Page 76 of All I Want for Christmas

‘...Right,’ Margit said finally, pulling back. ‘Well, seeing as we are nowallhere...over to you, Darcy.’

Darcy took a steadying breath as everyone’s gazes settled upon her, trying to ignore the one that carried more weight than the rest. ‘This morning, I came upon this necklace.’ She unlocked the box file and lifted it out. ‘It was in an envelopewith no distinguishing notes or records at all. At first, I thought it must have been a gift Trier had intended to give to someone – or that he himself had, perhaps as a memento. But this gold bead in the centre seemed distinctive. It reminded me of this.’

She held up the printout of the portrait taken under ultraviolet light. ‘Obviously, we can’t yet gauge colours in this image – but we can clearly see the contrast in tone on this one bead, suggesting a different material or colour. In and of itself, that probably wouldn’t be enough to go by, but when I showed the necklace and the printout to Viggo Rask, he was reminded of this photograph in the Madsen Heritage room.’

Darcy then held up a printout of the black-and-white photograph of the Madsens playing croquet. She pointed to Lilja in the picture: delicate and defiant all at once. ‘Again, we have no colour to go by – just differing shades of light and dark – but we can clearly see she’s wearing a dainty bead necklace with a contrast bead at the throat. Now, by virtue of this being a photograph and not a painting, this is not a likeness but an actual representation of the necklace so we can accurately assess the shape, size and even the number of the beads; we can identify the singular gold bead in the centre, and we can definitively conclude that the necklace I’m holding is the same one in the photograph.’

Margit Kinberg’s knuckles were blanched as she interlaced her fingers, listening hard. ‘So, then, who is that girl?’

‘Her name is Lilja. She was the wife of Frederik Madsen’s younger brother, Casper.’

Margit stiffened. ‘She’s a Madsen?’

Darcy glanced at Helle, who was listening intently too, her eyes narrowed in concentration. She seemed pleased.

‘Yes. However, at this stage it’s too early to be certain that she is also the woman in the painting.’

‘Well, it’s obvious, surely, if they’re wearing the same necklace?’ Helle pushed.

‘It’s certainly likely. They both have long dark hair, but we can’t get an exact facial match from such a low-grade black-and-white image and a portrait currently buried under board. We have to be mindful of other scenarios that might alter the findings.’

‘Such as?’ Helle frowned.

‘She could have borrowed the necklace she is seen wearing in the photograph. It may not be hers.’ Darcy held up the images of the painting and the photo. ‘Or it could be that the necklace is hers and she loaned it to the woman in the portrait. A dash of colour as a finishing touch, perhaps...A prop. It may be that there’s one necklace, but two women. Or two necklaces...’ She looked at her audience, all of them listening, rapt. ‘But I agree the odds would suggest Lilja Madsen is our girl.’

Helle and Max looked at one another. Margit sat back in her chair with an inscrutable expression; she had her elbows splayed and her hands locked together as she ruminated on the news. ‘Well, that really is something.’ She was quiet for a moment, deep in contemplation. ‘So – Lilja Madsen. One of yours,’ she said, looking at Helle. ‘Perhaps you can shed some light on her for us, seeing as we’re all here?’

‘Oh, very little really, I’m afraid,’ Helle said with surprising dismissiveness. ‘Only the broad strokes. As Miss Cotterell rightly says, she was the wife of Casper, the younger Madsen brother, who was something of a renegade and...an outlier in the family, I suppose you would say. He made his own small fortune during the Great War, but...’ She let the sentence trail away, as if there was nothing more of significance to add.

‘How did he make his fortune?’ Darcy asked, her interest piqued by the way the woman’s nose had started to wrinkle with disdain.

Helle looked irritated by the question. ‘He was a goulash baron,’ she said, as if it were a dirty word. ‘But of course, it was Frederik who set up the Foundation in ’61 and really drove the family’s philanthropy and patronage of the arts. Casper was long dead by then, so we’ve never paid too much attention to him – or his wife. They both died young.’

‘What happened to them?’ Darcy asked.

‘Well, she drowned.’

‘Oh!’ Darcy startled. It felt tragic somehow to discover that this young woman had perished in such an untimely, distressing manner, when she had only just found her.

Helle, and Max, looked surprised by her emotional response. ‘...Yes. A tragedy made even sadder by the fact that Casper himself died three days later. Broken heart syndrome. He’d been besotted with her.’ Helle gave a shrug. ‘But that’s really about all I can tell you about that side of the family. This all happened forty-odd years before the Foundation was set up and, as I say, it was Frederik who was the driving force behind it. Casper’s really only a footnote in our operations.’

‘Not to worry,’ Otto said, in his usual placid tone. ‘It’s Darcy’s job to find the details. She’s an exceptional researcher. Sometimes I think she could be a detective.’

Darcy shot him a puzzled smile. If she was flattered by the compliment, she was also bewildered by it; he wasn’t usually prone to high praise. She suspected this had more to do with communicating a point to Foss, rather than espousing her virtues.

‘Well, thank you for that overview,’ Darcy said, looking back at Helle. ‘I’ll make Lilja the focus of my attentions from hereand hopefully, now that we have an identity to work with, we can get confirmation quickly and a full bio worked up.’

‘Great.’ Margit pushed back into her chair as if that was that. She appeared keen to bring the meeting to a close. Unlike Max and Helle, she hadn’t seemed pleased by the reveal.

Max cleared his throat. ‘Of course, if it should prove to be the case that Lilja Madsenisthe woman in the portrait...’ His attention was focused on Margit. ‘This would only strengthen the Foundation’s claim uponHer Children.’

His words were met with a confounded silence.

‘Claim?’ Margit’s voice was hollow.

‘Yes. You know we’ve made no secret of our ambition to buyHer Children,but new information has since come to light and we intend to file for restitution in the coming weeks.’

What?Darcy’s head whipped round. He had made no mention of any legal case in the car just now. Max was still looking directly at Margit.

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