Diana Glass
The Help
I hurry into the hotel, stamping the snow off my boots and brushing flakes from my jacket; it’s snowing in earnest now. I’ve been on an early morning walk with my camera among the pines as I’m not needed until breakfast. I check my watch. Nine o’clock; Mrs Bantry will be back from the spa soon.
‘Attention!’ Just inside the doors a member of staff is removing something unmentionable from the Persian rug near the entrance. I had nearly stepped right in it.
‘Oh!’ I make a face.
‘The actress’s enormous dog,’ he mutters, apparently too irritated to be discreet, ‘on her way out it stop’ ? he makes a face of utmost disgust and gestures at the stain ? ‘and she just carry on her way. Bof, like that!’ He gestures out through the doors.
I wonder what it must be like in such a bubble of Hollywood stardom that you don’t even stop when your dog defecates on a rug – ruffling the feathers of the supremely unflappable staff here.
A loud voice seems to carry over the general hubbub.
‘But what I am asking you is can one shoot the chamois?’ the old colonel says, leaning against the counter and over the poor receptionist, speaking very slowly and loudly.
‘You’ve got their heads mounted on every which wall.
Need a licence, what! I tell you I have a licence.
A Swiss licence? The bureaucracy these days! ’
I sidestep a maid carrying a load of laundry so huge it obscures most of her face, a nun, three bell hops, and a group of guests who seem to be deliberating about whether to go out.
‘Visibility will be next to nothing,’ one of the men says, worriedly.
‘I just think we’d be better having a day in the library playing Whist.’
‘Perhaps you’re right, dear,’ says his wife. ‘We have the rest of the week, don’t we?’
The nearest lift doors open and I hear: ‘I said no! Not now.’ It is Anthony Narracott, dressed in his skiwear and followed out of the lift by the unkempt sandy-haired young man with glasses.
All his usual suavity of manner is absent.
He looks truly furious as he marches in this direction.
I’m standing right in his path; don’t even have time to step aside, so suddenly we are face to face.
I watch as he seems to recollect himself; it is like watching a mask slip back in place. ‘Oh, hello,’ he says, charm fully restored. ‘The photographess. We meet again. What did you say your name was?’
I didn’t. ‘Diana, Diana Glass.’
‘Diana. The huntress.’ He sizes me up, and I feel suddenly as though I might as well be standing here in a bathing suit rather than several layers of cotton and wool.
‘Yes, I see it. Do you hunt?’ He turns and hands his coffee flask to the receptionist. ‘This to be filled up, please. I hope it’s freshly brewed today because yesterday,’ he pulls a sorrowful face, ‘it was a little stale, I’m afraid.
’ He gives her his most dazzling smile. Then he turns back to me and studies me more closely.
I am pinned by that cool blue gaze. I have the sense he is formulating a question.
‘I should be going to my employer now,’ I say. ‘She wants to take her breakfast at nine o’clock today so I’m actually running a little late.’
‘By all means,’ he says, gracefully.
‘Monsieur,’ the hotel manager comes over. ‘A call for you.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’
He turns and stalks off towards the phone kiosks. A few moments later – with astonishing efficiency – the receptionist places his flask back on the desk, the scent of fresh-brewed coffee filling the air.
A few minutes later I join Miss Marple in the breakfast room. She smiles at me and then produces a cotton laundry bag.
‘Oh, Diana,’ she says. ‘They delivered this to my room instead of yours. I know the mix-up they must have made – 19 and 61 – and I knew as soon as I opened it, I knew that they couldn’t be mine.
I’m afraid I never had such fine undergarments, not even as a young woman – silk and leavers lace.
Goodness but they must cost a great deal!
’ And then: ‘Sorry, that’s rather prying of me. ’
I take the bag from her, my cheeks warm. ‘Thank you.’
Now she looks out of the window. ‘It is interesting,’ she says, ‘isn’t it, how the snow keeps the record? All the night-time wanderings of the birds and mountain animals. Look, that must be a bird and those prints there one of those funny goat-antelope creatures …’
‘Chamois,’ I supply, thinking of the colonel and his eagerness to shoot them.
‘One wonders what they are all doing. Searching out food of course, finding shelter and trying to kill or not be killed, I suppose. And even more interesting is that it seems the kind of animals that walk on two legs have also been hither and thither. What do you make of these tracks … over there, leading off towards the glacier? It looks as though someone, or two someones or perhaps even three, have been up there – but they must have done it after nightfall, because we had that small fall of snow yesterday evening, which covered everything up—’ She stops and looks at me.
‘Are you all right, Diana? You really don’t look well. ’
‘Yes, you look definitely peaky,’ Mrs Bantry says, appearing and sitting down. ‘Are you tired? But the beds here are so comfortable! And the mountain air.’
‘I think it must be the altitude,’ I say, and it comes out a little apologetic. ‘I’m not used to it, you see. I’m fine, though. Please don’t worry about me.’
‘The spa!’ says Mrs Bantry. ‘You should try the spa. I’ve just come from there – it’s lovely and empty at this time of day.
Only a couple of other people around, though I have not yet managed to try the hammam: it was full.
There’s a room with walls of salt … imagine!
I tell you, Jane, it makes any English hydro look a little underwhelming, by comparison. ’
‘Well,’ Miss Marple says, ‘I was most impressed by The Royal Spa Hotel in Medenham Wells in spite of the unpleasantness that became associated with it.’
A maid approaches the table to clear our plates. She freezes at the sight of something out of the window and mutters under her breath.
‘What is it?’ Miss Marple says, craning to see. ‘Ah, that strange flag?’
‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Bantry frowns up at it. ‘The mountain wolves. How strange. Whoever did this, it’s not very attractive, is it? It seems a little sinister.’
The maid suddenly speaks, in accented English and in a rush, as though she couldn’t bear to remain silent.
‘I know who they are,’ she says, sombrely.
‘Or who they were. The wolves of the mountain. They were not sinister. They were …’ She switches into French and her accent is in fact French, I note, not Swiss.
‘They were very brave people.’ Her voice seems to tremble a little with feeling.
‘They fought the Nazis in the mountains, not far from here, but over the border, in France … under occupation.’
I turn to Miss Marple and Mrs Bantry, in case they haven’t caught it all. ‘It sounds as though they were some sort of Resistance group, in the war.’
Miss Marple nods, as though she had already understood all of this.
‘So, what can this mean?’ Mrs Bantry says, gesturing towards the strange sign on the mountain. ‘The war, as I kept telling Arthur, is over. What role do the Resistance have now? And here, in Switzerland?’
She looks at the maid. Perhaps it is something about her rather imperious British voice, the authority in it (I’m sure she has marshalled many maids in her time) but the Frenchwoman takes a step back, as though she feels she has said too much.
‘I do not know, Madame.’ Then she turns imploringly to me, switching back into French.
‘I was only a young girl at the time. I don’t know anything apart from what others have told me.
That is all. But when I heard you talking of the flag …
I felt I had to speak for them. For what they were.
My father knew some of them. All lost their lives, in the war. It was a terrible thing.’
‘Perhaps not all,’ Miss Marple says, with a glance towards the strange ragged flag, dancing in the wind. ‘Because how does one explain that, if so?’
We are all looking through the large windows of the restaurant now but as they continue to discuss the flag my gaze is caught by the sight of the first gondola of the day beginning its slow climb to the top of the mountain.
The bright red capsule is briefly agleam in the gold rays splitting through the gathering snow clouds.
I watch it until the light reflecting from the windows is so bright it scorches my eyes, like a second sun, and I have to look away.