Borrower of the Night - Elizabeth Peters [68]
‘I wished to tell you again how sorry I am that your vacation has been so unpleasant,’ she began. ‘It is unaccountable. Never, until you came, have we known such violence.’
‘Is that right,’ I said. ‘You surprise me. I would think a place like this had seen a lot of violence over the years.’
‘Many years ago, perhaps. But this is ancient history now. There has not been a prisoner in those horrid cells since sixteen thirty. And on that occasion Graf Otto was severely reprimanded by the emperor.’
I exchanged glances with Tony. Damn her, the woman knew every move we had made.
‘You are well acquainted with the family history for someone who is not a Drachenstein by birth,’ I said.
‘I was forced to amuse myself. To be buried in this provincial spot after Prague, Vienna, Budapest was not easy for a spoiled young girl. My husband loved his home and would not leave it. I painted, embroidered, studied music; but these soon pall.’
‘Especially when one has mastered them,’ Tony said. It was a reluctant compliment, and not an empty one. I too was sure the old lady could master anything she attempted. She acknowledged his courtesy with a chilly smile.
‘So then I turned to a study of genealogy. As a professor of history, you will understand its fascination. Are you making progress with your research into the Peasants’ Revolt, and Count Burckhardt?’
‘I’ve been to the town archives.’ Tony eyed the woman with what he obviously thought was a look of fiendish cunning. ‘I imagine you’ve used them too.’
‘Oh, yes. I know the story of the Countess Konstanze’s death.’
‘Does your niece know it?’ I asked.
‘She does not. She is already sufficiently unbalanced on that subject.’
Tony was turning red – a sure sign that he was about to lose his temper.
‘Irma must know the story,’ he said. ‘How else can you account for what she said in the séance?’
‘Must I account for it? “There are more things in heaven and earth,” as your poet so cleverly puts it.’
‘Rrrr,’ said Tony He turned the growl into a cough. ‘I would be more willing to admit the supernatural if there were some quasi-logical reason for a haunting. Even a spectre has to have a raison d’être. You surely know the classic explanations – unexpiated crime, for instance.’
‘How clever!’ exclaimed the Gräfin. ‘;But what of innocence abused and unavenged? Konstanze was falsely accused – ’
‘Naturally.’
‘Yes, we moderns know the folly of the witchcraft persecution. Yet her fate was not surprising. She was a learned woman who had been educated by a family priest in her home near Granada. His lessons apparently gave her ideas which were, in that day, dangerously heretical. It is said that she was in commumcation with Trithemius, at Würzburg.’
‘That must be apocryphal,’ Tony said. ‘Trithemius died in fifteen sixteen. But that doesn’t account for the lady’s restlessness. She can’t be worried about her reputation; we know she was innocent. And I’m afraid we’re in no position to punish her persecutors, or give her Christian burial.’
He looked at his hostess with the candid wide-eyed stare that had brought out the motherly instinct in many middle-aged ladies. I could have told him it wouldn’t work; the Gräfin had about as much maternal instinct as a guppy. She smiled gently.
‘It is very mysterious.’
After she left, Tony and I discussed the interview. We agreed on one thing: the Gräfin almost certainly knew about the shrine. One of the most common motives assigned to restless spirits is their desire to tell their descendants where the gold is buried. The Gräfin must have been familiar with the whole corpus of supernatural literature; her failure to mention this point was significant.
‘She knows,’ I summarized, ‘but she doesn’t know where. If she had the shrine, she’d throw us out of here. She has every excuse; our snooping has been outrageous.’
‘I don’t know.’ A visit from the Gräfin always depressed Tony. ‘She might let us stay on just for the fun of watching us stumble around. We must look pretty ridiculous, and her sense of humour is decidedly macabre.’
‘She couldn