Dead Men Don't Ski

All at once, Henry had an extraordinary impression of tension, as if each remark had more than its surface meaning, as if purposeful streams of innuendo were being directed by the speakers towards—whom? Everybody? One other person? He glanced round.

Not everybody’s cup of tea—hotel stuck up all by itself at the top of a chair-lift. Can’t get down to the village at all after dark, you know.”

As they had all realised in their loneliness on Innsbruck station, the English and Americans have not yet discovered Italy as a winter sports’ country. No other English voices greeted them.

Emmy always remembered the scene that followed as a sort of El Greco tableau. The lean, cadaverous figure of Carlo, his long face creased into vertical lines of distress, lit sharply by the stark glare of the single bulb in the cabin: the skeletal shapes of the empty chairs as they clattered on their way: the huddled figure lying motionless in the

Henry stopped climbing and stood stock-still, just in the shadow of the trees, and watched, with a terrible fascination. Little by little, foot by foot, the pursuer seemed to be gaining ground on his quarry. Then the slim black figure of the leading skier accelerated, as though propelled by some superhuman force of desperation, and the distance bet

The faces were pale, true, but—Henry noted with a sinking heart—quite aggressively merry and free from any sign of stress: the voices were unnaturally loud and friendly. The whole dingy place had the air of a monstrous end-of-term party.

For the next few minutes Henry trotted between luggage, porter, and ticket office like a flustered but conscientious mother bird intent on satisfying her brood’s craving for worms—the worms in this case being those cryptic bits of paper which railway officials delight to stamp, perforate, clip, and shake their heads over.

His face was long, and creased with deep lines of intolerance, and his lean, vulpine features were crowned incongruously by a green Tyrolean hat.

The other youth did not quite achieve the standard of physical perfection set by the rest of the party—he was tall and thin, with a beak of a nose and dark hair that was rather too long—but he made up for it by the dazzling appearance of his clothes. His trousers, skin-tight, were pale blue, like a Ruritanian officer’s in a musical comedy: his swea