Detective Max Hornung should have been a happy man. He had found a loose thread. But now he had met Elizabeth Roffe, and she was no longer simply a name, an equation in a mathematical puzzle. There was something very special about her. Max felt an urge to shield her, to protect her.
Rhys said, “I asked what this—”
Max looked at him and said vaguely, “Er—police procedure, Mr. Williams. Just routine.” He rose. “Excuse me.”
He had some urgent work to do.
CHAPTER 33
Chief Inspector Schmied had had a full morning. There had been a political demonstration in front of Iberia Air Lines, three men detained for questioning. A fire of suspicious origin at a paper factory in Brunau. It was being investigated. A girl had been raped in Platzspitz Park. A smash-and-grab job at Guebelin and another at Grima, next to the Baur-au-Lac. And if that weren’t enough, Detective Max Hornung was back, filled with some kind of nonsensical theory. Chief Inspector Schmied found himself starting to hyperventilate again.
“The elevator cable drum was cracked,” Max was saying. “When it collapsed, all the safety controls went out. Someone—”
“I saw the reports, Hornung. Normal wear and tear.”
“No, Chief Inspector. I examined the specifications for the cable drum. It should have lasted another five or six years.”
Chief Inspector Schmied felt the tic in his cheek. “What are you trying to say?”
“Someone tampered with the elevator.”
Not, I think someone tampered with the elevator, or, In my opinion someone tampered with the elevator. Oh, no! Someone tampered with the elevator. “Why would they do that?” “That’s what I would like to find out.” “You want to go back to Roffe and Sons?” Detective Max Hornung looked at Inspector
Schmied in genuine surpose. “No, sir. I want to go to Chamonix.”
The town of Chamonix lies forty miles southeast of Geneva, 3,400 feet above sea level in the French department of Haute-Savoie, between the Mont Blanc massif and the Aiguille Rouge range, with one of the most breathtaking vistas in the world.
Detective Max Hornung was completely unaware of the scenery as he debouched from the train at the Chamonix station, carrying a battered cardboard suitcase. He waved a taxi away and headed on foot for the local police station, a small building situated on the main square in the center of town. Max entered, feeling instantly at home, reveling in the warm camaraderie that he shared with the fraternity of policemen all over the world. He was one of them.
The French sergeant behind the desk looked up and asked, “On vous pourrait aider?”
“Oui.” Max beamed. And he started to talk. Max approached all foreign languages in the same fashion: he slashed his way through the impenetrable thicket of irregular verbs and tenses and participles, using his tongue like a machete. As he spoke, the expression on the desk sergeant’s face changed from puzzlement to disbelief. It had taken the French people hundreds of years to develop their tongues and soft palates and larynxes to form the glorious music that was the French language. And now this man standing before him was somehow managing to turn it into a series of horrible, incomprehensible noises.
The desk sergeant could bear no more. He interrupted. “What—what are you trying to say?”
Max replied, “What do you mean? I’m speaking French.”
The desk sergeant leaned forward and asked with unabashed curiosity, “Are you speaking it now?”
The fool doesn’t even speak his own language, Max thought. He pulled out his warrant card and handed it to the sergeant. The sergeant read it through twice, looked up to study Max, and then read it again. It was impossible to believe that the man standing before him was a detective.
Reluctantly he handed the identification back to Max. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m investigating a climbing accident that happened here two months ago. The victim’s name was Sam Roffe.”
The sergeant nodded. “Yes, I remember.”
“I would like to talk to someone who can give me some information about what happened.”
“That would be the mountain-rescue organization. It is called the Société Chamoniarde de Secours en Montagne. You will find it in Place du Mont Blanc. The telephone number is five-three-one-six-eight-nine. Or they might have some information at the clinic. That’s in Route du Valais. The telephone number there is five-three-zero-one-eight-two. Here. I’ll write all this down for you.” He reached for a pen.