Dead Man's Tale by Ellery Queen Read Free Book Online Page A

Hacha.…
    Good-bye, Heinz, Trudy thought. Tonight, and then goodbye. Of course good-bye. The athlete was entirely gone and the complete musician stood there, coaxing the Moldau out of the Kursaal Orchestre in the garden on Haldenstrasse overlooking the dark, silent lake.
    At the ringside table, listening to the music, Trudy Ohlendorf ordered another bottle of Pony Hell export beer. It was her third. When it came, the glass beaded with condensed moisture. Trudy drank deeply. She was a handsome woman who was thirty-two and looked twenty-five. Her hair was chestnut, her legs long and pretty, although on the sturdy side. Swiss Alpine legs, Heinz Kemka had called them, caressing her with his big strong athlete-musician’s hands. She wore a summer dress with a low neckline. It showed wide, smoothly curved shoulders, an expanse of flawless tanned skin and the beginning of a cleft between her breasts.
    Tonight could be like any other night, Trudy Ohlendorf decided. Why not? She would tell Heinz that it was all over between them afterwards. Perhaps she wouldn’t even bother to explain. She was hoping he wouldn’t make a scene. Already she had in mind exactly what she wanted to do.
    A walk down Haldenstrasse to Schwanenplatz and over the old Chapel Bridge across the River Reuss (Moldau, she thought, and smiled) to the old quarter of town for some cheese fondue and a good white wine. A new Swiss wine, at the Wilden Mann, where the fondue was so thick a spoon would stand in it.
    Then back across the bridge to Alpenstrasse, where Heinz had set her up in an apartment and where, tonight, they would make love for the last time. At dawn, a walk at the lakeside to watch the sun come up behind the snowy Alps. Heinz would express his amazement, for the three-hundredth morning, at her unflagging energy. At that moment he would look most like a musician and least like an athlete—his hair mussed, tired shadows under his eyes—and so then she would tell him.
    The Vltava was now rushing stormily across the orchestra stage through the St. Johns Rapids, assisted by the elements. A real thunderstorm was in the air. The garden roof rolled shut overhead. Heinz softened the storm onstage with fluid movements of his big hands as he put the Vltava, in its wide and serene phase, through its paces in Prague.
    Trudy finished her third Pony Hell and looked around. Now that the customers beyond the range of the sliding weather roof had scurried under it, the Kursaal garden was crowded. Trudy stared boldly at the men seated at the tables listening to the Vltava run its course.
    They were so easy to figure out, most of them. Take that German burgher there. Obviously a businessman, his pockets stuffed with marks from the rebuilding of Köln or Koblenz or wherever.
    Or that one. Dark and small and very French. Very suave, very sure of himself, very boring.
    Or the young man talking anxiously to the maître d’ and then making his way self-consciously across the garden. That one, surely, was an American student. He had no mystery, no surprises, absolutely none.
    He was good-looking in a sapling sort of way. He had studied a guide-book on Lucerne and could name all the mountains in the vast rising ranges across the water. He would ascend Mt. Pilatus on the cograilway, spend a morning hiking along the cliff trails, stop for lunch and wine at Pilatus Kulm and go home saying he had climbed an Álp.…
    Trudy yawned. And suddenly sat up straight. That was a surprise, at least. The American student seemed to be heading for her table. Now he had stopped, looking down at her. A slightly lopsided smile touched his mouth. He was actually going to speak to her.
    â€œI beg your pardon,” he said. “Miss Ohlendorf? Miss Gertrude Ohlendorf? Do you speak English? Parlez-vous FranÇais? Oder, sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
    â€œI can speak whichever you prefer,” Trudy said in English. “But I’m afraid you have an advantage