by Dorothy Eden
“Then he does think Willa’s in trouble!” Grace exclaimed.
There was the sound of an indrawn breath: then Peter Sinclair’s pleasant crisp voice came through.
“That’s exactly what I’m getting at, Grace. Don’t be like Willa, running around with men you know nothing about.”
“For goodness’ sake! I couldn’t be more different from Willa. And you must know Polsen.”
“I’ve met him, yes. Don’t know much about him. And neither do you. But I’m not giving you a lecture. Kate and I only wondered how you were getting on and whether you would like to come with us tomorrow. We’re driving out to our country cottage for the day. It’s really too late in the year, but we like to get out of town. You could see something of the country.”
The forest where Willa was lost, as the children had told her, their eyes large and strained.
Grace said without hesitation, “I’d love to. Thanks for asking me.”
“Splendid. We’ll pick you up about ten. Okay? Wrap up well. It’ll be cold. I’m taking my gun. I might get a shot at an elk.”
Grace dressed quickly, thinking that things were at least happening, even if none of them proved anything. Now she intended paying a call on the Misses Morgensson to introduce herself as their temporary neighbor and to ask them if they had heard any suspicious sounds overhead that afternoon. The Balenciaga perfume still hung in the air, constantly reminding her of Willa’s absence and of the expensive tastes she had acquired. Why hadn’t she taken the bottle of perfume with her, for instance? That was not too unreasonable a question to want answered.
A white-haired old lady opened the door of the flat on the first floor, and peered at Grace with red-rimmed watery eyes.
“Do you speak English?” Grace asked, and the old lady tilted her head on one side, like an alert but slightly deaf white-crested cockatoo.
“Eh? English? Ja, ja.”
Grace raised her voice. “I’m Grace Asherton, Willa Bedford’s cousin. I’m staying upstairs.”
“With Fröken Bedford? How nice. Won’t you come in and meet my sister? But don’t waste your time trying to talk to her. She is quite deaf. She understands no one but me.”
Miss Morgensson hadn’t boasted when she said she could speak English. Her pronunciation was as perfect as her manners. She took Grace into the cozy living room, with its lamps and plush tablecloths and embroidered antimacassars, and indicated an exactly similar old lady who sat in a rocking chair rocking gently, her eyes closed.
“Katerina!” she said loudly. “Wake up! We have a guest.”
Another pair of vague watery eyes rested on Grace.
“Eh? Who is the young lady?”
The sister shouted again. “Fröken Bedford’s cousin, from England. Isn’t that nice? This is my sister, Katerina, Miss Asherton. I am Anna. You will sit down and have some coffee with us, won’t you? Don’t say you haven’t time because it is already hot. Katerina, Miss Asherton is going to stay and have some coffee.”
Katerina rocked and smiled and stared. She wore a gray dress with an old-fashioned high neck, her sister an exactly similar style in brown. They both looked pink-cheeked, healthy, and cheerful. If spinsterhood could bring them to this comfortable, contented old age, there was something to be said for it.
Better than Willa, run ragged with her tortuous affairs. Or Grace with hers, for that matter. Except that her wounds didn’t show in any way but the now permanently sober aspect she took of life.
“My sister has been deaf for a long time,” Miss Anna explained, bustling about with coffee cups.
“Then it’s no use asking her if she heard anything unusual this afternoon,” Grace said. “Did you, Miss Anna?”
“Unusual!” The old lady paused, her head tilted in that listening look.
“I was out all day, and I think someone came into my flat.”
“A burglar! Nej!”
“No, not a burglar.” She was sorry for the alarm she had put in this kindly creature’s face. “Just one of Willa’s friends, I expect. I only wondered if you had seen anyone go upstairs.”
“No, we saw nobody. My sister and I always take a nap after our midday meal. In any case, with no offense meant, we had learned not to notice the number of people going up the stairs since Fröken Bedford lived in the flat above. She was young, we said. She had her life to live. But now the child has gone off we are told. So suddenly! What Axel will say we can’t imagine. Can we, Katerina?”
The rocking chair stopped.
“What did you say, Anna? Speak more clearly.”
“I said how disappointed Axel would be when he returned to find Fröken Bedford gone.”
“Axel?” said Grace, her heart beating fast. (Jacob, Sven, Axel, Gustav…)
“Our nephew.”
“He lives with you?”
“Oh, dear, no. Not in this small place with two old women. But he calls on us when he is back from his travels. Doesn’t he, Katerina? He is a good boy, isn’t he?”
“Ja, ja, ja!”
“He travels a lot?” Grace asked. She took the cup of coffee offered her, holding it carefully, afraid the cup would rattle against the saucer.
“A great deal. To all sorts of places. Jutland, Norway, Finland, sometimes to Baltic ports. He is captain of a ship. Axel has done well, hasn’t he, Katerina?”
“He’s married?” Grace asked.
Anna shook her head, laughing. The joke seemed to be a good one. “Nej, nej, nej. How would he have been interested in Fröken Bedford if he had had a wife?”
The coffee was strong and bitter. Grace gulped it, wishing for Polsen to hear this conversation.
“He liked Willa?”
“I think a little. But then he objected to the color she had made her hair. It was a very strong color. Axel has serious views and thought it unsuitable. I believe they parted not the best of friends.
“What a shame,” said Grace. “Is your nephew good-looking?”
The bait was taken with ridiculous ease.
“You must see a picture of him. Look! Look at this!”
“What are you getting, Anna?” Katerina asked inquisitively.
“The picture of Axel on his twenty-first birthday. Mind you, that was twelve years ago. He is much more serious now. He smiles less.”
He was not smiling too much in this photograph either. He had a long chin, a long straight nose, cool pale eyes.
He was not remotely like the mincing, effeminate picture of Gustav IV.
“Yes, he is very good-looking,” Grace said politely. “When will he be visiting you again?”
“We never know. It might be one month, two months, three months between visits. He comes and he goes, like a wild goose before the winter.” Anna liked her poetic fancy and repeated it, adding with a gentle chuckle, “Not that Axel is a goose. He is much too clever.”
Grace stood up. She seemed to have learned a great deal, but nothing that answered any questions. Except that Axel was not Gustav.
What had Willa written in her diary about him?
“Axel staring at me with that awful dire seriousness. Too boring for words.”
“Come see us again, Miss Asherton,” Anna said, tilting her little white-parrot head, and Katerina echoed, “So kind.”
The door closed, and the old ladies vanished, an old-fashioned cozy daguerreotype put back in a drawer.
But why hadn’t Polsen told her about Axel?
Because he never saw what was under his nose, he admitted shamefacedly. He knew the old ladies had a nephew, but he had always been referred to by Fru Lindstrom and others as Captain Morgensson, never as Axel.
How had Grace got into that parlor with those two pussycats? It was something he had never done. He didn’t believe Willa had either. Nor did he believe Willa could have seen the nephew more than a couple of times. Hadn’t she written that he was too boring for words? He couldn’t be Gustav. Could he?
Grace said her head was full of cotton wool. She was glad she was
going to have a long drive with the Sinclairs in the fresh air tomorrow.
Polsen looked hurt. What had they been doing all day that day? But he admitted that it was a good idea for Grace to be looked after by the Sinclairs, because on Sundays he always took his son out. He never let anything upset that arrangement.
“You mustn’t feel you have to be responsible for me,” Grace said. Her voice sounded spikier than she had meant it to be. Of course, Polsen’s son must come before such a new acquaintance as herself and her improbable problems.
This conversation had taken place at the top of the stairs outside her door, and she was tired and cold. Her elation about Axel had very quickly passed. It was a clue that had led to nothing.
“Me! It seems I’m too stupid to be responsible even for myself,” Polsen said, still brooding over his obtuseness about the Misses Morgensson’s nephew. “Don’t rely on me to recognize Gustav until he is right under my nose.”
All the same, he didn’t quite look at her, and she could see that secret awareness in his eyes. She decided that she had never had the least idea what he was thinking.
Chapter 6
“SO YOU INTEND STAYING on,” Peter Sinclair said. With a touch of irritability, Grace thought. But the atmosphere in the car had not yet thawed out. It was almost as chilly as the morning. What seemed like a half gale was blowing across the lake, rocking the little neat boats at their moorings and sending leaves spinning along the pavement.
Kate had a scarf tied around her head, concealing her hair and making her face look sharp and diminished. Peter, on the other hand, wore such a thick wide-shouldered sweater that he seemed twice his size. His fair hair was blown about. He looked healthy and attractive except for the bad humor he couldn’t quite dismiss, even when Grace had got into the car.
The children wore red tam-o’-shanters which were too gay for their pale, solemn faces. Georgy was in a talkative mood, happy to be having the day out, but Alexander sat quite silent in his corner. He was frightened of elks, Georgy said. Wasn’t that silly, especially when it wasn’t likely they would see any? He had to get over that sort of nonsense, his father said over his shoulder, and then asked Grace the question about staying on in Stockholm.
Before she could answer, however, her attention was diverted by a tall man and a small boy who had just crossed the road.
“Look, Peter! That’s Polsen!”
She looked back, ready to wave, but Polsen was totally engrossed in what the small boy was saying. His absorbed face seemed to be not the one she knew at all. Although how could she possibly be so sure of that in a split-second glimpse?
“Is that his boy?” Peter asked.
“I expect so.”
“You didn’t say that he had a wife and child.”
“He doesn’t live with them. He takes his son out on Sundays.”
“Oh, that sort of thing,” said Kate.
“The divorce rate in Sweden is the highest in the world,” said Peter. “You know that, darling.”
“Yes, but there’s no need to discuss it now. Little pitchers.”
“That’s us,” Georgy said to Grace. “What’s a divorce rate?”
“Never mind,” said Kate sharply. “Grace, you didn’t answer Peter’s question. Do you mean to stay on?”
“Until I hear from Willa, yes.”
“But if she doesn’t know you’re here, love,” Peter said mildly. “She may be in Copenhagen, Paris, Rome, Rio de Janeiro. Who knows?”
“She’ll have to come back for her things and to settle about the flat. Besides, I’m beginning to enjoy my holiday.” Which was true, in an odd way and in spite of the glimpse she had just caught of Polsen as a besotted parent. He ought to go back to his wife, the old fool.
“Fancy staying here from preference,” Kate grumbled.
The sky was clear except for a low bank of luminous gray clouds on the horizon. Snow clouds, Peter said. They might roll up later in the day. At this time of the year, everyone talked about snow and prepared for it, but one never knew when it would begin. The birch trees flared like torches among the somber green spruce and pines. In less than half an hour after leaving the city, they were driving through the forest, broken here and there by clearings where the doll-sized cottages, so loved by the city-bound Swedes, had been built. Occasionally the forest opened out to give glimpses of lake water, or it thinned away altogether and there were flat sodden fields with great outcrops of rock, as if the bones of this harsh country were showing.
“This is the road to Uppsala,” Peter said. “You must go there one day. It has a university and a fine cathedral. We branch off presently and go down toward the lake.”
“It’s near here that Ebba and Jacob live,” Kate said. “Of course, they have a mansion, not a poky cottage.”
“A Gothic pile,” Peter said. “I hope they’ll invite you to it, Grace. And it’s their official residence, not a summer cottage. You weren’t thinking we could rent one like that, Kate? My wife’s a dreamer, Grace. She’s not with you half the time. She’s back in Surbiton. Aren’t you, love?”
“There!” exclaimed Georgy. “Did you see it, Grace? That sign said ‘Beware of elks!’ Didn’t it, Daddy?”
“Did it? I missed it.”
“But it did. You said so other times. Did you know that elks have horns, Grace? That’s why Alexander is scared of them. They horn you and throw you in the air and then stamp on you.”
“Georgy! Stop it!” Kate said.
Alexander cringed in his corner, his eyes wide as he stared into the shadowy forest.
“They could have done it to Willa,” Georgy muttered.
“Watch it!” said her father. “Or you’ll find yourself spending the day in the bedroom, my girl.”
“If she is lost in the forest,” Georgy finished in a determined whisper.
The cottage was in a wide clearing, the forest sufficiently hidden behind a screen of young birches and wild roses and brambles to restore Alexander’s confidence. He erupted out of the car and began running in wide circles, Georgy following, both of them screaming with laughter.
“Well, thank goodness for that,” Peter said. “I don’t know what’s got into Alexander about elks.”
“It was that last one you shot,” Kate answered. “He saw blood on it. After all, he is only four.”
“Going on five. Can’t have him so green at the sight of a bit of blood. Well, this is our mansion, Grace. It won’t take you long to look it over.”
Yet it was attractive for all its small size. Two rooms, one a bedroom with four bunks, the other a kitchen-dining-living room, comfortable with its scrubbed floor and plain furniture.
“When Willa stayed, she had one of the bunks with the girls, and Alexander and I slept on the couch in here,” Peter said.
The silence was profound. No rain drumming on the roof, no dark trees crowding the house.
“Did she stay often?” Grace asked.
“Only once,” said Kate. “We intended to have her again, but there never was another opportunity. Either she had other plans, or Peter came down with Bill—with men friends to go elk shooting.”
Bill? That was a new name. Kate seemed to regret using it. It had been a slip of the tongue.
Grace was afraid that her questions were going to make her unpopular.
“Bill? Who is he? One of Willa’s boyfriends?”
“Goodness gracious, she wasn’t that attractive!” Kate burst out waspishly. “When she dyed her hair that canary color, I thought she was decidedly common. It was rather a relief, wasn’t it, Peter, when she decided to go?”
“Well, I told her if she stayed, she’d have to tone down a bit,” Peter admitted.
“So this Bill couldn’t have had anything to do with her going?” Grace persisted stubbornly.
“Hardly.” Peter’s voice was curt. He was looking out the window across the clearing into the dusky forest. “Since he’s dead.”
“Dead!” Grace said uncertainly, looking from
Kate to Peter, wondering why neither of them seemed to want to say anything more.
“You’d better tell her,” Kate said at last. “Otherwise, Georgy will. In her own inimitable fashion. That child has the weirdest imagination.”
“There was an accident when Bill was out looking for elk,” Peter said in a suddenly hard clipped voice. “Bill Jordan, one of my colleagues. Unmarried, fortunately, so we didn’t have the ordeal of breaking the news to a wife.”
“But how?” Grace asked.
“The usual sort of damned stupid shooting accident. He tripped in the undergrowth, and his gun went off. Got him in the stomach. He’d gone out alone. God knows how long he’d lain there before I found him. He couldn’t tell me because he was dead by then.”
“How perfectly awful!” Involuntarily the thought came to Grace that this must have been one of the scandals that the embassy deplored.
“It was ghastly,” said Kate. “I tried to keep it from the children, but of course, they knew something had happened. Georgy thought an elk had attacked him, and that’s why Alexander has had this obsession ever since.”
Peter flung himself around, saying in a loud, angry voice, “He’s got to get over it. That’s why I don’t want any more talk of this. It was a tragedy, and I blame myself for not having gone with Bill that morning. I didn’t realize he was such a novice. But what was I doing? I was sleeping off a hangover. We’d cracked a bottle of vodka the night before, and Bill had a better head than me. Or perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps that’s what made him stumble. But it’s over. He can’t be brought back. So no more talk, girls. Understand?”
Kate nodded, her eyes getting their haunted look.
“He always comes into my mind when we arrive here. But I make myself forget. Ugh, it’s cold! Let’s light the fire. Peter, bring in some logs while Grace and I get the food. It’s really too late in the year to come down here. I wouldn’t be surprised if it snowed before the day’s out.”
The fire in the pleasantly austere room was cheerful. The children sat on the hearthrug, Grace and Kate on the couch. Peter sprawled in the rocking chair, plucking at the strings of a guitar. When it was summer, he said, they spent most of the day down by the lake. In the warm evenings they sat on the doorstep, and he played the guitar, and anyone who could sang, and the light never faded completely, even at midnight.
