Eva Ibbotson - The Star of Kazan

Stefan was resigned now to following his father as a groundsman in the Prater.

‘What’s the point of making oneself miserable?’ said Stefan. ‘There’s no money to train as an engineer and that’s the end of it. And at least you’ll have someone to take you round the fair and get you in half-price.’ He turned to Zed. ‘You’ll see tomorrow when we go on the Giant Wheel. It really is something. There isn’t a higher one in Europe.’

Tomorrow was Zed’s last day but one, and they were going to spend it in the Prater. But when the morning came it turned out to be a very different sort of day, because, as soon as they had finished their breakfast, the professors sent for Annika.

‘We have something to tell you,’ they said.

It was not a nice ‘something’; Annika could see that at once. All three professors were looking grim — indeed they had only just stopped arguing about whether what they were about to do was right. Professor Gertrude was against it: ‘There’s no need to tell her, it’ll only make her miserable.’

But both Julius and Emil said she should know. ‘Truth is important,’ they said, ‘even for children. Particularly for children.’

All the same, they did not find it easy to begin.

‘It’s about your mother,’ said Professor Julius.

Annika’s heart began to beat wildly. ‘Is she coming?’

‘Yes, she is coming. She is staying at the Hotel Riverside and she will be here tomorrow afternoon to fetch you. We wrote to tell her that you were safe with us, and that we took you away from Grossenfluss because you were unhappy there, and that we think you should not return. Dr Flass has given you a medical certificate to say it would be bad for your health.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But there is something… Perhaps we should explain why Zed came to Vienna. He had found out that the jewels in the trunk which the Eggharts’ great-aunt showed you were real.’

Annika looked at him in amazement. ‘But they can’t have been. She told me all about them… how the jeweller in Paris had them copied.’

‘Nevertheless, they are real.’ He told her the story of Fabrice’s deception. ‘He was very fond of the old lady, so he played a trick on her.’

‘A kind trick,’ said Annika. ‘I wish she’d known. Or perhaps it was best as it was.’

‘And it seems,’ the professor went on, ‘that the jewels are worth a fortune — and that they were left to you. Fräulein Egghart left you the trunk and all it contained; the lawyers have confirmed this.’

Annika was bewildered.

‘But where is it then? My mother thought that Zed had taken it and at first… But I’m sure he didn’t. I’m absolutely sure.’

‘We are sure too.’

‘But then who did?’ Annika was completely at a loss.

‘When Fräulein Egghart showed you the jewels,’ the professor went on, ‘did you see a brooch shaped like a butterfly?’

‘Yes, I did. Blue sapphires for the wings and filigree gold for the antennae with rubies for the eyes. I suppose I should have known the stones were real, they were so beautiful.’

Professor Julius picked up a letter on his desk. ‘Yes. That is an exact description. We asked a friend in Switzerland to make some enquiries and his letter came this morning. Your butterfly brooch has just been sold by Zwingli and Hammerman for two million Swiss francs.’

‘I don’t understand. How did the brooch—’

Professor Julius put a hand on her shoulder. ‘We think your mother may have taken it. That your mother and your Uncle Oswald took the trunk. The description of the woman who brought the brooch to the jeweller fits your mother perfectly.’

‘NO!’ Annika pulled away from him. ‘It isn’t true. I don’t believe it. My mother wouldn’t steal from me — why should she? Anything that belongs to me I’d have given her. She knows that.’

‘It would have to be proved, and since it is you who have been robbed it is you would have to bring the case against her. If she was convicted and sent to prison we would ask the courts if you could come back to us, at any rate for the length of the sentence. This would mean that you could stay in Vienna and—’

But Annika couldn’t take in another word.

‘NO!’ she said again. ‘It isn’t true. You’re lying!’ And she turned and ran from the room.

Frau Edeltraut sat at the dressing table of her room at the Riverside Hotel, brushing her hair. Bottles of scent and ointments, her silver combs, her powder puffs were spread out in front of her; sunlight filtered in from her private veranda with its deckchairs and pots of hanging carnations. Oswald was in an adjoining room, gazing at the paddle steamer and the colourful pleasure boats on the river through his binoculars.

Mathilde had been difficult, before they left for Vienna.

‘I don’t see why you should use Oswald all the time to fetch and carry for you,’ she had said, glaring at her sister. ‘Oswald is my husband; he doesn’t belong to you.’

‘I never said he did. If it’s of any interest to you, I find Oswald extremely dreary. He has no breadth — no vision,’ said Edeltraut. ‘But I need him for this last journey to Vienna. Once we have Annika back at Spittal I will find a person to be with her at all times and see that there’s no more nonsense. If necessary…’ But this was a sentence she did not finish, since Mathilde was weak and dithery and had been fond of Annika. ‘And I have to point out that you were pleased enough to come to Zurich and spend my money.’

‘Your daughter’s money, you mean.’

Edeltraut ignored this. ‘If the truth came out you’d be in quite as much trouble as Oswald and myself.’

‘No, I wouldn’t. I didn’t steal the trunk. And Gudrun knows nothing about it, nothing at all.’

‘Well, of course not. Nor does Hermann. One would hardly bring children into something in which secrecy is essential. But I tell you, if we don’t get Annika away from Vienna, and quickly, and make sure she cannot escape again, everything we have worked for could fall to the ground.’

‘Well, all right,’ said Mathilde sulkily. ‘But this is the last time — and I shall expect you to bring back a present for Gudrun. I suppose you won’t go back to the Hotel Bristol.’

‘You know perfectly well that I can’t go back to the Bristol,’ said Edeltraut, who had left without paying her bill.

‘Well, in that case why don’t you stay near the river instead? There’s a good hotel by the Danube — the Riverside. Oswald thinks we need a new boat for the lake and there’s a boat-builder near there.’

‘Oh, Oswald wants me to buy him a boat now, does he?’

But she did in fact book two rooms at the Riverside Hotel on the edge of the city, and when she and Oswald arrived in Vienna she was glad she had done so, because the weather was fine and warm and the hotel, with its verandas over the water and its riverside walks and its view of the landing stage where the steamer unloaded its cargo of passengers, was a very pleasant place to be.

‘I have business to attend to in the morning, as I told you,’ Edeltraut told her brother-in-law when they arrived. ‘I shan’t need you for that. But in the afternoon I want you to come with me to fetch Annika. I have full legal rights as her mother, but I don’t trust these professors.’

‘You don’t think they suspect something?’

‘Don’t be silly, how could they? Zed’s with the gypsies in Hungary and no one else knows anything.’

So now she was busy creating herself in readiness for another day. Her morning dress of coral silk was protected by a chiffon peignoir; her coral earrings and matching necklace were waiting on the jewellery stand. She had powdered her face and darkened her eyelashes. Her long hair, washed the night before by the hotel hairdresser, hung loose down her back and she was brushing it. One could never brush hair hard enough, or for too long.