Christmas in the Snow (49 page)

Allegra felt her stomach tighten. She had left them alone too long. She should have told Isobel this morning; she should have said something before Lars had had a chance to get his hooks into
her, because now . . . now the betrayal would be so much worse.

She watched Lars clap his hands in delight at Isobel’s punchline and she wondered whether he’d suspected her doubts in the church. Maybe he had seen something in her face – a
face he already knew so well, of course – and known he had to switch teams.

‘Legs!’ Isobel beamed, noticing her standing by the door. ‘Come and take a seat. You must be shattered! Have you got face-ache?’

Allegra smiled as she walked across, sitting protectively next to her sister and handing her the cream leather-bound visitors’ book that was now all but full of memories. ‘For
Mum’s good days.’

Isobel looked down at in her surprise, but her nose soon began to wrinkle as she flicked through the pages. ‘Uh, sis – it’s all in German. And I hate to say this, but I
don’t reckon Barry’s German is going to be all that, do you?’ she chuckled.

‘It’s OK. Timo’s going to translate it for us.’

‘Who’s Timo?’ Isobel asked, without looking up. She had found one of the photographs and was squinting at it.

‘Our grandfather.’

Isobel’s head snapped up and all Allegra could do was let her see the truth in her eyes. If she could have told Isobel another way, she would have done, but this needed to be done overtly
and swiftly. Lars couldn’t be given anywhere to hide.

The sound of the walking cane on the floor told her Timo was coming through, Nikolai by his elbow, and she watched as Lars’s face set hard and fast.

‘Legs? What’s going on?’ Isobel asked in a nervous voice as the two men came in, Nikolai helping his father into the armchair opposite Lars and going to stand behind him. The
two old men stared at each other coldly, their bodies too old for fighting, but there was war in their eyes.

After a moment, Timo turned, his gaze falling to Isobel, and a look of unbidden affection softened his face at the sight of her.

Isobel looked at her sister. ‘Legs, tell me what’s going on.
Now
. I mean it.’

‘Lars was Valentina’s husband, but he wasn’t Mum’s dad.’

‘Are you saying Valentina had an
affair
?’ Isobel’s face took on an incredulous expression and Allegra knew her sister was thinking, Did people do stuff like that back
then?

Isobel turned back to Lars sympathetically. ‘Did you know?’

‘No.’ Lars’s response was lightning-quick, but his eyes were on Timo, his lips curled in a sneer. ‘I knew he was in love with her, just like everyone else. There was
nothing more to it. He wanted what he couldn’t have.’

‘So did you, old man,’ Timo replied calmly.

‘
I
married her.’

‘I’m not talking about Valentina.’

Another silence fell as they waited – waited for Timo to elaborate his accusation, for Lars to defend, but they were like boxers in the ring, circling each other, gloves up, each waiting
for the other to throw the first punch.

‘It has been a great party here today. You must be in no doubt now about his great love for his first wife.’ Timo was looking at Isobel again.

She shook her head uncertainly.

‘No. How could you? His love for her is famed. You can imagine how hard it must have been for Anya to follow in her footsteps. And as for poor Bettina, well, is it any wonder she carries a
face like a storm?’ he shrugged.

‘What are you doing here in my house?’ Lars said in an ominously low voice. ‘I want you out of here.’

Timo’s expression changed, looking almost pleased, as he addressed Lars directly now. ‘I know you do, just like you wanted Valentina out of the house that night. You knew what you
were doing when you told her I was waiting for her at the hut. You knew you were sending her out to her death.’

‘That is a lie!’

‘No. It is the truth. You know it and I know it, but what does it really matter when we both know I cannot prove it?’ he shrugged. ‘Proof has always been our problem, Fischer,
has it not? For when Valentina died, I had no proof that Giulia was mine. In the eyes of the law, you were her father. But we could all see in her eyes that
I
was; every time you looked at
her, you saw the truth. You knew it, but you could not prove it either. A checkmate.’

Lars didn’t respond, but his hands were clawed into the armrests, his complexion turning steadily redder.

‘Just tell me what you told her,’ Timo said, leaning forwards in his chair. ‘Even if I had proof, there’s a statute of limitations, is there not, on how long a
manslaughter charge can be pressed?’

‘You are a
fool
,’ Lars hissed.

‘I am a fool who has had sixty years to think about this, and my guess is that you told her she’d be waiting for me there. What is . . . ?’ He said something in German to
Nikolai, who thought for a moment.

‘A double bluff?’

‘Yes. Double bluff.’ Timo looked back at Lars. ‘It’s the only possible reason she would have gone up there.’

‘Why would I have done that? I loved her.’

‘But she didn’t love you. She despised you. You tricked her into marrying you with promises of seeing the world beyond these mountains, of living like a lady, but she quickly found
out you had overstated your wealth. And when you started your campaign to get her to sell, she realized exactly why you had married her.’ A shadow passed over Timo’s face. ‘But I
think perhaps she couldn’t hide the sickness from you. Three days trapped in the house with you during the storms and even you guessed her condition? And that was when you realized you were
out of time. One child that looked like me . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe you could pass it off. But two? Everyone would know. You knew she was going to leave you – and take the farm
with her.’

‘You lie!’ Lars roared, so loudly that Isobel jumped, his eyes bulging like a gargoyle’s as spittle collected on his chin.

‘Oh, don’t worry. I knew how stubborn she could be. Believe me, I spent
years
trying to get her to walk away from the farm, to just come away with me so we could start a new
life with Giulia somewhere else. But that deathbed promise . . .’ He shook his head sadly. ‘She could never forgive herself for defying her father in marrying you and she felt she owed
it to him to stay, no matter what beatings or threats you punished her with. She wouldn’t leave for me, the man she loved, and she would never sell for you, the man she hated – not even
as Giulia grew more like me by the day, spelling out our secret.’ Timo’s voice trembled at the mention of his daughter, but the look in his eyes never wavered. ‘Valentina had made
a promise and she was prepared to die to keep it. And die she did.’

Allegra felt like she could hardly breathe as the words filled the room like bellows. She knew what Timo was doing here: pushing, humiliating, carousing Lars into confessing. It was the only
card he had to play, because the accusations he was throwing out there . . . Without proof, it was just theory.

‘I never raised a hand to her,’ Lars snarled, quieter again.

‘It was how our affair started up again, Lars,’ Timo said with almost a chuckle and a shrug, riling him up again. ‘She was hiding up in the huts, pretending to shepherd the
herd but waiting for her bruises to go down . . . And of course everyone bought that. They all knew you were no farmer. “Lars wouldn’t know a goat from a cow,” they used to say,
and they were right. Six months after her father’s death, you had almost run the farm into the ground, overstocking the pastures and starting that roundworm epidemic. We would have laughed if
it hadn’t been so tragic.’

He was quiet for a long moment. ‘And it was tragic. It almost killed me watching her trying to keep that farm going as you made one bad decision after another. Were they deliberate?
I’ve always wondered. Were you deliberately trying to fail so that she would have no option but to sell?’ He nodded. ‘Maybe. Maybe you did. I think you probably tried everything
– but with the zoning maps coming and a new baby on the way, you could not wait any longer. She would not sell and you could not make her. You sensed your opportunity for fortune was going to
slip by like a salmon in the river.’

‘I don’t have to listen to this. If you’re so sure I’m such a monster, why don’t you go to the police with your big ideas? I’m sure they’d be interested
to hear the ramblings of a bitter, poor old man who lost the woman he loved to one of the richest and most powerful men in the area.’

Timo’s eyes shone. ‘If only I had those deeds, I would, old man.’

Lars’s face changed.

‘
They
were what you needed, weren’t they? That’s what Anya told me.’

‘Anya? What does she have to do with this?’

‘Everything, of course. It’s why you married her. Everybody knew she was sweet on you, and you made a convincing show of falling apart after Valentina’s death. The marriage
stood up to scrutiny even if it was indecently fast, but there was no time to lose, was there? Because she had inherited the farm, not you.’

Allegra frowned, interrupting. ‘Wait, surely inheritance law means the farm passes to the husband as next of kin?’

‘Ordinarily, yes. But with no sons in your family for several generations, a clause on the deeds of the farm states that it must pass down through the bloodline – to prevent the farm
from passing out of the family through marriage.’

‘“You come from a long line of mothers,”’ Isobel murmured under her breath, her hand on Allegra’s arm.

Timo was back to watching Lars closely. ‘You married Anya thinking you could easily persuade
her
to sell. She was gentler than Valentina; she would do anything you asked.’
His voice changed like a capricious wind. ‘But she was more like her sister than you had supposed. You underestimated her!’ Timo jabbed his finger delightedly towards Lars. ‘And
when you got rough with her too, she started to think that maybe her sister’s death had been more than an unlucky accident.’

Allegra cut in again. ‘Were there
any
circumstances in which Lars could have inherited?’

Timo turned to her with a grim expression. ‘Only if the bloodline stopped.’

‘Stopped. You mean’ – her eyes scoped his – ‘if Anya and Julia died?’

He nodded. ‘Only once the clause was null would the farm would pass to him as Anya’s legal next of kin.’

Allegra and Isobel both looked at Lars with horror. It was obvious now why Anya had run; and without proof that Julia was his, legally Timo couldn’t do anything to protect her either.

‘Sorry, there’s something I don’t get,’ Isobel said, half raising her hand like a student in class. ‘Granny didn’t die until 2001, and Mum is still very much
alive.’

‘Yes.’ Timo nodded.

‘So then if legally the farm has passed down to Mum, how did
he
sell the farm?’

‘With Anya gone, she was as good as dead. There was no one to argue the farm wasn’t legally his, and those who may have known about the clause . . . Well, Lars was clever enough to
be generous where it counted. He could afford to be. When he sold the land, he made six, seven, eight fortunes.’

Allegra stared at him, her brain racing. ‘So where are the deeds now?’ she asked urgently.

Timo’s eyes slid back to Lars, narrowing into slits. ‘I wish I knew. I’ve never seen them.’

‘Didn’t Anya tell you?’

‘She didn’t know either. Valentina had hidden them. She couldn’t let
him
find them – if they’d fallen into his possession, that would have made her . . .
What is the word? Disposable?’

Everyone fell silent. Allegra couldn’t bear to look at Lars any more. What was the point in all this? Histories and feuds and wars that had lasted three generations were blowing around
like leaves in her mind, and just when she thought everything was beginning to settle, another wind disturbed them all again. But there wouldn’t be any victories here tonight. Nothing had
changed. There was still no proof. She had heard enough, and they had a plane to catch. Feeling nauseated by the lies that had defined every generation of her family, she got up, helping Isobel to
her feet. Nikolai moved forwards too – a silent bodyguard – as Timo got out of his chair.

‘Shouldn’t we . . . ?’ Isobel protested feebly, but Allegra shook her head.

‘Let’s just go,’ she murmured, keeping her eyes down. The only justice they would have here was knowing, at last, the unproved truth. It would have to be enough.

‘The truth will out, old man,’ Timo said, his voice weaker from the strain of the battle, Lars watching in silence as their small group shuffled and hopped their way to the door.
This was his only punishment – to watch the family that wasn’t his walk out on him for the last time. Did he even care?

It was like Timo had said at the beginning: proof was their problem. Without the deeds they couldn’t prove motive, or that he had sold the farm illegally.

The mountains were still keeping secrets.

To all intents and purposes, Lars had got away with it.

It was after ten in the evening before they approached the arrivals hall at Heathrow, Isobel enjoying the envious stares of the other passengers as they were whisked past on
the special-assistance buggy, Allegra holding her crutches.

She was dead on her feet – she hadn’t slept in nearly thirty-six hours, and the day’s events had made it impossible for her even to nap on the plane – but she
couldn’t stop yet. Pierre was waiting for her in the office. He had said he’d wait for her, as long as it took, an ambiguity in his words that she’d never heard before.

Her stomach clenched with nerves again and she wished she had time to go home for a shower and change of clothes. She had woefully under-packed and all her clothes had been worn several times
over. Then again, if she’d known half of what was coming her way, she never would have gone at all – racing down the mountains, dancing on barrels and getting drunk with dangerous
strangers had been the easy part. She had found angels and demons on this trip, sifted the truth from the lies, and she was back on home soil with a new past and a brighter future. She would be
there in the hour.