by Gavin Scott
“You’re right, Grevinne; I do hope you’ll help me solve the mystery. But the truth is I don’t know how. I suspect the murder had something to do with a manuscript David may have seen when he was with you during the war.”
“A manuscript?”
“An Old Norse manuscript. He was showing such a manuscript around Oxford before he died, and I wondered if he’d taken it from here.”
Countess Arnfeldt-Laurvig smiled sadly. “I know exactly what David took from here when he left me, Mr. Forrester,” she said. “I packed his bag myself, and a Norse manuscript was the last thing he would have added to his load: he had to ski two hundred miles to the Swedish border with the German Army hunting for him. The only things in that pack were what he needed to stay alive.”
Forrester was silent; it looked as if he had reached a dead end. And yet he did not want the conversation to be over.
He did not want the conversation ever to be over.
The countess looked at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It looks as if you are having a wasted journey.” She paused for a moment. “But at least I can offer you some hospitality. There will be no train to Oslo tonight, and there is plenty of room in this house.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“Also I would like you to tell me more about David. About his life in those Oxford… cloisters. It’s very hard for me to think of him as…”
And suddenly her composure cracked and she was weeping silently against his chest and Forrester held her as she sobbed, not saying anything, just letting her grief pour out. He felt her body against him, her tears dampening his shirt, her delicate shoulders shaking. Then her outburst subsided and she gently disengaged herself, took a deep breath and picked up a small bell from the sideboard.
“Helga will show you to your room,” she said. “You will want to clean up after your journey. There are some of my late husband’s clothes in the wardrobe and if you find any that fit you, please borrow them. We dine at eight.”
* * *
The dining room had clearly been designed for large parties, if not the crew of a Viking longship. The table was a massive slab of oak, and the chandelier that hung over it was the size of a cartwheel. Even the candle-holders were huge, and the candles that burned in them were massive cylinders of beeswax. Duncan and the Grevinne Sophie Arnfeldt-Laurvig sat at one corner across from one other, with Helga and an ancient manservant called Josef silently laying the dishes and refilling their glasses.
“This place must have seen some festivities,” said Forrester.
“We had many parties before the war,” said the countess. “My husband loved to bring people here. There was always hunting and hiking and music in the woods.”
“It sounds idyllic.”
“Sometimes there were English people. They talked about Henley and Ascot and polo matches. Did you play polo?”
“No,” said Forrester. “Polo wasn’t big in Hull.”
“Kingston upon Hull? Some of the timber from our estates went through that port.”
“A lot of things come through Hull. Fish. Copra. Seed oil. All very glamorous.”
She smiled, a little hesitantly. “I think that is the opposite of what you mean.”
He inclined his head. “Yes, it is. Hull’s a very working-class city. And even if there had been people playing polo there before the war, which is a very unlikely thought, our family wouldn’t have been among them. My father worked on the fishing trawlers.”
She looked into his eyes. “Why are these things so important to English people? And to you?” she asked, gently.
“What makes you think they are?”
“Your eyes are – I don’t know the right word in English – hot.”
“Hot?”
“Angry. Not at me – at something. Perhaps a little hurt too, as if this subject is giving you pain. And your speech is not like someone from a poor background. You speak as if your father was a gentleman.”
“My father was a gentleman. He was honest, hardworking and intelligent. But no-one in England would think of him like that, because he was a trawlerman.”
“Ah… class,” said the countess.
“Yes, class. That’s what rules England.”
“And yet you, the son of a poor man in a poor city, have risen to become a professor.”
“A lecturer.”
“At Oxford.”
“True.”
“You should be proud of yourself.”
This time he smiled, a little shame-facedly. “I should be, shouldn’t I? And not go about with a big chip on my shoulder.”
“A big ship?”
He laughed. “Not ship, chip. It means feeling resentful. I’m not, really. I don’t envy people who grew up in big houses with servants and garden parties. It’s just not the world I knew, and I don’t want to pretend it was.”
“No, you do not seem to be a man who likes to pretend,” she said. A shadow crossed her face. “And I know such men from experience.” She took a drink from her wine glass, and Forrester remained silent, waiting until she was ready.
“My husband was such a person: a weak man who pretended to be strong. He fooled many people, but he did not fool himself.”
“Weak in what way?”
“He drank and he did not have a good head for drink. He made wagers when he could not judge the odds. He took risks to make people think he was brave. I believe that was what led to his death in the war.”
“I’m sorry,” said Forrester.
“There is a strange quality to the death of a husband you no longer love. You tell yourself you should be feeling more than you do. You ask yourself whether you could have made him a better man if you had tried harder.” She met his eyes again. “And you, Dr. Forrester, have you been happy in love?”
He tried to look away, and could not. “I have known great love,” he said, “and what it is to lose it.” Suddenly, to his fury, he felt his eyes pricking. “She was killed by the Gestapo. I feel I bear some of the blame.” Then unshed tears blurred his vision and her hand was closing over his.
Later, he had no idea how, they were in the library and she was pouring brandy into a heavy glass. Firelight flickered gently over the polished spines of the leather-bound books that lined the walls. The mood was easier now, like the air after a storm; as if, worn out with the tempest of his long-suppressed emotions, he was easier with himself than he had been for a long time.
“There is one other thing you should know about my husband,” said Sophie Arnfeldt-Laurvig. “Something about the reputation of this place.”
“What is that?” asked Forrester, though he was already certain he knew.
“There was a time, during the thirties, when my husband was interested in… how do you say it? Dark magic.”
“I have heard that,” said Forrester. “In fact I’d heard that an Englishman named Aleister Crowley came here.”
“He did,” said the countess. “He was a disgusting man; powerful, and horrible. I want you to know that I had nothing to do with these things; in fact my husband and I parted for a time when those men were here, and I went to Oslo. But the things continued while I was away.”
“What things?”
“They tried to raise the Devil,” she said softly.
“In this house?”
She nodded. “In this house. When I came back, there were pentagrams carved into the beams of the hall. And out in the woods – things had happened out in the woods. Things I am glad I know nothing about.”
“What happened when you returned?”
“I confronted the man Crowley and drove him from this house.”
“That must have taken some doing.”
“I have never encountered such strength. I thought I was going to die. I felt as if I was wrestling with… a great serpent.”
“But you prevailed.”
“I prevailed.”
Forrester moved slightly so that he could look at her face. He knew now what it reminded him of: one of the ange
ls carved into the beams in the entrance hall. If anyone could have overcome the evil that was Aleister Crowley, it was she. And then a thought occurred to him.
“Do you think Norse incantations played any role in what they did?”
“Incantations?”
“Runes, rituals. Sacrifices to Odin, that kind of thing.”
“I do not know; it would not surprise me. Some of our Old Norse books were damaged when I came back. Engravings torn out, pages removed.” Forrester glanced at the shelves: there were many gaps.
“And later some manuscripts were lost entirely,” she said.
“Lost?”
“I think it was partly in revenge for me coming between him and his magic that my husband began to gamble. When my back was turned he used the most valuable manuscripts in this library as his stake.”
“He gambled them away? To whom?”
“It could have been anyone. As I said, people came here from all over Norway, all over Europe; there were times when the fjord was full of yachts. Famous people. Distinguished people. Not all of them beasts.” She looked him in the eye. “It may be hard to believe, but there were times when this was a good place. When the magic in the air was good magic.”
“So you were happy here, sometimes?” said Forrester.
“I sometimes used to dream about what it would have been like to be here with a man I truly loved.”
Her face was turned towards him, and this time he could not stop himself. Gently, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. The kiss went on for a long time, and it felt to Forrester as if he had been waiting to feel those lips on his since the world began. After a moment they opened their eyes and looked at each other.
“We have met before,” said Sophie.
Forrester nodded. “But not in this life.”
“And now we have found each other again,” said Sophie Arnfeldt-Laurvig.
They sat there on the worn leather sofa so long the blaze of the burning log became a dull glow, lost in the realisation that whatever tides of time and space had torn them apart in some other age, those same tides had, finally, brought them back together.
As the fire died, she rose to her feet. “My room is directly above yours,” she said. “Come to me before you sleep.”
21
NIGHT IN THE FOREST
Forrester sat for some time after she had gone, staring into the embers. Then he stood up and wandered around the room, picking up photographs of long-lost social gatherings in heavy silver frames. There were photograph albums, too, showing picnic parties on the shore, games on the lawn, expeditions in the forest. He turned to a page where two photographs had once been – and saw that the lower one of them had gone. Beneath the place it had occupied were the words: “Who were these two? One was English, I think, and one German. But anyway, here they are playing cards with Ernst, June 1937.”
The remaining photograph – presumably a precursor to the missing picture – showed a yacht anchored in the fjord in the background. In the foreground two men rowed towards the shore in a dinghy. The Englishman and the German of the missing image? The man on the oars had his back to the camera, and the other was sitting in the prow facing the shore, and though the image was so small Forrester was convinced that it was Dorfmann. Something about the shape of the head and light hair – as he had seen him that night at High Table. He pulled the photograph out of its mount to see if he could read the name of the yacht and then, when he could not, slipped it into his pocket.
He heard the servants going to bed, and waited a little longer before walking into the entrance hall, kneeling down beside the rug and lifting the edge.
There, incised deeply in the ancient pine, were the outer markings of what could only be a vast pentagram. The image of Haraldson lying on the floor of Lyall’s set flashed into his mind, and he knew what had drawn the Norwegian to Oxford when Lyall had summoned him. He listened. Silence. Everyone was asleep except for the one person who suddenly mattered more to him than anyone else in the world.
Silently, he made his way up the stairs. Her door was ajar and after a pause he pushed it gently open. When she saw him, she smiled.
“Close the door behind you,” she said.
* * *
Afterwards she slept, and the moon rose, and silvered their bodies. Forrester opened the window onto a little balcony, letting the night air flow over him, breathing in the elusive scent of the snow. As he stood there he heard the crunch of a boot, cutting through the frozen crust. Just one, and nothing more, but it was enough. He closed the window quietly, went back to the bed, breathed into her ear. “Wake up, Sophie.”
Instantly her eyes opened and seconds later they were dressing. She asked no questions, revealed no surprises, simply did what had to be done. They did not hear either window or door being forced below them in the house: they did not need to. Neither of them was surprised as they heard the first creak on the stairs.
Forrester glanced towards the bedroom door: no lock. There was a chair, folk-painted with flowers. Would it delay them if he jammed it under the door handle? No, too flimsy. Sophie was already thrusting bolsters under the bedcovers. Pillows where the heads would have been. As the door handle turned, they flattened themselves against the wall on either side of the door.
The door swung open and as the silenced gun fired twice into the figures in the bed Forrester brought the painted chair down hard on the extended forearm. The chair disintegrated, but the impact was enough. There was a cry of pain and the gun went flying. Before the man had time to react Forrester was on him, grasping the gun-arm and wrenching it sideways.
But the man was strong, fit and trained. His free hand rabbit-chopped Forrester’s neck and his left foot entwined itself with Forrester’s, bringing him down through the open door onto the landing – as the second and third men came up.
But Forrester had not released his grip on the man’s arm and with a sudden jerk he sent him careering backwards down the stairs into the other two, darted back inside the room and slammed the door. Sophie was ready, pushing a heavy wooden chest towards the door even as he returned – and she had the fallen gun.
But the chest would only delay them for a moment, and whatever the first man’s injuries, there were still two more of them. “Window,” said Forrester, and seconds later they were climbing out. Already the door was shuddering under the blows of the men trying to get in, and the chest was beginning to move.
Forrester was out on the balcony and about to jump when her hand grasped his shoulder and the moon came out from behind a cloud, illuminating the old ploughshare lying in wait. Behind them, the chest screamed against the wooden floor as the men forced the door. “Up,” said Sophie, and then they were heaving themselves up from the balcony ledge and onto the roof, clawing their way over the snow-covered shingles, chunks of snow falling away behind them. The first of the intruders appeared on the balcony before they had reached the roof crest. Sophie swivelled round, pointed the gun and fired.
The shot went wide, but the man ducked back out of sight as Forrester and Sophie slithered down the far side of the roof, sending more snow avalanching before them. This time, as they reached the edge, the ground below them was clear, and without hesitation they jumped, landing thigh deep in the thick crystalline covering of the lawn.
Perfect targets, both of them, as soon as their pursuers saw them. Ahead, the lawn stretched level and unencumbered: a moonlit killing ground. “The trees,” said Forrester. “Make for the trees.”
And then they were running towards the darkness of the forest, as the first of the intruders reached the roof crest. Bullets hissed into the snow around them and sent splinters flying out of the trunk of birch trees as they ran on, their feet sinking into the snow, plunging blindly into the blackness. Forrester swerved to avoid a fallen log, hit an unseen dip, and as he crashed down into the snow slammed his face into a fallen branch. Suppressing a cry of pain, pressing one hand against his nose to stem the flow of blood, he rose to his fee
t with the branch in his hand and smashed it into the man pursuing him; his gun went flying.
And then he saw her, a hundred yards off, running hard up some kind of promontory, and the moon came out from behind the clouds and there was a shot from somewhere ahead and she cried out and fell. Sick with shock, Forrester began to run diagonally across the slope towards her.
But the killer was faster: he sprinted straight up the promontory towards the fallen body, gun held out before him, ready to fire again if she stirred. No, said Forrester, no, and then the man was gone, vanished as if plucked from the surface of the earth and Sophie was rising from the snow, unhurt, gesturing him away from the snowhole.
“They didn’t know the terrain,” she said. “I did.” Forrester looked down into the darkness and heard a splash as the man hit the water a thousand feet below.
Then they went looking for the man he had felled with the branch, but when they came to the bloody patch of snow where he had fallen he was gone and far away. Down the drive, they heard the sound of a car engine starting.
It was over, and Helga and Josef were coming out of the house to look for them, and Forrester allowed himself to be led back inside.
22
PRINCE OF DENMARK
The hours after Sophie and Forrester returned to the house were unrelenting. He kept guard while the two old servants helped Sophie pack; only then did he allow them to deal with the damage to his nose. Even while they dabbed at him with antiseptic and various pine-scented herbs he kept the loaded gun at his side and his eye on the expanse of lawn that led down to the drive. During the war he had several times used the euphoria that often overcame defenders after they had repelled an attack to return when they were least ready for it – he was determined that was not going to happen now. But even if the killers did not come back tonight that did not mean they had given up. Even after Forrester himself left, this place would not be safe. Sophie must leave too – and Josef and Helga with her, because they too would be vulnerable. He cursed himself for assuming that whoever had been sent to attack him in Berlin would give up when they failed there.