some subtle change, one that had left it less friendly to me, less, well, like home. The sensation was all the more troubling in that it was so inchoate, a pervasive wrongness I could neither explain nor explain away.
‘You are the English clockman,’ Immelman said. ‘You have come to learn the secrets of our timepieces, no?’
‘I hope to be permitted to study them,’ I allowed.
‘You have a strange way of going about it, climbing the tower like that. It is not the sort of behaviour likely to be rewarded by Herr Doppler.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘I think it was no idle action.’ Immelman glanced to the door, then leaned towards me, his voice a confiding whisper. ‘I think you saw something that … astonished you. Something that provoked you to make the climb.’
‘On what do you base your diagnosis?’ I asked. ‘Have you yourself seen something astonishing?’
‘I have seen many such things in my time here,’ Immelman replied, once again casting a nervous glance towards the door. He licked his thin lips. Then, as if coming to a decision, he addressed me in English. ‘Sir,’ he said, pitching his voice lower still, ‘you are in grave danger. Märchen is not what you think. Nothing here is what you think. You must be on your guard if you ever wish to leave this place alive.’
I confess I was too taken aback to make an immediate reply. It was not only the shock of being addressed in my native tongue, but the warning thus conveyed, which, though it had come out of the blue, was uttered with such conviction that I did not doubt the man’s sincerity. But of course sincerity is no guarantee of truth. No one, after all, is as sincere as a madman.
‘They have tried to keep us apart,’ Immelman went on, his words spilling out in a breathless rush. ‘This is not your first injury since you arrived in Märchen, yet only now have I been given the task of treating you. Do you not find that strange?’
‘They? Who is this they?’ I found my voice at last.
‘Herr Doppler and the rest. They are afraid I will warn you, as indeed I have. Afraid I will help you escape, as I should like very much to do. Yes, and go with you, away from this cursed place for ever! They wish to keep you here, Herr Gray. They have need of you. Just as, years ago, when I was as young a man as you, they had need of me.’
The disarray of the doctor’s clothes and wig, which I had at first taken as evidence of a certain absentmindedness often to be met with among medical men, now began to suggest a more troubling interpretation. Inge had told me that the long months of isolation imposed by Märchen’s heavy snowfalls sometimes induced a kind of mania in the townsfolk. Was that the cause of Dr Immelman’s odd behaviour? His eyes had a wild cast behind his spectacles, and his skin glistened with sweat; he looked sickly, feverish. I responded reasonably, hoping to calm him. ‘If my skills are required, Herr Doppler need only ask. Instead, he has denied my every request.’
‘He has his reasons, of that you may be sure. But it is useless to try and puzzle them out. They do not think as we do, Herr Gray. They are not—’
He broke off at the sound of approaching footsteps, turning to the door as Inge entered, carrying a tray on which she had balanced a steaming jug, a bottle of schnapps with a small glass turned upside down beside it, and a pile of folded white cloths. ‘What is the prognosis, Doctor?’ she inquired.
Dr Immelman blanched at this innocuous question and, switching back to German, stammered out his diagnosis of a broken ankle.
‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said Inge, shaking her head in sympathy as she crossed the room to us and set the tray on the bedside table; her bosom strained against her blouse as she leaned down, but somehow, as before, failed to overspill it. That was as astonishing as anything else I had seen, I assure you. When I tore my eyes away from the display of ripe pink flesh, it was to find her gazing at me with what I can only describe as hunger, as if I were a feast spread before her. At that moment I felt an answering hunger, as though, were it not for the presence of Dr Immelman, each