The Star of Kazan

‘And you told this story to your niece? To Frau Edeltraut?’

‘Yes, I did. But I swear I had no idea – even when I met Annika I didn’t guess – not till the Eggharts came. But Edeltraut was desperate. She’d have done anything to save Spittal.’

Zed nodded. ‘Yes. Thank you, sir.’

‘You believe me, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Not that it matters. I’m too old to worry about the future. I wouldn’t have told you now except for the galoshes. Annika’s a nice little thing. If Edeltraut took the child’s jewels she should have shared. You don’t steal from your own daughter.’

Zed had finished his story.

‘So you see,’ he said, looking round the professors’ kitchen, ‘if the story is true and the jewels in the trunk were priceless, then Annika has been most cruelly robbed.’

C

HAPTER

T

WENTY

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EIGHT

C

OLLECTING

E

VIDENCE

Professor Julius now became a sleuth.

‘We must get proof before we accuse Frau Edeltraut,’ he said when they had finished listening to Zed. ‘I believe that Zed is telling the truth, but there could be other explanations for the disappearance of the trunk.’

‘What sort of explanations?’ asked Professor Gertrude.

‘I don’t know. But Zed will agree with me, I’m sure, that we must look into this further before we confront her.’

‘Yes, I do. That’s partly why I came here. I don’t even know whether a mother is entitled to the things that belong to her daughter. Maybe she hasn’t committed a crime in the eyes of the law.’

The professors shook their heads. ‘In Austrian law it is certainly a crime. The property of someone who is under age has to be kept in trust for them till they’re grown up. It’s twenty-one here – it may be different in Germany.’

So Professor Julius made a list of all the jewellers in Vienna and set to work, visiting them one by one to see if he could find the man who had heard the story of Fabrice and the Eggharts’ great-aunt while in the baths at Bad Haxenfeld. He had some help from Professor Gertrude, but not very much. She was so shy that going into a jeweller’s shop and asking peculiar questions upset her badly, and she always felt she ought to buy something to make up for wasting the jeweller’s time, so that she came home with silver ashtrays and cigar-cutters and thimbles, which she did not want at all and which, when added together, turned out to be surprisingly expensive.

She was also very busy with her new harp. Harps have to ripen slowly, like fruit, and though her wonderful concert-grand had come seasoned and strung, it was a slow job keeping it at the pitch she required. Liquid ‘plinks’ and ‘plonks’ came from Gertrude’s room whenever she had a spare moment, but there were times when she felt very sad because she knew that her harp would not come into its full glory till the last years of its life, by which time she herself might be dead.

As for Professor Emil, he did not help with the jewellers at all because he had been sent off to Switzerland to look for Herr von Grotius; and if possible to find his grave.

Zed had intended to remain in Vienna only as long as it took to tell Annika’s story, but Professor Julius had said firmly that he would have to stay until everything was sorted out.

‘We might need you to confirm anything we discover and check it with what happened at Spittal.’

Zed had tried to argue: ‘I feel I should go, sir. I have hardly any money left and I need to get to Hungary.’

‘The money is neither here nor there,’ said Professor Julius. ‘You can stay with us. It shouldn’t be for long.’

‘I suppose I could sleep in the hut if it’s only for a few days,’ Zed had suggested.

But nobody thought this a good idea. The hut was private property; and if he took Rocco it would only be a matter of time before he was discovered.

‘Could he have Annika’s attic?’ Ellie asked, and it showed how completely she trusted Zed that she suggested this.

But Zed shook his head. ‘It’s hers. I wouldn’t want to – it wouldn’t be right.’

In the end it was Pauline who decided where Zed should sleep.

‘He can come to the bookshop. There’s a storeroom at the back – we can put a camp bed in there – and he can come round by the back lane to see to Rocco. Grandfather won’t mind. He probably won’t even notice.’

Pauline had been convinced that Zed spoke the truth the moment she saw him. ‘I always knew no good would come of Annika turning into a “von”,’ she said, and she did her best to make Zed comfortable. Some hostesses do this by bringing their guests breakfast in bed or putting flowers in their room. Pauline did it by piling the books she thought would interest him on the upturned packing case that served as his bedside table.

She brought him a book called The Heavenly Horses of the Emperor Wu-Ti, who believed that his horses would carry people’s souls to heaven when they died. She brought him a book by the Duke of Newcastle on how to train horses for dressage.