The Star of Kazan (21 page)

After that Edeltraut went to meet Mathilde in a dress shop. Her sister was spending altogether too much money on her own clothes since the visit to Switzerland and needed watching.

‘You can go to Zettelmayer’s for coffee and cakes,’ she told the children. ‘I’ll meet you at the hotel.’

Zettelmayer’s was the best pastry shop in Bad Haxenfeld; its cakes were famous all over the province. Everyone who could afford it came there; people taking the cure or people driving through the town. The shop overlooked the park; the tablecloths were rose-coloured, the chairs were pink velvet and gilt, and the smell wafting out – of coffee and cinnamon and chocolate and apricots – stopped people in their tracks.

Gudrun and Hermann ordered hot chocolate and went over to choose their cakes. There were iced eclairs, which were wheeled away like patients in a hospital to be injected with fresh whipped cream. There were wild strawberry tartlets, the fruit as red as drops of blood, and almond biscuits shaped like stars.

Hermann chose a nut-layer tart with confectioner’s custard and Gudrun, as always, followed him and chose the same – but Annika hesitated. She knew all the cakes, she could have baked all of them except one: a small squat bun, very dark in colour, but not, she thought, the darkness of chocolate. She studied it for a while and then asked the lady what it was.

‘A h – that’s a local speciality. A Norrland Nussel. It’s made of chestnuts and molasses and a touch of tansy. You won’t find it anywhere else.’

‘Can one get the recipe?’ Annika asked. ‘Or is it secret?’

‘Bless you, no. I’ll write it out for you. Are you from Vienna?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll know about patisserie then.’

Annika nodded and took her bun to the table. It was unlike anything she had eaten before – a dark and serious taste, but sumptuous too – and she looked forward to sending Ellie the recipe. But Hermann, once again, was not at all pleased with her.

‘Why do you always talk to waitresses and servants? It’s not the thing. You’re making us conspicuous.’

Their table was by the window and Annika sat watching the people outside. Children bowled hoops, nursemaids pushed prams and everywhere the patients in wheelchairs or on crutches lifted their faces to the sun.

Then suddenly she leaned forward. It couldn’t be . . . except that it was. No one else’s bottom stuck out like that; no one else born and bred in Vienna would wear such a violently Scottish tartan dress; no one else tugged at the hand of her exhausted governess so fiercely. It was Loremarie Egghart and she was coming up the steps, pushing open the cafe door. The governess shook her head, but Annika could have told her she was wasting her time. If Loremarie wanted to eat cakes at Zettelmayer’s, then that was exactly what she would do.

‘I want a caramel sundae with two straws and a chocolate eclair – a round one, not a long one,’ she was announcing in her loud and piercing voice, while the governess (a new one whom Annika had not seen before) tried to call her back.

‘You know your mama wishes not—’ she began in terrible German.

But Loremarie had caught sight of Annika sitting at her table. She stopped dead on her way to the counter. She filled her chest with air as if she was an opera singer about to launch into a tricky aria.

Then she pointed at Annika and in an accusing shriek she said, ‘You’re a thief! You’re a dirty, disgusting thief!’ Her voice rose even higher. Then, ‘
You stole my great-aunt Egghart’s trunk!
’ yelled Loremarie across the cafe floor.

I
t was Leopold, the Eggharts’ snooty manservant, who had brought the appalling news to his employers.

‘I had it from the filing clerk in the office below the lawyers. She’s engaged to the boy who cleans up for Gerhart and Funkel and he swears it’s true. He carried it to the storeroom.’

‘But that’s outrageous. It can’t be allowed. I’ve never heard anything so shocking!’ said Herr Egghart.

‘The trunk belonged to OUR great-aunt. She had no business to leave it to that little kitchen girl,’ said his wife. ‘No business whatsoever.’

‘But, Mama, you said it was just rubbish in the trunk. You said I couldn’t use it even to dress up,’ said Loremarie.

‘So it is rubbish. And probably full of germs too. But that has nothing to do with it.’ Frau Egghart’s bosom was definitely heaving. ‘It was OUR great-aunt, so it is OUR trunk!’

‘Actually it was MY great-aunt,’ said her husband. ‘All the same, it’s an impertinence. How dare she leave it away from the family after all we did for her? Giving her a home.’

‘Nursing her with such loving care,’ said Frau Egghart.

‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this,’ said Herr Egghart. ‘Perhaps that kitchen child blackmailed her.’

‘Annika could be very cunning,’ said Loremarie.

‘I’m going across to the professors’ house. It’s an insult to the family.’

The professors were at home but not pleased to be interrupted.

But when Sigrid announced the Eggharts they gathered themselves together and came downstairs.

‘What can we do for you?’ asked Professor Julius politely.

‘You can get your cook’s adopted daughter to return our great-aunt’s trunk,’ roared Herr Egghart, and the professor stepped back because Herr Egghart’s voice, known as the loudest in Vienna, hurt his ears.

‘The trunk she stole from us by making up to the poor old lady as she lay on her deathbed,’ put in Frau Egghart.

‘I can think of nothing more disgusting than cheating someone out of their property when they are no longer in their right mind,’ said Herr Egghart.

Professor Julius had been taught by his mother not to hit people who came to the house, but sometimes he wished that he hadn’t.

‘Why don’t you sit down?’ he said. And then, ‘It is true that the lawyers told us that Fräulein Egghart had left a bequest to Annika, but as you know she no longer lives with us. We gave Annika’s new address to the lawyers and they said they would send the trunk to her mother – to Frau von Tannenberg – to give to the child.’

‘Well, I’m not going to leave the matter there,’ said Herr Egghart. ‘The trunk must be returned to us.’

‘The lawyers gave us to understand that the contents of the trunk only had a sentimental value – old keepsakes from her days in the theatre and so on.’

Frau Egghart gave an indignant snort. ‘Are you suggesting that it would not have had a sentimental value for US?’

‘She was OUR great-aunt,’ roared Herr Egghart, and Emil remembered Richard the Lionheart, at the sound of whose voice horses were said to kneel.

Loremarie, meanwhile, had crept out of the drawing room and made her way to the kitchen.

‘Your Annika’s a thief,’ she said.

Ellie was sitting in the wicker chair, shelling peas. She had lost a lot of weight and she looked tired, but her voice when she spoke to Loremarie was firm and strong.

‘
Get out of my kitchen
,’ she said. ‘
And fast!
’

That night in bed under the goose-down duvet for which so many Hungarian geese had given their lives, the Eggharts were still muttering angrily.

‘I’m going to write to Frau von Tannenberg. The trunk went to her; she will make Annika give it back. And if not we’ll sue.’

‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Frau Egghart. ‘You know we’re going to Bad Haxenfeld at the end of the month. Well, it’s only about an hour’s drive from there to the Tannenberg place – remember you looked it up? If we call on her and take her by surprise she won’t have time to make up any excuses.’

Herr Egghart nodded. ‘Yes, that might do. Perhaps I could get leave from the office a little earlier.’ He pushed his leg out of bed. ‘I’ll be glad to get Dr Becker on to my varicose veins. They’re giving me a lot of trouble.’

‘Yes, Becker’s a good man, but I’ve never met anyone who understood my oesophageal sphincter like that young French doctor in the massage room.’

‘Your what?’

‘My sphincter,’ said his wife patiently. ‘The ring of muscle between my stomach and my gullet. I told you, it’s beginning to leak.’ She yawned and settled herself back on her pillow. ‘They say they’ve got a new treatment,’ she murmured. ‘Something to do with seaweed . . .’

In the middle of the night Herr Egghart turned over restlessly.

‘She was MY great-aunt,’ he muttered angrily, and slept again.

A
nnika did not like Hermann. Quite apart from what he had done to Hector, she found him snobbish, selfish and overbearing.

But in the moment after Loremarie had called her a thief, and everyone in the cafe fell silent and stared at her, Annika saw another side to him. Hermann rose to his feet. He walked up to Loremarie, he clicked his heels.

‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he said. ‘I am Acting Cadet Hermann von Tannenberg.’ He turned to Annika. ‘This lady is my sister, Fräulein Annika von Tannenberg. Anybody who calls a member of my family a thief will have to answer for the consequences. If you have a brother, it will give me great satisfaction to challenge him to a duel.’

Loremarie stood stock-still, her mouth open. The governess tugged uselessly at her arm.

‘I . . . don’t have . . . a brother,’ she stammered.

‘Then perhaps your father would care to meet me. Ask him to choose his weapons – pistols or swords.’

Everyone was still staring, their cakes forgotten.

‘Oh, Hermann,’ breathed Gudrun adoringly. ‘How brave you are.’

‘Not at all,’ said Hermann carelessly. ‘Any insult to those with von Tannenberg blood must be avenged.’

But Annika now tried to return to the real world. ‘Loremarie, I didn’t steal your great-aunt’s trunk. I know nothing about her trunk. How could I steal it? I haven’t seen it since she died.’

‘Yes, you have. She left it to you in her will because she was mad and it isn’t fair. She was OUR great-aunt, so it is OUR trunk.’

But Hermann was writing something on a piece of paper. ‘If your father would care to name his seconds,’ he said grandly, clicking his heels once more, ‘he will find me at this address. All I require now is the name of your hotel.’ And as Loremarie gaped at him, ‘The hotel where you are staying.’

‘It’s called . . . the Haxenfeld Hydro,’ she mumbled, and then the governess, with a final tug at her arm, managed to drag her to the door.

‘I don’t understand it,’ said Annika, bewildered. ‘Mitzi said they took the trunk to the cellar after the old lady died, to have it thrown away. Could someone have stolen it from the Eggharts’ house?’

‘What happened to the trunk is neither here nor there,’ said Hermann, waving his hand. ‘What matters is that a member of the von Tannenberg family has been insulted. Leave this to me.’

But Gudrun had seen a difficulty. ‘If the girl’s father is not ennobled, you won’t be able to meet him in a duel.’ And as Annika stared at her, increasingly puzzled, she explained, ‘A member of the aristocracy is not permitted to fight a duel with persons of lower rank. Do you know who he is? The father?’

‘He’s a councillor. And he wants to be a statue.’ Both Gudrun and Hermann stared at her as though she was mad. ‘Well, with a statue Hermann cannot possibly fight,’ said Gudrun.

‘They’ve run out of seaweed,’ said Baron von Keppel as Zed wheeled him back from the baths. ‘Well, it stands to reason, having to drive it in 200 kilometres from the coast. The smell was awful. They said it was the iodine, but I’ve never smelt iodine that stank like that. And little flies came off it when they put it in the water. There was a woman making a dreadful fuss this morning because there wasn’t any left. Viennese by the sound of her. She wanted to try it for her sphincter. Why she should imagine seaweed would work on sphincters I don’t know. Her husband’s come for his veins. A common family with an awful child. They’re staying at the Hydro, I believe.’

Zed made agreeing noises. He liked Edeltraut’s uncle, who paid him generously and was free of the self-pity that so many invalids suffer from, but he did not always listen to every word he said.

They met a party of men coming towards them who greeted the Baron politely but did not stop to talk. ‘Undertakers,’ he said, sighing. ‘They’re here for two weeks. I still miss the dentists. Though I did overhear something quite entertaining yesterday. Apparently nearly a quarter of the coffins which are opened after a burial have scratch marks on the
inside
.’

‘You mean the people had been buried alive?’ said Zed. ‘I expect they were making it up.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Uncle Conrad. ‘I suppose it must be rather a gloomy profession, you can’t blame them for exaggerating a bit. Now the jewellers . . . they told some fascinating stories. There was one about a man in Paris – a famous jeweller with a crooked back who was in love with a dancer.’ He broke off as Lady Georgina Fairweather came swooping towards him in one of her amazing hats.

‘Have you heard that the seaweed has run out?’ she said. ‘It’s a scandal when you think what we pay—’

Zed stopped the chair and switched off his attention.

By the time they were under way again the baron had forgotten the jewellers and was telling Zed about the man who had come the previous night and thought he was the German emperor.

‘He walks through the park and clicks his fingers at a tree he doesn’t like, and tells the groundsmen to cut it down. I must say, you do see life in this place.’

It was when they were buying the six pairs of white kid gloves which Hermann needed to wear with his dress uniforms that he told his mother what had happened in Zettelmayer’s cake shop.

‘This vulgar child came and accused Annika of stealing her luggage.’

‘Her
luggage
? How could she do that?’

‘Well, she didn’t of course. The girl was mad. Some girl Annika knew in Vienna – Egghart, they’re called. So I’m afraid I had to make it clear that if she persisted I would have to challenge her father to a duel.’