Silhouette in Scarlet vbm-3

by Elizabeth Peters

  Below lay the lake, almost as symmetrical in reality as it had been on the map – a steel-grey coin, dropped carelessly from an Ice Giant’s pocket, encircled by sombre groves and backed by the misty shapes of high mountains. But the map had not shown the island. It was shaped like a lopsided triangle, and at one end of it rose the black metal roof and white walls of a large house. Like the kings of Sweden, Gus had built his castle on his own private island.

  Tomas stopped the car by a building near a small quay. It appeared to be a combination garage and boathouse, with a gas pump and shop. Sheltered by the overhang of the shop roof stood a row of chairs occupied by four or five elderly men looking as stiff and wooden as their seats. It made me feel right at home; there were always a few retired men with nothing better to do hanging around the gas station in Meadowbanks, Minnesota.

  They were all tall and lean, with long, tanned faces and hair that could have been grey or bleached blond. A row of keen blue eyes studied me without blinking. Not a muscle cracked until I smiled and lifted a hand in greeting. Then five heads nodded in unison, but nobody smiled back.

  A younger man wearing overalls came out of the shop, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. He was tall and blond and blue-eyed – it was getting monotonous, but that kind of monotony I can endure.

  Tomas said, ‘My son, Erik.’ Apparently everybody was supposed to know who I was, but I said, ‘Hi, I’m Vicky Bliss,’ and held out my hand. Erik grinned and shrugged apologetically, indicating his grimy fingers. The old men watched stonily as Erik helped his dad unload a number of parcels from the car and stow them away in a neat little cabin cruiser. She was a beauty, and I’d love to have handled her, but I wasn’t even allowed to stay up above. The minuscule cabin was as shipshape as the exterior; brass gleamed, mahogany shone, and a Formica-topped table held more magazines, bottles of beer, and mineral water, and a tray of open-faced sandwiches – caviar, this time.

  Needless to say, the caviar and the beer were still intact when we docked. The trip took only about ten minutes.

  I found myself on a windswept jetty with a flight of steep wooden steps ahead. Tomas gestured towards them, raising an inquiring eyebrow, and when I nodded he got back into the cockpit and started easing the boat towards a covered shed at the end of the jetty.

  At the top of the steps a gravelled path led through formal gardens to the front of the house. It looked even bigger close up than it had from a distance. Part creamy stucco, part grey weathered wood, part stone, it appeared to have grown over the centuries as naturally as the trees that sheltered it.

  A man stood at the door looking eagerly in the direction of the stairs, and when he started forward I understood why he had not met me at the dock. Even with the aid of his stout wooden stick he limped badly, dragging one foot.

  I knew what his first words would be. ‘I am so happy! Come in, come in, you must be tired. It is a long journey.’

  He looked just the way I had pictured him – in fact, he looked like the five old gents at the garage, except for the smile that gave his lined face an inner radiance. Like many men of his colouring he had worn well; he might have been any age between forty and seventy, and with the exception of the bad leg he had kept in good shape.

  With a wide, hospitable gesture he showed me into the house. The hallway was dark and narrow, with pieces of heavy furniture lined up in rigid rows. A doorway on the left led to a lighted room. I turned in that direction, but before I had taken more than a few steps, Gus said seriously, ‘Victoria, there is tragic news. Be brave, my child. It was so good of him to come the long distance to share your grief and give you the comfort of a friend and kinsman.’

  Heaven knows I have plenty of hostages to Fortune, starting with my parents and proceeding through a long line of friends and relatives; but it never occurred to me for an instant that there had been a genuine tragedy. After a moment’s pause I went into the room. And there he was, the bastard, perfectly at ease, immaculately tailored, the one, the original, restored by the miracles of modern cosmeticians to his Anglo-Saxon fairness.

  In a voice choked with emotion I quoted from the sagas. ‘Blonde was his hair and bright his cheek; Grim as a snake’s were his glowing eyes . . .’

  ‘I hate to be the one to tell you, Vicky,’ John interrupted. ‘Aunt Ingeborg is – is – ’

  ‘Dead,’ I agreed. ‘You know, for some strange reason I’m not surprised to hear it.’

  John swept me into a brotherly embrace. He looks so willowy and aristocratic, I keep forgetting how strong he is. One arm squashed my ribs and cut off my breath, the other hand pressed my face into his shoulder. As I squirmed, unable to utter a word, he said to Gus, ‘A glass of brandy, perhaps? The shock, you know.’

  Gus clucked sympathetically and hurried out. Freeing my mouth, I mumbled an obscenity into John’s tweed shoulder. He kept his hand firmly on my head.

  ‘I told you I’d look after Gus,’ he murmured. ‘Why the devil didn’t you do as I asked?’

  I said, ‘Let go of me.’

  The pressure on my neck subsided so that I was able to move my head. John promptly kissed me, with considerably more skill than he had displayed the night before.

  ‘Nice,’ he said, as I sputtered. ‘You really have the most – ’

  ‘What have you told Gus?’

  ‘Nothing. I thought I’d leave that to you. You can be so much more persuasive.’

  ‘I’m telling the truth.’

  ‘You don’t know the truth. I don’t doubt that your educated guesses are reasonably accurate, but we ought to discuss the situation before deciding what to say. If you give me your word not to accuse me – ’

  ‘Why should I let you off the hook?’

  ‘I’ve no intention of being keelhauled over this deal,’ John said, with a glint in his eye that told me he meant every word. ‘If you cooperate, I can be of considerable assistance. If you won’t – ’

  Before he could complete the threat, I heard Gus’s footsteps approaching. Another pair of feet accompanied his, in a quick pitter-patter. They belonged to a stout old lady carrying a tray with glasses and decanter.

  I wrenched myself away from John. ‘I’m fully recovered, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You are very courageous,’ said Gus, viewing my flushed face and dishevelled hair with the respect such signs of grief deserved.

  ‘She had a good life,’ I said. ‘Ninety-six years old and not a tooth missing.’

  John showed signs of breaking down – or up – at that point, so brandy was administered all around and everybody cheered up. Gus introduced his housekeeper, Mrs Anderson, who displayed a mouthful of artificial teeth as impressive as Aunt Ingeborg’s and made me welcome in a mixture of Swedish and English. For the next few minutes she ran in and out with trays and plates and little doilies to put under the plates and little tables to put under the plates and doilies.

  John won the housekeeper’s heart by devouring her canapés and paying her extravagant compliments that made her giggle and blush. I couldn’t eat. I was too choked with rage.

  John must have left Stockholm early that morrung. I wasn’t impressed or touched by his apparent fidelity to his promise. I felt sure that protecting Gus wasn’t his only purpose in coming.

  By catching me off guard, he had won the first round. I should have yelled for the police instead of appearing to accept him; now any accusations I might make would be weakened. Most galling of all was my suspicion that by hook or crook, by gosh and by golly, he had somehow manoeuvered me into the precise position he had meant me to occupy from the first. If my analysis of the situation was coreect, there was only one way out of the dilemma John had gotten us into, and that was to do what he always intended to do – dig up the field and find whatever might be there before illicit investigators could get to it.

  His supposedly casual comments supported this conclusion. The conversation had turned to the house and its architectural features, its fine antique furnishings and decor. John babbled
fluently about Dalarna baroque and eighteenth-century design. Gus looked impressed.

  ‘You are a student of art, Mr Smythe?’

  ‘That’s one word for it,’ I said.

  ‘Archaeology is my specialty,’ John said. ‘I couldn’t help noticing the earthworks behind the house, Mr Jonsson. They resemble the remains of hill forts found in other parts of Sweden. Have you ever thought of excavating?’

  ‘There are ancient remains there,’ Gus said. ‘My grandfather made a hobby of agriculture; wishing to try a new variety of grass, he ordered the upper pasture to be ploughed, and one of the workmen turned up some sort of cup. Grandfather presented it to a museum in Stockholm.’

  ‘Of course,’ John exclaimed, his eyes wide. ‘The Karlsholm chalice. I know it well.’

  ‘I am told it is a fine piece,’ Gus said indifferently.

  ‘It is magnificent. Sir – haven’t you ever wondered whether there might not be other antiquities buried there?’

  ‘If they are there, they will remain there,’ Gus said. ‘I won’t have archaeologists tramping over my island desecrating the graves of my ancestors.’

  John gave me a meaningful glance, meaning, ‘You see what I was up against?’ I snorted. Gus asked if I had taken cold.

  Shortly after we moved into the dining room, for a wholly unnecessary meal, it began to rain. Water streamed down the windowpanes like something out of a celestial fire hose. Glancing at the impressive display, John said, ‘I’m most grateful for your invitation to stay the night, sir. I’d hate to drive those roads in this sort of weather.’

  ‘Yes, we have very violent storms,’ Gus said proudly. ‘In winter I am often cut off for days at a time. I have my own generator for electricity, but always when it rains the telephone does not function.’

  I did not need John’s sidelong smirk to tell me that the weather had put another spoke in my wheel. There would be no telephone call to the police tonight. I hadn’t expected I would get that far in one evening; older people are hard to convert to a new point of view, especially as one as hard to swallow as the tale I meant to tell. I’d have a better chance of persuading Gus of the danger with John to back me up; that expert and congenital liar undoubtedly had concocted a modified version of the facts that would convince Saint Peter, while leaving ‘Sir’ John in line for a halo.

  As soon as he decently could, Gus turned the conversation to genealogy He seemed puzzled by John’s and my relationship.

  ‘Distant cousins,’ John said airily, when the question was put. ‘Vicky’s grandmother’s sister was my grandfather’s brother’s second wife.’

  Even the expert genealogist was baffled by that one.

  After dinner we went to Gus’s study, a room the size of a football field, lined with bookcases and equipped with comfortable chairs. Tables and desks were covered with papers – Gus’s genealogical materials. His eyes alight, his face beaming, Gus outlined the history of ‘our’ family back to the creation of the world. It was rather interesting, or it would have been if I had not had other things on my mind. At any rate, Gus enjoyed himself. He might be a recluse but he was also a fanatic, and every fanatic loves an audience.

  He kept thinking of things he wanted to show us – a faded satin slipper that had belonged to a lady-in-waiting of Queen Christina, the sword an ancestor had carried at Narva. After watching him hoist himself painfully out of his chair a time or two, John offered his services; Gus kept him running back and forth to fetch more souvenirs, which were tucked away in cupboards under the bookcases. While John was scrounging in one such cupboard at the far end of the room looking for the birth certificate of a seventeenth-century Jonsson, Gus turned to me.

  ‘Mr Smythe,’ he whispered. ‘He is not – are you perhaps – your relationship is . . .’

  ‘We’re just friends.’ I gagged on the word, but Gus didn’t notice. He looked relieved.

  ‘I am so glad. He is a very pleasant young man. I have no prejudice, believe me; but there is something – I cannot say what. . .’

  I was strongly tempted to tell him what. There wasn’t time. John trotted back with the birth certificate and we spent the rest of the evening on family history. I have never heard such lies as John told when Gus started inquiring about the English and American branches.

  When the mellow tones of the old clock in the corner boomed eleven times, Gus rose. ‘Come with me to the window, Vicky,’ he said. The sun had dipped below the far mountains, outlining their snowcapped heights in molten gold. The storm had left a patch of broken clouds, like bloody footsteps running down the west. The shore lay deep in shadow, a slope of unbroken green whose reflection deepened the water to dark malachite.

  ‘I stand here each night,’ Gus said quietly. ‘Before I go to bed. Each night it is different, each night it is beautiful. You must see it in winter, Vicky, when every tree is trimmed in ermine and the full moon turns the snow to silver.’

  ‘I can see why you love it,’ I said.

  ‘It is part of your heritage too. I am so glad you are here to share it with me.’

  ‘Mr Jonsson,’ I blurted, ‘there’s something I have to tell you – ’

  ‘You must call me Gus. Cousin Gus.’

  ‘That’s very sweet of you, but I want to tell you – ’

  ‘I don’t think this is the time, Vicky,’ said John, close behind me.

  ‘No, it is late,’ Gus agreed. ‘You will be weary from your journey.’

  He escorted us to our rooms. They were on the ground floor in a separate wing. I had seen mine when I went to wash up before dinner, but I had not realized that Gus’s room was next to mine and that John had been given a room at the far end of the corridor – with Gus’s door between.

  ‘I bid you goodnight,’ Gus said, standing tall in his doorway. ‘I am a light sleeper, so if there is anything you require in the night, do not hesitate to call me.’

  As if that weren’t enough of a hint, he continued to stand there with the look of a man who is prepared to remain in the same spot all night.

  ‘Good night, sir,’ John said. He looked at me. Gus looked at me. Neither of them moved until I had closed my door.

  If I had kept my wits about me, I could have invented a valid reason for a private interview with John – vague references to ‘family matters’ would have done it. Gus’s old-fashioned notions of chaperonage did me in; I was too entertained to think quickly, and once those bedroom doors were closed, the die was cast. The dignified, loveable old man intimidated me. He wouldn’t say anything if he caught me sneaking into John’s room in the middle of the night, but he would be disappointed and hurt and disapproving.

  Excuses, excuses. It’s easy to think of them once the damage is done. I didn’t have any sense of urgency. The physical isolation of the island gave me a feeling of security, and John’s relaxed air implied that he had no fear of immediate pursuit. I had even begun to wonder whether the far-out story about the criminal conspiracy and the fiendish silhouette cutter might not be an invention of John’s, and his attempt to get me to go back to Munich an example of reverse psychology. I definitely had to talk to the rat, but morning would be soon enough. I would corner him first thing, when I was rested and calm and better able to deal with his lies.

  Like so many good intentions, that one now forms a paving block on the road to the bad place. In fact, a considerable stretch of that path owes its solidity to me. It is small consolation to reflect that even if I had acted on my instincts instead of trying to behave calmly, things would have turned out just the same.

  Chapter Six

  I WAS WAKENED once during the night by a strange, high-pitched cry. It was not repeated. I concluded I must have been dreaming, but I was sufficiently concerned to get out of bed and go to the door.

  Dim lights burned in the hall. Gus’s door was slightly ajar. His room was dark, but as I listened I heard faint rustling noises, like someone turning over in bed. That put an end to any idea I might have had of seeking a midnight rendezv
ous with John. So I went back to bed. Not that it would have made any difference . . .

  It was a little after five when I was awakened for the second time, and on this occasion the noises could not be mistaken for the products of my imagination. Crashes, thuds, and curses echoed through the house.

  Like the fool that I am, I dashed into the hall. The noises came from John’s room. Gus’s door was now closed; either he was up and about, or he was a heavier sleeper than he had claimed, for he did not appear.

  John’s door was open. By the time I reached it, the noises had stopped. The room was a disaster – furniture overturned, sheets torn off the bed, and a handsome lamp smashed to bits. At the foot of the bed, sprawled in awkward abandon, was a body. It was that of a man with longish brown hair, wearing a dirty white sweater and faded jeans. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses, miraculously unbroken, lay on the floor by his hand. Over him, breathing heavily and dripping blood from a split lip, stood John.

  I hadn’t quite taken all this in, much less absorbed the full effect of John’s pale-blue silk pajamas with the gold crest on the pocket, when the muslin curtains exploded into the room and another man appeared. There was no mistaking his identity. It was fully light outside, and he filled the entire window embrasure. His eyes bulged, and his hair bristled like that of an antique warrior in the grip of the insane berserker rage. After one quick glance, from the recumbent body to John, he let out an animal howl and flung himself forward.

  His shoulders stuck in the window. The delay gave John time enough to leap aside. Leif stumbled forward, assisted by John’s foot, and hit the floor with a crash that shook the room. One of his outflung arms sent me reeling backward. I bounced off the wall and sat down harder than I wanted to.