Borrower of the Night - Elizabeth Peters [17]
If the tables in the dining room were any guide, the hotel part of the Schloss wasn’t large, but it was doing a good business. There were a couple of dozen places laid, four to a table. Most of them were occupied.
‘Fill me in on our fellow guests,’ I said.
‘Two American high school teachers,’ Tony began, indicating a couple at the next table. ‘A German family from Hamburg – two kids. The honeymoon couple are French; the old miserable married couple are Italian. There are some U.S. Army types from Munich, and a miscellaneous bevy of Danes.’
‘You’ve been busy,’ I said, smiling at him. He looked pleased, the naïve thing.
‘The little fat guy who looks like Santa Claus without the beard is a professor,’ he went on complacently. ‘What he professes I don’t know; he keeps trying to corner me, but I’ve avoided him so far. The middle-aged female with the face like a horse is English. She’s a crony of the old countess’s.’
‘Old countess? Is there a younger one?’
‘You must have met her. If she wasn’t carrying your suitcases, she was scrubbing your floor. She does all the work around here.’
‘Her?’ I gasped ungrammatically.
‘Sure. Irma. The last frail twig on the Drachenstein family tree.’
‘Irma!’ It was some name for a girl who looked like a Persian houri. I was about to express this sentiment – and get some additional insight into Tony’s attitude towards her – when a man walked up to the table. He was a stocky young man with brown hair and blue eyes, a deeply tanned face, and an expression as animated as a block of wood. He distributed two brusque nods and a curt ‘Abend’ around the table, and sat down.
Now as I have indicated, I find the usual leering male look quite repulsive. I am accustomed, however, to having my presence noted. Tony, who knows me only too well, glanced from me to the newcomer and said, with a nasty grin.
‘This is Herr Doktor Blankenhagen, from Frankfurt. Doc, meet Fräulein Doktor Bliss.’
The young man half rose, clutching his napkin, and made a stiff bow.
‘Doctor of medicine,’ he said, in heavily accented English.
‘Doctor of philosophy,’ I said, before I could stop myself. ‘How do you do?’
‘Very pleased,’ said Herr Doktor Blankenhagen, without conviction. He opened a newspaper and retreated behind it.
‘Hmmph,’ I said; and then, before Tony’s grin could get any more obnoxious, I went on, ‘One more place at the table. Who’s that for?’
Tony’s grin faded into the limbo of lost smiles. I knew then. I had been half expecting it, but I still didn’t like it.
‘Hi, there,’ said George Nolan, making his appearance with theatrical skill, at just the right moment. ‘Glad you got here, Vicky.’
‘Hi yourself,’ I said. ‘Congratulations on your detective skill. Or did you just follow Tony?’
George laughed, and leaned over to give Tony a friendly smack on the shoulder. Tony swayed.
‘Right the second time.’
‘No problem following him?’ I asked sweetly. ‘Not for a man who has tracked the deadly tiger to its lair, and hunted the Abominable Snowman in his mysterious haunts.’
‘He went to the Jones Travel Agency,’ said George, still grinning. ‘As soon as my gratuity to one of the help produced the name of Rothenburg, I put two and two together.’
We both burst out laughing. Tony glowered. Blankenhagen lowered his newspaper, gave us a contemptuous stare in common, and hid behind it again.
The waitress, a stolid blond damsel, came with our soup, and the meal proceeded. Tony sulked in silence, Blankenhagen read his newspaper, and George and I kept up the social amenities. He was a master of the double entendre, and I don’t mean just the sexual entendre. He kept dropping hints about sculpture and secret passages in ancient castles. Tony writhed, but I was pleased to see he was learning to control his tongue. Part of George’s technique was to probe until he got an angry, unthinking response.
With the dessert came Irma, hot and harassed, but still disgustingly beautiful, to inquire how we had