Erik fell into Kjosfossen.”
Her voice was flat and after the last words, it was hard to know what to say. As Pix squeezed the girl’s hand hard, Kari began again.
“We all stood absolutely still. Then Carl said, ‘Oh shit! Look what you did! to me and he ran toward the train. I
started to follow, but Sven grabbed me. The next thing I knew, I was on the farm. I don’t know how he got me from the train tracks there, but Carl must have called Sven’s wife from Flam. My head had a lump, so I know he hit me.”
“Carl made another call, too.” Pix told her about the message the stationmaster at Voss had received that they were eloping and Carl’s telephone conversation with her grandmother later that night at the hotel in Bergen.
Kari stood up and paced rapidly up and down. She was incensed.
“How could anyone have believed, that! The whole time I’ve been wondering how Carl could have covered up our disappearance, but this idea never occurred to me.”
“Because, my dear, you don’t have a criminal mind.” Pix was angry, too. The man was a monster. “But,” she reminded Kari, “your grandmother didn’t believe it. She knows you.”
“The police must have, then. What has been going on?”
Pix told her as delicately as possible the theories in various papers, reassuring her that it was already old news. Kari paced even more furiously.
“They think I killed Erik! And ran off someplace! How could I? My knapsack with all my money was on the train still, under my seat.”
Pix told her the bad news. “I’m afraid Carl and Sven thought of that. The knapsacks were left where they were and ended up in the lost luggage back in Oslo, but yours was missing your wallet and passport.”
“So, I’m guilty.” Kari sat down, then jumped up again. “If I ever see Carl again, I will kill him!”
Pix needed to get something cleared up. “Why did you and Erik have your passports?”
“Erik told me to bring mine, that you never knew when you might need it.”
Shades of Faith Fairchild, Pix thought. Oh Faith, where are you when I need you now!
“I think he may have been planning to surprise me with a trip at the end of the summer, after our jobs ended. Maybe to Greece or someplace like that.”
Greece. Sunny places. Olive groves. Pix thought of the picture of Kari’s parents. She hadn’t told Kari about the newspapers dredging up the circumstances of her mother’s death. She also didn’t think it was the time and place to talk about Hanna’s origins. She did want to know about Sven, though.
“Kari, did Sven look familiar to you? Is it possible that you knew him before? He threatened you, but he brought you here, and you mentioned they were giving you food. He hasn’t harmed you. Maybe because he knew you?”
“Why do you ask? It’s true he said he would kill us, but that is very different from doing it. I saw his face when Erik went into the water, and he was horrified. Why kill me? Murder is very serious, very different from what he’s doing with Carl. Just before they pick up the Viking silver, they will probably bring food and water here. Enough until some hikers find us. Or maybe they’ll drug us again and leave the door unlocked. I’ve thought about it a lot. There’s not much else to do here.”
Pix decided to leave the matter at that for now. Yet Kari was being rather naive. With that much money at stake, Pix was sure the leap from one crime to another would not be a big one.
“I don’t think we can depend on their good natures. At the least, it would be just as easy to leave us here. I hope you’re right and they will come one more time to appease their consciences, if they have any. Then we can be ready for them. And now we have to flunk of a plan.”
Pix always felt better when she thought she knew what she was doing.
The day had gone by very slowly, despite the tour of Balestrand and other diversions offered by the hotel and Scandie Sights. By dinner, tempers were short and the various tour members were either sitting by themselves or in small isolated family groups. Inspector Marcussen looked at the tables as he filled his plate with
After dinner, he would tell them they were free to go in the morning. He couldn’t legitimately keep them here any longer, although he was sure that both the answer to Oscar Melling’s death and Mrs. Miller’s disappearance was known to someone in this room. If he could, he’d keep them in this pleasant jail until that person broke and confessed. But it was impossible. Sidney Harding had besieged his embassy with calls and several other tour members had made a single protest. Marcussen was officially ordered to let them go. Also, the hotel needed the rooms. It had been a minor miracle that they had all been able to stay put for even this long. He sighed. Could he be wrong? Jansen was convinced that Oscar Melling’s death had been an accident and the injury to his back somehow obtained in the fall. And Mrs. Miller? Had she given in to a sudden impulse and wandered off? His wife had once described a sensation she got at times, that she could just keep driving and not return—cross the border and eventually be in Venice. He had been shocked, then amused. Now that the children were grown and out of the house, he hadn’t heard any more about it and they had gone to Venice together last fall. He tried to remember how old Mrs. Miller’s children were. Some still home, but no one at that demanding toddler stage. Carl Bjornson, one of the guides, had privately confided that he and the other guide had thought Mrs. Miller troubled since her arrival— often agitated and given to long, lonely walks at odd hours. Carl was sure she would turn up, an amnesia victim or some other such thing.
But her mother and Fru Hansen were convinced that someone had done something to her. They were seated at a table, their food in front of them, but eating nothing, deep in conversation. He knew they believed that Kari Hansen’s and Pix Miller’s disappearances were connected—Oscar Melling’s death, too. He considered his food. The meatballs were so good, he thought he might be able to eat some more. The mother’s theory was all very far- fetched. After a meal like this, he was inclined to agree with Jansen that the women had been watching too much American television. Marcussen was opposed to television and worried that his future grandchildren wouldn’t be counted in Norway’s 100 percent literacy rate if things continued the way they were going with all these new channels. Mrs. Rowe and Fru Hansen were leaving the dining room and stopped to speak with him.
“I hope you are enjoying your meal,
“Everyone will be free to leave the hotel in the morning. I intend to announce it after dinner,” he told them abruptly. “I’m sorry,” he added, and put his fork down, leaving the rest of his helping untouched.
“We imagined that you couldn’t detain people for too much longer,” Ursula said sympathetically. “Of course, Fru Hansen and I intend to remain until my daughter is found.”
They said good night and left the room. Another group was coming in. Marcussen looked after the two women, handbags on arms, straight spines, no ladders in their hose. They could be here for a long time, he thought dismally, and decided to forgo dessert.
Myrtle “Pix” Miller had never been more awake and alert in her life. She could hear Kari’s regular breathing from across the room. They were taking the watch in turn. Kari had shown Pix the small chink she had found between the boulders, which had been wedged tightly together during the original construction and made more impenetrable, settling into the ground over the years. They had not taken her watch, so looking at a tiny patch of sky, she’d charted the passage of time, painfully aware of how slowly it was moving.
“After Midsummer Eve, after the children are out of school, I’m sure there will be people on walking trips, but now even if we could make enough noise to be heard through these walls, there’s a very slim chance that anyone would be near enough to hear us,” she’d told Pix. Midsummer Eve, Pix thought dismally, was still a week away. She willed the door to open, willed them to make one last food drop, avoiding the possibility of more blood on their hands. Blood—it made her think of the swastika at Stalheim. Carl had seemed genuinely surprised at her assumption that he had killed Oscar. If Oscar had figured out what Carl was up to, he would have been more likely to offer him a North American outlet than blackmail him, Pix now thought. Yet if not Carl, then who killed the old man—and who was the graffiti artist?
