The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [168]
“Unlike you to eat so little, especially as you missed your lunch,” Caroline remarked as we left the dining room that night.
I made no comment as we passed Travers seated at the bar, his hand on the knee of another innocent middle-aged woman.
I did not sleep for one second that night, and I crept out of bed just before six the next morning, careful not to wake Caroline. Everything was laid out on the bathroom floor just as I had left it the night before. A few moments later I was dressed and ready. I walked down the back stairs of the hotel, avoiding the elevator, and crept out by the fire exit, realizing for the first time what a thief must feel like. I had a woolen cap pulled well down over my ears and a pair of snow goggles covering my eyes: Not even Caroline would have recognized me.
I arrived at the bottom of the ski lift forty minutes before it was due to open. As I stood alone behind the little shed that housed the electrical machinery to work the lift, I realized that everything now depended on Travers’s sticking to his routine. I wasn’t sure I could go through with it if my plan had to be moved to the following day. As I waited, I stamped my feet in the freshly fallen snow and slapped my arms around my chest to keep warm. Every few moments I kept peering round the corner of the building in the hope that I would see him striding toward me. At last a speck appeared at the bottom of the hill by the side of the road, a pair of skis resting on the man’s shoulders. But what if it turned out not to be Travers?
I stepped out from behind the shed a few moments later to join the warmly wrapped man. It was Travers, and he could not hide his surprise at seeing me standing there. I started up a casual conversation about being unable to sleep, and how I thought I might as well put in a few runs before the rush began. Now all I needed was the ski lift to start up on time. A few minutes after seven an engineer arrived, and the vast oily mechanism cranked into action.
We were the first two to take our places on those little seats before heading up and over the deep ravine. I kept turning back to check there was still no one else in sight.
“I usually manage to complete a full run even before the second person arrives,” Travers told me when the lift had reached its highest point. I looked back again to be sure we were now well out of sight of the engineer working the lift, then peered down some two hundred feet, and wondered what it would be like to land head first in the ravine. I began to feel dizzy and wished I hadn’t looked down.
The ski lift jerked slowly on up the icy wire until we finally reached the landing point.
“Damn,” I said, as we jumped off our little seats. “Marcel isn’t here.”
“Never is at this time,” said Travers, making off toward the advanced slope. “Far too early for him.”
“I don’t suppose you would come down with me?” I said, calling after Travers.
He stopped and looked back suspiciously.
“Caroline thinks I’m ready to join you,” I explained, “but I’m not so sure and would value a second opinion. I’ve broken my own record for the B-slope several times, but I wouldn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of my wife.”
“Well, I—”
“I’d ask Marcel if he were here. And in any case you’re the best skier I know.”
“Well, if you—” he began.
“Just this once, then you can spend the rest of your vacation on the A-slope. You could even treat the run as a warmup.”
“Might make a change, I suppose,” he said.
“Just this once,” I repeated. “That’s all I’ll need. Then you’ll be able to tell me if I’m good enough.”
“Shall we make a race of it?” he said, taking me by surprise just as I began clamping on my skis. I couldn’t complain; all the books on murder had warned me to be prepared for the unexpected. “That’s one way we can find out if you’re ready,” he added cockily.
“If you insist.