Silhouette in Scarlet vbm-3

by Elizabeth Peters

  I frustrated the good ladies of the village by refusing to stay in bed. Why should I? I felt fine. I had the second-best guestroom in the mayor’s house – the best, despite his protests, was reserved for Gus – and we spent the evening in the mayoral parlour, waiting for the police to arrive. There was enough food to feed a regiment and enough drink to drive us into permanent alcoholism and two dozen people trying to explain what had been going on. The mayor’s wife finally won out, since she combined the loudest voice with the most idiomatic English. I summarize.

  ‘Mrs Andersson knew something was wrong. It was not like Mr Jonsson to send everyone away, on such short notice, and Mrs Andersson, who has read many detective stories, was sure the little grey man had a pistol under his coat. She saw the bulge. She said nothing and pretended to suspect nothing for fear the grey man would hurt Mr Jonsson. When she came here, with the others, we sat down and tried to think what to do. The police? Ya, the police are very well, but we feared they would attack, with guns and boats, and you would all be murdered. They could do nothing we could not do as well.’

  She may have been right about that. Most of the men, and some of the women, had done their military training, and all of them were totally at home in the water. The island had been under observation from the first, by watchers hidden among the trees and by the petrified old gentlemen on the dock. They had seen me come and go, but had never caught a glimpse of Gus, and their anxiety mounted until it was decided they could wait no longer.

  The operation had been mounted with typical Swedish thoroughness. The raid was supposed to take place that night, but one of the watchers on the east side of the lake had seen our activities in the pasture. He couldn’t make out exactly what was going on, but he didn’t like the look of things, so the rescuers got ready to move in. Because of the foul weather they didn’t see us till we were close to shore. During the frenzied seconds while Leif had tried to sink us we had been under observation by dozens of horrified eyes. That was the part I found hardest to believe – that the seemingly interminable interlude had happened so fast that the rescuers were unable to react, much less interfere, until it was almost over. I hadn’t even noticed them. I wondered if John had . . .

  Mrs Mayor had seen him go over the side. She was one of the few watchers who had the presence of mind to keep her binoculars trained on Leif instead of being distracted by the capsized boat. Her description made the struggle sound like a Norse epic – flailing arms, struggling bodies, foam-lashed water, and the slow spreading stain on the surface . . .

  When she got to that point, Gus let out a mammoth cough and stamped on her foot. She shut up, with a guilty look at me. Actually, the spreading bloodstain was probably her own invention. I doubt she could see it from so far away, even though the weather had cleared.

  The realization of her tactlessness silenced the poor lady, and her husband had to finish the story.

  ‘We had our plans made. Ten of our best young men. Knives they took, but no other weapons. The villains must be overpowered in silence. We had one of them, in the cell in the town hall – ’

  ‘What?’ I demanded. ‘One of whom?’

  ‘Ya, he came the same day, after Mrs Andersson had told us of the danger, so we were ready for him.’ The mayor beamed. ‘He thought to deceive us. We are not so easily fooled, no. He said he was a friend of the lady’s. Ha! We lock him up, then we also have a hostage. Now, soon, all his criminal friends will join him in the prison.’

  I almost hated to ask. ‘What does he look like, this villain?’

  ‘Oh, a harmless little man in his looks. It is always so with villains, ja? Stout, with a round, smiling face . . .’

  I stood up and stretched. I was wearing one of Mrs Mayor’s flannel robes, which went around me twice and barely reached my calves, but I decided against changing. The more pathetic I looked, the easier it would be to calm him.

  ‘You had better let me see this villain,’ I said.

  I don’t know what Schmidt had to complain about. The ‘cell’ in the town hall, which also served as youth centre, cinema, social club, and anything else necessary, was a pleasant room with a comfortable bed and pots of flowers on the windowsills. They had fed him regularly and let him keep his suitcase, which – typically – contained one change of clothing, two ponderous scholarly tomes, and four pornographic novels. But the way that man carried on, you’d have thought he had spent twenty-four hours hanging by his thumbs in a dungeon full of rats.

  I let him get it out of his system, and then, as I had expected, he hugged me and told me I looked terrible. ‘Poor girl, what you have been through! But it is your own fault. If you had confided in me . . . I have been so worried for your safety! And it serves you right; you will never learn to trust others.’

  There were a few more fading rumbles of complaint before Schmidt dropped into a chair and mopped his face. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered. ‘Tell me everything.’

  He said afterwards that it was almost as good as a chapter from my book. Almost. I knew very well what was lacking, but did not feel obliged to pander in the first person to Schmidt’s perversions.

  He didn’t press me. In fact, when I told him, briefly and impersonally, of the denouement, his faded blue eyes filled with tears. Schmidt is very sentimental. He cries over everything, especially corny old German love songs.

  ‘It was the man you knew in Rome?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My child, time will heal your grief. There are many who love you, who will comfort you – ’

  ‘Skip the violins, Schmidt. He dragged me into this.’

  ‘But he did not mean to. When he realized the danger, he tried to save you. And,’ Schmidt went on, reverting to his familiar grievance, ‘you had not sense enough to do as he said. If you had returned home, or asked for my help, instead of keeping me always in the dark like a stupid old grandpa . . . It was your fault.’

  On the whole, I prefer Schmidt’s scoldings to his disgusting wallows in bathos, so I said provocatively, ‘You can’t blame me for your being here. I should have known when I talked to Gerda and got the well-known runaround that you had done some damn-fool thing like haring off to Stockholm.’

  Schmidt grinned from ear to ear with reminiscent pride. ‘You did not see me, did you? Not ever! I was following you everywhere. I have not lost the touch. You think I am too old and too fat, but not once did you see Papa Schmidt when he was on the trail.’

  ‘And a fat lot of good it did me.’

  ‘If you had stayed in Stockholm, I would have helped,’ Schmidt said angrily. ‘But no, you must go rushing into the wilderness. I could not find where you had gone. I rented a car, I was lost, many times, many times. . .’

  ‘You must not speak to her that way,’ said Gus, from the door.

  I introduced the two, adding, ‘We always yell at each other, Gus. Schmidt is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and I would not deny that he has a point.’

  ‘Yes, he is right to scold you for doing foolish things,’ Gus said. He took a chair next to Schmidt’s, and the two of them stared at me with matching expressions of stern disapprobation.

  I wondered what local deity I had offended to incur such a curse. Most heroines (in which category I account myself, of course) pick up handsome, dashing heroes as they pass through their varied adventures I seemed to be building up a collection of critical grandpas.

  Schmidt, being the more sentimental of the two, was the first to remember my bereavement. His eyes got watery again.

  ‘We must not scold her now,’ he said to Gus.

  Gus nodded. ‘You are right. She must not be alone. We will show her how much she is treasured by us.’

  ‘It is very romantic,’ Schmidt assured me. A tear trembled on his eyelid, as if terrified by the vast pink expanse of cheek below, then took the plunge. ‘You have redeemed this man, my dear. His love for you turned him from his path of crime He died a hero, saving the life of the woman he loved. Let that comfort you,
and let the memory of his gallant death shine in your thoughts through the years of – ’

  ‘Shut up, Schmidt,’ I snarled.

  The two heads turned, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and nodded solemnly in tempo.

  ‘She is distraught,’ Schmidt said.

  ‘She does not know what she says,’ Gus agreed.

  What was the use of trying to explain? They wouldn’t understand. On the surface the whole affair had been a succession of simple clichés; but motives are never so simple. I didn’t even understand my own.

  After the first few hours I was pretty sure Gus and I weren’t in danger of being killed. Crazy as it may sound, I believed Max. I don’t know why; maybe it was the cat that convinced me that I could trust his word. Even after I realized that Leif was one of the gang, I wasn’t afraid for myself. He’d have let me survive, as the latest of what was undoubtedly a long list of infatuated dupes; his vanity was so overweening that he couldn’t believe I had penetrated his disguise until I hit him over the head with it – literally.

  I could have played along. It would have been the safest and most sensible course. I owed John nothing. And the funniest thing about it, the thing nobody would believe – except John himself – was that I had not risked myself because I was in love with him. I had always known John for what he was – a corrupt, unscrupulous man with the morals of a tomcat – and I’m not referring to the cat’s sexual habits, but to its incurable tendency to put its own interests ahead of everyone else’s. I didn’t love that man; I didn’t even like him. The one I loved was the guy with the perverse sense of humour and the peculiar brand of courage and the occasional streak of quixotry and the clever, twisty mind. But that man was part of the other, buried so deep it was hard to be certain he existed.

  I caught a glimpse of him in those last few seconds, just before John went over the side. That was why I tried to stop him. He must have realized, as I did, that I was Leif’s primary target. He stood a good chance of getting away while Leif was busy with me. He had a bad arm and a bad head and he was half Leif’s size, but he hadn’t made a break for it. If he had, I might not have lived to hear Schmidt blathering on about heroic sacrifices and heroic deaths. Is it any wonder I snarled at poor old sentimental Schmidt?

  The police had no trouble rounding up the gang. They were not unarmed – Max had another suitcase of weaponry tucked away – but resistance to the death was not part of their credo. With their connections they’d be out on parole in a couple of years, and back at the old stand.

  Max asked to see me before they hauled him off to jail. Schmidt and Gus wanted to go along, to protect me, and I had to be very firm with them.

  He rose with his usual courtesy when I entered the room.

  ‘I am glad to see you are unharmed by your adventures,’ he said. ‘I felt a certain concern.’

  ‘You had cause.’ I waved him back into his chair. ‘I suppose I should commiserate with you, but I’m damned if I feel any regret about Leif – Hasseltine – whatever his name.’

  ‘It was a business association,’ Max said calmly. There wasn’t a wrinkle in his well-cut suit, his tie was neatly knotted, and his wig was firmly in place; he was the very image of a respectable businessman. ‘In fact,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘his, er, premature demise opens several promising avenues of speculation for me. I might even say, Dr Bliss, that if you should ever have occasion to call on me for a favour . . .’

  I ought to have been shocked and disgusted. But there was something about Max . . . His composure was so complete that he forced you to accept his premises – for the moment, anyway.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Was that all you wanted to say?’

  ‘Only to express my personal regrets for the inconvenience you experienced, and to give you this.’

  They had let him keep his briefcase. From it he took a piece of cardboard and handed it to me. The black silhouette had been neatly mounted.

  ‘I did it from memory,’ Max said, as I studied the familiar profile. ‘It is good of him, don’t you think?’

  ‘You always do good work, Max. I appreciate it. Did you make another – for your collection?’

  ‘No,’ Max said deliberately. ‘No, Dr Bliss.’

  I said, ‘I understand.’

  ‘I felt sure you would. May I say, then, good fortune to you, and auf Wiedersehen.’

  ‘I sincerely hope not,’ I said. ‘Goodbye, Max.’

  And that, dear reader, is how I came to be footing it, not too lightly, around the Karlsholm maypole. It was an event I wouldn’t have missed, a memory I will always cherish. And I’ll be back. By dint of desperate searching and ingenious invention, Gus and I worked out a genealogy that made me his fourteenth cousin twice removed, or something of that nature. Kinfolks have to keep in touch. Besides, Schmidt had been working on Gus to permit excavation of the pasture, and Gus was showing signs of yielding.

  When the dance ended, I went to join the two of them. They broke off their solemn conversation to offer me a chair and food and drink. Then Gus said hesitantly, ‘We were speaking of a matter – ’

  ‘No, Gus,’ Schmidt interrupted. ‘The wound is only beginning to heal. You will rend it open again.’

  ‘Shut up, Schmidt,’ I said.

  ‘I think it will comfort her,’ Gus answered. ‘My dear Cousin Vicky, I wish to raise a stone to the memory of the brave man who gave his life for us. Here, on the shore, or on the headland in front of the house – we have not decided.’

  ‘How about outside the bedroom windows?’ I suggested.

  They were used to my frivolous comments; they had decided to treat them as instances of stiff upper lip.

  ‘We have been discussing the epitaph,’ Schmidt said. ‘I favour something like “Dulce et decorum est – ”’

  ‘“To die for one’s country”? Not too appropriate, Schmidt.’

  ‘But it sounds so well in Latin.’

  ‘It is all wrong,’ Gus insisted. ‘There is a verse in the Bible – in English it is like this: “Greater love hath no man . . .”’

  ‘Something from Shakespeare,’ Schmidt exclaimed. ‘He is full of excellent quotations, and what could be more fitting for an English nobleman than the great English poet?’

  They went on arguing. Neither of them really gave a damn for my opinion, and I didn’t offer it. They would have been scandalized at the quotation I favoured as most apropos.

  I couldn’t be absolutely certain; but Max shared my doubts, and Max knew him well. The opportunity had been too good to pass up – a chance to vanish in a cloud of glory, avoiding awkward questions that might be asked by unsentimental parties on shore, such as the police and the surviving members of Leif’s organization. Nobody but me had seen any significance in the disappearance of certain articles of old clothing from Axel Foger’s storage shed. In the confusion and excitement of that eventful evening, things were bound to be mislaid.

  ‘Of his bones are coral made?’ Not bloody likely. But it reminded me of another quotation from the great English poet – from the same play, in fact. John would have been the first to appreciate it.

  ‘He hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows.’

  If you enjoyed Silhouette in Scarlet why not join Vicky Bliss on other exciting adventures . . .

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