Silhouette in Scarlet

Chapter Ten

IT DIDN’T TAKE long to dispose of the extraneous weapons, but John begrudged every second. He was moving with the eellike quickness he displayed when the bad guys were breathing down his neck. He didn’t have to spell it out for me. We had the upper hand, but only temporarily. The only way of immobilizing a crowd like that permanently is with a machine gun. Our inane coup had succeeded because we caught them off guard and hustled them into prison before they had time to realize how vulnerable we were. The shack wouldn’t hold them forever; and the odds were almost four to one against us – higher, considering that they were trained killers, that Max might have a reserve supply of artillery in his luggage, and that Leif was an army in himself. I could picture him snapping his bonds like a comic-book hero bursting out of his shirt when he turns into Captain Muscle. There was no need for a consultation on our next move. We had to go, and stay not upon the order of our going. I had no idea how we were going to get off the island, but when push came to shove I’d have preferred to take my chances in the water rather than huddle in a cul-de-sac with Leif on my trail.

For all his quickness, John was not at his best. When we started back across the pasture towards the house, his breathing was a little too fast.

‘We work so well together,’ he remarked. ‘It almost smacks of clairvoyance – the marriage of true minds.’

‘You needn’t be insulting.’

That shut him up for a while. Then he said, ‘How did you know Leif was one of them?’

‘Anything you can figure out, I can figure out. Or did you know already?’

‘No. I knew Max must be taking orders from someone, and towards the end he was making decisions a little too quickly; there wasn’t time for him to have communicated with a distant headquarters. He also got careless about guarding Hasseltine.’

‘Right.’

‘Right, you say. I’ll wager it was good old feminine intuition.’

I didn’t answer. His hit came too close to the mark.

My discovery had been based on logical reasoning: Leif’s performance, as Swedish cop and as German engineer, had been discordant with sour notes. His suitcase was the giveaway. He could have swum the lake, but not with that heavy bag. I hadn’t thought it out so neatly, though; it had all come together in a wave of instinctive revulsion when Leif made love to me, a dreadful illusion that the hands moving over my body were sticky and slippery with blood – the hands of a killer.

The clouds spit out a windy gust of rain and closed up again. We reached the grove of trees behind the barnyard and John said, ‘Hold on a minute. I want to say something.’

His voice sounded odd. I turned. He clung for support to one of the pale birch trunks, his chest rising and falling rapidly. In the gloom his tumbled hair had a silvery lustre.

‘It’s okay,’ I said gruffly. ‘You don’t have to thank me.’

‘I wasn’t about to.’

‘Well, you damned well should! I didn’t have to stick my neck out for you! In fact, any woman with the brains of a louse would have helped Max beat you up last night.’

‘He had plenty of help.’

After a moment I said, ‘Leif?’

‘He didn’t join in. He just watched. And made a few suggestions.’

‘That was careless of him.’

‘Not really. He’s so rotten with conceit he assumed you wouldn’t believe me even if I had a chance to accuse him. It was,’ John said thoughtfully, ‘becoming more and more difficult for him to restrain himself. His feelings for Georg are the closest he can come to normal human emotions. Unluckily for me . . . Luckily for me, and you, his passion for revenge made him careless. He’s up to his neck in this affair; the police may just manage to pin it on him.’

‘Did you know Georg was his brother?’

‘Good God, no. I wouldn’t have touched that deal with the proverbial ten-foot pole if I had realized the hairy degenerate was related to one of the top men in the business. Blood will tell, though; long before I ran into him, Georg had picked up some of the tricks of the trade, despite Leif’s efforts to keep him legitimate.’

‘Bless your heart,’ I said. ‘I might have known you wouldn’t turn a nice innocent boy on to drugs.’

‘I avoid that aspect of organized crime,’ was the austere reply. ‘It lacks class.’

‘So what do we do now?’

His hair was speckled with dirt and twigs; the trickle of dried blood under his nose looked like a sloppily trimmed moustache. ‘I rather hoped you would have an idea,’ he said.

‘I haven’t had time to think, dammit. The only way of dealing with a chaotic situation like this one is to grab the opportunities as they come up; it’s impossible to plan in advance.’

‘I didn’t ask for a lecture, darling, or for a list of excuses. Hans can probably demolish that shack board by board in a couple of hours. I plan to be miles away by that time.’

‘We could call for help.’

‘Fine, if you happen to have a shortwave hidden in your lingerie. Or shall we all stand on the shore and shout?’

‘Max may have a radio somewhere.’

‘If he has, I haven’t found it, and I assure you, I looked. Besides, I don’t fancy cowering in the cellar waiting for possibly hypothetical help to arrive. Max might decide to fire the house.’

‘Maybe Gus will have a suggestion.’

‘We can certainly ask,’ John said. ‘All right, let’s get him out. What do you propose to do about the guard?’

‘I read a book once where the heroine took off her clothes and walked into the room where the villains were – ’

‘Don’t be vulgar.’

The only tricky part was locating Pierre, who had taken shelter in the garden shed. In the end I had to call him. When he saw me, smiling and innocent and unarmed, he came out, and John took care of the rest. We tied him up with Georg’s twine and tossed him back into the shed, wedging the door with a log from the woodpile.

The barn door was held by a bar so big it took both of us to lift it out of the massive iron staples. When it swung open, the smell struck me motionless with nostalgia; no matter how much you clean, you can never dispel the old ghosts of manure, hay, and warm animal bodies. It smelled marvellous.

It was lucky for me that I stopped. The heavy stick whistled through the air, missing my nose by a few inches.

‘Wait, Gus – ’ Before I could go on, I was enveloped in a rib-cracking hug. ‘Vicky, my dear child – have I hurt you? I dared not wait any longer, I feared for your life – ’

‘It’s okay. But we’ve got to get away, Gus, as fast as we can.’

Gus let me go and turned to John, who was watching with a fixed, ingratiating smile. Before I could speak or move, Gus raised his fist and brought it crashing down on John’s head. He crumpled up like a piece of aluminium guttering.

I caught Gus’s arm. ‘Don’t. He’s on our side.’

‘My poor Vicky, you are mistaken,’ Gus said seriously. ‘He has a gun, don’t you see? And I must tell you that he is not kin to us. It is impossible that Great-great-aunt Birgitta could have – ’

‘I know, I know, know. Actually, he’s – never mind, it would take too long to explain. Just take my word for it.’

I knelt and tried to straighten John’s tangled limbs. This had not been his day. ‘Wake up,’ I said, shaking him.

‘Not until you convince Cousin Gus,’ said John, without opening his eyes.

‘He’s convinced. Right, Gus?’ I grabbed John’s collar and dragged him to his feet. He stood swaying, head on one side, like Petrouchka, in the ballet of the same name.

‘If you say so,’ Gus agreed doubtfully. ‘Where are the other evil men?’

‘Locked up.’

‘Temporarily.’ John straightened, with some effort. ‘I fear this isn’t the time to break out the champagne, Mr Jonsson. You wouldn’t happen to have an extra boat hidden away?’

‘Only in the boathouse,’ Gus said. ‘We must telephone to the police . . . No. They have cut the wires?’

‘And smashed your shortwave.’

‘Then one of us must go for help.’ Gus flexed his arms and shoulders. I had to admire the quickness with which his mind worked; he had considered and comprehended the possibilities before I could explain them. He went on, ‘They would also immobilize the boats, yes. Very well. I shall swim to the other side. Vicky will lock herself in the cellar with the gun, and you to protect her . . .’

‘Or vice versa,’ said John, as Gus studied him dubiously. ‘Tell him, Vicky. He seems to lack confidence in me.’

Looking at Gus, I almost believed he could do it. John was the subject of my concern now. The last blow on the head hadn’t done him any good. He caught my eye and grinned, in the old mocking fashion.

‘I’d prefer to take my chances with Mother Nature,’ he said. ‘Maybe we won’t have to swim. Come along.’

Another spatter of rain struck stingingly into my face as we crossed the barnyard. Thunder rumbled distantly. A shaft of light streaked the sky to the north.

‘Did you see that?’ I grabbed John’s arm.

He let out a hiss of pain and shook me off. ‘What?’

‘Lightning. Only it wasn’t. Thunder comes after the flash, not before.’

‘Flashlight?’

‘Looked like it.’

‘Damn. I thought we’d have more time.’

‘Tell me what to do,’ Gus said calmly.

‘Run,’ John said, and set the example.

After hanging coyly around all day, the storm had made up its mind to move in. Lightning wove patterns jagged as the designs on Celtic goldwork across the tarnished silver of the sky. The rain began in earnest as we approached the garden; within seconds I was soaked to the skin, and water was running down the path like a little river. Gus hobbled like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but he hobbled fast, and he was more surefooted than I on the steep wooden stairs.

John slammed the boathouse doors and barred them. It was almost as dark as midnight inside; but John has eyes like a cat’s; as Gus moved toward the switch, he snapped, ‘No lights. Let them look for us.’

‘I have a flashlight,’ I said.

‘I knew you would. Keep it down, away from the window.’

Gus swore extensively in Swedish when he saw the havoc wrought among his boats. When John grunted, ‘Give me a hand, you two,’ we helped tug at the rowboat’s painter. I had forgotten how heavy a waterlogged boat can be; it seemed to take forever to haul it up onto the deck. John groped under one of the seats and fished out a roll of some material that shone greasily in the narrow beam of the flashlight.

‘Mr Jonsson, get ready to open the outer doors,’ he said.

I watched in mounting disbelief as he spread the piece of leather over the hole in the bottom of the boat. It looked like – it surely was – the side of a calfskin suitcase.

‘Oars,’ John said to me.

‘I’d rather swim.’

‘You may have to.’

‘John, that won’t – ’

‘It’s waterlogged and somewhat adhesive. One of us will have to sit on it, that’s all. And bail like hell.’

He grabbed a can from the shelves and gave it to me. I gave it back. ‘You sit, you bail like hell. Where are the damned oars? Oh – I’ve got them.’

‘Ready,’ Gus called.

‘Okay, open up lights out, Vicky.’ Before I pressed the switch, I saw John lower himself into the boat. His face was screwed up like that of a man expecting to get hit with a pie.

‘Well,’ he said, out of the darkness, ‘it hasn’t sunk yet. Hop in.’

I had a brief argument with Gus, who wanted to do the rowing. I took one oar, he took the other. After a nerve-wracking false start we got into the rhythm, and the boat shot out into open water. Gus laughed with pure pleasure. ‘What is the phrase – a chip off the old block?’

I would have acknowledged the compliment, but the full force of the waves hit just then, and we had to do some fancy rowing to keep from being swamped. I let Gus do most of the work, for he was the expert, following his orders mechanically. After a few frenzied moments he had us heading into the wind. John bailed like a madman, but there was a lot of water sloshing around in the bottom, and the boat’s response to the oars was unpleasantly sluggish.

Still, it was better than swimming, if hardly less wet, and a great deal better than playing games with Leif and Max. The storm was directly overhead now; thunder boomed like a bass drum arpeggio, the rain was an icy shower, lightning ripped the dark apart. In between thunderclaps I heard John swearing as he bailed. The water seemed to be coming in faster than he threw it out. I didn’t care. I was filled with a crazy exhilaration that brushed aside the weather, the leaky boat, and the ache across my shoulder blades as I bent and straightened in time with Gus. He was as fey as I; he started to sing in a reverberant baritone. I assumed from the rhythm that it was a classic Swedish boating song, so I joined in with ‘Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing. . .’

The rain began to slacken. A finger of paler grey parted the clouds. The boat moved like a dying animal, but my wild spirits refused to be squelched. We were all right now. Even if the boat sank, we could make it. In a few minutes we’d be in Gus’s warm, dry car, speeding along the road to town.

‘Loud the winds blow,’ I sang, ‘loud the waves – ’

He came up out of the water in a great soaring leap, like a demonic creature half-fish and half-man. Water streaming from his hair and body surrounded him with a ghastly green glow of phosphorescence.

My voice rose to a high note that is not part of ‘The Skye Boat Song.’ The others hadn’t seen him; Gus was staring soulfully at the storm, and John was bent over bailing. My shriek alerted them in time to observe Leif’s next appearance. He was on the same side of the boat – my side. He moved in the choppy water as if it were his natural element, perfectly at ease, smiling . . . One bronzed arm lifted and came down, delicately, gently. A beaded line of blood sprang up across the back of my hand, blurring as it spread.

Leif went under. The boat dipped; water began trickling in over the gunwales. Not much water – he didn’t want us to sink, not before we had plenty of time to think about what was going to happen to us.

John brought the bailing can down on the whitened fingers that curled over the side. They disappeared, and the boat lifted sluggishly. We turned in a slow, reluctant circle as I freed my oar. It was the only thing I could think of to do; but I was well aware it was a futile gesture. The oar was too unwieldy to use as a club, especially since my quarry would probably not be considerate enough to stay in one spot so I could brain him. The gun was no use, it was in my purse, which was six inches under water, in the bottom of the boat.

John kept spinning around on his backside. If he got up, the ineffectual patch would give away altogether and we would sink like a stone. I figured we were going to sink anyway. It wouldn’t have been a disaster if Leif had not been lying in wait like the Loch Ness monster. He was unencumbered by bulky clothing – that sleek, shining torso, limned by pale fire, was a sight I would never forget. John was hurt and Gus was crippled, and with his handy knife Leif could pick us off one by one before we reached shore.

The sky lightened rapidly. I saw the hand the next time it appeared, and since it was – of course – on my side, I bent over and bit it. The boat was rocking, water was coming in from every possible direction, and Gus was flailing around with his oar. If Leif didn’t sink us, he would. Under the sound of water and Gus’s infuriated bellows I heard a confused roaring noise, which I took to be the pounding of my overstrained heart.

Leif came up again, treading water. He slashed at my hand and slipped sideways as Gus struck at him with the oar. Another blurring crimson line crossed the first on the back of my hand. X marks the spot? Half of a double-cross? The specific reference was obscure, but the general meaning was clear. I was now number one on Leif’s hate list, and he wanted me to know it. A slash here and a slash there, weakening, demoralizing – once in the water, I’d be easy prey for a murderous merman.

John rose to his knees. Somehow during the chaos he had managed to strip off shoes and sweater. One vigorous yank pulled most of the buttons off his shirt, and he shrugged out of it as I made an ineffective attempt to grab him. I think he said something, but I’m not sure. He slid over the side, leaving his pants floating on the surface until the water soaked them and they sank, with gruesome slowness.

There was no sound except that distant roaring. The water poured in. Gus was pulling at me, trying to get between me and the sleek fishlike shape that kept leaping and slashing, leaping and slashing. I couldn’t move. Blood poured down my arm and hand, but it wasn’t physical weakness that held me paralyzed, it was superstitious terror. Leif’s monstrous form seemed more, or less, than human, a water demon, an aquatic Bane.

He came up again, right beside me. His face was only inches from mine. His lips were drawn back in a fixed grin and his eyes were flat as brown glass. A ray of feeble sunlight glinted off the knife blade.

The valiant, abused craft finally gave way. But just before the icy water took me, I saw Leif’s grin vanish and a look of mingled fury and disbelief transform his face as he was pulled down into the steel-grey depths.

I swallowed a couple of pints of water before I managed to fight my way back to the surface. Somehow I was not at all surprised to find myself in the solicitous grasp of a total stranger whose face was blackened like Al Jolson’s.

So, after all, I danced the maypole dance with the people of Karlsholm on Midsummer Day.

I wore a dress that had belonged to Gus’s wife, brilliant with embroidery and laced with silver chains. Fortunately for me, she had been a stout, healthy woman, but we had to add a ruffle on the skirt. That was no problem for the housewives of Karlsholm. They’d have embroidered a whole dress if I had let them.

My partner was Erik, the son of Gus’s chauffeur; he steered me through the dance so adeptly that I didn’t screw up the pattern more than five or six times. Gus watched from the sidelines. He occupied the chair of honour, under a bower of green branches. When I glanced in his direction, which I did every time I went around the circle, he smiled and waved. He was trying to help me forget my tragedy. From time to time he addressed a remark to the little bald man beside him. The two of them had struck up quite a friendship.

But I guess I had better recapitulate.

The commando who hauled me out of the lake handed me over to a circle of waiting arms. To my dazed eyes the crowd seemed to number in the hundreds – more commandoes with blackened faces, mingling familiarly with elderly housewives and sedate old gentlemen in their Sunday best and sturdy youths wearing jeans. I fought my way out of a smothering mass of sympathetic faces. ‘Please – let me go back – he’s still out there . . .’ They wouldn’t let me go, they kept crooning at me and holding on. My muscles had gone soggy, so I couldn’t break away, and I couldn’t understand a word of the soft litany, but I knew what they were saying – oh, yes, I knew . . .

After an eon Gus came limping into the throng, pushing people gently aside until we stood face to face. His hair and clothes were soaked. Water trickled down his cheeks.

‘My child,’ he said, and held out his hands.

I don’t make a habit of fainting, but this seemed like a suitable moment for it.

They took Leif out of the water later that evening. I didn’t see him, but I heard people talking. I suppose the citizens of Karlsholm are still talking about him. Beautiful as Baldur, mighty as Thor . . . The water hadn’t damaged him, but there were deep slashes across his arms and chest.

They found no other bodies, though they searched for hours.

I frustrated the good ladies of the village by refusing to stay in bed. Why should I? I felt fine. I had the second-best guestroom in the mayor’s house – the best, despite his protests, was reserved for Gus – and we spent the evening in the mayoral parlour, waiting for the police to arrive. There was enough food to feed a regiment and enough drink to drive us into permanent alcoholism and two dozen people trying to explain what had been going on. The mayor’s wife finally won out, since she combined the loudest voice with the most idiomatic English. I summarize.

‘Mrs Andersson knew something was wrong. It was not like Mr Jonsson to send everyone away, on such short notice, and Mrs Andersson, who has read many detective stories, was sure the little grey man had a pistol under his coat. She saw the bulge. She said nothing and pretended to suspect nothing for fear the grey man would hurt Mr Jonsson. When she came here, with the others, we sat down and tried to think what to do. The police? Ya, the police are very well, but we feared they would attack, with guns and boats, and you would all be murdered. They could do nothing we could not do as well.’

She may have been right about that. Most of the men, and some of the women, had done their military training, and all of them were totally at home in the water. The island had been under observation from the first, by watchers hidden among the trees and by the petrified old gentlemen on the dock. They had seen me come and go, but had never caught a glimpse of Gus, and their anxiety mounted until it was decided they could wait no longer.

The operation had been mounted with typical Swedish thoroughness. The raid was supposed to take place that night, but one of the watchers on the east side of the lake had seen our activities in the pasture. He couldn’t make out exactly what was going on, but he didn’t like the look of things, so the rescuers got ready to move in. Because of the foul weather they didn’t see us till we were close to shore. During the frenzied seconds while Leif had tried to sink us we had been under observation by dozens of horrified eyes. That was the part I found hardest to believe – that the seemingly interminable interlude had happened so fast that the rescuers were unable to react, much less interfere, until it was almost over. I hadn’t even noticed them. I wondered if John had . . .

Mrs Mayor had seen him go over the side. She was one of the few watchers who had the presence of mind to keep her binoculars trained on Leif instead of being distracted by the capsized boat. Her description made the struggle sound like a Norse epic – flailing arms, struggling bodies, foam-lashed water, and the slow spreading stain on the surface . . .

When she got to that point, Gus let out a mammoth cough and stamped on her foot. She shut up, with a guilty look at me. Actually, the spreading bloodstain was probably her own invention. I doubt she could see it from so far away, even though the weather had cleared.

The realization of her tactlessness silenced the poor lady, and her husband had to finish the story.

‘We had our plans made. Ten of our best young men. Knives they took, but no other weapons. The villains must be overpowered in silence. We had one of them, in the cell in the town hall – ’

‘What?’ I demanded. ‘One of whom?’

‘Ya, he came the same day, after Mrs Andersson had told us of the danger, so we were ready for him.’ The mayor beamed. ‘He thought to deceive us. We are not so easily fooled, no. He said he was a friend of the lady’s. Ha! We lock him up, then we also have a hostage. Now, soon, all his criminal friends will join him in the prison.’

I almost hated to ask. ‘What does he look like, this villain?’

‘Oh, a harmless little man in his looks. It is always so with villains, ja? Stout, with a round, smiling face . . .’

I stood up and stretched. I was wearing one of Mrs Mayor’s flannel robes, which went around me twice and barely reached my calves, but I decided against changing. The more pathetic I looked, the easier it would be to calm him.

‘You had better let me see this villain,’ I said.

I don’t know what Schmidt had to complain about. The ‘cell’ in the town hall, which also served as youth centre, cinema, social club, and anything else necessary, was a pleasant room with a comfortable bed and pots of flowers on the windowsills. They had fed him regularly and let him keep his suitcase, which – typically – contained one change of clothing, two ponderous scholarly tomes, and four pornographic novels. But the way that man carried on, you’d have thought he had spent twenty-four hours hanging by his thumbs in a dungeon full of rats.

I let him get it out of his system, and then, as I had expected, he hugged me and told me I looked terrible. ‘Poor girl, what you have been through! But it is your own fault. If you had confided in me . . . I have been so worried for your safety! And it serves you right; you will never learn to trust others.’

There were a few more fading rumbles of complaint before Schmidt dropped into a chair and mopped his face. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered. ‘Tell me everything.’

He said afterwards that it was almost as good as a chapter from my book. Almost. I knew very well what was lacking, but did not feel obliged to pander in the first person to Schmidt’s perversions.

He didn’t press me. In fact, when I told him, briefly and impersonally, of the denouement, his faded blue eyes filled with tears. Schmidt is very sentimental. He cries over everything, especially corny old German love songs.

‘It was the man you knew in Rome?’ he asked gently.

‘Yes.’

‘My child, time will heal your grief. There are many who love you, who will comfort you – ’

‘Skip the violins, Schmidt. He dragged me into this.’

‘But he did not mean to. When he realized the danger, he tried to save you. And,’ Schmidt went on, reverting to his familiar grievance, ‘you had not sense enough to do as he said. If you had returned home, or asked for my help, instead of keeping me always in the dark like a stupid old grandpa . . . It was your fault.’

On the whole, I prefer Schmidt’s scoldings to his disgusting wallows in bathos, so I said provocatively, ‘You can’t blame me for your being here. I should have known when I talked to Gerda and got the well-known runaround that you had done some damn-fool thing like haring off to Stockholm.’

Schmidt grinned from ear to ear with reminiscent pride. ‘You did not see me, did you? Not ever! I was following you everywhere. I have not lost the touch. You think I am too old and too fat, but not once did you see Papa Schmidt when he was on the trail.’

‘And a fat lot of good it did me.’

‘If you had stayed in Stockholm, I would have helped,’ Schmidt said angrily. ‘But no, you must go rushing into the wilderness. I could not find where you had gone. I rented a car, I was lost, many times, many times. . .’

‘You must not speak to her that way,’ said Gus, from the door.

I introduced the two, adding, ‘We always yell at each other, Gus. Schmidt is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and I would not deny that he has a point.’

‘Yes, he is right to scold you for doing foolish things,’ Gus said. He took a chair next to Schmidt’s, and the two of them stared at me with matching expressions of stern disapprobation.

I wondered what local deity I had offended to incur such a curse. Most heroines (in which category I account myself, of course) pick up handsome, dashing heroes as they pass through their varied adventures I seemed to be building up a collection of critical grandpas.

Schmidt, being the more sentimental of the two, was the first to remember my bereavement. His eyes got watery again.

‘We must not scold her now,’ he said to Gus.

Gus nodded. ‘You are right. She must not be alone. We will show her how much she is treasured by us.’

‘It is very romantic,’ Schmidt assured me. A tear trembled on his eyelid, as if terrified by the vast pink expanse of cheek below, then took the plunge. ‘You have redeemed this man, my dear. His love for you turned him from his path of crime He died a hero, saving the life of the woman he loved. Let that comfort you, and let the memory of his gallant death shine in your thoughts through the years of – ’

‘Shut up, Schmidt,’ I snarled.

The two heads turned, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and nodded solemnly in tempo.

‘She is distraught,’ Schmidt said.

‘She does not know what she says,’ Gus agreed.

What was the use of trying to explain? They wouldn’t understand. On the surface the whole affair had been a succession of simple clichés; but motives are never so simple. I didn’t even understand my own.

After the first few hours I was pretty sure Gus and I weren’t in danger of being killed. Crazy as it may sound, I believed Max. I don’t know why; maybe it was the cat that convinced me that I could trust his word. Even after I realized that Leif was one of the gang, I wasn’t afraid for myself. He’d have let me survive, as the latest of what was undoubtedly a long list of infatuated dupes; his vanity was so overweening that he couldn’t believe I had penetrated his disguise until I hit him over the head with it – literally.

I could have played along. It would have been the safest and most sensible course. I owed John nothing. And the funniest thing about it, the thing nobody would believe – except John himself – was that I had not risked myself because I was in love with him. I had always known John for what he was – a corrupt, unscrupulous man with the morals of a tomcat – and I’m not referring to the cat’s sexual habits, but to its incurable tendency to put its own interests ahead of everyone else’s. I didn’t love that man; I didn’t even like him. The one I loved was the guy with the perverse sense of humour and the peculiar brand of courage and the occasional streak of quixotry and the clever, twisty mind. But that man was part of the other, buried so deep it was hard to be certain he existed.

I caught a glimpse of him in those last few seconds, just before John went over the side. That was why I tried to stop him. He must have realized, as I did, that I was Leif’s primary target. He stood a good chance of getting away while Leif was busy with me. He had a bad arm and a bad head and he was half Leif’s size, but he hadn’t made a break for it. If he had, I might not have lived to hear Schmidt blathering on about heroic sacrifices and heroic deaths. Is it any wonder I snarled at poor old sentimental Schmidt?

The police had no trouble rounding up the gang. They were not unarmed – Max had another suitcase of weaponry tucked away – but resistance to the death was not part of their credo. With their connections they’d be out on parole in a couple of years, and back at the old stand.

Max asked to see me before they hauled him off to jail. Schmidt and Gus wanted to go along, to protect me, and I had to be very firm with them.

He rose with his usual courtesy when I entered the room.

‘I am glad to see you are unharmed by your adventures,’ he said. ‘I felt a certain concern.’

‘You had cause.’ I waved him back into his chair. ‘I suppose I should commiserate with you, but I’m damned if I feel any regret about Leif – Hasseltine – whatever his name.’

‘It was a business association,’ Max said calmly. There wasn’t a wrinkle in his well-cut suit, his tie was neatly knotted, and his wig was firmly in place; he was the very image of a respectable businessman. ‘In fact,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘his, er, premature demise opens several promising avenues of speculation for me. I might even say, Dr Bliss, that if you should ever have occasion to call on me for a favour . . .’

I ought to have been shocked and disgusted. But there was something about Max . . . His composure was so complete that he forced you to accept his premises – for the moment, anyway.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Was that all you wanted to say?’

‘Only to express my personal regrets for the inconvenience you experienced, and to give you this.’

They had let him keep his briefcase. From it he took a piece of cardboard and handed it to me. The black silhouette had been neatly mounted.

‘I did it from memory,’ Max said, as I studied the familiar profile. ‘It is good of him, don’t you think?’

‘You always do good work, Max. I appreciate it. Did you make another – for your collection?’

‘No,’ Max said deliberately. ‘No, Dr Bliss.’

I said, ‘I understand.’

‘I felt sure you would. May I say, then, good fortune to you, and auf Wiedersehen.’

‘I sincerely hope not,’ I said. ‘Goodbye, Max.’

And that, dear reader, is how I came to be footing it, not too lightly, around the Karlsholm maypole. It was an event I wouldn’t have missed, a memory I will always cherish. And I’ll be back. By dint of desperate searching and ingenious invention, Gus and I worked out a genealogy that made me his fourteenth cousin twice removed, or something of that nature. Kinfolks have to keep in touch. Besides, Schmidt had been working on Gus to permit excavation of the pasture, and Gus was showing signs of yielding.

When the dance ended, I went to join the two of them. They broke off their solemn conversation to offer me a chair and food and drink. Then Gus said hesitantly, ‘We were speaking of a matter – ’

‘No, Gus,’ Schmidt interrupted. ‘The wound is only beginning to heal. You will rend it open again.’

‘Shut up, Schmidt,’ I said.

‘I think it will comfort her,’ Gus answered. ‘My dear Cousin Vicky, I wish to raise a stone to the memory of the brave man who gave his life for us. Here, on the shore, or on the headland in front of the house – we have not decided.’

‘How about outside the bedroom windows?’ I suggested.

They were used to my frivolous comments; they had decided to treat them as instances of stiff upper lip.

‘We have been discussing the epitaph,’ Schmidt said. ‘I favour something like “Dulce et decorum est – ”’

‘“To die for one’s country”? Not too appropriate, Schmidt.’

‘But it sounds so well in Latin.’

‘It is all wrong,’ Gus insisted. ‘There is a verse in the Bible – in English it is like this: “Greater love hath no man . . .”’

‘Something from Shakespeare,’ Schmidt exclaimed. ‘He is full of excellent quotations, and what could be more fitting for an English nobleman than the great English poet?’

They went on arguing. Neither of them really gave a damn for my opinion, and I didn’t offer it. They would have been scandalized at the quotation I favoured as most apropos.

I couldn’t be absolutely certain; but Max shared my doubts, and Max knew him well. The opportunity had been too good to pass up – a chance to vanish in a cloud of glory, avoiding awkward questions that might be asked by unsentimental parties on shore, such as the police and the surviving members of Leif’s organization. Nobody but me had seen any significance in the disappearance of certain articles of old clothing from Axel Foger’s storage shed. In the confusion and excitement of that eventful evening, things were bound to be mislaid.

‘Of his bones are coral made?’ Not bloody likely. But it reminded me of another quotation from the great English poet – from the same play, in fact. John would have been the first to appreciate it.

‘He hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows.’