3

After forty minutes journey, the train screeched to a halt, and Leila hopped off into the powdery snow, white and pristine as a starched sheet. The childish sense of freedom got the better of her. She put the skis on and ran towards the village, picking up pace, squinting at the blinding sun. Her joy was infectious. It spread all around her, through the old pine trees and over the hills, to the passers by and animals that lived in the mountains. Leila felt free, young and agile. She could ski like this for thousand kilometers, far beyond the sleepy village in front of her. It had been two long winters since she’d hit the slopes. Getting into Oxford didn’t leave much time for skiing. It had not been an easy journey, especially for her, a German speaker taking on the entrance exam and an interview. But Leila prevailed, and was offered a place at New College. Now she was determined to get her First. Leila’s childish excitement of seeing snow suddenly evaporated. She found herself standing in front of the small supermarket, wet and panting. Her muscles were still trembling, but the thought of the final exams approaching pulled her back to the planet Earth. She took off her glove, and looked at her messages, hoping to find one from Gerard. They’ve arranged to meet on the main street. Suddenly she heard a crackling rumble, as if a small plane was landing in the neighborhood. She barely had time to jump away before it whizzed past her-not a plane, but a snowmobile, one of those used by mountain pros. The snowmobile stopped and was cooling off in front of the Post Office, next door to the supermarket. Leila opened her mouth to express her outrage, but the words died on her lips when a boisterous stranger jumped out. He was undoubtedly male, though his gender initially wasn’t apparent due to the elaborate brown dreadlocks atop his head. The red knitted scarf was artfully draped around his neck. His clothing – washed jeans with a decorative hole around one knee, a dark green pullover and denim vest – was certainly noticeable. A pair of brown snow boots completed the ensemble. In great haste, he hurried around the village, phone in hand and a confused look on his face. As Leila reached for her own mobile it produced a grumpy meow of Snoopy the cat.

‘Hello!’ The young man rejoiced when he spotted her. ‘Hello, dear Delilah!’

A faint smile drifted across Leila’s face.

‘Actually, I’m Leila. And you must be Gerard?’ The young man broke into a wide grin at her guess.

‘Exactly! Now let me take your bags while you follow the main road straight ahead until you reach the fork. I’ll see you there!’ He swiftly picked up her rucksack and drove off, leaving an impressive tail of prickly snow.

Leila skied through the deserted chalets, each one older and drearier than the last. The recent years were not ski-resort friendly, and the seasons were getting shorter and shorter. Most of the chalets were grand log mansions, built from thick pine and cedar in the late 19th century. They towered over the landscape with their crooked chimneys, elaborately carved shutters, and old-fashioned gables. Some had fresh snow piled up against their walls and others had tall hedges surrounding small gardens, the only sound being the wind whistling through.

“Peaceful and beautiful,” Leila admired her enchanted surroundings, breathing in the cold, heavy air.

But then she spotted it - a modern stone cottage, standing tall with three stories, an anomaly in the rustic landscape. The windows on the top floor were black as coal. There was a camera over the door, and the sign about a mean dog nailed to the short gate. It all seemed so out of place. At the time she didn’t give it much thought, and carried on.

Gerard parked while waiting for her at the fork, just a few steps away from Christina’s chalet. She took the skis off, and they continued walking together.

‘Welcome,’ he said while opening the short wooden gate. ‘I hope you enjoy your stay. Wolfie is very sweet. You will become besties in no time.’

‘Actually, we are acquainted,’ Leila replied curtly and stepped in.

Christina’s chalet had all the charm of a fairy tale cottage; old and solid, made of tightly fitted logs. The wide veranda evoked memories of long summer evenings spent watching the sunset. The table could easily seat ten people, reminding Leila of Christina’s apple pies, blackcurrant jam, and freshly squeezed apple juice. Ten years older than Leila, aunt Christina had that rare gift of keeping children entertained with games and laughter. The wave of childhood memories was about to overwhelm Leila. Sadly, this time she didn’t come here for tea and cakes. Leila followed the immaculate path lined with firs. She noticed that Gerard disappeared somewhere behind the house.

‘Delilah!’ Gerard bellowed from somewhere under the floorboards. Leila rolled her eyes and muttered her name wasn’t Delilah, yet she followed the sound of his voice.

Gerard was deep in a hole, rummaging through the dirt.

‘What’re you lookin’ for, Ger?’ Leila asked. As it turned out, Christina had left a spare set of keys hiding below a pile stones. After a few minutes of digging, he unearthed them. Leila shook her head in disbelief.

The front door was secured with two locks and a rusted iron bar. Gerard opened them all before shouting for Wolfie. Leila took a step back as an enormous beast of grey and white fur burst into the hallway. She remembered Wolfie as a pup, but could never have predicted how large she had grown over the years; the hallway suddenly felt cramped.

‘Gosh,’ Leila gasped, ‘you’ve gotten so big!’ The dog responded with a loud howl that roared through the nearby mountains.

‘Don’t worry,’ Gerard said with a smirk, ‘she talks more than me.’ The canine pushed up against Leila’s legs and looked up at her with a wide, friendly grin - happy to be reunited with her old friend. The affection between them was almost tangible.

‘She loves everyone,’ Gerard added with a wry smile, ‘without exception.’

Leila ran her hands through Wolfie’s fur and the hound nuzzled into her leg for a petting session. As Gerard directed them down the hallway, Leila noticed how his dreadlocks and extensive tattoos clashed beautifully with the innocence of his childlike grin

The small card he handed her said he was a PhD candidate in Computer Science. Leila wanted to thank him, but before she could open her mouth, he had already disappeared into a flurry of snow.

‘Well then, Wolfie,’ Leila said to her furry companion, ‘show me where everything is’.

The dog tottered alongside Leila as she walked through the sprawling grounds. The garden stretched behind the house, rugged and mature, ensconced in shadows. A little shack stood near the border, almost obscured by a blanket of snow. Leila strove to open the door and saw that it was locked up tight. The snowmobile was stored inside. She had to use it for her trip to the Post Office. Leila gave it a thought but decided to deal with it later.

‘Let’s get inside,’ she suggested. She had already seen the veranda, and now stepped into a spacious room. Her eyes were drawn to the imposing stone fireplace. It was a focal point of Christina’s drawing room, no doubt unchanged since Leila was a child. The furniture was as heavy as she remembered it: carved of dark oak, a rarity known as “Black Forest”.

Leila’s gaze drifted to the buffet. The two doors were fashioned with crafted glass and lead binding. Within lay an ornate decanter, flanked by whiskey glasses and a lonely Champaign flute with a chipped rim. The Delft plates lined the top shelf, their blue and white pattern still vibrant, and the inscription around the rim in ancient Gothic font still a mystery.

Opposite the window stood the desk - elaborate Black Forest carving, and a wide green leather top which housed an Apple computer. Next to it were neatly piled folders, papers and notebooks, along with a brass lamp - slender base, fluted bronze and green glass shade. To Leila’s disappointment it cast no light when plugged in.

Leila smiled at this relic from days gone by before settling on the corner tartan sofa for a short break. Her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room. The only thing she saw in front of her was a wide wall covered in built-in bookcases — no television in sight.

‘Nice place you have here,’ Leila said, stroking Wolfie. ‘Don’t worry, Christina is away, but not for long. She will be back soon. We are going to have fun in the meantime.’

The dog looked up at her with sorrowful blue eyes and sighed heavily before trotting away through one of the two wooden doors. Behind the first was Christina’s bedroom, furnished with French armoire and a metal bed dressed in tartan bedspread. Starched knitted curtains hung from the windows, depicting a tranquil lake and a curious mermaid peeking out. Leila smiled as childhood memories resurfaced — those curtains were made by her aunt’s grandmother many years ago. In the olden days people weren’t afraid to invest their time in making beautiful things, she mused.

The guest room on the same floor was much smaller, furnished with a single four poster bed, a bedside table, and an old chest of drawers. It had the look of being used recently, prompting Leila to wonder who had been visiting Christina.

Inside the dresser she found fresh linen and followed the stairs down into the kitchen. Wolfie was already there, waiting for her in front of a substantial ceramic bowl. The bowl was decorated with blue and white chinoiserie and had “Wolfie” written on it in neat Italic script. Leila managed to resist the adorable puppy eyes and poured out just enough food to fill the bowl halfway. Nothing personal. She just followed Christina’s instructions.

On the kitchen table she found a sheet of paper with a detailed recipe for apple strudel. The writing was not Christina’s. Feeling famished, Leila read over the list of ingredients. It was exactly what she needed—the perfect accompaniment to a gourmet loose tea she’d spotted in the buffet. She devised a plan to get all of the items needed when she went to pick up her textbooks from the Post Office the next morning. .

Leila didn’t get much sleep that night. She tossed and turned in her bed, with the howling blizzard outside playing with the window shutters. Wolfie was pacing around the room, was determined to get into Leila’s warm bed no matter what. The audacity of this mutt knew no bounds as it began scratching the floorboards.

Leila sat up abruptly, shaming the beast. ‘You know you aren’t allowed in here! Even if Christina is spoiling you, she’d never let a colossus like you sleep in her bed!’

Wolfie was offended by Leila’s body-shaming move and started to yelp like an unhinged coyote. Leila had no choice but to cart Wolfie’s cushion next to her bed in a less-than-genteel fashion. It shocked the hound speechless and brought quiet to the premises.

By morning the blizzard had subsided. Leila got up at dawn, while the dog was still asleep. She run out onto the porch in her pajama, and wiped her face with fresh, fluffy snow to neutralize the effect of her sleepless night. The sun had barely peeked over the ridge, and the long blue shadow of Dick Jones’s chalet stretched across the garden. After having breakfast of almond croissant and tea, Leila went out to clear away the snow off the shed before getting the snowmobile ready. A text message came from her mom advising her that books were due for collection after eleven o’clock. Knowing that leaving Wolfie outdoor was not prudent despite Gerard’s assurance, she locked the dog inside. As a compensation, Leila provided a brand-new squeaky rabbit she fetched for Wolfie when in Zurich.

She spent about an hour reviving the frozen snowmobile, and eventually made her way to the village not meeting a single soul on the way. There was a longish queue outside the bakery. The young salesgirl dressed in a dark blue uniform was chatting at length with each and every customer. Leila gave up on fresh bread and instead visited a small, seriously overpriced supermarket. After picking up all the items on her list she proceeded to collect her books at the Post Office. The girl at the Post Office was also in no hurry to serve customers, so Leila had plenty of time on her hands to browse pay-as-you go, SIM only, deals on offer. She got her books after twenty minutes wait and rushed back to Wolfie.

What time did she leave the village? It was well before lunch, she reckoned. All them shops still open and bustling. She returned to the chalet shortly after twelve, only to find a body lying there, cold as ice. She run out into the street screaming, drawing the attention of old Dick. It was lucky he didn’t see the body.

Thinking that it simply wasn’t possible, Leila settled on the straightforward explanation that she was dreaming. She was tired after the sleepless night and her three kilometer ski run, fell asleep on the sofa and had a nightmare. Maybe it was the mountain air. Nah, Leila didn’t buy it. The fresh air never harmed anyone. Maybe she has been drinking some funny tea Christina had forgotten to warn her about. How much tea did she have at breakfast? A half-full mug. Not enough to make her lose her marbles.

Maybe she was studying too hard and it was starting to drive her bonkers. “Come on,” Leila told herself. “Everyone else has been studying just as hard, if not harder.”

There was no point in sitting there feeling sorry for herself because of some silly daydream. She had to get on with things. Tidying up, making an apple strudel and finishing the paper she started when in Zurich would be a good start.

‘Wolfie, come here girl! We’re gonna need you to keep us company,’ Leila called out to the dog.

Wolfie stirred awake, her mouth crooning like a siren’s call. The drawing room was a mess. Leila’s bag had spilled its contents, cluttering the floor with apples, books, dog food and sugar. She was in haste picking up the items when she found something peculiar: a small notebook. Leila cleared the layer of sugar off and discovered it to be a hardcover notebook bought in Aldi supermarket. It was as wide as two matchboxes and bound in black faux leather. Upon closer inspection, Leila deduced that it wasn’t hers. Intrigued, she opened it. The small address book had alphabetically ordered pages filled with a neat, beady handwriting. The kind of steady, proper handwriting hard to come across nowadays

But whose was it? Yesterday, when Leila was sweeping the room, there was definitely no books on the floor.

Maybe the body in the room wasn’t just a bad daydream. Could it be that the book belonged to that poor man?

Leila carefully leafed through. Dense, small letters filled the pages in neat rows, but the entries were incomprehensible. Leila couldn’t find a single familiar word, only incoherent combinations of letters.

Why would anybody fill an entire notebook with some meaningless gibberish?

Leila felt a slight but persistent tingling at the roots of her hair. It occurred to her that the entries in the notebook were encrypted. Leila Weinrich, an Oxford student in ancient civilisations, had an unusual hobby: she was good at solving mysteries. And mysterious things kept happening with her, her friends and acquaintances, with acquaintances of her friends and the friends of her acquaintances. Leila was helping everyone, even when she was not asked to do so, as sarcastic Tom pointed out.

Leila frowned. One day she did something stupid - she told her future husband everything that happened to her honestly and in fine detail. Tom, usually calm and balanced guy, threw a tantrum. He was getting agitated, screaming that one couldn’t pull fate’s mustache forever with impunity, and other wise, sensible things.

Leila gave her word of honor that, basically, “never, never again she will get herself involved”. She failed to live up to it. Instead, she kept her investigations secret from her fiancee. She warned all her friends that if anyone spilled the beans, then she, Leila Weinrich, would break off all relations with them once and forever. Nevertheless, rumors continued to spread and her hobby had long become an open secret. Only Tom somehow remained in the dark. Well, at least Leila hoped so.

The itching at the roots of her hair usually meant that she was about to be distracted from her studies once again. It was her third year, and the final exams were fast approaching. But Leila was too weak to resist the temptation.

She forgot all about her textbooks, and instead sat down at the Black Forest desk equipped with her iPad.

As a linguistics scholar she came across algorithms for encryption and decryption. In fact, she had develop a learning algorithm for her linguistics students to do exactly that. All she needed to do was to scan the content of the notebook and input it into her program. Though it was desirable to have at least a small sample of text to speed things up. If the notebook belonged to the guy who was lying lifeless near the chest of drawers, it was possible that he wrote down Christina’s address. Unless, of course, he was Christina’s acquaintance. That would be too bad.

Leila opened the page marked “W”. Christina’s last name was Weinrich. Luckily, there was only one entry beginning with W. She logged into her  iCloud, and scanned the page. Then she typed in Christina address hoping for a strike of luck.

She waited for a few seconds before her face gleamed. Christina address was indeed there. The program has generated the key in no time. At least she confirmed that the notebook didn’t belong to her aunt or Gerard, as they wouldn’t need to write the address down. It looked like Leila wasn’t imagining things. The notebook belonged to the person whose body she found on the floor in the drawing room. The unlucky guy in dirty boots was looking for this particular chalet. He found it, got inside, and something went terribly wrong.

No, Leila had to correct herself. If he had died as a result of an accident, he would still be lying in the same place. Corpses cannot just run around. There was only one plausible explanation: the mysterious stranger didn’t die, but temporarily passed out. He then came to his senses and walked away. Though Leila knew this couldn’t be - when she saw a man lying on the floor, she immediately knew that he was dead. And yet he disappeared. She just had to spell it out: someone first killed this unknown guy and then hid the body.

The house had suddenly become much colder. Leila shuddered, realizing that when she returned from the village, the killer could have been somewhere nearby, and maybe he still was. She looked at Wolfie. A dog would certainly sense the presence of a stranger in the house, become wary, and make it obvious. Any normal dog would bark and go nuts. But Wolfie was not a normal dog. She loved everybody unconditionally and was friendly with strangers. In fact, Wolfie didn’t know how to bark - she just spoke and sang. In the most extreme cases she would growl in a low, powerful voice. True, this normally had a sobering effect on people.

“You call this a guard dog?” Leila quipped, addressing the canine as a way to ease her loneliness.

The husky, sensing the judgment in Leila’s tone, lowered its gaze and let out a mournful howl. A clear message that it was not bred for such mundane tasks as guarding, but rather for pulling sleighs through snowy landscapes. “Just put me in my element and I’ll show you what I’m truly capable of,” it seemed to say.

“I highly doubt that,” Leila retorted without missing a beat.

“Give me back my wild days in the forest!” Wolfie continued to howl, determined to prove its worth.

“Maybe one day,” Leila consoled the dog by patting its ears, “but not today.”

But there was no time for jokes. Leila knew they had to carefully search every inch of the house. Borrowing a sword from the German armor display in the entrance and gripping Wolfie’s collar, she set off on her mission.

Starting at the back entrance, which was rarely used except for when she stayed here with Christina one winter, Leila noticed that the door was unlocked. Someone had entered and left through here, but they couldn’t have gotten into the house without creating a disturbance. Leila had made sure to lock it securely from the inside before going to bed. Unless they had some sort of magical powers or brute strength, Old Dick Jones would have definitely heard them.

She briefly considered calling her aunt for support and updates on her surgery, but decided against it. Christina was too perceptive and would surely sense that something was wrong. And who knows if she could understand Wolfie’s howls like Tom claimed he could with Snoopy’s meows? No need to give that sly cat any ammunition to use against her.