Dead Man's Tale by Ellery Queen

Switzerland.”
    Instead of answering, Andy beckoned the waitress. “Our check, please. This is on me,” he said. “We detectives have expense accounts that would choke a horse.”
    Trudy squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. He made her feel very young. While Andy paid the check she thought of the walk in the rain, the Wilden Mann and afterward.…
    Heinz Kemka mounted the podium and the first violinist scratched out a tone for the other musicians. The lights in the Kursaal garden dimmed and a flash of lightning across the lake momentarily showed the brooding crag of Mt. Pilatus.
    â€œAnd now,” Trudy said, rising as he held her chair for her, “no more talk of Milo Hacha for a while. Fair enough?”
    â€œIt suits me fine,” Andy said.
    As they stepped out from under the protection of the Kursaal garden’s roof into the rain, Trudy noticed that Heinz Kemka was watching them. Perhaps, this was the best way of telling him good-bye, after all.
    The soft rain was like a caress.

8
    The apartment had two rooms and was furnished in severe Danish modern. “You like it?” Trudy asked.
    â€œVery nice.”
    â€œI hate cluttered rooms.”
    Trudy seated herself on a sofa that resembled an open sandwich, a slab of polished birch supporting a slab of foam rubber. She spread her wide skirt out and smiled up at Andy. “What are you thinking?”
    Instead of answering, he smiled back. What he was thinking was that she was a beautiful woman and that he wanted to make love to her, here, on this sandwich-of-a-sofa, immediately.
    â€œWhat are you thinking?”
    She really didn’t want an answer. What he was thinking was that a course ought to be given somewhere in the flirting mores of European women. How did you keep from making a fool of yourself?
    â€œLet’s go to the Wilden Mann every night,” she said. “Because the Kursaal was nothing. We really met there, at the Wilden Mann.”
    They had a great deal of fondue, Andy remembered, dipping it up with thick chunks of bread and washing it down with so much white wine that he had a pleasant buzz on. She had obviously enjoyed the cheese, the wine, his company, the walk in the rain. And most of all she had enjoyed his enjoyment of them. She had seemed pleased at their lack of conversation, as if she disliked people who talked too much. Then, coming here to her apartment on Alpenstrasse, when the rain had really pelted them, she had laughed like a child at the way he held her hand.
    â€œI’m glad you don’t want to tell me,” she said.
    â€œTell you what?”
    â€œWhat you’re thinking of course. There is brandy in the bar.”
    It was Martell V.S.O.P. He found two large, tinted snifters and poured a liberal shot in each. He watched her swirl the brandy and sip it. He did the same with his, standing over her. Suddenly she set the snifter on the floor and stretched like a cat. “Tired?”
    He shook his head.
    â€œYou are not very talkative, either.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said, watching her.
    She laughed. “Who wants to talk?”
    She swung her legs up on the slab of foam rubber and kicked off her shoes. She lay back, clasping her hands behind her head, watching him watch her breasts, her eyelids fluttering, closing. “Don’t shut off the light.”
    Just before he kissed her on the mouth her eyes opened. They remained open as she flung her arms around his neck.
    He carried her into the bedroom.
    She was a big woman, but she felt weightless in his arms. He put her down on the bed. “Turn on the light,” she said.
    He turned the light on. She was undressing.
    They made love and slept in each other’s arms and made love again before Heinz Kemka’s key turned in the lock of the apartment on Alpenstrasse.
    Heinz Kemka was jealous.
    He had never dreamed their affair would be permanent, of course. He knew Trudy’s history too well