Silent Witness by Margaret Yorke

Author:Margaret Yorke
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Silent Witness
ISBN: 9780755134878
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2012-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

They reached the bridge and stood beside it, staring up at the mountain. It was impossible to make out through the murk the figures of the men searching up there. They had taken long slender poles to prod into the deep snow at the side of the piste, such as were used after an avalanche to find the buried victims.

Penny went off to the burgomeister’s house. Liz, looking across at the row of chalets above the church, saw a solitary figure on the professor’s balcony. She had telephoned Patrick before leaving the Gentiana to tell him that Bernard had not been found.

Penny came back and told them that if it were not for the avalanche risk, the burgomeister would have asked for a helicopter to help in the search, but the vibration might be all that was needed to start a fall. In any case, the weather was too bad and the visibility too poor for a helicopter to fly in the mountains.

Sue and Barbara decided, since they were so near, to visit June in the clinic. The Derringtons, who clearly hated to be idle, said they would walk up to the Grand for a swim. Liz, left with Francis, Sam and Penny, turned abruptly from them, saying she was going back to the hotel. She walked rapidly away before any of them could offer to go with her, head down, and gloved hands thrust into her pockets. She stared at the grimy snow forming the surface of the road as she went, and would have walked straight past Patrick if he had not hailed her.

‘Why isn’t your anorak red?’ she demanded without preamble, for he, too, fitted the description of Bernard, although he was a much bigger man, in fact.

‘I don’t want to be mistaken for a ski-instructor, and I like to be garbed as the Dark Blue that I am,’ he replied at once. ‘But why do you ask?’

She told him.

‘How shrewd of Irwin,’ Patrick observed. ‘What else is known about friend Bernard?’

‘Not much. He’s older than I thought at first. I put him down at about thirty-five, but he once said something about being nearly twice as old as Penny, which makes him over forty. He doesn’t look it – a few frown lines on the brow, but no others much.’

‘Life hasn’t etched its careworn furrows yet, you imply?’

‘More or less. He scuttled about so, maybe he never stopped long enough in one place for them to form.’

‘Where’s his room? Near yours?’

‘No. It’s in the annexe beyond the hotel.’

Patrick walked silently past the main building of the Gentiana, brushed his snowy boots on the annexe doorstep with the stiff broom provided, and went inside.

‘Where are you going?’ Liz demanded, following.

‘Which is his room. Do you know?’

‘You can’t go into it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Someone may see you. And you’ve got no right.’

‘Everyone’s out, or asleep. And I’m going to look for him. He may have come back,’ said Patrick. ‘Which is it? Or must I try each one?’

He was perfectly capable of doing just that, and of getting away with it too.

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