Silhouette in Scarlet vbm-3

by Elizabeth Peters

‘No. I knew Max must be taking orders from someone, and towards the end he was making decisions a little too quickly; there wasn’t time for him to have communicated with a distant headquarters. He also got careless about guarding Hasseltine.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Right, you say. I’ll wager it was good old feminine intuition.’

  I didn’t answer. His hit came too close to the mark.

  My discovery had been based on logical reasoning: Leif’s performance, as Swedish cop and as German engineer, had been discordant with sour notes. His suitcase was the giveaway. He could have swum the lake, but not with that heavy bag. I hadn’t thought it out so neatly, though; it had all come together in a wave of instinctive revulsion when Leif made love to me, a dreadful illusion that the hands moving over my body were sticky and slippery with blood – the hands of a killer.

  The clouds spit out a windy gust of rain and closed up again. We reached the grove of trees behind the barnyard and John said, ‘Hold on a minute. I want to say something.’

  His voice sounded odd. I turned. He clung for support to one of the pale birch trunks, his chest rising and falling rapidly. In the gloom his tumbled hair had a silvery lustre.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said gruffly. ‘You don’t have to thank me.’

  ‘I wasn’t about to.’

  ‘Well, you damned well should! I didn’t have to stick my neck out for you! In fact, any woman with the brains of a louse would have helped Max beat you up last night.’

  ‘He had plenty of help.’

  After a moment I said, ‘Leif?’

  ‘He didn’t join in. He just watched. And made a few suggestions.’

  ‘That was careless of him.’

  ‘Not really. He’s so rotten with conceit he assumed you wouldn’t believe me even if I had a chance to accuse him. It was,’ John said thoughtfully, ‘becoming more and more difficult for him to restrain himself. His feelings for Georg are the closest he can come to normal human emotions. Unluckily for me . . . Luckily for me, and you, his passion for revenge made him careless. He’s up to his neck in this affair; the police may just manage to pin it on him.’

  ‘Did you know Georg was his brother?’

  ‘Good God, no. I wouldn’t have touched that deal with the proverbial ten-foot pole if I had realized the hairy degenerate was related to one of the top men in the business. Blood will tell, though; long before I ran into him, Georg had picked up some of the tricks of the trade, despite Leif’s efforts to keep him legitimate.’

  ‘Bless your heart,’ I said. ‘I might have known you wouldn’t turn a nice innocent boy on to drugs.’

  ‘I avoid that aspect of organized crime,’ was the austere reply. ‘It lacks class.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  His hair was speckled with dirt and twigs; the trickle of dried blood under his nose looked like a sloppily trimmed moustache. ‘I rather hoped you would have an idea,’ he said.

  ‘I haven’t had time to think, dammit. The only way of dealing with a chaotic situation like this one is to grab the opportunities as they come up; it’s impossible to plan in advance.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for a lecture, darling, or for a list of excuses. Hans can probably demolish that shack board by board in a couple of hours. I plan to be miles away by that time.’

  ‘We could call for help.’

  ‘Fine, if you happen to have a shortwave hidden in your lingerie. Or shall we all stand on the shore and shout?’

  ‘Max may have a radio somewhere.’

  ‘If he has, I haven’t found it, and I assure you, I looked. Besides, I don’t fancy cowering in the cellar waiting for possibly hypothetical help to arrive. Max might decide to fire the house.’

  ‘Maybe Gus will have a suggestion.’

  ‘We can certainly ask,’ John said. ‘All right, let’s get him out. What do you propose to do about the guard?’

  ‘I read a book once where the heroine took off her clothes and walked into the room where the villains were – ’

  ‘Don’t be vulgar.’

  The only tricky part was locating Pierre, who had taken shelter in the garden shed. In the end I had to call him. When he saw me, smiling and innocent and unarmed, he came out, and John took care of the rest. We tied him up with Georg’s twine and tossed him back into the shed, wedging the door with a log from the woodpile.

  The barn door was held by a bar so big it took both of us to lift it out of the massive iron staples. When it swung open, the smell struck me motionless with nostalgia; no matter how much you clean, you can never dispel the old ghosts of manure, hay, and warm animal bodies. It smelled marvellous.

  It was lucky for me that I stopped. The heavy stick whistled through the air, missing my nose by a few inches.

  ‘Wait, Gus – ’ Before I could go on, I was enveloped in a rib-cracking hug. ‘Vicky, my dear child – have I hurt you? I dared not wait any longer, I feared for your life – ’

  ‘It’s okay. But we’ve got to get away, Gus, as fast as we can.’

  Gus let me go and turned to John, who was watching with a fixed, ingratiating smile. Before I could speak or move, Gus raised his fist and brought it crashing down on John’s head. He crumpled up like a piece of aluminium guttering.

  I caught Gus’s arm. ‘Don’t. He’s on our side.’

  ‘My poor Vicky, you are mistaken,’ Gus said seriously. ‘He has a gun, don’t you see? And I must tell you that he is not kin to us. It is impossible that Great-great-aunt Birgitta could have – ’

  ‘I know, I know, know. Actually, he’s – never mind, it would take too long to explain. Just take my word for it.’

  I knelt and tried to straighten John’s tangled limbs. This had not been his day. ‘Wake up,’ I said, shaking him.

  ‘Not until you convince Cousin Gus,’ said John, without opening his eyes.

  ‘He’s convinced. Right, Gus?’ I grabbed John’s collar and dragged him to his feet. He stood swaying, head on one side, like Petrouchka, in the ballet of the same name.

  ‘If you say so,’ Gus agreed doubtfully. ‘Where are the other evil men?’

  ‘Locked up.’

  ‘Temporarily.’ John straightened, with some effort. ‘I fear this isn’t the time to break out the champagne, Mr Jonsson. You wouldn’t happen to have an extra boat hidden away?’

  ‘Only in the boathouse,’ Gus said. ‘We must telephone to the police . . . No. They have cut the wires?’

  ‘And smashed your shortwave.’

  ‘Then one of us must go for help.’ Gus flexed his arms and shoulders. I had to admire the quickness with which his mind worked; he had considered and comprehended the possibilities before I could explain them. He went on, ‘They would also immobilize the boats, yes. Very well. I shall swim to the other side. Vicky will lock herself in the cellar with the gun, and you to protect her . . .’

  ‘Or vice versa,’ said John, as Gus studied him dubiously. ‘Tell him, Vicky. He seems to lack confidence in me.’

  Looking at Gus, I almost believed he could do it. John was the subject of my concern now. The last blow on the head hadn’t done him any good. He caught my eye and grinned, in the old mocking fashion.

  ‘I’d prefer to take my chances with Mother Nature,’ he said. ‘Maybe we won’t have to swim. Come along.’

  Another spatter of rain struck stingingly into my face as we crossed the barnyard. Thunder rumbled distantly. A shaft of light streaked the sky to the north.

  ‘Did you see that?’ I grabbed John’s arm.

  He let out a hiss of pain and shook me off. ‘What?’

  ‘Lightning. Only it wasn’t. Thunder comes after the flash, not before.’

  ‘Flashlight?’

  ‘Looked like it.’

  ‘Damn. I thought we’d have more time.’

  ‘Tell me what to do,’ Gus said calmly.

  ‘Run,’ John said, and set the example.

  After hanging coyly around all day, the storm had made up its mind to move in. Li
ghtning wove patterns jagged as the designs on Celtic goldwork across the tarnished silver of the sky. The rain began in earnest as we approached the garden; within seconds I was soaked to the skin, and water was running down the path like a little river. Gus hobbled like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but he hobbled fast, and he was more surefooted than I on the steep wooden stairs.

  John slammed the boathouse doors and barred them. It was almost as dark as midnight inside; but John has eyes like a cat’s; as Gus moved toward the switch, he snapped, ‘No lights. Let them look for us.’

  ‘I have a flashlight,’ I said.

  ‘I knew you would. Keep it down, away from the window.’

  Gus swore extensively in Swedish when he saw the havoc wrought among his boats. When John grunted, ‘Give me a hand, you two,’ we helped tug at the rowboat’s painter. I had forgotten how heavy a waterlogged boat can be; it seemed to take forever to haul it up onto the deck. John groped under one of the seats and fished out a roll of some material that shone greasily in the narrow beam of the flashlight.

  ‘Mr Jonsson, get ready to open the outer doors,’ he said.

  I watched in mounting disbelief as he spread the piece of leather over the hole in the bottom of the boat. It looked like – it surely was – the side of a calfskin suitcase.

  ‘Oars,’ John said to me.

  ‘I’d rather swim.’

  ‘You may have to.’

  ‘John, that won’t – ’

  ‘It’s waterlogged and somewhat adhesive. One of us will have to sit on it, that’s all. And bail like hell.’

  He grabbed a can from the shelves and gave it to me. I gave it back. ‘You sit, you bail like hell. Where are the damned oars? Oh – I’ve got them.’

  ‘Ready,’ Gus called.

  ‘Okay, open up lights out, Vicky.’ Before I pressed the switch, I saw John lower himself into the boat. His face was screwed up like that of a man expecting to get hit with a pie.

  ‘Well,’ he said, out of the darkness, ‘it hasn’t sunk yet. Hop in.’

  I had a brief argument with Gus, who wanted to do the rowing. I took one oar, he took the other. After a nerve-wracking false start we got into the rhythm, and the boat shot out into open water. Gus laughed with pure pleasure. ‘What is the phrase – a chip off the old block?’

  I would have acknowledged the compliment, but the full force of the waves hit just then, and we had to do some fancy rowing to keep from being swamped. I let Gus do most of the work, for he was the expert, following his orders mechanically. After a few frenzied moments he had us heading into the wind. John bailed like a madman, but there was a lot of water sloshing around in the bottom, and the boat’s response to the oars was unpleasantly sluggish.

  Still, it was better than swimming, if hardly less wet, and a great deal better than playing games with Leif and Max. The storm was directly overhead now; thunder boomed like a bass drum arpeggio, the rain was an icy shower, lightning ripped the dark apart. In between thunderclaps I heard John swearing as he bailed. The water seemed to be coming in faster than he threw it out. I didn’t care. I was filled with a crazy exhilaration that brushed aside the weather, the leaky boat, and the ache across my shoulder blades as I bent and straightened in time with Gus. He was as fey as I; he started to sing in a reverberant baritone. I assumed from the rhythm that it was a classic Swedish boating song, so I joined in with ‘Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing. . .’

  The rain began to slacken. A finger of paler grey parted the clouds. The boat moved like a dying animal, but my wild spirits refused to be squelched. We were all right now. Even if the boat sank, we could make it. In a few minutes we’d be in Gus’s warm, dry car, speeding along the road to town.

  ‘Loud the winds blow,’ I sang, ‘loud the waves – ’

  He came up out of the water in a great soaring leap, like a demonic creature half-fish and half-man. Water streaming from his hair and body surrounded him with a ghastly green glow of phosphorescence.

  My voice rose to a high note that is not part of ‘The Skye Boat Song.’ The others hadn’t seen him; Gus was staring soulfully at the storm, and John was bent over bailing. My shriek alerted them in time to observe Leif’s next appearance. He was on the same side of the boat – my side. He moved in the choppy water as if it were his natural element, perfectly at ease, smiling . . . One bronzed arm lifted and came down, delicately, gently. A beaded line of blood sprang up across the back of my hand, blurring as it spread.

  Leif went under. The boat dipped; water began trickling in over the gunwales. Not much water – he didn’t want us to sink, not before we had plenty of time to think about what was going to happen to us.

  John brought the bailing can down on the whitened fingers that curled over the side. They disappeared, and the boat lifted sluggishly. We turned in a slow, reluctant circle as I freed my oar. It was the only thing I could think of to do; but I was well aware it was a futile gesture. The oar was too unwieldy to use as a club, especially since my quarry would probably not be considerate enough to stay in one spot so I could brain him. The gun was no use, it was in my purse, which was six inches under water, in the bottom of the boat.

  John kept spinning around on his backside. If he got up, the ineffectual patch would give away altogether and we would sink like a stone. I figured we were going to sink anyway. It wouldn’t have been a disaster if Leif had not been lying in wait like the Loch Ness monster. He was unencumbered by bulky clothing – that sleek, shining torso, limned by pale fire, was a sight I would never forget. John was hurt and Gus was crippled, and with his handy knife Leif could pick us off one by one before we reached shore.

  The sky lightened rapidly. I saw the hand the next time it appeared, and since it was – of course – on my side, I bent over and bit it. The boat was rocking, water was coming in from every possible direction, and Gus was flailing around with his oar. If Leif didn’t sink us, he would. Under the sound of water and Gus’s infuriated bellows I heard a confused roaring noise, which I took to be the pounding of my overstrained heart.

  Leif came up again, treading water. He slashed at my hand and slipped sideways as Gus struck at him with the oar. Another blurring crimson line crossed the first on the back of my hand. X marks the spot? Half of a double-cross? The specific reference was obscure, but the general meaning was clear. I was now number one on Leif’s hate list, and he wanted me to know it. A slash here and a slash there, weakening, demoralizing – once in the water, I’d be easy prey for a murderous merman.

  John rose to his knees. Somehow during the chaos he had managed to strip off shoes and sweater. One vigorous yank pulled most of the buttons off his shirt, and he shrugged out of it as I made an ineffective attempt to grab him. I think he said something, but I’m not sure. He slid over the side, leaving his pants floating on the surface until the water soaked them and they sank, with gruesome slowness.

  There was no sound except that distant roaring. The water poured in. Gus was pulling at me, trying to get between me and the sleek fishlike shape that kept leaping and slashing, leaping and slashing. I couldn’t move. Blood poured down my arm and hand, but it wasn’t physical weakness that held me paralyzed, it was superstitious terror. Leif’s monstrous form seemed more, or less, than human, a water demon, an aquatic Bane.

  He came up again, right beside me. His face was only inches from mine. His lips were drawn back in a fixed grin and his eyes were flat as brown glass. A ray of feeble sunlight glinted off the knife blade.

  The valiant, abused craft finally gave way. But just before the icy water took me, I saw Leif’s grin vanish and a look of mingled fury and disbelief transform his face as he was pulled down into the steel-grey depths.

  I swallowed a couple of pints of water before I managed to fight my way back to the surface. Somehow I was not at all surprised to find myself in the solicitous grasp of a total stranger whose face was blackened like Al Jolson’s.

  So, after all, I danced the maypole dance with the people of Karl
sholm on Midsummer Day.

  I wore a dress that had belonged to Gus’s wife, brilliant with embroidery and laced with silver chains. Fortunately for me, she had been a stout, healthy woman, but we had to add a ruffle on the skirt. That was no problem for the housewives of Karlsholm. They’d have embroidered a whole dress if I had let them.

  My partner was Erik, the son of Gus’s chauffeur; he steered me through the dance so adeptly that I didn’t screw up the pattern more than five or six times. Gus watched from the sidelines. He occupied the chair of honour, under a bower of green branches. When I glanced in his direction, which I did every time I went around the circle, he smiled and waved. He was trying to help me forget my tragedy. From time to time he addressed a remark to the little bald man beside him. The two of them had struck up quite a friendship.

  But I guess I had better recapitulate.

  The commando who hauled me out of the lake handed me over to a circle of waiting arms. To my dazed eyes the crowd seemed to number in the hundreds – more commandoes with blackened faces, mingling familiarly with elderly housewives and sedate old gentlemen in their Sunday best and sturdy youths wearing jeans. I fought my way out of a smothering mass of sympathetic faces. ‘Please – let me go back – he’s still out there . . .’ They wouldn’t let me go, they kept crooning at me and holding on. My muscles had gone soggy, so I couldn’t break away, and I couldn’t understand a word of the soft litany, but I knew what they were saying – oh, yes, I knew . . .

  After an eon Gus came limping into the throng, pushing people gently aside until we stood face to face. His hair and clothes were soaked. Water trickled down his cheeks.

  ‘My child,’ he said, and held out his hands.

  I don’t make a habit of fainting, but this seemed like a suitable moment for it.

  They took Leif out of the water later that evening. I didn’t see him, but I heard people talking. I suppose the citizens of Karlsholm are still talking about him. Beautiful as Baldur, mighty as Thor . . . The water hadn’t damaged him, but there were deep slashes across his arms and chest.

  They found no other bodies, though they searched for hours.