Ellis Peters - George Felse 08 - The House Of Green Turf by Ellis Peters Page B

and we find now that the legatee parted company with his parents some time ago, and they have no idea where he is at the moment. We have advertised for him without result, at least so far. We therefore began to make enquiries in the hope of tracing him. The last record we have of him, strangely enough, terminates here, in your hotel, thirteen years ago.’
    He waited to elicit some sort of acknowledgment, and what he got was illuminating. The first thing old Waldmeister had to say was not: ‘What was his name?’ but: ‘How much is it, this legacy?’
    ‘When cleared it should be in the region of fifteen hundred pounds.’ Not so great as to turn out the guard in a full-scale hunt for him, but great enough to pay the expenses of a solicitor’s clerk as far as Scheidenau, in these days of off-peak tourist bargain travel.’ The old man nodded weightily. Property is property, and the law is there to serve it.
    ‘How is he called, this young man?’
    ‘His name is Robert Aylwin.’
    ‘I do not remember such a name.
The last record
of him, you say? It is a long time ago. To remember one visitor is impossible.’
    ‘You will remember this one, when I recall the circumstances.’ And he recalled them, very succinctly and clearly. There were names enough to bolster everything he had to say. Fredericks had regularly used this inn on those tours of his; neither he nor his students would be so easily forgotten. ‘I understand from a man called Charles Pincher, who shared a room here with him, that Aylwin left his suitcase and his ’cello in the room when he went away, and that Dr. Fredericks gave them into your charge, expecting the owner to come back to collect them. Is that so?’
    ‘It is so,’ said the old man without hesitation. ‘The name I had forgotten, but this of the cases and the Herr Doktor, that I remember.’
    ‘In that case I’m hoping that you can help me to the next link in the chain, that he gave you at any rate a forwarding address, when he came back for them.’
    ‘He did not come back for them,’ said Waldmeister, and volunteered nothing more.
    ‘He didn’t? Then in all these years you’ve had no word from him?’ The chill at the back of his neck, like icy fingers closing there, made Francis aware that he had never believed in this. Considered it, yes; believed in it, no.
    ‘No word. That is right.’
    ‘Did you… expect to?’ What he meant was, did you know of any reason why it would be no use expecting it.
    ‘I expected, yes. People do not just go away and leave their belongings. You understand, it is a very long time since I have thought of this matter. No, he did not come, and I knew no way to find him. I kept the things for him, that was all I could do. But he did not fetch them.’
    ‘Then… you still have them?’
    ‘Come with me!’ said the old man, and rose and led him from the room, out to the broad stone passage-way with its homespun rugs and its home-carved antique chairs and spinning-wheels and boot-jacks, over which a London dealer would have foamed at the mouth. Up the uncarpeted, scrubbed, monumental back stairs, spiralling aloft with treads wide enough at the wall end for a horseman to negotiate. One flight, a second, a third, and they were up among the vast dark rafters, in a series of open attics that hoarded rubbish and treasure together in the roof.
    ‘Here,’ said Waldmeister simply, and pointed. The ’cello-case, leaning sadly against a scratched wooden box, might have been covered in grey felt, but when Francis drew a dubious finger along its surface the blanket of dust came away clean from a finely-grained black leather. Of good quality, expensive, and surely almost new when the owner abandoned it here. A medium-sized black suitcase, its upright surfaces still almost black because it was of glossy, plastic-finished fibre-glass, stood beside the ’cello.
    ‘This is his? May I look? Under your supervision, of course. All I want is to see if there is anything