From the first moment we were introduced Helga had regarded me with unconcealed suspicion. But I guessed she suspected everyone—every woman, at least—of stealing a march on her.
It was evident that I’d been thoroughly discussed—presumably on the phone—and Helga knew all the details I had given about myself to Sigrid and Raimund. She shot questions at me as if they were accusations.
“You live in London—which part of London?”
“I have a small studio flat in Chelsea,” I replied, suppressing the borderline truth.
“Why is London everywhere so dirty?” She curled her lower lip in distaste. “In Zurich all the streets and buildings are so clean and nice. You have to agree it is a far better place to live.”
“I’m sure it is—if you happen to be Swiss.”
Helga missed the irony, and plunged on. “Ernst and I have a most beautiful home in Zurich, in Wollishofen. Last year we had a swimming pool built, and this year we are planning a squash court.”
“How nice,” I said sweetly. “I wonder what you’ll find left to do next year.”
I caught a grin from Raimund, but Sigrid was impatient with Helga’s bragging, and flattened her daughter with, practised ease.
“It would be no bad thing if you swam and played squash yourself. That would take off some of your surplus weight. Gail, a little more of this
Geschnetzeltes?
Ernst, what do you think of this wine?”
Her son-in-law had been listening to the conversation in silence, every now and then tugging at his beard with thumb and forefinger. Now, his opinion called for, he smiled at Sigrid and said judicially, “It is good,
Schwiegermutter—as
good as any in my own cellar.”
“That is indeed a compliment.” She had recovered her good humour. “I was thinking, Ernst... there may be legal formalities to be observed when Gail takes her father’s paintings back to England. You could advise her about that.”
“It would be my pleasure,” he assured me with a little bow. “I shall check on the position tomorrow, and let you know.”
Feeling that I was being pressured, I said uncomfortably, “I
haven’t really given the matter any thought yet.”
“Then you must, my dear.” Sigrid’s voice was tinged with reproach. “The days pass so quickly, and before you know it the time will have come for you to be leaving us. Raimund can give you the address of a firm in Zurich which specialises in packing works of art for shipment abroad. Or why not let him arrange everything for you?”
“Please, leave it for a little while,” I begged. “I’m still not sure what to do about the paintings. In any case, I wouldn’t dream of taking all of them, Frau Kreuder. I want you to feel quite free to select the ones you’d like to keep.”
“That is most generous of you, Gail,” she said warmly. “Perhaps you will permit me to have one or two of my special favourites, then, to remember Benedict by.”
Once again I wondered why, since Sigrid was supposed to think so highly of Benedict Sherbrooke’s work, there were none of my father’s paintings hanging on the walls. Why had every single one of them been banished to an attic, out of sight?
As the days went by I fell into a routine of going to the chalet each morning. And each morning, disappointingly, my sketch remained on the easel, exactly as I’d left it. I couldn’t be sure whether Willi had seen my offer of friendship and rejected it, or whether he’d not been there at all. As a check, I plucked out a long strand of my hair and fixed it between the door and the jamb with a couple of drawing pins. Next day, the hair was still unbroken. But I felt convinced that, sooner or later, Willi would return to the chalet.
By now Sigrid and Raimund had accepted, reluctantly, that I was unwilling to be chained to them, but my plan to discover more about my father made no progress. Once or twice I dropped in for coffee at the “Wilhelm Tell” in the village square and, on various pretexts, I visited the local shops and tried to strike up conversations. Often I exchanged a few words with the men who worked in the orchards or among the vines, and once I paused to chat with the pastor as he emerged from his pretty steepled church. Though the local people were always polite to me, their unease was something almost tangible, and their answers to my questions whenever I mentioned my father’s name were patently evasive.
Had the Kreuder family, with their considerable influence in Rietswil, put it about that they wished me to be spared the sordid details of my father’s death? It seemed the most likely explanation. But somebody, sometime, was going to tell me what I wanted to know. I was determined about it.
One morning, after I’d been staying at the Schloss Rietswil for nearly a week, I went again to the attic where the paintings were stored. I’d not returned before, reluctant to face that sense of searing disappointment. Yet I was drawn here now by the memory of that other experience, that strange feeling of communion with my father’s mind. Today, however, it wouldn’t come. Gazing at canvas after canvas I found my brain becoming clogged, and I went across to the dormer window and stood looking out.
From here, the angle of the roof across the courtyard restricted my view of the rising hillside. I realised, though, that from the window of the nearby turret I’d be able to see clear across to the chalet. On an impulse I went along the attic corridor and found a flight of stone steps that spiralled up into darkness. I flicked a switch, but no light came on. With my hand against the outer wall, I felt my way up, one careful step at a time. At the top was a solid door, a slit of daylight showing beneath it. But when I tried the handle I discovered that the door was locked.
“Gail.” Raimund’s voice called me from the landing below. “Gail, where are you?”
“Just a minute,” I called back. “I’m coming.”
“What on earth were you doing up there in the dark?” he demanded when I reached him.
“I tried the light, but it doesn’t seem to be working.”
He snapped the switch on and off. “It’s gone kaput again. This whole wing needs rewiring. But you still haven’t told me what you were doing up there.”
“Nosing around, I’m afraid. Actually, I just wanted to see what the view would be like from the turret windows.”
“And what,” he said slowly, “did you think of it?”
“Oh, I couldn’t get in. The door at the top was locked.”
“Really? I wonder why.” He smiled, and I had a feeling that he was relieved. It was none of my business to question why doors in the Schloss should be left locked or unlocked, but Raimund seemed to think I was entitled to some sort of explanation.
“I suppose Karl keeps it bolted because he’s got some of the old family treasures up there. He and Ursula have been with us for many years, and they value the old things more than we do. Karl would consider it a crime to allow my rocking horse to get damaged, or Anton’s train set. Still, never mind. If you want a fine view there is an even better one from the bell tower. Come, I will show you.”
Raimund began to lead me through a maze of corridors, and but for glimpses through the windows, sometimes of the courtyard, sometimes of the lake, I’d have lost all sense of direction.
“How do you ever remember your way around?” I asked him.
“Yes, it is a weird old place,
nicht?
The oldest parts go back eight centuries and I should think that every family that has ever owned it must have added and altered bits. The Schloss Rietswil has had quite a chequered history, from all accounts. In the fourteenth century it was a hotbed of plotting against the Hapsburg oppressors. In those days the peasant soldiery was mobilised for action by tolling the bell.”
I laughed. “I thought you Swiss were supposed to be a peace-loving lot.”
“Just lately, maybe. But in olden times there wasn’t much the rest of mankind could teach us about blood and butchery.”
Raimund halted at an arched door, and when he opened it the rusty hinges screeched a protest. The way to the belfry lay up an ancient creaking stairway, with narrow slit windows at alternate landings and a door that led into a bare, cell-like chamber. At the top of the stairs we passed through a trap door, and were caught at once by an icy wind whipping through the unglazed embrasures. The heavy bronze bell, about the size of a small wine cask, was suspended mouth up and restrained by a chain.
“We still ring it once a year, early in March,” Raimund told me. “It’s an ancient custom—to drive away the winter and welcome in the spring. The magic works, too ... the first signs of spring always arrive soon afterwards.”
“That’s comforting to know.”
“I wish I could give you a demonstration, but people round about would wonder what was going on if they heard the bell.”
“Do you think they might come running out with axes and knives?”
“One never knows.”
Cradling my arms against the cold wind, I stood and looked down at the garden sloping gently to the lake, its waters a dull grey now under the sombre sky. It was in my mind to say to Raimund,
Tell me all the things I want to know, the things you’re so anxious to spare me.
But he’d only deny it, and I’d have gained nothing. Better to wait for a natural opportunity than try to force the issue. Instead, I said, “Shouldn’t you be at the mill at this time of day?”
He made a face at me as he perched himself comfortably on a large wooden crate.
“Don’t you start. Mama has been dropping heavy hints.”
“Anton won’t like you playing hookey,” I said maliciously.
He muttered a rude comment in German about Anton, then said, “After that cheeky remark you do not really deserve it, Gail, but I was wondering whether you would like to come over to St. Gallen with me. I have to call on someone there. Business, believe it or not.”
“Today, you mean?”
“Now, I mean. We could have lunch there and drive back a long way around. How about it?”
Why not? It might provide me with the very opportunity I was seeking.
“Great,” I said. “I’ll enjoy that.”
I went back down the stairs with too much enthusiasm, and missed the doorway through to the house. Raimund grabbed my arm.
“Hey, come back. There’s no way out down there, the door at the bottom was blocked up years ago.”
“These little rooms on each level—what are they for?” I asked. “Were they dungeons or something in the old days?”
He grinned. “Let us have a look and see if we can find any skeletons. If you don’t mind the cobwebs, that is.”
“Thanks, I’d rather remain in blissful ignorance.”
Ten minutes later, having fetched my coat from my room and explained to Sigrid, I joined Raimund in the courtyard where he had his white Mercedes waiting. He drove to the silk mill first, pulling up in one of the marked-out parking bays.
“I have to fetch some samples,” he told me, “but I will only be a few minutes. Will you come in with me, or wait in the car?”
“I’ll stroll around, I think. That curious little building over there looks interesting.”
“It houses the old water wheel that used to power the mill in the days before electricity,” he explained, and walked off in the direction of the showroom.
Out here the roar of the mill’s machinery was no more than a steady hum and from the row of pollarded lime trees that marked the boundary I could hear birds singing. The yard was attractively laid out. Three fan-trained blossom trees spread their laden pink boughs against a pristine white wall, and beneath the windows of the mill were beds of tulips, strictly segregated according to colour—flame red, bright yellow, and maroon. I sighed. Everything connected with the Kreuders was so neat and tidy and in proper order ... except for the memories that my father had left behind. It was as if my unexpected arrival had inflamed the wound inflicted by his death.
I walked across to the old wheelhouse and peered inside. Its derelict state was almost welcome after so much meticulousness. The great cast-iron axle was eaten away with the rust of decades and the radial arms were green with watery slime.
Another car had drawn into the yard and parked on the far side. Behind me I heard footsteps, which stopped abruptly. Then a voice, an instantly remembered voice, called out, “It
is
you, isn’t it?”
I spun around in confusion and found myself facing the man I’d met in Zurich. Anton Kreuder, as I knew now.
“Well hello,” he said, “what an astonishing coincidence.”
He was smiling as he came towards me, and I felt a quick bubble of excitement. But I also felt absurdly nervous, very much on the defensive.
“You’re rather off the usual tourist track here,” he went on. “Or does your ‘sort of’ holiday include a special interest in the textile trade?”
“Not really. I’m just waiting for Raimund.”
“My brother?” His smile faded at once. “Does that mean you knew Raimund before you came here? Or have you just met?”
“We’ve just met—the day I arrived. Isn’t it quite extraordinary, after you helped me like that in Zurich?”
“Incredible,” he said.
“I was amazed when I saw your photograph,” I rushed on, “because of course I recognised you at once.”
“My photograph? Are you saying that Raimund carries a photograph of me around with him?”
“I meant at the Schloss. Your stepmother showed it to me. Or rather, I happened to see one lying about.”
He was looking even more puzzled. “You know my stepmother, also?”
“Yes, I’m staying at the Schloss. Frau Kreuder kindly invited me to stay there, rather than find a guesthouse.” I hesitated a moment. “From what she said, I gathered that you weren’t expected home so soon.”
The grey eyes flickered. “Something arose and I had to change my plans. I have driven straight here from the airport.” His manner became terse as he continued, “I’m afraid I shall be keeping Raimund for some time, so perhaps you would prefer to return to the Schloss. I could arrange for someone to drive you.”
“Thanks, but it’s not very far. I’ll enjoy the walk.”
“As you please. Well ... we will be meeting again later. By the way, you did not tell me your name.”
“It’s Gail,” I said. Then, wondering how he was going to take it, I added, “Gail Sherbrooke.”