by Annie Dalton
With another blood-curdling yowl, Loki swiped a pile of books off his shelf. They crashed to the floor, taking more books with them on their way down, narrowly avoiding Tim.
‘I’m not sure Bonnie got that right,’ he said plaintively.
Eventually, Edie’s eyelids fluttered closed, briefly reopened and then finally closed in sleep.
Anna had already told Tim about her and Tansy’s trip to, and premature departure from, Innsbruck.
‘So now you’re going into the lion’s den?’ Tim whispered, to avoid waking Edie. ‘You’re actually going to have lunch with the guy who might have set the police on you?’
‘Because I need to know if he was that guy,’ Anna whispered back. ‘Did you have any joy with the guest list?’
Tim shook his head. ‘It only told me who had registered for the murder mystery weekend. If you wanted to go to the ball you could simply print off e-tickets.’
‘Damn,’ Anna said. ‘And you can’t trace who bought the e-tickets?’
Tim shook his head. ‘I don’t have the resources police or private eyes have at their disposal. I’m afraid I’ve pretty much reached a dead end.’
‘Oh, well,’ Anna said, disappointed. ‘Thanks for trying.’
‘There’s one very faint possibility. Anjali’s company had a professional photographer in, to cover the ball. I’ll forward you the photos when I get a chance. The police have been through them and didn’t find anything but you might have more luck. I wish we could somehow access Lili’s emails and phone records, but we can’t.’
Anna glanced at her watch and quickly drained her coffee.
‘I’ve got to go. Thanks so much for having Bonnie.’
Tim indicated the peacefully sleeping baby. ‘Anna, she’s been awake since five. I should be thanking you.’
On the drive to London, Anna caught herself singing along to the radio. She was on the way to a potentially frightening meeting, yet she felt almost euphoric, though nothing at all noteworthy had happened. She had dropped off her dog at her brother’s, cuddled her little niece and had coffee. People did those things every day. It was just that Anna had never been one of them, until now.
I could have been though, that’s the stupid thing, she thought, with a pang. Chris and Jane had tried to stay in touch. They’d written and phoned and sent her little gifts.
Anna had a sudden flashback to the funeral. Jane breaking down in the middle of reading a Robert Frost poem; Chris swiftly taking her place, reading the last two stanzas in a shaking voice as he gripped the lectern, his knuckles blue-white. Chris must have been beside himself with grief for his friend and for the mother of his child, a child who had never been allowed to know that he was her real father. Yet somehow he had made his way through to the end of the poem, as Jane continued to weep inconsolable sobs.
Until today Anna had never once thought how they must have felt. I was only sixteen, she thought, quickly staving off the inevitable wave of guilt. My world had imploded. I was a mess.
But she’d survived and the beauty of it was that the Freemantles were still here – they hadn’t gone anywhere. I’ll go and see them both, she promised herself. When this is all over.
An hour and a half later, Anna was in South Kensington having managed to park her car. She made her way to Hempels, suddenly nervous, wondering which Herr Kirchmann she was going to meet, the Father Christmassy idealist or the cunning Euro-criminal as described by Alice Jinks?
But when she announced herself to Mrs Carmody the receptionist, it was not Herr Kirchmann who appeared to welcome her, but Alexei Lenkov.
‘Anna, how lovely to see you again,’ he said warmly. ‘Thomas sends his apologies and has asked me to look after you until he’s free to join us.’ He gave her an apologetic smile. ‘I’m afraid his new PA is still learning the ropes and he’s running late.’ He gently steered Anna towards the lifts. ‘Fortnum and Masons have delivered an extremely nice lunch to our conference room in your honour.’ he told her. ‘Usually we make do with sandwiches from Pret!’
New PA? Anna felt a flicker of dismay. ‘What happened to Alice?’
Alexei’s jaw tightened. ‘I’m afraid we had to ask Ms Jinks to leave.’
She’d been fired. When? Anna had been trying not to let Alice’s lurid warnings sweep her off into the realms of paranoia, but now she wondered if Alexei was really taking her upstairs to give her lunch, or if she’d end up drugged and bundled into the boot of a car. She followed him warily out of the lift, completely thrown by this turn of events.
‘But Alice seemed so …’ Perfect, she thought. ‘Outstandingly good at her job,’ she said out loud.
Alexei made an exasperated sound. ‘To begin with she was exemplary, I agree. But recently her conduct was not what we would expect of an employee at Hempels.’ His normally open and friendly face was suddenly closed off. ‘Alice was in a position of trust and she violated that trust.’
Alexei stopped in front of a door marked Conference Room. He opened the door, ushering her into an oak-panelled room that looked like something out of a stately home. The table had been laid with a miniature buffet, slivers of quiche, slices of game pie, Scotch eggs and other savoury morsels, alongside bowls of fresh salads. It was like a feast provided by benevolent fairies. They surely wouldn’t bother feeding her Fortnum and Masons quiche, only to later bundle her into the boot of someone’s car?
‘Alice’s behaviour had become increasingly inappropriate,’ Alexei said sounding genuinely upset. ‘She even – if you can believe this – insulted one of our best clients!’
Anna felt a new twinge of doubt. Alice had behaved oddly, to say the least, when she’d visited Anna’s flat. But she was surely far too controlled to publicly lose her temper? Was she being deliberately discredited, as Alice believed her grandfather Lionel had been? Or had she cracked under some unbearable new pressure? ‘She’s called Poppy. She’s my life. She’s everything.’ Anna heard her distraught voice and felt again the tidal wave of Alice’s terror. ‘I’m saying it’s all happening again! Only this time it’s me! I’m the one stumbling over their dark secrets, just like Julian.’
It was odd though that Alice hadn’t thought to mention that she’d been fired. Was that the real reason she’d turned up at Anna’s in such a state? Anna belatedly noticed that Alexei had pulled out a chair for her, before seating himself opposite. Behind him tall, Georgian windows looked out over London’s rooftops and spires. The sky was a hazy grey, with that faint yellow cast of pollution.
Alexei took a breath. ‘I’m sorry, Anna, I have been most unprofessional. It has been an unusually difficult week, but I should not have spoken of Alice in the way I did. There are extenuating circumstances, I know. She is bringing up a little girl on her own. That can’t be easy.’
They had almost finished eating when the door opened and Thomas Kirchmann came in, obviously stressed.
‘Anna, Anna, entschuldigen sie bitte. This is not at all how I imagined our special lunch, but Alexei has been looking after you?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said.
Alexei pushed back his chair and smiled at Anna. ‘I hope you enjoy the rest of your meal. Please excuse me, but I must get back to work.’
Herr Kirchmann took the seat that Alexei had just vacated, inspected the remains of Fortnum’s savoury platter with a critical eye and eventually helped himself to salad, quiche and a tiny jewelled slice of game pie.
‘You have eaten enough?’ he asked Anna.
‘Yes, it was lovely, thank you,’ she said.
They exchanged polite pleasantries as Herr Kirchmann ate. Then he dabbed his mouth with a napkin.
‘So, Anna. You and I need to do some straight talking.’ He leaned back in his chair.
‘I didn’t lie to you about my father,’ he said. ‘He did hide valuables for Jews. But as so often happens, someone found out. A man called Stefan Schneider; he was a local council official, who had apparently thrown in his lot with the Nazis. In reality, he was
an opportunist.’ He gave Anna a tight nod. ‘They exist in all countries, these men, but given certain conditions they flourish.’
‘Certain conditions like war.’ Anna took a sip of her water.
‘War, chaos, civil unrest. Schneider saw an opportunity to earn favours with senior Nazi officials and he offered my father a bargain. In return for being allowed to cherry-pick certain artworks for his own profit, he would generously allow all the rest to remain hidden until the war was over. My father very reluctantly accepted. He felt he had no choice. He had to save what he could. The man’s scheme was eventually discovered and both Schneider and my father were executed.’ Herr Kirchmann pushed away his plate. ‘Would you like coffee? I need coffee. And I believe there are petits fours. Would you like to try them?’
He went over to an antique sideboard, poured coffee into two fine china mugs, brought them back with the plate of petits fours and returned to his seat. ‘So,’ he said. ‘I have given you my straight answer, Anna. And I want to reassure you that I am not hiding any more horrible secrets from you. I admired your father very much and I wish only to be your friend.’
Anna tried not to hear Alice’s voice echoing his word: ‘I just want to be your friend, to look out for you.’
Anna watched his face as she said, ‘Clara Brunner told me that you knew the whereabouts of David Fischer’s Vermeer.’
Herr Kirchmann sighed. ‘I once knew its whereabouts and I have even seen it.’
Anna felt her hair rising on her scalp. ‘You saw it? Where?’
‘You must understand that even Alexei knows nothing of this, so I must ask you to keep this strictly between ourselves.’
Anna heard herself say, ‘Of course,’ though she could hardly breathe.
‘It was before I took over Hempels. One day, at a meeting in the library on the Scott-Neville estate, I saw it – on the wall! Can you imagine, Anna? This – this unknown treasure! Because it is a treasure – just hanging there.’ Thomas Kirchmann’s tone was almost hushed.
‘Did you say something to someone?’
‘Of course! I asked Ralph Scott-Neville outright if it was a Vermeer.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing,’ Kirchmann said in a disgusted tone. ‘He just smiled like a crocodile. I could see I wasn’t going to get anything out of him, so I went to ask your grandfather, Charles, but he insisted that I was mistaken, that there could not possibly be any unattributed Vermeers, as he put it, “running around in the wild”. He said, “you’ll be telling me next you’ve seen a unicorn, old chap.”’ Kirchmann mimicked Charles Hopkins’s chilly patrician tones. ‘And then one day, Julian came to see me. He had heard of my father’s work during the Nazi occupation. And that’s when I learned the provenance of the Vermeer I had seen in the Scott-Nevilles’ library. I did my best to describe this painting to your father. Julian thought it sounded suspiciously like the painting David Fischer called A Study in Gold and which he insisted had been given to my father for safe-keeping. Let me tell you, Anna, that night I could not lie still in my bed for worrying. I paced and paced. I was sick to my stomach that such a thing had happened.’
‘Did you ever go back for a closer look?’ Anna asked.
‘Not immediately, unfortunately,’ Kirchmann said soberly. ‘I became ill.’ He briefly touched his chest. ‘My heart. When I came out of hospital, it was to find that the world had changed for the worse. Your father and all your lovely family—’ He stopped abruptly, shaking his head. ‘But as soon as I had recovered, I went back as I had promised. I felt I owed it to Julian.’
Kirchmann went on to describe how he had paid them an unexpected visit, on a day when he knew that Ralph Scott-Neville had an appointment elsewhere, using the pretext that he had left his cigarette case behind.
‘I had been a heavy smoker before my illness,’ he explained apologetically. ‘But when I walked into the library, I was shocked to see that the painting was no longer hanging on the wall.’
‘No,’ Anna said. ‘Oh, no.’
Thomas Kirchmann thumped the table making their glasses ring. ‘Anna, yes, that was exactly my reaction! I had had that one elusive glimpse, very like the mythical unicorn, and now – gone! Then, as I was making my way back from the library, I almost collided with Ralph Scott-Neville’s son, Dominic. He was extremely drunk. He kept repeating that his father was a monster and that he was terrified he was becoming a monster just like him.’
Despite herself, Anna had almost begun to trust this old man’s version of events but now he’d lost her. She shook her head.
‘I’m sorry, Herr Kirchmann, but I knew Dominic—’ Far too well. ‘—and I know that he would never express those kinds of sentiments to anyone, no matter how drunk.’
He gave her a sad smile. ‘I can only assure you that it happened and that Dominic went on to tell me what had happened to him, on the night your family died so tragically.’
Anna felt herself turn cold. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What did he say had happened?’
‘He had to be rushed to hospital,’ Kirchmann said very quietly. ‘He had overdosed on heroin. When I asked him about it, Dominic couldn’t seem to remember if he had done it by accident or if he had genuinely wanted to die.’
Anna felt as if her known world had just gone up in flames. She had never believed Dominic’s story about where he was that night, no matter how many witnesses his father had produced. Though her mind instantly repudiated Herr Kirchmann’s explanation, it made a certain terrible sense. Ralph Scott-Neville would have felt compelled to supply Dominic with a socially acceptable alibi. He would have bullied and bribed, doing everything in his power to conceal the truth, that his son and heir was, in fact, a common junkie.
‘You never suspected?’ Thomas Kirchmann said.
Anna shook her head, not yet trusting herself to speak.
‘I told Dominic I was seeing you today and he said he would very much like to meet you. I’ve arranged to meet him at the Mandarin Oriental later, if you’d like to join us?’
‘I think,’ she started, huskily, then cleared her throat. ‘Yes, I think perhaps I would.’
Anna flashed back to the morning in the park, when she had asked Isadora: ‘Do you ever really know anybody?’ Well, she had obviously not known Dominic at all. As a teenager, she had admired him, desired him even. Then later, she had demonised him, but none of these projections was the real Dominic. She took a breath.
‘Herr Kirchmann, I think you should know what happened to us in Innsbruck. I don’t want to seem like I’m pointing my finger, but apart from close friends, you were the only person I’d told where we were.’
He shook his head, perplexed. ‘Forgive me, Anna, but I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.’
Anna gave him an edited version of their experiences: their conversation with Clara Brunner and her subsequent arrest, in which the unknown man Tansy had seen at their hotel and on their guided tour, appeared to be implicated. When she reached the part about them fleeing on the Orient Express, Herr Kirchmann was open-mouthed.
‘I knew nothing about this,’ he told her, appalled. ‘Did you seriously believe I might be involved?’
Anna spread her hands. ‘Honestly, Herr Kirchmann? We didn’t know!’
‘This is most upsetting,’ he murmured. ‘I must find out what has happened to Frau Brunner. I do not know her personally, but naturally I know of her excellent work.’ He passed his hand over his face. ‘Anna I am going to tell you something else now in strictest confidence. Things have not felt right at Hempels recently. Both Alexei and I are doing our best to get to the root of it. I think what happened to you in Innsbruck may be connected to this same problem. That’s all I can say at present. But you have my word that we will get to the bottom of it somehow. Now will you come with me to meet Dominic? I have my car here today.’
But Anna said she’d meet him there.
She parked a few streets over from the Mandarin Oriental, walked the short distanc
e to the hotel and found her way to the bar. She immediately spotted Dominic talking to Herr Kirchmann and felt a flicker of fear. She wasn’t even sure why she was here. She had nothing whatsoever to say to him.
As if he’d felt her come in, Dominic glanced around and their eyes met across the bar. He smiled, such a painfully uncertain smile that Anna felt a confused rush of shock and pity. If Bonnie was here there was no doubt in Anna’s mind that she would have instantly sniffed out Dominic Scott-Neville as the most defenceless human in the bar.
Was she only noticing his vulnerability now because of what Herr Kirchmann had told her? Or had it always been there and the adolescent Anna had simply been too wrapped up in her own emotions to see? Taking a deep breath, she walked forward to meet him.
FIFTEEN
The sun was setting as Anna drove back up the M40, scrawling streaks and swirls of improbable colours across the sky, heightening her sense that at some point she’d crossed into a parallel world. Four plus hours of intense talk had left her exhausted yet completely wired.
In the dim lights of the strange bar they’d moved on to from the Mandarin Oriental, Dominic’s face had been a silvery blur, his eyes graphite, his voice low and raw with hurt: I’ve done terrible shameful things. Knowing that her face must be similarly leached of all familiarity by the eerie purplish lighting, Anna had felt as if she and Dominic had been exchanged for wiser, yet oddly impersonal, avatars of themselves. Her sense that none of this was quite real, but somehow occurring outside the normal laws of physics, had made the intensity of their encounter easier to bear. Until now …
Anna switched on her car radio, nervously flicking between music stations but could only hear Dominic’s voice, urgent, imploring: But I swear to you, Anna, I would never … She’d seen a sign. She was sure she’d seen a sign. Motorway Services 10 miles. She must have passed it without realising or she’d have surely reached it by now? Dominic’s right hand tightly imprisoning his left wrist as he talked and talked: Terrible shameful things. When he stopped to gulp his mineral water, she saw pressure marks printed on his flesh: Shameful things.
