The Forest Lake Mystery

by The Forest Lake Mystery (retail) (epub)

  Holst stayed silent; he didn’t want to talk now, even though Captain Ankerkrone had touched upon the letter and the diary – in fact upon even more than he had written and more than he had promised to talk about.

  The Captain put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Now we two are on this journey together and your thoughts take only the path you most prefer. When you return, if your thoughts are still following the same path, we will read my diary together and we will talk. When we parted after our time together up there, where you were working so eagerly, I told you that your path would lead you to me and that you would need my help. You can see for yourself that that’s exactly what has happened and you will receive my help. My life has only one goal now and that single goal is also yours, my dear friend. That’s why we two are so ideally suited to work together.”

  Ankerkrone’s gaze glided along the gunwale to where Ulla was standing propped up against a staircase in cheerful conversation with the district magistrate. Holst’s gaze followed the Captain’s and he blushed.

  The steamer docked at the jetty by the Lido. Holst and Ulla walked together along the beach where the bathing was in full swing and hundreds of happy people were rolling around in the sand, laughing and joking, as the sun reflected off the windows of the casino and cast its rays over balconies and galleries.

  Ulla stopped.

  “This isn’t the real Venice for me. For me, Venice is the silent, sighing streets, the dark churches with their treasures and the magnificent paintings in the Doge’s Palace and the Accademia, but most of all, St Mark’s Square. Father loves Venice, where he first met mother, who died when I was quite small. Pictures from Venice have always adorned our walls, and father is always quoting from Goethe’s Venetian Epigrams; he knows them by heart, but he will never really explain them to me and I don’t understand them at all.”

  Holst smiled.

  “Understanding them isn’t always easy either.”

  “But you understand them,” Ulla interrupted eagerly. “You must be able to explain a lot of it to me…” she blushed, “of course not everything – but something of what you understand, which you could…”

  Ulla had once again entered one of those blind alleys out of which she never seemed able to escape.

  “Like this one,” she blurted out quickly.

  “‘Sanct Johannes im Koth heißt eine Kirche; Venedig

  Nenn’ ich mit doppeltem Recht heute Sanct Marcus im Koth.’”10

  Holst smiled.

  “It probably means that Venice is built on marshy, clayey ground.”

  Ulla looked up at him.

  “– clayey ground – yes, but…”

  Holst looked her right in the eye.

  “Miss Ulla. If you want, we can meet up in the afternoon in St Mark’s – then we can perhaps see on what ground St Mark stands.”

  Ulla blushed. “Five o’clock?”

  “Five o’clock.”

  The district magistrate waved to them that their meal was ready. They returned to Venice just after midday.

  XII

  The Patriarch in Venice was saying mass in St Mark’s. He stood in front of the high altar dressed in his gold-braided vestments with the bishop’s mitre on his head and surrounded by a boys’ choir and prelates with crosses and censers. The music swirled down from the organ over the congregation, while the heavy incense spread its scent through the vaulted space. The sunlight shone strongly through the stained-glass windows; the mosaic on the ceiling glimmered with gold and rich colours, while the smoke in the light, pulsating air was yellowish in the light from the candles.

  Devout believers were kneeling on the floor while curious strangers stood and watched. The occasional Catholic bowed in reverence, but the majority – indifferent Englishmen – chatted undisturbed, as if it was a popular theatre piece they were watching.

  The hymns and the sound of the organ swelled more strongly and then a single lovely voice echoed alone through the vault. The boys’ choir joined in, merging with the voice and dying in a wealth of different tones. The music went silent and a dry, old man’s voice read from the book by the high altar, two voices responded, and once again the organ and trombones sounded while the choir weaved the Latin psalms into readings given by alternating voices and interrupted by the strong, full-toned solo.

  The clergy in front of the high altar began moving; they removed the mitre from the bishop’s head and replaced it with one glittering with gold; the boys fasted a shining, golden robe around his shoulders, and constantly switched places around him, handing him a vessel and cloth, gathering around before breaking away once more, while the liturgy resonated incessantly and the incense rose towards the mosaics on the ceiling in the flickering candlelight. Sometimes the psalms were more subdued, sometimes only murmuring faintly, while the believers kneeled on the sharp stones, which with their strange, colourful images formed the floor of the eternal church of St Mark.

  In a corner close to the entrance to the sacristy, from which the priesthood had emerged, stood a young man and a young woman, arm in arm. They weren’t talking to each other, but she was leaning against him, and her head was resting on his shoulder. It was as if their thoughts were being borne by the lovely music to distant realms and the mighty power that lies in the centuries’ old church’s strange traditions was forcing them under its dominion. They didn’t understand the words, but they understood that behind the psalms and hymns, behind the music, was a kingdom that no human eye will ever see but which is there because the human race, in the hundreds of years that have passed, has built this kingdom into its hopes.

  When mankind’s path goes past the threshold of this kingdom – and it happens when serious decisions are made, when sorrow and happiness grasp our souls deepest – the mind bows under this mighty power, and even someone who doubts or denies feels in such a moment the stronger power which he doesn’t understand. But this is felt most deeply if two people stand at each other’s side at the very moment they have linked their hearts to each other so that they swell in the rich hope of love.

  Then it isn’t a theatre piece, even though it seems strange and foreign, even though the devotion of the believers seems simple-minded and the activity of the priests incomprehensible and unfounded. The singing, the smell of incense and the light merge in the space, combining with the vaults in the lovely basilica into a dream that carries the thoughts far away to where happiness must be eternal, as long as happiness exists, and eternity at such a moment is happiness.

  And for these two standing there in their dream, everything was forgotten at this moment, everything else but this one thing: that they were two and happy in a dream that would last forever.

  The mass ended and the prelates left to the blare of the organ on their way to the sacristy. In front of them, the choir boys carried the cross and the censers; the venerable patriarch went past, and when he cast his eyes on the two standing in the nook, he saw two people bending towards each other in a kiss of warm love.

  The patriarch smiled under his mitre, he who would later bear the tiara that adorns pontifex maximus.

  XIII

  When Holst came home that evening, Jeannette received him with melancholic seriousness.

  Jeannette’s infatuation was of a strangely humble nature; she bent herself to her chosen master’s wishes like an Eastern slave woman, fearing his great power and authority. But she was seriously in love and her feeling was genuine enough. She was young, but she had been through a lot and she had gradually become accustomed to humiliation, but also to humility. She hated Sjöström and the fate that had struck him hadn’t taken the edge off her hatred. Holst was not especially well acquainted with women and their feelings, but he understood that Jeannette had become attached to him and that she would follow him like an obedient dog. After what had just happened, it was impossible for him to continue with the little adventure that had taken him unawares.

  It troubled him that he couldn’t offer her even the insignificant c
rumbs she would be happy with, but she was young and healthy, and, particularly in the mood that had now captured him, he was happy for youth and health and for the thousands of little things that a woman in love creates around her loved one. He had deliberately chosen Signora Montuori’s house as his residence in order to be able to find out everything Jeannette knew about Annie, but that was the only reason.

  Jeannette was curious about the people whose guest Holst had been, and he told her who they were and how the trip had gone. He only mentioned Ulla in passing, but Jeannette guessed at a lot from his few words and doubled her tenderness so that he would forget her. It had gone quiet now that night had fallen and it was very warm in the narrow canal streets. Holst couldn’t sleep, so they sat together in a large room facing the canal with the water lapping against the foot of the house and talked for a long time; and strangely enough, what Holst learnt from the young woman in the quiet of the night cast the first really sharp light on the case that was filling his thoughts. Jeannette told him about herself and gradually there grew out of her narrative exactly what Holst had a foreboding of but didn’t dare believe until it lay before him in all its sharp clarity, like cold, hard-headed reality that threatened that to which he was tying the warmest aspirations of his life. Jeannette told him about herself and her childhood:

  “Daddy was an officer of the watch in the Scanian Dragoons based in Ystad. I still remember so clearly the farm at home, where we siblings played, and where Glimmingehus Manor, with its big stone trolls and bare boulder walls not a hundred yards from our playground, reared up out of the green fields. And when the soldiers met up for manoeuvres and exercises, when Daddy’s squadron came riding down the road with the big, shiny brown horses and the trumpets on the massive roans, they often stopped in front of the farm and Mummy came out with us children, and Daddy’s Captain on his grand, black and brown horse rode up in front of the door and was given a soft drink and asked about us and pinched our cheeks. Do you know who that Captain was? It was the father of the young man you saw here yesterday when you arrested Hugold, Captain Ankerkrone. He had a magnificent manor house up near Kristianstad, but his wife was dead. They said her story was a sad one, but I didn’t hear it until later. Daddy told me a lot about it later, after we had come to Paris with the Falkenbergs. Because the year I had my eighth birthday, there was such a huge exhibition in Copenhagen that Daddy and Mummy and my brother, who was twelve, and me went first to Copenhagen and afterwards to Paris with the grand Count of Riddartofte. He was a delightful man, one of the finest old men I’ve ever seen, and he was very charitable too. Hugold’s brother came to serve there as an equerry. The old Count is dead now, but the son is said to be like his father – Tage, that is – because the younger one, Otto, I won’t say anything good about him, not after how badly he treated me later.”

  Jeannette sighed and became lost in thought, but Holst, sitting quietly and listening to her chatter, asked her to tell him more.

  “I remember it so clearly,” she continued, “I must have been twelve to fourteen years old – she came, the one you mentioned, Annie Cederlund, to Daddy for the first time. She was so unhappy, she said. She’d been rich and had important friends, but the last one, an Austrian Count, had suffered a big bankruptcy that everyone was talking about in Paris, and now Annie was ill and she thought she was going to die. She had once had quite a lot of money, but it had all gone on her lavish lifestyle, and she’d been thinking of drowning herself in the Seine – just like me before I met you. I’ve often thought about jumping into the canal here and sinking to the bottom away from all my sorrows. But she had a little child at home in Kristianstad where she had been and wasn’t it strange? It was precisely with Daddy’s old Captain, Ankerkrone, that she had had the child. She loved him so terribly, but he had rejected her, and Daddy often said later that Annie had been responsible for the death of the Captain’s wife.”

  Holst, who had been sitting half in his own thoughts, immediately began to pay attention.

  “If you know anything about that matter, you must tell me everything you know,” he said, giving Jeanette a sharp look.

  Jeannette shook her head.

  “No, I only know what Daddy said, that Ankerkrone had been in love with Annie when she was a young girl up in Småland many years ago, and his wife had been so weak after her last child, a girl, and then it hadn’t gone well for them living together, the Captain and his wife. But she had recovered and it had been better between them until one day she died suddenly. And Annie had caused ill-feeling between her and the Captain, because she could be vengeful, even though she could be so good too. She wasn’t like me. I could never hurt a man I really loved, and Annie loved Arvid Ankerkrone much more than they could write about in any novel.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Holst with a little smile.

  “Because she told me hundreds of times – you should know that Annie was like a mother to me, but that was later, after everything had gone wrong for me. And that’s why I can’t understand that I’ve never heard a word from her since she left me in the spring in Elsinore. I asked Claes Ankerkrone about her yesterday, but he didn’t want to say anything; he went very quiet, and he loved her more than anyone would believe, but she didn’t like him. He wanted to divorce his wife and marry Annie, even though she was much older than him, but she looked young – then suddenly it was all over and it was his father who caused it. I know because I personally had a visit from him that day.”

  Jeannette’s story was jumping around a lot; Holst tried to force it back on an even keel because every word she could tell about this was of paramount importance to him. It was clear to him that this young woman knew better than anyone else what had happened just before the crime was committed in the forest north of Esrum on 27th March, and he wanted to know everything.

  “So you met Annie for the first time in 1894?”

  Jeannette thought about it.

  “It was the summer they assassinated the French President, I remember that clearly – yes, it was in 1894. She lived with us for a whole year and recovered completely. Then she went back home to look after her child, who I suppose was about ten. A couple of years later, Otto Falkenberg came down to his father; he was a kind of attaché, they called him, but there was no goodness in him. I was so proud that he made so much fuss of me. I was good at riding, and we rode together, and he told me so much about everything he was going to do for me, and that’s how it all went wrong. He was the first gentleman I got mixed up with, and he seduced me without me realising how wrong it was. Then Daddy fell ill and died, and on the same day the old Count died. It was a dreadful time because I was going to have a baby and I was very ill and the child died too. But Mummy was grieving so much and my brother, a soldier stationed in Ystad, came down to fetch her. But I didn’t want to go with them so I left with Otto to Germany. Then they wrote to him so much and he met someone else, so he left me, and I was alone in a foreign country with only a little money. I didn’t want to go home because I felt ashamed towards my brother and my mother, and I accepted a job in a circus where I rode a little and also danced in the ballet. It was a difficult time, but then we arrived in Berlin. Yes, that was some time after, it must have been in ’98, and I met Hugold there; he spoke to me in the ring – he’d probably found out that I was Swedish, and then I saw that Annie was with him.

  They were in Berlin, and incidentally were almost penniless, but she was very good to me, and I came to live with them too, and we travelled together because I left the circus. I’ll never forget Annie for that year, she was so very good to me, but they didn’t have any money, and I wanted to have some fun and I knew many gentlemen, but nobody I cared about, because you should know that you’re the first one I’ve really loved, and I did that the moment I saw you. So you must also love me.”

  Jeannette looked up at her protector with questioning, trusting eyes.

  He bent towards her.

  “Of course I’ll be good to you, you poor little
thing.”

  Holst looked at her for a long time, then took hold of both her hands.

  “Jeannette, you’re a good, honest girl, and I trust you. You don’t know how important you can be for me and it’s no coincidence that we two have met each other. You also need to know why I’m here and you’re going to help me with a job which is so difficult that you’ll hardly believe you can manage it, but you’ll see that I trust you. But first I want to tell you that I won’t try to pull the wool over your eyes.”

  Jeannette looked up anxiously.

  “Are you married?”

  “No,” said Holst with a smile.

  “But you have a girlfriend?” she whispered almost silently.

  “Maybe,” replied Holst and Jeannette put both arms around his neck. Holst pushed her gently away.

  “Jeannette,” he said, “I can’t give you my love, because there is someone else I care about.”

  Jeannette gave a start.

  “Someone else – so why did you tell me you loved me?”

  Holst took her hand.

  “Jeannette, you know what I am, don’t you? It was because of Dr Braun that we two got together – at the time I didn’t know everything I know now. Tell me honestly, Jeannette, when you now know that I love someone else, someone whom I have told today that I love her, will you keep being honest with me like you are now?”

  “Is she a fine lady?” asked Jeannette. “One you want to marry?”

  Holst didn’t answer.

  “If that’s the case – if it’s a fine lady you’re in love with and who you want to marry, you can still stay here with me a little while yet, can’t you? You mustn’t leave me. If you do, I’ll drown myself and it’ll be your fault.”

  Jeannette clung to him and tears came to her eyes.