The Star of Kazan

21 The Eggharts are Disgusted

It was Leopold, the Eggharts’ snooty manservant, who had brought the appalling news to his employers.

‘I had it from the filing clerk in the office below the lawyers. She’s engaged to the boy who cleans up for Gerhart and Funkel and he swears it’s true. He carried it to the storeroom.’

‘But that’s outrageous. It can’t be allowed. I’ve never heard anything so shocking!’ said Herr Egghart.

‘The trunk belonged to OUR great-aunt. She had no business to leave it to that little kitchen girl,’ said his wife. ‘No business whatsoever.’

‘But, Mama, you said it was just rubbish in the trunk. You said I couldn’t use it even to dress up,’ said Loremarie.

‘So it is rubbish. And probably full of germs too. But that has nothing to do with it.’ Frau Egghart’s bosom was definitely heaving. ‘It was OUR great-aunt, so it is OUR trunk!’

‘Actually it was MY great-aunt,’ said her husband. ‘All the same, it’s an impertinence. How dare she leave it away from the family after all we did for her? Giving her a home.’

‘Nursing her with such loving care,’ said Frau Egghart.

‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this,’ said Herr Egghart. ‘Perhaps that kitchen child blackmailed her.’

‘Annika could be very cunning,’ said Loremarie.

‘I’m going across to the professors’ house. It’s an insult to the family.’

The professors were at home but not pleased to be interrupted.

But when Sigrid announced the Eggharts they gathered themselves together and came downstairs.

‘What can we do for you?’ asked Professor Julius politely.

‘You can get your cook’s adopted daughter to return our great-aunt’s trunk,’ roared Herr Egghart, and the professor stepped back because Herr Egghart’s voice, known as the loudest in Vienna, hurt his ears.

‘The trunk she stole from us by making up to the poor old lady as she lay on her deathbed,’ put in Frau Egghart.

‘I can think of nothing more disgusting than cheating someone out of their property when they are no longer in their right mind,’ said Herr Egghart.

Professor Julius had been taught by his mother not to hit people who came to the house, but sometimes he wished that he hadn’t.

‘Why don’t you sit down?’ he said. And then, ‘It is true that the lawyers told us that Fräulein Egghart had left a bequest to Annika, but as you know she no longer lives with us. We gave Annika’s new address to the lawyers and they said they would send the trunk to her mother — to Frau von Tannenberg — to give to the child.’

‘Well, I’m not going to leave the matter there,’ said Herr Egghart. ‘The trunk must be returned to us.’

‘The lawyers gave us to understand that the contents of the trunk only had a sentimental value — old keepsakes from her days in the theatre and so on.’

Frau Egghart gave an indignant snort. ‘Are you suggesting that it would not have had a sentimental value for US?’

‘She was OUR great-aunt,’ roared Herr Egghart, and Emil remembered Richard the Lionheart, at the sound of whose voice horses were said to kneel.

Loremarie, meanwhile, had crept out of the drawing room and made her way to the kitchen.

‘Your Annika’s a thief,’ she said.

Ellie was sitting in the wicker chair, shelling peas. She had lost a lot of weight and she looked tired, but her voice when she spoke to Loremarie was firm and strong.

‘Get out of my kitchen,’ she said. ‘And fast!’

That night in bed under the goose-down duvet for which so many Hungarian geese had given their lives, the Eggharts were still muttering angrily.

‘I’m going to write to Frau von Tannenberg. The trunk went to her; she will make Annika give it back. And if not we’ll sue.’

‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Frau Egghart. ‘You know we’re going to Bad Haxenfeld at the end of the month. Well, it’s only about an hour’s drive from there to the Tannenberg place — remember you looked it up? If we call on her and take her by surprise she won’t have time to make up any excuses.’

Herr Egghart nodded. ‘Yes, that might do. Perhaps I could get leave from the office a little earlier.’ He pushed his leg out of bed. ‘I’ll be glad to get Dr Becker on to my varicose veins. They’re giving me a lot of trouble.’

‘Yes, Becker’s a good man, but I’ve never met anyone who understood my oesophageal sphincter like that young French doctor in the massage room.’

‘Your what?’

‘My sphincter,’ said his wife patiently. ‘The ring of muscle between my stomach and my gullet. I told you, it’s beginning to leak.’ She yawned and settled herself back on her pillow. ‘They say they’ve got a new treatment,’ she murmured. ‘Something to do with seaweed…’

In the middle of the night Herr Egghart turned over restlessly.

‘She was MY great-aunt,’ he muttered angrily, and slept again.