To try and sleep was out of the question. I decided to add to my report to Engles. I picked up my typewriter and lifted the cover. I was just going to remove the sheet of paper on which I had already typed the day’s report when I noticed that the top of it had been caught between the cover and the base. The paper was torn and dirtied by the catches. Now I am always most careful to adjust the paper so that this does not happen when I am putting my typewriter away with copy in it. It is quite automatic. Somebody had read that report and had failed to adjust the paper properly before putting the lid back on the typewriter. I made a quick search of the room. My things were all in place, but here and there they had been moved slightly — a bottle of ink at the bottom of my suitcase was on its side, some letters in a writing case were in a different order and several other small things were out of place. I became certain that Keramikos had searched my room. But why had he left the door open? Was he trying to frighten me?
The only thing that mattered was the report to Engles. Fortunately there was no address on it. It read like part of a diary. It was quite innocuous, merely recording my conversations with Carla and Keramikos that afternoon. But it showed my interest. I suddenly remembered that cable from Engles. But it was all right. It was in the wallet in my pocket. The photograph of Carla was also there.
I sat down then and penned an account of the night’s happenings for Engles.
When I came down to breakfast, after only a short sleep, I found Mayne at the piano. ‘Know this, Blair?’ he asked. He was as full of sunlight as the morning. The notes rippled from his fingers like the sound of a mountain stream.
‘Handel’s Water Music,’ I said.
He nodded. He had a beautiful touch. ‘Do you like Rossini for breakfast?’ he asked. And without waiting for an answer, he slid into the overture of The Barber of Seville. Gay, subtle humour, full of mockery and laughter, rilled the sunny room. ‘There is more of Italy in this music, I think, than in the works of all her other composers put together,’ he said. ‘It is gay, like Anna here.’ The girl had just come in to lay the breakfast and she flashed him a smile at the sound of her name. ‘Do you know this piece, Anna?’ he asked in Italian, switching into the first act. She listened for a second, her head held prettily on one side. Then she nodded. ‘Sing it then,’ he said.
She smiled and shook her head in embarrassment.
‘Go on. I’ll start again. Ready?’ And she began to sing in a sweet soprano. It was gay and full of fun.
‘That is the Italian side of her,’ he said to me through the music. He suddenly left her flat and thumped into the priest scene. ‘But she does not understand this,’ he shouted to me. ‘She is Austrian now — and a good Catholic. This mocks at the Church. Only the Italians would mock at their Church. Here it is — the foolish, knavish priest enters.’ The notes crashed out mockingly.
He struck a final chord and swung round on the stool. ‘What are you doing today, Blair?’ he asked. ‘Yesterday you introduced me to a very good entertainment at that auction. Today I would like to return your kindness. I would like to take you skiing. It is early in the season and there is a lot of snow still to fall. We should not waste a fine day like this. Besides, the forecast is for snow later. What about coming up Monte Cristallo with me?’
‘I’d like to,’ I said. ‘But I feel I ought to do some work.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You can work all this evening. Besides, you ought to have a look at one of the real mountains up here. I can show you a glacier and some very fine avalanche slopes. Your fat friend is only taking pictures of the ordinary ski runs. You ought to take a look at the real mountains. There’s good film stuff up there.’
‘Really,’ I said, ‘I must work.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘My God, you take life seriously. What does a day more or less matter? You should have been born in Ireland. Life would have been more fun for you.’ He swung back to the piano and began thumping out one of Elgar’s more solid pieces, looking at me over his shoulder with a twinkle in his eyes. He quickly changed into a gay Irish air. ‘If you change your mind,’ he said, ‘I’ll be leaving about ten.’
The others were drifting in now, attracted by the music and the smell of bacon and eggs frying. Conscious of a growing audience, Mayne switched to Verdi and began to play seriously again. Only Joe was not interested. He looked tired and liverish. ‘Does he have to make a damned row so early in the morning?’ he grumbled in my ear. ‘Like talking at breakfast — can’t stand it.’ His face looked grey in the hard sunlight and the pouches under his eyes were very marked.
The mail came up, after breakfast, on the first sleigh. With it was a cable from Engles. It read: Why Mayne Keramikos unmentioned previously. Full information urgent. Engles.
