The Glass Demon

by Helen Grant

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lunch was a miserable affair. My father was thrown into despair over the death of his main contact, Herr Mahlberg. Tuesday claimed to have lost her appetite because of the mere thought of what might have happened; Polly certainly lost hers once Tuesday told her not to be a pig and eat all the tomatoes. Ru was fractious and badly behaved after having waited so long for something to eat and drink. I did my best to push away the feeling of dread which had come over me when I saw the scorched glass outside, and had even managed to appear relatively cheerful, right up until the moment when Tuesday asked why Michel had come to the castle in the first place.

  ‘To see if Lin wanted a lift to school,’ said Polly.

  ‘Great,’ said my father.

  ‘I said no,’ I cut in hastily.

  ‘You said what?’ snapped Tuesday.

  ‘I said I thought you or Dad would be driving me,’ I said, with a sinking feeling.

  ‘But school starts at eight fifteen,’ Tuesday pointed out. ‘If Michel’s family are prepared to take you, I don’t see why I have to get up that early too.’

  ‘We hardly know them,’ I tried, but it was no use.

  ‘How can you say that?’ demanded Tuesday. ‘He practically saved all our lives.’

  I looked down at my plate. The rye bread and smoked ham, not particularly appetizing in the first place, now looked inedible. ‘Well, he’s gone anyway,’ I said.

  ‘Lin.’ A note of steel had entered Tuesday’s voice; this was important – this was an extra hour in bed in the morning that we were talking about. ‘He says he lives in the farm in the woods, doesn’t he? You’re not doing anything this afternoon. Why don’t you go for a walk and see if you can find the farm? Then you can tell Michel and his parents that we’d love to take them up on their offer of a lift.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that this would be outright lying, but I suppressed it. ‘OK,’ I said with a sigh. Perhaps the farm would be impossible to find; I hoped so anyway.

  As it happened, the expedition into the woods was put off. Just as we were finishing lunch, someone knocked at the front door.

  Tuesday froze with her cup of coffee halfway to her lips. ‘I hope that’s not the landlord wanting to know what we’ve done to his tree,’ she said.

  We looked at each other. The knocking sounded again. Reluctantly I got to my feet.

  To my relief, it was not Michel standing outside on the stone step. In fact I didn’t recognize our visitor at all. He was a rather chubby man of about sixty, not much taller than I was, with a pudgy-looking face framed with greying hair which curled on to his collar. He was dressed in a dark suit in an out-of-date cut, with a dark shirt underneath it and no tie. He looked to me like the sort of person whose elderly mother still picked out his clothes and his thick-soled unfashionable shoes for him. I took in the pursed lips and the fussy way he held his hands clasped in front of him, and guessed that this was someone you would not want to be cornered by at a social event – the sort of person who grabs you by the arm to stop you getting away while they bore you to death with their one feverishly nurtured obsession, whether it be stamp collecting or steam trains. The only thing about him that didn’t spell anorak was his eyes. They were very blue, very alert, and they were fixed on me.

  ‘Fräulein Fox?’ said the man. His voice was just the way you would expect it to be: clear and a bit prissy.

  I stared at him, undecided how to respond. He didn’t look like anything dangerous, a policeman or a journalist from the local paper. All the same, the memory of the body we had left lying in the orchard weighed heavily on me. I was not sure whether I should admit to being Fräulein Fox or not.

  ‘I can speak English if you like,’ said the man when I didn’t reply. ‘I am looking for Dr Oliver Fox.’

  I heard my father’s chair scrape on the flagstones as he stood up. ‘I’m Oliver Fox.’ He strolled over to where I stood, still holding on to the door. He and the visitor made an incongruous pair – the would-be media star and the geek.

  ‘Hermann-Joseph Krause,’ said our visitor, and extended a hand, which my father shook rather gingerly. I could see he was wondering who this person was.

  I, on the other hand, was thinking, Who has a name like Hermann-Joseph? And who admits to it if they do? I would love to have turned and shot Polly a glance, but dared not.

  ‘It’s good to meet you,’ said Hermann-Joseph Krause to my father. His English accent was excellent but there was a stiffness about the way he spoke. ‘You are researching the Allerheiligen windows, I believe.’

  ‘Well…’ My father hesitated. I wondered if he was starting to feel as I did, somewhat exasperated at the fact that everyone in the entire area seemed to know why we were here.

  Herr Krause was undeterred by my father’s reluctance. He pressed on.

  ‘I have come to offer you my assistance.’

  ‘You’re offering help?’ said my father cautiously.

  I could tell that he was sceptical, though the fact probably passed Herr Krause by; my father was very good at producing expressions of earnest and sincere interest, and Herr Krause didn’t look like the sort of man who was often on the receiving end of them.

  ‘Of course. May I come in?’

  As my father showed Herr Krause in, I briefly entertained the idea of making my escape before I was dragged in to translate as the conversation ran aground on some piece of obscure vocabulary. But where would I go? I certainly didn’t intend to go looking for Michel’s house until it was absolutely unavoidable, and there was nothing else apart from forest for kilometres all around. While I was still debating the merits of claiming a sudden irresistible interest in pine trees, Herr Krause had established himself in one of the dining chairs and was surveying the room with ill-disguised interest. I went and stood by Polly, who was still pushing her lunch around her plate, and gave her a surreptitious nudge in the shoulder with my elbow. Look at this guy!

  ‘This must be your mother,’ said Herr Krause to me, smiling hopefully at Tuesday.

  She didn’t return the smile; she had seen those shoes too.

  I didn’t smile either. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that she wasn’t my mother, but I knew what my father would say if I did.

  ‘This is Tuesday,’ said my father.

  He might have made some further introduction, but he saw the look on Tuesday’s face and thought better of it. Tuesday would have forgiven a serial killer or an evil despot all his crimes if he were charming and beautifully dressed, but she would have turned her back on St Peter himself if he had been wearing shoes like those. I almost felt sorry for Herr Krause.

  ‘So,’ said my father, placing his hands palm down on the pine table with an air of brisk attentiveness. ‘You have an interest in the glass?’

  ‘Yes.’ Herr Krause was nodding. ‘I have studied the history of the Allerheiligen Abbey for years.’

  He paused deliberately, as though waiting for a response, and patted his chubby thighs with his fingers. His trousers were shiny at the knees, I noticed.

  My father didn’t reply. I could see that Herr Krause had failed to impress him, with his flabby indefinite face and worn-out suit. He smiled gently but he let the silence stretch out a little too long, hoping to make Herr Krause uncomfortable so that he would get to the point.

  ‘I don’t mean to publish anything myself,’ said Herr Krause, aiming for a self-deprecating tone but unable to keep the hint of self-importance out of his voice. ‘I intend to put all my notes at your disposal, Dr Fox.’

  My father’s smile grew wider and more tigerish at this; I guessed he was thinking the same as I was, that Herr Krause’s notes would all be in German, probably handwritten or printed out laboriously on some antiquated typewriter, and about as much use to him as an Assyrian’s shopping list stamped out in cuneiform. Still, my father’s main contact in Germany having gone to present his findings to a higher authority, my father had to make do with whatever leads he
had.

  As I unwillingly listened to Herr Krause’s fastidious and rather pompous voice rambling on, an uncomfortable thought occurred to me. There seemed a definite danger that Herr Krause would represent more of a hindrance than a help. Perhaps this was the point. I remembered Michel’s parting words to me the first time we had met, outside the castle: Your father – he won’t find the Allerheiligen glass – not on his own. Clearly there was some feeling among the local people that it would be better if we left well alone, that the glass – if indeed it still existed – should be left in obscurity. The inhabitants of Baumgarten had drawn up their ranks to resist us, and Herr Krause was the champion they had sent out to engage in single combat with my father.

  This idea was confirmed a minute or two later when I came out of my reverie just in time to hear Herr Krause say, ‘Of course, the glass itself no longer exists, that is for certain.’

  This pronouncement did not alarm my father as much as it might have done. He was a veteran of the academic world, in which epic battles could be fought and won over whether one particular word of medieval Latin had originally appeared on a palimpsest or not. The truth was a largely irrelevant bystander to these battles; in the absence of absolute proof one way or another, the laurels went to whoever could present the most convincing argument.

  Herr Krause was saying that the Allerheiligen glass no longer existed. Herr Mahlberg had claimed that it most certainly did. This was familiar territory to my father.

  ‘It is by no means certain, Herr Krause,’ was his opening salvo. ‘Other local scholars –’ I saw him hand the word over reluctantly – ‘believed not only that it exists but that it can and should be located.’

  Herr Krause shook his head pityingly. ‘You are referring to Herr Mahlberg?’ He sighed heavily. ‘Let me tell you something, Dr Fox. Herr Mahlberg, he was a good man with a real interest in local history. But, you know, he didn’t come from here, from Baumgarten.’

  I saw a look of real irritation cross my father’s face at this.

  ‘He had some ideas about the glass, yes,’ continued Herr Krause, ‘but he was wrong about this. I know for a fact that the glass was destroyed in the early nineteenth century by the French troops.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ interjected my father.

  ‘There was a letter in the archive in Trier,’ said Herr Krause. ‘I had an uncle who was also interested in the glass and he saw this letter, before the war. It was a letter from the last abbot, whom the French turned out when the abbey was closed, describing the ransacking of the abbey buildings and the destruction of the windows.’

  This was quite a serious blow, but my father attempted to parry it. ‘And have you personally seen this letter?’

  ‘Actually, no,’ said Herr Krause primly. ‘The letter, like many other documents, was destroyed when the archive was bombed during the war.’

  My father maintained his expression of calm interest. I doubt Herr Krause noticed the infinitesimal pucker which appeared at the corner of his mouth, but I saw it and knew my father didn’t believe what Herr Krause was telling him.

  Herr Krause was shooting my father what was intended to be a sympathetic glance; he reminded me of an old sheep, rolling its eyes at us over a fence. Evidently he took my father’s silence to mean that he was crushed by this piece of news, since he hurried on, ‘But I am sure a history of the glass would be of great interest, even though the glass itself no longer exists. Here is my card.’ He fumbled open a little card case and handed the card over. ‘Please, do visit me at any time. My notes are mostly handwritten –’

  I knew it! I thought.

  ‘But I think you will find them of great use. You read German, of course?’

  ‘Of course,’ said my father drily.

  ‘Well,’ said Herr Krause, getting to his feet. ‘I must go.’

  I heaved a mental sigh of relief and wondered whether I could slip away somewhere while he was taking his leave; anything rather than go looking for the farm. But Herr Krause had not quite finished. He stopped halfway to the door.

  ‘I see you have had a fire,’ he said to my father.

  ‘Yes,’ said my father.

  ‘You should be careful,’ said Herr Krause. ‘The woods can be very dry at this time of year.’ His gaze shifted from my father to Tuesday and then to Reuben, who was sitting in his high chair apparently attempting to finger-paint with a little pot of fromage frais. ‘I hope no one was hurt,’ he said.

  Suddenly I had a strong conviction that Herr Krause was really here to represent the town, that he was going to go back and report to them like a chubby fifth-columnist. Would they be pleased or disappointed that none of us had been hurt?

  ‘We’re all fine,’ I said loudly, winning myself a startled look from Tuesday.

  Herr Krause’s gaze was suddenly on me instead of Ru, and I found myself reflecting that he did not remind me of a sheep after all so much as a plump little pig, rooting for truffles in the rich loam of our private lives. A second later I felt guilty – he was smiling at me with such genuine concern.

  ‘Gott sei Dank,’ he said in a low voice; thank God. Then he made a little gesture of farewell to my father, something halfway between a nod and a bow, and he was gone.

  ‘What a dreadful man,’ said Tuesday when the door had barely closed behind him. She looked at my father. ‘Did he say the glass was destroyed?’

  Tuesday rarely took a very close interest in my father’s studies; in fact it was probably something of a mystery to his university colleagues that he was married to her at all. I sometimes conjectured that he had chosen her for her decorative qualities; certainly she stood out at faculty parties among the other wives, who were habitually swathed in artistic draperies of no particular form or shape and garlanded with hideous ceramic pendants. Tuesday would have looked good at an awards ceremony or a magazine photo shoot, and never mind that she could not tell a Holbein from a Jackson Pollock.

  Now, however, she was not only interested, she was anxious. She understood the value of the stained glass perfectly well; a million pounds was not something she was likely to forget.

  ‘Oliver?’ she said. ‘Do you think –’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said my father shortly. He scowled.

  ‘He’s left something behind,’ said Polly suddenly.

  She picked it up; it was the silver card case with a handful of cards in it.

  I held out my hand. ‘I’ll run after him.’

  Anything rather than give him an excuse to come back. I took the card case and went to the door. The courtyard was empty; he must have made a quick start. I ran over to the gate and looked out. There was no sign of a car, and no sign of Herr Krause. Funny, I thought. I wandered out into the open area in front of the castle and peered down the tracks in all directions but I could not see anyone, either on foot or in a car. Herr Krause had apparently vanished into thin air.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  To my dismay, the topic of the lift to school had not been forgotten, and after Polly and I had cleared away the lunch things Tuesday insisted that I set off to look for the farm. I started from the spot where Michel had surprised me the first time we met, setting off in the direction of his vague wave. There were two possible tracks, both of them nothing but packed earth with a sprinkling of gravel here and there. At the side of the tracks were drainage ditches which were overgrown with brambles and ferns, and beyond them the dark damp undergrowth overhung with trees. On impulse I took the right-hand track. After about two hundred metres it split, the main track continuing ahead and a smaller, muddier track leading off to the right. In the fork of the intersection there was an object which I recognized as a shrine – a thing like a little glass-fronted hut on a red stone plinth. Behind the glass was a relief carving of a man and a stag. My gaze dropped to some lettering cut into the stone plinth. ST HUBERTUS, I read. I peered at the figure again. Someone had put a candle in a red plastic holder into the shrine, but it had long since burned down, giving the shrine a
rather forlorn look.

  ‘Well, St Hubertus – which way do I go?’ I muttered.

  The carved figure was facing right, his outstretched hands pointing towards the stag as though blessing it. I decided to take the right-hand turn again.

  It was rather hard going and my shoes were quickly caked in mud. Still, I was hopeful that the track might take me to the farm; I could see the marks of other shoes in the mud. This was somehow comforting, as it meant that other people had passed this way and might even be close by. There was no doubt about it, the forest made me feel distinctly uncomfortable, though it was hard to say why. I had not seen a single living thing since I left the castle, and certainly not a dangerous wild boar or the intimidating bulk of a stag. It was silent apart from the rustle of leaves in the wind and the occasional distant chirp of a bird high up in the treetops. I scanned the undergrowth but could see nothing moving.

  ‘Idiot,’ I whispered, hugging myself.

  I went on, trying to keep to the side of the path where the ground was drier. Ahead, the path continued in a straight line for about a hundred metres and then seemed to curve away to the right. I looked down at my filthy shoes, looked back up again, and a dog had appeared on the track up ahead. I jumped, then relaxed; it was just a dog after all. No. It was not just a dog – it was a very large, very powerful and aggressive-looking dog, and it had seen me. For a second it paused, its great muzzle snuffing the air, scenting the presence of an intruder. Then it leapt forward and bounded down the track towards me.

  ‘Shit…’

  Instantly adrenalin was shooting through my veins, a toxin so swift and powerful that I thought it would stop my heart. I sucked in a breath but the air seemed thin, the inadequate atmosphere of a strange planet; my ears were buzzing and I was getting no oxygen. It’s going to rip my throat out. I took a step back on legs that felt as though they would hardly support me for a moment longer. My head turned wildly as I scanned the trees and bushes around me, looking for something to climb, something to put between me and the dog. To my horror I realized there was nothing. The trees were all pines, with no lower branches capable of supporting anything bigger than a squirrel; for the rest, there was nothing but bushes, and a hound that size would come through those like a chainsaw.