Waiting for Sunrise Read Free

yet she was still very small in stature –
    ‘What’re you looking at?’ she said abruptly, meeting his gaze in the reflection of the etching’s glass.
    ‘I was admiring your bootees,’ Lysander improvised quickly and smoothly. ‘Did you buy them here in Vienna? –’
    She never answered, as the door to Dr Bensimon’s consulting room opened at that moment and two men stepped out, talking and chuckling to each other. Lysander knew at once which one was Dr Bensimon, an older man in his forties, quite bald with a brown trimmed beard flecked with grey. Everything about the other man – to Lysander’s eyes – shouted ‘soldier’. A navy double-breasted suit, a banded tie below a stiff collar, narrow cuffed trousers above shoes so polished they might have been patent. Tall, ascetically lean with a small neat dark moustache.
    But the young woman was immediately in a kind of frenzy, interrupting them, calling Dr Bensimon’s name, apologizing and at the same time insisting on seeing him, absolutely essential, an emergency. The military man stepped back, leaned back, as Dr Bensimon – glancing at Lysander – swept the yammering woman into his room, Lysander hearing him say in a stern low voice as he did so, ‘This must never happen again, Miss Bull,’ before the door to his consulting room shut behind them.
    ‘Good god,’ said the military type, dryly. He was English as well. ‘What’s going on there?’
    ‘She seemed very agitated, I have to say,’ Lysander said. ‘Cadged two cigarettes off me.’
    ‘What’s the world coming to?’ the man said, lifting his bowler off its wooden hook. He held it in his hands and looked candidly at Lysander.
    ‘Have we met before?’ he said.
    ‘No. I don’t think so.’
    ‘You seem oddly familiar, somehow.’
    ‘I must look like someone you know.’
    ‘Must be that.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Alwyn Munro.’
    ‘Lysander Rief.’
    ‘Now that does ring a bell.’ He shrugged, cocked his head, narrowed his eyes as if searching his memory and then smiled as he gave up and moved to the door. ‘Don’t feed her any more cigarettes, if I were you. She looks a bit dangerous to me.’
    He left and Lysander resumed his scrutiny of the small drab courtyard outside. He extracted every possible detail from the view – the basket-weave pattern of the paving stones, the dog-toothed moulding on the arch above the stable door, a damp streak on the brickwork under a dripping tap. He kept his mind occupied. A few minutes later the young woman appeared from Dr Bensimon’s room, evidently much calmer, more composed. She picked up her handbag.
    ‘Thank you for letting me barge ahead, ’ she said breezily. ‘And for the ciggies. You’re very kind.’
    ‘Not at all.’
    She said goodbye and sauntered out, her long skirt swinging. She glanced back at him as she closed the door behind her and Lysander caught a final glimpse of those strange, light brown, hazel eyes. Like a lion’s eyes, he thought. But she was called Miss Bull.
     
     
    3. The African Bas-Relief
     
    Lysander sat in Dr Bensimon’s consulting room, looking around him as the doctor wrote down his personal details in a ledger. The room was spacious, with three windows along one wall, simply furnished and almost entirely done in shades of white. White painted walls, white woollen curtains, a white rug on the blond parquet and a beaten silver-metalled primitive-looking bas-relief hung above the fireplace. In one corner was Dr Bensimon’s mahogany desk, backed by floor-to-ceiling glass-fronted bookshelves. On one side of the fireplace was a soft high-backed armchair, loose-covered in coarse cream linen and on the other a divan under a thick, woollen fringed blanket and two embroidered pillows. Both were facing away from the desk and Lysander, who had chosen the armchair, found he had to crane his neck round uncomfortably if he wanted to see the doctor. The room was very quiet – double windows – and Lysander