“My dear, I am so glad to meet you,” Dagmar said. “Kurt has written so much about you. Mama, what do you think?”
The Baroness smiled with all the enigma of a cat. “She is beautiful indeed, Dagmar.” Then, to Helen, “I always knew that American cosmeticians were superbly clever. Which company makes your hair dye and what is it called?”
Mouth full of delicious fresh bread roll and butter, Helen blinked, swallowed in a hurry, coughed, almost choked. Oh, hell! she thought. Aristocrats come in two flavors-bitter and sweet. This bunch are so sure of their bloodlines and wealth that they say and do exactly as they like. Bitter? They’d make a lemon feel syrupy by comparison. I am in for a rough ride.
Aloud she said, “I don’t dye my hair, Baroness. It’s my father’s family’s color. My brother has it too.”
The two women exchanged a glance that said they didn’t believe a word of her answer.
“You see,” said Dagmar, nibbling at a roll, “Fahlendorf Farben is contemplating a cosmetics branch, a line to be called
“Lady!” said Helen with a snap. “I’m well versed in Latin
“Helen’s father,” said Kurt, looking bewildered, “is the president of another great university-Chubb.”
“Really? How nice,” said the Baroness.
She, thought Helen, must have a pedigree that makes the von Fahlendorfs look like hayseeds and yokels. I bet Catherine de Medici was an ancestress, right along with Lucrezia Borgia. I am going to have
Josef was opposite Helen, and gave her what was probably his most charming smile. “Breakfast is a hurried meal,” he said, his English more heavily accented than that of his in-laws. “I look forward to a more leisurely conversation at dinner, Helen.”
“No more than I,” she said, trying to simper; Josef looked like a man who would succumb to a simper.
He gave her another smile, got to his feet, bowed, and clicked his heels before leaving.
“Oh, dear, flog the in-laws, eh?” said Helen, crunching her roll. “What a delicious breakfast! Nothing sweet in sight, yet nothing slimming. I love it. Is the sausage bologna?”
“No, kaiserfleisch,” said Kurt, who seemed to think it was his job to keep the peace. “It is more delicate.”
“It’s yummy.” Helen piled some on to another roll, well buttered. “I could get fat on this breakfast, Kurt. Seriously, though, is Josef off to work?”
“We all are,” said Dagmar, a touch of ice in her voice. “Dinner is at eight, but we assemble in the red drawing room for an aperitif at half past seven. Macken will send someone for you, otherwise you might get lost.”
“Good thinking,” said Helen, on her third roll. “Kurt, do go with your sister, please. I’m off for a drive later anyway.”
He smiled at her and hurried after Dagmar’s retreating form.
Not much of a dresser for a rich woman, Helen was thinking as she watched them; her skirt, sweater and coat hadn’t come from Chanel or Balenciaga. In New York, I’d pick her as shopping at Bloomingdale’s, not Bergdorf’s. She wouldn’t bother driving to Boston to do Filene’s basement either.
Macken was pottering around the blue, cream and gilt room when Helen walked in at a quarter of eight.
“What does a German butler do?” she asked as he led her down a long, fussily decorated hall. “My father has a butler at Chubb House, but he’s more a superintendent of staff than anything else. He doesn’t open the front door unless he happens to be passing, for instance, and he doesn’t have a pantry full of silverware. We hire an indigent scholarship student to polish the silver.”
She chattered on, apparently oblivious to Macken’s horror at her familiarity, until, passing into the ballroom, she decided she had softened him up sufficiently.
“Macken,” she said earnestly, her eyes on his seamed face rather than the splendor of a room that would have done credit to any palace, “you must understand that I’m far more your class of person than I am of the von Fahlendorfs. And no, I am not going to marry Kurt, so there’s no indiscretion involved. I’m here because Herr Kurt had a horrible time while he was kidnapped, and he needed company to come home. In other words, I’m everybody’s friend, nobody’s fiancee.”
His eyes were grey and keen; they regarded her with liking and respect. “I understand, Miss Helen.”
“Good! We’re supposed to fly home on Monday, but don’t be surprised if it’s tomorrow-Sunday. Kurt’s unhappy here.”
“Yes. It is Herr Josef. Kurt cannot forgive him for the injuries to his sister.”
“What was Josef’s real name?” she asked, not varying the amount of curiosity in her voice. “Was it aristocratic?”
“No, not at all. His name was Richter,” said Macken.
“Where does he come from? His accent in English is different.”
“I do not know, Miss Helen, but I think East Germany.” He swept his hand around in pride. “Is it not a beautiful room?”
“For a family of five, I think it’s downright hedonistic,” Helen said tartly. “I know the family is very wealthy, Macken, but this place must cost a fortune to keep up.”
The dam wall was broken; the old man loved her, and would have told her almost anything. “Indeed, indeed, Miss Helen! It is killing them, but Graf von Fahlendorf will not hear of selling Evensong-that is its name in English.”
“Pretty soon Swansong, sounds like.”
They left; it was a long trek to the front door.
“Do you miss Kurt?” she asked.
“Yes, and no. His work has always interested him more than the factory or life anywhere, I think.”
“Is the factory actually open on a Saturday?”
“Not the factory itself, but Herr Josef and Miss Dagmar go in to the office. It was a wonderful thing, that you found Kurt before the ransom was paid.”
“Why, particularly?”
“Because it was the Baroness’s money, her dowry for the grandchildren.” He opened one leaf of the front door. “Kurt has left you a map in the car, Miss Helen, with the factory and Evensong marked on it.”
She looked at the high blue sky, the sun bathing the park around this palace in warmth, and smiled. “What a shame to have to slave in an office on a day like this,” she said, laughing.
“Herr Josef does not,” Macken said, insisting on escorting her down the great bank of steps. “He leaves the office at noon to visit his mother.”
“Do you know her?” Helen asked, looking at the black Porsche parked exactly where the door would coincide with her knees as she came off the bottom step. Trust Kurt! Control was his middle name.
And there she was, free in tons of time to get used to the Porsche’s quirks, even time to get lost. But driving in Munich wasn’t difficult the way driving in Great Britain had been, with traffic on the wrong side of the road. Germans drove on the correct side, the right. That was the Brits, though: island mentality.
Traffic was light compared to New York City, lighter even than Holloman; clearly not every Bavarian owned a car as yet, or maybe there were fewer two-car families? She cruised around contentedly, taking in the sights, but by half after eleven she was parked outside Fahlendorf Farben at the entrance she had decided looked like the one to the offices.
If Josef came out, she had a good chance of catching him here. What chewed at her was that if he didn’t use this entrance, she’d lost her only chance to investigate Josef as an entity divorced from the von Fahlendorfs. However, her instincts said that he was the kind who detested seeming soiled or working class; if her reading was correct, then she would succeed. At first the showy Porsche had worried her, but after a couple of hours in the city, she had seen enough Porsches on the roads to believe Josef wouldn’t notice her, parked far down the block and behind a cheap Ford. Come on, Josef, prove me right!.
At noon precisely he came through the imposing glass doors and strode across the wide thoroughfare to a dark red Mercedes she hadn’t noticed until that moment. It must have just pulled up. Dark red… She couldn’t really see,
