The Seventh Child (7 page)

They drove under the crowns of tall trees, the road gently curving away from the sound. Enormous mansions stood on each side of Skodsborg Strandvej, right up to the road.

“My source in Mother’s Aid Society also mentioned something else
…
in 1966, the old matron adopted a child herself. Or rather, she kept an orphaned girl as her foster daughter. The girl was born the same year, 1961. Later, when she retired, the matron—Ms. Ladegaard—moved to an apartment in Skodsborg, but her foster daughter, who must now be in her late forties, remains at the orphanage.” He paused briefly.

“Strange, don’t you think?”

Nils didn’t think it particularly odd;
he’d
lived at home until his midtwenties. He signaled a right turn and angled the vehicle down a steep, winding gravel road and toward the water.

At first they saw nothing, and Knud suspected they might have made a wrong turn. Then a dark shadow appeared between the trees, and they glimpsed the outline of the house. It rose up like the giant brown hull of a ship pitching on a sea of green beech trees. Seconds later they saw the seven white chimneys and a towerlike annex that faced south, and finally the whole villa.

Nils braked, overwhelmed at the sight, and then cut the engine.

For a moment both men sat motionless, silent. In a strange way the orphanage resembled an impenetrable fortress within the budding green, as unapproachable as an English country manor—not as big, perhaps, but with the same ceremonial aura emanating from every pillar, cornice, and turret.

After a minute or so, Knud spoke, softly, as though he were seated in a movie theater and didn’t want to disturb those around him. “Look at that place, Nils. Fifty thousand Danes were once put up for adoption here, remember. This house was the beginning of their stories.”

Breathing deeply, he opened the car door. Nils followed him.

Though it was early May, Nils shivered. It was an unfamiliar and puzzling sensation. With his father
he’d
patrolled hundreds of backyards, and he was used to the darkness and the cold. Fear, his father had taught him, wasn’t something you brought into the bat’s domain.

The surroundings—with the house under the shade of rich green foliage—were as idyllic as the magazine article depicted. Yet he felt at that moment that they were being watched; he turned slowly, glancing at the treetops, and heard Knud laugh at his obvious unease. In the midst of his laughter, Knud was seized with a fit of coughing, and he doubled over, a hand on each knee. For a few moments this hacking sound was all they heard.

Only later did Nils recall (with a touch of embarrassment) what he thought
he’d
seen on the hill: a small figure that withdrew into the bushes before disappearing in the direction of an old white mansion nearby. An absurd thought, of course, clearly an optical illusion. That white house was obviously empty; even at a distance it looked decrepit. There were no curtains, no plants in the sills—no signs of life whatsoever.
You can always tell the difference between an abandoned house and an inhabited one
, he thought. His father had showed him that.

Knud stood to his full height and spit in the gravel. A large black car was parked at the far end of the driveway, but Nils could easily make out the license plate, even at a distance: MAL 12.

“Hello.”

Knud spun around, startled by the unfamiliar voice.

She’d
approached them without making a peep. “My name is Susanne Ingemann. You’re earlier than expected.”

She wore a beautiful green dress that fell nearly to her ankles. Nils grasped how lovely she was faster than his shutter could capture her image: tanned feet in light-brown sandals; dark-brown hair with a reddish sheen, gathered in a tight bun with a black clip. She greeted them with a small, deprecating gesture—gracious but reserved—without any effort to make physical contact, not even a handshake. “Welcome to
…
Kongslund.”

Nils noted her hesitation at the name Kongslund.
And had she actually curtsied?

“Let’s go inside,” she suggested. Before they could reply, their hostess was halfway to the door.

The entry hall had very high ceilings paneled in tall, dark mahogany. Behind the sandstone fireplace that looked as though it hadn’t been used in decades, the wall was covered with black-and-white photographs in small, square black and brown frames. Several hundred of them in fact, all of children: tiny faces shining in the light of those old flashcubes they used to use.

Standing motionless, Nils stared at the photographs, which for some reason reminded him of his childhood home, though he couldn’t say why. Where
he’d
grown up the only sentimentality on display was in the golden romances
he’d
read—with their damsels in distress—or from Bjørn Tidmand’s love songs that played on the radio. He looked away, and his eyes fell on a broad staircase that wound its way over the main entrance and rose into the darkness. On the wall high above the staircase was a tall painting of a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat and standing in an idyllic clearing. Like Susanne, she wore a deep-green dress with long sleeves and flounces. The abundant fabric stretched to the ground, cascading in folds at her feet.

“N.V. Dorph painted that,” the matron said, interrupting the two men from their thoughts once more. “Presumably it’s Countess Danner, the commoner wife of King Frederik VII.”

Knud was suddenly seized with another coughing fit.

Susanne politely ignored him and simply raised her voice. “Dorph furnished the house for the old sea captain who lived here before Mother’s Aid Society, and he painted the pictures,” she said. “Or at least some of them. So it would be appropriate to begin with a tour, wouldn’t it?”

She let them go ahead of her on the broad staircase, and when she followed, Nils heard the green fabric of her dress rustle softly. The beautiful matron had an eerie resemblance to the woman in the painting.

“The house was built between 1847 and 1850 by a famous architect,” she said, “by all accounts in consultation with the last absolute ruler, King Frederik VII, during the same period when the Constitution was written.”

Knud coughed as if to indicate his skepticism on such a peculiar and cryptic statement.

They were in a long, dark corridor now with three or four closed doors. “This is where the governesses lived, and the matron. Staff resided at the orphanage among the children, which was completely natural.” She stood motionless with her back to the enormous painting. “The architect loved this place so much he couldn’t bear to leave it, so he built a home for himself next door—on the southern slope—the decrepit white house you might have seen when you drove in. He lived there with his wife and son, and later on the son lived there with his wife
…
and their daughter.”

She’d
added the last three words after a strange pause that Nils didn’t understand.

“The daughter had cerebral palsy,” she said, as if by way of explanation.

“Kongslund itself was passed down for generations before Mother’s Aid Society bought it in 1936.” Susanne Ingemann stopped to open a door. After several minutes in the dark hallway, the light was blinding. The room could’ve been part of a royal palace, the private apartment of a queen. Even though toy cars were strewn on the mahogany table by the window and small dolls with blond, red, and brown hair lay in the chairs, there was something ancient and proud about the room. It had a kind of emptiness you sense in halls that have been admired but not lived in for decades. Fine golden wallpaper decorated the walls, and on two deep, antique sofas were stacks of pillows of black-green silk, embroidered with rose-colored bouquets. Through the window was a view of a spacious green lawn and a narrow white beach. Between the yard and the beach was a wire fence with two gates, presumably to prevent the children from running into the water should an adult momentarily turn her attention elsewhere.

“This was the private room of the former matron. She lived here for more than half a century,” Susanne Ingemann said. “We’ve left it the way it was.” Stepping back into the corridor, she said, “The office is at the end of the hallway, but there is nothing to see there.”

The door was open to the office, and Nils glanced into the room. There was a large, empty birdcage on the windowsill.

“We once kept three canaries,” she said, noticing where his attention was. “But they’ve been dead a long time. Let’s go downstairs and have a cup of tea.”

The peasant is granted access to the very holiest of places
, Nils thought. Maybe that had been a test run for the tour that would be given in a few days to the visiting luminaries. Except for Susanne, they hadn’t met a single person yet. Perhaps the children had been moved to another part of the house for the occasion. These vulnerable creatures, he gathered, were not to be disturbed by strangers.

She gestured for them to take seats at a low coffee table in a vast room with two tall windows facing the lawn and the water. “During the war, the governesses had their hands full,” she said, taking a seat on a small sofa next to the window and offering them tea and cookies. “They were amazing. They took care of orphans as well as children whose parents were in trouble—and during the last years of the war, they worked closely with the Resistance. But perhaps you already know this.”

They did, but for a second Nils could hear the pride in her voice, so he said nothing.

“Magna rarely talks about this time.”

“Magna?” To his surprise he heard his own voice articulate the question—in a single word.

“Yes, Magna. Ms. Ladegaard. The children always called her Magna. I’m not sure why she doesn’t mention this era, perhaps she doesn’t want to be described as a hero, a rare characteristic today. She became the matron at Kongslund on May 13, 1948, exactly twelve years after the orphanage was founded, and that’s the date we’re celebrating Tuesday, her sixtieth anniversary. Although she retired a long time ago, she has meant everything to Kongslund.”

She sounded strangely formal.

After a moment of silence, Knud mumbled, “Let the little children come to me
…
” His voice was still hoarse, and Susanne Ingemann blanched as though she found the phrase inappropriate.

The reporter cleared his throat and then asked his first real question since they arrived. “Back in the forties and fifties, I gather there were many children put up for adoption?”

“That’s correct,” Susanne Ingemann said in the voice of a teacher responding to an especially bright student.

Nils grabbed his camera and snapped it on. Either he was imagining things, or their hostess had become suddenly more wary than
she’d
been during the tour.

“That lasted into the sixties,” she said. “But today, very few Danish children are relinquished—and those who are, well, they live with us. These are children who cannot remain with their parents due to unique circumstances. Abuse
…
illness
…
I became matron in 1989, when Ms. Ladegaard retired.”

“But back then,” Knud interrupted, “in the fifties and sixties, they were otherwise normal children who were simply
unwanted
?”

“Yes, if you want to put it like that. Often the fathers had left the mothers in the lurch, and in many cases the fathers’ identities were unknown. The mothers were alone and typically quite young.”

“And they stayed here
…
in the same rooms as today?”

“Yes.” Then she added, in a rather arrogant tone, “Where else?”

Knud leaned forward and in a clear voice asked, “Can we have a look at the infant room?”

Susanne Ingemann’s teacup hovered an inch from her lips. It wasn’t this sudden pause in motion so much as the very atmosphere in the room that abruptly changed at this request.

“The infant room?” she repeated very slowly.

“Yes.”

In that instant, Nils understood the provocation. Knud had informed her that he possessed information that hadn’t been made public in five decades of enthusiastic magazine coverage. No random visitor could know of the infant room, and neither should Knud.

Of course,
he’d
learned of it from the form included in the strange blue envelope, but she wouldn’t know about that.

It was then the two men realized they weren’t alone. They heard him before they saw him. He must have been sitting in a chair behind the white pillar separating the sunroom from the dark living room. He suddenly stepped up to the table, into the light from the east-facing windows. Nils and Knud were speechless, unable to conceal their shock.

“Meet Carl Malle,” Susanne Ingemann said. “He’s visiting us
…
as a representative of the Ministry of National Affairs.”

To Nils it sounded as though she pronounced the word
representative
with a hint of sarcasm.

“Yes.” The huge man nodded as though in greeting, but he didn’t extend his hand. “I’m the security advisor for the ministry. I’m sure you take no offense at me listening in?” Without waiting for an answer, he sat beside the director. He was almost a head taller than she, Nils noticed.