There was no sound in the room, but I knew that I wasn’t alone. Terrified, I stood there with my back to the door and stared around, picking out the furniture piece by piece in the faint glimmer from the moon. An oval table with chrysanthemums in a big vase. Farther along, an armchair, and then a tallboy against the wall. On the nearer side was the dressing table and built in closets.
But near the dressing table there was something else, a patch of black shadow.
Had Leopold Hellweg found me out? But surely he wouldn’t be standing here in the dark, and anyway, why should he have disturbed the curtains? It must be an intruder.
Should I yell for help?
With a conscious effort I opened my mouth, ready —and the light caught me, a brilliant, dazzling beam that shot across the room. My cry died to a tiny whimper.
“Jessica. Don’t scream.”
I knew the voice, and in my relief cried out too loud. Dangerously loud. “Richard!”
“For God’s sake, keep quiet, or someone will hear.”
I sighed on a long breath. “You did give me a scare.”
“Sorry.”
He came softly across the carpet, flicking off his flashlight when he was only halfway. He felt for me, fingers brushing against my breast before he found my arm.
“We must make sure we haven’t disturbed them,” he whispered. “Listen.”
We waited there just inside the door, utterly still, until Richard was satisfied. Then he took my hand and began leading me across the room. We sat down side by side on the edge of the bed, and I was reminded of the time we’d sat like this once before, ages ago, it seemed, in London.
My voice a husky murmur, I said, “How did you know I wanted you to come? It’s such a relief to see you. I felt desperate when I couldn’t get through.”
“Get through . . . ?”
“I’ve just been trying to phone a message to you at the embassy.”
“What happened?” he asked quickly.
“The phone seemed to be dead. I couldn’t even get the dial tone.”
“I see. I was coming anyway, Jessica. I had an idea you might be needing me,”
“I do, oh how I do! So much has happened here, Richard.”
“Then you’d better tell me all about it. And keep calm.”
I tried to be coherent, to start right at the beginning and progress fact by fact. But I got a bit confused, and Richard said patiently, “I know a lot of this already, of course. I’m more interested in what was said, rather than what you did.”
“It all seems so odd—they talk as if it’s they who expect to get something from me, as if we are bargaining about the amount I’m to be paid for it.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, Leopold said something about discussing terms, and went on about wanting evidence of my ability to deliver. I just couldn’t make it out. And another thing, he seemed to be saying that they regretted ever having trusted Max.”
Richard made no comment. I wished I could see his face, because in the darkness I felt lost, unable to gauge what he was thinking.
He was silent for so long that I felt I couldn’t bear it, and burst out, “What does it all mean? I wish I could understand!”
Richard said slowly, uncertainly, “So do I.”
All the spirit dropped out of me. For hours now my thoughts had been turned forward to the moment when I could talk things over with Richard. My plan to contact him had failed, and that had seemed the last straw. Then, miraculously, as if he was in some mysterious way answering my cry for help, Richard had appeared from out of the night.
And now, here he was saying that he couldn’t understand the situation any more than I did.
I was trembling, and my voice shook. “You’ve just got to tell me something, Richard. What am I to say in the morning when the Hellwegs ask me for this evidence—whatever it is they mean by that?”
Silence. If I had not heard his breathing, I’d have wondered if he was still there. Suddenly I had a desperate need for light—I felt I couldn’t get to grips with Richard in the dark.
Reaching for the bedside lamp, my outstretched hand knocked against the shade, and for a second I thought the whole thing, heavy cut-glass base and all, was going to topple to the floor. But luckily it rocked back into place.
“What the devil are you doing?” asked Richard.
My fingers, careful now, had found the switch. With a pleated silk shade, the light was soft and subtle, but after the darkness it seemed blindingly harsh.
“Put that out,” he said swiftly, and leaned across to do it himself.
“No.”
He glanced at me, surprised, and I added, “Nobody will see. And anyway, if they did, they’d only think I couldn’t sleep or something.”
“I suppose so.” But Richard got up and went over to the window, carefully closing the gap between the curtains. As he came back across the room, I was able to see his face. Pale as always, he looked anxious and uncertain. He sat down again, on the end of the bed this time, with his back half-turned. A hand went up, and finger and thumb rubbed at his eyebrows in the typical way when he was thoughtful.
In a low voice I asked, “What are we going to do now?”
He looked at me over his shoulder. “You must just carry on and see what develops.”
“But how can I?”
“You’ll have to play it by ear, that’s all. Appear to be going along with them, and report everything you hear back to me. I’ll keep in touch.”
“But . . . but they want answers to questions I don’t even begin to understand. How do I play it by ear unless I have some idea what it’s all about?”
The faintest glimmer of a smile hovered around his lips. “You’ll have to improvise a bit. Make it look as if you understand them, even though you don’t. It’s not so difficult when you get into the way of it.”
“That’s all very well! But if the Hellwegs were friends of Max’s, why do they talk about not trusting him? You’d almost think they were on the other side.”
Richard said, slowly and soberly, “You trust nobody at all in this game, Jessica. The Hellwegs didn’t entirely trust Max. We don’t entirely trust the Hellwegs. Keep that firmly in your mind, or you’re likely to come unglued.”
Trust nobody. That could never become my philosophy. I liked people, and I liked to be able to trust them. I had trusted my husband implicitly, and I still believed in him. This undercover work of his wasn’t really a case of him deceiving me. Max was already committed to it when we first met, so he was committed to secrecy. And what about Richard himself—I trusted him, didn’t I? And Steve. . . .
I wished that Steve was here now, to tell me what I should do. But that was crazy. Steve was on the outside of this whole wretched business. I couldn’t possibly discuss it with him.
I looked at Richard doubtfully. “Suppose I try to play along with the Hellwegs, and fail. Won’t it wreck all your plans?”
“That’s a chance we’ll have to take.”
I sighed. “Well, at least you know who they are now.”
He jerked around to look at me. “What do you mean by that?”
“Only that it was the Hellwegs who were Max’s contacts. That’s something gained, isn’t it?”
He nodded uncertainly. “How did they react when you first told them that Max’s death was no accident?”
“They were shocked—naturally. They could hardly believe it at first.”
Richard nodded again. Then he stood up. “I’ll have to get going.”
The thought of him leaving hit me like a rock. He couldn’t stay here, of course, I knew that. But I dreaded the prospect of being on my own to face the Hellwegs.
I made an effort to keep calm. “When shall I see you again?”
“Soon. I don’t know exactly when. But I’ve got somebody outside keeping an eye on you all the time, Jessica. You’ll be all right.”
And then he put the light out and left—by the window, noiselessly.
You’ll be all right! I forced myself to believe Richard’s easy reassurance, but I was scared.
Having come so far along this path, I couldn’t give up now. And I was doing it for Max, I reminded myself—to square the account for Max’s murder. Yet I knew what I really wanted to do. I wanted to escape, to run away from here and hide myself from the Hellwegs, from Vienna. I wanted to go back to my burrow in London and forget.
But that wasn’t true, either. The real truth was that I longed to go running to Steve, to be with him, to feel safe.
Was this a new discovery, or had I known before? Had I known for longer than I dared admit?