Ellis Peters - George Felse 05 - The Piper On The Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page A

outcrops, scrambles, that kind of thing. But nothing to tempt a man like Terrell. So the first question, even if I’d known nothing more, is: “
What was he doing there at all
?”
    “I see nothing to prevent even a climbing man from fancying a walking holiday now and again, for a change,” objected Blagrove reasonably.
    “Nothing whatever. Except that they just don’t do it. Hardly any of them, and certainly not Terrell. Once you’re as proficient as he was, you lose interest in the mild stuff. The climbs have to get harder all the time, and higher. Failing that, you just go somewhere new, where at least they’re different, unknown. But you don’t go back to walking and scrambling. And for that matter, even if you did go back, you certainly wouldn’t fall off a perfectly good traverse path, even at a blind corner, like the place where they found him.”
    “I shouldn’t like to be so sure it couldn’t happen. The skilled and experienced sometimes fail to give all their attention to the easy bits.” Blagrove was playing somewhat irritably with the card he held in his fingers. “Unless you have something more than that to go on….”
    “Oh, I have. You see, Terrell got in touch with me early this year, and asked my advice about good climbing country in the
High
Tatras. You don’t know that part of the world? There’s this great, open valley of the river Váh, running east-west, and to the south of it these broad, rolling crests of the Low Tatras. Then to the north, sickle-shaped, like this, and much more concentrated, there’s the cluster of the High Tatras, the highest peaks in the whole Carpathian range.
These
are for climbers. Anything up to nearly nine thousand feet, granite, three hundred or so peaks packed into about fifteen miles length, and magnificent country. I advised him to book in at Strba Lake, or at Tatranská Lomnice. And he did. He booked for two weeks at the lake. So what was he doing across the Váh valley in the Low Tatras?”
    Blagrove raised his brows. “He could surely have changed his mind. How do you know he went ahead with his booking?”
    “For the best reason in the world,” said Welland flatly. “Because
I
made the reservation for him, as long ago as April. And I know he turned up on time at the hotel, because he dropped me a card on arrival. He said nothing then about moving. On the contrary, he confirmed the arrangement we’d made by letter earlier. I was supposed to go along and spend the week-end climbing with him on Krivan. Only, you see, before the week-end came we got the news at the embassy that he’d been found dead—fifty kilometres away across the valley, in the Low Tatras, where he’d never intended going. He’d checked out from Strba Lake on the third day, and gone away to a small inn in one of the valleys in the other range. No mystery about
what
he did, up to that point. The only mystery is
why
?”
    “And you think,” said Blagrove, his hands still and alert before him on the desk, “that you know why?”
    “No, not yet. All I have is certain indications that may suggest reasons. As, for instance, that at some time after his arrival at the lake, something happened within his knowledge, something that caused him to pay his bill there and then, and go rushing off across the valley. No one at the hotel could account for it. He just left. But something happened that made him leave. If it had been simply something that disinclined him to stay where he was, made him dislike the place or con-struct uncomfortable there, he’d most probably have transferred to another hotel, somewhere along the range, or come back to Prague! Instead, he made his way for some reason to this one particular valley in the Low Tatras, not even a very frequented place. Whatever it was that happened didn’t just drive him away from Strba Lake—it led him to Zbojská Dolina. And believe me, it can have had nothing to do with climbing. Do I interest you, Mr. Bla-grove?”
    “You