“I’m sorry for what I said about your mother.” At least I had run out of breath before I started calling her names. Jen and I would never be best friends, and in my not so humble opinion she was too possessive about her baby boy, but rudeness is rudeness, even when it’s true.
John shrugged. “She’s the reason I haven’t been in touch recently. No, it’s not what you think; I had to pop down to Cornwall and deal with a little emergency there. Someone broke into the house.”
“How terrible,” I exclaimed, with only a moderate amount of hypocrisy. I pitied the burglar who ran into Jen unless he was armed to the teeth.
“She wasn’t hurt, or even frightened. You know her.”
“Oh, yes.”
“She wasn’t aware a break-in had occurred until she took it into her head to do a spot of housecleaning, and ventured into the attic.”
My first, and thus far last, visit to the family homestead had been a well-meaning attempt on John’s part to get his mother used to me, or at least the idea of me. John had once told me: “You wouldn’t like her. She wouldn’t like you either.” But when I first met Jen, on what could be called neutral territory, I had found her mildly amusing and perfectly pleasant.
That was before she found out who I was—or rather, what I was, in relation to John.
When he suggested we spend a few days in Cornwall, giving Jen a chance to know me better, I thought, what the hell, why not give it a try? I did try, I really did. I even bought a dress. It was an inoffensive shade of green with a demure neckline and a skirt that reached to mid-calf. I put pink polish on my nails and bought a matching lipstick. I had my hair done. I looked, as John was unwise enough to remark, like an ingenue in a forties musical.
Bear in mind, if you please, that I didn’t regard Jen as a threat. I had realized early on that John’s feelings about his mother were a mixture of exasperation and tolerant affection. He’d go his own sweet way no matter what she said or thought. What I hadn’t realized was that Jen refused to accept that.
They say Americans are suckers for antiquity. I suppose we are; we don’t have many houses that are over three hundred years old. This one had all the right stuff—gateposts with shapeless heraldic beasts on top, heavy wrought-iron gates, a winding drive overhung by gloomy trees, a circular carriage drive. The house itself was like a caricature of a Gothic novel’s cover: the original, rather elegant stone facade, now smeared with lichen and thick with ivy, had inappropriate towers on either end and, of all things, crenellations. I wondered somewhat hysterically if there was an Ornamental Hermit lurking in the grounds.
It had been raining and drizzling all day; clouds hung low and dark over the house and fog twined around the towers. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Jen had ordered up the weather. The front door opened as we approached and there she stood, like the evil housekeeper in one of those novels: robed all in black, leaning on a black, silver-headed cane. I felt pretty sure the cane was a prop; she had been brisk as a cricket during that Egyptian cruise, and there hadn’t been a single long black robe in her wardrobe.
We had tea in the Small Drawing Room (you could hear the capital letters when Jen pronounced the words). I had expected it to be served by an Aged Retainer (sorry about the capitals, they are contagious). I guess Jen couldn’t rake one up, but the maid wore an apron and a ruffly white cap pinned on top of her head. John sat there looking bland while Jen and I made conversation. I was so afraid of saying the wrong thing I let her do most of the talking. It was all about the distinguished family tree and general worth of the Tregarth family. She summed it up by remarking, “There has never been a dishonest or dishonorable Tregarth.” I choked on my iced biscuit.
After tea Jen showed me round the entire place, making sure I realized that this wasn’t just a house, it was the Family Mansion, reeking with the sort of history and tradition a Colonial from the American corn belt could never appreciate. I knew what she was doing, and I didn’t appreciate it much, but as we paced along corridor after corridor and climbed stair after endless stair, my mounting annoyance had another cause. The place was an anachronism, a gigantic white elephant. I wouldn’t be in the business I’m in if I didn’t appreciate historical values, but one has to draw the line somewhere; in some cases the old has to make way for the new. This place was quaint but not unique, picturesque but useless for any practical purpose. It was costing John a small fortune to keep it from falling down around Jen’s ears. He had once remarked in a rare moment of pique that he’d have torn the house down and sold the land if it had not been for Jen.
“The storerooms are in the attic, if you remember,” John went on. “She got something of a shock when she saw what had been done—every box and chest opened, the contents strewn around. She rang up the local constable and got him out to inspect the wreckage. After she’d ranted at him for a while, he informed her there wasn’t much he could do. As far as she could tell nothing was missing—certainly nothing of any value, since nothing of value had been there. We don’t keep the family jewels in the attic.”
“I didn’t know you had any family jewels.”
“A metaphorical statement,” John said, looking shifty. “The point is that there was nothing worth stealing. And no useful clues. She couldn’t even be sure when the break-in occurred.”
“Still,” I said, getting interested, “it’s frightening to find out that you are vulnerable to any casual intruder. How did the non-thief get in?”
“My dear girl, you’ve seen the place; there are twenty doors and a hundred windows on the ground floor alone, and three separate sets of staircases. She’s a sound sleeper and her room is at the front of the house.”
“Doesn’t that suggest that the intruder knew the layout of the house? He wouldn’t go tramping past the door of her room.”
“Don’t get carried away, Sherlock. One can’t arrive at any sensible deductions from the evidence at hand. The most likely theory is that some local youth was dared by his friends to see whether he could get into the house and out again without being caught. Stupid, I know, but that’s youth for you. Jen is regarded as a mixture of lady of the manor and local witch. A challenge, in other words.”
He sipped his drink, and I said righteously, “That’s a very cavalier attitude for a dutiful son. She oughtn’t be there by herself, in that large isolated house.”
“I’ve tried to persuade her to move to London,” John said. “She won’t hear of it. Honestly, Vicky, she’s perfectly all right. We don’t breed serial killers in that part of the world, and any miserable sinner she might come across would be in more danger than she would. She takes her cane to bed with her. There’s a pound of lead under that silver head.”
I wandered to the window and looked out. Everything was gray—gray skies, gray streets, gray houses, little boxes all in a line, their flower beds and shrubs and other brave attempts at individuality dulled by the weather. I have to have a house and yard on account of my oversized Doberman, and this suburb, outside the city center of Munich, was the best I could afford. It was okay. I spend my working hours surrounded by medieval and Renaissance art, I don’t need more of it at home.
The silence lengthened, broken only by the purring of Clara and the heavy breathing of Caesar. I said, without turning, “Something has happened, hasn’t it?”
“I told you—”
“Not Jen. Something else.”
He started to stand up and let out a yelp as Clara dug her claws into him. I took the empty glass from his hand and refilled it. Another sign, if I had needed one. As a rule it took him a lot longer to get through a drink.
“You overreacted,” I said. “Okay, so did I, but not for the same reason. You wouldn’t have gone into panic mode if you hadn’t been recently, and forcibly, reminded that you are, as you put it, of interest to several unpleasant persons. Who’s after you now? What have you done?”
“Nothing! Not a damned illegal thing. That’s the truth, believe it or not.”
I did believe it. Not because of the candid gaze of those cornflower-blue eyes—John could lie his way into heaven—but because of the note of indignation in his voice. Like that of a burglar who has been charged with breaking into a house when he has a perfect alibi because he was actually robbing a bank at the time.
“Schmidt is coming for dinner,” I said. “He’ll be thrilled to see you.”
The reaction wasn’t flagrant, just a blink and the tiniest of pauses before he replied. “How nice. I hope my unexpected presence won’t leave you short of food. I can run out to the shops if you like.”
Maybe I was imagining things. Whether or not, pursuing the subject wouldn’t get me any further. “He’s bringing food from his favorite deli. There’ll be enough for a regiment. You know Schmidt.”
“Know and love. What’s the little rascal been up to lately?”
Actually, it had been several weeks since I’d set eyes on my boss. I had missed him. Herr Doktor Anton Z.
