by Ann Yost
Vincent had ordered everyone into the parlor.
“Let me begin by announcing that success has crowned our efforts.” A smile appeared on his handsome face then almost immediately, it disappeared. He focused on his wife.
“My dear, please enlighten the staff with a description of what we uncovered this afternoon.”
The staff? We were now Vincent’s staff?
Helena Tallmaster, seated in Elli’s re-upholstered armchair, with her legs elegantly crossed, looked remote and beautiful, an ice princess in a tailored white wool pantsuit with her hair perfectly coiffed in an updo fastened with a diamond clip. She represented a distinct contrast to those of us wearing old clothes and sporting dust in our hair. Had she really spent the afternoon searching the mortuary attic for treasures?
“Perhaps you should stand, my love.”
Helena did not move.
“Vincent and I found an old stamp collection,” she said.
A notch appeared between Vincent’s eyebrows.
“Yes, yes, but not just any stamp collection.” His voice contained a hint of irritation. “Tell everyone what was significant about our find.”
Helena’s cool gaze lingered on his increasingly agitated face.
“But you would tell it so much better,” she said, in a bored voice.
Vincent ran a careful hand over his smooth hair and muttered something under his breath.
“We discovered stamps that had been released by the Finnish government during the 1940s. They commemorate the Red Cross and the National Defense Fund.” He produced a self-satisfied smile.
“Do the stamps bear any connection to the Third Reich,” the Reverend Sorensen asked. He was leaning forward in his straight-backed chair.
“No,” Helena said.
“Not as such,” her husband admitted. “But the time period is perfect for our theme. It is a wonderful find and precisely what we have been seeking.”
“Are the stamps valuable?” Harry threw out the question, casually.
“I’ll take a look at them,” Seth promised. “Stamps are like coins. Their value depends on how many were issued and whether they are hard to come by.”
“This is an excellent start,” Vincent boomed, as if to make up for the general lack of enthusiasm.
Kind-hearted Aunt Ianthe put down the striped stocking she was knitting and clapped her hands and Miss Irene followed suit. Mrs. Paikkonen, seated between the other two on the Victorian sofa, did not stir.
Seth got to his feet and produced an elaborate beer stein with a hinged metal lid.
“Elli and I found this here at the Leaping Deer,” he said. “The relevance is the illustration on the side of the mug. As you can see,” he held it up, “it’s a soldier on horseback. He’s wearing one of those spike-topped helmets.”
“Ah, the Picklhaub helmet,” the Reverend Sorensen said. “Those were worn by German soldiers in the Great War.”
This time Vincent clapped his hands in excitement.
“Another wonderful find! Proof positive of the close connection between Finland and Hitler!”
“It’s very nice and, historically interesting,” Seth said, cautiously.
“What Seth is saying, or trying not to say is that the helmet was worn in the First World War, not the Second,” Harry said.
Vincent stared at him for a moment and then, as if he’d found a loophole, he said, “Did Hitler participate in World War I?”
“Oh yes,” the Reverend Sorensen said. “As a soldier. A corporal.”
“Well, all right, then,” Vincent crowed. “We’ll use the pickle helmet in the show!”
“We found something else, too,” Elli said, retrieving a brown paper bag from which she extracted and held up a long-sleeved pale gray shirtwaist dress with white collar and cuffs that were both frayed and yellowed. A silver badge, about an inch-and-a-half square, was pinned to the collar. Four heraldic roses had been carved into the four corners of the badge and the words Lotta-Svard were etched underneath.
In the center of the pin was another of those bent crosses.
“A swastika,” someone gasped.
“Voi kahua!” The exclamation came from Aunt Ianthe.
“I don’t understand,” said Serena Waterfall. “What is the significance of this?”
“Perhaps you’ll allow me to give you some background,” the pastor said, in his low-key way. “Lotta Svard was a Finnish patriotic, auxiliary paramilitary organization for women. The Lottas were organized during the Finnish Civil War in the 1800s. Lotta, is the name of a fictional battlefield hero and svard is the Swedish word for sword. Many of the women who belonged wanted to fight for Finland but, as that was not possible in those times, they built a network of support.”
He cleared his throat giving others a chance to speak but no one did.
“The volunteers did social work in the 1920s and 30s and then, during the World War II years, the women stepped into jobs traditionally held by men, such as hospital staff, air raid warning posts, and so forth. They continued in the effort to bring comfort to refugees and others who had been impacted by the violence. American Finns, here in the Upper Peninsula, supported the efforts with donations.”
“Such brave ladies,” Aunt Ianthe said, obviously moved by the recital of an old story.
“They had Sisu,” Mrs. Moilanen agreed.
“She is more precious than jewels. And nothing you desire can compare with her,” Miss Irene said, somewhat obscurely. “Proverbs.”
Harry hid a smile then asked the obvious question.
“Why the swastika?”
“I seem to recall,” the Reverend Sorensen said, “that the swastika had been used as a symbol of luck on the first aircraft in the Finnish defense forces. You have to remember that before Hitler co-opted it the swastika was just a bent cross. It has been around for a long time.”
Vincent waved a hand as if to dismiss the pastor’s words.
“We don’t have to go into all that. A swastika is a swastika.” He clearly still had his heart set on exploiting the Finnish-Nazi connection.
“My turn,” Harry drawled. “After an afternoon of backbreaking labor, Hatti and I discovered this.” He held up the compass. “It appears to be German-made and we deduce that it was a souvenir collected from a battlefield and brought back by a returning G.I., probably a Finnish-American.”
“An embarrassment of riches,” Vincent crowed. “We shall start shooting the program in the morning.”
“I have a few things to add,” Serena Waterfall said, getting to her feet. She was, once again, a symphony of color in a fuchsia-colored peasant blouse that should have clashed with her carrot-y hair but didn’t, and a broomstick skirt of forest green and hot pink buffalo checks. She smoothed the dancing ringlets away from her face and produced a folded quilt. “We believe this was constructed by Miss Ianthe’s grandmother and her quilting circle during the 1940s. As you can see, it is a snowball quilt composed of blue squares topped by white snowballs. Very typical of the times but this one was done in traditional Finnish colors.”
“That’s very nice,” Vincent started to say, “but, really, Serena, it doesn’t tie into our theme.”
“All the blocks,” she continued, ignoring him, “are blue and white except for two, one in each of the lower corners. See the red one with the yellow star and sickle? The other is a typical snowball but someone embroidered it with a black swastika.”
I’d been starting to feel anxious and this last discovery drove me over the top. Despite what Harry had assured me, it looked as if Vincent would be able to exploit Finland’s connection to Hitler. I could feel my temperature rising and my heart working doubletime.
“The quilters must have been Nazi sympathizers,” Vincent said. He was all smiles.
“I think it would be a mistake to infer that,” Seth said. “There is a long tradition in quilting of incorporating important events. These quilters were, most likely, leaving an historical record of what was happening in the
ir country at the time. Finland was in a deadly war with Russia on the one hand and, because of that, forced to become allies with Hitler. The quilt illustrates that dark heritage. No Finn or Finnish-American, as far as I’ve ever heard, was happy about the pact with Germany.”
I threw him a grateful look.
“Serena, dear,” Aunt Ianthe prompted, “tell Vincent about the newspapers.”
“Of course.” She disappeared into the foyer and returned a moment later with a short stack of yellowed tear sheets which she handed out to several of us, including the Reverend Sorensen, Mrs. Moilanen, Seth and me, while Aunt Ianthe explained.
“These are all copies of the Copper County Times which went out of print about ten years ago,” Aunt Ianthe said. “My family collected what they considered historic issues. Henrikki, read the headline on yours.”
“Finland Declares War on Reds, November 30, 1939,” I said, holding it up.
Mrs. Moilanen adjusted her glasses and read the headline on hers.
“Finland helps poles, Czechs, Feb. 12, 1940.”
“Allies gain in Normandy, June 6, 1944. D-Day,” the Reverend Sorensen said, dutifully holding up his paper. Then Seth held his up, too, and said, “May 9, 1945: Victory in Europe!”
“Are the papers worth anything,” Vincent asked Seth.
“They’ll make a good timeline for the narrative,” the antiques expert said. “In fact, we could make them into posters to decorate the set.”
Vincent appeared to think about that for a minute.
“Speaking of historical context,” Harry said, “Hatti and I found something else interesting during our search.” His lips twisted in a wry grin and his eyes twinkled at me. “It’s a postcard from a very famous event called the Degenerate Art Exhibition held in Munich in 1937.”
“Degenerate art?” Elli looked confused. Harry smiled at her.
“Hitler held modern art in great contempt. He exalted German art and the Great Masters but he wanted to wipe out everything modern from the Impressionists to the Fauvists, to all the newest schools. He hated Monet and Manet, Matisse, Van Gogh, Klimt, Rousseau and Chagall. Part of it, we think, is that he himself had little imagination and his own work consisted of indifferent, photographic-type drawings of objects. He did not understand the concept of trying to capture a split second of life, an impression, rather than a realistic depiction, the new belief that what the eye perceives is different from what the brain understands.
“Part of it, quite frankly, was that Hitler had developed an intense hatred for Jews and therefore for Jewish artists. The degenerate exhibition was poorly mounted with the pictures crammed in against each other and Hitler’s hope was to convince everyone to reject modern art.
“But didn’t Hitler steal nearly all the art in Europe,” Elli asked. “And didn’t that include those Impressionist masters?”
“Certainly,” Harry said. “He stole a fifth of the world’s art treasures. Some of the modern art he sold, cheaply, to fund the war. Some he destroyed. He probably kept some as he was intending to build a fabulous museum in his hometown of Linz, Austria.”
“Do you think there were stolen paintings stashed at Nazi headquarters in Munich?” The question came from Elli but a sudden movement from Mrs. Paikkonen made me look at her. All the color had drained out of her face and she looked as if she were about to be ill.
“Mrs. Pike,” I murmured, “Are you all right?”
“A little tired. I need to go home and to bed. You must take me there, Henrikki.”
I helped her to her feet but Vincent didn’t allow us to leave.
“Hold on! What about the letter? What did it say? Was it anything to do with Nazi loot?”
Mrs. Paikkonen swayed a little and I spoke firmly.
“She can tell us tomorrow. Can somebody find her coat and boots?”
“Of course,” Aunt Ianthe said, getting to her feet to help me.
“Just give us the gist of it,” Vincent persisted.
Mrs. Paikkonen, looking like, as Charlie would say, death warmed over in the black dress with the high neckline and long sleeves, stiffened her spine.
“Ernst calls her his dear Aunt and hopes she is well. He talks about the weather.”
“The weather? What about the loot? Did he mention a treasure?”
Mrs. Paikkonen looked down her long nose at him.
“He tells her he was a diplomatic officer who had been assigned to Germany, as he has a facility with language. He tells her he has chosen a gift for her birthday which he knows is some three months late and he says he is unsure whether he will be allowed to mail it to the U.S. from Germany.
It was clear to me that Mrs. Pike had become comfortable with both the letter-writer and his aunt. They were not shades of an earlier era but people who were alive for her.
He tells her he will send the package to his aiti to forward on to his aunt. He hopes she will like the gift and will keep it safe.”
“Aiti?”
“Mother,” the reverend translated.
Vincent stared at Mrs. Pike, then at Helena, then at Harry.
“So what is it? And where is it?”
The pastor sighed.
“I would have to say it sounds as if it is something Ernst wanted to smuggle out of Germany. Perhaps war plans.”
“No,” Helena said. “Not intelligence. If Ernst was housed in Munich, the central holding place for all that looted art, I think he found and rescued a painting. I think he shipped the painting to his mother in Finland with instructions to send it on to his aunt in Michigan for safe keeping.”
“Huzzah!” Vincent could scarcely contain his enthusiasm. “That means there is a treasure, a priceless painting hidden here in one of the attics!”
“I hate to burst your bubble,” Harry said, “but wouldn’t Ernst have come to the U.S. to retrieve the painting after the war?”
There was a moment of silence while the mood plummeted and then Elli sprang to her feet.
“Hang on,” she said, leaving the room. She reappeared a few minutes later with a huge, dusty, antique Bible. All eyes were on her as she sat on the step next to me and leafed through the front pages.
“Bingo,” she said, after a minute. “I found her. Miss Bengta Hautamaki. She is part of my mother’s family tree.” Elli looked up and smiled at Miss Irene, who was a distant relation of Elli’s mom. “She was born in a village called Kuoppala in 1860 and she died…” Elli’s voice faded and she looked at me. “She died here. In Red Jacket. In the summer of 1942. Oh my gosh! She probably never even got the package.”
“More than likely, Ernst Hautamaki visited here after the war and retrieved the painting,” Helena said. I was both surprised and impressed at her contribution. And then I thought of something.
“Elli,” I said, my heart thumping hard against my ribs, “what about Ernst? Is he listed in the Bible?” She ran her forefinger down the page.
“Yep. Here he is. Ernst Hautamaki, born 1920 also in Kuoppala. Died, July, 1942.”
“Poor boy,” Aunt Ianthe said. “To die so young.”
“Where, Elli. Where did he die?”
She looked up, a grim expression on her face.
“It says he died in Germany.”
“What does that mean? What does that mean?” squealed Vincent.
“It means,” Harry said, “that either the young man was never able to mail the package or that he did mail it and Aunt Bengta was not here to receive it and it was returned to Finland. It means we have to forget about the alleged treasure.”
“Or,” I said, thinking aloud, “it means the package did get here and, in the confusion of Aunt Bengta’s death, no one ever opened it. It could still be here.”
Elli looked at me. “In one of our attics. But surely someone would have noticed it and investigated over the past seventy years.”
While we digested that, Mrs. Moilanen spoke.
“I sincerely hope that young man’s body was shipped home for burial in consecrated g
round.”
“If he was buried in Munich the ground was surely consecrated,” the Reverend Sorensen said, in an obvious effort to comfort her. “The Germans are Lutheran, too.”
“Missouri Synod,” Mrs. Moilanen sniffed. The difference between the German Missouri Synod and the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutherans is considered a great divide within the church and, of no importance at all, outside of it.
As usual Vincent heard only what he wanted to hear.
“We have to find that painting,” Vincent said. “I want all hands on deck!”
“I think we should slow down,” Harry said. “The chances are slim that there is any kind of Nazi loot hidden in Red Jacket. But even if that is true, we could stir up a lot of trouble for this community by broadcasting it. There is a thriving black market for stolen art and we do not want to subject our friends here to a frenzy of treasure hunters.”
“There may be some small risk,” Vincent admitted, “but surely it is worth it to put on the best pilot possible. And Arvo Maki told me he wanted to put this burg on the map.”
“I’m just asking that we be responsible about this,” Harry said. “What if we agree not to mention anything about Ernst Hautamaki or his letter to his aunt unless we find the painting?”
Vincent looked undecided but Seth and Serena agreed with Harry and they carried the day.
“In the meantime,” Serena said, “I’d really like to see your Rya Rug, Hatti. We can tape a segment on that.”
Vincent gazed at me. “Please don’t wear that sweatshirt. And you will have to do something about your hair.”
Chapter 16
I woke the next morning to the nasal tones of Betty Ann Pritula and a new appreciation of Vincent Tallmaster’s turn for publicity. He not only knew about Betty Ann, he’d fed her a press release.
“According to a little bird,” Betty Ann said, coyly, “there really is a treasure in one of our attics. Rumor has it that, in the summer of 1942, a young Finnish officer assigned to Germany, rescued a stolen masterpiece right out from under the nose of the Nazis. The soldier packaged the painting, thought to be a Rembrandt, possibly, or possibly a Monet, and had it sent to his great aunt who is related to the Risto-Lehtinen-Aho-Maki families. Experts now believe the masterpiece is hidden somewhere on Calumet Street and, when found, will become the centerpiece of the soon-to-be-award-winning television show What’s in Your Attic? Don’t worry, though, there is plenty of air time for your own treasures. Come one, come all to the Red Jacket Opera House today to show off your World War II vintage finds and to become part of the program that everyone is talking about!”