The Dark Frontier A. Decker (i like reading TXT) 📖

the small boat, cold and hungry, for the next few days gave him little cheer. But it seemed to him an eminently worthwhile hardship when he considered the likely alternative that awaited him at the railway station.

He settled back as best he could into his unsprung sanctum, waiting for that precious moment when the ship’s engines would start up and the paddles would begin to turn. But his exhausted body denied him the pleasure of that moment. Despite the discomfort of his bedding, he dropped almost instantly into a deep sleep. And when eventually he was roused from this welcome recess, his mind had no time to pay any heed to the boat’s engines, the paddles or the direction of his journey. He found himself face to bewildered face with the vaguely familiar features of Hansruedi holding back the canvas over his shelter. The bargeman peered in with a quietly severe expression in his eyes.

“Raus aus dem Boot!” were his only words. Frank’s heart sank. As he was dragged out of the lifeboat, he felt the thud of Achim’s hip flask in his coat pocket. It knocked against the oarlock, reminding him instantly of his old friend and that suitcase of betrayal. But above all he thought of Patricia. Would he ever see her again, he wondered. And cursed every inch of his stupidity.

Chapter 14

“Ever since I started thinking out loud about Frank, raking over the last few months in search of clues, I’ve begun to wonder whether I ever really knew him,” Ellen said as she placed her empty tea cup on the table. “You probably think I’m daft. But when I think about it now, he often startled me in one way or another. Something he did or something he said, which seemed so out of character. And when I add them all up now, I begin to ask myself whether I ever knew who he really was. You see, I’m even talking of him in the past tense now, as if he was just a passing stranger I once knew.”

As Marthe poured another cup of tea, a smile fixed itself on her face. It unsettled Ellen. She was aware that Marthe had a little background in psychology. And she could not help sensing that, as Marthe poured the tea, she was listening to Ellen with the ears not of a woman, but of an examiner drilled to look at every conversation as a cryptogram. Until now, speaking with her had been a completely different experience from conversations with Dr Zellweger. It was woman to woman, and it gave her confidence. Even the way she had gone to such lengths to make Ellen feel at home by getting Darjeeling from the special tea shop in town, and made sure she found some ginger biscuits to go with it, showed such consideration. But this afternoon, Marthe succeeded in making her feel distinctly uncomfortable.

“You think I’m silly, don’t you?”

“No, of course not.” Marthe put the teapot down. Ellen’s remark made her appear self-conscious. But she was not about to be side-tracked.

“What sort of things did you feel were out of character?” she asked.

For the first time since Ellen had been here, she started to wonder whether Marthe’s primary purpose was to report back on their conversations to her husband.

“Marthe, I’ve been here for almost three weeks. And while my employer is becoming slowly intolerant of my long absence, you and your husband have been very kind and hospitable. And very patient. I really am very grateful to you for that. I’ve no doubt it’s mainly professional curiosity on your husband’s part. But I’m still very grateful.”

“You know that you’re welcome to stay for as long as you wish. And not for reasons of professional curiosity as you say.”

She continued to pour the tea. For some reason she looked slightly less ill at ease now as she passed the cup of tea to Ellen. Ellen wondered what was going through her mind, why she seemed so strange that afternoon.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Marthe insisted. “Tell me about the things which were out of character.”

“There are so many. Mostly little things. It’s hard to remember any one thing in particular,” she said, not feeling entirely comfortable with this lie. “It’s funny because, most of the time, Frank was so predictable. In every way. It was all a part of what I liked about him. He was so dependable. Not that he was boring. On the contrary. He introduced me to some fascinating things – poetry readings by weird and wonderful people I’d never heard of before, strange music that was completely new to me. And he’d often take me mudlarking along the banks of the Thames when the tide was out.”

A look of blank bewilderment crossed Marthe’s face, before Ellen added how much “Frank loved the thrill of digging up what he called ‘little pieces of the past’ – and just being by the waterside, amid the occasional swans on the water and ‘the boats laid out like rats in ritual style by the cat tide’ he used to say.”

The memory brought a smile to Ellen’s face.

“He could get quite lyrical at times,” she continued, recalling “one day in particular when he pulled an old camera from the mud. He picked it up, wiped it clean and – as he held it staring back up at him in his hands – let out an excited cry of ‘Exakta!’

“I had no idea what he was talking about. But apparently it was one of the first single-lens reflex cameras. Made in Germany in the 1930s and 40s. ‘Just imagine who might have thrown it in the Thames. And why,’ he said. He was almost breathless with the speculation, and his eyes flashed with the innocent wonder of a child as he panned the camera along the river bank until he hit on a solitary bedraggled swan that floated past him in the water. I remember his words quite clearly even now, as he