The Glass Demon

by Helen Grant

  ‘I’d really like to talk to you. Would you care to come inside for a moment?’

  I stared at him, wondering what he could possibly want to talk to me about.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Come, come,’ he said in a jollying-along tone which made me feel as though I were about six years old. ‘I won’t bite you.’

  Reluctantly I followed him inside. I took a swift look around but there was no sign of my father. Professor Lyle went through a couple of sets of double doors with me in tow and we found ourselves in a small, untidy office. He subsided into a chair behind the desk and waved me towards another. Then he sat for a moment, studying me and not saying anything.

  I really hate that. I knew what he was doing; he was trying to put me on the defensive. I looked at my watch very ostentatiously.

  ‘I’m meeting someone.’

  He smiled faintly at this. ‘Then I’ll get to the point. Is your father planning to publish anything about the Allerheiligen stained-glass windows?’

  ‘How should I know?’ I glowered at him. ‘He’s more likely to tell you than me.’

  Professor Lyle leaned forward. ‘Ah, but he hasn’t.’

  ‘Well, what makes you think I’d know?’

  ‘You’ve seen them. The windows, I mean. Haven’t you?’

  I nodded reluctantly.

  ‘And I think I am right in saying that you are the only person who has seen them?’

  ‘No, Michel – I mean, some people in Germany saw them too.’

  ‘And these people, are any of them involved in this field?’

  I couldn’t imagine Michel Reinartz Senior taking time off from roaming the forest with his monstrous dog in order to write a monograph about medieval stained glass. I shook my head.

  ‘Then I have a proposal for you.’

  I stared at him. An inkling of his purpose was beginning to come to me. I wondered whether I should simply get up and walk out, but something kept me there in my seat.

  ‘If your father is not going to write anything about the glass, tell me about it.’ He studied my face, looking for my reaction, and then went on, ‘I’m sure you realize – well, perhaps you don’t – that the discovery of those windows would have been a sensation in the world of medieval studies. Something like finding the Holy Grail.’

  He gave me a condescending smile. I didn’t return it.

  ‘Naturally I have no intention of impinging on your father’s work,’ said the professor smoothly. He raised a forefinger as though about to lecture me. ‘But if he is not planning to write anything, well…’ His eyebrows shot up. ‘It would be nothing short of a crime if the academic world were deprived of whatever information is available – wouldn’t it?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘It is, of course, a tragedy that the windows themselves were destroyed.’ He gave no sign that he knew who had destroyed them or what the circumstances surrounding their destruction had been. His voice and demeanour were so calm that we might have been discussing some regrettable accident. He sat back suddenly, eyeing me. ‘All that history – all that beauty – it doesn’t have to be lost, you know. You’re not studying at the moment, are you?’ He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘You could come here… You could tell me as much as you can remember about the windows. You could draw them for me – the layout – as much as you can recall, and if you can’t draw I’ll get someone in who can do it for you. Like a police photofit,’ he added jocosely. ‘When the work is finished, I’ll credit you, of course.’

  I looked at him. I looked at his well-fed, self-satisfied face – the face of a man who is successful, a man who knows that he is going to get what he wants. I let him sit there for a while, thinking no doubt that I was awestruck by the generosity of his suggestion, savouring the moment of his triumph. Then I stood up.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said. I hoisted my bag on to my shoulder and made for the door.

  There was a stunned silence and then the scraping of chair legs on the floor as he stood up too.

  ‘Lindisfarne! Lin –’ He was around the desk remarkably nimbly for one so weighted down with his own dignity. I stepped back, thinking he might actually try to grab me by the arm. ‘Think about this! Think –’

  ‘I have thought about it,’ I told him. ‘And I’ve just remembered. My father is going to write a book about the glass after all.’

  And with that I marched out of his office and fled down the hall. I’ve never felt bad about it. I could have forgiven him a lot, but I never forgive anyone for calling me Lindisfarne.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  I didn’t see my father during my precipitate flight from the Faculty of History, but by the time I got home late in the afternoon he was already back in his study. The door was closed. He liked to preserve the illusion that he was in there working away so furiously that no one could be allowed to disturb him, but after I had knocked and opened the door I was not surprised to see him sitting by the window, simply staring out at the sky.

  ‘Dad?’

  He looked at me a little vaguely, as though surprised to see me there. ‘Is it dinnertime already?’

  ‘No.’ I slid into the room and shut the door behind me. ‘I wanted to show you something.’

  I went over to the desk. There was one drawer in which my father kept stationery – reams of paper for the printer, spare ballpoint pens, a battered stapler. I pulled the drawer open and began to rummage through it. I found what I wanted at the very bottom: a board-backed sketchpad. I put it on the desk and then I began to fish about in the mug he used to hold all his pens and pencils, looking for an HB pencil.

  All this time my father said nothing. He did not ask me why I was raiding his desk drawer instead of finding my own materials downstairs, or why I wanted the sketchpad in the first place. I had the impression that he was just waiting for me to go away again.

  When I had what I needed, I fetched a chair from the other side of the room and seated myself at the desk. I opened the pad, smoothed back the cover and began to draw, slowly and carefully at first, but then with more confidence. Sometimes I had to stop and think a little, and once or twice I had to rub out details which looked wrong, but on the whole I was pleased with my work. It was a pale echo of Gerhard Remsich’s genius, but I thought it would do.

  I was puzzling over the spelling of NAAMAN when I heard my father heave himself out of his chair. He gave a heavy sigh; I supposed he was about to ask me why I couldn’t go and do my sketching elsewhere. I looked up as he approached and I was struck by how old he seemed. He had begun to remind me of his own father, my grandfather. I put the pencil down and picked up the sketchpad. I held it so that he could see what I had drawn.

  ‘It’s the first one,’ I said, and when he didn’t reply I added, ‘There are seven more.’

  My father stepped forward and took the sketchpad from me. He studied the drawing for a long time. Still he didn’t say anything. I began to feel uncomfortable and to wonder whether I was going to have to spell it out for him. Look, I can draw all of the windows for you. Or perhaps – perhaps I had got it completely wrong and I was just rubbing salt into the wound; perhaps he never wanted to hear the Allerheiligen glass mentioned again. Inwardly I cursed myself, but still I waited to hear what he would say.

  Eventually he rubbed his face with his hand and said, ‘This is… it? You can draw them?’

  I nodded. ‘That’s the one of Naaman bathing in the River Jordan.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said my father with a slight touch of tartness. He gazed at the drawing. ‘This might… can you remember the colours too? Can you draw all of them like this?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  I was tempted to blurt it all out at that point, to tell him of Professor Lyle’s offer and to urge him to use the drawings himself, to write his own book before the subject could be snatched from under his nose by those less worthy to handle it. After all, my father had paid for his involvement with the Allerheiligen glass; Professor Lyle
hadn’t. With an effort I held my tongue. Let my father work it out for himself. I watched him studying the drawing, turning it this way and that, narrowing his eyes as though he were able to see right through the picture into some alternative reality where Gerhard Remsich’s original masterwork still glowed with the tints of rubies and sapphires. I knew that eventually he would accept the task that was being offered to him.

  ‘This…’ he was saying to me. ‘This, here in the background. This city. Or is it meant to be a castle? Naaman was the leader of the Syrian army, you know. Could it be a garrison?’

  ‘I think it was a castle,’ I started to say; the building or group of buildings had been too small to be a city. But my father was already launching into another torrent of questions.

  ‘The waters of the River Jordan, here. Can you tell me exactly what colour they were? Blue, obviously, but were they cornflower blue? Greenish? Did they look turquoise?’

  He put the sketchpad back down in front of me with a slap. ‘No, forget that for a moment. We can discuss that later. Draw another one.’

  I picked up the pencil and turned to a clean page. I had heard the eagerness in my father’s voice; his old enthusiasm was seeping back in. I did not think that we would ever be the same with each other as we had been before. The fit was wrong – it felt like a tooth which has been knocked right out of its socket and put back in. It appeared to be as good as it ever was from the outside, but you would never dare bite on it again; you would know that one day it might have to come out for good. I would never look at my father again and see George Clooney, Sir Lancelot and Robin Hood all rolled into one. But I had helped to give my father back to himself and with that I was satisfied.

  I frowned, adjusted my grip on the pencil and began to draw.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  As for Michel, well, we write to each other: texts, emails, sometimes even postcards – his with hearty German scenes of half-timbered houses and forests on the front, mine with views of the spires and domes of the university city where I live. I like the postcards; I like to touch something which he has sent me.

  I plan to see Michel again, very soon. My family and I are now firmly reinstated in Uncle Karl’s good books. In fact I think he feels guilty about having even suspected any of us of involvement in the attack on Ru, not that he would ever admit it. At any rate he was happy to find somewhere for me to stay during the long summer holidays this year. Tuesday expressed astonishment that I would consider returning to the Eifel, but I told her I wanted to keep up my German fluency. Of course I didn’t discuss the other reason with her, or with my father.

  Not long ago I received the following email from Michel:

  Hi, Lin

  I just picked up your email – I had to go to the library. If I check them at home Dad might see them.

  Of course I remember those wooden boxes, but I don’t know who took them from the church. My father says he didn’t and I can’t ask Father Krause. The police asked me if something had been removed from the church. I said no. I wasn’t really thinking at the time – I was confused. Anyway they didn’t ask me about it again. I don’t think they were really interested. They had no way of knowing what was taken. It could have been old church furniture or something.

  I only looked in one of the boxes. The others were held shut with metal bands, but the lid of this one was loose so I lifted it up and looked inside. At first all I could see was some material, like the stuff they make sacks out of. Something was wrapped up in it. I pulled the coverings off.

  Did you guess what was in there? It was stained-glass windows. I couldn’t really tell what they showed because of course the light wasn’t shining through them. I could just see from the shape of the pieces of lead that there were figures. I tried to cover the glass up again, to make it look as though I had not opened the box.

  So I guess we didn’t destroy all of the Allerheiligen glass after all. There must be many more windows left other than the eight we broke…

  The rest of the email was about other things. I didn’t reply right away. I thought about it for several days and then last night I wrote back.

  Hi, Michel

  I read your last message about ten times. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me before what was in those boxes. I had some really crazy ideas about them – you’d die laughing if I told you.

  I’m feeling better now. I miss Polly so much. I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to her being gone. But I can get through the day. The place where they put her is beautiful, really peaceful.

  Tuesday and Dad finally agreed that I can come back to Germany in the summer. It took them a while to say yes, but I think now they can see that I’m OK, I’m not going to crack up or anything. My uncle Karl is organizing it – he knows some people in Nordkirchen and thinks I can stay with them. I’ll send you the address as soon as I have it. I suppose I’ll have to spend the first day with them, but then can you come and pick me up?

  Look, those boxes, they can’t be far away. The obvious place to hide them is somewhere in the forest or at the farm. Wouldn’t it be cool if we were the ones to find them?

  We could start by searching the farm. I guess we’ll have to think how we can search without your father finding out. If there’s nothing there we can try the forest. Maybe there’s a hunter’s hut or something. Father Krause can’t have taken them far.

  I really, really want us to be the ones who find the glass. Promise you’ll help me look? And don’t tell anyone.

  I love you.

  Lin

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Once again I would like to thank Camilla Bolton of the Darley Anderson Agency for her enthusiasm, honesty and support. I would also like to thank Amanda Punter, Editorial Director at Puffin, and everyone else at Puffin and Penguin – it continues to be a pleasure to work with you, and a thrill to see that little penguin on the spines of my books!

  A special thank-you is due to Polizeihauptkommissar Erich Trenz of the Bad Münstereifel police for answering my interminable questions about German police procedure, and to a German friend who kindly advised me on other aspects of German officialdom.

  I would also like to mention the late Father Nikola Reinartz, whose articles about the lost stained glass of Steinfeld Abbey and descriptions of his correspondence with the late great Montague Rhodes James were a source of inspiration for this book.

  Finally, a big thank-you to my husband, Gordon, for his moral support and the numerous cups of tea!

  MEET THE AUTHOR

  Lin and her family move to Germany at the beginning of The Glass Demon. Did you have to research the area where the book is set?

  I didn’t have to do much research about the area itself because I lived in that part of Germany (the Eifel) for seven years, so I know it really well. I had already done a lot of research into castles and churches in the Eifel for some magazine articles I wrote several years ago. Truthfully, I didn’t really think of it as ‘research’ – it was all so intriguing that I just had to find out more!

  We’ve heard that the legend of the Allerheiligen stained glass was based on a true story. Can you tell us about it?

  It’s based on the true story of the Steinfeld stained glass. Steinfeld Abbey had a fabulous series of sixteenth-century stained-glass windows. Several times in their history they had to be taken out of the window frames and hidden, because there was a war on and they could have been damaged. In 1785 they were taken down for the last time, and when the abbey closed in 1802 they were sold and vanished altogether. For a century nobody knew where they were. In 1904 the famous ghost-story writer Montague Rhodes James was cataloguing the stained glass in the chapel of Ashridge House in Hertfordshire, and realized that most of it came from Steinfeld. The name of the abbey was written on one of the windows in Latin. He was inspired by the glass to write a story called ‘The Treasure of Abbot Thomas’, which is set in Steinfeld. A German priest called Father Nikola Reinartz heard about the story and when he was in England for
a conference he contacted M. R. James to find out where the glass was. He was then able to visit it at Ashridge. He was thrilled that the lost glass had been found at last. The Steinfeld glass was eventually sold in the 1920s at Sotheby’s for the equivalent of about £800,000 in modern money.

  I found this story fascinating for several reasons. I would never have believed that something as fragile as stained glass could be taken out of the window frames and transported to another country without being broken. Also, I couldn’t help thinking how amazing it would be if there were another set of priceless stained-glass windows still hidden somewhere, waiting to be found. That’s what inspired the book!

  In The Glass Demon and your first book, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, you mix ordinary people and places with sinister human behaviour. What appeals to you in writing about crime?

  Strangely enough, I didn’t really set out to write ‘crime’ novels. I try to tell a story with interesting characters and exciting events. The people are just as important as the crimes. I love books and films with dramatic and thrilling events, but I think a lot of the excitement is lost if you aren’t involved with the characters.

  Do you use the names of real places in your books? Have you ever visited any of the German towns that you write about?

  Normally I do use the names of real places – Bad Münstereifel, the town featured in The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, really exists (I lived there for seven years!), and all the street names are real ones. However, I departed from this approach a bit in The Glass Demon because a lot of the action takes place in a castle. Some Eifel castles, such as the ones at Dollendorf and Kronenburg, are ruined, and nobody lives there, but some are still inhabited. I wouldn’t want anyone to read the book and think, That’s my home, and perhaps be offended. So the castle in the book, the Kreuzburg, is a mixture of several different castles, and the place names are mostly imaginary ones.