L'Affaire Read Online Free

but Adrian was nice to him, and Kip was sensible of that.
    Kip’s own room, damp from the shower steam, now smelled like dirty Pampers and talcum powder. Adrian and Kerry had a suite for themselves and the baby, but Kip had felt uncomfortable there, their stuff all around, and had thought Harry could crawl around in his room while he read or something. He called their room yet again. He had no special apprehensions, was puzzled more than worried. As the light fell outside the window, and the snowdrifts turned a gray-blue, his room darkened.
    Later he put on his Walkman again and took Harry out into the corridors. Harry had only recently learned to walk, and occasionally doddered into the walls or sat down with a plop, so that the back of his coverall was sopping from where the carpets were wet with the snow off people’s shoes and boots. Kip found it hard to walk as slowly as Harry. People smiled at this nice boy Kip, for being in charge of a little tot.
    They dawdled up and down the green-carpeted corridors of the lobby floor. Harry raced, fell, giggled with mad baby merriment. Outside the cardroom, Kip saw that Christian Jaffe, the chef’s son, who managed the front desk, was following them, tentatively, wearing a grave expression, the expression of an adult who was facing the need to discipline you. He saw that Christian Jaffe was probably only a little older than he, maybe nineteen. Behind Christian was one of the daughters, the plain one, hands clasped at her waist. Kip knew something was wrong, and that it involved him and Harry. He picked up Harry and waited.
    ‘Monsieur Canby, there has been some bad news,’ Christian said. ‘I suggest we go upstairs. Come up to the office.’
    Kip obeyed, not asking what the bad news was, not wanting to hear it yet. He had a crawl of apprehension in his stomach. It must have to do with Kerry and Adrian. The daughter reached out her arms to take Harry, and without words they moved up the stairs, past the pool table and coffee lounge, into the small room behind the front desk. The daughter saw Kip installed in a chair, then left, carrying Harry.
    ‘This is very bad news,’ Christian said. He sat down and faced Kip. ‘Mr and Mrs Venn have been taken in an avalanche. We were just telephoned.’
    ‘Taken?’
    ‘Swept away. Excuse me, my English.’
    Kip heard this without grasping it. Taken or swept? ‘But I just saw them. They were going to have lunch, they were just there on La Grange,’ a simple run down to a cluster of houses at the bottom of the western slopes. Well, a couple of hours ago.
    We never know where an avalanche or other act of God might capriciously, or purposefully, strike us, said Christian Jaffe’s look.
    ‘Are they dead? Is that what you’re saying?’
    ‘No, no!’ cried Jaffe, happy to be able to adjust the bad news upward. ‘They are still alive, thanks, God, but their condition is not so good. A helicopter is coming to take them to the hospital in Moutiers. Has done so.’
    Now Kip felt his face getting red with relief, Kerry not dead. He realized that he’d been expecting bad news allafternoon, dread resonating with the distant echo of dynamite along the snowy ridges. But broken legs had been more in his mind. ‘Where?’ he asked, as if it mattered.
    ‘They didn’t explain. They found them a few hours ago, but we weren’t notified because the rescuers had no idea what hotel they were staying in. They – we always advise avalanche detection devices when people are skiing hors piste, but – but they weren’t skiing hors piste , they were quite low down, I only heard that they weren’t hors piste .’ A quaver of concern suggested anxiety about the liability issues.
    ‘But will they be okay?’
    ‘They – I gather the condition of Monsieur Venn is – grave. They were buried in snow for an unknown length of time, many minutes, an hour.’
    Kip’s eyes stung. This was bad. He didn’t know how to feel or react. He felt the weirdness of