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By Root 279 0

an excellent hotel. And its situation on the lake was agreeable. The climate was not brilliant, but in comparison with other, similar, resorts, it was equable. The resources of the little town were not extensive, but cars could be hired, excursions could be taken, and the walking was pleasant if unexciting. The scenery, the view, the mountain, were curiously unemphatic, as if delineated in the water-colours of an earlier period. While the young of all nations hurtled off to the sun and the beaches, jamming the roads and the airports, the Hotel du Lac took a quiet pride, and sometimes it was very quiet indeed, in its isolation from the herd, knowing that it had a place in the memory of its old friends, knowing too that it would never refuse a reasonable request from a new client, provided that the new client had the sort of unwritten references required from an hotel of this distinction, and that the request had come from someone whose name was already on the Huber family’s files, most of which went back to the beginning of the century.

As she descended the wide, shallow stairs Edith could hear well-behaved laughter echoing from some sort of salon where she supposed tea to be in progress, and then, as she approached, as if drawn to this sound, a sudden furious barking, high-pitched, peevish, boding ill for future peace. At the foot of the stairs crouched a very small dog, quivering with anxiety, its eyes covered by its hair. When no one came to see what was wrong, it started up again at full volume, but experimentally, like a baby. A prolonged keening, as if it were undergoing unimaginable torture, brought cries of’Kiki! Kiki! Naughty dog!’, and a tall woman, of extraordinary slenderness, and with the narrow nodding head of a grebe, rushed out of the bar, collapsed at the foot of the stairs, gathered the dog into her arms, covered it with kisses, and again, with the same boneless uncoiling movement, pressed the dog to her face like a cushion, and returned to the bar. A puddle on the last step brought a momentary closing of the eyes and a quick snap of the fingers from the manager. As a boy in a white jacket wielded a cloth, impassively, as if this happened fairly often, the manager of the Hotel du Lac (Famille Huber) indicated to Edith Hope his distress that this incident should mar her arrival, and at the same time expressed dissociation from the misdemeanours of animals and, more important, from those unwise enough to harbour them. For the latter he would, of course, provide shelter, but shelter without complicity.

How interesting, thought Edith. That woman was English. And such an extraordinary shape. Probably a dancer. And she promised herself to think about this later.

The salon was more agreeable than her room would have led her to expect, furnished with a deep blue carpet, many round glass tables, comfortably traditional armchairs, and a small upright piano at which an elderly man with a made-up bow tie was playing mild selections from post-war musicals. With tea inside her, and a slice of excellent cherry cake, Edith plucked up the courage to look around. The room was sparsely populated; she supposed that most people would only come back for dinner. The pug-faced lady was eating grimly, her legs wide apart, crumbs falling unnoticed on to her lap. Two shadowy men were whispering in a far corner. A greyish couple, man and wife or brother and sister, were checking their air tickets, and the man, who had by no means finished his tea, was sent off periodically to see if the car had arrived. Although the room was bright and cheerful, its most notable feature was its air of deadly calm. Edith, recognizing the fate to which she had been consigned, sighed, but reminded herself that this was an excellent opportunity to finish Beneath the Visiting Moon, although it was not an opportunity that she herself had sought.

When she next raised her eyes from her book – a book from which she had absorbed not a single word – it was to find an unexpected note of glamour in the person of a lady of indeterminate age, her hair radiantly