MINI MAG City Of Secrets by Alison Carter

Liv had thought her home town was respectable, but it seemed everyone had something to hide – even the pastor . . .

THE pastor nodded as Liv passed by in the line of worshippers leaving the church. “God go by your side,” he said. “All the way along the canal.”

Liv walked on with her mother until they reached the gate to the street, when she stopped short.

Why was the pastor talking about canals? There wasn’t a canal on the way to their house.

But Mr Willemsen had recently come from a different part of Holland. Perhaps “all the way along the canal” just meant “everywhere”.

“Liv, dear, keep up,” her mother said. “Mr Dekker nearly bumped into you.”

“Sorry, Mother,” Liv said. “It was something the pastor said.”

“What did he say?” Mrs de Groot looked behind her at Mr Willemsen and gave him a beaming smile.

“Such a nice young man,” she said. “So pious, and such a scholar.”

Sometimes Liv wondered about their new pastor.

He had a beautiful voice which made everyone listen, and he wasn’t nearly as keen on hell and damnation as the last pastor, which was a relief.

But Liv was almost sure that his sermon that day had been based on the same text as the sermon three weeks before: “Fret not thyself because of evildoers”.

The point of it was that good people shouldn’t worry if bad people gained by doing wrong; good people should keep on keeping on.

Fair enough. But did it provide material for more than one sermon in a few short weeks?

As they walked, Liv unhooked her arm from her mother’s, took her little bible from her pocket and found the text.

It was right in the middle, which made it easy to read as she walked.

Perhaps, Liv thought, Mr Willemsen simply liked Psalm 37.

She was no judge – she preferred the joys of science and engineering, and all the interesting aspects of her father’s work draining the lake.

Mrs van der Heide was at home when Liv and Anneke de Groot passed her house.

It was a large mansion with the front door opening on to the square and the back door on to a yard, on the other side of which ran the canal.

Liv had been inside the house when the previous Mrs van der Heide, a sweet and modest lady now sadly deceased, had welcomed the whole congregation in for a birthday party.

That had been, Liv recalled, in 1626, and now in ’29 the house was much changed, from what Liv could see through the doors.

“Mrs de Groot. Miss de Groot.” Mrs van der Heide smiled and pressed herself against the doorframe as if wishing to display the wonders of her home.

“The dust!” Mrs van der Heide said. “So dreadful!”

“Oh, it is, Cornelia,” Liv’s mother agreed. “Do I see a new blanket chest in your hall?”

Liv couldn’t see a speck of dust anywhere.

She knew that Cornelia van der Heide had insisted on hiring an additional maid when she’d married her husband, the lawyer.

“Yes, an oak one. There is so much to store, with little Christoffel growing so fast!”

“Children, eh?” Mrs de Groot said. “A trial and a joy!” She took Liv’s arm, meaning to carry on home.

“Now is the time for a family group, we think,” Cornelia said, loudly enough to call them back.

“A group?” Mrs de Groot said.

“I mean a painting of the family. Christoffel can sit still now and so the time has come. He takes after his father, so nicely behaved.”

Liv had met Christoffel, now aged four, and “nicely behaved” was not the phrase she would have chosen.

Anneke de Groot walked to the front door.

“Then you will want to talk to my daughter’s good friend, Mr Visser,” she said. “He is an excellent artist.”

“Of the Visser family?” Cornelia asked, her attention caught.

“The very same. His esteemed father has been dead now two years, rest his soul, and the son is making a career in art.”

“Though the father made his fortune, of course, in windmills,” Cornelia said.

“Rows and rows of them, powering all those sawmills, and every one a symbol of Dutch industry and success,” Anneke replied.

“That man had a Midas touch. My husband says he can’t imagine, sometimes, how Hans Visser made so much money so quickly.

“The other industrialists envy him.”

The address of the portraitist Markus Visser duly handed over, the de Groot ladies headed home.

“Do you have to bandy Markus’s name around, Mother?” Liv said.

“Well, he’s a fine man,

Liv. Handsome, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so.”

Markus was handsome, and clever, and he was also gaining a reputation locally in Dranburgen and further afield as a painter of merit.

But Liv wasn’t pleased that her mother had been angling so obviously for her and Markus to be together. It was just embarrassing.

It was perfectly possible that she would fall in love with him at some future date, but a girl needed to be left alone to decide that sort of thing.

They cooled off in the hall of their own house. Anneke ordered water to be brought and mother and daughter sat in the main parlour to sew.

Sundays were always quiet – far too quiet for Liv. She could hear her father going to and from his study.

“Shall I take Father some coffee?” Liv asked.

Mrs de Groot looked up from the bolster case she was hemming.

“The girl will be taking him coffee at eleven,” she said. “He does not need you to be fiddling with the models and the diagrams and what-have-you.”

“What-have-you” was

Lars de Groot’s brilliant plan for the draining of the Dranburgen lake. The idea was to create agricultural land of immense value.

These reclaimed areas were called polders, and they were becoming popular across northern Holland.

Liv knew all about it because she sneaked in whenever she could to examine the progress of the project.

There was no money yet, her father had told her, but the man in charge, Mr Peters, was gathering the investors.

Liv sat with her sewing on her lap, gazing round the room. She was good at needlework, but it bored her.

“I need a walk,” Liv said. “We walked back from church,” Anneke reminded her.

“But it’s lovely out.”

For a moment, Liv thought that her mother might come with her, which would not do, because Liv had decided to nip out and visit Sander Haan.

Sander lived on a small and ancient houseboat on the canal, just where it emerged from the built part of the town, and meandered through sheds and yards before reaching farmland.

The part of town nobody visited. Dranburgen wasn’t a large town so it only took Liv half an hour to reach the boat. Sander was sitting in the sunshine, smoking a pipe.

“It’s a fine day, Liv de Groot,” he called as she approached. “Don’t get your Sunday best dirty on my barge!”

Liv was aware of the risks. She was wearing her Sunday gown with its wide skirts and big gathered sleeves, and there was far too much lace for comfort.

If she went home muddy her mother would know that she’d been “visiting the unsuitables”, which was how Anneke referred to characters like Sander.

But Liv liked him – he told her jokes, and stories

about his days of sailing out of Amsterdam’s port.

Sander owned nothing – sometimes Liv thought he lived off the leftovers and occasional coins she was able to bring him – but he was happy.

Liv had discovered

Sander while on one of her longer walks and had returned to find out who the old man was who lived on a boat. They had struck up a friendship.

Liv sat on the mooring post and they chatted.

“You’re a good girl to come and talk to me and keep me sane,” Sander said. “I know the gentry don’t approve of me.”

“My family’s not gentry,” Liv said.

“I know of your father and he’s the most brilliant engineer in Holland,” Sander said.

Liv smiled.

“Well, I think so.”

She saw a figure on the footbridge that curved over the canal, fifty yards ahead.

It was a man – Liv could tell from the tall black hat – but she did not recognise him until he turned to face them, and smiled. It was Pastor Ruben Willemsen.

“Ah, that priest walks this way a lot,” Sander said, raising a hand. “He’s a decent fella.”

Liv understood then what the pastor had meant by his comment outside church, about God being with her along the canal. He had seen her visiting old Sander!

Quite possibly, he knew that she brought him things pinched from home, too.

Liv wasn’t sure how problematic this was; he didn’t seem the kind of man to welch on a person.

Ruben Willemsen didn’t stop, but strode off along the bank in the other direction.

****

The next Saturday there was a small dinner at the de Groot home.

“Don’t call it a dinner, Anneke,” Lars said. “It is just an exploratory meeting for possible investors. With food.”

But both Anneke and Liv knew that it was an important occasion. Mr Peters had asked if the first discussions of potential investors in the drainage project could be at the home of the engineer.

“We want no bias or favouritism, you see,” Mr Peters had said.

Liv had been in the room with them, her excuse being that Lars had asked her to lay out all the drawings in order.

“It’s sensible to chat at the engineer’s house,” Mr Peters continued. “A man with no money in the project.”

Only four men in Dranburgen had enough cash to back the making of the polder.

Timo van der Heide, Cornelia’s husband, was one, and another was Abel Dekker.

As well as the lawyer and the merchant, there was a senior government clerk and the local physician, a man of means with a large house on the outskirts of town.

Mr Peters looked at Liv and her sheaf of drawings.

“But your daughter won’t be eating with us?” he asked, alarmed.

“No,” Lars said, “though to be honest she knows about as much as I do about draining a lake, how to regulate windmill power and how to move water.”

“Really?” Mr Peters sounded as though he didn’t believe it. “Well, thank you, Miss de Groot, and we may see you later.”

Liv knew she was being dismissed. It happened a lot.

“You and the artist?” Mr Peters continued before she left the room. “Visser’s son. You and he . . .?”

“The young make their own choices these days,” Lars said with a smile.

“I dare say,” Mr Peters said.

Liv fumed. The whole town seemed to want to throw her into Markus Visser’s arms, and even if they were strong and attractive arms, she was going to take her time.

****

Abel Dekker arrived first for the little dinner. Liv was passing through the hall when she heard his voice outside in the porch.

He seemed to be involved in an altercation of some kind. Liv crept to the door and listened.

“I tell you I am threatening nothing, Mr Dekker!” a low and gruff voice said.

“Your sort have no business hanging about the houses of men like de Groot!” came Mr Dekker’s reply.

It sounded like the end of the argument.

Mr Dekker told the man to go away, and the man said he didn’t take orders.

Liv peeped out and saw that the second man was dark-skinned – Spanish or Portuguese, she guessed.

There were increasing numbers of Portuguese in Dranburgen; they were basing themselves in the town in order to conduct trade with the east.

Finally the man stormed off, and Liv watched Mr Dekker straighten his lace collar and large-brimmed hat and approach the door.

“What was that all about?”

Liv spun round at the sound of Markus’s voice.

She laughed.

“Where have you been hiding?”

“Not hiding,” Markus corrected her. “I’ve been with your father for the past ten minutes.

“He kindly invited me to this shindig – not that I have the wherewithal to invest. A civility, I think.”

“Because your father would have been involved if he had not passed away?”

Markus nodded and looked down, obviously emotional.

“A great man, a great loss.”

Liv knew how Markus had worshipped his father.

Sometimes she wondered if he saw himself as somehow inferior; Mr

Visser had lived for business and commerce and then his son had turned to art.

But she looked at

Markus – good-looking and stylish – and she changed her mind. Markus was confident in his skin.

“Of course,” she said. “A great man.”

“I’ve come to honour him among his peers, but . . .” Markus smiled “. . . also to enjoy a couple of glasses of your father’s delicious wine.

“I won’t stay long. Maybe I can come by your sittingroom after that?”

He arrived a short time later. She asked if Mr Dekker had commented on the foreigner at the door.

“I didn’t see Abel

Dekker,” Markus said. “Our paths didn’t cross. It was lucky, because the chap can talk!”

They spent a pleasant hour together, and Markus went home, leaving Liv to think about whether she’d end up as his wife.

****

On Sunday the Dekkers were not at church, and it was reported that Mr Dekker was unwell.

“Send my best regards,” Ruben Willemsen said in the porch to a neighbour of the Dekkers.

Liv approached the pastor.

“So, no Psalm Thirtyseven today?” she said, and he started and gave her a long look as though

trying to get inside her thoughts.

He had light brown eyes, she noticed, and a tiny scar above his right cheekbone that made him look distinguished, though she knew he was only twentyeight.

“It’s an excellent psalm,” he said, and his expression dared her to contradict him.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “A wise message.”

Then there was a lively discussion in the churchyard about the van der Heide portrait project.

“I’d like some of our furniture in it,” Cornelia was saying.

She was glowing with the excitement of the commission.

Liv asked Markus if she could call in on his mother on her way home.

Mr Willemsen the pastor said he thought that was a lovely idea, as that lady had not been at church and had seemed fretful when she’d last come.

“Oh, my mother can be nervous on occasion,” Markus said. “She likes to stay in the house.”

“Your father’s death hit her hard?” Anneke asked.

“It did, but she is recovering. Come next week, Liv – she likes warning of a visit. My mother always wants to do the household proud.”

Liv agreed, pleased to note that Markus was so thoughtful, and the congregation dispersed.

Markus headed off to the van der Heide house where he was going to lay out his easel and materials.

****

Four days later Abel Dekker was dead. The whole of Dranburgen went into shock, not least because the surgeon said it was undoubtedly cholera.

Liv met Mr Willemsen when their paths crossed in the town square. He was hurrying away from the Dekker house.

“That poor lady,” he said. Ruben told her Abel had been in Antwerp visiting some warehouses.

“Mrs Dekker is beside herself,” Ruben said. “She says Antwerp is dirty, overcrowded and a den of disease, and nobody must ever go there again.

“Abel has brought cholera here to Dranburgen where it’s been a rarity.”

“Doctor Fabricius identified cholera?” Liv asked.

He nodded.

“Mr Dekker showed all the symptoms. I’ve left the undertaker there, sorting things out.” He pressed his hands together. “That unhappy lady!”

“But Mrs Dekker is well provided for?” Liv asked.

“Oh, I believe so. And she tried to be stoical. She has already summoned Mr Peters and told him she means to carry out Abel’s wishes and invest in your father’s polder.”

Liv saw how Ruben’s hands were turning pale, he was pressing them so hard. She touched the tips of them with her own fingertips and they dropped apart. For a moment, the pastor stared at her.

“I ought to go,” Liv said.

****

Markus was horrified and distressed by the death. He paced as he spoke to her.

“I think it has brought back memories of my father’s illness and death,” he said. “That devastating sense of loss.”

“But your father was very different from Abel

Dekker,” Liv said, trying to calm him.

Hans Visser had been a larger-than-life character, a person with high standards, and the wealthiest man in Dranburgen.

“Yes, an extraordinary man, my father,” Markus said.

Liv frowned.

“Don’t feel you have to live up to an idea of him,” she said. “It only makes grief worse.”

He shook his head. “I don’t. I live to paint. My work distracts me.”

“We must all guard against the cholera,” Liv said.

“Definitely,” Markus replied. “Look after yourself, Liv.”

He said it with gravity, and took her hand in his and looked into her eyes. Liv felt uncomfortable.

“We must have a talk, Liv,” he said, “soon.”

She suspected she knew what he meant.

It was becoming clear that Markus Visser was fond of her. It was just that Liv did not know – not yet – if she were fond of him. She longed to ask someone how a young woman was supposed to know when she was in love, but the question seemed a ridiculous one.

****

A few days later Liv decided to take a long walk and think about it.

She walked into the commercial district of Dranburgen where she would be less likely to come across anyone she knew.

She found herself in the grid of narrow alleys that were home to the pawnbroker’s, the usurer’s shop, the lesser dressmakers and basket weavers that chose the area for its cheaper rents.

At the far end of the quarter there was a sort of park, and in the park Liv saw the back view of the pastor.

She knew his shape better than she expected – the shoulders narrowing to a slim waist.

He was bent low, talking to someone on the ground, and Liv wondered if somebody was sick. She became immediately anxious about cholera.

Ruben Willemsen must have heard her footfall because he turned, and blushed.

He moved aside as Liv approached, and she saw that there was a makeshift tent in the park and a pile of rags that, as she focused, she made out to be two small children.

“A gypsy family,” Ruben said, “without a penny to their name.”

Dranburgen was a town on the up and up, trying to rival great Amsterdam in its elegance and wealth.

The town leaders had instigated measures to discourage travelling families.

“It rained last night,” Ruben said.

A woman in a mantilla came up to them, pulled the children to their feet and took a small cloth bag from Ruben and went into the trees with the children.

“She’s trying her best,” he said.

“One tries to help sometimes,” Liv said quietly. She was testing him.

Dranburgen was not always a kind place – she had noticed that as it got more prosperous this became more pronounced.

“Sander Haan,” he said. “You help him.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and something passed between them, some agreement.

They set off walking in the same direction, falling into step, back into the shop quarter.

“I conducted the Dekker funeral,” the pastor said. “Upsetting,” Liv said. “Yes.” He hesitated. “The

undertaker said something odd. He said it was too quick for cholera.

“And there has been no other case, Miss de Groot, not one in Dranburgen. Cholera spreads like wildfire.”

She frowned.

“What does the undertaker think was his illness?”

The undertaker was a man of 40 years’ experience.

Liv’s father had said that he knew more than Dr Fabricius and all the lesser physicians in town put together.

“Arsenic,” Ruben said. “The same symptoms, but faster.”

Liv stared at him.

“But that’s a . . .”

Ruben held up both hands.

“I make no further comment,” he said. “You’re the scientist, they say; you look into it, Miss de Groot.”

Despite the shocking suggestion of poisoning, Liv was pleased that he’d said she was a scientist.

She wasn’t sure anyone else in Dranburgen acknowledged that she had any skill at all.

“I couldn’t,” Liv said. “Well, we’ll leave it there, then,” Ruben said.

But as Liv looked into his face, just before their paths diverged, she felt strongly that neither of them would be leaving it there.

****

Another tragic death came hard on the heels of the first.

This time it was Timo van der Heide, and though it was widely said to be an accident, Liv had her doubts right away.

“He cracked his head on the hard ground by the canal,” a horrified Anneke de Groot told her daughter. “Which canal?” Liv asked. Her mother frowned. “I don’t know why you’d need that detail,” she said. “If you must know, Cornelia told me that he fell from the wall at the back of their house.”

“Why would Mr van der Heide be on a wall?”

“Liv, you really must learn to be respectful. How would I know? A gentleman can examine his own wall, I suppose.

“Cornelia came home and could not find her husband, and when she looked . . .” Anneke began to cry, and Liv regretted questioning her.

But a man in the peak of health, falling so violently that he actually died – it seemed odd.

She knew the wall because she knew the canal, and it was no more than six feet high.

“I shouldn’t say it, or even think it,” Anneke was wailing, “at a time like this, but will there be enough to invest now in your father’s project?”

Markus, who had been using a room at the van der Heide house to finish his group portrait, was frantic with distress.

“If I’d been there that day I might have prevented him climbing up,” he said.

****

The deaths occupied Liv’s mind as the days went by. At church she found herself unable to concentrate.

Even when Ruben again preached from Psalm 37 she didn’t realise until he’d almost finished.

She looked up just as the pastor drew to a close, and glanced at the little bible in her mother’s hand, open at the relevant page.

“That text again?” she whispered.

Anneke gave her child a sharp glance.

“That’s not for us to comment on,” she said.

Liv, trying to drive speculation about arsenic poisoning from her mind, and images of people being pushed off walls, decided to ask the pastor about the psalm.

It wasn’t, she told herself, that she wanted to pick his brains about the deaths.

It was that she wanted to know what it was about “Fret not thyself because of evildoers” that fascinated him.

Once Liv had persuaded her mother to set off home alone, she knocked on the vestry door.

But then she noticed that it was slightly ajar, took courage and pushed.

Pastor Willemsen was sitting at a table, still in his long black coat, playing Solitaire at a dark table.

He was just laying down a king and frowning when Liv put her head round the door.

“Yes!” he said to himself in a quiet but triumphant voice, before looking up.

He said nothing for five seconds, and then he sighed.

“What will it take, Miss de Groot, for you to remain silent about the sins of your spiritual guide and leader, the pastor?”

“Sins?” she said. She felt embarrassed; it was awkward to have caught a man in authority at play.

“I, um, I only came to ask about Psalm Thirty-seven, because I know it’s a favourite of yours and I’d like to find out, if I may, the significance of the text.”

Liv was aware that the pastor was naughty to hide a pack of playing cards in the vestry, and naughtier to play with them on a Sunday.

But she knew that she was just as naughty to say that she had come for scripture advice, when she knew perfectly well that she had come because she liked him.

He picked up the bible and walked across the room.

“I’m going to show you this,” he said, “and I am going to hope for your kind indulgence in not telling on me.”

His expression was half-serious and half-ironic, as though he might laugh at any moment. He opened the bible.

Its pages, hundreds of them, had been stuck together to form two equally sized blocks of paper, and both had been hollowed out! It wasn’t a bible at all; it was a hiding place!

“I’ll show you the nature of my sin,” he said, “but be merciful.”

He gathered up his pack of cards neatly and slotted it into one hollow, and then carefully closed it.

“You see, I am the most forgetful fellow,” he said. “I grab a bible from the shelf at home as I leave, and sometimes I discover that I have this one.”

He came closer so that he was standing beside her, opening the bible again.

“Look, the verse that’s visible is Psalm Thirtyseven. If you look in your own bible you’ll see it’s somewhere near the middle, depending on which Old Testament books are included.” He grinned.

“There, I’m a half-decent scholar as well as a bad, bad man. I do at least know my scripture.”

Liv’s laughter bubbled up. She knew that the church vestry was quite the wrong place to laugh, and he was quite the wrong man to laugh with.

But he was giggling, too. “My mother scolds me if I mention the psalm cropping up again,” Liv said at last.

He lowered his eyes.

“I’ve heard more than one lady giving a child a telling-off for asking the same question,” he said.

“I feel bad when they do that.”

Liv held out her hand. “I think it will be best for all concerned if I take away your cards,” she said.

He looked like a penitent schoolboy found with a biscuit in class.

“I suppose so,” he said. “You’re my moral saviour now; you know that?”

Their eyes met for a moment, and Liv’s stomach turned over.

She remembered moments when she had asked herself what it felt like to be attracted to a man and how one knew about love.

The truth, in the vestry, was a revelation: it was much more likely that she loved Ruben Willemsen!

“One last game,” he said softly, his eyes still upon her, a little sad.

“Solitaire is a game for one,” Liv said.

“I know a dozen other games. Stay a while, saviour mine.”

****

Dranburgen became almost completely silent

about the deaths of

Abel Dekker and Timo van der Heide.

Then one day Sander told her that he knew a bargeman who’d passed by on a tug when poor Mr van der Heide was still lying on the towpath.

“It was old Tom van Slageren who raised the alarm,” Sander said, “and when he’d got the constables out everyone ignored him, though he wanted to tell them what he thought.”

“What?” Liv asked.

“That lawyer fella didn’t fall, Liv de Groot. His body lay too far out from the wall for that.

“Tom told me that his arm was in the water. I mean, it’s ten feet from the base of that wall on that stretch and the canal!”

Sander took from her the parcel of bread and cheese she’d brought from home, with a polite nod of thanks.

“Pushed,” he said. “That’s all that old Tom can think happened.”

“I can’t believe it,” Liv said, though she was beginning to think she could.

She had already visited the undertaker, spending a full hour and a half wheedling him into admitting what he thought about cholera and arsenic.

Now it appeared perfectly possible that Timo van der Heide had been murdered, too.

****

Liv spent hours mulling the motives for these crimes. She knew that she had to find some reason why a well-off lawyer and a successful merchant would be murdered.

Money didn’t seem a likely motive, because there was no evidence that money or possessions had been taken from either home.

“What does that leave us?” Ruben Willemsen asked her.

They were sitting next to each other on the wall of the bridge above Sander’s barge. It felt a little bit badly behaved to be there with him, but also so very pleasurable.

“Dekker struck me as intolerant,” Ruben said, cutting into her thoughts. “But I’m new here so I don’t know. Tell me about him.”

“I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” she said.

“I think in this case it’s your bounden duty.”

“He was acquisitive, perhaps,” Liv said carefully. “Greedy?”

She sighed.

“Well, more that he became unhappy if he thought that business might not come his way.

“My father has talked to me about all the men in the project, and –”

“What project?”

“The lake to the west will be turned into prime farmland,” she said.

“Four men, most likely, will invest. But I don’t know how much money will be available now.”

“But keep telling me about Dekker,” he said.

“I did hear him arguing on the night of an investors’ dinner.” “With a colleague?” “With a man outside our house.”

“And this man was . . .?” “A Jew, I think.”

“The Jews have been coming from Portugal for some time, skilled men with experience in trade.

“I have met some of them and I know they will be an asset to Dranburgen, whatever some of our citizens think.”

“Mr Dekker was angry that night, but so was the Portuguese man.”

“Perhaps they had other dealings, some bad business.” Ruben sighed. “Money breeds contempt, and worse.”

“You mean if Abel Dekker insulted this man?”

“And the man couldn’t bear it?” Ruben considered. “It seems extreme, but I think we should keep it in mind. What did he look like?”

Liv gave as much of a description as she could.

“I will visit my new friends at the little synagogue and ask,” Ruben said.

“But if some foreign merchant wanted to poison Abel Dekker, how would they do it?

“Mrs Dekker would not let such a man cross her threshold, you can be sure of that.”

They watched the water for a while, and then Ruben spoke.

“You said there was a dinner?”

“Mr Dekker fell ill the next day.”

“What about the men at the dinner?”

“They have the least motive of anybody in the town, Mr Willemsen. They have all been scraping together the money to get this polder made, and they’re dedicated to the project.

“I believe some have sold assets for the purpose. To remove one investor from the picture brings the whole thing crashing down.

“My father is just waiting; he’s still visiting pump and windmill suppliers, drawing up plans in the hope that it goes ahead.”

He nodded.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he said.

****

Markus was upset that he had not seen Liv much. He called at the house, and Anneke was delighted to see him. She picked up her needlework and headed out of the parlour.

“So you two can chat,” she said.

“This is a bad time for the town,” Markus said. “I think we all need cheering up, and the person who cheers me up most is the lovely Liv de Groot, naturally.”

“Did you get the van der Heide picture finished?” Liv asked, anxious to keep the conversation light and away from romance.

“Yes, thank the Lord, before that poor man fell to his death. I don’t know what to do with it, Liv.

“I don’t know if Mrs van der Heide will want to see it at all – her husband with his manly hand laid on the sideboard, Christoffel smiling away . . .”

“Then keep it at home for a bit,” Liv said.

“I whipped it away, finished, a day before the accident,” Markus said.

At that moment, Lars de Groot walked into the room.

“Liv, my darling girl,” he said, “am I going to Alkmaar on Tuesday or Thursday?” he said. “When is my haircut? Is that next week?

“Oh, hello, Markus – nice to see you.”

Lars rummaged among a mess of papers on the desk. Liv stood up and drew the diary from its usual place on a shelf. She opened it.

“You go to Alkmaar on Thursday to investigate recruitment of men for the project.

“Wednesday is the anniversary of your wedding and you go nowhere but home.”

“Is it, by golly?” Lars said. “Our anniversary?”

Liv laughed.

“Don’t forget. On Thursday, you are going to visit the site. It says here ‘without guests or distractions’. That’s what you scheduled.”

“Good,” Lars said. “Thank you, my organised assistant daughter.

“Ah, now, Markus, you know that we hope to lease for the project the array of windmills that your father built beside the lake?”

“I do, sir,” Markus said. “Our man of business has it in hand. But they were built for sawing wood, you know that.”

“Indeed. But I can convert them to pumping with the minimum of expenditure. I’m excited about it.

“In six months that great black lake will be no more, and its lovely silty, fertile bed will be there for all to see and for the planting of food for thousands.”

“Yes, sir,” Markus said. “It’s brilliant, the lake gone, the land in use.”

Lars went off to talk to Anneke about their wedding anniversary, and Liv persuaded Markus that she really should visit his mother, Mrs Visser.

“I think I might plan a picnic,” she said, “by the lake. If I can get the widows of Abel Dekker and Timo van der Heide to come along, it may be a way for the poor ladies to pass the time.

“It will certainly please

Father and Mr Peters, who so want the investment.

“The ladies both seem interested in continuing, my father says.

“I’m going to call at your house, Markus, whatever you say about your mother needing warning of visitors. She will not mind me paying a call!”

But Mrs Visser refused point-blank to attend the picnic.

“It’s all that sitting on the ground,” she said. “I’m too old for it.”

Liv promised chairs, and the de Groot horse and trap to take her there, and still Mrs Visser resisted.

“But the weather is set fair,” Liv said.

Markus appeared at the doorway of the drawingroom, making signs that Liv should go.

“Oh, just an hour by the water,” Liv begged. “You can look at the handsome mills your husband made again, and –”

The older woman turned on Liv.

“Please leave me alone, Liv de Groot,” she snapped. “I will not come, do you hear me?”

Markus, full of apologies, ushered Liv out, and that was the end of the idea.

****

Rumours were beginning to spread around Dranburgen that Timo van der Heide had been pushed.

Liv and Ruben were unhappy to learn that suspicion was inevitably falling on servants.

“It’s no excuse for a murder,” one busy-body lady said to Liv outside the poulterer, “but you must know that van der Heide was brutal with his servants, quite unnecessarily so.

“Poor Cornelia has had to put up with such a high turnover of staff.”

Talk spread, and a few days later Ruben reported to Liv that a servant had been arrested.

“I doubt it’s him,” Ruben said. “I’ve baptised three of that man’s children and a more mild-mannered individual you would not wish to meet.” He thought for a moment.

“Or a more exhausted and overworked one. He hasn’t the energy to get himself up on to a wall, let alone his master.”

Cornelia van der Heide was distraught.

“Her little boy is a blessing,” Lotte Peters, wife of the investment manager, said. “He keeps her busy but the poor woman is distracted and not eating.”

Liv decided to visit Cornelia’s sister Eva, who lived between Dranburgen and Amsterdam, and ask what could be done.

“A sister will have more of an instinct,” she said to her mother. “She will know.”

Eva was matter-of-fact and practical.

“Cornelia likes to shop,” she said. “She always has. Why do you think she married the lawyer, may God rest his soul, but for his money?

“I’ve visited with her, you know, since that dreadful day, and I managed to get her to stop crying for half an hour simply by taking her to the haberdasher’s and spending money.

“Is that painting ready yet? Cornelia was obsessed with it – the ultimate status purchase.”

Liv hesitated.

“I know the artist,” she said. “He feels it’s better if he keeps –”

“Oh,” Eva said with a knowing smile, “I know you know the artist.

“My sister talks about the match. Is the painting complete?”

“It is, but won’t Cornelia be upset by the sight of her deceased husband, got up in oils?”

Eva shrugged.

“That’ll pass. It may even be a comfort – an image of the man to gaze upon.

“No, I was thinking of the – what would one call it? – the background.

“Cornelia stipulated what drapes should appear in the painting, and what silks little Christoffel should wear.

“I think it will give her relief to see what she ordered come to fruition.” Eva laid down her cup.

“Except, of course, that hideous side table.”

“What hideous side table?” Liv said.

“She had the thing brought in on the very morning of the accident, and I know because I was there until luncheon.

“My sister is not blessed with good taste. The table is like something out of a Venetian palazzo and all wrong here in Holland.

“She was absolutely determined that it should be added to the painting, even when the artist had packed away every brush.”

“Oh, then the table won’t be in the portrait,” Liv said. “The artist, Markus Visser, finished his work before that day and went away.”

Eva frowned.

****

Liv felt that she was a traitor when she called at the Visser house at an hour when she knew Markus and his mother would not be at home.

“I can wait in the hall for their return,” Liv said to the maid.

The maid smiled.

“Well, now,” she said, “I know that my master would want you to have the run of the place.” She smiled again, knowingly.

“That’s kind,” Liv said stiffly. “If I may I’ll peek inside his workroom – Markus is secretive about his paintings and I’d love to see.”

The maid, who was sentimental and loved a romance, escorted Liv to a large room lined with finished and half-finished canvases.

She needed to satisfy herself that Markus had not been mistaken about the day on which he left the van der Heide house.

The town was rife with rumour about who killed Timo, and Markus needed to be above suspicion.

He had quit the house a day before the death and so had not even seen the new side table.

Liv walked slowly round the room, turning pictures until she came to a large rectangle shrouded with a cloth.

Drawing it back, she saw the images of Cornelia and Timo, and Christoffel. Her eyes scanned the painting until it came to rest on the large pink hand of Timo.

It was touching a side table of such hideousness that Liv knew immediately this was the one that had been delivered the day after Markus said he left the van der Heide house for good.

The day of the death of Timo van der Heide.

She looked closer. The paint of the table stood proud of the rest – it had probably been added last.

Liv could just imagine Cornelia demanding that Markus include it, and Markus rolling his eyes and unwrapping his brushes.

But why had he said he was nowhere near the house the day Timo died?

She heard noises in the hall and hurried out.

“Ah, Mrs Visser!” she said in a bright voice. “I am so glad! I wanted to see if I could at least take tea with you. ”

Liv was looking beyond the old lady, trying to see if Markus was with her.

“Perhaps your son –”

“My son has been called away,” Mrs Visser said, frowning. “I am tired, Liv de Groot. I will send to you if I ever want to see you.”

Mrs Visser looked distracted, distressed even, but Liv knew she had to go.

“Can you tell me where Markus has gone today?”

The old lady looked into her eyes.

“Leave him alone,” she said. “Leave the lake alone, too.”

Liv hurried home, and there she asked where her father was.

“Gone to the polder site, silly,” Anneke said. “It’s Thursday. I thought you were keeper of appointments, dear, the organised one.”

Liv felt an inexplicable wave of anxiety surging through her brain.

There was something about the image of her father with Markus at the lake that worried her.

She called the family’s trap and leapt inside.

“The west lake,” she ordered the man. “Quick as you can.”

Liv had the driver stop the trap in a copse at some distance from the lake. She saw Lars as she emerged from the trees.

He was standing on the shore at the point where the lake was deepest, looking out over the dark water at what was to be his most significant project.

Liv was about to call out when she saw a second figure.

From the handsome profile of the figure, silhouetted against the sunlight, she knew it was Markus.

Liv waited for Markus to call out to Lars but instead there was an eerie silence.

Lars looked small against the expanse of the lake. She saw Markus raise both hands in front of him and approach Lars’s back.

“No!” she screamed. None of them could swim; her father would drown in that cold water if he was pushed!

Lars turned, and Markus was on him, his hands roughly around Lars’s body, trying to propel him into the deep water while Lars fought to stay stable.

Liv reached them, ready to fling herself and provide some counterweight, but Markus reached an arm behind him and simply shoved her away.

Liv fell into the grass and all she could see was her father, being walked backwards, towards death.

A shout rang out over the water and a man came flying from behind Liv.

It was Ruben Willemsen, and he was hurling himself at the legs of the struggling pair, bringing them down with a crash.

Then there were three men on the bank in a great pile of humanity. Two men, Lars and Ruben, rose up; the third – Markus – was pinned on the grass.

Liv picked herself and reached them just as they allowed Markus to sit up. He pointed at the lake.

“They’re under there,” he said, and he began to sob. “And you will find them. I could not stop it, and now my father is disgraced, and I with him.”

It took some time before explanations could be made.

Ruben, Liv learned, had come hard on her heels after he learned something more about the deaths.

“I made a list of the men present the night Abel died,” he told Liv. “I went to your kitchen, Liv; I asked who came for dinner and it was as I expected – Mr de Groot and the investors.

“But as I was leaving, the cook said that Markus had come in. He’d asked to take a tray of glasses of wine up. Such a nice young man.

“He was able to slip poison into Abel Dekker’s glass.”

Liv sighed.

“He said he hadn’t seen Abel,” she said. “I believed him.”

“Why wouldn’t you?

Then, when your mother said you had followed Mr de Groot to the lake, I felt in my bones that something was wrong.”

“He was picking off the investors one by one,” Liv said.

It was a day later and they were in the garden of the de Groot house. Lars came in.

“There are two bodies being brought from the lake,” he said in a low voice.

“The victims have blows to the head and died before they were put in the water.”

“Who are they?” Liv asked.

“Workers, I believe, from Hans Visser’s days of building those sawmills.” He shook his head.

“I think he used men like the Pharaohs used men, as disposables. I am guessing that two of them – maybe more, who knows? – threatened to speak out.”

“Markus didn’t want the lake drained,” Liv said. “He wanted the honour of his father protected. He never felt good enough.

“Hans exerted a hold on him even after death. No wonder Mrs Visser was so unhappy.”

“She knew,” Lars said. “Your mother has called on her. She wept and said it was better that it had come out, that it had weighed on her so heavily.

“She knew that men had died at her husband’s hands, and that he was greedy and unscrupulous. What a model for a son!”

“But a son who is in awe of him nevertheless,” Liv said.

“Markus Visser is a fine artist,” Ruben said. “This is sad waste.” He turned to Lars. “What of the van der Heide servant?”

“Released,” Lars said, “with a proper apology and a sum of money from the town.”

****

Markus Visser had decided that if he could eliminate enough investors the project would not proceed, the lake would not be drained, and the bodies would not be discovered.

He confessed to luring Timo on to the wall, claiming he wanted to discuss a painting of the whole property.

He had not bargained on the possibility that the wives would carry on with the investment, and so had gone instead after the brains of the operation.

If Lars were dead, at least there would be a long delay, a time to think.

Lars sat heavily in a garden chair and gave his daughter a wan smile.

“Little did the foolish, wicked boy know that my daughter could very well have taken the project forward if I ended up at the bottom of Dranburgen Lake.”

“She’s quite a woman,” Ruben added.

Lars and Anneke looked at him in surprise.

“We thought of him as a husband for you, child,” Lars said. “Are you unhappy?”

Liv pursed her lips, forming her response carefully.

“I always wondered what I should feel about a man I thought of for a husband. I waited for a spark. Did you feel a spark for my father?”

Anneke reached behind her and took her husband’s hand.

“I did, my darling, and I ought to have told you to wait for that spark yourself.

“I am sure you will know it when it comes.”

“I’m sure I will,” Liv said. “Now, I’ll show the pastor out.”

She and Ruben stood in the street, both suddenly shy.

“Well, I’ll see you on Sunday,” Ruben said.

“Yes,” Liv said. “What will be the text?”

A smile crept over his face.

“Can we think of a suitable text for such an occasion?” he said.

“I don’t know, pastor,” Liv said. “Thou shalt not kill – that’s an easy one.” He nodded.

“But I am your pastor and I choose,” he said. “I am now thinking of a verse that comes often into my thoughts.”

They spoke it in unison. “Fret not thyself because of evildoers.”

And they laughed out loud. Then Ruben’s arms were enfolding her, and he kissed her. And Liv knew what it felt like to love.

The End.