Waiting for Willa

by Dorothy Eden

  “Is it a typical Swedish face?” she asked.

  “No. I wouldn’t say very typical.”

  “Then if we meet it, we should be able to recognize it without difficulty.”

  “Allowing for modern dress, hair its natural color, and the animation I spoke of.”

  “Species, a King of Sweden, circa 1778 to 1837. You’re giving a lecture, Polsen. So we look for someone like this with a strong personality. It will be difficult.”

  He took her hand. She was surprised at the way her own disappeared within it. His hands and feet were proportionate to the size of his body. She rather liked the way he towered above her.

  “Now if we were looking for someone like you, Polsen, you would stand out in a crowd.”

  “Is that meant to be a flattering remark? I somehow doubt it. But finding Gustav might not be as hopeless as you think. Shall we see all of the castle while we’re here? You must think of all the kings’ and queens’ feet which have climbed these stairs through the centuries.”

  “Including more recently Willa’s and her Gustav’s. I wonder if he was promising her the things kings promise queens.”

  “A promise is one thing. What the lady eventually gets is another.” Grace didn’t know whether Polsen was referring to unfortunate medieval queens or to Willa, but his face had its sudden lugubrious look, as if the pampered face in the portrait had made him uneasy, too. And Grace didn’t care for the steely glimpses of lake water through the embrasured windows. The lake curled its cold tentacles everywhere, from Stockholm right down to this remote place. In winter its icy grip must be paralyzing.

  She was letting herself get like Kate Sinclair, neurotic about the coming winter…

  “But didn’t you like the little theater?” Polsen asked later. “Or the paintings of the horses in the attics?”

  “Yes. Yes, I did, very much.”

  “Then stop looking as if you’ve just escaped from prison.”

  They were out in the thin sunlight, walking around the edge of the lake. A swan swam slowly among the rusty reeds; a row of yellow and red houses on the far side were reflected in the water, like a slow-burning fire. Crows cawed in the trees. The air was so still that not one of the papery dehydrated leaves fell to the ground.

  “Do I?” said Grace. “But you must have realized by now that I have a morbid imagination.”

  “And what did this morbid imagination tell you?”

  “Only that, if Willa’s Gustav looks like his predecessor in the portrait, wherever Willa has gone must have been against her wishes.”

  “Let us open the champagne,” said Polsen.

  Grace smiled reluctantly. “Very well, I promise to stop brooding.”

  “Picnics are meant to be enjoyed,” Polsen said in his pedantic way.

  “I’m not a gay person like Willa. You must have seen that.”

  “Yes. I’ve noticed.”

  Polsen took the hamper out of the back of the car and spread a rug on the ground. In a thoroughly expert manner he eased the cork out of the bottle of champagne, filled two mugs, and handed one to Grace.

  “You think too much,” he said. “So do I. That’s why my wife left me. I was too dull for her.”

  “I’m sorry, Polsen. Did it hurt?”

  “Of course. Rejection isn’t pleasant, no matter what the circumstances. And there’s the boy. Have you been in love, Grace?”

  “Of course.”

  “Deeply?”

  “I thought so at the time.”

  “How many times?”

  “Only twice.” Her voice got the aggressiveness she could never overcome when speaking about her private feelings. “I told you, my typewriter always came between me and other people. I would suddenly have a compulsion to work until two in the morning, and then I would be exhausted. Which isn’t good for love. And anyway—”

  “Anyway what?”

  She held her chin in the air.

  “I was the one in both these affairs to feel the most.”

  “But not enough to put away your typewriter?”

  “You must understand I couldn’t,” she cried. “That’s part of me. Without it I’m only half a person.”

  He studied her in his customary thoughtful way.

  “What are your books about, Grace?”

  “Oh, young married couples, social problems, the unwanted child, the complications of human nature—you know the kind of thing. It’s important.”

  “Yes, it’s important. And so you forget to smile.”

  “Do I?”

  Grace lifted her face with such instinctive anxiety that Polsen bent and kissed her. She was so startled that at first she sat quite still, thinking that the coolness of his lips against hers was pleasant, like the coolness of the champagne. Then she drew back sharply, scowling.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because it seemed to be a nice thing to do.”

  “For you or for me?”

  He began to laugh, and his eyes looked less myopic, sharper and clearer, as if he could see very well when he wanted to.

  “Really, Grace, you are like those savage plants that grow in Scotland. All prickles.”

  “Scotch thistles?” she said, not amused.

  “That’s it.” His big hand fell heavily on her shoulder. “Come and have some food. Sandwiches, chicken, boiled eggs. I hope you’re hungry. And if you’re going to ask me, did I kiss Willa on picnics, the answer is no.”

  Grace looked at the ground. She hadn’t known he had taken Willa on picnics. It must have been in the summer, when it was hot and they could swim.

  “We used to bring Magnus along with us,” Polsen said, reading her thoughts.

  “Magnus?”

  “My boy. We were teaching him to swim. Willa swims like a fish. I am like a whale. But it was fun.”

  “Didn’t she go for picnics with Gustav?”

  “This was early in the summer. Later she used to go away for weekends.”

  “Did she tell you where?”

  “Occasionally she said she was going with the Sinclairs. They have a cottage in the forest. I imagined that was where she always went.”

  “So that’s why the children talked about the elks in the forest. But she must have gone somewhere else some of the time.”

  “Yes. I know that, now.”

  “There’s Sven and Ulrika in the Strindberg house.”

  “True. We have to find out about them. We have plenty to do. Why did you shiver? Are you cold?”

  “A goose walking over my grave.”

  “Come and sit closer to me. Have some more champagne, and tell me why you and Willa are so different.”

  “Why shouldn’t we be? We’re not sisters; we’re only cousins, even if our mothers were twins. Our fathers were very different from each other. Actually, Willa’s parents separated when she was quite small. I think all that talkativeness and gaiety of hers are partly an act, compensating for having been deserted by her father. She began to be an awful showoff when she was quite small. My parents were comparatively happy. My mother died soon after Willa’s, both of them from the same thing, a heart defect. Isn’t it odd, as if they’d shared the same heart! But my father’s still alive, and I’m devoted to him.”

  “He takes your work seriously?”

  “Oh, yes, indeed. He expects a great deal more of me than I’ve already done.”

  “So. That makes it clear. You and Willa have a father complex.”

  Grace pouted. “Polsen, for a Swede, your English is too good.”

  “But my analysis?”

  “I suppose I have to agree with that, to a point. Willa and I always knew our mothers cared more about each other than about us. That made us grow close. We feel the deepest responsibility for each other.”

  “I’ve gathered as much.”

  “Does that make you understand Willa better?”

  “It explains why she does harebrained things, but not where she is.”

  Grace raised troubled
eyes. “Gustav is hardly a father figure, is he? Not from that portrait. Polsen, I don’t think we should be sitting here wasting time drinking champagne.”

  She caught his look and scowled again. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that Willa would never have said that.”

  “You’re perfectly right. Let alone the insult to a noble wine. Willa was much too greedy to think like that. Perhaps her greediness is the reason for whatever has happened to her now.”

  He didn’t enlarge on that theory, and Grace didn’t pursue it. She was afraid he meant the Persian rugs and all the other luxuries in the flat. Eventually she supposed they would find out how Willa had acquired them. But not now. The twilight was growing already, and the lake, the castle, the trees, with their ragged leaves, had become too forlorn. Grace suddenly wanted to be back in the warmth of Willa’s flat, in spite of its perplexing possessions.

  What she didn’t expect was the strong perfume that assailed her senses when she unlocked the door of the flat two hours later. Willa’s perfume, surely! Willa must be home!

  But the flat was in darkness.

  She switched on the light, calling excitedly, “Willa!”

  There was no answer. The living room and the bedroom were empty. Everything was in order. If Willa had dashed in and gone out again, leaving this strong trail of perfume, she would have left things scattered about.

  But there were no flung-off clothes, no disorder.

  Completely baffled, Grace sat at the dressing table. The scent was strongest here. She could even put a name to it. Balenciaga’s Quadrille. She opened a drawer at random and saw the spilled bottle.

  She knew absolutely that she hadn’t spilled it. She hadn’t touched anything in that drawer. Yet there the bottle lay on its side, the heavy scent seeped out from under the loosened stopper.

  There was only one explanation. Someone else had looked in this drawer. Today, while she was out.

  Fru Lindstrom, of course. Polsen, who had followed her up the stairs after parking the car, listened to her excited exclamations.

  “Polsen, we’ll have to speak to her. She can’t come in here snooping while I’m out. What would she be snooping for?”

  Polsen sniffed, wrinkling his nose with distaste.

  “That smell is too much of a good thing, isn’t it? Very well, come down and ask some questions.”

  “It must have been her! Don’t you agree?”

  “I said, ask some questions. Isn’t it your English law that a person is innocent until proved guilty.”

  “Fru Lindstrom isn’t innocent,” Grace said dourly. “I’ve never trusted her from the start.”

  Fru Lindstrom was dressed in outdoor clothes when she answered their knock. A shaggy fur hat was pulled well down over her ears, as if winter winds were already blowing around street corners. Her cheeks were bright from exercise, her china-doll eyes prominent as she suspected drama.

  “Fröken Asherton! Herr Polsen! What can I do for you?”

  Grace spoke first, in her agitation.

  “Someone has been in my cousin’s flat. Who did you give the key to?”

  The friendliness went out of Fru Lindstrom’s face. Her mouth tightened.

  “I will tell you, Fröken Asherton, that I am not in the habit of handing out keys to strangers.”

  “Perhaps this person was not a stranger?” Polsen suggested mildly.

  This remark made Fru Lindstrom bristle with indignation.

  “Herr Polsen, I am surprised at you. A stranger or a friend, I would not give the key. Besides, I have seen no one. On Saturdays I go to my married daughter’s. I have just returned, as you can see. I haven’t had time even to take off my hat and coat.”

  She certainly seemed to be speaking the truth. Her curiosity was rapidly getting the better of her indignation, however, for she couldn’t resist asking, “What has happened? Have things been stolen?”

  Grace shook her head.

  “No, I don’t think anything’s missing.”

  “Then how do you know there has been an intruder?”

  “A bottle of scent has been spilled. Someone has been going through the drawers.”

  “There are other things in disorder?”

  “No-o,” Grace said, although now she believed the cushions had been moved and plumped up too carefully, one of the rugs left slightly askew. It was a mind’s eye picture induced by her uneasiness.

  Fru Lindstrom gave her an abrupt and disconcertingly hearty laugh.

  “Is that all you have to report? A bottle upset. But I expect you did it yourself without noticing. Don’t you think so, Herr Polsen? A burglar would leave great disorder.”

  “Not a burglar,” Polsen said in his reflective way. “Someone who was looking for some specific object. Someone who obviously had his own key, since you didn’t give him one.”

  Fru Lindstrom pressed her hands to her ample breast.

  “Ah! Now I understand. One of Fröken Bedford’s boyfriends. Some small souvenir that had to be removed. Letters, perhaps.” She laughed again, enchanted with her powers of deduction.

  “There, you see, you clever people worry about burglars, and I think of something quite simple. The unhappy end to a love affair.”

  “I must say I don’t think it very simple that someone has a key that he can use at any time of the day or night,” Grace exclaimed.

  “Now don’t be unhappy, Fröken. No one enters this house without my knowing.”

  “But if you’re away, as you were today?”

  “Yes, that’s true. Then I suppose the lock must be changed to stop these intruders. All the same I am still not convinced. It is easy to upset a small bottle without noticing. Don’t you think you did it yourself?”

  “Not with that scent,” Grace said. “I’d have known at once. The place smells like a perfume factory.”

  “So the lock must be changed,” Polsen said.

  “And if Fröken Bedford returns and finds her key won’t open the door?”

  “I’ll be here,” said Grace.

  “And she will be happy about our sensible precautions,” said Polsen amiably.

  Fru Lindstrom’s gleeful laughter broke out again.

  “I understand your meaning. If she has a new husband, as you say, Fröken Bedford will no longer care for an uninvited visitor.”

  “How dare she insinuate that Willa lived such an untidy life,” Grace said indignantly as they returned upstairs. “She laughs, but her eyes look malicious. She feeds on other people’s indiscretions.”

  “But I remember that she does visit her daughter on Saturdays,” Polsen said.

  “And whoever came must have known that? And also that we were going to be away all day? Polsen, we must be being watched!”

  When he made no denial, as Grace hoped he would, she began to shiver. “I’ve got to have that lock changed. Who would Willa have been so silly as to give a key to? It can’t have been Gustav since obviously she’s with him. An earlier boyfriend, do you think? Someone who doesn’t want it known that he ever came here? Winifred Wright’s married man, perhaps?”

  Polsen looked wholly admiring.

  “Your powers of reasoning are becoming formidable, Grace.”

  “Willa’s diary!” Grace exclaimed. “He knew about it and was afraid he was mentioned in it. He didn’t want me or anyone else reading it. But he couldn’t find it, because I have it here, in my handbag. So he must be Sven or Axel or Jacob. Do you think he’s Jacob, the Baron von Sturpe? A prominent man like that wouldn’t want a scandal.”

  “Neither do I see him doing a grubby thing like searching a girl’s room,” said Polsen. All the same his eyes had their strange glint again, as if some theory were being tested in his brain. It was not one, however, that he intended to discuss with Grace. For all he added was, “You can feel safe tonight. I’m quite sure your visitor won’t return. If you are alarmed, don’t hesitate to use the broom.”

  Which remark reduced the slightly sinister situation to comedy. As prob
ably Polsen had intended it should.

  “I mean you to use it on the ceiling, not on your uninvited guest, of course. Although it might be best if you did both things.”

  The telephone rang when Grace was in her bath. The sound was so unexpected that she leaped out and ran dripping across the polished floor of the living room, forgetting even to snatch up a towel. She had been lying in the warm water thinking that the only other tenants in the house, the two old ladies on the first floor, ought to be questioned. They might have seen someone go up the stairs that afternoon or heard movements overhead.

  Two elderly sisters, unmarried, Fru Lindstrom had described them. Quiet, untroublesome people who kept to themselves and never made complaints.

  Two women living a dull stay-at-home life sometimes saw and heard a great deal more than they ever acknowledged.

  Now, however, the imperative ringing of the telephone might solve everything. There might be no need to ask questions of the Misses Morgensson or of anyone else.

  For this, Grace’s excited blood told her, must be Willa.

  “Hello,” she said breathlessly into the receiver.

  “Grace? This is Kate Sinclair.”

  “Oh, Kate.” The anticlimax was too disappointing. (But why had she imagined that Willa would telephone what should be an empty flat?)

  “You sound upset.”

  “No. It’s only that I’m dripping from my bath. Will you hold on a minute while I get a towel?”

  When she came back swathed in one of Willa’s large bath towels, she was calm again.

  “How are you, Kate? And the children?”

  “Fine. Peter asked me to ring. He thought you might be lonely.”

  “No, I’m not lonely. I’ve spent the day sightseeing. We went to Gripsholm Castle and had a picnic.”

  “Isn’t it a bit chilly for picnics? Just a minute.” There was some murmuring, and Kate went on, “That was Peter. He wants to know who you went with.”

  “Is that any of his business?” Grace said lightly. “As a matter of fact, it was my neighbor. Or Willa’s neighbor. A very large kind Swede called Polsen who lectures at the university. He gave me a private lecture today on the portraits at Gripsholm.”

  There was some more murmuring in the background: then Kate’s voice came again. “I’m sorry, Grace. Peter just wants me to explain to you that it is his business to see that British tourists don’t get into trouble.”