The Silver Castle (26 page)

It was the early hours of the morning when news of Ernst came through. His car had skidded off a twisting mountain road near the Austrian border and plunged to the lonely valley below, bursting into flames. His charred body had been found in the wreckage. A few days later forensic experts were able to identify traces of artists’ canvas, enough to confirm that Benedict Sherbrooke’s counterfeit paintings had been destroyed in the blaze. I did not regret their loss. It seemed like an act of poetic justice

     ****

A shaft of early sunlight cast a bar of gold across Anton’s face on the pillow beside me. I lay and watched him sleeping, as I had secretly watched him on other mornings. But today, for the first time since our marriage three weeks ago, my happiness was blurred with faint misgivings.

Thus far we had come through safely. As soon as possible after that night I had returned to London and picked up the threads of my working life, though Colin grumbled that my illustrations lacked the sparkle he expected from me.

As spring advanced into summer Anton phoned me frequently, and several times he flew over to see me. One weekend in July, when we fixed the date of our wedding, Anton suggested that I return with him to stay at the Schloss Rietswil for a few days to break the news to his family. I agreed with some trepidation.

Sigrid held out her hands for me to come and kiss her. “So it’s to be September. I’m very happy for you both.” Her glance flickered in Raimund’s direction and I knew what she was thinking. Raimund made the point himself with a rueful laugh.

“I was hoping it would be me, Gail. Still, you’ll be in the family and that’s some consolation.”

Helga, living at the Schloss now, looked on with smouldering eyes. She blames me for everything, I thought with dismay, and wondered how the two of us would ever manage to coexist under the same roof.

On the wall on each side of the carved stone mantel, where before there had been blank spaces, hung paintings by my father. They were mountain scenes of spring and autumn, charmingly executed.

Sigrid said almost apologetically, “I thought it would be nice to rehang them there until you decided what you wanted done. But I’ll have them taken down at once, if you wish.”

“No don’t. I like them there.”

“Do you want to see the one that was returned from America,” she asked me. “The copy of the George Frederic Watts?”

Anton intervened quickly. “I think Gail would prefer to leave it for now, Sigrid.”

I gave him a grateful smile. “One day I’ll be interested to look at it,” I told her. “But not quite yet.”

Through the window I could see a man on a stepladder clipping a yew hedge.

“Has there been any further news of Josef?” I asked.

Anton said, “There’s a rumour going around that he’s been seen in Italy, in a village not far from Milan.”

“Bad luck for the Italians.”

After lunch when Raimund had returned to the silk mill, Helga muttered something about having things to do and disappeared. Sigrid said in an imperious voice, “Now, Anton, I want to have a private talk with Gail, so perhaps you would leave us, too.”

He glanced at me swiftly, and I nodded that I didn’t mind.

Alone with Sigrid, I thought how pale she looked, how thin and gaunt she had become, but the beauty of her face was indestructible.

She came directly to the point. “Gail, my dear, I want you to know that when you and Anton are married I shall no longer be living here. I’m taking Helga with me to my family home in Winterthur.”

Guiltily, I tried to stifle the leap of pleasure I felt at this news.

“But why, Frau Kreuder? I don’t understand.”

Her fingers smoothed the silk fabric of her long skirt. I have given the matter much thought and it seems best all around. My widowed brother, Ludwig, lives there alone, and he is semi-retired now from the firm. It’s a huge old house, so we shan’t get in each other’s way.”

I said, prompted by my conscience, “This too is a huge house. More than big enough for all of us.”

She pursed her lips into an unbelieving little smile. “I wonder if you really think that, my dear?”

“Of course I do,” I lied.

She shook her head, and said, “Ludwig has already been alone too long, and he’s growing into quite a crusty old man. It will be good for him to have some female company. Besides, I will be able to devote more time to Helga. Perhaps I have been at fault in the past in not giving her enough of my attention, and I shall try to make amends.”

Or do you mean, I wondered with a cynicism which made me feel ashamed, that you need someone whom you can shape and mould and bend to your will, as you did my father? I thrust away the unkind thought.

“I hope it will work out well for you all,” I said sincerely. I hesitated, then added, “You must take whichever of my father’s paintings you wish. As many as you like.”

She was overcome with delight. “Are you really sure, Gail?”

“Yes, of course. There are plenty for us both, and I know how much his paintings mean to you. There’s only one I lay any special claim to.”

“Which is that?”

“The one of my brother....” It gave me pleasure to say those two words. “My brother and his little cat. I took it to London and had it framed, and now it’s hanging in my studio.”

Sigrid nodded. “I believe Willi was very fond of the cat. They say it ran away after his death.”

I said nothing. It was best to say nothing.

Anton and I were married quietly in London, with only Colin and Raimund as our witnesses. Anton had told me a week or so before that Raimund had decided to quit his job in the family silk mill to join a university friend in a new venture, making precision optical equipment at a small factory in Berne.

“But does he know anything about optical equipment?” I asked in surprise.

“No, the other chap is the technical expert. Raimund is to be the business brain. He says he wants to run his own show.”

I looked at Anton and knew that he was wondering what I myself was wondering ... whether Raimund’s enthusiasm would last the course. He’d never before shown any signs of dedication to hard work.

“But he is a Kreuder,” Anton said. “So I suppose he must have inherited something of the family flair. Maybe I’ve sat on him too hard in the past and not allowed him enough scope for initiative. It’s often said that the quickest way to learn to swim is to dive in at the deep end.”

“Anyway, you can be sure of one thing,” I laughed. “Raimund won’t drown.”

We had come to Crete for our honeymoon. Lazing the sunny days away we had grown rapturously close. We talked, not just about ourselves and our future, but about the past, too. The black shadow between us had melted away, but the shadow of the shadow still hovered and sometimes we drew back from delving too deeply, understanding that the passing of time would heal the wounds, not words.

Today we were going home, and I was brushed with feathers of apprehension. Would memories I’d held at a distance till now come crowding in too closely at the Schloss Rietswil?

Beside me Anton stirred and the bedcovers slipped, baring the sun-tanned skin of his shoulders and chest. I leaned forward and laid my lips against the warm curve of his throat. He opened his eyes, and in those first waking moments he looked at me without his usual smile.

“You seem sad, darling. You mustn’t be.”

“
I’m
not, not really.”

Anton reached for me and my apprehensions were forgotten. But they returned to me later when we breakfasted on the sundrenched terrace. We made conversation and it somehow wasn’t real.

The plane bore us over mountain ranges back to Switzerland. At Kloten airport Anton’s car was waiting for us, left there by Karl. The sun still lingered as we took the lakeside road, and trees I had last seen in the summer were beginning to display the golds and flaming reds of autumn.

Through Rietswil, instead of taking the left turn to the Schloss, he swung right towards the chalet, driving up between the bushes that were hung now with crimson berries.

I turned my head sharply. “Why here, Anton?”

“Because, my darling, I think we need to banish your ghosts.”

The chalet was exactly as I had last seen it. Our footfalls had disturbed the fine film of dust, and tiny flecks whirled in the sunlight that slanted through a window. I walked slowly across to my father’s easel, touched it, picked up the palette, and stood with it in my hand, remembering....

Watching me, Anton said, “When I was a boy I used to spend a lot of time up here. I furnished it after a fashion, and I liked to think it was a place of my very own.”

“Willi loved it, too,” I said.

Anton gathered me in his arms. “Perhaps our children will come here one day. I think they’d like to know that this was where their grandfather painted all his pictures.”

I smiled at him gratefully. The past was past, unchangeable, but I need fear no ghosts to haunt me.

Arms entwined, we stood in the doorway looking down at the silver castle, our silver castle, its stone walls half hidden now by leafy trees. Beyond it stretched the lake, serene and beautiful.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Anton hung back a moment. “Are you sure you’re ready,
Liebes
?”

“More than ready. I can hardly wait.”

Copyright © 1978 by Erica Quest/Nancy Buckingham

Originally published by Doubleday/Crime Club

Electronically published in 2013 by Belgrave House

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.