Free The King of the Rainy Country by Nicolas Freeling

you?’
    â€˜Not at all,’ came Canisius’ voice, dry, level, practised at speaking over long-distance telephones. The line was astonishingly good: mountains or not, he could have been in the next room. ‘Itis exactly the kind of unbalanced act I had feared. A possible scandal looming. Now you know why I was emphatic about discretion. Do the local police know all this?’
    â€˜They know about the girl. That is the pretext for my inquiries. Nobody knows about him yet, though the German police know something, naturally, since I had to tell them. They haven’t released anything to the press, though.’
    â€˜Good, good. Excellent. I have no doubt that you can find a pretext for keeping Mr Marschal from any further escapades until I can be notified. I will know then what steps to take. I am very pleased that you have got on his traces so quickly; congratulations. Remember, Mr Van de Valk – discretion. He may do something unexpected if he finds himself cornered.’
    â€˜You think that he is unbalanced, do you?’
    â€˜Don’t concern yourself about that, my dear inspector,’ the voice was silky. ‘Remember that we are all acting for the protection of himself as well as of very considerable interests. Ring me again the moment you have any news. Goodbye now.’
    He went and had dinner. He was extremely sleepy from the mountain air, and his leg muscles were aching: he got some stuff from the porter to grease the stiff newness out of the famous snow-boots, and put his legs in hot and cold water. But he was a little overtired and overtense.
    He had left his gloves somewhere, and would have to buy some more, and snowglasses. He was beginning to understand Mr Bratfisch, especially after reading the local paper.
    He could speak and understand German well enough, but this mountain dialect was a bit beyond him; they had all sorts of words for things that foxed him. He was a bit of a fish out of water here: he had never been on skis in his life, and didn’t intend to start, thanks, and get shipped home with plaster on his leg. He would have to do a lot of walking, he could see that. In the snow; on the slopes – those poor leg muscles were going to suffer. Too bad about them.
    He didn’t understand a thing about Jean-Claude Marschal. To talk about being unbalanced … Running away suddenly withthe tanzmariechen – he was sure there was nothing premeditated about it – was that really unbalanced? Mr Canisius was very quck to say it was. Anne-Marie had remarked that it didn’t do to take the word of a Canisius as an infallible guide to understanding Marschal. What sort of a fellow was he? Romantic, impetuous, contemptuous of consequence. There was something paradoxically schoolboyish about a millionaire who has private bank accounts in half the major towns in Europe, keeping them under the names of Napoleonic Marshals. He was giving a romantic dash and sheen to that prosaic money. What was the point? Yes, he thought, he would have to go to the library and get a list of all those Napoleonic characters. Likely as not there was an account here in Innsbruck: he recalled vaguely that there were several Alsatian ones – Strasbourg was a great breeding-ground of marshals – with Germanic names.
    He thought about the tanzmariechen. A hussar, a cavalier, almost a Rosenkavalier? Full of innocence, of courage, of trust. What pull could that exercise on Marschal? Did it really mean anything deep to him?
    He had had Anne-Marie’s word that Jean-Claude had never found any woman but herself that really meant anything to him. He hadn’t thought she was lying, either.
    If Marschal was behaving in a peculiar way, so was Canisius. Van der Valk had come round again to the old puzzle: what was Canisius so anxious about? Surely an escapade more or less trivial of the son-of-the-family could not seriously worry the Sopex? How did it warrant sticking a