by Helen Grant
Polly had reappeared at the bottom of the stairs. Evidently she had managed to coax Ru to sleep. My gaze slid to Tuesday, who had not moved from her place at the table. In spite of the grimaces she had made when she first tasted it, she was pouring herself another glass of the liqueur. I felt a familiar mixture of affection and annoyance at Polly – why did she allow Tuesday to let her do all the work? If Ru had started calling Polly ‘Mummy’ I should not have been at all surprised.
‘There you are, Polly,’ said my father, seeing an opportunity for widening his audience. ‘I was just about to tell Lin about the local superstitions.’
It was as well that he did not see the face I pulled. Polly had no thought of escape, however; she sat down on one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs drawn up to the pine table and prepared herself to listen. She dipped a finger thoughtfully into the jar of Bärlauchschmalz and scooped out a tiny glob of it, which she tasted absent-mindedly.
Tuesday leaned across without saying a word and slapped Polly’s fingers. I think I was the only one who saw the glances Polly and Tuesday exchanged, the way Tuesday’s gaze flickered casually up and down Polly’s figure, telegraphing a reproach. My father was too impatient to continue with his story to notice any restlessness among the listeners. He plunged on heedlessly.
‘The glass that I came here to research, the Allerheiligen glass, came from an abbey, oh, I suppose about thirty kilometres from here. The abbey is gone; it was closed down about two centuries ago, and most of the stone was carted off to build other things. There’s nothing to see there. But the glass …’ My father leaned forward, his eyes bright with excitement. ‘The glass might have survived.’
‘How?’ I asked, intrigued in spite of myself. It was impossible to think that anything so fragile could have survived the destruction of the window frames it was set into.
‘It could have been removed. Packed. Hidden.’ My father shrugged. ‘Other windows survived it. The windows from the abbey at Steinfeld, for example. They vanished for a century and then turned up in the chapel of a manor house in Hertfordshire.’ He sat back. ‘The Steinfeld windows were partially created by the same master craftsman who did the Allerheiligen glass, Gerhard Remsich. They were auctioned in the 1920s and sold for the equivalent of about eight hundred thousand pounds in today’s money.’
For the first time since the beginning of the conversation I saw Tuesday sit up and take notice. ‘So these other windows…’ she began slowly.
‘Would be worth over a million pounds, yes,’ said my father.
There was a moment’s reverential silence as he and Tuesday considered this marvellous fact.
‘Then why…’ began Tuesday eventually.
‘Why isn’t everyone out looking for them?’ finished my father. He picked up his glass again and swilled the evil-looking liquid about in it. ‘That’s the point. They’re unlucky. They said that the artist was inspired by the Devil when he made them, that the scenes with demons in them were drawn from the life. They said that if you were to walk through the cloisters late at night you would see a dark shape on the other side of the glass, keeping pace with you, and if you were to turn and look directly at it, you would see him glaring at you through the window. Bonschariant. The Glass Demon. And, at that moment, your heart would stop.’
I could not suppress a shudder. My father saw it and smiled. In the dancing candlelight his face had a mocking, saturnine look: he could have been a miser gloating over gold, or a misanthrope delighting in the death of a relative. I looked away.
‘Herr Mahlberg, the local historian who wrote to me, told me that these superstitions persist,’ continued my father. ‘He is a rational person; he was frustrated by it. He thought that he knew where the glass was located, but nobody would cooperate with him. And that,’ said my father thoughtfully, taking a sip of the liqueur and wincing, ‘is significant, don’t you think?’
Polly and I looked at each other and then back at my father.
‘Why?’ said Polly.
‘Because,’ said my father, ‘if the locals believe the glass no longer exists, then why are they trying to stop anyone finding it?’
CHAPTER NINE
The next morning I was woken at five thirty by the lights suddenly going on. I sat up in bed, blinking at the sudden glare. Polly’s bed was empty, the covers thrown back. I got up and staggered out on to the narrow landing, rubbing my eyes. When I went down into the kitchen, Polly was already there. She was dressed in a baggy track suit and was lacing up her running shoes.
‘The lights are on!’ she said cheerfully.
‘I know. They woke me up.’
‘Sorry. I found the fuse box – it was behind the front door.’
‘What are you doing?’ I groaned. ‘It’s still the middle of the night.’
‘Going for a run – what do you think?’
I cocked my head to one side and studied her. I thought I knew what this was about. ‘Polly, don’t take what Tuesday says so seriously.’
Polly gave a tremendous yank on her laces. ‘She’s right. I ought to get fitter.’
‘Polly, it’s five thirty in the morning.’
‘So?’
‘So Tuesday wouldn’t get out of bed at five thirty.’
‘She doesn’t need to.’
‘She’s a lot less fit than you are,’ I retorted. ‘The nearest thing she comes to exercise is walking round the shops and lifting her credit card on to the counter.’
‘Yeah, well, she’s skinny,’ said Polly, straightening up.
‘Polly!’ I was exasperated. ‘She looks like a stick insect.’
‘Don’t make such a fuss, Lin. I’m just going for a run, I’m not having liposuction or anything.’
I watched her go over to the front door and twist the key. It was an old one and the lock was stiff, so I had already turned away when she got the door open. A moment later I heard her make an exclamation.
‘Lin! There’s something here!’
I turned back. She was just outside the door, treading up and down on the spot as though she were standing in something sticky.
‘There’s something all over the ground!’
‘What, has a wild boar come out of the woods and crapped on the doorstep?’ I asked facetiously.
‘No – it’s something crunchy. Can you put the light on?’
I went over and flicked the switch, shivering as the cool outside air wafted around my bare legs. ‘So, what are you standing in? Maybe it’s snails.’
‘Yuck. No, I think it’s –’ She stopped.
‘It’s what?’
‘It looks like broken glass, but there’s something in it.’
Curious, I went to the doorway to have a look.
‘Get out of it, can’t you? I can’t see what it is.’ I peered at the ground. ‘Someone’s dropped a bottle of something, I think. It looks like…’ I hesitated.
The glass shards were smeared and streaked with a red-brown substance. Ketchup? Fruit juice? Possibilities flashed through my mind. Blood?
‘I don’t think we should touch it,’ I said hastily. ‘Not with our bare hands anyway.’
Polly was peering at the ground.
‘It looks like blood.’
‘It can’t be,’ I said, trying to convince myself. ‘Who would be carrying a bottle of blood around with them?’
‘Maybe someone broke a bottle and cut themselves,’ suggested Polly.
She lifted a foot and examined the sole of her training shoe with disgust.
‘There’s too much of it, if it’s blood,’ I pointed out. ‘We would have noticed if one of us had cut ourselves that badly.’
‘It must have been the last people, then, or the person who left the food.’
‘Then it would’ve been there last night when we arrived,’ I said. ‘It definitely wasn’t, though. We couldn’t all have stepped over it dozens of times and not noticed it.’
We stared at each other. Polly looked pale, I noticed. My gaze slid past her
to the open gateway and the strip of forest which was visible through the arch. Under the densely clustered pine trees tendrils of early-morning mist were curling through the cool air. It looked very dark under the canopy of foliage. The night before, the forest had seemed wild but not threatening, the domain of foxes and badgers. Now it looked somehow sinister. Anyone could be standing in the darkness under the pine trees, unseen by us but watching our every movement. I shivered.
‘Polly, don’t go running this morning.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Something’s not right.’
‘Don’t be silly. You’re giving me the creeps,’ said Polly nervously.
‘Can’t you just stay here?’
I found myself staring at that dark space under the trees, looking for any sign of movement. There was nothing, or at least nothing that I could pick out among the shadows. Still I had that feeling of being watched.
‘We’ll have to clear up this mess before the others get up. Supposing Ru steps in it?’
Polly sighed. ‘OK. But I’m definitely going tomorrow morning.’
I stepped back to let her into the house. ‘If you go later I’ll come with you. But I’m not getting up at five thirty.’
Polly rummaged through the cupboards, looking for a dustpan and brush. I fetched a pair of tongs from the kitchen drawer and picked up the larger shards of glass with those. I held up one particularly big piece and studied it. Whatever the reddish-brown liquid was, it had dried on to the glass in blotches and smears reminiscent of brush strokes. Funny, I thought. It looks just like stained glass.
CHAPTER TEN
School did not start until the following week, so later that morning my father recruited me as interpreter for his initial enquiries. He did not put it like that, of course; that would have meant admitting to the deficiencies in his own spoken German.
‘It might be interesting for you, Lin,’ he said.
‘Thanks, Dad, but…’ I struggled to think of a convincing excuse for not accompanying him.
‘Ten minutes,’ he said breezily, before I had time to come up with anything.
I had already opened my mouth to argue when a thought occurred to me. Why not go along and make some enquiries of my own? I thought I would feel very much better about the events of the afternoon before if I knew for certain that someone had found the body of that poor old man in the orchard – and that nobody had seen us stopping there. Perhaps then I would feel less bad about leaving him there, without even closing his eyes. Certainly I would feel much happier if I reassured myself that the local papers were not running the headline BRITISH CAR SPOTTED AT DEATH SCENE.
The other advantage of going with my father was that I would no longer have to listen to Tuesday complaining about the fact that her mobile phone would not work in the middle of the woods. I had watched her at the chaotic eating relay that passed for breakfast in our household; she had kept switching the phone on and off and pressing the buttons, and eventually she had even tried shaking it. She had reacted to the discovery that there was no signal much in the way that an extraterrestrial of an advanced race would have reacted if he had crash-landed here in the Stone Age. I thought that going with my father would be preferable to staying at the castle and listening to her complaints, even if he were going to ask me to translate words like rood screen and gargoyle.
I did my best to smile helpfully at my father. ‘How long will it take to get… wherever we’re going?’
‘Baumgarten,’ said my father. ‘That’s where Herr Mahlberg lives. Ten minutes and we’ll be there.’
Nearly an hour later, we were still not there. My father had printed directions that Uncle Karl had sent him, together with a map, but we missed a turn somewhere and found ourselves on the other side of Baumgarten, looking at the factory chimneys of Nordkirchen. We doubled back, and this time I tried to use the map, but I was hampered by the large scale; we seemed to pass dozens of tiny roads that were not marked. Eventually by sheer luck we found ourselves on Adlerstrasse, a road which was mentioned in the directions; we turned off it on to the side road where the local historian lived, but then we couldn’t find his house.
‘His name is Heinrich Mahlberg,’ said my father. ‘I haven’t got a house number but you can look at the names on the gates.’
There were only six houses on the street and we stopped outside each of them. I had to get out of the car each time and read the little name over the bell; at the first five there was a name other than Mahlberg, and at the sixth there was no name at all. The house looked well kept and the garden was tidy, but the roller blinds were down on all the front windows and a free newspaper was sticking out of the letter box. I peered at the little glass box over the bell, but there was no name in it at all – not even a piece of paper from which the letters had faded out. I tried ringing the bell anyway, but there was no reply. Eventually I knocked on the door too, feeling rather foolish and wondering what I would say if someone other than the elusive Herr Mahlberg were to open the door. In the event the house remained silent and nobody came to answer.
I went back to the car.
‘It’s empty.’
We debated what to do, and decided to return to the centre of Baumgarten and ask. My father drove back with a stormy look on his face, muttering to himself. Karl should have given us better directions, or got hold of Herr Mahlberg’s telephone number – what we were supposed to do?
I didn’t say anything. I thought Uncle Karl had done more than most people would have. I could have wished, however, that he had not been quite so free with information about my father’s research. Judging by the handful of people we had already spoken to, everyone within a ten-kilometre radius knew that my father was here to research the Allerheiligen glass. Quite illogically, I had a feeling that this was a bad thing. Seeing the house which possibly belonged to Herr Mahlberg shuttered and deserted did nothing to dispel this feeling.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We drove back to the centre of Baumgarten, parked and went to look for the post office. It was late morning by now and the little town was becoming busy. When we walked into the post office my father groaned; it was packed out.
We took our places in the line, behind a little old lady dressed unseasonably in a green woollen coat with a large and very ugly edelweiss brooch pinned to the front of it. I noticed the brooch because she turned round and gave us both a very hard stare. As she turned back my father rolled his eyes at me.
The queue was moving at a snail’s pace. Eventually there was only the little old lady in front of us, but by then one of the post office workers had come out and hung a ‘closed’ sign on the front door. I shuffled my feet uncomfortably. The old lady was taking forever. There was something about the way she moved, slowly but deliberately, that made me suspect that she was taking her time on purpose. My father kept looking at his watch.
At last she had finished and my father, almost beside himself with impatience, virtually shouldered her aside to get to the counter.
‘Ich suche… diese… Adresse…’ I heard him say, pushing the piece of paper with the directions to Herr Mahlberg’s house under the glass. ‘Mahlberg… Heinrich.’
He glanced round, looking for me. Reluctantly I went up to the counter. I noticed that the old lady had packed her things into her bag, but that she was in no hurry to leave. Unless my eyes deceived me, she was listening in to the conversation between my father and the clerk with avid interest.
‘Das kann ich nicht sagen,’ the clerk was saying.
‘He says he can’t say,’ I translated helpfully.
‘I know that,’ snapped my father. ‘But does that mean he doesn’t know or he won’t tell me?’
I leaned over the counter. ‘We just want to confirm the address,’ I said in German, but the man was already shaking his head. He had one hand up ready to pull down the little blind at his window. I could see he was dying for us to go so that he could get to his bratwurst roll.
&nb
sp; ‘Try at the town hall,’ he said brusquely, and the blind came down with a tight little snap.
‘Damn it!’ exploded my father.
I saw the old lady’s eyebrows go up so far and so fast that I thought they might dash like fleeing field mice into the thick white bush of her hair. I gave her a tentative smile. It was not returned. Instead the old lady’s gaze moved steadily from my face right down to my feet and back up again, as though she were scanning me for concealed weapons. Her gaze snagged on my jeans and for a moment the thought Would look so much better in a dress passed through her mind so visibly that she might as well have inked it on her forehead in gigantic letters.
‘Come on, Lin,’ snapped my father. ‘We’re wasting our time here.’
I dragged my gaze away from the old lady’s basilisk stare and half-turned to go.
Suddenly a skinny claw shot out and grabbed me by the upper arm. The old lady was surprisingly strong – and the collection of rings that adorned her gnarled fingers like a knuckleduster was digging into my arm. I started to protest and found myself looking at close range into a pair of very intense grey eyes, alarmingly magnified by her spectacles.
‘You are the English professor and his daughter? The professor who is looking for the Allerheiligen glass?’
‘Ye-es,’ I stammered.
‘Herr Mahlberg cannot help you,’ she said with grim satisfaction. ‘Herr Mahlberg is dead.’
‘Tot? What did she say? Did she say Herr Mahlberg was dead?’ my father asked me.
I frowned. ‘I think so. That can’t be right.’ I stared at the old lady. ‘We’re looking for Herr Heinrich Mahlberg. We’re supposed to be meeting him.’
‘No mistake,’ said the old lady sharply. ‘Herr Heinrich Mahlberg, he’s definitely the one who’s dead. I should know. It was my cousin’s cleaning lady who found him.’
