before I had taken more than a few steps, Gus said seriously, ‘Victoria, there is tragic news. Be brave, my child. It was so good of him to come the long distance to share your grief and give you the comfort of a friend and kinsman.’
Heaven knows I have plenty of hostages to Fortune, starting with my parents and proceeding through a long line of friends and relatives; but it never occurred to me for an instant that there had been a genuine tragedy. After a moment’s pause I went into the room. And there he was, the bastard, perfectly at ease, immaculately tailored, the one, the original, restored by the miracles of modern cosmeticians to his Anglo-Saxon fairness.
In a voice choked with emotion I quoted from the sagas. ‘Blonde was his hair and bright his cheek; Grim as a snake’s were his glowing eyes . . .’
‘I hate to be the one to tell you, Vicky,’ John interrupted. ‘Aunt Ingeborg is – is – ’
‘Dead,’ I agreed. ‘You know, for some strange reason I’m not surprised to hear it.’
John swept me into a brotherly embrace. He looks so willowy and aristocratic, I keep forgetting how strong he is. One arm squashed my ribs and cut off my breath, the other hand pressed my face into his shoulder. As I squirmed, unable to utter a word, he said to Gus, ‘A glass of brandy, perhaps? The shock, you know.’
Gus clucked sympathetically and hurried out. Freeing my mouth, I mumbled an obscenity into John’s tweed shoulder. He kept his hand firmly on my head.
‘I told you I’d look after Gus,’ he murmured. ‘Why the devil didn’t you do as I asked?’
I said, ‘Let go of me.’
The pressure on my neck subsided so that I was able to move my head. John promptly kissed me, with considerably more skill than he had displayed the night before.
‘Nice,’ he said, as I sputtered. ‘You really have the most – ’
‘What have you told Gus?’
‘Nothing. I thought I’d leave that to you. You can be so much more persuasive.’
‘I’m telling the truth.’
‘You don’t know the truth. I don’t doubt that your educated guesses are reasonably accurate, but we ought to discuss the situation before deciding what to say. If you give me your word not to accuse me – ’
‘Why should I let you off the hook?’
‘I’ve no intention of being keelhauled over this deal,’ John said, with a glint in his eye that told me he meant every word. ‘If you cooperate, I can be of considerable assistance. If you won’t – ’
Before he could complete the threat, I heard Gus’s footsteps approaching. Another pair of feet accompanied his, in a quick pitter-patter. They belonged to a stout old lady carrying a tray with glasses and decanter.
I wrenched myself away from John. ‘I’m fully recovered, thank you,’ I said.
‘You are very courageous,’ said Gus, viewing my flushed face and dishevelled hair with the respect such signs of grief deserved.
‘She had a good life,’ I said. ‘Ninety-six years old and not a tooth missing.’
John showed signs of breaking down – or up – at that point, so brandy was administered all around and everybody cheered up. Gus introduced his housekeeper, Mrs Anderson, who displayed a mouthful of artificial teeth as impressive as Aunt Ingeborg’s and made me welcome in a mixture of Swedish and English. For the next few minutes she ran in and out with trays and plates and little doilies to put under the plates and little tables to put under the plates and doilies.
John won the housekeeper’s heart by devouring her canapes and paying her extravagant compliments that made her giggle and blush. I couldn’t eat. I was too choked with rage.
John must have left Stockholm early that morrung. I wasn’t impressed or touched by his apparent fidelity to his promise. I felt sure that protecting Gus wasn’t his only purpose in coming.
By catching me off guard, he had won the first round. I should have yelled for the police instead of appearing to accept him; now any accusations I might make would be weakened. Most galling of all was my suspicion that by hook or crook, by gosh and by golly, he had somehow manoeuvered me into the precise position he had meant me to occupy from the first. If my analysis of the situation was coreect, there was only one way out of the dilemma John had gotten us into, and that was to do what he always intended to do – dig up the field and find whatever might be there before illicit investigators could get to it.
His supposedly casual comments supported this conclusion. The conversation had turned to the house and its architectural features, its fine antique furnishings and decor. John babbled fluently about Dalarna baroque and eighteenth-century design. Gus looked impressed.
‘You are a student of art, Mr Smythe?’
‘That’s one word for it,’ I said.
‘Archaeology is my specialty,’ John said. ‘I couldn’t help noticing the earthworks behind the house, Mr Jonsson. They resemble the remains of hill forts found in other parts of Sweden. Have you ever thought of excavating?’
‘There are ancient remains there,’ Gus said. ‘My grandfather made a hobby of agriculture; wishing to try a new variety of grass, he ordered the upper pasture to be ploughed, and one of the workmen turned up some sort of cup. Grandfather presented it to a museum in Stockholm.’
‘Of course,’ John exclaimed, his eyes wide. ‘The Karlsholm chalice. I know it well.’
‘I am told it is a fine piece,’ Gus said indifferently.
‘It is magnificent. Sir – haven’t you ever wondered whether there might not be other antiquities buried there?’
‘If they are there, they will remain there,’ Gus said. ‘I won’t have archaeologists tramping over my island desecrating the graves of my ancestors.’
John gave me a meaningful glance, meaning, ‘You see what I was up against?’ I snorted. Gus asked if I had taken cold.
Shortly after we moved into the dining room, for a wholly unnecessary meal, it began to rain. Water streamed down the windowpanes like something out of a celestial fire hose. Glancing at the impressive display, John said, ‘I’m most grateful for your invitation to stay the night, sir. I’d hate to drive those roads in this sort of weather.’
‘Yes, we have very violent storms,’ Gus said proudly. ‘In winter I am often cut off for days at a time. I have my own generator for electricity, but always when it rains the telephone does not function.’
I did not need John’s sidelong smirk to tell me that the weather had put another spoke in my wheel. There would be no telephone call to the police tonight. I hadn’t expected I would get that far in one evening; older people are hard to convert to a new point of view, especially as one as hard to swallow as the tale I meant to tell. I’d have a better chance of persuading Gus of the danger with John to back me up; that expert and congenital liar undoubtedly had concocted a modified version of the facts that would convince Saint Peter, while leaving ‘Sir’ John in line for a halo.
As soon as he decently could, Gus turned the conversation to genealogy He seemed puzzled by John’s and my relationship.
‘Distant cousins,’ John said airily, when the question was put. ‘Vicky’s grandmother’s sister was my grandfather’s brother’s second wife.’
Even the expert genealogist was baffled by that one.
After dinner we went to Gus’s study, a room the size of a football field, lined with bookcases and equipped with comfortable chairs. Tables and desks were covered with papers – Gus’s genealogical materials. His eyes alight, his face beaming, Gus outlined the history of ‘our’ family back to the creation of the world. It was rather interesting, or it would have been if I had not had other things on my mind. At any rate, Gus enjoyed himself. He might be a recluse but he was also a fanatic, and every fanatic loves an audience.
He kept thinking of things he wanted to show us – a faded satin slipper that had belonged to a lady-in-waiting of Queen Christina, the sword an ancestor had carried at Narva. After watching him hoist himself painfully out of his chair a time or two, John offered his services; Gus kept him running back and forth to fetch more souvenirs, which were tucked away in cupboards under the bookcases. While John was scrounging in one such cupboard at the far end of the room looking for the birth certificate of a seventeenth-century Jonsson, Gus turned to me.
‘Mr Smythe,’ he whispered. ‘He is not – are you perhaps – your relationship is . . .’
‘We’re just friends.’ I gagged on the word, but Gus didn’t notice. He looked relieved.
‘I am so glad. He is a very pleasant young man. I have no prejudice, believe me; but there is something – I cannot say what. . .’
