Mathilde Rossier

Mathilde Rossier is 38 and has spent twelve of those years at Maestro Haldenstein's side. Born in Lausanne, the daughter of a piano teacher, she studied typing and languages and joined as a secretary at 26. She did everything that wasn't music: schedule, letters, contracts, travel. When the maestro died, the widow kept her on at the house, now to look after the accounts and papers.

She lives in a small two-room apartment in Vevey, with an upright piano she no longer plays, a shelf of borrowed scores and a window onto the rooftops and the lake. Everything is arranged at right angles. She keeps an enameled iron kettle on the stove and one cup at a time, never two. She walks to the villa every morning, by the same route, and returns by it at the end of the day, sometimes passing by the cemetery.

She is thin and elegant, with a fine, pale face, tired light eyes and light brown hair in a low bun. She wears a charcoal tailored suit, a black high-collared blouse, leather gloves and a treble clef brooch on her lapel. She carries a leather-covered notebook under her arm. She speaks in short sentences and corrects other people's dates without raising her voice.

About the ransom demand, she says Mrs. Haldenstein heard him out to the end and replied on the phone that her husband would have found the man ridiculous. She hung up and went back to her tea. Mathilde recounts the scene with a touch of admiration and adds that her employer would not pay a cent, even if the coffin ended up at the end of the world. Asked how much she would gain from the ransom, she answers nothing, and that she won't accept the tone.

It could be the restraint of a professional who spent a decade looking after other people's papers. It could be the defense of someone with more to lose than she shows. The detective will have to decide which.