The doorbell rang, distracting her from the displeasing image.
The door opened into a glass-sided storm porch. Through the rippled glass she could see a man, flanked by the two ghastly stone gnomes which guarded the main door of Hope House. The man seemed to be in uniform. She opened the outer door and saw he was a young policeman, with his cap in his hand.
That should have warned her. When policemen remove their hats they dont bring good news. But his accent was so broad and his face so unrearrangeably jolly that it took a little time to realize he wasnt simply collecting for something.
Slowly she made sense of him.
There had been an accident.
She knew at once that Trent was dead.
She knew it as she sat in the police car on their way to the hospital.
She knew it as she listened to a staff nurse explaining that someone would be along shortly.
She knew it when a soft-spoken man in a blue suit showed her Trents tempered steel identification bracelet.
At last, as if worn down by her silent certainty, they too admitted it.
Im sorry Mrs Adamson. Im afraid that your husband is dead.
2
A week in Sheffield had been long enough for Trudi to take a strong dislike to the place.
She found it cold, drab and ugly, and the people were not much better. The north of England was almost more foreign to her than anywhere else in Europe. She disliked in particular the way everyone addressed her as love or rather luv. It felt like an invasion of privacy.
It was only now that she began to realize just how little in truth her privacy was likely to be invaded.
She knew no one. No one knew her. She went home and sat and waited for tears to come. When they didnt she tried to induce them by going back over her life with Trent, like a video run in reverse. But nothing happened till she went beyond their wedding day and found herself suddenly three months earlier at her fathers funeral.
Now the tears came close. How regressive a thing was grief, she thought. Then the moment was past and her cheeks were still dry.
She took a strong sleeping pill and went to bed.
She awoke to instant remembrance but when she cautiously explored her feelings she discovered a barrier, thin as cellophane round a packet of biscuits, but irremovable without the risk of damage.
So she turned away from feelings and concentrated her thoughts on the bureaucracy of death.
Another policeman came, a sergeant, older, more solemn.
Just a formality, luv, he said. Just a few details.
He noted Trents full name, his age, his business.
This firm he works for. Silver Rider
Schiller-Reise of Vienna. Trudi spelt it out. Its a travel company. Reise means journey. And Schiller is the name of the man who runs it.
Oh aye? German, is it?
Austrian.
And theyve got an office here.
Well no, I dont think so, said Trudi hesitantly. She felt the officer regarding her dubiously and she pressed on. Theyre in most big European cities, of course. But Im not sure about the UK. Probably thats what my husband was doing, setting something up. He travelled a lot in his work, looking at hotels, locations, amenities. He used to be an airline pilot himself.
She produced this last statement as if somehow it justified the preceding vagueness about Trents work. The sergeant looked unimpressed.
Is that right? he said. Well, I reckon Sheffieldd be as good a centre as anywhere.
He did not say for what.
There would, he told her, be a post-mortem; routine after any sudden death.
The facts of the accident were tragically simple.
It had happened a few miles south of the city in the Derbyshire Peak District. The car had been parked at the side of a narrow undulating country road. A fertilizer truck moving at speed had come over a rise some fifty yards behind it. It had been raining earlier in the day. There was muck on the road surface which was long overdue for repair after the previous bitter winter. The driver had braked, the truck had skidded, caught the parked car from behind and driven it a hundred yards before slamming it into a telegraph pole. The truck driver had been flung out of his cab.
Lucky for him, said the sergeant, perhaps in search of some consoling circumstance. Old farmer working in the fields saw it all. Said the car went up like a bomb. Fractured the tank likely. And he seems to have been carrying some spare fuel in a jerry can in the boot. Probably for his scooter.
Scooter?
Aye. We found the remains of one of them foldaway motor-scooters in the boot. Didnt you know he had one?
No, said Trudi. I didnt know. Perhaps he hired it with the car.
Aye. Mebbe. Well, one thing, Mrs Adamson, it mustve been quick.
In support of this assertion he educed the fact that identification had only been effectable through the number of the hired car and the name on the fireproof bracelet.
Realizing too late that these considerations were as likely to aggravate as to ease pain, the well-meaning sergeant hopped from the past to the future, pointing out that the police would be swift to establish the extent of the truck drivers responsibility as soon as the man came out of hospital.
Shock; broke his collarbone and a few ribs falling out of his cab; and he got pretty badly scorched too. Well, he would. Like an inferno. Burnt the telegraph pole like a Yule log, brought all the wires down, you know. Sorry, luv. All I mean is, youll want to get your insurance company working on this. And your solicitor too, I shouldnt wonder. Youve got someone to help you with all this, have you? Someone to talk to? Friends?
Oh yes, said Trudi, with dismissive certainty.
She thought of Janet in distant Spain. There was no one else to think of, but there was no way of contacting her even if she wanted to. It was bad enough working out who to contact in Vienna. Friends? She couldnt think of anyone close enough to require a personal notification. Shyness, agoraphobia, call it what you will, but a woman who gives the impression that the end of any social occasion cant come soon enough doesnt attract friendship. Consciously or unconsciously, Trent had encouraged her isolation, rarely bringing people home, rarely involving her even in business entertainment. Herr Schiller, the head of the firm, was the only one of Trents senior colleagues she had met more than a couple of times socially. She had not much liked the old man, but he had seemed to take a benevolent interest in Trents career and for the sake of her husband she had put on her best social face. It seemed to have worked, for Trent had risen close to the top. But Schiller was old now, semi-retired and invalid, and it would be no kindness to contact him direct. In the end, she sent a telegram to Schiller-Reises head office and left it to them to pass on the news where and how they saw fit.
By the day of the funeral, there had been no response, and the vicar in the cemetery chapel was clearly disturbed to be faced by a congregation which, bearers apart, was divided evenly between the quick and the dead.
But before the service started, the door opened and a man came in. He had a narrow intelligent face which was hard to put an age on, particularly as the eye was diverted by his hair which in a woman would have been called beautiful, worn rather longer than was fashionable, and swept back in powerful waves of rich black, becomingly tinged with grey. His elegance was underlined by his clothes which were of such immaculate manufacture that the professional bearers shifted uneasily in their shabby mourning.
He came straight to Trudi, stooped over, took her hand and said in German, My dear Mrs Adamson, what a tragedy! What a loss! Believe me, I am truly devastated.
It was only at this point that Trudi recognized Franz Werner, her husbands, though not her own, Viennese doctor. She hardly knew the man, certainly did not know his relationship with Trent went beyond the professional to the extent of flying eight hundred miles to catch his funeral.
This was explained to some extent as they followed the coffin out of the chapel. Perhaps aiming at a therapeutic distraction, he told her in a reverential whisper that he had been on the point of departing from Vienna to attend a conference in London when he had heard the news.
I admired your husband greatly. I am proud to think I was his friend as well as his physician. So I rearranged my schedule in order to be here.
That was kind, said Trudi.
They were approaching the open grave.
We will talk later, said Werner.
What about? wondered Trudi, who was finding it very hard to believe that this brass-handled box contained her husband. Her husband. Who was he? What had he been? She concentrated hard upon his image but found that somehow her knowledge seemed to stop round about their wedding day. Up till then, there were plenty of people willing to fill in on Trents origins. East-ender, orphan, Barnardo boy who had grabbed with both hands the opportunity offered by the war to advance himself. He had made per ardua ad astra his own personal motto, his best man, an old RAF chum, had said at the reception. And he had finished his drunkenly risqué speech by saying, One thing the boys always said about Trent, you might not trust him with your wallet or your wife, but by Christ, old Trent was the chap you wanted to fly with. He always came back!
Well, old Trent wasnt coming back this time.
As though in confirmation of her irreverent thought, the vicar was scattering earth on the coffin. She was not listening to his words and it took a slight pressure from Werners hand to tell her it was all over.
But not quite. As she turned away, she saw a bright red Fiat Panda, with a long pennant bearing the name of a hire firm streaming from its aerial, come rocketing through the cemetery gates. It halted on the narrow driveway and a long, slim, blonde woman in her thirties got out and came running towards Trudi.
She reached her, embraced her.
There were tears streaming down her face.
Oh Trudi, mein liebe Trudi! Es ist schrecklich, ganz schrecklich.
Hello, Astrid, said Trudi Adamson.
3
Astrid Fischer had been Trents personal assistant during the whole of his time in Vienna. She was a striking woman, full of nervous energy. Her bright blonde hair was matched with smoky-blue eyes and the kind of skin which would stick at twenty-nine for at least another decade.
She was the only one of Trents colleagues Trudi knew at all well, apart from Manfred Schiller, the head of the firm, and even this closeness was only relative. But a couple of years earlier, perhaps in an attempt to rekindle her own almost extinct emotional fires, Trudi had gone through a period of intense jealousy concerning Astrid. There had been no material cause of it, she had never said anything to Trent, and the flame had died as rapidly as it ignited, dowsed by trust, indifference, or fear, she didnt care to find out which. But jealousys the next best thing to friendship and for a moment she felt genuinely moved by the womans appearance.
Werner was shaking her hand.
I must go. Already Im late, he said. Again, my deepest sympathy.
Astrid whispered, Whos he?
Trents doctor. It was nice of him to come. I thought he would stay longer though.
Astrid seemed to take this as an invitation and accompanied Trudi back to Hope House. Trudi did not mind. In fact she found herself almost pleased at last to have a partner in mourning.
They sat in the kitchen whose gaudy surfaces best reflected the brittle blank of Trudis feelings, and drank whisky.
I wasnt really awake when he left that morning, you know. He kissed me goodbye. He didnt always, sometimes but not always. He said hed try not to be late. Then he was gone. I heard the car. I didnt go out to wave or anything. We were past all that. And that was the last I saw of him, alive or dead.
Alive or Astrid hesitated delicately.
I never saw him. He was burnt
She felt her voice tremble like a rail at the approach of a train. But it was a long way away. She took a deep breath and described the accident as it had been described to her.
I dont even know what he was doing there! she concluded.
Why he stopped, you mean?
Presumably he stopped to read his map, stretch his legs, something. No, I mean I dont know why he was driving around Derbyshire. I dont even know what we were doing in Sheffield. Why did Schiller-Reise send him here, Astrid?
The girl was regarding her uneasily and Trudi, guessing at the cause of her unease, said, Its all right. I can talk about him. Really.
Its not that. No. Trudi, you clearly do not know, but Schiller-Reise did not send Trent here. No. He had handed in his resignation only a week before he left the country. Trudi, he was no longer working for the company!
Trudi was dumbfounded.
Astrid said, You knew nothing of this?
She shook her head slowly and the movement brought back her voice. No. We rarely talked about his job. He didnt want to or perhaps I didnt want but we didnt talk The move was sudden, but then wed made sudden moves before. When we came to Vienna from Milan, that was quick. Well, this was even quicker, but not so quick that though its true when I saw where hed brought me, I thought of the other places wed lived, the apartments, the cities, and compared with this
Her gesture took in the room, the house, the suburb, the city.
Oh God! she suddenly thought. Im a widow and Im complaining about the domestic arrangements.
She said quite sharply, Astrid, if Trent had left Schiller-Reise, what are you doing here?
Astrid said, I was on holiday in London. I had to ring the firm on a personal matter. When I heard of Trents death, I was dumbstruck! I asked about the funeral. They knew when it was, but didnt seem to know if anyone was going from the company. This made me very angry. It was not a proper way to act. If Herr Schiller had still been in charge but Im sure you must have worked out that if Herr Schiller had still been in charge, probably Trent would not have left.
Trudi shook her head.
I didnt realize Herr Schiller was no longer in charge, she said.
Its not official. Technically while hes still alive but hes a very sick man, you knew that?
I know he had a stroke just after we came to Vienna and spent a lot of time at his house in the Wachau. The last time I saw him was there, about six months ago. He looked ill, yes, but still alert.
Hes deteriorated greatly in the last couple of months, said Astrid. A second stroke. You didnt know?
No, said Trudi, with an indifference not caused solely by her circumstances. Even if her own troubles didnt exist, she would probably have felt little sympathy for the old man. She had never liked him, despite the many kindnesses he showered on her as Trents wife. Something about the dry voice, the coldness of his skin when he took her hand, the way in which the rarely blinking pale blue eyes never left her face, as though searching for something there that she did not have to give; in short, a sense of a cruelty mingled with his kindness had always repelled her, and she sometimes thought he sensed it though she did her best to keep it hidden.