A Moment On the Edge : 100 Years of Crime Stories By Women

A Scandal in Winter GILLIAN LINSCOTT

At first Silver Stick and his Square Bear were no more to us than incidental diversions at the Hotel Edelweiss. The Edelweiss at Christmas and the new year was like a sparkling white desert island, or a very luxurious ocean liner sailing through snow instead of sea. There we were, a hundred people or so, cut off from the rest of the world, even from the rest of Switzerland, with only each other for entertainment and company. It was one of the only possible hotels to stay at in 1910 for this new fad of winter sporting. The smaller Berghaus across the way was not one of the possible hotels, so its dozen or so visitors hardly counted. As for the villagers in their wooden chalets with the cows living downstairs, they didn’t count at all. Occasionally, on walks, Amanda and I would see them carrying in logs from neatly stacked woodpiles or carrying out forkfuls of warm soiled straw that sent columns of white steam into the blue air. They were part of the valley like the rocks and pine trees but they didn’t ski or skate, so they had no place in our world — apart from the sleighs. There were two of those in the village. One, a sober affair drawn by a stolid bay cob with a few token bells on the harness, brought guests and their luggage from the nearest railway station.

The other, the one that mattered to Amanda and me, was a streak of black and scarlet, swift as the mountain wind, clamorous with silver bells, drawn by a sleek little honey-colored Haflinger with a silvery mane and tail that matched the bells. A pleasure sleigh, with no purpose in life beyond amusing the guests at the Edelweiss. We’d see it drawn up in the trampled snow outside, the handsome young owner with his long whip and blond mustache waiting patiently.

Sometimes we’d be allowed to linger and watch as he helped in a lady and gentleman and adjusted the white fur rug over their laps. Then away they’d go, hissing and jingling through the snow, into the track through the pine forest. Amanda and I had been promised that, as a treat on New Year’s Day, we would be taken for a ride in it. We looked forward to it more eagerly than Christmas.

But that was ten days away and until then we had to amuse ourselves. We skated on the rink behind the hotel. We waved goodbye to our father when he went off in the mornings with his skis and his guide. We sat on the hotel terrace drinking hot chocolate with blobs of cream on top while Mother wrote and read letters.

When we thought Mother wasn’t watching, Amanda and I would compete to see if we could drink all the chocolate so that the blob of cream stayed marooned at the bottom of the cup, to be eaten in luscious and impolite spoonfuls. If she glanced up and caught us, Mother would tell us not to be so childish, which, since Amanda was eleven and I was nearly thirteen, was fair enough, but we had to get what entertainment we could out of the chocolate. The truth was that we were all of us, most of the time, bored out of our wits.

Which was why we turned our attention to the affairs of the other guests and Amanda and I had our ears permanently tuned to the small dramas of the adults’ conversation.

“I still can’t believe she will.”

“Well, that’s what the headwaiter said, and he should know. She’s reserved the table in the corner overlooking the terrace and said they should be sure to have the Tokay.”

“The same table as last year.”

“The same wine, too.”

Our parents looked at each other over the croissants, carefully not noticing the maid as she poured our coffee. (“One doesn’t notice the servants, dear, it only makes them awkward.”)

“I’m sure it’s not true. Any woman with any feeling…”

“What makes you think she has any?”

Silence, as eye signals went on over our heads. I knew what was being signaled, just as I’d known what was being discussed in an overheard scrap of conversation between our parents at bedtime the night we arrived: “…effect it might have on Jessica.”

My name. I came rapidly out of drowsiness, kept my eyes closed but listened.

“I don’t think we need worry about that. Jessica’s tougher than you think.” My mother’s voice. She needed us to be tough so that she didn’t have to waste time worrying about us.

“All the same, she must remember it. It is only a year ago. That sort of experience can mark a child for life.”

“Darling, they don’t react like we do. They’re much more callous at that age.”

Even with eyes closed I could tell from the quality of my father’s silence that he wasn’t convinced, but it was no use arguing with Mother’s certainties. They switched the light off and closed the door.

For a minute or two I lay awake in the dark wondering whether I was marked for life by what I’d seen and how it would show, then I wondered instead whether I’d ever be able to do pirouettes on the ice like the girl from Paris, and fell asleep in a wistful dream of bells and the hiss of skates.

The conversation between our parents that breakfast time over what she would or wouldn’t do was interrupted by the little stir of two other guests being shown to their table. Amanda caught my eye.

“Silver Stick and his Square Bear are going skiing.”

Both gentlemen — elderly gentlemen as it seemed to us, but they were probably no older than their late fifties — were wearing heavy wool jumpers, tweed breeches, and thick socks, just as Father was.

He nodded to them across the tables, wished them good morning and received nods and good-mornings back. Even the heavy sports clothing couldn’t take away the oddity and distinction from the tall man. He was, I think, the thinnest person I’d ever seen. He didn’t stoop as so many tall older people did but walked upright and lightly. His face with its eagle’s beak of a nose was deeply tanned, like some of the older inhabitants of the village, but unlike them it was without wrinkles apart from two deep folds from the nose to the corners of his mouth. His hair was what had struck us most. It clung smoothly to his head in a cap of pure and polished silver, like the knob on an expensive walking stick. His companion, large and square shouldered in any case, looked more so in his skiing clothes. He shambled and tended to trip over chairs. He had a round, amiable face with pale, rather watery eyes, a clipped gray mustache but no more than a fringe of hair left on his gleaming pate. He always smiled at us when we met on the terrace or in corridors and appeared kindly. We’d noticed that he was always doing things for Silver Stick, pouring his coffee, posting his letters. For this reason we’d got it into our heads that Square Bear was Silver Stick’s keeper. Amanda said Silver Stick probably went mad at the full moon and Square Bear had to lock him up and sing loudly so that people wouldn’t hear his howling.

She kept asking people when the next full moon would be, but so far nobody knew. I thought he’d probably come to Switzerland because he was dying of consumption, which explained the thinness, and Square Bear was his doctor. I listened for a coughing fit to confirm this, but so far there’d been not a sign of one. As they settled to their breakfast we watched as much as we could without being rebuked for staring. Square Bear opened the paper that had been lying beside his plate and read things out to Silver Stick, who gave the occasional little nod over his coffee, as if he’d known whatever it was all the time. It was the Times of London and must have been at least two days old because it had to come up from the station in the sleigh.

Amanda whispered: “He eats.”

The waiter had brought a rack of toast and a stone jar of Oxford marmalade to their table instead of croissants. Silver Stick was eating toast like any normal person.

Father asked: “Who eats?”

We indicated with our eyes.

“Well, why shouldn’t he eat? You need a lot of energy for skiing.”

Mother, taking an interest for once, said they seemed old for skiing.

“You’d be surprised. Dr. Watson’s not bad, but as for the other one — well, he went past me like a bird in places so steep that even the guide didn’t want to try it. And stayed standing up at the end of it when most of us would have been just a big hole in the snow.

The man’s so rational he’s completely without fear. It’s fear that wrecks you when you’re skiing. You come to a steep place, you think you’re going to fall and nine times out of ten, you do fall. Holmes comes to the same steep place, doesn’t see any reason why he can’t do it — so he does it.”

My mother said that anybody really rational would have the sense not to go skiing in the first place. My ear had been caught by one word.

“Square Bear’s a doctor? Is Silver Stick ill?”

“Not that I know. Is there any more coffee in that pot?”

And there we left it for the while. You might say that Amanda and I should have known at once who they were, and I suppose nine out of ten children in Europe would have known. But we’d led an unusual life, mainly on account of Mother, and although we knew many things unknown to most girls of our age, we were ignorant of a lot of others that were common currency.

We waved off Father and his guide as they went wallowing up in the deep snow through the pine trees, skis on their shoulders, then turned back for our skates. We stopped at the driveway to let the sober black sleigh go past, the one that went down the valley to the railway. There was nobody in the back, but the rugs were ready and neatly folded.

“Somebody new coming,” Amanda said.

I knew Mother was looking at me, but she said nothing. Amanda and I were indoors doing our holiday reading when the sleigh came back, so we didn’t see who was in it, but when we went downstairs later there was a humming tension about the hotel, like the feeling you get when a violinist is holding his bow just above the string and the tingle of the note runs up and down your spine before you hear it. It was only mid-afternoon but dusk was already settling on the valley. We were allowed a last walk outside before it got dark, and made as usual for the skating rink. Colored electric lights were throwing patches of yellow, red, and blue on the dark surface. The lame man with the accordion was playing a Strauss waltz and a few couples were skating to it, though not very well.

More were clustered round the charcoal brazier at the edge of the rink where a waiter poured small glasses of mulled wine. Perhaps the man with the accordion knew the dancers were getting tired or wanted to go home himself, because when the waltz ended he changed to something wild and gypsy sounding, harder to dance to. The couples on the ice tried it for a few steps then gave up, laughing, to join the others round the brazier. For a while the ice was empty and the lame man played on to the dusk and the dark mountains.

Then a figure came gliding onto the ice. There was a decisiveness about the way she did it that marked her out at once from the other skaters. They’d come on staggering or swaggering, depending on whether they were beginners or thought them-selves expert, but staggerers and swaggerers alike had a self-conscious air, knowing that this was not their natural habitat. She took to the ice like a swan to the water or a swallow to the air. The laughter died away, the drinking stopped and we watched as she swooped and dipped and circled all alone to the gypsy music. There were no showy pirouettes like the girl from Paris, no folding of the arms and look-at-me smiles.

It’s quite likely that she was not a particularly expert skater, that what was so remarkable about it was her willingness to take the rink, the music, the attention as hers by right. She wasn’t even dressed for skating. The black skirt coming to within a few inches of the instep of her skate boots, the black mink jacket, the matching cap, were probably what she’d been wearing on the journey up from the station. But she’d been ready for this, had planned to announce her return exactly this way.

Her return. At first, absorbed by the performance, I hadn’t recognized her. I’d registered that she was not a young woman and that she was elegant. It was when a little of my attention came back to my mother that I knew. She was standing there as stiff and prickly as one of the pine trees, staring at the figure on the ice like everybody else, but it wasn’t admiration on her face, more a kind of horror.

They were all looking like that, all the adults, as if she were the messenger of something dangerous. Then a woman’s voice, not my mother’s, said, “How could she? Really, how could she?”

There was a murmuring of agreement and I could feel the horror changing to something more commonplace — social disapproval.

Once the first words had been said, others followed and there was a rustling of sharp little phrases like a sledge runner grating on gravel.

“Only a year…to come here again…no respect…lucky not to be…after what happened.”

My mother put a firm hand on each of our shoulders. “Time for your tea.”

Normally we’d have protested, begged for another few minutes, but we knew that this was serious. To get into the hotel from the ice rink you go up some steps to the back terrace and in at the big glass doors to the breakfast room. There were two men standing on the terrace. From there you could see the rink and they were staring down at what was happening. Silver Stick and Square Bear. I saw the thin man’s eyes in the light from the breakfast room. They were harder and more intent than anything I’d ever seen, harder than the ice itself. Normally, being properly brought up, we’d have said good evening to them as we went past, but Mother propeled us inside without speaking. As soon as she’d got us settled at the table she went to find Father, who’d be back from skiing by then. I knew they’d be talking about me and felt important, but concerned that I couldn’t live up to that importance. After all, what I’d seen had lasted only a few seconds and I hadn’t felt any of the things I was supposed to feel. I’d never known him before it happened, apart from seeing him across the dining room a few times, and I hadn’t even known he was dead until they told me afterward.

What happened at dinner that evening was like the ice rink, only without gypsy music. That holiday Amanda and I were allowed to come down to dinner with our parents for the soup course. After the soup we were supposed to say good night politely and go up and put ourselves to bed. People who’d been skating and skiing all day were hungry by evening so usually attention was concentrated discreetly on the swing doors to the kitchen and the procession of waiters with the silver tureens. That night was different. The focus of attention was one small table in the corner of the room beside the window. A table laid like the rest of them with white linen, silver cutlery, gold-bordered plates, and a little array of crystal glasses. A table for one. An empty table.

My father said: “Looks as if she’s funked it. Can’t say I blame her.”

My mother gave him one of her “be quiet” looks, announced that this was our evening for speaking French and asked me in that language to pass her some bread, if I pleased.

I had my back to the door and my hand on the breadbasket. All I knew was that the room went quiet.

“Don’t turn round,” my mother hissed in English.

I turned round and there she was, in black velvet and diamonds.

Her hair, with more streaks of gray than I remembered from the year before, was swept up and secured with a pearl-and-diamond comb. The previous year, before the thing happened, my mother had remarked that she was surprisingly slim for a retired opera singer. This year she was thin, cheek-bones and collarbones above the black velvet bodice sharp enough to cut paper. She was inclining her elegant head toward the headwaiter, probably listening to words of welcome. He was smiling, but then he smiled at everybody. Nobody else smiled as she followed him to the table in the far, the very far, corner. You could hear the creak of necks screwing themselves away from her.

No entrance she ever made in her stage career could have been as nerve-racking as that long walk across the hotel floor. In spite of the silent commands now radiating from my mother, I could no more have turned away from her than from Blondin crossing Niagara Falls. My disobedience was rewarded, as disobedience so often is, because I saw it happen. In the middle of that silent dining room, amid a hundred or so people pretending not to notice her, I saw Silver Stick get to his feet. Among all those seated people he looked even taller than before, his burnished silver head gleaming like snow on the Matterhorn above that rock ridge of a nose, below it the glacial white and black of his evening clothes. Square Bear hesitated for a moment, then followed his example. As in her lonely walk she came alongside their table, Silver Stick bowed with the dignity of a man who did not have to bow very often, and again Square Bear copied him, less elegantly. Square Bear’s face was red and flustered, but the other man’s hadn’t altered. She paused for a moment, gravely returned their bows with a bend of her white neck, then walked on.

The silence through the room lasted until the headwaiter pulled out her chair and she sat down at her table, then, as if on cue, the waiters with their tureens came marching through the swinging doors and the babble and the clash of cutlery sounded as loud as war starting.

At breakfast I asked Mother: “Why did they bow to her?” I knew it was a banned subject, but I knew too that I was in an obscurely privileged position, because of the effect all this was supposed to be having on me. I wondered when it would come out, like secret writing on a laurel leaf you keep close to your chest to warm it.

When I was fourteen, eighteen?

“Don’t ask silly questions. And you don’t need two lumps of sugar in your café au lait.”

Father suggested a trip to the town down the valley after lunch, to buy Christmas presents. It was meant as a distraction and it worked to an extent, but I still couldn’t get her out of my mind. Later that morning, when I was supposed to be having a healthy snowball fight with boring children, I wandered away to the back terrace overlooking the ice rink. I hoped that I might find her there again, but it was occupied by noisy beginners, slithering and screeching.

I despised them for their ordinariness.

I’d turned away and was looking at the back of the hotel, thinking no particular thoughts, when I heard footsteps behind me and a voice said: “Was that where you were standing when it happened?”

It was the first time I’d heard Silver Stick’s voice at close quarters.

It was a pleasant voice, deep but clear, like the sea in a cave. He was standing there in his rough tweed jacket and cap with earflaps only a few yards away from me. Square Bear stood behind him, looking anxious, neck muffled in a woolen scarf. I considered, looked up at the roof again and down to my feet.

“Yes, it must have been about here.”

“Holmes, don’t you think we should ask this little girl’s mother?

She might…”

“My mother wasn’t there. I was.”

Perhaps I’d learnt something already about taking the center of the stage. The thought came to me that it would be a great thing if he bowed to me, as he’d bowed to her.

“Quite so.”

He didn’t bow, but he seemed pleased.

“You see, Watson, Miss Jessica isn’t in the least hysterical about it, are you?”

I saw that he meant that as a compliment, so I gave him the little inclination of the head that I’d been practicing in front of the mirror when Amanda wasn’t looking. He smiled, and there was more warmth in the smile than seemed likely from the height and sharpness of him.

“I take it that you have no objection to talking about what you saw.”

I said graciously: “Not in the very least.” Then honesty compelled me to spoil it by adding, “Only I didn’t see very much.”

“It’s not how much you saw, but how clearly you saw it. I wonder if you’d kindly tell Dr. Watson and me exactly what you saw, in as much detail as you can remember.”

The voice was gentle, but there was no gentleness in the dark eyes fixed on me. I don’t mean they were hard or cruel, simply that emotion of any sort had no more part in them than in the lens of a camera or telescope. They gave me an odd feeling, not fear exactly, but as if I’d become real in a way I hadn’t quite been before. I knew that being clear about what I’d seen that day a year ago mattered more than anything I’d ever done. I closed my eyes and thought hard.

“I was standing just here. I was waiting for Mother and Amanda because we were going out for a walk and Amanda had lost one of her fur gloves as usual. I saw him falling, then he hit the roof over the dining room and came sliding down it. The snow started moving as well, so he came down with the snow. He landed just over there, where that chair is, and all the rest of the snow came down on top of him, so you could only see his arm sticking out. The arm wasn’t moving, but I didn’t know he was dead. A lot of people came running and started pushing the snow away from him, then somebody said I shouldn’t be there so they took me away to find Mother, so I wasn’t there when they got the snow off him.”

I stopped, short of breath. Square Bear was looking ill at ease and pitying but Silver Stick’s eyes hadn’t changed.

“When you were waiting for your mother and sister, which way were you facing?”

“The rink. I was watching the skaters.”

“Quite so. That meant you were facing away from the hotel.”

“Yes.”

“And yet you saw the man falling?”

“Yes.”

“What made you turn round?”

I’d no doubt about that. It was the part of my story that everybody had been most concerned with at the time.

“He shouted.”

“Shouted what?”

“Shouted ‘No.’”

“When did he shout it?”

I hesitated. Nobody had asked me that before because the answer was obvious.

“When he fell.”

“Of course, but at what point during his fall? I take it that it was before he landed on the roof over the dining room or you wouldn’t have turned round in time to see it.”

“Yes.”

“And you turned round in time to see him in the air and falling?”

“Holmes, I don’t think you should…”

“Oh, do be quiet, Watson. Well, Miss Jessica?”

“Yes, he was in the air and falling.”

“And he’d already screamed by then. So at what point did he scream?”

I wanted to be clever and grown-up, to make him think well of me.

“I suppose it was when she pushed him out of the window.”

It was Square Bear’s face that showed most emotion. He screwed up his eyes, went red, and made little imploring signs with his fur-mittened hands, causing him to look more bear-like than ever. This time the protest was not at his friend, but at me. Silver Stick put up a hand to stop him saying anything, but his face had changed too, with a sharp V on the forehead. The voice was a shade less gentle.

“When who pushed him out of the window?”

“His wife, Mrs. McEvoy.”

I wondered whether to add, “The woman you bowed to last night,” but decided against it.

“Did you see her push him?”

“No.”

“Did you see Mrs. McEvoy at the window?”

“No.”

“And yet you tell me that Mrs. McEvoy pushed her husband out of the window. Why?”

“Everybody knows she did.”

I knew from the expression on Square Bear’s face that I’d gone badly wrong, but couldn’t see where. He, kindly man, must have guessed that because he started trying to explain to me.

“You see, my dear, after many years with my good friend Mr.

Holmes…”

Yet again he was waved into silence.

“Miss Jessica, Dr. Watson means well but I hope he will permit me to speak for myself. It’s a fallacy to believe that age in itself brings wisdom, but one thing it infallibly brings is experience. Will you permit me, from my experience if not from my wisdom, to offer you a little advice?”

I nodded, not gracious now, just awed.

“Then my advice is this: always remember that what everybody knows, nobody knows.”

He used that voice like a skater uses his weight on the blade to skim or turn.

“You say everybody knows that Mrs. McEvoy pushed her husband out of the window. As far as I know you are the only person in the world who saw Mr. McEvoy fall. And yet, as you’ve told me, you did not see Mrs. McEvoy push him. So who is this ‘everybody’ who can claim such certainty about an event which, as far as we know, nobody witnessed?”

It’s miserable not knowing answers. What is nineteen times three?

What is the past participle of the verb faire? I wanted to live up to him, but unwittingly he’d pressed the button that brought on the panic of the schoolroom. I blurted out: “He was very rich and she didn’t love him, and now she’s very rich and can do what she likes.”

Again the bear’s fur mitts went up, scrabbling the air. Again he was disregarded.

“So Mrs. McEvoy is rich and can do what she likes? Does it strike you that she’s happy?”

“Holmes, how can a child know…?”

I thought of the gypsy music, the gleaming dark fur, the pearls in her hair. I found myself shaking my head.

“No. And yet she comes here again, exactly a year after her husband died, the very place in the world that you’d expect her to avoid at all costs. She comes here knowing what people are saying about her, making sure everybody has a chance to see her, holding her head high. Have you any idea what that must do to a woman?”

This time Square Bear really did protest and went on protesting.

How could he expect a child to know about the feelings of a mature woman? How could I be blamed for repeating the gossip of my elders? Really, Holmes, it was too much. This time too Silver Stick seemed to agree with him. He smoothed out the V shape in his forehead and apologized.

“Let us, if we may, return to the surer ground of what you actually saw. I take it that the hotel has not been rebuilt in any way since last year.”

I turned again to look at the back of the hotel. As far as I could see, it was just as it had been, the glass doors leading from the dining room and breakfast room onto the terrace, a tiled sloping roof above them. Then, joined onto the roof, the three main guest floors of the hotel. The top two floors were the ones that most people took because they had wrought-iron balconies where, on sunny days, you could stand to look at the mountains. Below them were the smaller rooms.

They were less popular because, being directly above the kitchen and dining room, they suffered from noise and cooking smells and had no balconies.

Silver Stick said to Square Bear: “That was the room they had last year, top floor, second from the right. So if he were pushed, he’d have to be pushed over the balcony as well as out of the window.

That would take quite a lot of strength, wouldn’t you say?”

The next question was to me. He asked if I’d seen Mr. McEvoy before he fell out of the window and I said yes, a few times.

“Was he a small man?”

“No, quite big.”

“The same size as Dr. Watson here, for instance?”

Square Bear straightened his broad shoulders, as if for military inspection.

“He was fatter.”

“Younger or older?”

“Quite old. As old as you are.”

Square Bear made a chuffing sound and his shoulders slumped a little.

“So we have a man about the same age as our friend Watson and heavier. Difficult, wouldn’t you say, for any woman to push him anywhere against his will?”

“Perhaps she took him by surprise, told him to lean out and look at something, then swept his legs off the floor.”

That wasn’t my own theory. The event had naturally been analyzed in all its aspects the year before and all the parental care in the world couldn’t have kept it from me.

“A touching picture. Shall we come back to things we know for certain? What about the snow? Was there as much snow as this last year?”

“I think so. It came up above my knees last year. It doesn’t quite this year, but then I’ve grown.”

Square Bear murmured: “They’ll keep records of that sort of thing.”

“Just so, but we’re also grateful for Miss Jessica’s calibrations. May we trouble you with just one more question?”

I said yes rather warily.

“You’ve told us that just before you turned round and saw him falling you heard him shout ‘No.’ What sort of ‘No’ was it?”

I was puzzled. Nobody had asked me that before.

“Was it an angry ‘No?’ A protesting ‘No?’ The kind of ‘No’ you’d shout if somebody were pushing you over a balcony?”

The other man looked as if he wanted to protest again but kept quiet. The intensity in Silver Stick’s eyes would have frozen a brook in mid-babble. When I didn’t answer at once he visibly made himself relax and his voice went softer.

“It’s hard for you to remember, isn’t it? Everybody was so sure that it was one particular sort of ‘No’ that they’ve fixed their version in your mind. I want you to do something for me, if you would be so kind. I want you to forget that Dr. Watson and I are here and stand and look down at the ice rink just as you were doing last year.

I want you to clear your mind of everything else and think that it really is last year and you’re hearing that shout for the first time.

Will you do that?”

I faced away from them. First I looked at this year’s skaters then I closed my eyes and tried to remember how it had been. I felt the green itchy scarf round my neck, the cold getting to my toes and fingers as I waited. I heard the cry and it was all I could do not to turn round and see the body tumbling again. When I opened my eyes and looked at them they were still waiting patiently.

“I think I’ve remembered.”

“And what sort of ‘No’ was it?”

It was clear in my mind but hard to put into words.

“It…it was as if he’d been going to say something else if he’d had time. Not just no. No something.”

“No something what?”

More silence while I thought about it, then a prompt from Square Bear.

“Could it have been a name, my dear?”

“Don’t put any more ideas into her head. You thought he was going to say something after the no, but you don’t know what, is that it?”

“Yes, like no running, or no cakes today, only that wasn’t it.

Something you couldn’t do.”

“Or something not there, like the cakes?”

“Yes, something like that. Only it couldn’t have been, could it?”

“Couldn’t? If something happened in a particular way, then it happened, and there’s no could or couldn’t about it.”

It was the kind of thing governesses said, but he was smiling now and I had the idea that something I’d said had pleased him.

“I see your mother and sister coming, so I’m afraid we must end this very useful conversation. I am much obliged to you for your powers of observation. Will you permit me to ask you some more questions if any more occur to me?”

I nodded.

“Is it a secret?”

“Do you want it to be?”

“Holmes, I don’t think you should encourage this young lady…”

“My dear Watson, in my observation there’s nothing more precious you can give a child to keep than a secret.”

My mother came across the terrace with Amanda. Silver Stick and Square Bear touched their hats to her and hoped we enjoyed our walk. When she asked me later what we’d been talking about. I said they’d asked whether the snow was as deep last year and hugged the secret of my partnership. I became in my imagination eyes and ears for him. At the children’s party at teatime on Christmas Eve the parents talked in low tones, believing that we were absorbed in the present-giving round the hotel tree. But it would have taken more than the porter in red robe and white whiskers or his largesse of three wooden geese on a string to distract me from my work. I listened and stored up every scrap against the time when he’d ask me questions again. And I watched Mrs. McEvoy as she went round the hotel through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, pale and upright in her black and her jewels, trailing silence after her like the long train of a dress.

My call came on Boxing Day. There was another snowball fight in the hotel grounds, for parents as well this time. I stood back from it all and waited by a little clump of bare birches and, sure enough, Silver Stick and Square Bear came walking over to me.

“I’ve found out a lot about her,” I said.

“Have you indeed?”

“He was her second husband. She had another one she loved more, but he died of a fever. It was when they were visiting Egypt a long time ago.”

“Ten years ago.”

Silver Stick’s voice was remote. He wasn’t even looking at me.

“She got married to Mr. McEvoy three years ago. Most people said it was for his money, but there was an American lady at the party and she said Mr. McEvoy seemed quite nice when you first knew him and he was interested in music and singers, so perhaps it was one of those marriages where people quite like each other without being in love, you know?”

I thought I’d managed that rather well. I’d tried to make it like my mother talking to her friends and it sounded convincing in my ears. I was disappointed at the lack of reaction, so brought up my big guns.

“Only she didn’t stay liking him because after they got married she found out about his eye.”

“His eye?”

A reaction at last, but from Square Bear, not Silver Stick. I grabbed for the right word and clung to it.

“Roving. It was a roving eye. He kept looking at other ladies and she didn’t like it.”

I hoped they’d understand that it meant looking in a special way.

I didn’t know myself exactly what special way, but the adults talking among themselves at the party had certainly understood. But it seemed I’d overestimated these two because they were just standing there staring at me. Perhaps Silver Stick wasn’t as clever as I’d thought. I threw in my last little oddment of information, something anybody could understand.

“I found out her first name. It’s Irene.”

Square Bear cleared his throat. Silver Stick said nothing. He was looking over my head at the snowball fight.

“Holmes, I really think we should leave Jessica to play with her little friends.”

“Not yet. There’s something I wanted to ask her. Do you remember the staff at the hotel last Christmas?”

Here was a dreadful comedown. I’d brought him a head richly crammed with love, money, and marriages and he was asking about the domestics. Perhaps the disappointment on my face looked like stupidity because his voice became impatient.

“The people who looked after you, the porters and the waiters and the maids, especially the maids.”

“They’re the same…I think.” I was running them through my head. There was Petra with her thick plaits who brought us our cups of chocolate, fat Renata who made our beds, gray-haired Ulrike with her limp.

“None left?”

“I don’t think so.”

Then the memory came to me of blond curls escaping from a maid’s uniform cap and a clear voice singing as she swept the corridors, blithe as a bird.

“There was Eva, but she got married.”

“Who did she marry?”

“Franz, the man who’s got the sleigh.”

It was flying down the drive as I spoke, silver bells jangling, the little horse gold in the sunshine.

“A good marriage for a hotel maid.”

“Oh, he didn’t have the sleigh last year. He was only the under porter.”

“Indeed. Watson, I think we must have a ride in this sleigh. Will you see the head porter about booking it?”

I hoped he might invite me to go with them but he said nothing about that. Still, he seemed to be in a good temper again — although I couldn’t see that it was from anything I’d told him.

“Miss Jessica, again I’m obliged to you. I may have yet another favor to ask, but all in good time.”

I went reluctantly to join the snowballers as the two of them walked through the snow back to the hotel.

That afternoon, on our walk, they went past us on their way down the drive in Franz’s sleigh. It didn’t look like a pleasure trip. Franz’s handsome face was serious and Holmes was staring straight ahead.

Instead of turning up toward the forest at the end of the hotel drive they turned left for the village. Our walk also took us to the village because Father wanted to see an old man about getting a stick carved.

When we walked down the little main street we saw the sleigh and horse standing outside a neat chalet with green shutters next to the church. I knew it was Franz’s own house and wondered what had become of his passengers. About half an hour later, when we’d seen about Father’s stick, we walked back up the street and there were Holmes and Watson standing on the balcony outside the chalet with Eva, the maid from last year. Her fair hair was as curly as ever but her head was bent. She seemed to be listening intently to something that Holmes was saying and the droop of her shoulders told me she wasn’t happy.

“Why is Silver Stick talking to her?”

Amanda, very properly, was rebuked for staring and asking questions about things that didn’t concern her. Being older and wiser, I said nothing but kept my secret coiled in my heart. Was it Eva who pushed him? Would they lock her up in prison? A little guilt stirred along with the pleasure, because he wouldn’t have known about Eva if I hadn’t told him, but not enough to spoil it.

Later I watched from our window hoping to see the sleigh coming back, but it didn’t that day. Instead, just before it got dark, Holmes and Watson came back on foot up the drive, walking fast, saying nothing.

Next morning, Square Bear came up to Mother at coffee time. “I wonder if you would permit Miss Jessica to take a short walk with me on the terrace.”

Mother hesitated, but Square Bear was so obviously respectable, and anyway you could see the terrace from the coffee room. I put on my hat, cape, and gloves and walked with him out of the glass doors into the cold air. We stood looking down at the rink, in exactly the same place as I’d been standing when they first spoke to me. I knew that was no accident. Square Bear’s fussiness, the tension in his voice that he was so unsuccessful in hiding, left no doubt of it.

There was something odd about the terrace, too — far more people on it than would normally be the case on a cold morning. There must have been two dozen or so standing round in stiff little groups, talking to each other, waiting.

“Where’s Mr. Holmes?”

Square Bear looked at me, eyes watering from the cold.

“The truth is, my dear, I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He gave me my instructions at breakfast and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Instructions about me?”

Before he could answer, the scream came. It was a man’s scream, tearing through the air like a saw blade, and there was a word in it.

The word was “No.” I turned with the breath choking in my throat and, just as there’d been last year, there was a dark thing in the air, its clothes flapping out round it. A collective gasp from the people on the terrace, then a soft thump as the thing hit the deep snow on the restaurant roof and began sliding. I heard “No” again and this time it was my own voice, because I knew from last year what was coming next — the slide down the steep roof gathering snow as it came, the flop onto the terrace only a few yards from where I was standing, the arm sticking out.

At first the memory was so strong that I thought that was what I was seeing, and it took a few seconds for me to realize that it wasn’t happening that way. The thing had fallen a little to the side and instead of sliding straight down the roof it was being carried to a little ornamental railing at the edge of it, where the main hotel joined onto the annex, driving a wedge of snow in front of it. Then somebody said, unbelievingly: “He’s stopped.” And the thing had stopped. Instead of plunging over the roof to the terrace it had been swept up against the railing, bundled in snow like a cylindrical snowball, and stopped within a yard of the edge. Then it sat up, clinging with one hand to the railing, covered from waist down in snow. If he’d been wearing a hat when he came out of the window he’d lost it in the fall because his damp hair was gleaming silver above his smiling brown face. It was an inward kind of smile, as if only he could appreciate the thing that he’d done.

Then the chattering started. Some people were yelling to get a ladder, others running. The rest were asking each other what had happened until somebody spotted the window wide open three floors above us.

“Her window. Mrs. McEvoy’s window.”

“He fell off Mrs. McEvoy’s balcony, just like last year.”

“But he didn’t…”

At some point Square Bear had put a hand on my shoulder. Now he bent down beside me, looking anxiously into my face, saying we should go in and find Mother. I wished he’d get out of my way because I wanted to see Silver Stick on the roof. Then Mother arrived, wafting clouds of scent and drama. I had to go inside of course, but not before I’d seen the ladder arrive and Silver Stick coming down it, a little stiffly but dignified. And one more thing. Just as he stepped off the ladder the glass doors to the terrace opened and out she came.

She hadn’t been there when it happened but now in her black fur jacket, she stepped through the people as if they weren’t there, and gave him her hand and thanked him.

At dinner that night she dined alone at her table, as on the other nights, but it took her longer to get to it. Her long walk across the dining room was made longer by all the people who wanted to speak to her, to inquire after her health, to tell her how pleased they were to see her again. It was as if she’d just arrived that afternoon, instead of being there for five days already. There were several posies of flowers on her table that must have been sent up especially from the town, and champagne in a silver bucket beside it. Silver Stick and Square Bear bowed to her as she went past their table, but ordinary polite little nods, not like that first night. The smile she gave them was like the sun coming up.

We were sent off to bed as soon as we’d had our soup as usual.

Amanda went to sleep at once but I lay awake, resenting my exile from what mattered. Our parents’ sitting room was next to our bedroom and I heard them come in, excited still. Then, soon afterward, a knock on the door of our suite, the murmur of voices and my father, a little taken aback, saying yes come in by all means. Then their voices, Square Bear’s first, fussing with apologies about it being so late, then Silver Stick’s cutting through him: “The fact is, you’re owed an explanation, or rather your daughter is. Dr. Watson suggested that we should give it to you so that some time in the future when Jessica’s old enough, you may decide to tell her.”

If I’d owned a chest of gold and had watched somebody throwing it away in a crowded street I couldn’t have been more furious than hearing my secret about to be squandered. My first thought was to rush through to the other room in my nightdress and bare feet and demand that he should speak to me, not to them. Then caution took over, and although I did get out of bed, I went just as far as the door, opened it a crack so that I could hear better and padded back to bed.

There were sounds of chairs being rearranged, people settling into them, then Silver Stick’s voice.

“I should say at the start, for reasons we need not go into, that Dr.

Watson and I were convinced that Irene McEvoy had not pushed her husband to his death. The question was how to prove it, and in that regard your daughter’s evidence was indispensable.

She alone saw Mr. McEvoy fall and she alone heard what he shouted.

The accurate ear of childhood — once certain adult nonsenses had been discarded — recorded that shout as precisely as a phonograph and knew that strictly speaking it was only half a shout, that Mr.

McEvoy, if he’d had time, would have added something else to it.”

A pause. I sat up in bed with the counterpane round my neck, straining not to miss a word of his quiet, clear voice.

“No — something. The question was, no what? Mr. McEvoy had expected something to be there and his last thought on earth was surprise at the lack of it, surprise so acute that he was trying to shout it with his last breath. The question was, what that thing could have been.”

Silence, waiting for an answer, but nobody said anything.

“If you look up at the back of the hotel from the terrace you will notice one obvious thing. The third and fourth floors have balconies.

The second floor does not. The room inhabited by Mr. and Mrs.

McEvoy had a balcony. A person staying in the suite would be aware of that. He would not necessarily be aware, unless he were a particularly observant man, that the second-floor rooms had no balconies.

Until it was too late. I formed the theory that Mr. McEvoy had not in fact fallen from the window of his own room but from a lower room belonging to somebody else, which accounted for his attempted last words: “No…balcony.”

My mother gasped. My father said: “By Jove…”

“Once I’d arrived at that conclusion, the question was what Mr.

McEvoy was doing in somebody else’s room. The possibility of thieving could be ruled out since he was a very rich man. Then he was seeing somebody. The next question was who. And here your daughter was incidentally helpful in a way she is too young to understand. She confided to us in all innocence an overheard piece of adult gossip to the effect that the late Mr. McEvoy had a roving eye.”

My father began to laugh, then stifled it. My mother said “Well”

in a way that boded trouble for me later.

“Once my attention was directed that way, the answer became obvious. Mr. McEvoy was in somebody else’s hotel room for what one might describe as an episode of galanterie. But the accident happened in the middle of the morning. Did ever a lady in the history of the world make a romantic assignation for that hour of the day?

Therefore it wasn’t a lady. So I asked myself what group of people are most likely to be encountered in hotel rooms in mid-morning and the answer was…”

“Good heavens, the chambermaid!”

My mother’s voice, and Holmes was clearly none too pleased at being interrupted.

“Quite so. Mr. McEvoy had gone to meet a chambermaid. I asked some questions to establish whether any young and attractive chambermaid had left the hotel since last Christmas. There was such a one, named Eva. She’d married the under porter and brought him as a dowry enough money to buy that elegant little sleigh. Now a prudent chambermaid may amass a modest dowry by saving tips, but one look at that sleigh will tell you that Eva’s dowry might best be described as, well…immodest.”

Another laugh from my father, cut off by a look from my mother I could well imagine.

“Dr. Watson and I went to see Eva. I told her what I’d deduced and she, poor girl, confirmed it with some details — the sound of the housekeeper’s voice outside, Mr. McEvoy’s well-practiced but ill-advised tactic of taking refuge on the balcony. You may say that the girl Eva should have confessed at once what had happened…”

“I do indeed.”

“But bear in mind her position. Not only her post at the hotel but her engagement to the handsome Franz would be forfeited. And, after all, there was no question of anybody being tried in court. The fashionable world was perfectly happy to connive at the story that Mr. McEvoy had fallen accidentally from his window — while inwardly convicting an innocent woman of his murder.”

My mother said, sounding quite subdued for once: “But Mrs.

McEvoy must have known. Why didn’t she say something?”

“Ah, to answer that one needs to know something about Mrs.

McEvoy’s history, and it so happens that Dr. Watson and I are in that position. A long time ago, before her first happy marriage, Mrs.

McEvoy was loved by a prince. He was not, I must admit, a particularly admirable prince, but prince he was. Can you imagine how it felt for a woman to come from that to being deceived with a hotel chambermaid by a man who made his fortune from bathroom furnishings? Can you conceive that a proud woman might choose to be thought a murderess rather than submit to that indignity?”

Another silence, then my mother breathed: “Yes. Yes, I think I can.” Then, “Poor woman.”

“It was not pity that Irene McEvoy ever needed.” Then, in a different tone of voice: “So there you have it. And it is your decision how much, if anything, you decide to pass on to Jessica in due course.”

There were sounds of people getting up from chairs, then my father said: “And your, um, demonstration this morning?”

“Oh, that little drama. I knew what had happened, but for Mrs.

McEvoy’s sake it was necessary to prove to the world she was innocent. I couldn’t call Eva as witness because I’d given her my word.

I’d studied the pitch of the roof and the depth of the snow and I was scientifically convinced that a man falling from Mrs. McEvoy’s balcony would not have landed on the terrace. You know the result.”

Good nights were said, rather subdued, and they were shown out.

Through the crack in the door I glimpsed them. As they came level with the crack, Silver Stick, usually so precise in his movements, dropped his pipe and had to kneel to pick it up. As he knelt, his bright eyes met mine through the crack and he smiled, an odd, quick smile unseen by anybody else. He’d known I’d been listening all the time.

When they’d gone Mother and Father sat for a long time in silence.

At last Father said: “If he’d got it wrong, he’d have killed himself.”

“Like the skiing.”

“He must have loved her very much.”

“It’s his own logic he loves.”

But then, my mother always was the unromantic one.