Borrower of the Night - Elizabeth Peters [59]
That was an exaggeration. He was feeling poorly, and our progress was slow. With Tony leaning heavily on me, I began to feel my own age, and I was looking forward to going to bed. But when we reached the Schloss it was evident that I was still some distance from that indulgence. Our corridor was wide awake. The first person we saw was George, and the sight of his flushed, grim face told us something serious had happened.
‘What’s up?’ Tony asked.
‘Schmidt. He’s dead.’
‘Dead!’ Tony tried to enter Schmidt’s room, but George’s arm barred the door.
‘Don’t go in yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve seen a lot of dead men,’ said George, ‘but I never saw one who looked like that.’
‘Stop talking like The Monk,’ I said sharply. ‘What happened?’
George fumbled in his pocket and located a cigarette and matches. He looked at them blankly, as if he had forgotten what to do with them.
‘I heard him scream,’ he said. ‘What a sound . . . The Gräfin heard it too. She was in the hall when I came out of my room. I went through Schmidt’s door like a bulldozer. It wasn’t locked. Schmidt was sitting up in bed facing the window. The lamp by the bed was lit. He didn’t look at us, not even when the door crashed open. He was looking at the window. He never looked at us at all. He just kept staring . . . at the window. Then he keeled over.’
George was perspiring. His shirt clung to his broad chest.
All eyes turned towards the windows, which were open to admit the night air.
I pushed George aside. Without looking at the motionless form on the bed, I crossed the room, and leaned out of the window. The distance between it and the window of Tony’s room was a good twenty feet. To the left, at an even greater distance, were the windows of the neighbouring guest chamber. There were no windowsills. The outer panes were flush with the stones of the wall. Below was a stretch of blank wall reaching down to the foundations.
I craned my neck and looked up towards the sloping eaves of the roof. A very tall man, standing on the window ledge, might have been able to touch the edge of the roof with his fingertips. I might have done it myself. I’d have hated to try.
‘Unless somebody has suckers on his hands and feet, like the Human Fly, there’s no way out here,’ I reported, withdrawing my head.
‘But that’s impossible. I tell you I was in the corridor within seconds of the time I heard him scream. Nobody could have come out of that door without my seeing him.’
‘And I,’ said a cool voice, ‘was in the corridor when Herr Schmidt cried out. No one left his room.’
The speaker was the Gräfin. Blankenhagen was with her. He was fully dressed, of course; I wondered what kind of emergency it would take to get Blankenhagen out of his room without his pants. He bent over Schmidt. Then he flew into violent action, stripping the clothes from the little man’s chest and fumbling in his bag for a hypodermic.
‘The man is not dead. Telephone to the hospital. We must have an ambulance as quickly as possible. Run!’
The Gräfin obeyed. She didn’t run, but she moved fast. The rest of us stared blankly at one another.
‘You said he was dead.’ I looked accusingly at George.
‘I thought he was.’ George was badly shaken. ‘He sure looked dead. I couldn’t help – ’
‘Nobody’s blaming you,’ I said, more mildly. ‘Doctor, can we do anything?’
‘You can go,’ said Blankenhagen, without looking up. ‘All of you. Out of here.’
So we left. But I sat in my room with the door open till the ambulance arrived and took Schmidt away. The doctor went with him. Then I closed and locked my door and, remembering the interchangeable keys of the Schloss, I wedged a chair under the handle.
I was glad Schmidt wasn’t dead. I rather liked the old guy, despite the fact that I would not have been willing to stake my life on his honesty. In fact, I had been willing to consider him a prime suspect. His earlier attack hadn’t put me off the scent; the suggestion of invalidism was a good alibi in a case where the villain displayed such startling agility. But this attack couldn’t have been faked. Unless . . .
I had already