The Salzburg Connection Page 18

  The solid block of buildings stared back at him from across the street. His eyes swept over the sameness of its windows, over the small strips of balcony rising in exact tiers like shallow drawers half opened in a giant’s dressing chest. Each had its planters of green shrubs, pots of frost-wilted geraniums or newly added chrysanthemums, reminders—like the white chairs and tables—of the city dweller’s perpetual schizophrenia: the longing to be in the country, with an open door and garden, while living in the middle of a metropolis.

  On impulse, he opened the window wide and looked down on Sixty-ninth Street, eight floors below him. All was late-afternoon confusion: cars parked, cars moving, cruising taxis, an ambulance wailing its way through the cross-currents of traffic. From the avenues at either end of this block came the steady roar of a busy city, a constant surge of sound. Anyone who wanted to enjoy his miniature terrace must not only keep his eyelids closed, but develop a system of ear flaps too. Then Mathison saw Lamberti and Nield emerge from the service entry and cross the street to a panel truck parked between a battered Chevrolet and a polished Jaguar. New York, New York... They looked completely authentic, even to the way they walked. And the expert method by which Lamberti eased the light truck out of a tight squeeze into the stream of west-bound traffic seemed part of his daily stint. ACME RADIO QUICK SERVICE was the legend that now was putting on a spurt of speed to make the light at the corner.

  Certainly quick, Mathison thought, as he closed the window again. The sky was pale blue greyed over with a fine film of smog, clear of clouds, no storm blowing in from the Atlantic, no cut-throat wind sweeping from Canada. Good flying weather, at least. He headed for the bathroom for a shave and shower, pulling off his sweater and open-necked shirt as he crossed the hall. He was back to thinking about the Acme Quick Service boys. But he reflected as he dried himself vigorously, was all that setup actually necessary? A purely civilian remark, they’d possibly think if they could hear him. They weren’t the type to waste time and energy, not even in answering that kind of question.

  He weighed himself on the scales. One hundred and sixty-eight pounds, just holding the line. His muscles were firm, thank heaven, and his hair still thick, his colour healthy. That was the trouble with being a lawyer: there was a tendency to become desk-bound. He’d make a point of getting some exercise in Zürich, some fresh air free of smog. Would there be any time off at all for some mild mountain climbing? Usually there was never much time off for anything—office work was a slave driver. But after he was dressed in tweed jacket and flannels, he repacked his bag, adding a heavy sweater and socks, thick walking shoes, and a wind-breaker. With his two business suits and good shirts waiting for him in Zürich, he was all set for anything.

  One last look around the apartment... He picked a couple of books for company (one was The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the other The Last Battle). Then he wrote a cheque and a quick note of directions for Mrs. Pyokari. (“Keep some food in the refrigerator,” he added as a postscript, remembering the emptiness that had welcomed him home on Tuesday night.) And that was everything. Except for the unanswered correspondence that had piled upon his desk in the last week. Two invitations to weddings of people he scarcely knew, a suggestion for a week-end at Aspen this winter from a girl he had never liked in the first place, several cocktail notes from acquaintances who did their entertaining in all-at-once style, the usual summonses to black-tie dinners from hostesses eager to find the unattached man to balance the extra woman at their tables. But there were also the first-of-the-month bills, two letters from friends, and a list of engagements he had already made. These he slipped into an envelope addressed to his secretary down at Strong, Muller, Nicolson and Hodge, along with a quickly scribbled note. She could deal with them. And as for the rest—The bachelor syndrome, he thought gloomily. Well, there was one way to get rid of that before you were properly hooked. He swept the pile of cards off his desk into the trash basket.

  11

  The light breeze whipped the blue lake into a dance of broken ripples that sparkled in the early-morning sun. A few die-hard yachtsmen had sneaked down to the little boat anchorages strung along Zürich’s left shore, and were spending their breakfast hour in a quick sail. Bill Mathison unpacked, watching them from his hotel room, which overlooked Uto Quai’s wide promenade with its constant succession of small harbours and swimming pools, and quite frankly envied them. They were expert in the way they’d sense the change in wind, tacking or veering neatly as they kept close to this side of the lake. Few careened dangerously, even as the breeze quickened, or came to an ignominious jobble with sails flapping helplessly. Fine fun, he thought, just ten minutes away from your office.

  And that reminded him to call the Zürich branch of Newhart and Morris as soon as he finished breakfast. Perhaps he’d even wait until nine o’clock and give Miss Freytag the chance to be fully established at her well-run desk before he let her know that he had returned from New York. Come to think of it, his New York visit was all she did know about his recent movements; when he had left Zürich for Salzburg last Sunday, there hadn’t been time between his quick decision and his flight out from the Kloten airfield to leave any message with anyone. Not that he had wanted to leave any message; not that he needed to, either. Remembering the cool restraint of Miss Freytag’s welcome last week, he had felt he would never be missed if he didn’t show up on Monday morning. Possibly Yates had been to blame for the polite-freeze treatment, although Yates had been genial enough to Mathison’s face. “Why, Bill, good to see you! Too bad I’m just rushing off.” Hearty handshake, hefty pat on the shoulder, a broad honest beam on a big handsome face. That was Yates, good old warm-hearted, quick-witted Yates. Where was that son of a bitch?

  But by half-past eight, Mathison had shaved and showered and changed his clothes and finished the pot of coffee; and the sailboats had already come back to shore. Perhaps the clouds now swelling over the hills around the lake had a special message for yachtsmen. All offices were open and bustling. It might be time to telephone Miss Freytag.

  She was there. She was so upset that she could hardly speak. Yes, she said in the first series of monosyllables in reply to his questions: had Mr. Newhart called yesterday from New York to let her know he was returning? Was Mrs. Conway arriving later today? Had she found a comfortable hotel for Mrs. Conway? Had she any news of Mr. Yates?

  “Yes.” The dam broke. She was weeping. “Dreadful news,” she said in between her tears. “He is dead. He was—he was—”

  Dead? Yates dead? “I’ll be right around.”

  “I have to go and identify the body. Oh, Mr. Mathison, I just can’t—”

  “I’ll come at once. Wait there!”

  The Newhart and Morris office was only a normal walk of eight minutes from his hotel. Today, Mathison made it in five, cutting away from the lake shore for a couple of blocks until he hit the busy street that ran almost parallel to Uto Quai. There was a short stretch of heavy traffic to be negotiated, and an abrupt rise of wild wind that blew off hats, rattled shutters, tore at awnings, and even broke a window a few steps behind him when a sign swung off its hinges and dashed against the glass. By the time he had reached the small square surrounded by handsome shops and offices, less than two hundred yards from where the window had crashed, the squall had subsided. He chose the staircase to reach the office on the floor above the restrained apothecary shop, whose polished counters had never seen ice-cream soda, hair curlers, or paperbacks in their eighty years of life. Stairs were quicker than elevators for a short haul, just as walking had been quicker than telephoning for a taxi and waiting for it to arrive.

  The office was actually a suite of five rooms spreading in depths to the far-off rear of the building, linked by a narrow corridor. Heads popped discreetly out of opened doors, as his running footsteps were heard on the staircase, and then quickly withdrew like a batch of polite turtles. Miss Freytag was in her small office adjoining Yates’s room—the large front one with its bow window on
a level with the copper-brown tree-tops in the square. Through the open connecting door, he heard the sound of movement and low voices. He glanced inside. Two men had started to examine Yates’s files. Keller’s men, possibly.

  “They are from Urania Street,” Miss Freytag said. She didn’t look at him. She was sitting on the edge of a chair, wearing her coat and hat, purse and gloves clutched ready to leave. A grave-faced man, equally ready to leave, stood behind her. He was obviously an official of some kind, judging by the impersonal glance and bow in Mathison’s direction. Ordinary plain-clothes detective, or one of Gustav Keller’s special security detail? Mathison wondered as he nodded back and then turned to Miss Freytag. She was calm now. Perhaps numb with shock.

  “Miss Freytag,” he said gently, “you don’t have to go anywhere. I’ll attend to this matter. But what happened?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Mathison,” she said in her most precise manner. Her small-boned white face looked up at him briefly. “I must go.” The faded blue eyes flickered away from his.

  “All right. I’ll come with you.”

  “There is no need. This gentleman will—”

  “He can guide both of us. Now let’s call a taxi.”

  “A bus will take us right past the door.”

  “We’ll have a taxi today,” Mathison said, keeping his voice gentle. She rose obediently to telephone for one. He noted with amazement that she ordered a small cab, not the medium or large type that cost progressively more. When Freytag got a grip on herself, it was a good one. “What happened?” he asked again.

  The grave-faced man answered in German.

  Mathison repeated the flat statement in English just to make sure he had got it right. “Yates’s body was found in the lake early this morning, about ten miles south of Zürich?”

  Miss Freytag ignored the question. The man nodded. He understood English, all right, but perhaps he didn’t want to risk his dignity in trying to speak it, for he used German again. “His sailboat was overturned. It had drifted near the shore.”

  “But when did it happen?”

  “Last night. Otherwise, someone would have seen the overturned boat yesterday.”

  That could be true, Mathison thought, remembering the long stretch of Zürich’s suburbs into small towns and villages on either side of the lake. No one would call this area of gentle hills under-populated. There must always be some eyes watching the water. “Was he—” Mathison began, and then stopped, conscious of Miss Freytag. “We had better get downstairs and wait for the taxi,” he said. His question was possibly an unnecessary one anyway; Yates must have been trapped in the overturned boat, if they had both drifted in together. He didn’t argue, either, that she should stay here and let him have the grim task of identifying Yates’s body. She was walking quite determinedly towards the elevator, a tall spare woman in a brown tweed coat with everything—shoes, gloves, purse, felt hat—to match.

  It was the man who had been Yates, now lying inside a refrigerated drawer. Miss Freytag barely flinched, but her white face became almost grey. Mathison nodded to the watchful men who were gathered in the room. “That is Eric Yates,” he said, and took a firm grip on Miss Freytag’s elbow to get her out of there. She was steady enough; it was simply that her feet seemed anchored to the tiled floor, just as her eyes were fixed on Yates’s torn lips.

  Outside, Mathison decided that a walk would be good for both of them. She didn’t speak at all until they had come down through the narrow, twisting streets to the swift-flowing Limmat River that divided the older part of the city in two before it poured itself into the lake. She sighed heavily, looked at Mathison as if she had just become aware of him. “I must get back to the office. Mrs. Conway will soon be there. I must show her every—”

  “First, we’ll have a cup of coffee.” He led her towards a café on the Limmat Quai. “We both need it,” he told her. “Just ten minutes to pull ourselves together.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “I do,” he said firmly. “In fact, I think the doctor prescribes Scotch for both of us.”

  “But I never—”

  “All right. Coffee then. Now come on. This way.” He edged her inside the doorway, found a table in that section of the room. The lower half had its usual quota of journalists and professorial-looking types from the University up on the hill. They were talking quietly, reading papers, playing chess. That partly reassured her.

  “You see, there are women here,” he told her, noticing two others at a corner table.

  The word “women” seemed to distress her slightly. “Yes, ladies do seem to come here,” she said, looking at their tweeds and felt hats with approval. She fell silent, but her eyes were beginning to be interested in her strange surroundings. Mathison watched her quietly. She was more than ever a puzzle. She had obviously suffered when the news of Yates’s death had reached her, but now there was a dignified restraint, almost an impersonal calm. Was she behaving as she felt she should for the lawyer from New York?

  “Do you live in Zürich or in one of the suburbs?” he tried. And that released a small torrent of information. She was delighted to talk about her mother, now eighty-five but really so young at heart, with whom she lived in an apartment near the University. Her father had been a librarian there; he played chess too; he had passed away ten years ago. So now she looked after her mother, and they lived in the city because it was so much quicker to reach home from the office; her mother was confined to their apartment anyway, so a garden would have been useless. All in all, it was a practical arrangement, much less worrying than travelling any distance into a suburb in case—in case she was ever needed very quickly. She enjoyed her work at the Newhart and Morris office. She had a lot of responsibility, which she had tried to face as well as possible.

  “I had a feeling you almost ran the show,” Mathison said.

  That pleased her. But, “Oh, no!” she said, “Mr. Yates worked so hard. He was a wonderful man. Kind, generous...”

  So there she had reached the topic of Yates, bringing it into the placid context of her simple life, his bruised and smashed face receding into pleasanter memories. Mathison relaxed. “He was very good to you and your mother?”

  “Most thoughtful. He always sent her flowers at Christmas.”

  Did it take so little as that to win her loyalty? “I know you must be worried about the possible changes at the office, but I—”

  “Mrs. Conway?” she asked quickly. Yes, that worried her.

  “Mrs. Conway is here only for a short time, simply to report back to Mr. Newhart and keep him informed.”

  “I could have done that. I have always done my best for Newhart and Morris,” she reminded him virtuously.

  “Of course you have. But you seemed so upset on Thursday when you telephoned Mr. Newhart that Yates was missing. He thought a stranger might be able to handle a difficult situation more easily.”

  “I was very upset today, too, when you telephoned me.” Her voice was low but calm. “And yet, you see now how controlled I am. Mr. Newhart could trust me.”

  “But he does. So do I. We all trust you. You are highly capable, and completely honest.”

  She flinched slightly. “I try to be. But—” Her eyes, which had constantly dropped to his chest level or to his shoulder as she talked with him, looked at him frankly. For a brief instant. Then they were staring at something invisible at another table. “This last week has been terrible. I think I knew that something awful was going to happen to poor Mr. Yates.”

  “Why?” he asked sympathetically.

  Her eyes flickered back to his. She seemed to decide something. She sighed and opened her solid leather purse. “I knew that something was wrong when he did not come to collect these. He had said he would pick them up on Monday morning at my house, very early, on his way to the airport.” She pulled out a small black folder and handed it to him. It contained traveller’s cheques. Not many, two hundred dollars’ worth in Eric Yates’s name; enough for a quick busin
ess trip. “Oh, I’m glad to get rid of these,” she said thankfully. “But what will we do with them, Mr. Mathison? We can’t put them back in Mr. Yates’s drawer. The police started their search of the office with his desk, and I didn’t tell them I had the traveller’s cheques. I mean—how could I? You see, I hadn’t told the other policeman—the one who came on Monday morning asking questions about Mr. Yates and his friends in Salzburg. So how could I start telling the police today that I had had these cheques all the time? Mr. Yates had asked me to say nothing about his visit to Salzburg to anyone. He was hoping to clear up the mystery of that terrible man Bryant who had worried the New York office with his letter. And Mr. Yates was going to tell you all about it when he returned with a signed confession from Bryant. Mr. Yates said it was the only way to handle this business and smooth everything over without any trouble for anyone. He was thinking of the good name of Newhart and Morris. He always did.” She looked at Mathison anxiously, and then at the traveller’s cheques in his hand. “What do we do now?” she asked pathetically.

  “I’ll deal with this,” he promised her. With an effort, he kept his voice casual. “But first, you might tell me just what happened this last week. I thought Yates was in Germany visiting some authors. He left soon after I arrived, didn’t he?” He waited for the answer; its truth or untruth would let him know how much or little Greta Freytag was to be believed.

  “He didn’t go. He learned that one of the authors was in the hospital, another on vacation. So he decided to postpone the trip. He had a lot of work to do at home—studying our readers’ reports on recent books and articles, you know. So he didn’t come into the office. That’s quite normal—he often works at home.”