Silhouette in Scarlet (6 page)

W
HEN I WOKE UP
next morning I felt terrible. At first I couldn’t imagine why. Then I remembered my cousins. The dilemma was still unresolved.
Apparently my subconscious had taken the night off.

It wasn’t until I was brushing my teeth that the dream came back to me.

Not surprisingly, Leif had been the featured actor. Dressed in leggings and a tunic open to the waist, his fair hair shoulder length, he wore a smith’s leather apron and flourished a
hammer the size of Thor’s fabled Mjolnir. Outside the crude shelter where he was working was a sign: ‘Wayland’s Smithy; Good Work at Low Prices. If you didn’t get it at
Wayland’s, you paid too much.’

Hypnotized by the ripple of bronzed muscle on his arms and chest, I didn’t notice the object on the anvil till his great hammer was high in the air. It wasn’t a sword or a piece of
armour, it was a chalice – a footed cup made of silver and bound with strips of gold. Inlaid garnets and scarlet enamel flashed in the light.

My dream self sprang forward with a voiceless shriek, trying to save the precious thing. I was too slow; but just before the hammer struck, a figure materialized out of nowhere and a long, thin
arm snatched the chalice away. The figure was that of the silhouette cutter, his face no longer meek and humble, but set in a grin of fiendish triumph. He clutched the chalice to his meagre bosom.
The hammer crashed on the anvil, starting a progression of ringing vibrations that grew louder and louder. The silhouette cutter began to vibrate, as if the atoms of his body were spinning off into
space. His body faded until nothing was left but his grin – and the shape of the chalice, blazing with internal light so dazzling it hurt my eyes.

I decided I needed a cup of coffee. Or three.

While I made it and drank it, I sent a silent apology to my subconscious. It hadn’t solved the problem I had set it before I went to bed – to call or not to call Cousin Gustaf
– but it had reminded me of something important.

Leif’s presence in the dream probably didn’t mean anything except that all of my mind, sub – and super-conscious, has excellent taste. The silhouette cutter was one of those
random contributions one often finds in dreams; he was a bizarre figure, and the encounter had been unusual. The point of the dream was the chalice. It had numerous mythic connotations –
Arthurian legend, the Holy Grail, the chalice from the palace . . . No, that was from an old Danny Kaye movie.

I wrenched my frivolous mind back to business. The important thing was that the dream chalice was no figment of my imagination. It actually existed. I had seen a photograph of it only a few days
before.

I had been kidding myself when I tried to dismiss ‘Wayland’s work’ as a meaningless joke. The phrase had nagged at me for days, while I packed and shopped and cleaned out the
fridge and called the kennel and performed all the other chores my temporary absence required. Finally, the day before I was due to leave, I succumbed. I spent several hours in the museum library,
looking up objects to which that enigmatic description might apply.

The reference was even more ambiguous than I had supposed. Wayland was a northern god originally, but his story had travelled far and endured for centuries. ‘Wayland’s work’
might describe an art object produced anywhere in northern Europe over a period of several hundred years – Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Celtic – or even treasures brought back from Russia or
Byzantium by far-ranging Scandinavian traders.

‘That’s not my field’ is a statement often made by scholars to excuse their ignorance when they are asked to explain something they don’t understand. However, northern
Europe between 400 and 1100 a.d. is
not
my field. As I browsed in the library that afternoon, going farther and farther from my original research as my interest increased, I realized that,
like a good many people, I had underestimated my remote ancestors.

The popular impression of the Germanic tribes is that of bloody-minded savages trampling the delicate blossoms of civilization underfoot. In all the stories I had read they were the villains.
The Vikings burned villages, looted churches, raped and murdered; the Saxons fought noble King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table; the Vandals gave their name to successive generations of
destroyers. Admittedly they were a crude lot, but their opponents weren’t much better. They were courageous explorers, fighters, and traders. The might of Rome, which had crushed the
civilized empires of the Near East, faltered and fell in the German forests. Many a Roman standard graced the hut of a Germanic chieftain after the defeat of the legion that had carried it.

The Vikings became the finest seamen of their time, daring the perils of the unknown west. Even I knew that Leif the Lucky had been the first to discover America, centuries before Columbus. What
I didn’t know, or had forgotten, was that the Scandinavians also followed the caravan routes to the east. The tribes from whom the name ‘Russia’ derives were northerners. Tall
blond warriors formed the honour guard of the emperors of Byzantium, and traders brought back coins minted in Damascus, Baghdad, and Tashkent. As a runic inscription on an ancient tombstone put it,
‘Valiantly we journeyed afar for gold; and in the east we fed the eagles.’

Among the objects brought back to Scandinavia by traders or looters was the chalice of my dream. Discovered by a farmer ploughing his field, it had been buried over a thousand years earlier by
an owner fearing attack on his home. He had never retrieved it. Perhaps the powdery traces of his bones had been scattered by the same plough that turned up his treasure.

The chalice was now in a private collection in Stockholm, which undoubtedly explained its appearance in my dream. The name and address of the museum was in my lost notebook, along with other
notes I had taken that afternoon. The loss was not irretrievable; I could find the same reference books in local institutions. Or I could call Gerda, Schmidt’s secretary, and ask her to look
up the information.

The hell with it, I thought. And the hell with Cousin Gustaf, too. No busman’s holidays for me.

I hung around the room for another hour, fighting off energetic chambermaids who wanted to clean, and hoping the telephone would ring. I used all the makeup I normally don’t have time to
bother with, and tried on three different outfits before I settled on white slacks and T-shirt, with a kelly green scarf. I did my nails. The phone still didn’t ring, so I cleaned out my
purse. Among the papers in it was the slip of paper on which I had scribbled Cousin Gustaf’s address. Schmidt had also given me the references Gustaf had mentioned. Odd, that; it was the sort
of thing John might do, inventing unnecessary and seemingly respectable references to disarm suspicion. One of the banks was in Stockholm. I toyed with the idea of calling, but my resentment
against all the known and unknown characters who were trying to louse up my vacation was too strong. I put the papers back in my purse. The phone did not ring. I threw away the jelly doughnut. The
phone did not ring.

At eleven o’clock I admitted the maid. The hell with Leif too. I would dedicate the day to sightseeing and shopping of the most frivolous kind. No museums, no antiquities. Maybe I could
pick up another tall blond. There were plenty of them in Sweden.

Stockholm, which is often cool and rainy, put on one of her better shows for me that day. The colours were those of springtime innocence – clear greens, sparkling blues, soft red brick,
and creamy buff. The breeze was just cool enough to justify my decision to look for a hand-knit ski sweater.

I moved out of the way of the stream of traffic, pedestrian and vehicular, that passed the doors of the Grand Hotel, and consulted my pocket map of Stockholm. Up Kungsträdgårdsgatan,
along the park, to Hamngatan; wriggle through a small square and a side street to Drottninggatan, ‘long, narrow and filled with tiny shops,’ according to the guidebook.

Presumably I followed that route, and obviously I did not get hit by a taxi, but I don’t remember a thing about it. The shop windows finally roused me from my reveries. Clothes and food
(and a couple of other things) appeal to basic instincts even more compelling than the worries that continued to nag at my mind. I tried on fifteen or sixteen sweaters, each more gorgeous than the
last. The one I bought was a blend of green and grey and red and black, with silver clasps; and after I had paid for it I decided I had better start thinking seriously about finding a cheaper
hotel. Prices were lower than in Munich, but not much.

By that time it was after one-thirty, so I went to satisfy another basic urge. (I am referring to food.) One of the restaurants fronting Kungstradgården, formerly the royal gardens, would
be just the ticket. I would sit on the terrace in my new red-and-green sweater and drink beer and eat smorgasbord and look at the flowers and watch the children play.

All those amenities were available. In the cooler northern climate the flowers that had come and gone in Munich were still blooming their heads off. The lilacs filled the air with scent, and
neatly cultivated beds of freesia and roses made patches of colour between the paths where the children ran. But as I sat there poking at my food, I finally came to grips with my problem. That
morning I had seen – actually seen and noticed – thirty ski sweaters and two thousand faces. Instead of admiring handsome modern streets and quaint markets, I had been searching for a
well-known profile.

Not Leif’s. John haunted me like the ghost of an old murder. I hadn’t seen him for over twenty-four hours. Instead of reassuring me, that fact only made me exceedingly nervous.

His inadequate disguise at the airport might have been a precaution against me. He couldn’t be sure I would not be followed off the plane by half a dozen Munich cops. (I was sorry now I
hadn’t thought of it.) However, by the time I reached the currency exchange, he had had me under surveillance for some time, and he must have been reasonably certain I was alone. My jovial
hail wouldn’t have sent him scuttling for cover if I were the only person he had to worry about. My first assumption had been correct after all. Somebody was on his trail.

I had expected to hear from him before this. I had left the hotel that morning and walked, aimlessly and slowly, hoping he would seize the opportunity to contact me.

Men had tried to contact me. Two student types, a little Japanese gent draped with cameras, and a well-dressed, sanctimonious-looking man whose nationality was obscure, but whose command of
English included some surprising words. None had been John. If he was following me, he was doing it very skilfully. If someone else was following me, he or she was also doing it very skilfully. In
the bloom of my carefree youth I used to think I was a match for any number of villains, but I was older and wiser now, and I had to admit I probably wouldn’t spot a specific pursuer unless
he was bright blue or wore a clown costume. People are so annoyingly conformist. All middle-aged, middle-sized businessmen dress alike, and students are the most conservative of all; most of the
males were sporting beards that summer, and ninety per cent of them, male and female, wore designer jeans and T-shirts. A couple at a table nearby resembled most of the young people I had seen that
morning: dark glasses covered the upper halves of their faces, and her close-cropped brown hair and his whiskers were part of the informal uniform they all slavishly followed.

My eyes moved over the other diners. The only thing I could be sure of was that Leif wasn’t among them. His height made him as conspicuous as a clown or a painted Pict. Whatever disguise
he might adopt, he couldn’t hide that.

Then my roving eye focused on something that was familiar – a shabby grey sweater and a massive head of grey hair. His shoulders had an obsequious stoop as he addressed a group of older
women sitting at a table for six. The women were laughing and shaking their heads.

As if he felt my eyes upon him, the little man straightened and turned. Across the width of the room our glances locked. He bowed and smiled. Balancing his briefcase awkwardly on one arm, he
opened it and reached inside. The card he held up, like a picket’s poster, was only too familiar. There I was, in featureless outline, for all the restaurant to see.

I couldn’t be angry; he was so eager and so proud of his work, and so obviously in need of assistance in selling his unusual product. When he gestured at me, at the silhouette, and at the
ladies, I nodded, embarrassed but unable to resist the appeal. With an even deeper bow he turned back to the women to make his pitch. They had the unmistakable stamp of happy American widows taking
their annual summer holiday. I had seen a number of such parties in Munich. They clung to the bouffant hairdos of twenty years ago, and they always wore nice knit pantsuits. Now they were peering
at me through their bifocals, nodding and laughing as the silhouette cutter demonstrated his skill -with me as the model.

I felt like one of those antique advertising posters that have two big hands with pointing fingers indicating the object of interest. One of the ladies waved at me. With a shrug I waved back.
The silhouette cutter sat down and took out his materials. He had made his sale.

The brief interlude had distracted and entertained me, but as soon as it was over, I started worrying at the old problem again like a dog with a used bone. Only a few hours earlier, I had
determined to ignore all the intriguing little clues that led into trails of meaningless conjecture and possible disaster. It would be my own fault if I followed one of those trails. Nobody was
bothering me. Yet, knowing John, I couldn’t believe I was in the clear. He wouldn’t drag me all the way up here and abandon . . . not me, he’d do that in a second . . . abandon
the purpose for which he had summoned me. Even his apparent inaction had meaning, and my own inaction might be leaving me wide open to his next ploy.

Naturally I had thought of the most obvious reason for his failure to get in touch with me. The people who had been chasing him might have caught up with him. If they were police, he could be in
jail. If they weren’t . . .