The weekend dragged by slowly but also, to Trudi’s relief, uneventfully. She was half expecting James Dacre to ring and when Sunday night came without any contact, she was surprised to detect in herself a strong sense of resentment.
On Monday morning, she was pleased to find a fairly considerable body of mail to deal with at Class-Glass. Even so, by eleven in the morning it was all sorted out and she was faced with the prospect of several more hours of catching up on her reading.
There was a tap at the office door.
‘Come in,’ she called.
‘Hello,’ said James Dacre. ‘I was in the area and I thought I’d call and see what your place of work was like. Are you busy?’
‘Only on getting to the end of this chapter,’ she said, holding up her book.
‘And then?’
‘Then I sit and reflect.’
He glanced at the mirrors and smiled.
‘I’m sorry we didn’t get our cup of tea on Friday,’ he said. ‘Was everything all right?’
‘Why do you ask?’ she said sharply.
‘Your friend seemed rather anxious to see you, that was all,’ he said. ‘I just hoped there wasn’t any kind of emergency.’
‘No. Janet is just rather single-minded,’ replied Trudi. ‘When she wants to see you, she wants to see you.’
‘There are worse qualities. Are you doing anything tonight?’
Trudi still hesitated. She realized she was frightened where her growing intimacy with Dacre might lead. Would she have the strength not to confide her troubles to him? Did she have the right to risk involving him?
Whistling quietly to himself, Dacre took a turn round the room as though to give her time to think. He stopped in front of a heart-shaped mirror pierced with a painted arrow and studied his reflection as though it were a gallery painting.
‘Of course, if you’re busy,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Mr Usher’s giving you work to do at home. What kind of chap is he, by the way?’
As if in answer, the door opened and Stanley Usher appeared.
‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘Don’t say we’ve got ourselves a real live customer?’
‘Afraid not,’ said Dacre. ‘Just a friend of Mrs Adamson.’
Trudi introduced the two men, feeling absurdly guilty at being discovered alone with Dacre.
He excused himself after a couple of sentences of meaningless chat with Usher. At the door he said interrogatively, ‘Tonight, then?’
‘Yes. Fine,’ said Trudi.
‘I’ll pick you up at seven.’
With a cheerful wave, he left.
‘Nice chap,’ said Usher. ‘I should have asked. He’s not in the finance business, is he? I thought he looked familiar and the most I see of other fellows is when I’m trying to raise a loan from them.’
‘No,’ said Trudi. ‘I don’t think so. I haven’t known him long.’
Why she made this disclaimer, she did not really know, nor why she did not impart the little bit of information she had acquired about Dacre’s job. In fact, through the long dull afternoon, sitting with no work and nothing for company but her book and her multiple reflections, she found herself at a loss to explain most of her reactions in the past few months. There had been extraordinary events and revelations, that was true, but when she examined her own behaviour, it was just as extraordinary. Concealing a killing, getting drunk with her husband’s mistress, meeting a man through a dating agency – these alone in prospect would have had her rushing for medical help a year ago! But it was at a less dramatic level that she perceived perhaps the most worrying changes. She no longer knew how she was going to react to the ordinary circumstances of everyday life. She no longer felt in full control of her own thought processes. For instance, how was it possible that she, Trudi Adamson, whose attitude to sex had always been more dutiful than enthusiastic, could find herself slipping off into reveries about what James Dacre would look like naked and how it was going to feel as he entered her! And the real shock came when she realized that these hypotheses were not just idle, but anticipatory. It was going to happen, possibly – no; probably tonight.
By the time he came to call for her, a strong reaction had set in and she received him rather coolly. He did not seem to notice, but accepted a glass of sherry and an invitation to take a seat while she completed her preparations with a friendly smile.
Looking at herself in her dressing table mirror she found she was straining her ears for the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.
You’re going mad! she told her reflection. It’s the menopause or something!
She jumped up and grabbed her handbag. The sooner she got out of the house the better. Then she started violently as the front doorbell rang.
As she went down the stairs, James Dacre came out of the lounge.
‘It’s all right. I’ll get it, James,’ she said.
When she opened the door, she saw two men standing there, one behind the other. The nearer, who wore a belted raincoat and had a sharp, not unfriendly face beneath a thatch of salty grey hair, said, ‘Mrs Adamson?’
‘Yes.’
‘Detective Inspector Workman, ma’am.’
He produced a card which he held out for her inspection. It had a photograph and quite a lot of print. She registered the photograph but little else. Her eyes were drawn to the second man, at present little more than a silhouette familiar in Viennese winters of square fur hat and heavy overcoat with a thick fur collar.
As if interpreting her gaze as a question, Workman said, ‘And this is a colleague, Herr Walter Jünger of the Austrian Justice Department.’
The fur-hatted man moved forward so that the light fell on his face and Trudi felt light and substance begin to slip away from her. She leaned against the doorjamb and grasped at the solid wood both for support and reassurance.
For a second she had been certain that she was looking at the man whose frozen body had fallen out of the freezer at Well Cottage.
‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ said Workman anxiously.
‘Yes, of course,’ she lied, her eyes still fixed on Jünger’s face, her mind telling her that the similarity was superficial, and in any case this man’s round, rather squashed up face was marked by a long scar from the left corner of his mouth to the underside of his jaw which definitely had not been on the corpse.
Jünger, who looked to be about sixty, gave a little bow and said in German, ‘I am delighted to meet you.’
‘English, please,’ said Workman gently. ‘May we come in?’
‘We were just going out,’ said Trudi.
‘We’ll try to be as quick as possible,’ said Workman.
Trudi led them into the lounge. James Dacre stood aside at the door and said, ‘Shall I wait out here?’
Before Trudi could reply, Workman said, ‘And you, sir, are?’
Trudi interrupted to say coldly, ‘This is Mr Dacre, a friend of mine. No, James, I think I should prefer you to stay in here, if you don’t mind.’
She glared at Workman, challenging an objection.
He turned away indifferently and murmured something to Jünger.
‘What’s this all about, please?’ enquired Trudi.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ said Workman. ‘It’s just that we’re helping the Austrian authorities with some enquiries they’re making. A couple of questions first, just to make sure there aren’t any crossed lines. Do you know a woman called Astrid Fischer of …’
He consulted a piece of paper and with some difficulty read out Astrid’s address.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Trudi.
‘Have you seen her recently?’
‘Yes. I saw her, when was it? A week last Friday.’
‘And not since?’
‘No. I left Austria on the Sunday, and Astrid was going away on a ski-ing holiday on the Saturday. Look, what’s this all about?’
‘Why did you go to see her, may I ask?’
Trudi felt both anger and fear welling up inside her. She glanced towards Dacre, who must have read this as an appeal for help.
‘I really think that if it’s Mrs Adamson’s help you want, you ought to make the nature of the enquiry clear before she answers any further questions,’ he said gently.
‘Why? Has Mrs Adamson got any reason not to be absolutely frank with us?’ said Workman, irritated.
James Dacre laughed. He had a rich deep laugh, slightly unexpected from his rather dour and guarded expression.
‘We’ve all watched too much television to be bothered by that old insinuating stuff, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Mrs Adamson has every reason not to reveal details of her private business to a couple of strangers who may be investigating nothing more serious than a drunk driving charge.’
‘You don’t find drunk driving serious?’
‘Not as serious as invasion of privacy,’ said Dacre, with sudden force.
‘James, it’s all right. I don’t mind answering their questions. But I would like to know what it’s all about. Is Astrid all right? Nothing’s happened to her, has it?’
Workman glanced at Jünger, who shrugged and said in accented, but very correct English, ‘Astrid Fischer did not join her friends for the ski-ing holiday. At first they did not worry. They thought she must simply have been delayed. But by Monday they were worried and started making enquiries. They rang hospitals, enquired about road accidents, checked with her office. There was no trace of her. Finally they contacted the police. This was last Thursday. Even in Austria, Frau Adamson, citizens do not cooperate readily with the police.’
He smiled faintly, the unscarred end of his mouth curving more than the other.
‘So finally on Friday, the police, concerned that there may have been an accident to Fraulein Fischer in her apartment, broke in.’
He paused.
‘And?’ said Trudi impatiently. ‘Did they find her?’
‘Oh yes. They found her, Mrs Adamson,’ said Jünger.
He leaned towards her and despite herself she saw once again the figure toppling slowly forward out of the freezer. Perhaps he glimpsed this fear in her eyes and interpreted it as a sign of guilt, for his voice suddenly grew hoarse with an accusatory vehemence.
‘They found her on the floor near the telephone. Not that it would have helped her much if she’d got to it, Mrs Adamson. A massive overdose of heroin had been injected into her veins and once that happens there’s no turning back, is there?’
‘You mean she’s dead?’ said Trudi foolishly.
‘What do you think? Yes, she’s dead! Of course, she’s dead! Like your husband, Mrs Adamson!’
She took a step towards a chair, but it was too far away. The light was ebbing once more. Neither Jünger nor Workman attempted to move and James Dacre was too slow to catch her as she fell.