As darkness fell, someone brought bright lights and snaked power cords to Høiegård from a maintenance shop discreetly located in one of the historic structures. The harsh glare and bright colors and terse voices felt all wrong in that special place. Chloe had been profoundly relieved when Naess gave her and Roelke permission to go. “But don’t leave the Hardanger area,” he added, pinning her with that gray stare. “How long are you scheduled to be here?”
“For another week,” Roelke told him.
“Well,” the cop had said, “we’ll see.”
Now those simple words pinged in Chloe’s mind. “Needing to stay in Norway for longer than we’d planned would be … difficult.” For one thing, their money would run out fast. For another, their bosses—particularly hers—would not be pleased.
“Let’s not worry about that quite yet,” Roelke said. “A lot can happen in a week.”
“Too much has already happened.” Chloe pushed to her feet and plodded toward the bathroom. “I’m getting ready for bed.”
Sunlight woke Chloe long before she was ready to get up—4:58, according to the clock. Roelke was sleeping beside her. She lay still, listening to his rhythmic breathing and trying to figure out why she felt so groggy. Then it all came flooding back—the body, the blood.
Chloe sighed. She’d never go back to sleep now. Might as well get up and go in search of coffee.
She padded silently across the room and, without thinking, went to the window. As her palm brushed the sill, she was again overwhelmed with a sense of unbearable despair. She whipped her hand away and just barely managed to swallow a squawk. What was that? It really was frustrating to have the best view in the hotel and not be able to lean out the window and enjoy it.
Roelke hadn’t stirred. Moving silently, steering clear of the window, Chloe pulled on jeans and a green T-shirt. Then she eased the door open, slipped into the hall, and tiptoed down the stairs.
The hotel was quiet. She poked her head into the dining room, but no one was in sight. Geez, she thought with a sigh, it really was way too early to be up. The ground floor was divided into small rooms, each furnished with antiques. Not knowing what else to do with herself, she settled in a parlor … and tried not to think about Klara.
That part did not go well. Chloe was relieved to be interrupted by a red-haired teen carrying a broom and wearing the vaguely ethnic dress of an employee. “Pardon!” the girl gasped, clearly unnerved to see her. Behind wire-rimmed glasses her eyes were red and puffy.
“Sorry,” Chloe said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You didn’t.” The girl pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “May I bring you some tea or coffee?”
“Coffee would be absolutely wonderful,” Chloe admitted.
The girl quickly returned with a mug, sugar bowl, and china pitcher of cream on a tray. “Here you are.” She sniffled hard and dug for another tissue.
“Are you all right?” Chloe asked gently.
“It’s j-just … Do y-you know about Klara?”
“I do.” Chloe had to blink hard herself, and she tried to cover it by patting the sofa beside her. “Can you sit for a minute?”
The girl glanced toward the door before gingerly perching. Chloe put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m Chloe Ellefson. What’s your name?”
“Barbara-Eden Kirkevoll.”
“Oh!” Chloe tried to hide her surprise.
Barbara-Eden nodded wearily, as if used to the reaction. “It’s hyphenated. My mother loved I Dream of Jeannie.”
American pop culture at its finest, Chloe thought, remembering the blond actress in the starring role. Then she refocused on what mattered. “Were you and Klara friends?”
The younger woman began to cry unabashedly. “Best friends. I j-just can’t think who w-would do such a thing.”
“It’s hard to imagine,” Chloe agreed.
“If anybody had been bothering her, she would have told me.” Barbara stared at the damp tissue she’d wadded in her fingers. “We’ve been best friends since we were five.” Another tear slid down her cheek. She swiped it away with the back of one hand. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Chloe assured her. “I’m upset too, and I’d only just met Klara. She seemed very sweet.”
“She really was.” Barbara-Eden stood. “I have to get back to work. We’ll open the dining room for breakfast at seven.”
Chloe watched her go. Losing a best friend to illness or accident was horrid. Losing one to murder was brutal. And if the police hadn’t already questioned her, they would soon. Chloe knew from experience that even informational interviews with police officers could be daunting.
And what about Torstein? Ellinor had said that he and Klara were “madly in love.” Having seen him regarding Klara with glowing tenderness in the gift shop yesterday afternoon, Chloe believed it. But she’d heard Roelke say more than once that in cases like this, the lover/boyfriend/husband was always near the top of the suspect list. She remembered the exuberant joy in Torstein’s face as he’d fiddled with his friends, all the while not knowing that the girl he loved was lying dead nearby.
Chloe poured cream into the fast-cooling cup of coffee and sipped, trying to stave off despondency. Love was a wonderful thing, but it could also lead to heartache.
Eleven
Torhild—August 1854
Torhild feared that Gjertrud was setting herself up for heartache.
Edvin Brekke had stayed in Utne after the Midsummer dance. Sometimes he brought out his flatfele—a violin—and sat in front of the inn, playing. He spent most of his days trying to find a hardingfele player who would talk to him—or, when that didn’t work out, any elderly person who would tell him stories about dances and music.
“People have been quite rude to Edvin!” Gjertrud told her indignantly one hot day in early August. Plums and cherries were ripe in Hardanger. The first pears and apples too. After purchasing many baskets, Mother Utne had asked Torhild to come for a week and help set it all by.
Cook had ordered the two girls to have the kitchen tidy by the time she returned to make dinner, and left them to it. Now bees and flies buzzed at slop buckets brimming with pits and discarded bits of fruit, and the room smelled deliciously of cinnamon and cardamom.
“Rude?” Torhild echoed.
“Sometimes they won’t even speak to him! Yesterday he wanted to talk with someone in Kvanndal. He paid a boatman for the trip, and the man shut the door in our faces—”
“Our faces?” Torhild looked up from the plum she was pitting, juice dripping from her fingers. “You went with him?”
“It was my off day, so of course.” Gjertrud kept her gaze on some chopped fruit as she swept it into an iron kettle with her hand. “Torhild, Edvin and I are in love.”
“In love?” Torhild blinked. “You only just met!”
“Sometimes people know at once,” Gjertrud said loftily. “Since it hasn’t happened to you, you can’t understand.”
Torhild groped for a response. “Are you happy?”
“Of course I am!” Gjertrud sighed with obvious pleasure. “I’ve never met anyone like Edvin. I’ve been helping him with his project, and the more time we spend together …” She sighed again.
Torhild reached for another plum. As an only child who lived high on a mountain, she had few close companions. She loved Gjertrud. She wanted to be joyful for her cousin … but she could not. It was more than the way Edvin Brekke had touched her in the dining room, and his obvious disdain for the very people whose help he wanted. Something told her that Brekke was not the man her cousin was meant to marry.
She wished she understood why Gjertrud’s news prompted only apprehension. And she wished her great-grandmother Gudrun was still alive. She’d been a wise old soul, able to offer advice without offending. Torhild had loved
and respected Gudrun, even if she hadn’t always understood the old woman’s stories. Gudrun had once asked if she ever anticipated events before they happened. “Like looking forward to a harvest dance?” Torhild had asked.
“No, child. I’m speaking of events you have no knowledge of.”
Torhild laughed. “Then how could I anticipate them?”
“One day, I think you might.” Gudrun gently cupped her great-granddaughter’s face in her hands. “But I won’t be here to guide you. Once I had hoped that your mother, Lisbet … well. She has been too burdened. But you, Torhild …”
“Yes?”
But Gudrun had said only, “Don’t shut your heart to your gift, child. Promise me that. Watch for it in your own daughters and granddaughters. Nurture it.” Three weeks later Gudrun’s coffin was carried down to the shore while a fiddler played tunes for a death. The family had buried her in the Kinsarvik churchyard.
I should have asked more questions, Torhild thought now. For the first time, she thought she might understand what Gudrun had been trying to tell her. But it didn’t feel like a gift. Her sense of foreboding was a dark burden.
Gjertrud dumped more sliced plums into the kettle on the new cookstove. Then she faced her cousin with hands on hips. “You’re very quiet. Are you jealous of me?”
“No! No, it’s not that, it’s just that … I worry that Edvin might be … misrepresenting himself to you.”
“You sound like my mother!” Two spots of color bloomed in Gjertrud’s cheeks. Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “You think I’m not good enough for Edvin?”
Torhild grabbed her hands. “No. I fear that he might not be good enough for you.”
Gjertrud sniffled but smiled a forgiving smile. “I truly believe we are well matched. All will be well, Torhild. You’ll see.”
The next day, Mother Utne sent Torhild to a widow’s home with a crock of plum preserves. Torhild found the woman sitting in a chair by the open front door. “A gift from Mother Utne,” Torhild told her. “Shall I set it on the table?”
“That will be fine.” The old woman looked pleased. “Take my thanks back to her. You work at the inn?”
“I help out when needed.” Torhild turned to leave.
The widow held up one palsied hand, stopping her. “You’ve had a guest at the inn all summer.”
Edvin Brekke, she meant. “Yes.”
“He’s a bad one.” Despite the heat, the widow tugged at the worn wool shawl tucked around her shoulders. “All this talk of fiddles and collecting tunes! It’s the devil’s work. And that girl who goes about with him, she’s the same. People see what’s happening.”
Torhild caught her breath. “‘That girl’ is my cousin,” she flared. “She’s a good Christian who doesn’t believe in spiteful gossip. Good day to you.” She marched away with chin held high.
But her annoyance couldn’t mask her worry. Should I say something to Gjertrud? Torhild wondered miserably as she walked back to the inn. Let her know that people were talking? Would that do any good, or cause more harm?
When she stepped into the kitchen, Cook was berating Gjertrud, and her scowl quickly drew Torhild in too. “You girls left the floor sticky with juice. We’ll have all sorts of vermin if we’re not careful. I want it scrubbed, and scrubbed well.”
They heated water in silence. But when they were both on their knees, scrubbing the slates, Gjertrud caught her eye and winked a saucy wink. Torhild bit her tongue to keep from snickering. Warning Gjertrud of ill-minded talk can wait until tomorrow, she thought.
That afternoon a cool wind blew dark clouds low before the mountains. Soon a steady rain was dappling the gray fjord, churning the street to mud, drumming against the roof. Several local men came to the inn in search of dinner and a dry evening before the fire. Edvin Brekke tried to introduce himself into the group, but when he received a cool welcome he fetched his flatfele and settled into a corner. “Bring me some akevitt, Torhild,” he called. “I’ve grown quite fond of the wretched stuff.”
When she brought the drink he was tuning his violin. It was an odd, ugly instrument, flat and unadorned, with a flimsy sound. “I didn’t come to hear a squealing piglet,” a scrawny fellow near the fire declared loudly. But Brekke nestled the instrument beneath his chin, picked up the bow, and began to play.
The other man scowled. “Another round of ale, then,” he called to her.
Torhild poured the ale in the kitchen and fixed a tray. “I’ll take it,” Gjertrud said eagerly, almost elbowing her out of the way. Torhild didn’t care. She’d rather wash dishes.
She’d just rolled up her sleeves and reached for a skillet when she heard Brekke cut off his tune, and new voices from the dining room. More people wanting haven from the storm, no doubt. She tugged her sleeves down again and went to see what they might need.
Just as she opened the kitchen door, Gjertrud cried, “Leave it alone!”
Half a dozen newcomers had formed a semicircle around Brekke, all men. “We want you gone,” announced a man Torhild had seen selling fish on the shore. “And I’ll take that.” He made a grab for Brekke’s violin.
Gjertrud lunged and grabbed the fisherman’s arm. “No!” Torhild cried.
“For God’s sake, man!” Brekke exclaimed, swinging the violin away—right into the chest of a younger man who managed to snatch it. Torhild watched in shock as he ran to the hearth and hurled the flatfele onto the crackling fire. It crashed in a sudden flare of sparks.
The other men were all on their feet. Torhild braced herself, certain they’d charge at the newcomers. They gawked—some at the fanatics, some at each other. But they didn’t move. Didn’t throw a single fist.
After a stunned silence, Gjertrud ran from the room. “Mother Utne! Mother Utne!”
Torhild felt a sinking sensation in her chest. It was happening again. After years of relative peace, of little beyond grumbles and dark looks from those who believed fiddles and drink and dance should be banned, of visits to fiddlers’ homes that yielded no results, it was all happening again.
When everything had finally calmed down, when the dining room was empty and the last mug washed and dried, Torhild carried a candle to the storehouse. Gjertrud was not there. Torhild had not seen her since she ran from the dining room as Edvin Brekke’s violin burned.
She is with him, Torhild thought, and berated herself for not telling Gjertrud that people were watching. People were talking. People were upset. Only a few … but enough to do the harm that had been done tonight.
Torhild didn’t know how long she’d lain in bed, staring into the darkness, before the door creaked open. She saw a candle’s glow, heard tiptoeing footsteps. “Gjertrud, I’ve been worried!”
Gjertrud slipped from her dress, blew out the candle, and climbed into the bed beside her. “Don’t be. Everything is going to be fine.”
“They burned Edvin Brekke’s flatfele!”
“Oh, he’s angry about it,” Gjertrud conceded. “Very upset. In fact, he’s decided to end his study and return to Bergen.”
Torhild felt a flood of relief.
“And I’m going with him!”
The relief vanished. “You’re … what?”
“We’re going to be married! Edvin says a marriage can happen quickly in the city. We’re leaving day after tomorrow on the morning boat.”
“What about your mother?” Torhild could hardly believe what she was hearing. “She’ll want to plan the wedding—”
“I’ll write to her, of course,” Gjertrud said. “But my mother tried to keep me from seeing Edvin. When I’m married and living in Bergen, she’ll realize how wrong she was.”
Torhild pictured Gjertrud’s mother, a stern and implacable widow. If she had forbidden Gjertrud to spend time with the music teacher, nothing would change her mind.
“Edvin says this is the best solution,”
Gjertrud was saying. “I’ll be a teacher’s wife!” Her voice was filled with wonder.
“But … it’s all so sudden. Why not wait until—”
“We’d leave tomorrow except he wants to go say goodbye to one of the few people who actually helped him, and he’ll be gone overnight. And he wants me to have time to tell Mother Utne I’m leaving, and to say my own goodbyes.”
“Oh, Gjertrud. Are you sure this is what you want?”
“I don’t want to work at the inn all my life, or on a farm either. Edvin has offered me more than I ever dreamed of. Please be happy for me, Torhild. I couldn’t bear it if you weren’t.”
“All right, Gjertrud,” Torhild whispered. “I’ll try.” She rolled over and curled into a ball, but she couldn’t sleep.
Two days later, shortly before nine o’clock, Torhild and Gjertrud walked across the lane to the dock. The rain had blown through. The damp air smelled of smoke and fish. The sloop that would carry Gjertrud and Edvin Brekke to Bergen was already anchored in the fjord. A boy, perhaps twelve, sat in a rowboat edged on shore, waiting to transport passengers to the sloop. Gjertrud set her bundle down and looked about.
“Edvin is cutting things short,” Torhild murmured, then wished she hadn’t.
Gjertrud shielded her eyes against the sun. “He’ll be here.”
The boy jerked his head toward the sloop. “You ladies coming?”
“I’m waiting for my traveling companion,” Gjertrud told him.
Minutes ticked by. Torhild’s sense of impending disaster balled sour in the pit of her stomach. At that moment she wanted to see Edvin Brekke running toward the dock as badly as Gjertrud did.
“They won’t wait,” the boy said. “Captain’s got a schedule to keep.”
“Have you already taken anyone on board?” Gjertrud’s voice quavered. “A man going to Bergen?”
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