The Seventh Child (46 page)

Carl Malle was behind the wheel.

We hadn’t expected another visit from the security advisor so soon after his first, and it suggested a mounting desperation in the ministry he was hired to protect. He couldn’t seriously think we would tell him more than what
we’d
already revealed.

We sat, as we had the first time, by the small glass table in the sunroom, with a view of the garden and the beach. You could just see the outline of the Barsebäck nuclear power plant to the southeast, and Malle relaxed for a moment as though enjoying the dusk—which anyone
who’d
followed him over the years would know was unthinkable. Malle was not a daydreamer. He had come solely to find the truth he thought Kongslund was hiding. He reacted logically, with determination, to the signals being sent from this very place, and fear lounged—ready to pounce—on the sofa right next to him, fixed on us.

Malle furrowed his brow, and said, “I’ve spoken to the national minister. He still believes you know something that is of use to us.” He looked directly at me. “For the sake of your foster mother.”

It was an uncharacteristically sentimental appeal.

“For her sake I am to produce information I don’t have,” I said contemptuously. Momentary anger caused me to forget my fear.

His enormous hand squeezed the teacup, hard. It could break at any moment. “What did Magna know
…
about the boy?” he said.

“She never mentioned any John Bjergstrand,” I said. It was true.

“Who sent the anonymous letters?”

“Which one?”

He stared at me for a long time. “The letters that were sent to the boys from the Elephant Room. To Orla Berntsen and the press.”

“How would I know?”

“You’ve lived here a long time.” He gestured with his hand and the cup. “You must have a sense—”

“A sense of the past?” I said.

Susanne hadn’t bothered to serve cookies or any other finger foods. Perhaps as an expression of her disapproval over this unwelcome visit.

“Yes,” he said.

“What connection do you and the minister have to all of this?” A sudden and very direct question.

The hand that held the cup fell abruptly to the table, and he sat motionless for a minute. “We’ve known Magna almost since Kongslund’s founding.”

“Yes. I saw you in Søborg.”

He narrowed his eyes. It was an awfully nervous gesture coming from a man like Malle.

“Yes, I saw you with Orla and Severin—when they were children.”

“I lived there.” His voice was low.

“You kept up with the others too, didn’t you?”

He turned his head toward Susanne, who sat as usual with her back to the sound against a square patch of sunlight that rested on the little sofa, which was carved of dark mahogany and upholstered in gray-blue silk. It seemed to me
he’d
become paler.

“What was so interesting about the children from the Elephant Room
…
about those of us who were there in 1961?” I asked.

I could hear his breathing across the table. “Marie, I’ve followed this place for over fifty years. I’ve known your mother just as long.”

“My
foster mother
,” I corrected without hesitation.

“What did Magna tell you? That’s all we need to know.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” Now I sounded like the police officer.

“You’re smart. You always were.” There was an odd, admiring tone in his voice that I hadn’t expected. “But your silly questions have nothing to do with this case. I knew from Magna that two of her children grew up in my neighborhood. It was natural that I would take an interest. There were other children she asked me to check up on—both out of curiosity and love.” That word sounded completely wrong out of his mouth. “Or because they were in trouble. You know as much.” That sounded a bit more plausible. “In a way, I was her guardian angel.” He tried to smile, but failed, and the last word faded to a near whisper. I could tell he was annoyed that he had to explain himself—as though he were the one being interrogated.

“What do you know about Asger Christoffersen?” I asked, while I still had the upper hand.

“You expect me to know who that is.”

“I have a feeling you do.”

“Yes, I know him.” His admission came sooner than I’d expected, and was accompanied by a challenging look in his cold, gray eyes.

“Yes. Because his parents were about to mess everything up, weren’t they?”

His eyes darted, and that was a rare sight. In all the years I’d spied on him in Søborg, I’d never seen anything like it.

“They brought Susanne and Asger together, didn’t they?”

I could tell that Susanne was startled. But Malle kept silent.

“We weren’t supposed to talk, were we? We weren’t supposed to discover that none of us knew a damn thing about our parents, or that
we’d
all been in exactly the same place, with exactly the same dark hole in our knowledge of the past? Indeed, completely against Kongslund’s normal protocol, Magna had encouraged these particular parents to not reveal anything to their children about their past, right? They didn’t need to know they were adopted, or that they came from an orphanage
…
because then she
…
and you
…
could hide the scandal that would have destroyed Kongslund and everyone else involved
…
Isn’t that so? Do I have it right?”

He sat still for a moment—then simply shook his head.

“What was the scandal?” I was amazed at my own outburst and my surprisingly formal word choice. “Who is John Bjergstrand?”

He sighed and then found his tongue again. “Listen, Marie. Help us find the boy, since Magna no longer can—and because someone might have killed her because of those letters
…
and, not least, because of that name. For crying out loud, she was your mother.”

“My
foster
mother.”

“Yes. And someone may have killed her in order to prevent us from finding him.”

“Or in order to find him.” The accusation lingered. I didn’t even dare glance at Susanne.

“You’ve never been easy to talk to, Marie.”

“You’ve never shown any interest.”

Again he became silent as he struggled to control his anger. His large hands remained motionless around the cup
he’d
barely drunk from. Then he said, “We’re also looking for her personal diary, the Kongslund Protocol.”

I was surprised that he knew of the journal but ignored his comment. “What was it about us, Carl? What
is
it about the kids from the Elephant Room that worries you? What is it that makes us so interesting?”

Abruptly he stood, letting go of his cup.
He’d
lost his patience. “We think, Marie, that she passed on the Protocol to someone before she died. And you are the most obvious choice.”

He tossed his business card on the table. “Call me if you want to talk. I’m sure you grasp what all this is about,” he said, regaining his composure before making his exit.

“Ah, yes. Marie’s sense for murder
…
” I said, and I could hear how it sounded like a growl, but I couldn’t restrain my anger.

“Yes. Straight out of a potboiler, isn’t it?” This was as close as Malle got to sarcasm.

Then he exited the room, and we heard the front door slam. His teacup remained on the table, practically full.

Susanne Ingemann, an enigma to most—outside of Kongslund—hadn’t said a word during the confrontation.

Of course
she’d
have to reveal the secret very few people knew, which Malle and I had just shared in her living room.

One of the few others who knew, of course, had been Magna.

Susanne’s position as the director of the famous orphanage (the title of matron was no longer used) was as much a coincidence as all the other events that bound the children of the Elephant Room.

Magna had hired her as a trusted assistant in 1984; five years later, Susanne had replaced her as the director. When we had tea in the sunroom a few weeks after her appointment, I was struck by how beautiful
she’d
become over the years, and like everyone else, I wondered why
she’d
never married and had children. There must have been literally hundreds of suitors, but of course I didn’t dare ask her about something so private.

To my astonishment, she visited me a few days later in my room, where no one but me ever set foot. Because I’d never had any guests other than Gerda and my foster mother (and of course Magdalene before she was wooed by a king on the Other Side), I was instantly shy.

Feeling insecure, I offered her the Chippendale chair while I sat on the bed, unable to speak. Even the mirror fell quiet that day and seemed to withdraw into the wall, which it had never done before. I think it was as overwhelmed by her radiance as I was.

During her first visits she asked about the children and about the home’s routines over the years I had lived here. I answered to the best of my ability—and perhaps offered more details than I needed—telling her about Magna’s pedagogical methods, which no one had ever questioned; about her relationship with Gerda; and about her battles with all those powerful, haughty men who over the years had meddled in Kongslund’s affairs even though they knew it was Magna’s absolute domain—and that
she’d
pushed back with the same force she displayed when she crushed flower stems on the kitchen table. This long explanation made me short of breath, because I wasn’t used to speaking louder than what Magdalene could hear, but after a while I relaxed. Susanne listened so attentively and never asked any personal questions.

But that changed.

“You’re a very beautiful woman, Marie,” she suddenly said one Saturday evening when I had just described Gerda’s famous face-off with the German Gestapo commander during the war.

Then she added the unthinkable: “Why didn’t you ever find a man?”

The blood instantly flowed to my neck and into my deformed cheekbones, making my slouching left shoulder burn like it was on fire. I’d never shared my ugliness with anyone but the big mahogany mirror that hung on my wall. Already, as a child, I had grown used to its mean character and its prying questions (which I knew were due to the insistent nature of the magic mirror), and our nightly conversations that revolved around my deformities. Throughout my childhood, Magna had tried to soften my bizarre appearance in the eyes of others by telling them the story of the amazing design of the little foundling, a design that had captivated a host of orthopedic surgeons and specialists.

But Susanne wasn’t smiling. Instead she moved her chair closer to the bed, where I sat at the edge, near the headboard.

“You don’t know it yourself, Marie. Because you only look at yourself in a broken, old mirror that can’t contain you. You don’t see the whole picture.” Her lips were parted slightly, and the light from the setting sun over the sound caressed her neck and shoulders. I can’t describe it any other way today. Not even Magdalene had touched my soul like that—boldly—and I was completely overwhelmed. Behind her the mirror hung dark and frozen in a deep shadow; and I sensed jealousy, which even a magic mirror can’t hide from. For the first time in its hundred-year reign, it was quiet.

Yet I dared not reply to her words—in this magical moment—because I feared that the lisp I shared with my disabled friend would return, and Susanne would not be able to understand me. But I needn’t have worried.

She leaned in, and in the glow of the seven lit candles in the gilded candleholder Gerda Jensen had given me, she kissed me—and I was so shocked that I couldn’t move my body an inch from hers. In the sunlight, her red halo enveloped us, and I disappeared into it. To my own wonder, I embraced, for the first time, a person my own age—and I basked in the moment in a way I never had before.

When I lay in bed several hours later—after
she’d
departed—I laughed so loudly that I imagined it could be heard all the way to Hven, making the old, silver-nosed stargazer turn his eyes to the Big Dipper and Ursa Major and wonder which demons the night sky had released.

All of them, my dear Tycho! Every single one of them!

And a voice that had to be mine shouted:
Now I understand!

Susanne returned every evening, and all winter long we spent our nights together in the King’s Room while the children slept and the assistants were on nightshift on the ground floor; and, one night, when the wind whipped icily around the seven chimneys, she told me who she really was.

She closed her eyes and transported us back to the little peninsula and the small farmhouse with its garden of thorns and blackberry bramble. Her story was more ominous and incomprehensible than any other I’d heard, including those of Orla, Peter, and Severin—all of which I had studied with a wariness that bordered on fear. It was a declaration of confidence
she’d
never made to anyone else, and behind her back the mirror still hung dark, invisible, and mute; that night, I think its magic was finally broken once and for all.

No one hid her past better than Susanne Ingemann, and she had no way of knowing that I already knew her deepest secret.
She’d
arrived at Kongslund in 1961 and was put in the infant room, where she spent Christmas with me—she was the other girl in the room—and five boys.