Chapter Thirty-One
‘Well, given you only had three days to pull this together, it’s not too shabby,’ Darcy said as she and Freja looked out at the sea of glamorous guests. The two-storey space was filled with people mingling around small tree-planted islands, subterranean gardens and a blonde ceiling that was speckled like shagreen. The Opera Park was set on a man-made island in the harbour and was an oasis in the city with six parks around it; there wasn’t a right angle to be found anywhere, the 360-degree curved glass walls set beneath a huge overhanging flower-shaped grass roof. Beyond, the lights of the city glittered across the water – so many lives being lived alongside one another, all with different plans, different hopes.
‘It’s like partying inside an amoeba,’ Freja giggled, her champagne glass pressed against her lips.
‘It’s incredible, is what it is. Do you even know these people?’
‘Maybe...ten of them?’ Freja shot her a grin.
‘Ten out of a hundred. Great!’
‘Most of them are Tristan’s uni friends, colleagues, industry contacts...But remember, I’m marrying an older man – he’s had more time to make friends! Plus, he’s rich, so everyone wants to be his friend.’
‘Uh-huh.’
Freja squeezed her arm. ‘So long as you’re here, it doesn’t really matter.’ She scrutinized Darcy closely. Darcy was wearing the black velvet dress again, her hair worn in a half-up, half-down do and make-up on. For no one but Freja would she have made this effort; an evening of small talk was the very last thing she needed. She had tried to get hold of Max when she had got back from the library but, to her dismay, had discovered he’d blocked her number. The revelation had floored her. Things had ended badly between them at the Academy on Tuesday as they retreated to their opposite corners of the ring – but surely he had spoken to Viggo by now and saw that, with the unsealing of Johan Trier’s bequest, everything had changed again?
‘I thought I heard the tippity-tap of fingers on keys through your door earlier. I looked in, but you had your headphones on and I didn’t want to disturb your flow. Do I take it your early-morning rendezvous was a success?’
‘Illuminating, certainly.’
‘And you’ve started writing?’
‘I’ve made a start,’ Darcy nodded, forcing a smile even though her body still thrummed with the aftershocks of what she had learned. Everything had pivoted again and she wasn’t sure how to feel any more. Nothing was absolute.
‘So then the block’s unblocked!’ Freja said, too brightly. ‘Now you can close the door on the whole thing and move on!’
‘Exactly,’ Darcy replied with some equanimity. This was neither the time nor place to give the final post-mortem on her situationship. It was Freja’s moment and she refused to put a downer on her friend’s joyous mood.
They both stared into the crowd, watching the sophisticated guests glitter and sparkle. Elegant receptions were becoming something of a norm for her these days, it seemed.
‘Freja!’
Tristan was calling her through the crowd, his face split into a happy beam as he motioned enthusiastically for her to come over.
‘Come with me? Let’s see if he’s got any hot single friends.’
Darcy rolled her eyes. ‘Hard pass.’
‘But—’
Darcy smiled, shaking her head. ‘I’m fine. You go! You’re the hostess. And I need another drink. I’ll join you in a bit.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘I’ll come looking if you don’t,’ Freja warned, squeezing her hand before slipping into the crowd. ‘...Hey, baby,’ Darcy heard her say as Tristan looped his arm around her.
Darcy turned away and headed for the bar, weaving between the bodies and avoiding eye contact as interested stares landed upon her. She figured another hour here, tops, before she could make a French exit – and she could spend half of that hiding in the loos.
‘A champagne, please,’ she said to the bartender.
‘...Make that two.’
She turned, stunned by the sound of a voice that had no place being here.
‘What are you doing here?’ she breathed as Max stared back at her, one hand in his trouser pocket, his tie off and top button undone. He looked exhausted, no sign of his usual anima in his eyes.
‘Tristan’s a contact. We’ve worked with his labs on a few things.’ He looked down at her, his eyes narrowing fractionally as he clearly recognized her dress from the night they had met. ‘You?’
‘Freja’s my flatmate.’
‘Ah,’ he breathed. ‘Well, I guess that trumps me. Don’t worry, I won’t linger. I’ll head off as soon as I’ve offered my congratulations.’
‘You don’t have to go on my account.’
The bartended handed over their drinks.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, her heart pounding at this surprise encounter. Of all the people she hadn’t expected to see tonight, he was top of the list.
Quickly, she took a sip of her champagne. It tasted colder, fresher, sharper than usual, another small jolt to her shocked body as she tried to gather her composure. Their last meeting had ended so abruptly, with such finality...And yet seeing him again, she remembered only the weight of his head upon her breast, his hand on her hip.
‘I’ll leave you in peace.’
Darcy watched in shock as he turned to go. That was it ? He’d blocked her online and he had nothing to say to her face?
‘Haven’t you spoken to Viggo?’ she asked to his back.
He stopped and half turned back. ‘Not yet. I’ve been in board meetings all day.’
‘Well then perhaps you should.’
‘Viggo would alert me if there was anything I needed to know.’
Unless Viggo was leaving it to her? He clearly wasn’t blind to what was going on between her and Max, and after what they’d discovered today...‘There is.’
He sighed. ‘Yeah? And what further surprises await?’
She swallowed at his flat sarcasm. Viggo had been right; he wasn’t acting to type. It was as if he had completely checked out. Acceptance of his fate. The Madsens were the villains of this piece and he was one of them. Right? ‘Johan Trier was there the night Lilja died; he was a witness. He put it all in his diary. That was the bequest.’
There was a long silence as Max digested the news. Outwardly, he appeared not to react, but she saw the tension in his mouth, the unnatural stillness in his body. ‘Did he detail what happened?’
She nodded.
He walked back over, standing right beside her. ‘Tell me,’ he said in a low voice, not wanting anyone to overhear.
‘...They had all gone to bed when he heard an argument down the corridor. Casper was shouting. Lilja was crying. Johan could hear her pleading with Casper, saying he owed her this happiness. Trier thought he heard things being thrown and he debated going through and intervening – but he didn’t.’
Max blinked, saying nothing.
‘I assume he felt that as a guest in his patron’s house, it wasn’t his place to interfere in domestic disputes – although he was clearly conflicted. From the earlier diary entries, it’s clear he and Lilja had become friends over the summer.’ She bit her lip. ‘Eventually it seemed to die down. Everything went quiet and he fell asleep. But then he woke up later in the night. He needed the bathroom and said that as he was walking back to his bed, he saw Casper through his window, coming up the garden. He was fully clothed but soaking wet, as if he’d just gone for a swim. Apparently he’d had a lot to drink at dinner so it wasn’t...completely inexplicable.’
Max looked away, his jaw clenched.
‘Trier went back to sleep. It was only in the morning, when Casper started shouting for Lilja, that he realized something was wrong. The baby was crying, needing to be fed, and she was nowhere to be found...It was Johan who ran down to the beach and found her.’
‘Jesus,’ Max muttered through clenched teeth, closing his eyes momentarily as he sighed, the sound weary and dark. It was a moment before he looked back at her. ‘So then it’s exactly as we thought. Trier’s given us confirmation – but no surprises.’ It was a deliberate dig, echoing her accusations at their last meeting that he had known all along what Casper had done.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Because he wasn’t just a witness...He became an accomplice.’
‘By hiding the portrait?’ he asked sceptically. ‘That would hardly meet the threshold for obstruction of justice.’
‘No, not that crime. He realized what he’d seen the night before and told the Sallys – he knew all about Arne and Lilja; he knew they were in love. Arne was destroyed by her death. He had known there was no way Lilja would leave him or Emme. So when he heard Trier’s account...he went after Casper.’
Max’s eyebrows raised. ‘Arne killed Casper?’
‘Trier too. They all did.’
‘But how? There was no evidence of foul play.’
‘Not externally. Mrs Sally served him a lunch of ham, eggs and mushrooms. The mushrooms had been freshly foraged that day by Arne and his father. They collected them from the woods at the back.’
She looked at Max with an expression that made him frown, detecting subtext. ‘They fed him poisonous mushrooms? They poisoned him?’
She nodded. ‘It took seven hours for the first symptoms to appear. Another day and a half before he died. He was already unresponsive by the time the Madsens arrived from Sweden.’
‘But the police wouldn’t have just bought the story that he coincidentally collapsed and died within hours of his wife.’
‘They did, because Casper had already given them a show. He had had to give a statement after Lilja’s body was found. Trier heard him telling them that Lilja was a depressive and that she’d threatened to do this before...Apparently his act of distress was so convincing that the doctor had to sedate him. By the time he was called back to the house late the next day, Casper was too sick to speak and there was nothing left at Solvtraeer to disprove Casper’s own cover story of his wife’s suicide. The doctor and the police had seen his anguish first hand, so there was no suspicion when the doctor recorded a broken heart as his cause of death.’
Max couldn’t reply. He looked confounded.
‘Max, this changes everything,’ she said quietly, willing him to look at her. ‘What happened to Lilja didn’t go unpunished after all. She was avenged by the people who loved her. Johan Trier never forgave himself for not intervening that night, but he proved himself her friend by bearing witness in the diary to what he’d seen, and by agreeing to keep the affair secret so that Emme could stay with her real family.’
‘Testing, testing.’ Tristan’s voice suddenly carried through the room, the slight whine of a microphone switching on.
Darcy ignored it, focused solely on Max. Didn’t he see what this meant for him? Them? Casper Madsen wasn’t even his biological relation; his true great-grandfather, Arne Saalbach, had prevailed over him, against almost overwhelming odds.
‘The problem I have now is that if I reveal Casper’s crime, I also have to reveal the Saalbachs’...And they were good people. They don’t deserve to be vilified.’
He looked sharply at her with a mildly incredulous expression. ‘So what – now you want to whitewash this? You told me it wasn’t your place to judge either way.’
‘It isn’t! It’s just—’
‘Complicated? Don’t you think I know that better than anyone? My entire family history has just been rewritten and there’s still no happy ending. Did it ever occur to you I might actually be pleased to hear that Lilja’s death was avenged? That as far as I’m concerned, Casper had it coming?’ Anger blazed in his eyes. ‘Yes – the family had suspicions about what he might have done, but there was never any proof; only two dead bodies and a baby that needed a home.’ He stared at her, his eyes blank. ‘But you – you assumed I wanted him to get away with it.’
‘Max, I—’ she stammered.
‘That’s what you think of me; that’s the kind of man you think I am. Because – what? – my grandmother was a Madsen? Because I’m good at my job?’
‘No!’
He shook his head fractionally, his stare cold. ‘I’ve been waiting for this day my entire life. My father warned us that Trier’s bequest was a threat, that the missing painting could destroy our lives; that no matter what good we might ever do, it could all still be swept away. And you proved he was right. You were the first to believe the worst.’
‘Max, please—’ She thought of the work he did in his brother’s name, raising millions for the paediatric hospital. The sins of the father are visited upon the children . None of this was his doing; it was just coming to pass on his shift.
‘The truth is out now,’ he shrugged. ‘And I’ve simply swapped one murderous great-grandfather for another.’ He gave a small snort of contempt. ‘So for the avoidance of doubt, I’m glad Lilja was avenged, Darcy, but I don’t win either way.’
He was right. She had let him down, too quick to believe the worst. ‘Can’t we just go outside and talk?’
‘Thank you, everyone!...’ Tristan’s voice echoed across the room, making everyone turn and fall silent as their host commanded attention. ‘Where’s my...? Freja, come over here, darling,’ he said, standing centre stage, his arm outstretched for Freja to curl into. ‘Look at her – isn’t she beautiful?’
A cheer went up, everyone clapping loudly, and Darcy reluctantly dragged her eyes off Max to watch as her flatmate gave a small curtsey while blushing furiously.
‘Now, I know what you’re thinking: what the hell is she doing with an old man like me?’
Everyone laughed. Everyone but them. Darcy glanced back at Max, feeling the hostility radiating from him. He was staring dead ahead, not listening to a word. He hadn’t touched his champagne; he was standing completely alone in this crowded room.
‘Well, I’ll have you know not all love stories look like a Hollywood rom-com. In fact, not all love stories even have happy endings; sometimes the most powerful love stories don’t get the endings they deserve. But I have always been a lucky man...’
Max moved suddenly, turning to go, as if the words pained him. ‘Where are you going?’ she gasped, catching his fingers in her own.
‘I can’t stay here. I have to call a meeting with the board and let them know what’s coming. You’re not the only one who has a job to do.’ He slipped his hand free, a muscle flexing in his jaw as he looked back at her with resentment and blame.
‘Max, I’m sorry!’ she whispered desperately. ‘I wish everything could be different, but...Trier’s eyewitness account is in the public sphere now. Anyone can read it. Someone was always going to uncover the truth.’
‘I know that,’ he said, and she saw something like regret flicker through his eyes. ‘But why did it have to be you?’