The Silver Castle

by Nancy Buckingham

  “Oh, it’s clever, of course ... no one would deny that. But cleverness isn’t art. Besides, the whole idea is immoral.”

  “Not if there was never any intention to deceive. The plan was purely to bring credit to your father, not to put the paintings on the market as genuine.”

  “I should hope not.” I challenged Anton with a look. “I presume what you’re trying to work around to is that these paintings were kept in the turret room, and that they’ve all been destroyed in the fire?”

  I saw relief in his eyes. “I must say you’re taking it very calmly. I’d been anticipating ...”

  “What had you been anticipating? That I’d rant and rage because those paintings would have put money in my pocket?” My voice grated with bitterness. “That was what you thought right at the start, wasn’t it ... that I’d come rushing out to Switzerland for the pickings? And you’ve never really altered your opinion, have you?”

  “Gail, you’re not being fair.”

  “Have you been fair to me, any of you? You can’t even pretend—as you did about my father’s death, and about Willi being my half-brother—that you concealed these other paintings from me to spare my feelings. From what you say, Sigrid was proud of them, not ashamed. So hadn’t you better start telling me why I was kept in ignorance?”

  His grey eyes reproached me. “I’m trying to, but it isn’t easy. You see, not all of them were destroyed in the fire. There is one painting still in existence, in America. It’s a landscape done in the style of a Victorian painter named George Frederic Watts.”

  “In America? How did it get there?”

  “It was sold ... sold as a genuine Watts.”

  A coldness shivered up my spine. “But you told me that my father never had any intention of passing them off as genuine.”

  “That’s quite true. It was nothing to do with Benedict. He was very angry and upset when he heard what had happened.”

  “Then who did sell it?”

  He hung back a moment. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, but I can’t avoid it, not any longer. It was Raimund.”

  “Raimund? But... but how did he come into it?”

  Anton ran one finger along his eyebrow in a weary gesture.

  “Look, why don’t you sit down, Gail?”

  “I prefer to stand.”

  He didn’t argue. “Before explaining about Raimund, let me tell you how I came into things. When I was in New York recently I happened to run into a man I’d met once or twice before at the house of a mutual friend, a business contact of ours over there. He’s an art dealer, and he mentioned casually that he was sorry he’d not been able to help my brother get back the George Frederic Watts. It emerged that when Raimund was in the States a few weeks earlier he’d taken a painting to this dealer for appraisal. Raimund’s story was that he’d inherited it from an aunt, and he wanted to know whether it was genuine and what it might be worth. The dealer not only verified the painting as the work of Watts, but made a handsome offer for it. Raimund accepted, and the deal was clinched. Then a few days after my brother returned home, the dealer had an urgent phone call from him wanting to buy the painting back ... but he explained that it had already been resold.”

  “What did your dealer friend say when you told him that the painting was an imitation?”

  “I didn’t tell him, because I didn’t know it at the time. I was completely mystified. My only thought was to get back here so I could ask Raimund what the devil was going on.”

  “That’s why you returned home in such a hurry, then?”

  “Exactly. And if you remember, Raimund was out with you all that day. But I managed to get the truth out of Sigrid.”

  I gasped. “So Frau Kreuder knew about the deception, too?’

  “She did by then. Raimund had been forced to tell her what he’d done. You see, towards the end of last year Sigrid had decided that the time was ripe to hold the exhibition, but by now your father was getting cold feet. Perhaps he’d known all along that it was a nonsensical idea. Anyhow, he confided his fears to Raimund—who’d been let into the secret—and my brother came up with a suggestion. He would take one of the paintings with him when he went to America and try it out on an art dealer he knew there. See if this man was fooled into thinking it genuine, and ...”

  “You just said that my father was very angry when he found out,” I interrupted. “Now you’re trying to tell me he was a party to it all along.”

  “Not to the sale, Gail ... that’s the whole point. Raimund has a somewhat odd sense of morality. It’s his argument that he never made any claim about the painting being genuine, and the offer the dealer made for it was based on his personal judgement as an expert. So what was wrong in accepting his money? He thought Benedict would be delighted and that they could split the proceeds. But instead your father flew into a rage, insisting that it was nothing less than fraud, and that Raimund must get the painting back at once.”

  I felt a faint glow steal through the chill in my veins. “You told me once that the most important thing in my father’s life was his integrity as an artist ... that he had his own code of honesty. I suppose this is what you meant?”

  Anton nodded.

  “And Frau Kreuder, where did she come in?”

  “Raimund had to go to his mother for help with money, since the dealer would obviously expect a profit on the transaction. At once Sigrid instructed Ernst to realise some of her securities so as to have the cash ready to hand. But when Raimund phoned the dealer to ask his price, he was told that the painting had been resold.”

  “And they just left things like that?”

  “They didn’t know what to do. Your father, I’m told, was in a terrible state and kept insisting that it must be retrieved whatever the cost. It accounts for that extraordinary telephone call I had from him, and his subsequent suicide. He simply couldn’t face things. Nobody could have guessed, of course, that his feelings would carry him to such a tragic extreme, but unfortunately that’s what happened. So you will understand, Gail, how responsible we Kreuders feel about your father’s death.”

  I found myself nodding in unhappy agreement. Anton’s reasoning sounded so logical—until I paused to think. How much dare I believe of this long story he’d told me? How much was pure invention to help sustain the theory of suicide? I could always check with Raimund, of course ... would check with Raimund.

  Disbelief must have shown in my eyes as I said, “And your wife’s death—how do you explain that?”

  He gave a long, deep sigh. “How can I explain what I do not understand myself? I can only suggest that Benedict couldn’t bear to die alone. That he needed a companion to help him face oblivion.”

  “Are you seriously telling me you believe that?”

  He remained silent, watching my face. There was an aura of defeat about him, and I had to crush down feelings of pity that threatened to undermine my powers of judgement.

  A tap on the door startled us both. Raimund came in, looking nervous and apprehensive.

  “What do you want?” Anton demanded. “I told you to keep out of the way while I talked to Gail.”

  “I know you did. But it seemed unfair to leave it all to you.” Raimund threw an apologetic glance in my direction, not quite meeting my eyes. I’m sorry, Gail ... about this whole ghastly mess. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Anton has said most of it already.” My voice was surprisingly firm, betraying nothing of the riot in my mind. “He has virtually accused you of killing my father.”

  I heard Anton’s quick protest, and Raimund said incredulously, “But he wouldn’t ...”

  “According to Anton,” I cut across them both, “you are to blame. If you hadn’t sold that painting in America, my father would not have died.”

  I waited for Raimund’s fierce denial, waited for the new slant that his version would put on things. But nothing came, and a deep flush coloured his face.

  Anton addressed him as harshly as I had done. “For God
’s sake why didn’t you leave the explaining to me?”

  “It was Mama,” Raimund muttered. “She said that perhaps you needed some help.”

  “I might have known. Please leave and tell her I’m quite capable of managing on my own.”

  “No, let him stay,” I objected. “The story isn’t finished yet, Raimund. I’ve still to learn why I was kept in ignorance about those paintings in the turret. Was I ever to be told about them?”

  “Oh yes. We were just waiting until Anton could get that picture back from America.”

  “Get it back? But how?”

  Anton cut in grimly, “By paying more than four times the sum he originally sold it for. But it had to be done. You see, after Benedict’s death, Raimund and Sigrid agreed that it would be safest to say nothing to anyone and hope the deception was never discovered. And Ernst backed them up in this. I think that as a lawyer he was very much at fault, but he argued that short of either bankrupting themselves or admitting the truth there was nothing else they could do. If it hadn’t been for that chance remark by the dealer in New York, I’d never have heard anything about it.”

  “But when you did,” I finished for him, “you came rushing back home and had a serious family row. I knew that somehow or other I was involved, though I couldn’t begin to understand what it was all about. And afterwards—despite your earlier hostility towards me—you were suddenly very anxious that I should stay on and not go back to London. Your stepmother and Raimund, too ... they were both insistent that I shouldn’t return home. I still don’t see why.”

  “As Benedict’s next-of-kin those paintings were your property. I decided that you must be persuaded to remain with us until we’d got the matter sorted out and it was safe to tell you about them.”

  “I don’t follow. What difference would it have made if I’d gone home?”

  “Suppose something went wrong and the truth came out? We would have been in deeper trouble than ever, for defrauding you. I doubt if we’d ever have convinced you or anyone else that we had every intention of handing those paintings over.”

  “I see.”

  It was as if Anton had caught a note of disappointment in those two words. “That wasn’t the only reason, Gail. None of us wanted you to leave. Sigrid had become very fond of you.”

  “So?” I said, and my voice was frayed with fatigue. “Tell me the rest.”

  “I set about buying back the painting through a friend of mine in New York. The new owner turned out to be a millionaire collector of nineteenth-century works of art, and he wasn’t anxious to part with what he believed was a nice example of a George Frederic Watts landscape, which I gather are few and far between.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Naturally the whole business had to be handled with the utmost discretion. If my friend had looked too keen, it would have aroused suspicion. But I had a phone call from him the other evening to say that the deal was finalised ... for what amounted to nearly two hundred thousand Swiss francs. I saw my lawyer yesterday morning and arranged for the transfer of money, so the painting should arrive any time now.”

  I let a moment of silence go by. “And your plan was to put it with the others in the turret room, then hand the whole lot over to me?”

  “Yes. That was our intention.”

  “How would you have explained the delay in telling me about them?”

  “We’d have thought of something,” Anton said through tight lips. “Given you part of the truth, perhaps.”

  Part of the truth was all I was being given now. Maybe Raimund and Sigrid genuinely believed that my father had been driven to the point of desperation and taken his own life as a result. But then they didn’t know what I knew ... arising from my shattering realisation that Willi’s death had been no accident.

  My eyes on the space between the two men, I said slowly, “I don’t understand why you are telling me all this now that the paintings have been destroyed. You could have produced the fake Watts when it arrives, with some cooked-up story about it having been overlooked, and never mention the rest of the counterfeits.”

  “That is what Mama and I suggested.” Raimund’s tone implied that he thought the suggestion quite creditable. “After all, you would have been happier not knowing, Gail. But Anton wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted you must be told.”

  A startling new thought was stirring in my mind, prompted by a flicker of memory. I had wakened in the night, disturbed by some stealthy sound ... a bump on the floor somewhere above me. Someone had been moving about upstairs. So were those paintings of my father’s really destroyed? Or had they been removed and hidden elsewhere—and the fire started afterwards to conceal the theft?

  But the reason? I had to think of a reason.

  An answer came to me swiftly. If one fake painting could be sold so easily and lucratively, why not the rest? Placed with care and discretion, a fortune was there to be made.

  A fortune for whom?

  The two men remained silent, doubtless trying to gauge what I was thinking. I let them wait, while I sought to frame questions that would show I wasn’t entirely satisfied yet wouldn’t at the same time betray my suspicions. But before I was ready to speak there was another tap on the door, and Sigrid entered in her wheelchair. She was very pale, her face strained to near exhaustion.

  “You don’t mind, Anton?” she began apologetically. “I just couldn’t stay in my room any longer. I had to know how poor Gail has been taking what you were telling her.”

  All three of them were looking at me expectantly. A fortune, I wondered again, for whom? For Anton ... a man who already controlled a large fortune, but who had proved himself to be ruthless and capable of any iniquity? For Raimund, who always had to look to his half-brother for money ... perhaps he had been tempted. What he had done once, he might have argued, he could do again and again. Or Sigrid? Though crippled herself, it might have been her and her son acting together. Or Sigrid could have used Karl and Ursula as her accomplices ... Karl and Ursula, those loyal servants who had free access to the turret.

  The only thing I felt with any certainty was that the three Kreuders had not been acting in unison. If this had been the case there would have been no fire ... and I would never have been told about the existence of the paintings.

  Who was the culprit? Anton, my enemy already? Or one or both of the other two? I had to think of some means of uncovering the truth.

  I gave a heavy sigh, and it wasn’t difficult to let my voice tremble with uncertainty.

  “This has all been rather bewildering,” I said. “So if you don’t mind I think I’ll go to my room for a while.”

  At the door I turned and saw them all watching me, regarding me with deep concern. But was a single one of them expressing genuine emotion, I wondered, or were they each of them my enemy?

  Chapter Seventeen

  I visited Willi’s grave to lay fresh flowers there. Someone had been before me—his aunt, I guessed—and I placed my little bunch of wild primroses, newly gathered from a woodland corner of the Schloss’s garden, beside the jar of white narcissi.

  I felt closer to Willi at the chalet, though, and afterwards I started up the track that led there. Reaching the little clearing I paused to glance into the shadows of the conifer wood where the tiger-cub cat lay buried. I was grateful that Willi had been spared Josef’s final brutality, the vicious destruction of his pet.

  I turned and gazed down at the lake. On this day of fitful sunshine the water was dappled with a restless pattern of light and shade, and the farther shore was almost hidden in a fine misting of spring rain.

  Below me, standing at the water’s edge, I saw the Schloss Rietswil as I had seen it that first day, seeming to float weightlessly, a silver fairy castle. Yet those stone walls were solid enough. And concealed somewhere in the honeycomb of rooms was a secret collection of counterfeit oil paintings. But how, with my inadequate grasp of the Schloss’s intricate layout, with no knowledge of the myriad nooks and crannies, c
ould I ever hope to find the hiding place?

  Thoughtfully, I studied the smoke-blackened turret with its gaping eye sockets of glassless windows. From there my gaze travelled to the square bell tower across the courtyard, while my mind travelled back to the night of the fire, to those heavy footsteps that had disturbed my shallow sleep. Listening breathlessly as the minutes passed, I’d finally heard another sound, from far off, faintly, a long-drawn-out screech. It could have been the protest of rusty hinges, I thought, remembering suddenly the door that had screeched when Raimund took me to the bell tower. Could that be the hiding place? Were the paintings secreted somewhere in one of its cell-like chambers?

  As the hours of that day dragged slowly by, what had first entered my mind as a tiny seed of possibility grew into utter conviction. The paintings must surely be hidden in the bell tower. Where else would be safer, less likely to be stumbled upon accidentally by one of the servants? But how was I ever to find an opportunity to search the bell tower without fear of discovery?

  Night came and I tried to sleep, but with small success.

  The following morning when I went to see Sigrid in her sitting room, she told me she had just been speaking to Helga on the phone, and that we had all been invited to the house at Wollishofen for dinner.

  “You will come with us, Gail, won’t you?” she asked diffidently. “You haven’t planned to do anything else this evening?”

  Since Anton’s revelation to me three days ago, we had been living in an atmosphere of strain and tension. The Kreuders had been on their guard with me, cautious of every word they said in case it might spark an eruption. Anton in particular, I noticed. I was aware of him watching me with those sombre grey eyes that always held an unvoiced question.

  We were waiting, of course, for the arrival of the painting from America, the fake George Frederic Watts landscape. And when it came, what would happen then? I believe that none of us knew the answer. We were just waiting, trying to get through the days somehow.