The Grand Alpine Hotel Blizzard Murder
Prologue
The top of the Grand Alpine gondola
The gondola rises silently through the bank of clouds into the frozen world at the top of the mountain. It is a wonder of modern engineering, gliding between stanchions drilled into ancient rock, the red lacquer of its body gaudy against the bleak palette of white and grey.
There’s someone in the gondola. One of the hotel guests, most likely, eager to make the first tracks of the day.
Fresh snow fell last night, leaving a pristine covering of powder over the mountain and softening the glacier that sweeps down one side.
In the early morning light, it gives off a nacreous glow.
Faint bluish indentations on the surface whisper of hidden, lethal chasms beneath.
In the tiny cabin beside the lift the attendant stamps his feet in his boots, blows on his hands to keep warm.
He’s looking forward to interacting with another human being, however briefly.
It’s a lonely existence up here with only the eagles for company, the only sounds the otherworldly groaning and cracking of the glacial ice as it continues its endless creep towards the town.
He knows the fears of his ancestors, how they believed in malign mountain spirits and giants living among these peaks, why they shunned them as a place of dark magic.
Sometimes – when the seracs fall with crashes that seem to echo infinitely among the surrounding rock, or when a winter storm crackles with purple lightning, or when the low growl of an avalanche sounds at a distance – he’s not completely sure he doesn’t believe in such things himself.
The shadowy figure in the gondola sits with their head thrown back against the rear window; perhaps in awestruck appreciation of the view.
The mechanism grinds to a halt. The doors begin to open. The seated figure does not move.
The attendant peers through the cabin window. Are they asleep? Are they not intending to get out? Perhaps they’ve come up here for the sights and will simply stay put and travel back the way they’ve come. More snow is on the way, after all: a great deal of it.
And yet … there’s something odd. A peculiar stillness about the scene. The attendant feels that he is just as alone as he was before the gondola and its occupant emerged through the clouds.
Should he go and see?
He doesn’t want to see.
He’s struck by the sudden impulse (odd; he’s a good Swiss Protestant) to cross himself.
Just as he steps out of his cabin into the freezing air the gondola gives the mechanical shudder that locks it into the final position. This is when the seated figure falls, stiff and inert as a Dresden doll knocked from a mantelpiece, keeling face-first onto the metal floor of the cabin.
For a moment the attendant watches in horror. Then he springs into action. But he knows, even as he hastens along the ice-slick path, that it is no use. The gondola’s passenger is already dead.