‘We have every right. Read the terms of the occupation. We are looking for your son, Standartenführer Julius Boden. He has escaped internment as well you know.’

‘Well, clearly he is not here. As I told your men when they came before, he would not be so stupid as to come here.’

Wilde saw a family picture on a shelf near the ceramic-tiled wood stove, the centrepiece of many Alpine homes. ‘I take it he is in this picture?’

‘You barge into my house like a burglar and you expect me to answer your questions. Who do you think you are?’

Wilde shrugged. ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ He examined the picture closely. There were five people in the picture. A younger Frau Boden in smart Bavarian clothes, a man who must be her husband, wearing an expensive jacket and Tyrolean hat with obligatory feather, and three children. A boy of about sixteen, who he imagined must be Julius, and a younger boy and girl aged five or six, perhaps twins. Wilde removed the photograph from its silver frame. ‘And I’ll take this so I know what I’m looking for.’

‘That is theft.’

‘Sue me.’

‘And you call yourselves liberators. You are lower than swine.’

‘I suspect your son and his comrades probably committed worse crimes than taking possession of a photograph. And now, Frau Boden, I must ask you and your maid to go out to the square and assemble with the other villagers.’

‘And if I refuse to leave my house?’

‘Then you will be marched there or, if necessary, carried.’

‘This is outrageous, you know. You come here accusing us of all sorts of crimes, and then you act like gangsters.’ She turned to the maid. ‘Come, Ingrid. I suppose we must obey these dirty Americans.’

When they were gone, Wilde examined the property at his leisure. As well as the extensive outhouses, there was a massive area beneath the house used as a cattle shed in the cold winter months when the cows were herded down from the high pastures and snow settled on the land.

Their warmth and animal odours might have taken a little getting used to for anyone in the house above who was new to such living conditions. But it was a practice that worked, and went back many generations.

Wandering through the bedrooms, Wilde found nothing but the crumpled bed of the mistress of the house and, in a much smaller room, her maid’s. There was no sign of Boden, or anyone else.

*