The Glass Demon

by Helen Grant

  ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, I’m serious.’

  ‘Scheisse.’ I watched her shiver, hugging herself.

  I put out a hand and touched her shoulder. ‘Johanna, what is it?’

  She eyed me warily. ‘It’s – there are these stories. You wouldn’t understand.’

  She picked up a handful of pens and slipped them into her bag. In another moment she would be gone and I would have lost the opportunity to question her.

  ‘About Bonschariant? The Glass Demon?’ I gave her a straight look, which she did her best to avoid. ‘Look, I know about that. My dad’s studying the Allerheiligen glass, remember? But that’s just an old story. There are no such things as –’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Johanna. She sounded almost angry. ‘And there are no such things as ghosts either, right? But you still wouldn’t want to spend the night in a cemetery, would you?’

  I didn’t think I would ever want to enter one again, even in daylight, I reflected, trying unsuccessfully to push away the images which presented themselves whenever I remembered that terrible moment by Herr Roggendorf’s grave. Johanna must have taken my momentary silence as an admission of guilt.

  ‘You made it up, didn’t you?’ she snapped.

  I shook my head. ‘No, honestly.’

  ‘And you saw this glass with your own eyes?’

  ‘Well, no, I didn’t. Michel saw it.’

  ‘Michel Reinartz?’

  I nodded. ‘I was so shocked I didn’t notice it. Michel told me it was there.’

  With an air of brisk finality Johanna picked up her bag and swung it on to her shoulder. ‘Don’t believe anything he tells you,’ she said. She gave a quick glance about her, as if to see who was listening in to our conversation. The boy who had been eavesdropping caught her eye and hastily moved away. Johanna looked back at me and there was a hard expression in her pale eyes. ‘You can’t trust a word he says, that Michel Reinartz.’ The corners of her mouth puckered. ‘I’d stay right away from him if I were you… him and that brother of his.’

  ‘What’s wrong with his brother?’ I asked.

  Johanna made a face, as though she had bitten into something rotten. ‘What’s right?’ she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It was a week later, and autumn was very definitely in the air, when I came home from school just in time to hear my father say, ‘She was found dead right there, in front of the glass, and she was only sixteen.’

  ‘Who was found dead?’ I said, stopping in my tracks with my bag halfway off my shoulder.

  ‘Oh, it’s some disgusting story of Oliver’s about those stained-glass windows,’ said Tuesday. She was painting her fingernails an alarming shade of turquoise. Now she spread out her fingers to show me.

  ‘Horrible. You look cyanotic,’ I said.

  Tuesday gave me an evil look. ‘You’re as bad as he is. Such revolting ideas.’ She picked up the brush and began to attack the other hand.

  ‘Dad? Who was found dead?’ I asked again, ignoring her.

  ‘The abbot’s niece,’ said my father. He was holding a small hardback book in a faded green binding; now he flourished it at me and I was able to see the Gothic print stamped on the spine in gold, although it was impossible to read what it said from where I stood. ‘This is a fascinating book,’ he added. ‘You should read it.’

  I didn’t take the bait. One glimpse of the Gothic title had convinced me that trying to read even a single page in that typeface would be like picking your way through a thicket of thorn bushes. Even if you got to the other side you would wish you hadn’t tried it.

  ‘What happened to the abbot’s niece?’ I said.

  ‘Someone cut her throat,’ said my father. He saw Tuesday making a face and grinned wolfishly. ‘With a piece of glass,’ he added for good measure.

  ‘When?’ I demanded bluntly.

  ‘Cool it. About four hundred and fifty years ago.’

  I dropped my bag on to the floor. ‘So we don’t need to call the police, then?’

  My father ignored this piece of sarcasm. ‘This is a fantastic story. Did you know that there has been a whole string of deaths connected to the Allerheiligen glass?’

  He sounded thrilled. I supposed that he was already envisaging a new and glossy book which would be even more successful than the last one; it would be just as racy, only this time instead of SEX in the title it would have DEATH.

  I went over to the table and cast a doubtful eye over the remains of the lunch. ‘So who killed the abbot’s niece?’ I asked, picking out a cherry tomato from the limp remains of a salad still huddled in the bottom of the plastic carton it had been sold in. ‘And what was she doing in front of the stained glass anyway?’

  ‘That’s the point,’ said my father. ‘Nobody knows. She probably wasn’t his niece either – that was a euphemism. But according to the story she was only sixteen and very beautiful. They say she was so lovely that the master craftsman Gerhard Remsich used her as the model for one of his windows, the one showing the Queen of Heaven. Some say he was in love with her himself.’

  I bit into the tomato; it was unpleasantly soft.

  ‘She died the night before Gerhard Remsich was supposed to show the completed glass to the abbot of Allerheiligen. It had taken much longer to create than expected – there were all sorts of difficulties. The window showing the Ascension of Christ into heaven was mysteriously smashed. One of Remsich’s apprentices died after apparently ingesting silver nitrate, a poisonous substance used in the making of yellow glass. And there were all sorts of complaints from the workmen – that tools were going missing and that someone was trying to hinder the work.’

  My father was warming to his theme, imagining no doubt the laudatory reviews of the book as yet unborn. Tuesday was absorbed in applying a second coat of brilliant turquoise to her nails and probably hadn’t taken in a single word. It seemed that I was the only one to be chilled by what he was saying. A whole string of deaths. And the hindrances which the workmen had experienced – was I the only one who could see history repeating itself in the way that my father was being frustrated in his search for the glass? With an effort I made myself concentrate on what he was saying.

  ‘Remsich was to show the completed series of windows to Abbot Thomas after terce, the morning prayers. But an hour before the prayers had even begun, a servant came running from the cloister, screaming, “Murder.” When the monks investigated, they found the body of the girl lying in a pool of blood, in front of a window showing Job being mocked by his wife. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear.’

  I shuddered. ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said my father, with satisfaction. ‘The monks of that order wore white habits and they say that fully two inches of the hems of their robes were red from the blood on the flagstones. They never found the murder weapon. There was a rumour that the killer cut the girl’s throat with a piece of glass and disposed of it in the glassmaker’s furnace. The abbot, however, said that it was the work of the Devil and wrote to his brother abbot at Steinfeld for advice.’

  ‘And what did the abbot of Steinfeld say?’ I asked.

  ‘He said that Abbot Thomas should tear down the stained-glass windows and have every one of them smashed,’ said my father. He smiled slyly. ‘But I think the fact that the Allerheiligen windows were rumoured to be even more fabulous than the Steinfeld ones may have had something to do with it.’

  I picked up another tomato but it was as pulpy as the first. I put it down again.

  ‘Where did you get the book?’ I asked.

  ‘Herr Krause,’ said my father. ‘He came over again this morning – to see how I was getting on.’ His voice was dry; I could imagine how Herr Krause’s fussy offers of help and thinly disguised inquisitiveness had been received. ‘He still says the glass was destroyed. I think he was put out that I didn’t take his word for it.’ My father flourished a piece of paper. ‘In fact, when he turned up
I was writing to Herr Mahlberg’s executors to ask whether I can have access to his papers.’ The corners of his mouth turned up ironically. ‘Herr Krause was quite put out.’

  I could well imagine it; my father never spared anyone else’s sensibilities when it came to academic arguments.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued my father, ‘he brought all these.’ He patted a stack of books which were piled up on one of the dining chairs.

  I thought they looked unappetizingly dusty, and if they were all in that terrible Gothic typeface it would take my father years to read them all. A thought struck me.

  ‘How did you find that story – the one about the abbot’s niece?’

  ‘Herr Krause.’

  ‘That was –’ I struggled to think what to say – ‘nice of him.’

  I wondered if Herr Krause was expecting his name to appear on the cover of the new book, as joint author, or even in the acknowledgements. I suspected he did; he was altogether a different type of creature from my father – a benign and placid sheep with no conception of the desires and impulses of the wolf. Very likely he expected his share of the fame and fortune to come, not realizing that when my father feasted not the slightest scrap was permitted to fall from the table.

  ‘Hmm,’ said my father, without much interest in Herr Krause’s benevolence. He put the book down on the table. ‘It’s a great story,’ he added. He sounded cheerful – the abbot’s niece’s misfortune was his gain.

  ‘The slaughter of the innocent,’ I suggested.

  My father glanced at me. ‘That’s just what Herr Krause said.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  After the exchange with my father I went outside; I was very alert to the danger of being roped into helping to read the stack of mouldy-looking books thoughtfully supplied by Herr Krause.

  I wandered back to the green gate and looked out, in time to see Polly emerge from the forest. She was pushing Ru’s buggy; Ru was asleep in it, slumped over to one side and with his mouth firmly corked with one thumb. I went over to meet her. She was pallid and her fair hair was sticking to the side of her face.

  ‘Hi, Polls. Why have you got that jumper on? You must be boiling.’

  ‘I wasn’t when I went out.’ She didn’t seem inclined to discuss it.

  I looked past her, at the green darkness of the forest. Under the canopy of trees something shifted in the mosaic of light and dark: a bird fluttering through the undergrowth, perhaps, or the wind moving the branches so that the pattern of sunlight and shade moved kaleidoscopically.

  ‘Where did you go?’ I asked her, conscious that I was beginning to sound like an interrogator.

  There was nothing concretely sinister to see out there in the forest and yet I felt obscurely uncomfortable at the thought of my sister walking through it alone, pushing Ru in his buggy over the rutted track. It would not be easy to move quickly pushing a child in a buggy, if something happened to alarm you.

  ‘Just up the track a bit.’ Polly shrugged. ‘That guy, whatever his name is, the one who came once before and told Dad the glass had been destroyed –’

  ‘Herr Krause,’ I supplied.

  ‘Yes, him. He turned up again and Ru wouldn’t stop howling, so Tuesday told me to take him outside for a bit.’

  I looked up the track in the direction she had come from. Perhaps a hundred metres from where we stood, a rabbit suddenly broke cover, dashed across the track and disappeared into the undergrowth, its tail a brief white flash.

  ‘Polly…’ I looked back at her. ‘Don’t you think…’ My voice trailed off.

  I had been about to ask her whether she didn’t think the woods were a little creepy, but I was aware how lame that sounded. I could hardly tell my sister not to stroll in the woods simply because the thought of it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Perhaps that feeling I sometimes had, of being watched by unseen eyes, was simply overactive imagination on my part.

  ‘I don’t think you should go too far into the woods,’ I said eventually. ‘You know the time I walked to Michel’s and I met his dad? That dog is vicious, and he doesn’t have it on a lead.’

  ‘I didn’t go that far.’

  Polly sounded uninterested. She was bending over Ru, brushing an insect off his trouser leg.

  ‘Polly?’

  This time she looked up, perhaps hearing the tension in my voice. Her grey eyes seemed very pale in the autumn sunshine, and for the first time I noticed that she had grown thinner. I could see cheekbones emerging from the form of her face, as if a completely new Polly were appearing, as though the clay from which she was made were being reshaped. I wondered whether the move to Germany had troubled her more than I thought; just because she had an escape route planned didn’t mean that the upheaval hadn’t affected her. It was hard to tell with Polly. Such things seemed to disappear to some hidden place inside her, like stones dropping into the dark depths of a well.

  I suppose I had been studying her face for longer than I thought, because when she spoke she sounded faintly impatient.

  ‘Lin? What?’

  Polly was staring at me with her eyebrows raised. Hastily I reverted to the original subject.

  ‘Look, there’s something going on, I’m sure of it. That’s why I don’t think you should go into the woods alone. I’m not sure it’s safe.’

  ‘Because of the dog? Honestly, Lin, I didn’t go that far.’

  ‘No, not because of the dog. Well, not just because of it.’ I ran my hands through my hair. ‘The day the tree caught fire – I don’t think it was an accident. Remember there was all that broken glass lying in the ashes?’

  Polly didn’t react; a closed look was coming over her face, a look I recognized. Something unpleasant was rearing its head and Polly would rather not have known. I persisted anyway.

  ‘That thing I saw in the cemetery – there was broken glass there too. Michel saw it. And there was glass on the ground when we found that man in the orchard.’ I didn’t say that dead man; I was afraid Polly would shut me out completely if I said that. ‘And when we found out about Herr Mahlberg, the guy who wrote to Dad about the glass, Frau Kessel – that was the old bag in the post office, the one who told us – she said they found glass all over the floor in his bathroom too.’

  ‘So?’

  Polly began to fuss over Ru, checking the straps on the buggy, smoothing a strand of sweaty hair from his forehead, making a show of being too busy to listen. I guessed that she was hoping I would give up, that I would simply conclude that whatever person from the Baumgarten town council was responsible for collecting glass for recycling was pathologically clumsy.

  ‘So there must be a connection. I think someone’s trying to threaten us.’

  ‘But we didn’t even know that man in the orchard,’ said Polly. She sounded almost sulky.

  ‘I know. But don’t you think it’s strange, the glass being there?’

  ‘Maybe. But I don’t know what you want me to do about it.’

  ‘Help me. We could try to find out who the old man was. We could try to find Frau Kessel again – she said she lives in Münstereifel, wherever that is. Maybe she knows more about what happened to Herr Mahlberg.’

  Certainly it seemed a good bet that if anyone knew what was going on it would be her; I had recognized that quality in her the moment she had asked us whether we were the English professor and his daughter. I suspected that living next door to Frau Kessel would be like living next door to the FBI.

  ‘But I can’t speak German,’ Polly objected.

  ‘You could come with me anyway. You might see something I missed. And, Polly, I don’t think I could go back to that cemetery on my own.’ I gazed at her beseechingly. ‘Please, Polls.’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘We can’t just ignore all this stuff. People are dead. Supposing someone tries to – to do something to one of us next?’

  I realized my mistake when I saw Polly’s expression. We had veered over an invisible line into hostile terr
itory. Polly’s reaction was to shut it out, like a person walking through some terrible scene of carnage, looking neither left nor right because they know that if they do it will turn their brain.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lin.’ Polly hesitated; she hated to say no, even over something like this. ‘There must be some other reason for those things. It can’t have anything to do with us.’

  I won’t let it have anything to do with us, said her tone. A small furrow had appeared between her brows.

  ‘Polly –’

  ‘Anyway, in a few weeks I’m going to be going to Italy, remember?’ She grasped the handles of the buggy and began to move Ru slowly back and forth, as though lulling him, although Ru was so fast asleep I doubted whether he would have woken up even if there had been an earthquake. ‘Look – I have to get Ru inside.’

  This was a blatant excuse; Ru didn’t care whether he slept out here, inside the castle or on the wing of a biplane. I chewed my lip, trying not to let the frustration show on my face.

  Before I could think of another tack, Polly said, ‘We’ll stay out of the woods if you’re that bothered about it. It’s useless trying to take the buggy in there anyway.’ She looked at me. ‘And if you really think it’s that important, I’ll stick to the main track when I’m running, OK?’

  ‘Polly, can’t we even –’

  I gave up. She was already pushing the buggy forward, aiming for the green gate. I turned to watch her go in, a hard fist of resentment tightening in my chest. If I couldn’t rely on Polly, then whom could I ask for help?

  The buggy’s front wheel caught against a stone and I saw Polly struggle with it. She looked a little pink in the face, and warmer than ever; why was she still wearing that stupid jumper? The sight of it simply made me feel more irritable. I wanted to shake her. I wanted her to march into the house and tell Tuesday to take Ru out herself next time, and while she was at it, to give him his bath and feed him too, instead of palming it all off on her. I wanted her to tell Tuesday to stuff her friends in Italy and stuff the history of art – she was going to bum around Asia for a year, or go and count gorillas in Africa. Most of all I wanted her to get angry, and make a scene, and not bury her head in the sand any more. I would have done it. I knew she wouldn’t do it, and it exasperated me. I loved her for it, but sometimes I felt like screaming at her too. So I watched her go with the poisonous taste of resentment in my throat and I didn’t think any more about that jumper, other than that it was typical Polly that she wouldn’t even think of her own comfort.