Silhouette in Scarlet - Elizabeth Peters [79]
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