Silhouette in Scarlet - Elizabeth Peters [80]
Mrs Mayor had seen him go over the side. She was one of the few watchers who had the presence of mind to keep her binoculars trained on Leif instead of being distracted by the capsized boat. Her description made the struggle sound like a Norse epic – flailing arms, struggling bodies, foam-lashed water, and the slow spreading stain on the surface . . .
When she got to that point, Gus let out a mammoth cough and stamped on her foot. She shut up, with a guilty look at me. Actually, the spreading bloodstain was probably her own invention. I doubt she could see it from so far away, even though the weather had cleared.
The realization of her tactlessness silenced the poor lady, and her husband had to finish the story.
‘We had our plans made. Ten of our best young men. Knives they took, but no other weapons. The villains must be overpowered in silence. We had one of them, in the cell in the town hall – ’
‘What?’ I demanded. ‘One of whom?’
‘Ya, he came the same day, after Mrs Andersson had told us of the danger, so we were ready for him.’ The mayor beamed. ‘He thought to deceive us. We are not so easily fooled, no. He said he was a friend of the lady’s. Ha! We lock him up, then we also have a hostage. Now, soon, all his criminal friends will join him in the prison.’
I almost hated to ask. ‘What does he look like, this villain?’
‘Oh, a harmless little man in his looks. It is always so with villains, ja? Stout, with a round, smiling face . . .’
I stood up and stretched. I was wearing one of Mrs Mayor’s flannel robes, which went around me twice and barely reached my calves, but I decided against changing. The more pathetic I looked, the easier it would be to calm him.
‘You had better let me see this villain,’ I said.
I don’t know what Schmidt had to complain about. The ‘cell’ in the town hall, which also served as youth centre, cinema, social club, and anything else necessary, was a pleasant room with a comfortable bed and pots of flowers on the windowsills. They had fed him regularly and let him keep his suitcase, which – typically – contained one change of clothing, two ponderous scholarly tomes, and four pornographic novels. But the way that man carried on, you’d have thought he had spent twenty-four hours hanging by his thumbs in a dungeon full of rats.
I let him get it out of his system, and then, as I had expected, he hugged me and told me I looked terrible. ‘Poor girl, what you have been through! But it is your own fault. If you had confided in me . . . I have been so worried for your safety! And it serves you right; you will never learn to trust others.’
There were a few more fading rumbles of complaint before Schmidt dropped into a chair and mopped his face. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered. ‘Tell me everything.’
He said afterwards that it was almost as good as a chapter from my book. Almost. I knew very well what was lacking, but did not feel obliged to pander in the first person to Schmidt’s perversions.
He didn’t press me. In fact, when I told him, briefly and impersonally, of the denouement, his faded blue eyes filled with tears. Schmidt is very sentimental. He cries over everything, especially corny old German love songs.
‘It was the man you knew in Rome?’ he asked gently.
‘Yes.’
‘My child, time will heal your grief. There are many who love you, who will comfort you – ’
‘Skip the violins, Schmidt. He dragged me into this.’
‘But he did not mean to. When he realized the danger, he tried to save you. And,’ Schmidt went on, reverting to his familiar grievance, ‘you had not sense enough to do as he said. If you had returned home, or asked for my help, instead of keeping me always in the dark like a stupid old grandpa . . . It was your fault.’
On the whole, I prefer Schmidt’s scoldings to his disgusting wallows in bathos, so I said provocatively, ‘You can’t blame me for your being here. I should have