Waiting for Willa

by Dorothy Eden

  “I’ll come up with you,” Peter said to Grace. “See everything’s all right.”

  Inside Willa’s flat it was he who shivered.

  “I don’t know, this place strikes me as damned morbid now. You shouldn’t stay here.”

  Grace spread the cover over the canary’s cage. She knew that she was not going to stir one inch from here until Polsen returned. He would be back any minute. She would prepare a meal and open a bottle of wine. She didn’t mind being alone, or waiting. She was used to waiting.

  “For Willa? But she didn’t come back,” Peter said bluntly.

  Grace turned on him. “Are you suggesting Polsen won’t? One minute you’re insisting that Willa’s death was suicide, and the next you’re telling me something sinister could happen on a perfectly ordinary afternoon in Stockholm.”

  All the same, her heart had that hard agitated beat again.

  “Don’t be utterly mad,” she went on, trying to reassure herself with words. “I expect Polsen has gone to see his son. He’s absolutely devoted to that boy. I think it’s from conscience, as well as love. I mean, his marriage going wrong—” Her voice died away as she met Peter’s intent gaze.

  “You can’t be suggesting he has a conscience over Willa, too!” she burst out incredulously.

  “Or Willa’s expected child?” said Peter flatly. “All right then, Grace, I’ll leave you, since you insist. But you’ve got to get yourself a flight home the moment the police release the—I mean, arrangements are made about Willa. These are orders. Otherwise, you’ll become persona non grata.”

  Grace stood quite still listening to Peter’s footsteps going down the stairs. She thought she hated him, with his open boyish British face and the monstrous thoughts he dropped into her mind.

  The king with two queens… A man whose first wife, or second, had become an embarrassment to him…

  By ten o’clock, after Fru Lindstrom had twice made the journey upstairs to see that Grace was all right (what did she expect to happen?) and when the house was too silent to endure, she picked up the telephone and rang the police.

  “But I know he wouldn’t go on some journey without telling me,” she said. “He was to have picked me up at five o’clock. That’s more than five hours ago. Yes, he was always a person to keep his word. In my experience he was utterly reliable. Only something serious would keep him out this late.”

  They said, somewhat indifferently, that they would make a routine check. Perhaps Fru Polsen could tell them something.

  “Fru—” Grace began, and stopped. Polsen’s wife had never been a reality, until now. She didn’t care for it.

  “Please tell me if you find out anything,” she begged.

  An hour later the sergeant telephoned. “No luck, Fröken Asherton,” he reported. “Fru Polsen hasn’t seen or heard from her husband today, and he hasn’t been to the university. However, for what it’s worth, one of his students saw him in the old town this afternoon.”

  “But that was with me. We had lunch.”

  “No, later. About four o’clock. Would he be visiting anyone there, to your knowledge?”

  “Only Dr. Backe, but he’s left for Copenhagen. We saw him go.”

  “Copenhagen, eh?”

  “There’s a medical conference there. He was going to it.”

  “Ah. That might be interesting.”

  “It’s Herr Polsen, not Dr. Backe I want to find,” Grace pointed out.

  “Ja. Leave it to us, Fröken Asherton. We’ll find them both.”

  That, considering Willa, sounded far too glib. Meanwhile, they hadn’t told her how the night was to be lived through. Surely Polsen would come home. If he didn’t—but where would he be, if he didn’t, or couldn’t, come home?

  Grace made some tea, decided to take a shower to refresh herself and pass some time, then dressed again, and paced up and down. Once she went up to Polsen’s room, thinking he might have crept in quietly without her hearing. But that room, like her own, was full of the now-familiar crushing silence. Where was Polsen?

  In the early hours the wind began to whine against the windows again. The sound was like a whip on her raw nerves. She sat with her hands pressed against her ears, too tense, too miserable for tears. It was the loneliest night that she had ever spent.

  Early in the morning there was another telephone call from the police. It had been ascertained that Dr. Sven Backe had not been a passenger on any flight from Stockholm, to Copenhagen or elsewhere. Was Grace sure of the accuracy of her information?

  “Ask his nurse,” Grace said, her voice taut with weariness. “Haven’t you found out anything about Herr Polsen?”

  “Not yet. Sorry, fröken. Sometimes a man comes home in time for breakfast.”

  Grace slammed down the receiver, quivering with rage at the unfeeling facetiousness of that thick-necked and thick-skulled policeman.

  She made more tea, drinking it with a kind of desperation. It was eight o’clock and still dark. What was she to do all day? What was she to do if Polsen didn’t come back?

  “Grace! Grace!”

  The whisper from the door startled her out of her wits. She hadn’t realized she had left her door unlocked. She certainly was not expecting Winifred Wright at this hour.

  “I knocked but you didn’t hear. Sorry to barge in like this, but there’s something I want to tell you. At least, something I think you ought to know. I don’t suppose you could make some coffee. I rushed off without a thing, I thought I might get cautious and change my mind if I waited. God knows, enough wild rumors go about.”

  Winifred was flushed, and had a disheveled look, as if she had thrown her clothes on and left her hair uncombed. Grace, for all her curiosity, found she had a strange reluctance to hear this information which Winifred was in such a hurry to impart.

  She went into the kitchen to put the coffee on, saying over her shoulder, “Is it about Willa? Or Polsen?”

  “Polsen? What’s he got to do with it?”

  “He didn’t come home last night. I’m worried about him.” She gave a dry laugh. “Worried is hardly the word. I’m really a little demented.”

  Winifred came to the kitchen door. Now her large, creased, plump face was full of concern.

  “Does he usually tell you where he goes?”

  “Lately, yes. We—” Grace’s voice caught with emotion. “Hell, is there a hoodoo on this place? Everyone disappears!”

  “You’ve got nervous. Waiting so long for Willa, and then—”

  “Polsen isn’t in the lake!” Grace said vehemently. “Don’t you suggest that.”

  “Good Lord, no. Who would have the strength to drown him?”

  The bleak ugly words came out before Winifred could stop them. She said quickly, “I didn’t mean that, Grace. He’ll be all right. Be back any minute. My, that coffee smells good. No, it’s something about Willa I wanted to tell you. You know that she wore an antique ring, an enormous thing too big for her hand, really.”

  “Yes, the police showed it to me.” With the little pile of crumpled clothing, the water-sodden shoes, the gold watch that had been a twenty-first birthday present and the bracelet with its clinking collection of good-luck charms. The ring, with its dark-blue stone and baroque setting, had looked medieval, as if the donor had selected it with care from among his family heirlooms.

  “What’s its significance?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t an engagement ring, although Willa pretended it was. I don’t think Gustav ever gave her anything, so she had to pretend.”

  Grace stared. “Then who did give it to her? Do you know?”

  “I think so. I think it was Peter Sinclair.”

  “Peter!”

  “And I think Kate knows. That’s why she’s in such a state.”

  “Peter!” Grace breathed again. “But why? You don’t think he was having an affair with her?”

  “I would have thought it extremely unlikely. He’s too ambitious, for one thing. He wouldn’t have risked his ca
reer by getting involved with his secretary. And for another, she really wasn’t his type. She used to exasperate him to fury. He was going to ask to have her transferred to another department if she hadn’t decided to leave.”

  “But she was always at the Sinclairs.”

  “Kate liked her. She was gay and amusing and good with the children. And when she first came to Stockholm, I think she did have a bit of a crush on Peter, but no one took any notice of that because she flirted with every man in sight.”

  “Then why on earth give her a ring, an expensive one at that!”

  “I only know Willa’s story. At the farewell party we gave her, I found her in the ladies’ room crying. Mind you, she’d had too many drinks. She’d been trying to fix her face and had left the ring lying on the washbasin. I picked it up and said, ‘Gustav wouldn’t like you to lose this.’ She took it from me, saying that actually she didn’t care for it very much and only wore it so as not to hurt Peter’s feelings.”

  “She was drunk, she made a mistake.”

  “No, she didn’t, because she realized what she’d said and was frightfully embarrassed. She begged me not to tell anybody. The truth was, Gustav hadn’t given her a ring yet, he was going to when they were married, but she didn’t want people to think he was mean, so she pretended this one was his. She had seen it in a jewelers’ and had longed for it so much that Peter had helped her pay for it. He said it could be a gift for all her baby-sitting, but not to tell Kate. He didn’t mind her pretending it was her engagement ring—only in embassy circles, of course.”

  “What an extraordinary story!” Grace said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Neither could I, to tell the truth. I still don’t know what’s act and what isn’t, because Willa really was pretty drunk that night, and she was good at inventing stories at any time.”

  “But if she wanted the ring so much, why did she then say she hated it?”

  “Goodness knows. Because she secretly wanted diamonds, probably.”

  Grace nodded. That made sense. Willa had always had a habit of wanting something overpoweringly and then, when she had got it, of wanting something better. It was her power complex, she said.

  “And Kate knows this story?”

  “I’m not sure. She may only suspect it. She hasn’t got much confidence, poor Kate. I’ve noticed her looking at Ebba von Sturpe lately as if she doesn’t trust her.”

  And with reason, if she had seen the kiss that Georgy talked about. Poor Kate, indeed. Peter seemed to be a bit of a philanderer. He would have to be more careful if he really were so ambitious about his career.

  But this strange story of that ring that must have weighted down Willa’s hand as she sank in the lake. Like a stone tied round her neck. What did it all mean? And why wasn’t Polsen here to rationalize it for her?

  “Does this make things any more clear?” Winifred asked.

  “As clear as mud,” Grace said hopelessly.

  “Will you tell the police?”

  “I’m not sure. How significant is it? I’d hate Kate to get hurt. And the children. They’re too sharp at sensing things. I’ll have to think. Thanks, anyway, Winifred. Thanks for coming. I’m getting absolutely morbid about being alone.”

  Don’t sit there brooding, Grace said to herself, when Winifred had gone. Do something. Ring Peter, and have it out with him about that ring. Find out from the police if they have any clues about Polsen. Dear God, let him be all right. See if that lovesick nurse is at Dr. Backers and cross-examine her about the conference in Copenhagen.

  There were plenty of constructive things to do, especially now that a tardy sun was coming up, and the canary was beginning to twitter, preparatory to bursting into full song. Polsen would have said that it was just a day like any other, not the end of the world. Well, one had to find out about that.

  Peter’s voice was surprised, then decidedly wary. Or was she imagining that?

  “That lapis lazuli ring? What story have you heard? No, don’t tell me. This isn’t a thing to talk about on the telephone. I’ll come and see you. Give me an hour. I must clear my desk up a bit. It looks like a dog’s breakfast. Okay?”

  He rang off abruptly. Grace was mildly satisfied with her first result. She was making things happen. Now for the lovesick nurse.

  This conversation began tentatively. She had difficulty in making the girl realize who she was, and it wasn’t until she mentioned Willa’s name that there was a gasp at the other end, and the girl said, after a silence, “What do you want to know?”

  “I wanted to come see Dr. Backe, but I hear he’s gone to Copenhagen.”

  “Ja.”

  “Did he fly?”

  “I don’t know. His car has gone. He may have driven to Malmö.”

  “Did he say when he would be back?”

  “No. I should think in a week—actually—”

  “Actually what?”

  The voice lost its stiffness and began to tremble.

  “Actually I’m worried. He took things. His microscope, for example. As if—”

  “As if he weren’t coming back?” Grace prodded.

  There was a stifled sob. “That’s what I’m afraid of. For some time now—no, I mustn’t talk. But yesterday, after he had said good-bye and told me to go home, he came back.”

  “And you hadn’t gone home?”

  Grace remembered vividly seeing the thin figure with the red eyes wheel about and run back to the house with the dragon door knocker.

  “No, I was rather upset. I thought I would spend the afternoon working, after all. There were accounts…” Her voice trailed off.

  “So you heard Dr. Backe come back?”

  “Yes. Since he found me, there he asked me to make a telephone call. To Herr Polsen. Then we waited, and Herr Polsen came, and—”

  Grace managed to say calmly, “Go on.”

  “They were upstairs for a little while. Then the Baron and Baroness von Sturpe came, and they were all upstairs. And then they all went away.”

  “Polsen, too?”

  “Ja. I saw a white car at the end of the street. There aren’t many white Mercedes in Stockholm.”

  Polsen, you fool, you’ve been lured into something! What, for God’s sake!

  “Thank you,” Grace said quickly. “You’ve been a great help.”

  The girl was crying again.

  “Fröken Asherton, do you think he will come back?”

  “Dr. Backe? Why not? If he’s only gone to a conference.”

  “But it’s more than that. You must know it is.”

  There was no time to reassure the unfortunate creature, who was going to have her heart broken whether Sven returned or not. Grace had to make an urgent call to the police.

  Strangely enough, they had been about to contact her, they said. They thought they had discovered the cottage where Fröken Bedford had spent her last days. There were some articles that Grace might help them identify. They would like her to come at once. It was only an hour’s drive. Could she be ready in ten minutes? They could talk in the car.

  At last the waiting was over. Grace flung on her outdoor things, warm coat, scarf, fur hat. It would be cold, in spite of the fragile sunlight. She remembered to scribble a note and leave it for Peter. That business about the ring would have to wait. Perhaps it wouldn’t matter any more when she returned. She was so sure, although for no valid reason, that Polsen would have got to the cottage first, and be there waiting for them.

  She was wrong about Polsen, but right in her intuition that the cottage they were speeding toward was the Sinclairs’, because one went down the same tracks all the time in this strange game. There it stood in the little clearing, the forest, now that clouds had lowered, darker than ever. It was familiar, almost like home, as it must have been to Willa even though the rain got on her nerves.

  “You have been here before?” said the police officer.

  “Yes. How do you know?”

  “You don’t seem surprised.”
>
  “Nothing surprises me anymore.”

  She hadn’t told the police about the ring Peter had given Willa. That could wait. She had, however, told them word for word her conversation with the girl at Dr. Backe’s, and after listening in silence, one of the men had given some incomprehensible instructions on the car radio. A little later the radio had answered back. The only word Grace could understand was Gothenburg. Did they think that was where Polsen was?

  She asked, and was told no, this was another matter. But interesting, nevertheless.

  So, irrationally, her hopes rose that Polsen might be at the cottage.

  Of course he was not. It was empty and silent and filled with a strange odor. Grace wrinkled her nose.

  “Smells like something burned. Wool?”

  “Right, fröken. You would make a good detective, ja?”

  The hearth was swept clean, too clean. But there was a very small pile of carefully gathered sweepings on a sheet of paper. There was also, more disturbingly, a suitcase encrusted with dried mud on the floor.

  One of the policemen opened it and Grace’s hand went to her mouth. It was full of women’s clothing, and even if she hadn’t recognized one candy-striped blouse she had frequently seen Willa wear, she must have guessed whom these forlorn garments belonged to.

  “This guilty person,” she was told with the quaint formality of the sergeant’s English, “began by burning Fröken Bedford’s possessions. But that was going to take too long. Wool, for one thing, is difficult to burn. So he dug a hole near the wood heap and buried this bag and the half-burned garments. Then he piled the wood over the mound and hoped for snow.

  “Why for snow?”

  “If these things had been buried beneath six feet of snow, we wouldn’t have found them until the spring. When, of course, we would no longer be looking for them. Ja, it was bad luck for this villain that the snow hasn’t yet begun.”