Christmas in the Snow (48 page)

‘Papi,’ Nikolai said, looking at someone behind her with an anxious expression.

Allegra turned to find an elderly, white-haired man staring back at her, his hand shaking on a walking cane. But he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were on the Advent calendar on the
bench.

Slowly, he advanced until he was level with Allegra, his free arm outstretched as he touched the small cabinet with something approaching reverence.

Allegra looked questioningly over at Nikolai.

Nikolai was watching his father closely too, as though worried he might fall. His eyes briefly met Allegra’s. ‘This is my father, Timo.’

‘Timo?’ She had heard that name before.

Her voice broke the elderly man’s spell and he looked at her for the first time. And as she saw the shock come into his face – just like it had in Lars’s – she
remembered.

‘You knew my grandmother,’ she said quietly, more to herself than anyone.

But he could only nod – telling her, at least, he understood English – and she knew he was seeing not her but Valentina, the woman he had been engaged to before Lars had come to
town.

She rested her hand on the top of the Advent calendar too. ‘Did you make this?’

His eyes fell to her hand. ‘I did.’

She swallowed. There was something in the way he said those two words that caught her attention – the gravity in them, like he was in the dock, making an admission . . .

She followed his gaze to her hand and, on it, the tin ring, still on her finger – the one Valentina had died wearing, the one that conspicuously didn’t and couldn’t match up to
the showy three-diamond studded engagement band. Without thinking, she twisted the ring and exposed the perfect heart indented in her skin. Discovered in the twilight, she had forgotten it again in
the glare of the day. Until now.

Somewhere in her mind, the spindle began spinning again, spooling out loops of golden thread that, if she followed them, would take her down paths she hadn’t considered before now,
although the clues had been there all along – such as the love note Isobel had discovered only an hour or so ago, also hidden in plain sight.

A secret love.

She watched as he opened the twelfth drawer and pulled out the tiny flat metal hoop – also tin, also engraved with hearts. And as she realized what it was, she suddenly understood why the
secret could never have been kept. Because as Timo held out the baby bangle and met her gaze, she saw that the eyes looking back at her were her own.

A murmur rose from the congregation at the sight of Allegra, Valentina’s ghost, as she walked to join Lars in the front pew. He was sitting alone – no sign of
Bettina – a wheelchair folded and propped against one of the white pillars, his blue eyes watery as he watched her advance like a bride.

‘I thought something had happened,’ he said with relief as she followed after Isobel, who hopped into the pew, and she knew that he was referring as much to her absence yesterday
afternoon as to here. He could have no idea it was a minor miracle she and Isobel weren’t more than ten minutes late. What Timo had told her, upstairs in the little flat above the workshop,
she could have stayed there for days, just listening to his stories.

‘Isobel can’t move very quickly, that’s all,’ Allegra replied, her eyes averted as she pretended to fuss with Isobel’s crutches.

Lars shot her a quizzical look – they had taken to greeting each other with squeezed hands and a kiss on each cheek – but the organist had started playing now that the sisters had
arrived, and everyone stood, launching into the first hymn.

Being in Swiss German, neither Allegra nor Isobel could read it – the tune was unfamiliar too – and Allegra subtly looked around the congregation instead. She had been taken aback by
the sheer numbers as she’d come through the door; she had expected it would be simply her, Isobel and Lars here today, but every seat had been taken, to the point that the chaplains had had
to take some chairs from the nearby cafes to accommodate extras.

She could see the little group huddled together at the back: Timo, Nikolai, Leysa and Noemie. They would not join her and Isobel at the front in the family pews.

Allegra glanced over at Lars. He wasn’t singing either, staring instead at the lavish portrait he’d had removed from his own hall and placed on an easel.

Allegra looked back at it too, taking in her grandmother’s narrow face, high forehead and planed jaw, the strong eyebrows that were currently enjoying a fashion moment (and had seen
Allegra herself stopped several times at parties as women asked after her regime), the dark hair swept back from her beautifully boned face with the band of flowers, and her lips which, though not
fleshy, were sensuously dark as if just kissed. This was the woman who had refused to remain just a name, just a correction on a family tree whose only buds were women. She would not be forgotten
or overlooked. More than sixty years dead and she still drew a crowd.

As everybody sat down again and Father Merete began speaking, she remembered how Lars had cast the finger of suspicion on Timo when she had asked him what had happened the night of
Valentina’s disappearance. He had been testing her, she saw that now, seeing whether the name registered and how much she knew about her grandmother’s past. Well . . . She glanced over
again, catching sight of his wet eyes and trembling lips, but she didn’t mistake it for lost love this time. She was on to him now and she knew fear when she saw it.

The chalet swarmed with life. Laughter filled the rooms; conversation soaked into the walls as people jostled and circulated and shared memories of a woman who had been dead
three times as long as she had lived. The flowers and the art, the rugs and the antiques faded into mere backdrop against the stories of her beauty, the tales of her temper, and Lars sat in his
chair in the drawing room with a fierce pride that she had been his. Beside him, newly positioned, was a sepia-tinted photograph taken on their wedding day, showing them both standing stiffly in
the style of the day, Valentina in clotted-cream lace and Lars in a narrow black suit, tie and hat.

Isobel was sitting on the sofa to his left. She had wanted to stand, preferring to stay with Allegra greeting guests in the hallway, but her knee was throbbing too much, and after forty minutes,
she had had to admit defeat, sitting on the sofa with a rigid smile as Lars paraded her in front of his friends like a show pony. It hadn’t gone unnoticed by her, the tone of disapproval that
greeted Anya’s name as their likeness was compared and agreed, and Allegra hadn’t had a chance yet to tell her sister about the morning’s developments. By the time she’d got
back, Isobel was already waiting for her in the lobby of the hotel, and they were too late for her to delay the memorial service even a minute further. What she had to tell her couldn’t be
compressed into one sentence or even one day.

Allegra kept on passing the visitors through to Lars, but only after they’d obliged her small request. She scanned the visitors’ book that the Mont Cervin concierge had speedily
bought and delivered to Lars’s chalet before the service had ended, with the result that it was already three-quarters full. All the townsfolk who’d wanted to pay their respects in
church and back here had happily obliged her request of sharing anecdotes and memories of Valentina for Julia, her little girl, who’d left here when she was barely more than four years old.
The pages were filled with black script, and one or two people had even slipped grainy black-and-white photographs of Valentina in the pages, she saw, which would need to be secured later. Allegra
smiled a little as she saw, too, the local spelling of her mother’s name – Giulia – and remembered the ‘G’ dotted out on the leather strap of the baby cowbell. The
significance of it had passed her by when she’d first seen it, but now it was obvious what the ‘G’ stood for. The cowbell was a father’s gift to his secret baby
daughter.

A finger tapped her shoulder and she looked up to find the lean, bristly face of Connor Mayhew staring down at her.

‘Mr Mayhew,’ she said in surprise. ‘Goodness, thank you so much for coming.’

He nodded awkwardly. ‘It seemed right to pay my respects.’

Allegra stared up at the man who’d found her grandmother, the man who’d set this entire sequence of events into motion. She thought it seemed right he was here too.

‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘No, thank you. I . . .’ He glanced around the lavish chalet, as though looking for someone. ‘I should go now.’

‘Oh. That’s a shame. Well, I’ll tell my grandfather you were here.’

‘No—’ he said, too quickly. He gave a tight smile. ‘Please don’t.’

She paused. ‘Why not?’

‘He would not appreciate my presence here.’

‘Why not? He’d be so grateful that you’ve taken the ti—’

Connor gave a wry look that suggested he thought she was being deliberately ironic.

‘You must be aware that the history between your grandfather and the SLF is difficult.’

‘No. Why does my grandfather even
have
a history with the SLF?’ she asked, her eyes probing his face for answers.

‘Miss Fisher, I don’t think now is the—’

‘On the contrary, now is exactly the time, Mr Mayhew.’ She took him by the elbow and, glancing into the sitting room and seeing Lars in full flow from his fireside chair, she lowered
her voice. ‘He’s not my grandfather.’ She stopped him from saying anything with a brief shake of her head. ‘I only found out today.’

‘So then all this—’ He indicated to her dutiful-granddaughter routine, meeting and greeting guests.

‘Is for appearance’s sake only.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Everyone in the town who knew her has come and I’ve been trying to speak to as many of them as possible.
From what I’ve learned today, I think that he may well have played a role in my grandmother’s disappearance, so if there’s anything relevant you know that could help me shed light
on what happened . . . anything at all . . .’

Connor stared back with those clear blue eyes that hid nothing and kept no lies.

‘The SLF believes – but cannot prove – that your grandfather was complicit in an agreement between local landowners to sell the local pastures to developers before the zoning
maps could be drawn up.’

She shook her head. ‘What’s a zoning map?’

‘It is a map that identifies low-, medium- and high-risk avalanche areas. Low-risk areas are zoned yellow, medium are blue, and high risk are red. Much of Zermatt would have been
classified as a red zone, meaning no development would be permitted there. But your family’s farm and several others were sold off to developers before the classifications could be
enforced.’

‘Because they would have been in the red zones – and therefore worthless?’ she asked.

‘Fischer says he was just being a businessman. The government and SLF had been talking about bringing in the maps for years, but there were many delays and legal wranglings. It was only
when the winter of 1951 hit that they were rushed through, but by then it was too late: development had begun and fortunes had been made.’

‘So you’re saying even though Zermatt is developed in a red zone, Lars knowingly went ahead and put hundreds of thousands of people’s lives at risk, just to build his
fortune?’

He nodded. ‘Fischer calculated the risk – he knew if the SLF could not prevent, we would have to cure. And so we have. We have invested hundreds of millions of francs in creating
anti-avalanche defences: building reservoirs, planting forests, as well as hard structures. Advances in understanding and predicting avalanches have taken giant steps forward since the 1950s and
Zermatt is now safe. But it is the ordinary taxpayer who has had to foot the bill for his greed.’

Lars had traded other people’s safety for his own profit? Allegra looked away, ashamed to have ever thought she was like him, ashamed to have ever shown the old man a moment’s
kindness. ‘How many people know about this?’

‘Barely any. Some of the old locals here have their suspicions, of course, but we could never confirm them. It would not have been politic for this to come out. If it had become public
knowledge that some of the country’s most famous ski resorts had been knowingly developed in red zones, the scandal would have been devastating. Fifty per cent of all Swiss live in avalanche
terrain, and too many livelihoods are at stake to undermine the tourism industry here.’ He looked at her closely, watching as her eyes darted side to side, digesting the revelation. ‘I
trust I can depend on your discretion with this information.’

She nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘Good. I don’t know if that is any help . . .’

She shrugged. ‘It gives me a more accurate sense of his character, if nothing else.’

He took a step back and held out his hand, a signal that their private conference was at an end. ‘Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Fisher,’ he said in a louder
voice. ‘If ever I can be of assistance . . .’

She gave a weak smile as he walked into the lift, his eyes – she saw – moving between her and the portrait back hanging on the wall behind her, as the doors closed.

She turned to look at the painting herself. Valentina stared back: strong, independent, passionate, young. Only twenty-one and a mother. What had made a woman like that run into the mountains
during a hundred-year storm? What had made her own sister flee just two years later with her child? Until she knew the answers to those questions, secrets would hang in the air like smoke over
water.

The party was nearly over. Guests were taking their cue from one another and leaving in polite groups, bundling into the lifts with their coats still not on, their cheek
muscles tired from the laughter of the afternoon as they regretfully departed the grand chalet for their own more modest homes.

But there was still one person who hadn’t come to say hello. Allegra gave the cue they’d agreed on and walked back through the hall. It was empty, with just a few wine glasses on the
windowsills to indicate the merriment that had blown through the house. She could hear only the sound of voices in the sitting room and she stopped at the sight that greeted her. Isobel was
laughing with Lars, her leg propped up, explaining something with bright eyes and excited hand movements.