Page 133 of All I Want for Christmas

‘Okay. Why don’t you start by telling me what’s tripped your thoughts?’

‘It’s the necklace,’ she said quietly, unable to take her eyes off Lilja’s likeness. ‘It’s wrong.’

‘How can a necklace be wrong?’

‘Because it’s wooden. Home-made. Far too humble for a woman of her class. She would be wearing pearls in the daytime, or at the very least, paste.’

‘I see,’ he murmured, narrowing his eyes as he looked at the portrait with a fresh gaze. But he passed no comment. He wouldn’t lead her thoughts, only listen to them.

‘I think it was her lover’s gift to her.’

‘Her lover?’

She leaned forward, pointing. ‘Look at her expression, the tilt of her head – it’s intimate, like this is a shared, private moment. She’s in love...And see how the gold bead is positioned directly front and centre. It’s like a north star, drawing the eye. She’s wearing the necklace as a signal, using it to say she is still her lover’s property, even if she can’t show it publicly. Even if her husband has returned.’

‘Had he?’

‘Yes. The baby had been born – a little girl, Emme – and Casper was back from London.’ She reached for her phone and showed him the photograph she had taken of the picture in the end bedroom before she’d left. ‘This was taken at Solvtraeer in August 1922. It shows Lilja holding Emme, with Trier, Casper and the Saalbachs – or the Sallys, as they were known. They were the Madsens’ longstanding housekeepers-cum-gardeners. Trier was staying in the house that spring and summer, paintingHer Children.’

Otto’s brow furrowed as he looked back at the portrait again, his own brain beginning to make connections. ‘And you think Lilja was having an affair with Trier?’

‘I did,’ she nodded. ‘But now I don’t.’ She pointed to the robin. ‘I think it was Arne Saalbach, the gardener’s son. Little Sally.’

Otto’s eyebrows slid up. ‘Explain.’

‘Originally I thought the robin was just a motif for her love of the garden, a symbol of her return to health. Now I think it was a way of proclaiming thatshewas the gardener’s friend. She was head over heels in love with him, Otto, and I think this painting was her gift to him. I think it was a self-portrait.’

‘Shepainted it?’

‘We know Trier didn’t. And she was an accomplished artist, even if she never took it too seriously. Lotte’s diaries tell usshe and Lilja took fine art lessons together for years and there are some paintings at Solvtraeer which are signed L. Madsen; Max said they were by Lotte, but I think they just as easily could have been by Lilja.’

She hoped that had been an innocent misdirection on Max’s part, but she couldn’t be certain.

‘There are artistic similarities, definitely, between those paintings in Hornbaek and this,’ she continued. ‘And the botanical watercolours I found – misfiled – in Trier’s documents are, I suspect, also hers; they never looked like his work, even if he was experimenting. They’re much lighter and finer stylistically, and thematically they coalesce to her interests in the garden.’

Otto looked unconvinced. ‘Tenuous, though. And highly speculative.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘But there’s more that points to a relationship between them. There’s a cabinet in the Madsen archives with some clays: garden tool miniatures – spade, trowel, wheelbarrow, that sort of thing. But there are some lovely main pieces, too: life-size heads of fishermen.’

‘Specifically fishermen?’

‘Well, they’re all wearing sou’westers. But here’s the thing, Otto. There aren’t any miniature clay pieces of fishing kit – no nets, pots, hooks, not in the way that there are gardening tools. And all the clay heads have the same face. They’re of the same man.’ She enlarged the screen to show Otto a closer image of the young, tall, dark-haired gardener in the photograph. ‘Arne. She disguised him – figuring no one would recognize the gardener in a fisherman’s hat. She hid him in plain sight, Otto.’

She brought up the photo again, showing the Sallys’ guarded demeanours. They had been the keepers of secrets after all, just not the one she had first thought. ‘What if their son, Arne,was the father of her baby? She could never publicly admit it, even if they were in effect living as man and wife most of the time – except for when Madsen family or visitors came to stay. Which was rarely.’

Otto pinched his cheeks between finger and thumb as he contemplated everything she was saying. It was a lot to take in.

He began to pace. ‘Okay. Well, let’s go with that, for argument’s sake. Let’s say he is the father to the child.’

‘All of these things are love notes: a bead necklace around an aristocrat’s neck; a self-portrait of a private look; models of his head because she loved his face so much; clay doodles as she sat in the grass beside him as he worked...They allscreamaffair when you see it. But it could never be allowed to come to light. Can you imagine the scandal – the gardener and the lady of the house? It would have been unthinkable for a family so ambitious about its social prospects.’

Otto nodded. She could see he was with her. That the evidence – disparate though it was – stacked up when put together. ‘So, did someone find out about them? Didthey get caught?’

Darcy closed her eyes, moving effortlessly through memories of a house she herself had slept and made love in. ‘I think we definitely have to consider that possibility. Trier was in the house by spring onwards, and we know Casper came back in the summer around the time of the birth, meaning it would have been difficult for Lilja and Arne to move with the same freedom they had probably been accustomed to.’

She thought of stolen looks across the lawn, hands brushing lightly as they passed by the greenhouse.

‘I imagine it would have been difficult for Arne to see hischild in another man’s arms, not to mention the woman he loved sharing a bed with her husband again,’ Otto posited, running with it.

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