by Dorothy Eden
The two police officers paid a call that morning. They went over the flat silently, opening drawers, lifting things. The cause of death, said one, had now been established. Fröken Bedford had died by drowning, but the high percentage of alcohol in her blood suggested one of three things: She had got drunk enough to give herself courage to wade into the icy water, she had fallen in accidentally, again because of her unsteady state, or she had not seriously resisted being pushed. The first eventuality was the most likely.
The police, with their practical minds, still regarded the diary as a fairly useless and unreal document. The only thing that interested them, apart from the identity of Gustav, was this place where Willa had complained of the forest and the rain dripping on the roof. It seemed highly probable that that was where she had spent her last days.
“Why do you ask me where it is?” Grace demanded. “I’m a stranger here.”
The two men nodded in agreement. They seemed even less interested today than they had been yesterday in the inquiry. It was a routine suicide case. Dull.
Polsen insisted on taking Grace out to lunch. He was hungry, he said unashamedly. She would find she was, too, when she began to eat. Anyway, one had to escape from Fru Lindstrom, who was doing her jack-in-the-box trick, not only popping out of her own door at the slightest sound, but appearing at Grace’s, without apology.
She, of course, had expected this tragedy, although she had never said so. Fröken Bedford, for all her apparent worldliness, had been an innocent. Imagine trusting a man so completely! Fru Lindstrom had given up trusting men before she was twenty. Not that that meant that she didn’t like them. But never should a girl be crazy enough to let a man break her heart.
She would like to see this Gustav. He must be really something. Two days the poor girl had been in the lake. Where had everyone been at that time?
“All that matters is where Gustav was,” Grace said.
“Taking regard of who Gustav is,” said Polsen. “Put your coat on, Grace. We’re going out for some lunch, Fru Lindstrom.”
“Good, good. Fröken Asherton needs feeding. She has grown smaller since yesterday. She isn’t much bigger than that canary.” It was a pity Fru Lindstrom’s laugh sounded so jolly. It seemed a little macabre.
They went across to the old town to a restaurant Polsen knew. It was just the place for a cold day, he said, in a cozy dark-paneled room with windows looking over the old square. By chance—was it by chance—the door of Dr. Backe’s house was just visible. Grace could see the coppery glint of the charming little dragon.
“So what were we all doing on Saturday evening,” Polsen said. “I was driving back from Uppsala. I was alone. I have no witnesses. Then I spent the evening working on translations. Again alone.”
“You don’t have to tell me what you were doing,” Grace said, her strained gaze on him.
“I prefer to. Now the rest. Axel? We don’t know. Presumably he was worrying about getting his ship loaded. Sven?”
“He was home with his family. At least that was where Ebba and I left him after tea. And Jacob was with Ebba and me. Except—there was that conversation about Gustav attending to something.”
“Yes. I had remembered that.”
“Could he have been Willa’s Gustav?”
“We don’t know, do we? Who else? Peter Sinclair? We must include him. He is part of the circle.”
“He was working late, Kate said. He’d had the flu. He looked rather ill. All the men went shooting on Sunday, but by that time—” Grace couldn’t eat, after all. She laid down her knife and fork and said, “To think that when I was admiring all those pretty fawn-colored rushes bending over the water, even then—”
“I share the opinion of the police, Grace,” Polsen said, quietly ignoring her emotion. “We have to find where Willa was kept.”
“A prisoner?”
“It seems so.”
Grace leaned forward, speaking with intensity.
“Tell me I’m mad, if you like, but I’m certain some of the time she was in the attics at the von Sturpes. I have no proof except that bit of old fur. And that I think Ebba wanted me there to show me indirectly that the attics were empty. It’s only a feeling I have. Don’t laugh at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you. Now look!” Polsen was staring out of the window. “There’s something happening.”
“What?”
“Dr. Backe is leaving his house, carrying a fairly large briefcase. He can’t be visiting a patient with a briefcase, can he? He would have his doctor’s bag. That’s interesting.” Polsen stood up. “Excuse me, Grace. I suddenly feel it’s time I had a doctor look at my sinuses.”
He disappeared, coming back a few minutes later to say what a pity, he couldn’t make an appointment with Dr. Backe at present since the doctor had just left to attend a medical conference in Copenhagen. He had left no word about when he would be back. In about a week, the nurse thought, but he had promised to telephone from Copenhagen.
“He didn’t say anything about this at the weekend,” Grace said in surprise.
“No, I expect not.”
“Is there a conference in Copenhagen?”
“We can find that out easily enough. I would say there is. I don’t think Dr. Backe would risk inventing that, but he has certainly made a last-minute decision to attend it. I wonder why? Come, eat up your food. We must go.”
One had to suppose it was a piece of luck discovering Sven Backe’s activities in this way. By another lucky chance, as they left the restaurant and walked down the narrow cobbled street, they encountered the nurse hurrying along. Sven must have told her she could go home for the remainder of the day. She was wrapped in a heavy tweed coat and had on a shaggy fur hat that almost obliterated her small, unmemorable face. But not so much so that Grace didn’t notice her eyes were red, from crying. Or else the bitter wind had reddened them.
What could Sven have told her? That he wasn’t coming back?
Peter Sinclair was on the telephone a few minutes after they returned home. He had been ringing every ten minutes, he said. Where had Grace been?
“Out to lunch,” she said, and he seemed both relieved and surprised.
“That’s more sensible than my wife. She won’t look at food. I was afraid the police might have dragged you off for some questioning.”
“No, they came here instead.”
“And have they found anything significant? In the diary or elsewhere?”
“They don’t seem particularly interested in the diary.”
“They don’t share your view that it’s important?”
“No, they like facts, not fancies.”
Peter laughed. “Willa was a great leg puller, you now.”
“But it was her own leg that was pulled in the end, wasn’t it?”
Peter’s voice sobered. “You don’t have to remind me, Grace. I was ringing, actually, to see if you could come out. I’ve got to be at the office, and Kate really has me worried. She’s in such a state she’s got the kids upset, too. I don’t like leaving them with her. I wondered if you might be able to take them out for a couple of hours. I thought it would do you good, too. Get you out of that morbid flat.”
Where the embassy could keep an eye on her? Grace wondered.
“I’m not alone, Peter. Polsen’s here.”
“That fellow! Look here, how much do you know about him? How do you know he isn’t another Gustav? Or the Gustav even! Don’t answer, I expect he’s listening now, isn’t he? But use a bit of caution, won’t you, Grace? And it would do the kids a lot of good to see you. They talk about you all the time. Take them for a walk on Gärdet. It’ll keep you all out of mischief.”
Peter was certainly a man who had no inhibitions about giving orders. Grace wondered if this directive had come from higher up or whether he spoke the plain truth when he said that Georgy and Alexander were frightened and miserable.
There was no alternative. She would have to go and find out; otherwise, the anxio
us white faces of the children would haunt her.
“Good idea,” said Polsen. “I’ll drop you there and pick you up again in a couple of hours.”
“You probably guessed—Peter said I must be cautious, how much did I know about you?”
He came to stand over her, kissing her on the forehead.
“And how much do you?”
“Enough.”
Grace scarcely knew why she was taken aback when the door of the Sinclairs’ flat was opened by Ebba. That woman seems to be everywhere, she was thinking, as Ebba began to talk in a voice that was one agitated note higher than usual.
“Oh, Grace, I’ve been trying to telephone you. All yesterday, when I hear that you were in Uppsala—and again this morning.”
When I was in Polsen’s bed, Grace thought, gathering the warmth of that thought about her.
“Did you have anything to tell me?” she asked. It was much easier to be offhand with Ebba when one was no longer her guest.
“About Willa?”
“That would be all I would be interested in just at present.”
“I haven’t, of course. I only wanted to say how shocked and unhappy I am. I couldn’t stay at home after the police had been.”
“Why have they been to you?”
“They’ve been everywhere where Willa was known. The Backes, too. They frightened the old lady out of her wits.” (That smug old woman with her white pillow hands. Nothing would frighten her. Or Ulrika. But Sven—did Ebba know he had crept away?)
“Who would have guessed Willa would do such a crazy thing?”
“Nobody,” said Grace flatly.
The curious pale eyes flickered. “You don’t agree that she took her own life?”
“Just because she was pregnant! Good heavens, no!”
“You don’t think there might have been other reasons?”
“Not for suicide. I tell you, Willa just wasn’t that type.” She looked at Ebba levelly. “No matter what anybody had tried to do to her. I’ve told the police what sort of person she was. I’m glad they’ve been to see you. I did think it awfully funny the way her fur tie got in your attic.”
Ebba frowned. “Why are you like this, Grace? So aggressive. I haven’t harmed Willa.”
Grace lifted her chin. “I’m aggressive to everybody just now. Willa’s dead, and I can’t believe it. I’m more angry than shocked. I can’t think of any reason bad enough for her to have to die. But I’ll find out what it was, I promise you that.” She paused and gave a half-repentant shrug for her outburst. “I think some of Willa’s got into me. Or else I was always more like her than I thought. Perhaps it’s an improvement.”
“Then be careful you don’t go her way,” Ebba said.
“Oh, I’ll take care no one pushes me in a lake,” Grace said deliberately. “If that’s what you mean. Where’s Kate?”
“She’s lying down. I made her take a sedative. I came here after talking to Peter. He was worried about her. She’s terribly sensitive, isn’t she? How did you get here? By taxi?”
“Polsen drove me.”
“Oh. Look, Grace—none of us know much about this Polsen. Are you sure you’re not being too trusting?”
“Like Willa? No.”
“You say that very definitely.”
Anger boiled in Grace again.
“Of course I do. I don’t want to hear you say anything about Polsen. I’ve come for the children. I’ll go get them.”
The children hadn’t come bursting down the stairs in their usual way. They were unnaturally silent. Someone must have told them to put on their outdoor things, for they were buttoned into woolly overcoats, and had on their tam-o’-shanters, Alexander’s crooked, Georgy’s crushed onto uncombed hair that hung in her eyes. Georgy, indeed, had shed all her belligerence and was holding Alexander’s hand in the meekest way.
“Well! How come you’re all dressed up?” Grace said cheerfully.
“Daddy said you were taking us out. Aren’t you?”
“I am. We’re walking on Gärdet, I believe.”
A flash of Georgy’s spirit returned.
“You don’t say Gärdet, you say Yerdit.”
“Oh. Do you know the way?”
“Of course we do. We’ve been hundreds of times.”
“One day,” said Alexander, “Daddy says we can have a puppy.”
“Yes, you should have a dog to take for a walk,” said Georgy.
This was true, for most of the people walking on the pleasant undulating parkland that stretched for several miles to include small inns and restaurants and an inevitable arm of Lake Mälaren had dogs gamboling at their heels. They wore their habitual uniform of sober dark overcoats and scarves, although today there was champagne-colored sunshine that made the grass tawny and sparkling.
The children’s spirits rose as their walk progressed. They were deeply interested in the story of the canary Polsen had given Grace.
“That’s what I’d have if I didn’t have a puppy,” Alexander said.
“A puppy’s better,” said Georgy. “You can’t take a bird for walks. It would fly away.” Alexander giggled and made flapping movements with his arms, and Georgy went on, “Does Polsen like you, Grace?”
“It’s rude to say Polsen, you should say Herr Polsen.”
Georgy ignored Alexander, and persisted, “Does he, Grace? Does he want to marry you?”
“Now whatever gave you that idea?” Grace asked.
“Mummy says you’re getting as bad as Willa, with men you don’t know anything about, and Daddy says you should go back to England.”
“I like Polsen,” said Alexander.
“How do you know you do? You haven’t seen him.”
“I have. I saw him bring Grace in his car. I saw him kiss her good-bye. I thought only mothers and fathers are supposed to kiss.”
“You are old-fashioned,” said Grace. “Kissing’s fun. As you’ll find out one day.”
“Ick!” said Georgy. “I saw Daddy and Ebba kissing once. Their lips were stuck together like this.” She pushed out her lips exaggeratedly. “It looked as if they were starting to eat each other.”
Alexander, wracked with giggles, had to stop to get his breath.
“You did not, Georgy! You’re making it up.”
“I am not. I’ll show you how they kissed.”
They were off, Georgy pushing Alexander in circles over the shining grass. And Grace was thinking, Peter and Ebba. Was this at the bottom of Kate’s unhappiness? If so, how did Peter have the nerve to preach to her about discretion with Polsen? In his position his own indiscretion would be flagrant.
It was only at the end of their walk that Willa was mentioned. Then Georgy, with her uncomfortable acumen, observed calmly, “I expect Willa couldn’t see where she was going because she had lost her glasses. That’s how she came to fall in the lake.”
Kate was up and dressed and making tea when they returned. She looked ill, her face was sallow and her eyes sunken, and she fumbled with the cups and saucers, rattling them dangerously. But at least she was making an effort. There was no sign of Ebba.
“Grace, you are a love, taking the children out. They look ever so much better. I’ve had a rest, and I feel better, too. We have been a dopey household. Peter’s still not a bit well, but he insists on going to the office as usual. Especially now.” Kate bit her lip and seemed determined not to mention Willa. “You will stay to tea, won’t you?”
“Polsen’s calling for me at five o’clock. Have I time?”
“He can have some tea, too. We really haven’t met him properly. I know Peter would like to. Children, go upstairs and wash. And did you thank Grace for your lovely walk?”
Something had detained Polsen. They had had their tea, and it was six o’clock, and he still hadn’t arrived. Peter came home, calling in a falsely jovial voice, “Hello, Grace. Nice to have you here.”
His joviality was quite a triumph, judging by his tired, drained look. He still had a head cold, and
it had left his nose and lips swollen. Fleetingly, he reminded Grace of someone; she couldn’t remember at the moment who it was.
“This has been one hell of a week,” he said. “A dose of flu, a dose of overwork, and now Willa.”
“Ebba was here,” Kate said in an expressionless voice.
“I know. She came into the office, too. She’s blaming herself. As we all are.”
“Why? “Grace asked.
“Well, for accepting Willa’s story, for one thing. For not trying to find out more about the mysterious Gustav—”
“What’s it to do with Ebba?” Kate interrupted.
“What it is to do with us all. We were friends. It’s—”
“Hush! The children are coming. Don’t discuss it in front of them.”
“Could I telephone?” Grace asked. “I’m wondering what’s happened to Polsen.”
“Was he picking you up? I expect that old car of his has broken down. Is there any more tea, Kate? No, don’t bother. I’ll have whiskey instead.”
No one answered the telephone. Grace contemplated ringing Fru Lindstrom, then decided against it. No need to make a thing about Polsen being an hour late and have her clucking with a new drama. No need for her heart to begin its hard thudding of alarm. In a moment the doorbell would ring.
When another half hour had gone by, however, Grace had to confess to her uneasiness.
“Peter, would you drive me home? You don’t mind, Kate?”
“Of course not. But where is Polsen? He doesn’t seem very reliable.”
“He is. You all keep telling me I don’t know much about him, but reliability has always been one of his things.”
“Willa said that about Gustav,” Kate said. “Did you know? She stood in this room saying it. Didn’t she, Peter?”
Peter stood up, saying briskly, “Sure, I’ll take you, Grace. I don’t know why we’re all getting so doomy because a chap’s unpunctual. Perhaps he’s forgotten. The absentminded professor, eh?”
Chapter 13
IT WAS SURELY SIMPLE enough, Fru Lindstrom said. Herr Polsen had had a telephone call about four o’clock and had gone out. Fru Lindstrom wouldn’t have known even that much if she had not been vigilant, as always, and caught him just as he was leaving the house. With all these untoward events she was nervous and liked to put the chain on the door at nights. So she had inquired how late Herr Polsen would be, and he had said he would be back within an hour since he had promised to call for Fröken Asherton and bring her home. The place of his appointment could not have been far off, for his car was still outside, if they liked to look. What was the time now? Seven o’clock? Well, you knew what men were when they began having a few drinks.
