She bustled around nervously as she brewed him acorn coffee and gave him breakfast. He sat at her table and tucked into some black bread spread with wonderful butter, all the time wondering what to do next. August Jaeger’s phone call had seemed like progress, now he felt empty.

‘Frau Jaeger,’ he said when the coffee arrived in a small cup. ‘Answer me one question if you would. In all your conversations with Uncle August, did he ever talk of his idea of a perfect hiding place in the Alps.’

‘No, of course not. We didn’t have conversations like that.’

‘OK.’ He sipped the coffee. It was growing on him. ‘But you must know these mountains pretty well yourself. How far would you say it is from here to Schwarzenkirche, for instance?’

‘Across the mountains and high pastures? I suppose twenty kilometres. A long day’s walk because the terrain is hard and dangerous in the high mountains and glaciers. By road is far longer, but assuredly quicker and safer.’

‘So a day’s hike.’

‘Yes, for an extremely fit man or woman. But it’s not a route for amateur walkers and ramblers.’

‘And if you were going to hide someone?’

She laughed for the first time. ‘The Einsiedelei. When we were children, my friends and I used to go up there to give bread to the Einsiedler. We thought he was so funny, hiding away from the world like that in his little house with his little chapel, half carved into the rock wall.’

Einsiedler. Hermit. There was a hermitage in the mountains near here.

‘Tell me more about it.’

‘Oh there is no one there now. Not since the war.’

‘But you think it would be a good place to hide?’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose so. We used to love the place. Luckily the old hermit was a kindly man or he would have been driven mad by us kids playing around his mountain retreat. Oh yes, the caves in the cliff there are good to hide in. You know we’re not the only village in the Alps with a hermitage. It was a custom going back many hundreds of years. The village was expected to feed the man and in return he would pray for the community and the health of their livestock. I am not sure whether any other hermitages are left, but maybe there are. Surely you cannot believe that Adolf Hitler is hiding there . . .’

‘When were you last there?’

‘Seven years, eight years maybe. No one has any cause to go there. Maybe the children play there still, I don’t know.’

‘Will you take me?’

Chapter 33

Chapter 33

The eyes of the whole village were on them as they walked up from Paula Jaeger’s little chalet towards the woods. No one said a word, either to Wilde or the woman guiding him, but they stopped and stared.