? Never mind, don’t tell me, I’m not finished. You might at least warn a person that he’s putting his head in a noose instead of pretending this was just a social visit—”
“Now wait a minute,” I said, indignantly. “I didn’t invite you to come. It was your idea.”
“You could have warned me off.”
“I could have,” I admitted. “At the time I didn’t know—”
“Is that the truth?” Tony scowled at me over his mug. “Nobody tried to mug you, murder you, or burglarize you until the day before yesterday?”
I was glad he had phrased the question that way, because I could look him straight in the eye and say firmly, “No. Nobody.” Not that I wouldn’t have looked him straight in the eye and denied anything he accused me of.
“Oh. All the same, you might have mentioned it.”
“It could have been an accident. Some drunken hunter.”
“Yeah. But Friedl seems to think not. Are you sure you never got a letter or a package or anything from her husband?”
I looked him straight in the eye and said firmly, “No. I mean, yes. How about you?”
“Me? Why would I…” Tony considered the question. “No reason why it shouldn’t have been me, come to think about it. According to Friedl, the object in question is a work of art—she didn’t seem to know more than that. I met Hoffman last year, chatted with him…Hey. What about the rest of them—Dieter, Elise, Rosa…”
“I’m sure he liked you best,” I said.
“I might not have taken notice of a letter,” Tony muttered. “We get a lot of crank mail.”
“I know.”
“Just the week before I left, there were half a dozen or so. People seem to get weirder during the holiday seasons…. An appeal for funds from that Psychic Archaeology crowd in Virginia, a curriculum vitae from some loony who thinks he should be appointed to the staff because he’s the reincarnation of Herodotus, a copy of that photo of Sophia Schliemann—Hey, watch out!”