8

There’s a dreadful lot of press outside.” Stella peered through the curtains in the family room.

“Isn’t it lovely,” Puffin exclaimed. “Marvelous for the film. All this advance publicity.”

“Puffin, you are a sick puppy,” Temple said, looking apologetically from face to face.

“Could go the other way, you know,” Puffin reminded him. “Such and such a film, doomed from the start. Happens all the time.”

“Oop. There goes the ambulance. They’ve taken the body away in the ambulance.”

Father Metz puffed on his beloved, strongly forbidden meerschaum pipe. “It is hard to believe Frau Doktor von Osterwald is arrested. It is not possible. Not possible.”

Claire sat huddled in the red wing chair, her feet pulled up under her skirt. She shivered as she turned the pages Cosimo had given her. Seymour’s Garten Brevier. She couldn’t even see the print. Isolde being questioned for murder! Of course it wasn’t so. It was a mistake. Isolde couldn’t kill anyone. On second thought, she admitted to herself, Isolde very well could. But not these people. Not Hans. And now Fräulein Wintner. Not when Isolde had so much going for her, she wouldn’t. Isolde was full of surprises, but even those usually made sense. At least to her they did, and Claire could usually piece the logic together. This was absurd. Isolde would never care for either of them enough to kill them. Even if they had been blackmailing her—which seemed farfetched enough, considering Isolde was about as notorious as a body could be and still be in Bavarian society—Isolde would have certainly found a more clever way to do it than this! This was so weird.

“Where’s Doktor von Osterwald?” Stella pushed the rattan dessert cart to and fro, peeling the ends and poking the splinters into a doll’s fence around the potted orange tree.

“He’ll be right back, my dear,” Father Metz soothed her.

Claire blurted out, “Stella, what did you mean when you said, ‘Es war Cosimo! It was Cosimo.’ What did you mean?”

“Oh, he told me to cut my hair. He said, ‘Go ahead. Just do it.’”

Puffin said, “Temple, don’t sit there looking like you were hit with the bloody porridge dish. Your mouth is open. You’ll catch the odd bug.”

Temple stirred. He’d been off in another world. He looked to Claire.

“Nice,” Claire said, “the way you talk to people, Puffin.”

“Moi?” Puffin splayed his fingers across his silk shirt.

“Don’t mind him,” Temple said wearily. “He’s got more songs than the radio.”

I can’t take another minute of this, Claire thought. She got up and went outside. She hardly felt anything but shock. The car was standing on the pebble drive out back. It was a perfect afternoon. She took the grand key out and opened the door. There was a rich, well-oiled feel to an old Mercedes. When you shut yourself in, there was a silent, raised-up sense of privilege that set you away from everything and everyone. And that was just what she needed, to be away from all of them. To think. The idea that Isolde might be a murderer was boggling.

Of course, the idea that it was somebody else of them was equally horrifying. Temple Fortune hadn’t been with her when Fräulein Wintner was killed. He’d been off on his own for a good hour. And there was something else. When she’d first come to Saint Hildegard’s, Temple had referred to “sixty blue-white diamonds” as the treasure. No one else she’d heard had known the treasure was of diamonds, let alone sixty. How would he know there were sixty? Good Lord, she berated herself, she was becoming paranoid. Temple Fortune had had nothing to do with Saint Hildegard’s Mill years ago. She really must relax! Anyone might have been told tales of the Mill treasure. People talked about it all the time. She sucked a loud breath of air through her nostrils and held it in. She closed her eyes. She blew out her mouth and took another loud, lifting breath in her nostrils. And out. At last she breathed deeply. The passenger door opened and she heard herself scream.

“Lord.” Temple climbed in and shut the door behind himself. “Don’t do that! There are reporters all over the front yard. They’ll all come running.”

“My nerves must be shot.”

“No rest for the weary,” he said.

“Yes.” She smiled, remembering last night. A reporter burst from the big hydrangea bush. They ducked below the dashboard. The reporter scurried off. Still sunk down, Claire said, “May I ask you something? Why do you let Puffin speak to you the way he does?”

“Oh, that. I don’t mind, really. He doesn’t mean it.”

“He does too. And even if he doesn’t, either way it’s demeaning.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand no one has a right to say things the way he does. No matter what you’ve done—”

“It’s not what I’ve done. It’s what I haven’t done. And, by the way, I wouldn’t be anywhere without Puff’s connections.”

“Oh, please.”

“It’s true. You of all people should understand how important it is to know the right people. Doesn’t matter how good you are for a minute if no one sees your work. You know that. Puffin hooked me up. I’ll never be able to thank him for that.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this. He should thank you for letting him tag along on your talented shirttails.”

“It doesn’t work like that. In this business—”

“In any business. You should hear yourself, you sound like a battered wife.” They sat very still. “Oh, look,” she said, “let’s not argue. Please. I have no right.” She took his hand. “I am so happy. Even through all this, everything that’s happened, I… I can’t help being happy.”

A yearning sadness came over his blue-green eyes. She felt it like a tug on her heart. There were some people like that in your life. You could feel with them as if there were a line stretched between you, even when they didn’t speak. “I don’t even have the excuse of a failed marriage,” she said. “My husband is a decent man. A good father.”

“That can’t be true. If you were happy in your marriage, you never would have seen me, felt me.”

“You talk like someone never married, Mr. Fortune.”

“Call me Douglas now,” he said. He put both hands around her waist. “Just once.”

“Douglas,” she whispered.

They shared a fervent kiss. He looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry I am such a coward,” he said.

She started to protest, but he touched her lips with his fingers and sighed. “I am. I know I am. Look. I know how you feel about me. I feel it. Just the way I feel it for you. But if I left Mara, the next thing would be you’d have me leaving Puffin.”

“I never would think to ask you to leave Mara,” she protested. “I think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here.” His words had stung her into aloofness.

“No, wait. Let me finish. You think you’re terribly sophisticated and European, but you’re not. You’re hopelessly American, with your idealism and your belief that right must prevail. I don’t say you’re wrong. For God’s sake, I love you for it. I do. I love you.” His voice caught with emotion. “But it’s too late for me. I am a maelstrom of vice. Don’t laugh. I am. You don’t know what it was like for me before I had my bit of success. It wasn’t charming and cozy where I’m from in Ireland. It was cold and dirty and damp. Where I grew up there were so many babies, the house smelled of diapers. And if not diapers, then cabbage. Boiling bloody cabbage. Every time I smell the stuff I can see my mother. Her broad back at the stove. You never saw the front of the woman because she was always busy off doing something. There was nothing. No jobs. My father sodden from year after year of the drink. No hope. He’d sort of bumble out of his stupor long enough to rabbit my mother yet another time, she too old for any of it. Never complaining. Just doin’. Doin’ and doin’.

“I swore I’d get out. Brendan Timmons, this kid, moved to Belfast to marry a Protestant, and his mother threw his guitar in the rubbish bin. I snatched it right out. I was, like, fourteen. I learned all the songs. There was a lot going on back then. You remember. Out of Liverpool and all. Well, I didn’t have any other records to play but a pile of old rhythm-and-blues things from the Rectory. So when I saw an ad in a London paper for a lead guitar player with experience in rhythm and blues, I swiped my mother’s savings out of her extra teapot and I ran. I never looked back. I sent the money. I did that. I went back once. And again for her funeral. And again for his. The kids were spread all over. It was bad.” His eyes glazed over in the memory. Then he snapped out of it. “Anyway,” he said, “that’s when I met Puffin. Harry, then. Harry Almut Brown. He was managing another group. We hit it off straightaway. Used to get high together like a couple of fiends. I got stuck. That was when me mum died. He gave me the money for the flight, Puffin did. Said not to worry about payin’ it back. Just like that. He said his father was a bigwig and he had plenty of cash, so not to worry. I found out he didn’t, though. Didn’t even have a father, truth be told, just a mum. Very grand. A lady. Kept to herself in London. But he meant the bit about not bothering to pay back. I’ll never forget that. I won’t. Then, after the group thing went bad—all of a sudden there were six thousand groups coming from out of nowhere, everybody was a musician. And I wasn’t terrific, you know, just going along with the flow, carried by the times. But I’d bought myself one of those little film cameras, and I would record all our adventures. They had us flying all over the States, y’know? It was just a blur of hotels and stadiums and that. But I filmed it all. Musicians throwing electric guitars out hotel windows into swimming pools; their faces afterward. You know, I’d keep the camera on the faces after the main action. It was lovely, really. Little girls coming up to the door. Teenyboppers. Puffin would chat them up, and they would say the most amazing things. Family secrets. Offers of sex. Anything. It was wild. And the film was very good. I had a knack. Well, I stood still. King of the closeups, me. Everybody used to come over and get high. We smoked a lot of hashish back then. We used to laugh. Yeah. A lot of laughs. But then Puffin got me to enter one of my films in the Berlin Film Festival, and don’t you know, it won. I didn’t mind leaving the music world. The rock world, anyway. I was always more of a Coleman-Hawkins, Nina Simone-type, rather than rock. I used their music in my next film, by the way. I swear I think that’s why it won. So we got some backing, thanks to Puffin’s contacts up at school, and I made this other one, a serious one, and took a first at Cannes.

“Sure, I couldn’t do anything wrong. Then I met Mara. At Cannes. I was the up-and-coming filmmaker, and she was the model-turned-actress who was really going to make it. She had that film out about the Polish girl who fell in love with the border-patrol guard that was such a hit. Everybody wanted her. Hollywood. Everybody. But she fell passionately in love with me. I loved who she was, what she was. You know, a star. I told her. I admitted it. But the more I’d try to make her understand the way it was with me, the more she fell in love with me. She wouldn’t leave me. She would even come with me to the dentist’s office, she was that afraid I’d fall in love with someone on the street. But I never did. I never fell in love with a soul.”

“You don’t have to tell me this,” Claire interrupted, still holding on to his words from some few moments ago. Her tone was cool.

He grabbed hold of her wrist and pulled her toward him with brutal force. “Yes, I must. You must let me tell you every bit of it. Everything.” He released his grip and pressed his mouth into her wrist, holding her with his eyes.

Obediently she let him finish.

“We got along okay, except for her jealousy. But it was all right. Up until a year or so ago. She started wanting a baby, and I told her I wouldn’t. It wasn’t right. I didn’t want one. God. The whole idea horrified me. And on top of that, the last two films didn’t make a farthing. Nothing. Now she decides if we have a baby, everything will turn around and be all right. Yeah, I would say, and what shall I do to support it, shoot kiddy birthday parties for the folks in Essex? And what does she do? She goes and lets herself get pregnant anyhow. I tell you I almost hit her. I could have. If I ever hated anyone, I hated her then. I used to wish she would die. Just fall away and die. She knew what I felt. How things were. And she went and took herself off the pill anyway. Claire, I never wanted it to be like that. I swear to God. She didn’t tell me until she was too far gone to do anything about it. And then I reacted so negatively that she went and had the abortion—after it was too late. Four months. Four months! Do you know what a baby looks like at four months? Christ! She went and had it out. It’s so damn easy to get one, you know. You hardly have to think about it. It’s only later, when you see what a ruin your life becomes, you bother to think of the consequences. It almost killed her, too. I’m telling you. She doesn’t really look the way she’s looking now. She’s really very beautiful. Was. But nobody could go through what she went through and not come up looking bad. And we had this film to do. I don’t know. I don’t know anymore if this film is any good. I trust Puffin, though. He’s got all the book knowledge. He loves this story. I don’t know.”

Claire didn’t know either. Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time was beginning to look more like her own story more than anyone else’s.

Together they sat watching the house. The bird, the magpie, flew down and pecked at some seed in the vegetable garden.

“Wooh. There he is! He’s down and out now, too,” Temple sympathized, “now you’ve gone and stolen his treasure.”

Claire tried to laugh and couldn’t.

Evangelika came out the back door and threw a pan of dishwater at the magpie. “Weg!” she cried. “Geh weg!”

The large bird reared up, fluttered a couple of times for show and then settled impudently down right where he was before.

Evangelika, enraged, threw the heavy enamel dishpan at him. She missed him, but just barely grazed his left wing. “Scheissvogel!” she croaked.

“Christ!” Claire said.

“Here now,” Temple said, “she’s a hot-cross bun.” He pulled an apple from his vest and stroked it with his supple thumb.

Several men turned the corner of the house. One of them, no longer in Tracht but wearing a suit and tie, was the fellow Claire had seen on several occasions on the hill. “The Whistler!” she cried. “Temple, that’s the man. The one I told you about.”

“That the chap? He’s a copper. Can’t you tell? He’s the one questioned me at the airport. Detective Sergeant Martin Engel. He’ll be interviewing you next, you know.”

“No! I didn’t even think of that. I half thought he was the murderer!” Her throat felt stretched and tense. “I hoped he was.”

“Why hoped?”

“Because if he isn’t, then one of us has got to be.”

Temple slipped his hand under her hair and held the curve of her neck. “I know it couldn’t be you,” he said.

“You don’t even know what I’m like,” she muttered, pulling away.

“I think I know exactly how you are,” he said, cutting a slice of the apple with a Swiss Army knife identical to hers. Uncomfortably, she watched the juice of the apple leak from the slit as he ran the point down the skin. “Let me describe. You listen to listener-sponsored radio …”

“That’s true,” she laughed.

“You pick violets and put them on the table or in the window. On a doily, like.”

“When I can find them, yeah. What else?”

“You like this, don’t you, when we discuss the ways of you?”

“Yes,” she allowed, “who doesn’t? Go on.”

“You like it regular. No tricks or fancy effects. Oh, come on, don’t go red on me. I’m only teasing.”

There was a startling rap on the side window. It was Puffin, gasping and out of breath. Temple opened the back lock and he climbed in.

“I have such a thirst!” he complained, loosening his necktie. “Saw you both in here, out of harm’s way. I didn’t think you’d mind,” he said.

“Heavens!” Claire cried. “Why would we mind!”

“Where is everyone?” Temple said.

“Blacky went with Isolde. He’ll be back soon, though. She didn’t bring anything with her.”

“What?” Claire worried. “Do you think they’ll keep her?”

“At least overnight. She’ll need her things. Her toothbrush, her makeup.”

“Can’t Blacky put up bail?” she said.

“Don’t they have to post it first or something? I don’t know how it works, do you?”

“No,” Temple said.

“Well, have they arrested her or just taken her in for questioning?” Claire wanted to know.

Both men looked at her and shrugged. She couldn’t help thinking how unlike her husband they both were. He would have flown from the car, strode up to the detectives, spoken with them in professional, hushed tones. Knowing just what to do. He would protect her. That wasn’t true, she corrected herself carefully. He wasn’t like that at all. Why was she romanticizing her husband? It wasn’t as if he in any way were kind to her, wanted to spend even an hour of his time with her. He’d be upstairs in bed for the day, sleeping off the night’s beer.

Temple sat quietly, his mouth in his hand. Her heart went out to him. He didn’t understand this business any more than she did.

If they kept Isolde, she would have to go visit her. Maybe she’d just better go now. See if there was anything she could do. She started up the car. It didn’t go. She tried it again.

“What are you doing?” Temple said worriedly.

“I’m trying to start the car.”

“May I ask where we are off to? If we’re off?” Temple said. “It’s not going.”

“Smart,” Puffin said.

“I am smart,” Temple said jauntily, for Claire’s benefit.

“If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” Claire turned the key again.

“He is rich,” Puffin said easily. “So am I.”

“If you’re so rich, why ain’t you smart?” Claire said.

“It’s probably the generator.” Puffin sat with one ear cocked.

“I can’t imagine it’s the generator.” Claire frowned.

“Oh, generators go whether anyone wonders about them or not,” Temple said.

“Come on, Otto von Auto,” Claire pleaded, “turn over.”

“Only understands Deutsch,” Temple reminded her.

“Mach mal!” she crooned and petted the dash. “Tu es doch für mich.”

The car started right up. They jolted forward, then tooled down the drive and out onto the road.

“How about that,” they all cried and smacked one another’s shoulders.

It suddenly occurred to Claire that Fräulein Wintner might have spoken to the police about her just before she was killed. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head. And why wouldn’t she have? She’d said she would. No one had asked her about it, but maybe they were being cute. She suddenly lost her taste for the police station.

Her hand rested on something in her pocket that pricked. The miraculous medal. The one she’d grabbed hold of as she’d fallen down the bridge. She must show someone. Evangelika would know whose it was. Holding on to it, Claire felt suddenly sure Evangelika would certainly know, and had known Iris as well. She was old enough. It was feasible. How could she have been so stupid not to have put her and Iris together? She knew how. She looked over at Temple’s handsome profile. She’d been blind for the stars in her eyes.

She pulled over to the side of the road.

“Don’t turn it off,” both men cried.

“No, I won’t. I’ve got to go back. You go on ahead.”

“Hey, wait. I’m not sure I fancy the police station without any sleep,” Temple protested, “and without you.”

“Right.” She smirked sarcastically. “I thought you just decided you’re far better off without me.”

As though pained, he lowered the lids of his seductive eyes. “I cannot sleep for the wanting of you,” he said. “What am I to do? What? Leave the ones who love me so that the minute you’re sure you’ve got me, you’ll turn around and go back to your husband?”

Puffin sat huddled in the backseat. Strangely, it was his eyes she saw before she rose in protest. He was looking so cornered and woeful, sunk into his collar. He was cold, his hands in his pockets. Did even this have to be in front of him?

“And if you wouldn’t leave me for your husband”—Temple shook his head knowingly—“you would leave me for your family. You can’t deny that.”

Just then Blacky pulled up, coming from the other direction. He bounded out of the car and crossed the road over to them.

“How is she?” Claire said to Blacky, guiltily. Here she was discussing her love life, and his wife was being accused of murder.

“How do you bloody think she is!” he shouted at her.

“Who’s in the car?” Puffin bobbed his head up and down, craning to see.

“Oh, it’s Dirk,” Claire said. “Isolde’s son.”

“I’ve got to drop him at his old Kindermädchen’s,” Blacky said. “She’s to take him back to his school. The other one is half dead with Katzenjammer, hangover.”

“I’ll take him,” Temple volunteered. “I don’t want to go to the station house.” He glared at Claire.

Blacky waved Dirk over. The boy was happy to come and ride in the old-timer.

“Tell Isolde I’ll bring her things this afternoon,” Claire told Blacky. “Then you won’t have to waste time at the Mill.”

“Let me out, old boy,” Puffin said to Temple. “I’ll stay with Claire.”

Blacky gave Temple the address, and he sped back to Isolde. Temple took Dirk, and Claire and Puffin headed back to the Mill on foot.

Two police cars drove past, cutting Blacky off, headed back to town, followed by some reporters in Audis and timeworn Mercedes. On, she supposed, to the station house to question Isolde. Puffin was all wound up. One thing he loved was a catastrophe.

Claire walked slowly, trying to get her brain to clear. She kept feeling she was missing something. Puffin’s excited chatter was distracting, and she was relieved when he saw Friedel the gardener out back and went off to talk to him.

The yard was strewn with rice and broken glass. Wires from the twinkle lights hung, disconnected, from the branches. The kitchen door stood open. Evangelika was in there preparing a leg of lamb for the oven. She stabbed it full of garlic slices, surrounded it with wild rice and carrots and fresh rosemary branches.

“No Temple Fortune?” she greeted Claire meaningfully.

Claire’s eyes adjusted to the dark. “He’s gone back to take Frau von Osterwald’s son to the Kindermädchen. Doktor von Osterwald went back to the station house. They’re going up to see Isolde.”

“I thought you were keeping him away from the house so he wouldn’t be arrested.”

“Why should he be arrested?” Claire felt something coming. The kind of feeling you get at the start of a toothache.

Evangelika spit in the oven to test if it was hot enough, then slid the tray in. The serving girl came in with a pile of dishes, then left. Evangelika wiped her sinewy hands on the parchment-like apron. “Wasn’t her. That’s sure.”

“Wasn’t who?”

“Frau von Osterwald.”

“Wait a minute. You know it wasn’t Isolde who killed Fräulein Wintner? Why didn’t you tell the police?”

Evangelika shrugged. “I’ll wait till she knows what it feels like behind bars. Let her be good and grateful to me when I tell them. Thinks she’ll get rid of me, does she!”

“You can’t do that!”

“She did it. She did that very thing. She was up there with Hans before he died. She could have told the Polizei she’d been with him. Maybe she saw someone. Who knows?”

“You do! You know, don’t you!” Claire leaned up against her. Evangelika sat, flump, down on one of the chairs. Claire realized she was bullying an old woman; she sat down too. Evangelika was older than her mother. As old as Iris. She thought again of Iris’s wartime story. She’d been out with friends the night her family had been arrested. Claire remembered Iris’s description of that night on Ammersee. A girl had kept her out later than her curfew. A flighty girl. Effi. Effi?

“You’re Effi!” she cried.

Evangelika smiled. “Long time no one called me that.”

“You knew Iris von Lillienfeld, didn’t you?”

“Took you long enough.” Evangelika got up and hauled the bundles of white asparagus from the pantry. She sat across from Claire. She handed her a knife. “Long as you are sitting doing nothing, you can peel. You know the way?”

“Isolde taught me,” Claire said. “Not too much and not too little.”

“That’s right. I have eighteen bunches for tonight. You want to get busy. So. She told you about Effi, did she? Probably mentioned what a good-lookin’ hoofer I was, eh?”

Claire didn’t say no. They sat across from each other and peeled. “You’re Effi,” Claire said again. “The girl who kept Iris von Lillienfeld from going home the night her family was arrested.”

“Ja, ja. I was Effi then. Those were different times,” Evangelika said. “You wouldn’t believe what it was like then. How naive people like Iris von Lillienfeld were. Her whole family. None of them could believe the Germans would hurt them. They believed themselves to be Germans. Their families had lived in Berlin for more than a hundred years. You couldn’t blame them. I was different. I grew up on a farm outside Diessen. You learn quick on a farm. You know who is capable of what.” The words came tumbling out. It was as though she’d been waiting a long time to be rid of them.

“The von Lillienfelds were like children,” she said. “They thought the people who worked for them liked them. Loved them. They thought animals were for petting. For pets. Not survival. Iris had a cat. Muschi. She used to sit and talk to that cat like it was a person. Oooh, she loved that cat. When I came to Saint Hildegard’s, I brought it with me, for her.” Here she lit a cigarette, an H-B. She blew the smoke out rigorously as if to demonstrate how ridiculous this idea had been. She put her cigarette in the ashtray and let it fume as she continued to work. She smelled of garlic and the raw, uncooked lamb.

“You see, Iris wrote to me while she was at Saint Hildegard’s. She knew I had connections, men. She knew I knew some men in the SS. She thought I could help her find her parents. Thought it was my doing that she hadn’t been arrested. That was accidental, but I didn’t tell her that. She said she had ‘means’ and could pay. I couldn’t help. Who could help? They’d stick you in the camps if you even sympathized; you couldn’t even greet them on the street. They’d take you down to the Zollfahndungsstelle for questioning if you had anything to do with them. But then all the men left the farms. It was only women doing the work. Diessen was hard hit. Not as bad as later on. This was still early; this was in ’38. Later it got worse, of course. Then they had to break up the tar from the streets to boil up. For heat, you know. This was just the start of the bad times. All the elderly men were dying. Not the women. All the old men you saw had a stick, and at the end of the stick was a nail on the bottom for to pick up the cigarette butts. But the young people still had fun. I didn’t smoke, but if we were in a club and a soldier would offer me a cigarette, I always took it. Slipped it into my bra. I would give it to my father later. I used to carry a little bottle, like a jar. I would tip the drinks I got into the bottle when no one was looking. Put a little whisky in for my mother. But what I mean to say is they weren’t all bad, those days. We were young. We had a lot of fun. You know. It got worse. But in ’38 it was still all right.

“I know what you’re thinking. How could we enjoy ourselves with what was going on with the Jews? But ask yourself, isn’t it the same now? Aren’t you having fun while the world is suffering?”

“It’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it? You only know a small part. And yet you know so much more. With television. The world is smaller now.”

Sadly, they both shook their heads.

“My father had a kiln,” Evangelika continued. “You know, to bake the pottery. I don’t know what happened. He used some other fuel because he couldn’t get the normal stuff, and it blew up. Burned down the whole house. The barn. All the buildings. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but it was November tenth. All the fire brigades were lined up by the synagogues. That was the day the synagogues were burned, and the firemen had orders to stand guard in case the fires spread to Aryan buildings. Well. We were out in the countryside. No one would leave their posts. We burned to the ground. November tenth. Kristallnacht. There was nowhere left, so I wrote to Iris in care of Adam. I lied. I told her I might be able to help. She sent me a stone.”

“A diamond.”

“Ja, ja, ein Brilliant. A diamond. I got to Saint Hildegard’s. Iris was away. They told me she was away, in Paris. Looking for her parents. Adam was such a handsome, big man. What did he care for a farm girl from Diessen, like me, looking for work? Everyone was looking for work.

“But I had that letter from Iris promising me a place to stay. And I had Iris’s cat, Muschi. I thought I was smart. He, Adam, thought I was her friend. He was so good to me because of that. His mother honored Iris’s promise. She gave me a home. Work. Later, I had my parents here.

“I’d brought this girl with me, Ursula. She was in trouble. Something wrong with her. One heard stories in Diessen about her father and her, you know. But no one ever knew for sure. I remember her very well, too well. She was witty, funny. She made me laugh. She made a mess of things for me, though.”

“How was that?”

“She was man-crazy. There was no one here but Adam. No young men but him. Had her go with Adam von Grünwald, she did. Then tried to tell him she was pregnant with his child. That was all lies. Adam was truly in love with Iris. Only reason he slept with his wife was to get an heir for the Mill.” Evangelika looked furtively left and right. “Once they had Hans, he never slept with Kunigunde again.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“She told me. Kunigunde told me. Shame. She was a sweet woman. Swine dumb. But sweet. She didn’t deserve that life.”

“She had her grandchildren, though,” Claire reminded her.

Evangelika snorted. “I had her grandchildren. They were more mine than hers. She wasn’t capable. You wouldn’t notice, though, because I took care of everything. Did everything. Amazing how normal you can make someone look when nothing is expected of them. She was good at her roses. Used to sit out there with Stella Gabriella. It was Imogene, the mother, who filled Stella’s head with nonsense. She’s the one we can thank for Stella’s ‘vocation.’ Nothing wrong with that one’s brain, though. That child. She’s bright as a shiny new Pfennig. I used to take her home with me to Diessen when she was just a very little girl. She used to love to go to the tin market and the pottery fair each May. That’s how she started out. Was me who got her started up, nobody else. Nothing really wrong with Cosimo either. It’s more nerves with him. Not stupidity. He just can’t cope with the world. The way it is. He can’t take pressure. And it’s no wonder. His mother, Imogene, always belittled him, used to say he was her punishment. He was so dark, you see. So foreign to her. She hated that. He was a regular rough-and-tumble little boy. She used to make him kneel with her and say the rosary. Over and over. Poor child.”

“But back to Adam for a moment, please. I’m confused. If Adam was so in love with Iris, why would he sleep with another woman?”

“Oh, that’s about the easiest answer. Same reason as everyone else. Drinking. Lonely. Despair. You know, I still remember Ursula dressing up one night in a black hat when Iris was gone. I thought it was so strange, you know, I remember I was frightened. I thought it was Iris von Lillienfeld come back. That upstart Ursula tried everything to get Adam. Nothing worked. He really loved her. He really loved his Iris.”

Claire hung her head. She thought of Iris, old and all alone. No children. “But why didn’t Adam look for Iris? Why didn’t they get together after the war? Why did he marry this … Kunigunde? And I thought Iris went to Paris. Why would she have come back when it was so dangerous?”

“That’s just it, you see. Iris never really went to Paris to look for her parents.”

Claire was shocked. “Well, where was she?”

Evangelika snorted. “That was a funny thing. You know, when we first came to Saint Hildegard’s, Ursula and I, we were both astonished how happily the cat, Muschi, took to the place. She just raced up the stairs behind the kitchen. It was like she fit right in. We laughed. It hadn’t been easy transporting a surly large cat all that way from the country in nothing more than a covered basket. It was Ursula’s idea to bring it. ‘It’s our ticket,’ she told me, so I did it. Frau von Grünwald, Adam’s mother, didn’t want her at all. They didn’t have surplus to feed another animal, she told us. Oh, she was a grand, haughty woman. If Iris were still here, she told us, it would be different. But now, with her in Paris, why should they take her cat?

“Ursula, she was a quick thinker, Ursula was. Said off the top of her hat that the cat was a great mouser. ‘An excellent mouser,’ she said. Well, that was all Frau Grünwald had to hear. There had been strange noises in the night, she said. Banging and twisting sounds from the attic. She was sure there were rats in the house. All right, then, she said, the cat could stay. You’d have thought the cat understood. She jumped from my basket and ran up the back stairs to the attic. Oh, we laughed. We would not have laughed if we had known what was to come.

“One morning, months after I’d first come to live at Saint Hildegard’s, I was shelling the last of the peas in the garden. Right out there on that very bench. It was peaceful, and I had been there so long, making no sound. I guess I was invisible. It was still winter. Snow was everywhere. But in the sun it was hot. Really hot, the way it can get. So I was outside. I heard muffled laughter. Noises. Up in the attic. I thought, look at this, someone is up there. No one was supposed to be at home at all, everyone off to the Viktualienmarkt because it was a Wednesday. I should have gone too, but at the last minute I came back. I have these sinuses. They were acting up. Well, I went carefully up the steps. I brought an iron saucepan with me. You could have knocked me down with a dandelion fluff when I saw what it was! There I was with my pan held high in the air, and when I threw open the door, it was Iris von Lillienfeld and Adam von Grünwald, locked fast in a grip. He was loving her! And she—well, you never get used to some things, growing up on a farm or not—but she was pregnant. And not just a little. I was very shocked, I tell you.”

“My God! What happened?”

“Well, they calmed me down and got tidy and then they took me into their confidence. There was nothing else they could do. At that point, even old Frau von Grünwald didn’t know. She was sickly. Always had been. It wasn’t hard to pull the wool over her eyes.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“Oh, it’s true.”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing happened right away. Things went on as they were. Only now, everything was different for me, see. I was in league with them. I didn’t want to be. You see, I had fallen in love with Adam myself.”

Claire watched the stringy old woman remember. She found it difficult to imagine her young, but she could see how her heart’s dream had been shattered in that moment. “So what did you do?”

“What could I do? I helped them. They were so… beautiful. When they came together, they would both sort of light up, you know. Despite all that was going on, they had each other up there.” She nicked her chin in the direction of the stairway to the attic. “They kept each other. She was like his treasure. His obsession. He couldn’t bear to hear of her leaving. Something had to be done, though. Even if they were not thinking straight, I was. I knew when a baby came there would be no more hiding either of them. The child was not far off. I had to find a way to get them away from Munich. It was terrible to think of what would happen to them. And I had another problem. Ursula. She was, as I said, strange. And she was beginning to suspect something. I could feel her watching me. Whenever I would turn a corner, she would be there. She didn’t like Adam talking to me. Whispering. Oh, she didn’t like that at all.”

Evangelika took a deep breath. “Ursula had ingratiated herself with the old woman, Adam’s mother. She brought her her tea. Washed her hair. That sort of thing. Made herself useful. One night I heard the two of them talking. I was coming down the back stairs from the attic. I wore no shoes, just my old Pantoffeln, so no sound I should make. That’s why they didn’t hear me. Ursula was telling Frau von Grünwald how they got rid of rats on the farm. How they would put poison down. Wrap it in the Konfitüre, the marmalade. Oh, they loved it. They were dead before they knew it. I remember Frau von Grünwald’s enthusiasm. Good Lord, I thought. I hope she doesn’t go putting poison down around here! That’s all we need with Iris’s cat about. Well, not two days later, Iris took sick. Real sick. Vomiting. Loud, horrible retches you could hear throughout the house. She was dying. Ja. Really dying. Poisoned. By accident? I didn’t believe that, not for one moment! Not even then. I know what really happened. Adam’s mother. Frau von Grünwald. Thought she was above the law. She figured one Jew more or less—well, no one was going to imagine it wasn’t suicide. Adam would get over it. She was not going to see her dear son destroyed by a Jew. Oh no. A love affair was one thing. A family quite another. That’s what I think drove her to murder. But killing someone isn’t easy. People don’t just tip over and go to sleep. They agonize. Iris wouldn’t die peacefully. She wouldn’t cooperate, you see.

“Now, it was past caring if she was discovered. The whole house could hear what was going on. Now, Adam only cared that she should live. And of course it didn’t look like it. Adam wanted the doctor. His mother refused. She acted as if this was the first she knew of Iris in the attic. But of course she must have known. It was she who did the poisoning. Otherwise she wouldn’t have kept refusing to send for the doctor. She said they would arrest the whole house if they knew we were hiding a Jew. She was right, of course. We were all petrified. No one wanted to be sent to the camps. Ursula said get her out of here. Away from the house. That way, if she dies or not, they cannot say we hid her here. ‘Take her to the chapel,’ Ursula said. The mother said if Adam would do that, she would send for the doctor. Adam agreed. He carried her himself, out the Mill and up to the chapel. That little one, you know. Up on the hill.”

Claire listened, holding on to every word.

“So the doctor came. I don’t know if it was he who saved her or her own strength and will to live. But, live she did. Barely, at first. The child didn’t make it. He died.”

“He?”

“The doctor told her later it had been a boy. She never saw it.”

Claire felt awful. Iris had had a son and never held it. Oh, the poor, poor thing.

“So then,” Evangelika went on, “things happened very rapidly. The village began to talk. You couldn’t hold back an entire village from knowing what they knew. We were all frightened. Iris was so sick. She was a liability. Finally, Frau von Grünwald persuaded Adam to get rid of her, or we would all be arrested. I remember it like it was yesterday. Here was this old woman who could barely walk. Adam’s mother. And she came running up the front staircase. Flying, she was. Adam wouldn’t believe old Frau von Grünwald had poisoned his Iris. His mother could do no wrong in his eyes. The mother suggested they pay someone to take her away. Far away. To London. Well. That was not an easy thing. Especially as she was so ill. She would have to be smuggled over land. It would take a lot of money. So. Adam knew a man in Schwenningen, in the Black Forest. It was near the French border. It was a man he could trust. A schoolteacher. It was impossible to trust anyone in the village. Adam had told them Iris was already gone, off to Paris to search for her parents, and now here she was, half dead.

“The next night, very late, a car pulled up to the Mill. A truck. Like a bakery truck. I watched from the window upstairs. The main guest room, now. There was an argument. Adam did not want Iris to be taken that way, he kept shouting. Frau von Grünwald told him if she didn’t go this way, there was no hope for her. Already there was talk. She would be arrested and sent to the camp if she lived. So Adam let her go the way the schoolteacher planned. They carried her out in the old grandfather clock.”

Claire swallowed but said nothing. The faucet dripped in the deep porcelain sink.

“Ja. It was the only way they could think of to get her safely away. They took her out, Adam and the schoolteacher. I put the blankets down in the truck. They put the clock on top. I saw her through the glass. Her eyes. I said, ‘Auf Wiedersehen.’”

“It’s horrible.” Claire shuddered.

“Maybe so. But she lived, didn’t she? There were others. Many, many others not so lucky. Somehow, she made her way to England. She had Geld. Money.”

“But why, then, did Adam marry this Kunigunde? Why didn’t Iris come back after the war?”

Evangelika stood up. She walked around the kitchen in a circle and then sat back down. “That’s my doing. I wrote to her.”

“But why? How could you do that?”

“I will explain.” She lit another cigarette. Then she went to the cupboard and poured herself a glass of schnapps. She sat back down. “Adam was arrested. The Nazis wanted the Mill for their own use. It was rumored that Adam was associating with a Jewess. So it was very easy for them to get rid of him. I went to the Zollfahndungsstelle. They let me see him. He was frightened. Not for himself. For his mother. They had arrested her, too. They wanted to make a case against them for harboring Jews. Jews guilty of illegally taking money out of the country. Then they could confiscate the Mill.

“Somebody had given them details of Iris von Lillienfeld. They knew everything about her. I always thought it was Ursula, my girlfriend, the upstart, who betrayed her. She and I were both in love with Adam. I knew I had no chance with him. Anyone could see how he loved Iris. He carried her picture with him all the time. It was enough for me that I was in his confidence. Well, it wasn’t enough, but it had to be. I had no choice. And it was better than nothing. I was part of his life. A big part. But Ursula, Ursula had these crazy ideas. She was convinced Adam would love her if there was no hope for him and Iris. Later, when he rejected her, threw her out, she couldn’t accept it. Wanted to pay him back. I never could prove it, but I had my suspicions.” Evangelika shook her head sadly. “Ursula had such high and mighty notions of herself. And such fears! She was such a mix of majesty and fear! Well. To make a long story short, Adam needed money. A lot of money, and I didn’t have it. Nobody did. There was a family living in the village. In Saint Hildegard’s proper. Very wealthy. Their name was Asam. A nice family. They had a daughter, Kunigunden. She was sweet and fair and pretty. There was one problem: she was pregnant. And a bit of a fool, people might say. A little bit ‘touched.’ But just a little. Well, it was time for Kunigunde to marry, and the father must have been dead. Anyway, he was nowhere to be found. A lot of the men were gone. Adam, of course, had to stay because someone had to run the Mill. His mother wasn’t well enough to handle the whole Mill. Saint Hildegard’s has always been a self-sufficient, working mill. The water mill powers the mill grinder for the grain. Bread was as important as weapons. Adam had to stay.

“Well. Herr Asam was pleased by the idea of the marriage for Kunigunde. It wouldn’t hurt for her to marry an Adliger. A noble. They had the money, the Asams, but no aristocracy. Old Herr Asam was a self-made man. He started as a stone mason. I knew he would love for his daughter to marry into the aristocracy. Adam’s family would consider the union a horrible step down. Despite the money. But never mind. They were desperate.

“I made up a story. I told the Polizei that it was all lies about Adam and his mother knowingly hiding a Jew. Adam was engaged to Kunigunde Asam. I told them. They had been in love for months but had to be secretive about anyone finding out before they told his mother, Adam’s mother. She had been ill.

“‘Da hat sie schon recht,’—There she’s right—the one Polizist, the policeman, told the other, ‘Frau von Grünwald was never a healthy woman.’

“Yes, I said, she would be devastated if she heard it from someone else. But now—here I pretended to be embarrassed—’now Kunigunde is schwanger, pregnant,’ I told them. They would have to marry.

“‘Ja, ja, ja,’ the Polizei agreed, ‘they would have to marry!’ Every villager knows the shame unmarried people would live with. Things were not like they are today. You wouldn’t believe what it was like. You see old World War Two films on the television, and you think you know, but you can’t. Nowadays, there’s no such thing as scandal. Everything’s out in the open. Back then … Well, anyhow, it was known in the village that Kunigunde was reclusive. So it all seemed to fit. I made it sound as though they were pulling the story from me. I could see them giving each other meaningful looks, those two policemen. They knew Herr Asam had friends in high places. It was not a good idea to arrest the wrong people. It could cost you your career. The policemen finally let me see Adam. I told him my plan. He was agreeable, but only to save his mother. All he cared about was that I should write to Iris, get in touch with her in England and make sure she was all right. He knew she was staying at a small hotel in Hampstead. It was a respectable place. She was still very sick, but she was alive. There was a fine man there, he was a professor. His name was Dr. Opal. Young. He gave the Jewish refugees lessons in English for free. So that’s where she was staying, and I should write to her there. Well. I wrote to her. But I did something else. I told her what had happened, too. I explained about the Asam girl, Kunigunde, and how it was the only chance for Adam. They were to be married that week. There was no other way. I explained that they would send Adam’s mother to a camp if she was in any way associated with Jews. Iris knew Adam loved Saint Hildegard’s. She knew what it meant to him. I said if she really loved him, she would not write to him. If she loved him, she would never come back. Then I went to see Herr Asam.”

Claire’s mind reeled. “So it was you. You were the reason Iris von Lillienfeld and Adam von Grünwald never got together.”

“I told Iris that she had to let Adam go, yes. Kunigunde could marry him then, and the Mill would be saved.”

“The Mill. All this for the Mill.”

“Not the Mill. What the Mill represented. I almost didn’t save it. Ursula, the girl I had with me, she accused Adam of making her pregnant. Well, he was in prison, still. But she told me. She said as soon as he got out of prison, she would make him marry her. She confided in me. She also told me that he would pay for what he had done. Well. I knew she was lying. Just trying to be like Iris. I don’t believe Adam ever slept with Ursula. I didn’t believe it then, and I still don’t believe it now. She had a loose way with her, as I said. Adam might have been the only young man in the village, but there were still plenty of old ones at that time. Oh, she knew which side her bread was buttered on, that one did. She was good enough to blame Adam for another man’s shame. She knew where to go for the money, all right. So. I knew what I was dealing with here. I told her good. I explained to her that I knew what she was up to and if she interfered, I would swear that it was all lies. I would go to the Polizei and swear that she had told me she just wanted money from him and that had been her plan all along. You should have seen her. I thought she was going to kill me. I was frightened. Really frightened. But then something clicked in her, and she changed. She remembered I had the diamond Iris von Lillienfeld had sent me. She knew I still had it. She said if I gave it to her, she would leave. She would go away and never come back.”

Claire had stopped peeling the asparagus. She leaned forward. “But why didn’t Adam use the diamonds? Iris had sixty valuable diamonds. And why didn’t he use them to get out of jail?”

“Ah. That was it. The diamonds were to be their future. When they went to look for them, they were gone.”

“Wow.”

“Someone had stolen them.”

“So the diamonds were never found.”

“Never found. That’s why people talk still of the treasure at the Mill.”

“Where were they supposed to have been?” Claire asked.

Evangelika shrugged. “Adam could never find them. Kunigunde used to say, ‘Oh, they’re safe. The good Lord watches over them,’ she’d say. God knows where they are.”

Claire wondered if Iris had thought Adam had stolen the diamonds. Just put them to the side. No. Iris had been vehement in her belief that Adam would keep them here for her. Claire was sure that Iris had never doubted this promise. “So then what happened?”

Evangelika folded her hands. “That’s exactly what Ursula did. She left. And she left for good. I suspected that she was pregnant, but I was highly doubtful that it was from Adam. I was taking a chance, threatening her with the Polizei. But people were afraid of any dealings with the Polizei. They would send you off for the littlest thing. Ursula was terrified of being locked up. She had been locked up when she was little. You see, Ursula lived in such fear as a child. I knew she was despicable, but I also knew why.

“Her family had a farm, very small and rather broken down, but a farm, just at the edge of Diessen. Her mother would come and do work for my mother. She wasn’t very efficient, and we didn’t have much ourselves, but my mother had pity for her because she had such a difficult husband. He beat her. The whole village knew. He was a terrible man. Filthy. Unshaven. A frustrated man. Always blaming everyone else for his troubles. He even blamed my father. Especially he blamed the von Lillienfelds. Said they had taken the villagers’ chances for success, buying up land that belonged to the locals at a cheap price. Called Iris’s father a big Jew, of course. The usual. Anyway, the mother would come sometimes to the back door, looking for work. My mother was soft-hearted and knew she had the little girl, Ursula. You could see the woman was worn out. She would give her little odd jobs to do. I guess everyone did because the husband did nothing to earn, but the poor woman could never get ahead. Everyone thought, oh, you know, he’s just another good-for-nothing done in by the drink, but it wasn’t just that. There was something else wrong with him. Not everyone knew about that. Or they knew and they didn’t talk about it. In those times you didn’t talk about everything. You know. The way people do now. He was somehow perverted.

“Ursula was terrified of her father. And with good reason. He kept her tied up, in a stall off the house. She would cry out when we would pass her father’s broken-down farm. Everybody heard her. But, you see, times were different then. If a parent punished, beat a child, no one thought it was their business to interfere. Everyone knew if you heard little Ursula yelling. ‘Uh-oh,’ you would say, ‘Ursula’s gone and got herself punished again.’ Once, I heard that child yelling, and I started to weep myself. I pulled on my mother in our cart. We were passing on the way to Diessen to market, and my mother wouldn’t hear of it. It was their business, she said. But I knew she didn’t like it either. I knew she was shocked because I heard her telling my father about it. ‘The child was crying out in fear of her own father,’ I heard my mother tell my father. ‘That’s nonsense,’ said my father. He wouldn’t believe her. And I, who had been listening beside the Kachelofen, the tiled stove, ran out. ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘I saw him come out from the outhouse where he kept her when he heard our cart. He must have beat her,’ I told them. My mother was angry I had been listening. ‘It wasn’t an outhouse,’ she shushed me. ‘Yes, it was,’ I insisted. ‘Her father, Herr Braun, had his trousers down and unfastened when he came outside.’”

Evangelika looked meaningfully at Claire and sighed. “My parents went to see Herr Braun after that. They took some small crockery and went over there one Sunday. Pretending to bring a small neighborly gift of my father’s ‘Topferei,’ his ceramics. Only nothing came of it. I heard my mother tell our other neighbor that they didn’t even get to see Herr Braun. Only Frau Braun came out and took the crockery and thanked them and they went away. That was the end of that. My father said that would be the end of him scaring that child because he knew we were on to him. But it didn’t stop him, I think. I think they knew it, too.

“The thing was, I always felt I had this bond, a sort of bond with Ursula. From guilt. Not mine. I was just a child. But my parents. I felt bound to her by the guilt of my parents. Maybe they could have done more. Ursula was just a few years younger than me. I thought if I gave her the diamond, she could go and start over, start a new life away from everything. Away from Deutschland. Away from her terrible past. So I gave her the diamond, and she went away.”

Evangelika sniffed. “So you can figure her story was all lies. But I was glad when she left. I was relieved. It was like a dark cloud was lifted from the Mill. Her presence was so … so oppressive. It was worth the diamond to me to be rid of her.” Evangelika shuddered. “There was something very wrong about her. The day after she left, I went up the hill, walking. I went to the Isar banks. I saw something, a purple sack, tied to the old mill wheel. It was tangled and hard to drag up, but I pulled it out. You know what it was? It was Muschi, Iris’s favorite old cat, drowned to death.”

Claire sucked in her breath.

“Ja, ja.” Evangelika nodded her head. “For spite. Ursula had drowned the thing Iris had loved so much. There should be nothing left of her. Nothing left.”

“Evangelika, did you write to Iris and tell her to come here?”

“I …” She hesitated. “That was Fräulein Wintner. I let her find Iris’s address with all Adam’s papers and she sent a brochure. Hans found her address some months before he died. He kept it on his desk. Like everyone else, she got a brochure. I was afraid she would come. When you came, I was relieved. And then you called her. I listened on the extension. Oooh! It was terrible for me! I felt like my teeth were coming out all at once.” To demonstrate this emotion, she shocked Claire by reaching into her mouth and pulling out her false teeth. She put them on the table with an emphatic clack. Her cheeks were sunk in and she looked a hundred years old.

Claire gripped her chest.

Evangelika put her teeth back in and had another schnapps. “And as bad as that was,” Evangelika went on, “I was almost disappointed. I was, in a strange way, looking forward to seeing Iris, who Adam had so loved. This reserved young girl who had changed so many lives. I wasn’t really frightened of her. Just the changes she would start up. I was only afraid Fräulein Wintner would convince Hans to sell the Mill. I couldn’t let Hans sell the Mill. What would happen to Cosimo? Where would he go?” She sniffed. “Fräulein Wintner. She was saving her nest egg. She was going to make a business in the Seychelles with Hans one day, she thought. A hotel, but first she would make Saint Hildegard’s Mill making money again, real money. She had it all planned. She was writing to all the guests of the Mill. All the people who ever stayed here got a brochure. She thought she could do whatever she wanted. Step on everybody’s toes. She thought Hans would just go off and leave the children. She was completely stupid, as clever as she was. That was the one thing he would never do, desert his children. He would have taken them with him.”

“You mean, wait a minute. It wasn’t you who killed Hans?”

“Ich? Me? Why would I kill Hans? I loved him like my own. Fräulein Wintner killed Hans because he wouldn’t keep to her. He humiliated her with Isolde. That’s why she killed herself.”

“Drowned herself? Bibi Wintner? I can’t believe it. Go off on her own and start over, maybe. But kill herself? No.”

“That’s the way it was, though.” Evangelika sat down and brusquely resumed peeling her fat asparagus. This was her story. She should know. Why was Claire embroidering on it? If anyone knew the truth, she did.

Claire took out the miraculous medal and laid it on the table. Evangelika snatched it up. “Where did you get this?”

“I found it. The magpie had it in its nest.”

“It belonged to Imogene, Cosimo and Stella’s mother.” She pressed it to her lips.

“Thank you, Evangelika,” Claire said. “Thank you for telling me all this.”

Claire pushed her chair off, scraping it along the floor, and walked out into the sunshine. Otto von Auto was just coming down the drive, Temple at the wheel. “Here you are.” He smiled happily. “I got rid of Dirk. Left him with the au pair’s sister, actually. The au pair wasn’t there, so she said he’d stay with her until she got back from Mass.”

Was it Sunday then? Claire held her head.

“What’s the matter?” He came to her. “You look a sight. Here. C’mere. Sit down.”

“Temple, why did you come to Saint Hildegard’s Mill?”

“To shoot Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, Claire. You know that.”

“Yes, but why here? Was there some reason you particularly came here?”

“We thought it would be perfect for the film. And, well, you know why else. We thought it would be good for Mara to recover here.”

“But who suggested coming to the Mill? Who knew of it?”

“Why, Puffin. He’d come here as a child. Don’t you know all this?”

“But wasn’t the story Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time supposed to be set in Italy? I mean, why come to Munich to shoot an Italian story when it certainly would have been warmer and healthier to go to Italy for Mara to recover?”

“Well, Puffin explained that the story was originally written for Germany and then changed because the author couldn’t get a buyer. The author rightly thought it would sell if it played near Florence. What is this all about?”

Claire remembered when she’d phoned her sister Carmela about the spelling of their name. She’d mentioned the award-winning book to her and had been surprised when Carmela had never heard of it. Carmela was a bookaholic and read before she ate. It had struck Claire as odd then. Now it made sense.

“Temple, could it be possible that Puffin wrote the script of Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time? Could that have been?”

Temple looked incredulously at her. Then, slowly, she watched the scoffing expression in his eyes turn to skepticism, then doubt, then maybe, then, yes, yes, it might make sense after all.

“But why would he lie about that?” Temple shook his head.

“Why not? If it failed, it wouldn’t be his failure, but yours and the author’s. If it succeeded, he could surprise you with the happy news. A hero.”

“Yes.” Temple looked both sheepish and stunned. “It would be just the sort of thing he would do.”

“So let’s just think about this a minute now.” Claire got up and wandered, distracted, in a circle. Two people were dead. The real question was, what connected them? If she knew that, she would know why they’d been killed.

They were lovers, that was the obvious thing. Who else had been a lover of one of them? Isolde. However she juggled it, she always came back to Isolde. And yet something kept telling her that her old friend had not done it. There was something unconnected to the past, to the time when Iris had been at Saint Hildegard’s herself. It was all too coincidental otherwise. Had someone summoned her to Saint Hildegard’s Mill? Who else knew Iris back then? Was Evangelika capable of murder? Or was there someone, somewhere, who tied the ends together? Someone from long ago. What was it Father Metz had said? Something he had said had irked her and then she’d forgotten, lost it before she could turn it over in her mind. Something about Fräulein Wintner. She was upset because so much money had gone to England. Claire remembered the ledger of the Mill’s finances. And Puffin, laughing, scoffing at his own pretentious name.

The wedding tent rustled, unshackled, in the wind. It sounded like a flight of birds taking off.

“Did you ever meet Puffin’s mom, Temple?”

“No, never.” Temple blushed. “Puffin always said she was delicate. Didn’t take company.”

“Was she German?”

“No, she was British. Puffin always talked about how posh she was. ‘The shabby gentile’ he always called her, because she was too tight to buy new bedroom slippers. ‘Mrs. Brown and her worn-out Bee-Bops.’” He shrugged. “I always figured I was too, well, shanty, to be introduced.”

“But could she have been German? Lower-class German? I mean, didn’t you ever talk to her on the phone? In all those years?”

“No. No, I never did. You mean the housekeeper. I only ever met the housekeeper. Many a cup of tea I had with her. Puffin didn’t want anyone to bother his mum. Wait. Once I did call her. I couldn’t get hold of him, and we had to leave for Cannes. But, no, she wasn’t there. Only her housekeeper was there.”

“Was she German? The housekeeper?”

He looked at her. “Yeah. A strange old bird. Makeup, feathers. Uri. What’s going on?”

“That’s it.” Claire sank down onto the car bumper beside Temple. “That wasn’t the housekeeper. That was Puffin’s mother, Ursula Brown, née Ursula Braun. So that’s it. Jesus, I’m a total idiot.”

“Wait. Ursula Braun wrote Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time.”

“No. Puffin did. He just used his mother’s real name.”

“Hold on now. What do you mean? Do you mean like for poetic justice? Oh, come.”

“Yes, I do mean that. Temple, what happens at the end of the story? What’s the last scene of Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time?”

“It’s where the main character gets justice. It’s during the war. Venus and Folly are pierced by Cupid’s arrow. It’s all symbolic. Time teaches them. In the words of the book, ‘Venus and Folly knelt, embracing. Though madness shrieked for watching them, they would remain serene. They had no choice, those two, the children of sin. Time held out the forgiving cloak of eternal blue sky with which to cover them. And I, at last, would be fathered and free. Free as the pealing of bells.’”

Claire stood up. “I wonder where Stella and Cosimo are?”

“I know where they are. Puffin just went off to meet them. He said it was only right that he show them the beginning of the story. He took the cane to give Cosimo.”

“Why did you give it to him?”

“Because he asked me to.”

“I wish I didn’t have such a bad feeling.” She couldn’t sit still. She walked around, then came back and stood in front of him. “Temple,” she said, “I don’t suppose Puffin could be insane.”

“What?”

“I mean, did it ever occur to you that he might be … insane?”

Temple looked at her. He didn’t answer her, they just kept looking at each other, all the while Temple’s mind going a mile a minute. Finally, he said, “It can’t be. Why would he?”

“I don’t know. I’m as confused as you are. I only am sure of one thing: Puffin Hedges did write that story. He did. He had to have. And his mother is Ursula Braun, who lived here at Saint Hildegard’s Mill in 1938.”

“But why would he never tell me?”

“Temple, anyone whose mother convinced them they were the rightful heir to half the Mill would have a whole bevy of secrets.”

“What heir to what mill? This mill?”

“I don’t know. I’m just thinking it through. Could it be that Puffin believes himself to be the rightful heir?”

“You mean like in the script?”

“Is that what happens in the story?”

“Yes.”

Temple wrenched her shoulder and made her look at him. “What are you thinking?”

“I think it was Puffin. I think he killed Hans. And then Bibi Wintner because she suspected.”

“You’re mad!” Now he turned away.

Claire touched him from behind. “But it could be. It had to be.”

“Puffin has been kinder to me than my entire family. Of all the people I’ve ever known, he’s the only one who ever—”

“That’s why there were checks going out to England every month. Maybe Ursula Brown was blackmailing Hans. Just the way she’d blackmailed the father, Adam. Maybe Bibi Wintner found out.”

“But why would she blackmail him? What could he have done to her?”

“Ursula must have convinced Hans that Puffin was Adam’s son, too. Adam certainly believed it. Otherwise, why would he have sent money all those years? Someone was sending money to England all those years. He must have paid for his schooling. Anything to keep her away. I know Adam despised Ursula. Evangelika told me. Adam would have paid just to keep her and her bastard away from the Mill. Away from his adopted son, whom he loved. Kunigunde’s son. Later, Hans must have known, must have found out after Adam died and he took over the Mill. He wouldn’t want Puffin to come and take his share. Only maybe he got the idea that Puffin wasn’t really the rightful son of Adam. Maybe something made him doubt it. Or someone. What if he’d suggested a paternity blood test, something like that, something they wouldn’t have had years ago. Why should he keep on paying, he probably figured, if there was no reason to!”

“I can’t… I can’t imagine. Mrs. Brown is a lady. A great lady…”

Claire turned and faced him squarely. “No. She is Ursula Braun. She’s a common blackmailer, gussied up. Evangelika gave her a diamond years ago, if only she would never come back. Oh, the rage! Imagine Ursula Braun’s rage! Imagine how she must have hated them and raised her son Almut to hate them. Her precious son, Harry Almut Brown. Hans’s second name was Almut, too. Remember? The list of names from Adam’s files had his full name on it, Adam Almut von Grünwald. I knew I’d seen or heard that name Almut before, but I couldn’t put them together. Only now it all falls into place. Ursula told her son his father was keeper of the Mill. Told herself, probably. How much nicer it was to believe.”

“It can’t be the same …”

“Oh, Temple, really! It has to be!”

Temple flared at her. “You are so pleased that it is so!”

“What should I be? Pleased they’re holding my friend Isolde in prison for two murders she didn’t commit? No, I’ve got to tell you what I know. However much it hurts you. Puffin believes himself to be the rightful heir, and whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter anymore to him. He’s out of his mind.”

“He’s not!” he cried, knowing, already, that he must be.

“Don’t you see he planned all this?”

“Claire, you’ve got to be wrong.” Temple kept shaking his head. “Puffin never would have killed Bibi Wintner.”

“He had to have,” Claire insisted. “Bibi had an argument with Isolde. Isolde told me she, Bibi Wintner, accused her of having an affair with Puffin. Maybe she only thought that because she saw Puffin in the stairwell near Isolde’s room at the time of the murder. And she knew where the money was being sent to London every month. She found the accounts. She was in charge of them since Hans was killed. She figured it had to be Isolde or Puffin. And Puffin was the one from England. Bibi must have confronted Puffin just the way she confronted me. She was the kind of woman who wasn’t used to being crossed. She had no experience with someone more desperate than herself. Desperate enough to kill. She never would have believed there was no reasoning with Puffin. She couldn’t know just how demoralized he must have been.”

Claire saw the anguish wrench Temple’s face. She watched it fall, and she knew there could be no happiness for them now. It was the end of both their illusions. He would never forgive her for bearing such a truth.

“We’d better find Cosimo and Stella,” Temple said.

A car pulled up the drive. It was full of Müncheners.

Evangelika stood in the doorway. She knocked on the woodwork to get their attention. “What is it about Cosimo and Stella Gabriella?” Her face had turned to ashes.

The carload of customers opened the great Mercedes doors. Loud music and laughter barreled out.

“Where are they?” Temple called to Evangelika. “Where did they go?”

“Was?” She cupped one ear. “Wie?”

“Where are they?” Temple called again.

Evangelika lurched out the door. The rollicking customers cruised toward them. They were between Evangelika and Temple and Claire when Evangelika slumped against the side of the house and slid to the ground. She sat upright, her open palm kept tapping her cheek. None of the merrymakers stopped; they kept on walking. They hadn’t noticed her go down. Claire and Temple ran across to her and helped her up from both sides.

Claire said, “Temple, what was the line again? The line at the end of Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time?”

“‘And I, at last, would be fathered and free.’”

“No, the line right before that.”

“‘Time held out the forgiving cloak of eternal blue sky with which to cover them.’”

Claire gnawed at a cuticle. She looked up. Temple looked up, too. Their eyes both went to the same place, the bell tower.

“Herr Ober!” the customer from the grand Mercedes, dripping with importance and urgency, signaled Temple over. He mistook him for the waiter.

“It wasn’t Fräulein Wintner who killed Hans, then,” Evangelika said. “It was someone else, wasn’t it?”

“Where did they go?” Claire tried to sound normal. All she could think was getting to those kids before something terrible happened.

“Who was it?” Evangelika tried to stand.

“Did they go up to the bell tower, Evangelika? Did they go up there?”

The three of them looked up. There was no flash of movement from the tower. It was still.

“They’re dead!” Evangelika cried.

“They’re not dead.” Claire grabbed hold of Evangelika’s chin and looked up at the tower. “The bell hasn’t rung. There’s still time.”

“Evangelika,” Claire whispered in a voice that sounded calm, “I want you to go to the telephone. Call the police. What was his name? The detective?”

“Engel.” Temple let Evangelika’s arm go. He was shocked.

“Martin Engel,” Claire said. “Go to the phone and ask for Detective Sergeant Martin Engel. Tell he must come back to the Mill. All right? Tell him Isolde couldn’t have committed the murders because the murderer is here now. Tell him Cosimo and Stella are in danger.” She ran through the kitchen to the back stairs. Temple came up behind her.

Evangelika grappled with her legs, then pulled herself along the wall into the house. She moved as in slow motion, but she moved.

“My God,” Temple said, “it’s just like in the film. My God. He did it, didn’t he? He killed Hans.” He sat down on the bottom step of the spiral stairs and put his head in his hands.

Claire bounded past him. She took the stairs two and three at a time. By the second floor she thought she might have a heart attack. Still she climbed. The bell was so high up. She reached the third floor and the lighthouse-like steps of the bell tower. Time was indeed on the steps, on and on. Please, she prayed silently, don’t let them be dead. She burst through the portico door.

They were sitting, the three of them, with their legs over the sides, swinging, easy as you please. They might have been children entranced with the view.

Claire almost passed out. They looked across at her, astonished.

All around, the countryside was to be seen. The dismal, bright white light pressed against them. Claire reeled with vertigo. Only the bell itself seemed safe, nestled under its roof. Claire wanted to hold on to something. The bell was too far in. She sat down and held on to the frail wroughtiron rim the others had stuck their legs through.

“I’ve been telling them a story.” Puffin stood. His lips were very red, his hair slicked back and cut in a straight blunt line at his crisp linen collar.

“Hey!” the voice of the outraged customer down below reached them. “Was soll denn das?! Ober!”

Puffin leaned in and ran his finger along the rim of the bell. “Did you know,” he said, “they’ve used the Mill bell ever since they bombed the church.” He might have been a tour guide.

“Right,” Claire smiled. “You came here as a child.”

“That’s right.” Puffin’s eyes swam with reminiscence. “I was a little boy. Mum thought Hans and I would play together. I was older, but not by much. A couple of months. And Hans was such a big boy.” Puffin’s eyes clouded over. “He didn’t care for me, though. We had nothing in common, really.” He held his elbows. “Hans was rough. We even came up here once. He threatened to throw me off. He said I was a Mädele, a girl.” Puffin heaved a sigh. “He was coarse, you see. He had no mother. ‘That’s what happens when you have no upbringing,’ Mum used to say. Oh, she knew he’d hurt my feelings. We’d put so much into this trip, you see. It meant so much to the both of us. She told me we were going to go back and meet my father, Adam von Grünwald. But he didn’t like me either.” Puffin’s eyes filled with tears. “We were in the upstairs room, Hans’s room. The father said, ‘Nein.’ He said I didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to him … He said get that ugly brat away from him. That’s what he said! Mum’s heart just about broke.” Puffin rattled his head. “Mum didn’t think I understood, but I did. I understood more German than she thought. Even then.

“Yes, yes.” Puffin strode along the rim of the tower. He was balanced with his own bravado, unafraid now of the terrible height. “I was always excellent at German,” he muttered. “All languages, really.”

There was a scuffle behind Claire. The portico door flew open. It was Temple. The magpie, worried about its nest, flew over him and up into the tower.

Puffin faltered and almost fell. Cosimo instinctively reached out his hand to him. Puffin saw it and stopped. He didn’t take it, but it steadied him. He was safe.

“That’s just like me.” Puffin smirked at Temple. “I mean that bird. You see, I wasn’t well-named after all. I was never a Puffin. I was more like the shifty magpie. I was always after shiny things.” He pursed his wet lips. His pale eyes went blank. “Robbing other people’s shiny things.”

Cosimo’s dark brows drew together. He sensed something was about to happen. He took Stella’s hand.

Puffin sucked in his breath. That he wouldn’t have! He leaned down and removed Cosimo’s hand from his sister’s. “Lucky Cosimo.” He raised one eyebrow tartly. “Always the lucky one!”

Claire thought, two more minutes. Just keep talking for two more minutes. Someone will come. The police will be here any minute. They’ll know what to do. “It must have been terrible for you,” she said.

Evangelika, recharged with purpose, came up behind Temple. She cowered behind him.

Puffin fluffed his hair. “It wasn’t so bad for me. It was Mum. She took it so hard. Especially because Hans had been so cruel to me. She felt for me, Mum did. That the father would rather have a filthy Jew boy for a son than a fine Aryan boy like me.”

“Don’t tell! Don’t tell!” Evangelika cried in a horrified voice.

“My father was not Jewish,” Stella said from her small place on the rim. She held her rosary in her hand.

“Oh yes,” Puffin said, “he was Jewish. That woman Adam von Grünwald married wasn’t really Hans’s mother. What? Did you really believe she was? She was just a replacement. Handy.”

“Don’t tell,” Evangelika whimpered.

“What do you mean?” Stella whispered.

“I thought everybody knew. You really didn’t know?” Puffin glared at Stella and at Cosimo with wicked merriment. “Your father wasn’t Adam and Kunigunde’s child. That was just a trick. Hans’s real mother was a Jew. A dirty Jew. Adam von Grünwald’s dirty Jewish whore!” He spat the words. Blue veins stood out on his neck.

He’d shocked the fear from all their faces. They gaped at him.

“My mum told me the whole story,” Puffin said, “many times.”

“Oh, don’t tell, don’t tell,” Evangelika crooned. She held on to Temple’s back.

Puffin eyed her coldly. “That Jewess was ruining everything. She poisoned the Mill with her tricks. With her charms. Playing fancy piano. Having sex with Adam von Grünwald in return for sanctuary.”

Claire looked at Cosimo. He looked, she realized at once, like Iris.

“It wasn’t like that!” Evangelika shrieked.

“She had Adam von Grünwald captivated,” Puffin continued coolly, ignoring her. “He was going to lose the Mill. And it was all because of her. And she, this Iris von Lillienfeld, this Jew, was just using him.”

“Nein,” Evangelika murmured, “she loved him. And he really, truly loved her.”

“Oh, he thought he did,” Puffin mimicked in a womanish voice. “But she was a vamp. A sneak. Stealing him away from his own mother!”

He paced along the catwalk, closer each time he came by.

Claire hooked one foot under the wrought-iron fence. If he would only come that close one more time, she could grab hold of his ankle.

“What does it mean?” Stella asked in a small voice.

Puffin looked at her with disdain. “My mother”—he pulled himself up to his full meager height—“… my mother poisoned her. She poisoned your grandmother the way you would any rat. They were like rats, you know. Those people. Deserting the ship. Taking their money out of the country.”

“She was my grandmother?” Stella asked wonderingly. “The Jewess was my grandmother?”

“Liebling”—Evangelika reached out a useless arm across the void to Stella—“Iris von Lillienfeld was not the way he says she was.” Tears were streaming down her cheek from only one eye. The other didn’t work.

“But Iris’s baby was stillborn,” Claire protested. “The baby died when Adam’s mother poisoned Iris!”

Evangelika rocked herself. Her voice reverberated in the hollow belfry. “Adam was weeping so! There was no hope there. No sound would come out of it. ‘Iris!’ Adam kept calling. ‘Save Iris!’ The doctor said Iris would die too. But she kept living! ‘Take it away,’ the doctor said to me, ‘and bury it. Else who knows what the villagers will do with a Jewish corpse.’ I took the baby out, away from the Mill. I thought I would bury it in the Christian cemetery. Oh, it was so blue. So cold. I covered it in my shawl, no one should see it. I went to get something to dig with. I found a stick. I started to dig. I thought I heard something. I thought it was a ghost. I was so frightened. I kept digging, quickly. Then I heard it again. It sounded like a cat. I thought a cat was by the body. I went over to the kleine body. I leaned over it …” Evangelika clapped her hands and held them together. “It was alive. The boy was alive! I didn’t know what to do. I thought Hans’s mother had poisoned Iris. I thought if I brought the baby back alive, they would kill it. I was frightened. I thought to bring it to the priest. I wrapped it up in my shawl again and went on my way. By and by, as I walked along, it came to me. I would bring the baby to Kunigunde.”

“Hans was Iris’s son!” Claire marveled. “And Iris never knew. Never held her son!” She was horrified. All those years Iris believed Adam had stayed on to live with a mother who’d tried to poison her. But it hadn’t been Adam’s mother who’d done the terrible deed. It had been Ursula. Cruel Ursula.

“Kunigunde loved the baby right away.” Evangelika looked over her shoulder as though someone might be following her. “She named him Hans. She thought he was her doll. The villagers really believed he was hers. He was so new, you see. So fair. And Kunigunde was such a recluse. It might well have been that she was pregnant all those long months she was locked away, praying.

“But later she got tired of the poor thing. His leg wasn’t right. It never had been right, from lack of oxygen when he was born, you see. That’s why he limped. But to Kunigunde he was like a broken doll. If he couldn’t be fixed, she didn’t want him anymore.”

“So you raised him,” Claire said.

“That’s it. I raised him, ja. He was mine. Kunigunde sat in her garden, and I got to raise Hans. My boy. My poor boy.” She looked morosely over the side where Hans had fallen.

Stella Gabriella crossed herself. “And we never knew—”

“My mum knew,” Puffin hurried to say. He wouldn’t have Evangelika taking over now. This was his show here. “My mum knew all along. She figured that out fast enough. She saw Evangelika go into the cemetery with a bundle and she saw her come out. Still with a bundle. She knew something was up. Always dead clever, my mum.” His face was drained of color. “I couldn’t believe it when the housekeeper called and told me Mum had packed it in. I mustn’t fret, Uri said. Uri, that’s the housekeeper, she rang up the other day. Oh, she’s the fastidious one, Uri is. ‘Pills,’ she said. ‘Nice and neat. Wouldn’t want your mum to be locked up. Never want that …’ It’s not Mum’s fault she saves things. The flat all filled with rubbish. Just so many years she had to do without, you see. Was it more than a week ago?” He bit his lip. “The day before Hans died, it was. I didn’t tell you, Temp? Funny, that. I ought to have told you. She said I mustn’t worry. Mum’s time was up, and there was nothing we could have done to change that. As the Arab says, it is written …” Distraught, he snatched at his hair.

Claire shivered, knowing now that Uri, the housekeeper, was Ursula herself. She had called Puffin as her own housekeeper, to tell him of his mother’s suicide. Then committed suicide. It was ghastly.

“That’s why,” Cosimo spoke. He touched his face, his own hair, his strong, long nose. “That’s where I come from. That’s why.”

“You can’t know what it was like,” Evangelika said. “It was the war.” She looked from face to face. “I had to keep him. It was perfect. You see, no one knew. Only Kunigunde and I. And after a while, she forgot …” She felt Claire’s eyes on her. “I had nothing else,” she pleaded. “Iris had so much. She had a new life. She would never know. She couldn’t come back. The Jews would never come back.”

Temple said to Puffin, “It was you, then, rang the bells?” Still hardly believing, unable to say, “It was you who killed them.” Even now.

“Hans laughed at me,” Puffin said to Temple in a quiet voice. “I told him I would tell, and he laughed at me. He said, ‘Go ahead, tell the children. They’re grown now. What harm will it do?’ He turned his back on me. I said ‘Wait. Just wait.’ ‘What is it?’ he snapped. He was so brusque. ‘I only wanted to talk,’ I said. ‘After all, our destinies have been entwined.’” Puffin held his palms up, empty. “But he saw no romance in our tragedy. He had no romance in him.

“He pushed me out of the way. Right here, it was.” Puffin touched the air around his thigh. “He pushed me to the side like a sack of old potatoes. I said then I wanted my share of the treasure. I knew it was still here. My mother knew it would still be here. It was part of my inheritance, whether we were brothers or not. Anyone could see that. I was willing to be reasonable. I told him he could keep the Mill, but he would have to share the treasure with me. He had to share.

“You should have heard him laugh. Oh, I do wish I’d never heard him laugh. One didn’t often hear that sound. So big and metallic. It was not his nicest feature. He said Cosimo had searched the whole of Saint Hildegard’s Mill for it when he was a little child. If he couldn’t find it, nobody could. He said his father, Adam, had given the treasure to his mother, Kunigunde, to hide. His father said that way, someday, the true owner would have to come back for it. He laughed and laughed. He just kept laughing.

“I pushed him. Once. I shoved him just the way he’d pushed me. I didn’t expect him to go over. I didn’t think of it. But his foot was caught up in the rope. He fell backward. He looked into my eyes while he was falling …” Puffin looked intently at his nails. “I heard his head crack against the side …” He raised his eyes to Temple. “I didn’t really care about the money. I only ever wanted it for you.”

“Why did you never tell me!” Temple cried.

“You? I’d never tell you, dear. I’m the one to protect you. Know what I mean?”

“But look,” Claire pleaded, “it’s not too late. We could tell the police how it was—”

“It was Fräulein Wintner,” Puffin interrupted her. He put his gray gloves on, wedging down each finger with the other hand. “She was cold as ice. I took great pleasure in killing her.”

Someone clattered up the stairway.

Nobody moved. The door was violently thrown open. It was Mara. All she saw was whom she expected to see, Temple and Claire. So sure had she been to find them in an embrace, she was taken aback at the sight of the others.

“You!” She aimed her fury at Puffin.

“It’s always been me, love,” Puffin said, eyelids lowered, mocking her.

Then they heard the disturbing dee-da-dee-da of the police siren drawing close.

“That’s what you think,” Evangelika said in her crusty voice, surprising everyone. “That’s what you’ve always thought. You, you, you! Ursula and you! The only ones with secrets. Well, it wasn’t Hans your mother Ursula was blackmailing.” She pounded her scrawny fist on Temple’s back, “it was me. I was the one who paid all your fancy schools and fancy needs. All those years. Every Pfennig I earned. Every last Pfennig! I never bought for me. It all went to you. I had to. Else Ursula would have told that Iris was Hans’s mother. She knew. She saw me take the baby to Kunigunde. She was hiding in the woods. She would have told. And I would have lost him.” She wrung her hands, still leaning on Temple.

“No,” Puffin said, not believing.

“Oh, ja.” Evangelika nodded her head emphatically. “I am the Keeper of the Mill. Ich bin’s!” She touched the wall of the belfry. Hers. “Who else kept the secret, never told that it was Kunigunde kept the diamonds? I did. It was me who kept the secrets.”

Puffin gazed woefully at Temple. The Polizei were coming into the Mill. Puffin stood up.

“Puffin! Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” Temple cried.

Puffin saw his old friend’s eyes swimming in tears across the way. “It’s done,” he said. “Already done.” Puffin smiled. He bowed. He picked up Hans’s cane from where it was wedged between Cosimo and the white wall behind him.

“Don’t hurt them,” Claire called across the well of space. “Just let them go.”

“Promise me”—Puffin winked at Temple—“you’ll ring the bell.”

Temple, his face wet with tears, nodded.

“Say it.” Puffin pointed a finger at Temple.

“I’ll ring the bell,” Temple said.

There was a moment of timeless grace. The belfry beheld Puffin Hedges. Like a magician in slow motion, he picked up Hans’s cane. Absently, he stroked the bird’s carved head. He unsheathed the short sword. It slipped out like mercury, swift and glinting.

Cosimo rose and stood in front of Stella. They braced themselves.

In one sad, demented try at care, Puffin took aim.

“Puffin! Puffin!” Temple called him.

Puffin looked around at each of them, then held on Temple’s eyes.

Somewhere behind her, Claire heard a mournful shriek. It was Temple Fortune.

Puffin smiled wistfully at his old friend then plunged the sword into his own lost heart. Off the portico he dropped. The magpie was startled and flew, a quick shadow, into the wind. Over the hills you could hear the clouds lift and swallow the sound of the wings, free as the pealing of bells.