The Horn of Roland Read online

  He froze then, with the curtains still in his hands. Desire or reality, he was hearing it now, Roland’s horn, in that brilliant threnody he had written for its last solo passages. They were all hearing it, clear and close, no illusion. He might hypnotise himself into an aural hallucination, but not them. Una had come to his side, he felt her quivering against him. Crista’s black eyes, enormous and deep, seemed to be listening, too, and her fingers, extended on the air, and even the strand of hair that had fallen loose over her forehead. Geestler had crossed almost stealthily to join them at the window, and was searching the dark water for a betraying ripple.

  Somewhere out there, very close to the island, someone was performing dazzling high, defiant calls on a horn, drawing out the long, sustained appeals like threads of spun brass, smooth as honey, sharp as gall. The last great solo, splendidly played.

  Only no one here should have known it! No one here could possibly know it, except the horn players of the town orchestra, and the unknown soloist he was to meet for the first time at tomorrow’s rehearsal.

  ‘What is it?’ Geestler was demanding urgently, shaking him by the arm. ‘This is something to do with you, that I have seen. This music you know, something about it you know. What is it? What does it mean?’

  ‘It’s my music,’ said Lucas, with remote pleasure and pride. ‘I wrote it. It’s the final horn solo from the work we’re to rehearse tomorrow. No one can be playing it but a member of your orchestra. It can be meant for no one but me. What does it mean? According to my programme it means the death of Roland – according to his, I imagine, it means the death of Lucas Corinth.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Geestler spun on his heel and plunged out of the room, drawing the door to after him with a slam. They heard a shrill whistle outside on the terrace, a quick, light flurry of running feet, a few words called down into the garden, and an answering shout as Schwalbe vaulted one of the walls below, and ran after his colleague.

  ‘The boat!’ cried Una, caught up in the gust of their going, and halfway across the colonnade before she realised she was running. ‘They’re going down to the jetty. They’re going to round him up and bring him in.’ She halted just as abruptly, and flattened her hands imperiously against her father’s chest. ‘No, you don’t! You’ve got your orders. You’re to stay in and keep the door locked.’

  ‘And let you go rushing down those broken steps to the jetty in the dark,’ he said scornfully. The breath of action had brought him to life again, he no longer wanted to sit and wait for fate to come to him, he wanted to go out and look for it. After all, it was the first opportunity he’d had. ‘If that’s my man out there with the horn,’ he said, ‘I want to meet him just as urgently as he wants to meet me. You stay here and keep out of the way.’

  He had the bit between his teeth now, and she didn’t know how she was going to stop him. But neither could he frown her into staying behind; she had no intention of letting him out of her sight. She was hard on his heels as he plunged into the darkness, halting for a moment on the terrace to accustom his eyes to the change.

  ‘He may have a motor-boat, too,’ said Crista, close behind them, her sandals clicking on the uneven stones.

  ‘No! Don’t you remember how silent it was, just before we heard the horn? No, he’s in a rowing boat, he can’t run from them.’

  They came scrambling down the curving steps in the dark, terrace after terrace, to the jetty at the far end of the beach, and stood peering out over the lake surface. The engine of the motor-boat purred busily, somewhere out there at the end of its shining track; the ripples of its wash rustled up the beach in the soft sand. The lengthening trail of phosphorescence swept round in a great coil, like an illuminated question-mark, a dotted line of light heaving and twinkling to the play of the disturbed water.

  ‘They’re trying to circle round him and drive him in,’ cried Una. She strained her eyes upon the patch of water they were ringing, but could not see another boat moving. The horn was silent; they had not noticed the moment when the thin gold tone of its last cry dissolved into the night.

  ‘There!’ said Crista, pointing along the line of the rocks. A faint, darting point of light sparkled and vanished, another, nearer the shore, rhythmically appearing and disappearing. ‘See the oars dipping! He’s rowing in to the rocks.’

  Lucas dropped Una’s hand and ran, away from the jetty, along the broken, rocky shelves that gnawed at the water, running to meet the incoming boat. He heard Una stumbling after him, and cried to her to go back, but she still followed grimly, until the smooth sole of her sandal slipped on a mossy, slanting stone, and she came down on grazed hands; and then he came leaping back to pick her up and plant her on her feet again almost angrily, because the sound of her fall had shaken and touched him more than he dared admit.

  ‘Why can’t you do as you’re told? Here, if you must come, hold on to my arm.’

  ‘Why can’t you?’ she said heatedly. ‘You’re supposed to be safe in the house. I’m damned well not letting you out of my sight. It’s you he’s after.’

  The incoming rowing boat was so close that they could hear the soft, plashing sound of the strokes that brought it in. Behind, circling like a sheep-dog rounding up a stray lamb, came the motor-boat.

  The rower, too, had heard the stones rolling from Una’s fall. The strokes ceased. He hung on his oars, motionless, hesitating. ‘What is all this?’ demanded an aggrieved voice out of the darkness, in good English. ‘Do you shoot strangers around these parts?’

  The shock of astonishment stiffened them where they stood, and left them without breath to answer. The motor-boat, its engine stopped, closed in gently and lay clear of the oars, rippling softly alongside. Geestler’s voice ordered, in his correct English: ‘You will please come ashore.’

  ‘Like hell I will!’ said the invisible young man, but without rancour, as though curiosity already had the better of indignation, and he was only waiting to be asked nicely. ‘Give me one good reason!’

  ‘I really think you’d better,’ said Lucas, with an effort dragging himself out of his stupor of surprise. ‘The two gentlemen in the boat beside you are police officers.’

  ‘Police officers?’ Consternation and curiosity fought it out pretty evenly this time. ‘What’s the charge? Disturbing the peace?’

  ‘Row to the jetty,’ said Geestler patiently.

  The young man hesitated for a moment, and then dipped his oars with a sigh and brought the boat about, nosing gingerly out of the arms of rock. There was no means of getting away from them. They edged him in watchfully to the jetty, and Schwalbe hopped ashore by the second flight of steps to receive him firmly by the arm as he stepped out of the boat. He bridled at that, but he didn’t resist, even when Geestler made the boat fast in a hurry and sprang to take possession of his other arm. He was not seriously disturbed, only a little ruffled and more than a little intrigued.

  ‘I’m not armed,’ he assured them meekly, submitting to the inspection of quick and determined hands that went through his pockets without ceremony. ‘Not unless you count my horn. And you be careful with that, it’s my living you’ve got there. Anyhow,’ he added in an injured voice, ‘I can’t have been as bad as all that. You didn’t have to call out the militia.’

  He was taking stock of his captors as well as he could in the darkness, and he had not missed the approaching shapes of the two girls, picking their way back with Lucas along the rocks. He watched them come closer, and was aware that they were examining him with equally intent interest. Some of the tension ebbed out of him.

  ‘Now if you’d asked me to come ashore,’ he said approvingly, eyeing Una’s slender fairness, ‘I’d have come like a shot at the first time of asking.’

  ‘There’s no occasion for impudence,’ said Lucas sharply.

  ‘There’s been precious little for politeness yet, that I can see,’ retorted the prisoner reasonably. ‘But actually I intended a compliment. Well, I’m here. What happens next?’<
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  ‘Come up to the house,’ said Geestler. ‘We’d like a talk with you.’

  They kept their hold on him all the way back up the great staircases, but he stepped out willingly, so engrossed with the trim rear view of Una mounting before him that once he missed his footing on the broken stones, and had to be held up by his guards. He massaged a stubbed toe against his other calf, and finished the climb with at least half an eye on its hazards. They brought him into the lighted salon and closed the door, and Schwalbe set his chair against it, in case the prisoner should repent of his complacency and make a break for liberty.

  Seen now in the revealing light of Herr Graf’s chandelier, the horn-player was discovered to be a quite ordinary-looking young man of medium height and tawny colouring, lightly built, and attired in shabby grey slacks and a bulky fisher-knit sweater in a bright shade of corn-yellow. A thick crop of almost equally yellow hair, somewhat ruffled by his exertions and his handling, shed a long lock over one eye, and a bright, speculative eye it was, blue and roving. He accepted the chair Lucas rather helplessly offered him, and stared back steadily at all the thoughtful, baffled faces that contemplated and assessed him.

  He can’t be the one, thought Una. He hasn’t done or said a single suspicious thing yet since they caught him. And yet the real Valentine would want to look and sound just like this, if he had to face them before he was ready. Perhaps he hadn’t known the police would be here. And what was he doing rowing round the island, playing music almost nobody here could possibly know?

  Lucas wasn’t sure, either; his face was a study in doubt. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said constrainedly, ‘but this is necessary. These officers will have to ask you to account for yourself. But if you can do so, of course – satisfactorily …’

  ‘Why?’ asked the boy pointblank, exchanging a hesitant grin for a sudden frown. ‘Has there been a crime committed here?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Lucas with a wry smile, and walked away across the room and left him to Geestler.

  ‘Your name, please?’

  ‘You’ve got my passport. You took it out of my pocket. And when you’ve done with it, by the way, I’d like it back.’

  There was no doubt about it, the passport in Geestler’s hands was British. Not new, rather grubby from being carried around a good deal. He studied the particulars in it carefully, thumbed through the pages and examined the many stamps in it.

  ‘You are Michael Brace? Of Cobham, in England?’

  ‘That’s right. Mike to my friends. But you,’ he said sweetly, ‘may call me Mr Brace.’

  ‘By profession a musician?’

  ‘Yes. Horn. Anything that blows, actually, but the horn’s my real weapon. Well, I take it you heard me. May I smoke, please?’

  ‘Spoil your wind,’ said Lucas disapprovingly. But he offered him the box of cigarettes from the table, and then his lighter.

  The boy flashed a startled glance into his face, and looked mildly encouraged. ‘I don’t, much, you know. Are you a musician yourself?’

  ‘Of sorts,’ said Lucas.

  ‘Did you like that stuff I was tearing off, out there?’ The voice had lost its defensive brashness; it warmed into ardour with engaging suddenness. ‘Isn’t it superb? Hell to play, but stunning if you can bring it off. I thought I was doing pretty well with it tonight, until you sent the marines. If I could write for the horn like that …’

  Lucas turned his back with an abruptness which the young man obviously misinterpreted. He flushed and drew back, his ruffled, tawny brows drawing together in offence at the supposed rebuff. He really doesn’t know, thought Una, relieved. He genuinely loves the music, and doesn’t even know what Lu looks like. Valentine would certainly have known. There were photographs, even if Lu did shirk the camera. In concert programmes, in arts pages, on record sleeves. He isn’t the one, she thought, and her heart rose like a bird, though she had no idea why.

  ‘Have you been in Gries-am-See before?’ Geestler pursued.

  ‘No. I came here two weeks ago, that’s the first time I’d seen the place.’

  ‘What was your purpose in coming here?’

  ‘To get a job. What else? I heard in Innsbruck that they were taking on extra players for the festival. I’m good enough to keep up with a small-town orchestra, any time. I thought it was worth a try. And I got in. Actually,’ he said critically, ‘they’re not at all bad.’

  ‘Then you had an audition with the director. When?’

  The boy supplied day and hour cheerfully, facts which could very easily and quickly be checked.

  ‘And you are lodging – where?’

  ‘Frau Felbermayer, fifteen, Kirchgasse.’ No hesitation there, and no reluctance. Geestler nodded contentedly, more than satisfied, for this was all too transparently verifiable to be false. Mr Brace’s presence and business in Gries appeared to be eminently respectable, even if his habits were rather puzzling. For the only thing left unexplained was what he was doing in a rowing-boat off the Himmelhof at eleven o’clock at night, horn and all.

  ‘I was getting in a little quiet practice,’ said the boy, grinning. ‘Out of earshot of the town, I hope. Out of reach, anyhow. I’ll tell you. It’s like this – three days ago the leading horn player went down with a feverish condition of the throat, some sort of bug he’s picked up. And I stepped into his shoes. I know, I couldn’t believe it, either, but you’ve only to ask old Seligmann, he’ll tell you. Well, it isn’t every day I get the chance to play music like that, I want to make a good job of it. A substitute’s always got to be on his toes. But I can’t sit around in the park blasting out what everybody in Gries is going to be paying to hear next week, can I? I reckoned there’d be room enough for me on the lake, if I left it until dark. Over the water it sounds good, too.’

  He looked up and caught the full, delighted glance of Una’s grey eyes, and it dazzled him. ‘Did you like it?’ he asked, hesitant on the edge of deliberate impudence, and recoiling into honest appeal.

  ‘We all did,’ Una admitted. ‘But it certainly surprised us.’

  ‘And your previous movements, please,’ pursued Geestler doggedly. ‘You came to Gries from Innsbruck. How long were you there? You entered Austria more than three months ago.’

  ‘That’s right, I came …’

  At that moment the telephone rang. The sound of the bell was enough, at this hour, to charge the air with an instant tension that stopped Mike Brace in mid-sentence, glancing from face to face. He remained silent because Crista had reached over quickly and picked up the instrument.

  She turned to Lucas with a reassuring smile. ‘Herr Wehrle for you, Mr Corinth.’

  The casual utterance of the name closed Mike Brace’s mouth like the spring of a trap. He cast one startled glance at the great man, and thereafter eyed him only furtively, in sidelong flashes of cagey blue eyes. Lucas, with the receiver at his ear, noticed nothing, intent on the deep voice at the other end of the line.

  ‘Forgive me if I disturbed you. I wanted only to check once again that all is well there. Nothing further has developed? After this last incident … Everything is quiet there?’

  ‘It is now,’ said Lucas, briefly smiling. With the boy’s ears stretched to pick up every clue – as they must be, considering his situation, if he was human – this was no time to make detailed reports. ‘Herr Geestler will probably be giving you a call a little later – if you’ll be still available for a while?’

  ‘I shall indeed. I’ll expect his call. That means something more has happened.’

  ‘Nothing to keep any of us awake,’ said Lucas. ‘No trouble.’

  ‘I take your word for it. Since I can talk more freely than apparently you can at the moment,’ said Wehrle, ‘you may like to know how far things have progressed. Frau Gelder did not return to her family when she left Gries. For a while they seem to have heard from her from Freistadt, we’re following that up now. Both her parents are dead, it may take a few days to pick up the trail. But if she’s alive we’ll find
her. Her son we’ll certainly find – we’ve good reason to know he’s alive. Keep your landward windows well covered when the lights are on, Mr Corinth. Better if the town doesn’t find out too soon that the Himmelhof is occupied. It can’t be kept secret for ever.’

  ‘We hope,’ said Lucas drily, ‘that won’t be necessary.’

  ‘We hope not. Lock everything that will lock, and tell Hugo, when the time’s right, that I’m waiting. Goodnight, Mr Corinth!’

  ‘Goodnight!’ Lucas laid the receiver in its rest. ‘I beg your pardon! Please go on.’

  ‘I was waiting,’ said Geestler imperturbably, ‘for our friend to give me details of his former movements in Austria, and his undertaking not to leave Gries.’

  ‘You think I would,’ said Mike, ‘until this festival ends? Why should I quit a good job when I’ve found one?’

  ‘No reason, Mr Brace, unless you have something on your conscience, of course. Give me particulars that can be checked for the whole time since you entered the country, and you may go back to the town and go to bed. What were you doing in Innsbruck? And where were you before that?’

  The young man frowned down at his dwindling cigarette, patently considered his reply with some dour care, and then said in a flat voice: ‘I’m sorry, but that’s my business.’

  ‘Once we have checked, so it can be. We’re interested only in excising you from any enquiries that concern us. But that needs co-operation from you. You’ve been amenable until now, why this change?’

  ‘I get stubborn,’ said Mike, ‘when pushed. I’ve given you fair answers, but that’s far enough. I’m not saying another word.’

  Puzzled and concerned, for after all this boy was a very considerable musician, Lucas said warmly: ‘Mr Brace, Frau Felbermayer needs her peace of mind – you’ll be scolded for staying out too late as it is! – and Herr Geestler needs merely a few dates and addresses he can verify, and everyone will be happy. So why turn obstinate now, after being so admirably friendly? Not everyone would have taken it in such good part. Don’t spoil your record now!’