The Silver Castle (21 page)

“Do not reject my son, Gail, I beseech you.”

“I don’t reject him. I like Raimund very much, but that’s as far as it goes.”

“Perhaps time will change your feelings,” she said with another deep sigh. “I pray that it will.”

My patience was exhausted, so I excused myself and left her. Feeling at a loss, unsettled, I wandered up to the attic floor of the Schloss. I had been postponing the task of sorting through my father’s paintings—and I knew the reason why. There would be a finality about it, a setting the seal on my departure. But just now a thought had flickered through my mind, and I had an urge to follow it up.

I worked through the stacks of canvases methodically, glancing swiftly at each one and pausing sometimes—part of my mind still clinging to the hope that I might find something to justify Sigrid’s claim that Benedict Sherbrooke had been a genius. I was halfway through the collection of paintings when I found what I was really searching for ... a picture of Willi. It had been done about a year ago, I guessed, and Willi was kneeling on the scrubby grass by the
chalet, a kitten in his arms ... his tiger-cub cat. It was a charming composition, in the style of Millais, I thought, the flaw of sentimentality more than balanced by a sense of compassion. I tucked the canvas under my arm and went to the door.

At the far end of the shadowy corridor a shaft of yellow light shone down from the stairway to the turret. So the lighting was working again now. Wondering who was up there, I walked along the corridor and climbed the curving stair. The door at the top stood open now and I entered the turret room and glanced around enquiringly.

“Is anybody here?”

The place was so cluttered that for a moment I was unsure if I was really alone. It was a circular room with three windows and two doors, the one through which I’d entered and the other—a smaller one and locked, I found—which I decided must be a storage cupboard. There was a mass of old furniture, some in obvious need of repair. I picked out the rocking horse and train set that Raimund had mentioned, and several other relics of childhood, boxed games and model cars, a saddle for a pony, tennis racquets with broken strings, and small-size skis. Nothing here, though, that seemed to justify loving care from Karl and the locked door I’d been confronted with the other day. I went to one of the windows and, as I’d guessed, the view from here was spectacular. I could see right across to the chalet on the hillside where my father had lived. Then turning, I looked sadly down at the waters of Zurichsee where my father had died.

A sob caught in my throat and I wished suddenly that I had never come to Switzerland, that Colin had never shown me that paragraph in
The Times.
I
would have been spared so much anguish ... and perhaps it would even have spared Willi’s life. If I hadn’t been here, if Willi hadn’t tried to tell me through his carvings about my father’s murder, then Anton need never have discovered what Willi had witnessed that night. But there was no going back, no unravelling of time. I
had
come to Switzerland, and now I was trapped in a web of mystery and danger. My task was quite clear. However much I might hate it, however much it went against all my deepest instincts, I had to expose Anton Kreuder for the killer he was.

Faintly I heard the whirring of the lift and realised that someone must be ascending to the attic floor below this. I preferred not to be caught nosing around on my own, so I hastily slipped back down the spiral stairs. But I should have guessed I’d be too late. Just as I reached the bottom step, the lift doors opened and Karl emerged. He stopped dead, his eyes nearly popping as he glared at the canvas I carried under my arm.

“What have you got there?”

“It’s just one of my father’s paintings ...”

“But how? Where did you find it?”

I decided to overlook the rudeness of his brusque, suspicious manner. Gesturing along the corridor towards the attic where the rest of the paintings were stored, I said evenly, “Where do you think I found it? In the attic back there, of course. I picked this one out because I wanted to put it in my bedroom.” I turned the canvas for Karl to see and went on in a friendlier tone, “It’s rather nice, don’t you think? A good likeness.”

“Ja,
it is like Willi.” He still seemed doubtful, and his gaze flickered measuringly at the turret stairs behind me.

“I noticed there was a light on,” I explained, “and I thought somebody must be up there. I wanted to look at the view from those high windows. Isn’t it marvellous?”

“Marvellous?” Karl seemed not to understand the English word. He didn’t wait for me to explain, though, but squeezed past me and ran up the narrow stairs. I heard him slam and lock the door at the top.

I walked back long the corridor and down the one flight of stairs to my bedroom, and there I propped the unframed canvas on the bow-fronted chest of drawers. It would give me pain as well as pleasure to look at it, I knew, but I needed this constant reminder of Willi’s cruel death to urge me on to do what I had to do.

* * * *

I woke that night to darkness and silence. I seemed these days to sleep barely below the level of consciousness, ready to surface instantly to full alertness. As though, if I slept too deeply, I might miss something vital, something that would lead me closer to the truth I wanted to uncover.

Why had I roused tonight? I tried to recapture the sound I’d heard but it was elusive, like a dream. Heavy footsteps on the corridor above my head. But who could be moving about up there at this hour? Nobody slept in the attics.

I lay utterly still, breathing shallowly, my ears strained to catch the tiniest flaw in the deep nocturnal hush. What was I listening for? A bird trapped in a chimney, perhaps, a mouse scuttling behind wainscoting? No, it had been heavier than that. Definitely footsteps.

Outside, a breath of wind fretted at a window shutter somewhere, and rustled leaves. But from inside the house there was only silence, not even the creaking of ancient woodwork. A thought flickered ...
the calm before the storm.

Then, in some distant part of the building I heard, faintly, a long screeching sound like some night bird. Minutes went by. A plane droned high overhead, and far away a train chattered over points. Normal sounds. My tension eased, and I drifted back towards sleep....

This time the noise was loud and close at hand, a thundering of fists on my door.

“Gail!” It was Anton’s voice. “Wake up quickly. Open the door.”

Each night, now, I turned the key when I went to bed. Against what, against whom, wasn’t clear in my mind. While I hesitated, he rattled the handle urgently. I heard, too, the sound of other footsteps.

I slipped out of bed and ran to the door. Anton stood there dressed in a sweater and slacks that he’d obviously pulled on hastily.

“You’ve got to get downstairs, Gail, one of the turrets is on fire.”

By now I could smell acrid smoke, even hear the crackle of burning wood.

“How could it have started?” I asked him dazedly.

“God knows ... the damned electric wiring, I expect. Thank heaven Karl noticed the flames from their bedroom downstairs and gave the alarm. Luckily, the turret is all stone so there’s only the floor to burn, and the stuff that’s stored up there.”

Along the corridor I could see Sigrid being pushed in her wheelchair by Raimund.

“Come, Gail, hurry,” she called.

“Just a moment.” I dived back into my room, dragged on my seersucker robe over my pyjamas, and thrust my feet into sandals before hurrying to join Sigrid by the lift. She was wearing a quilted dressing gown fastened high up to the neck, and her face looked deathly pale against the crimson silk.

Helping Raimund manoeuvre her chair into the lift, Anton said, “Look after Sigrid for us, Gail. The firemen will be here soon, but Raimund and I will go up to the turret and see if anything can be salvaged.”

Sigrid caught his arm urgently. “Don’t take any risks, Anton. Nothing is worth that...
nichts?”

“Don’t worry,” he said with a wry shrug. “From the sound of it, I doubt if we’ll get nearer than the foot of the stairs.”

The brothers hurried away, and I closed the lift door. As we descended, Sigrid moaned, “Oh, Gail, my dear ... this is dreadful. Quite dreadful.”

“You mustn’t get too upset,” I soothed her. “Anton said the damage shouldn’t be too bad. I expect you’ll soon be able to have it put right.”

When we were safely down in the hall she asked me to push her to the kitchen quarters. That part of the house was safely away from the turret that was on fire, but looking through a window we had a clear view of what was happening. Ursula soon joined us, and we watched in dismay. The windows of the turret had shattered with the heat, and smoke and flames poured out into the night. A flickering ochre light illumined the nearby trees, turning their branches into writhing tentacles.

I heard Sigrid say to Ursula in a voice weighed down with grief, “There goes the meaning of my life. Nothing is left for me.”

Such wild exaggeration, I thought, was due to her being dragged from her bed in the middle of the night. Sigrid always took pills to help her sleep, and probably they had reduced her spirits to this low ebb. I felt pretty low myself, but I injected a note of determined cheerfulness into my voice.

“Honestly, Frau Kreuder, I don’t think it’s going to be too bad. Listen, isn’t that a siren? The firemen will soon have things under control.”

Within minutes the grounds were full of uniformed men, dragging hoses and running up their high ladders As we watched, they began to direct powerful jets of lake water onto the flames. It was all handled with great efficiency, and in a very short time the fire had died until only the men’s spotlights and flash lamps pierced the darkness.

Karl entered the kitchen by an outside door, bringing with him the sour-smoke smell of a doused fire. He told Ursula that Anton had sent him to arrange refreshments for the firemen. He gave a little formal bow to Sigrid, and muttered something about it being a sad business. At me he directed a glance full of doubt and suspicion, remembering, I suppose, that he’d seen me coming down the turret stairs yesterday afternoon. But nothing I’d done could have accidentally started a fire smouldering, and he could hardly have imagined that I’d set it off deliberately.

Ursula had filled the percolator at the sink and was plugging it in. To give myself something to do I began to set out mugs for her.

“Frau Kreuder is taking this very badly,” I whispered.

Ursula’s hand jerked as she spooned coffee, so that the brown grains spilled over the gleaming white worktop.

“Poor lady. It is so dreadful.”

“But surely, it doesn’t look as if the structure of the turret has been seriously damaged.”

“Ah, if that were all. It is what the turret contained.”

“Those mementoes of Anton’s and Raimund’s childhood, you mean? I know it’s a shame to have such things destroyed, but it’s hardly the end of the world.”

She took milk from the refrigerator and poured some into a large saucepan to heat, and I noticed that her hand still shook. “Frau Kreuder had such hopes, such dreams.”

“What hopes and dreams?” I asked, mystified.

She didn’t answer my question, but took some little honey cakes from a tin and opened packets of sweet biscuits, arranging them on a plate.

She said at length, “You will return to England now? You have found the truth about your father, and that is why you came.” There was an oddness about the way she spoke, a note of pleading. “You have so many of his paintings, too. They are good paintings, no?”

“Well yes ... they are.”

“So you will now go home?” she persisted.

“Perhaps, in a few days’ time. I shall have to see.”

At that moment Anton joined us. His lean face was grimed with smoke, his slacks and sweater were dirty and wet. He looked across at me, but before I could interpret the curious expression in his grey eyes he turned quickly away to his stepmother, who was demanding of him in a tense, high-pitched voice, “Is there anything left?”

“Nothing ... not a trace.”

She slumped in her wheelchair, looking defeated, those expressive hands lying limply in her lap.

“This is the end, then.”

“The end? I hope so. I hope to God it is the end.”

“Oh, Anton, what are we going to do?”

“There’s only one thing we
can
do. But this isn’t the time or the place to talk about it. Leave it for now, Sigrid.” He looked at me again and his eyes were guarded now, shuttered. “Apart from the turret itself there’s no damage except for some water on the stairs, which the firemen are mopping up. It’s okay for you to go back to your room now, Gail, unless you want to stay for some coffee.”

I went across to Sigrid, bending over her chair. Is there anything I can do for you, Frau Kreuder?”

She seemed to draw away—almost as if in fear of me.

“I just want to return to bed now, but Ursula will attend to my needs.” Then she added in an apologetic tone, “Thank you all the same, Gail dear.”

When they had departed, the firemen began trooping into the kitchen, and Karl and I handed round the refreshments. When everyone had been served, I quietly slipped away.

In the hall, I met Raimund coming downstairs. He looked as grimed and bedraggled as Anton had.

“My God, what the devil of a mess.”

“Have you seen your mother?” I asked him. “She seems to be terribly shocked and upset.”

“Yes, I met her just now on her way back to bed. Poor Mama. Never mind, though, you mustn’t let it get
you
down.”

“Of course I won’t. But then, it’s different for me, this isn’t my home.”

“I wish it was.”

My thoughts were elsewhere so that I didn’t catch on at once. “Why do you say that?”

“Can’t you guess?” He took a step down, a step nearer, and held my gaze. “Gail, you’ve come to mean a great deal to me, surely you realise that? There’s no reason why you should think of going back to England for a long time ... if ever. Stay on here, and let’s get to know each other better.”