A Wreath for the Bride

by Maria Lang

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Newlyweds are washing up dead in New York Harbor, and private investigator Gwenn Ramadge finds herself looking for the killer when one of the murdered brides is a former client's daughter

Release date: January 1, 1990

Publisher: Putnam Adult

Print pages: 176

Sample

THE month was June. The day was Friday, and the time, according to Dina Richardson’s admittedly somewhat unreliable statement, was ten minutes to three when she was halted at the corner of Priest Street and River Street by someone calling her name. She turned round and screwed up her eyes against the sun in surprise.

“Why, Anneli, it’s you. Darling, I was just thinking about you. Where have you sprung from? How are you? Are you nervous?”

If the inhabitants of Skoga had not had twenty-five years in which to become used to this attractive constellation, then they would have had good reason to slow down and take a closer look at these two friends. Since childhood they had been opposites. While Dina was and always had been lively, talkative and full of joie de vivre and mischief, Anneli was quiet, self-absorbed and a dreamer. Accordingly, Dina had providently been equipped with brown curls, at present extremely short, a cheeky nose and laughing slanting eyes, while Anneli was slim and fragile, a classic beauty of romantic pallor, her very fair hair caught in a graceful chignon at the back of her head. To all appearances, however, they got on very well indeed with each other.

Anneli sighed briefly and said with a slight grimace: “I’ve been to the hairdresser’s. Mother thought it’d be better if I had it washed today because … because then the head-dress would be easier to fix on. And of course I’m nervous. Heavens above, what on earth am I letting myself in for? Summer wedding in Skoga church—it sounds lovely—do you remember how we used to dream about it when we were at school? You were always going to marry a lieutenant, and I was going to have a big, safe man who was at least six feet tall …”

She stopped with a treacherous catch in her voice, and Dina, who had always been afraid of sentiment, pointed out somewhat dryly: “And now you’ve nabbed the richest bachelor in the whole district. And all the girls are green with envy, and all the mums are furious, and tomorrow the whole town will be in church or crowding round outside to criticize you, so no stumbling or stuttering or blushing, but just look happy and thrilled and in love, for this is the WEDDING OF THE YEAR in this hole, and everyone already knows you’re going to wear a genuine lace veil that’s two hundred years old which once belonged to Joakim’s mother, and that there’ll be champagne for eighty people and you’re spending your honeymoon …”

“For heaven’s sake, stop! I’ve already told you, I am nervous. The funny thing is that it’s Daddy and I whose knees are wobbling most. Both Mother and Joakim seem to be enjoying the spectacle in some unnatural way.”

She thrust her arm under Dina’s and they walked on down River Street. Anneli’s white cotton dress stood out brightly against her friend’s red one, one girl carrying a white bag in her hand and the other a red umbrella.

“I’m just going to Falkman’s to look at my bouquet. Joakim’s orders. He says I’ve got to ‘approve’ it.”

“What on earth has he thought up, then?”

“Oh, roses, I suppose.”

Anneli sounded indifferent and absent, but a moment later she was waving her hand and smiling happily at someone behind a window.

“It’s Len. No, there. In the barber’s. He must be sprucing himself up for tomorrow too.”

They swung round the corner into Little Street, past the expensive new tobacconist’s and stopped at a shop window stuffed with carnations and green cucumbers.

Dina screwed up her impertinent nose.

“The way she does her window. No, I’m not coming in with you. I’m allergic to Fanny Falkman. I can’t stand her untidy hair or her endless talk. I’ll wait out here, but try to get her to understand that you’re in a hurry.”

And with that Dina nodded carelessly to her best friend and watched the white frock disappear into the florist’s shop.

A cloud covered the sun. It was thick and greyish black, and she congratulated herself on her foresight in bringing an umbrella.

At that moment she caught sight of Livia and Olivia Petren purposefully making straight for her. She hurriedly deliberated whether Fanny Falkman’s more businesslike chatter were not preferable to that of the Petren sisters, but she had not managed to make up her mind before they were there.

No one looking at them would believe that these two sixty-five-year-old ladies belonged to one of the best families in Skoga. Olivia, plump and bulging, was wearing a tight-fitting flowered artificial silk dress, its shiny surface billowing and surging at her every movement. Livia, thin and dry, had found in one of her wardrobes a lilac-coloured hat which had probably been created round about the time of Dina’s birth, and from under its brim her eyes peered, as inquisitive and shrewd as a squirrel’s. As usual, both of them talked at once.

“Well, well, good morning, good morning, dear Dina. How are your mother and father?”

“Are they still in Italy? Well, that is a pity, now, isn’t it …”

“Just now, with the wedding and everything. Yes, we’ve had an invitation. Dear little Anneli has worked for so long in our office, so I suppose she thought …”

“Olivia means that she was employed in our brother’s office. We have nothing at all to do with Sebastian’s office or his affairs. No, that we cannot say, even if he did once take it over from dearest Papa—but naturally it was kind of the Stroms and Anneli to remember us on their big day …”

“I think it’s going to rain,” said Dina hopefully. “Perhaps I’d …”

“Oh dear. Yes, you’d better mind that hat, Livia. But let’s move off the steps and stand in the entrance for a while. It’ll probably only be a shower. There was one like this yesterday, such a heavy one it knocked all our lupins flat, but it didn’t last for more than five or six minutes …”

Dina put up her smart umbrella and smiled politely, but she stayed on the pavement in full view of the entrance of the florist’s shop, and as the rain pattered on the red silk and her feet got wetter and wetter, she glanced impatiently and expectantly at the shop door. Wasn’t Anneli ever coming? And wasn’t there any way of stopping these two old girls talking?

“Oh my goodness, what a lovely bride she’ll be. Mrs. Persson is making the wedding dress, and I can tell you, it’s going to be wonderful, but of course there are eighteen yards of material in the skirt …”

“But it’s a shame old Doctor Hammar didn’t live to see this day.” Livia shook the lilac-coloured hat sadly. “But one must admit she couldn’t have had a nicer stepfather, and she needed one too, for that poor muddled Gretel Hammar could never have looked after either herself or the girl. And won’t they look handsome walking up the aisle …”

“Oh, yes.” Olivia rapturously clapped her stubby hands together. “You can easily see that his mother was of the English nobility …”

“I was talking about Edward Strom,” said Livia sternly. “As the father of the bride, he’ll be the one to lead her to the altar.”

“But there he’ll be relieved by the bridegroom, won’t he?” Olivia tittered, as if she had suggested something improper. “You know, when he picks up that monocle of his and fixes it in his eye, it makes me shiver, for then he looks like … he really looks like … can you guess, Dina?”

She leaned forward confidentially and whispered her question with flushed cheeks. And Dina, who in common with the three thousand other inhabitants of Skoga was well aware of Olivia Petren’s secret passion, at once decided to be a little friendly and accommodating.

“It couldn’t be …?” she whispered back. “It couldn’t possibly be … Lord Peter Wimsey?”

Olivia clucked blissfully, and she became even more enraptured when the object of her admiration appeared on the corner by the tobacconist’s. He seemed to be in a hurry, but all the same he stepped politely up to greet the little group in the entrance.

Dina Richardson looked at him thoughtfully and noted again as she had so often done during the last six months that she did not know what she really thought about Joakim Cruse.

He was not bad-looking. Perhaps he was a shade too thin. His hair had an unmistakable red tinge; in addition it was cut in that idiotic way which had once been modern and relatively suited to young boys, but which was hardly appropriate to a man of thirty-five. But his light grey summer suit was faultlessly cut, as was his pale blue striped waistcoat (Joakim always wore a waistcoat, whatever the weather or the temperature), and even without his monocle he gave an impression of self-assurance and elegance.

Sometimes he’s silly, thought Dina, as he is now, standing in the rain kissing those two old dears’ hands, and sometimes I wonder if he’s all there, and yet … and yet …

“Yes,” she said aloud in reply to Joakim’s appeal. “Yes, she’s in Falkman’s. I think she’d be pleased if you went to fetch her. She must have got stuck in there.”

He bowed three times, once for each of them, walked the short stretch to the florist’s steps and opened the door. They heard the doorbell tinkle as he was swallowed up in the dim foliage of the shop.

Suddenly it stopped raining as swiftly as it had begun. Livia said goodbye abruptly and hurtled on towards the market. Olivia, who would have very much liked to remain and discuss the interesting Mr. Cruse, followed her reluctantly. Dina Richardson put down her umbrella and decided to tell Anneli that she was not going to wait any longer.

It was cool and dark in the shop, and there was a smell of earth, vegetables, carnations and roses. Fanny Falkman, large and black-haired, was standing behind the counter at the far end of the shop. In front of the counter stood Joakim, and when he saw Dina, he turned towards her and uttered three short words, which in their simplicity were quite unbelievable.

“She isn’t here.”

Dina stared stupidly and repeated his words.

“Isn’t … isn’t she here?”

Almost impatiently, he shrugged his shoulders.

“Mrs. Falkman says she hasn’t even been in here.”

Dina was seized by a peculiar sense of unreality. Her eyes darkened.

“But … but that’s impossible,” she mumbled. “I saw her vanish through the door. And I’ve been waiting outside all the time …”

It was almost frighteningly quiet. The three people in the shop seemed to be holding their breath.

Then Dina made a helpless gesture, and although she did not understand why Anneli should want to play such a game of hide and seek, she made a tentative suggestion.

“She must … she must have gone out another way. Is there … is there a back door?”

Her heart sank as she looked at the florist, whose eyes were serious and implacable, holding no promise of such an easy solution to the problem.

“To get to the back door,” Fanny Falkman said slowly, “you have to walk straight through the storeroom. And I’ve been in there for the last sixty minutes.”

FROM that astounding moment the mystery was a fact. The mystery which was to perplex and agitate Skoga more than anything else in its hundreds of years of history, the mystery which was to end with two funerals instead of a wedding and which was to give the town’s most famous son, Chief Inspector Christer Wick, his first grey hair.

However, he was as yet still quite unaware of all this. He had felt tired and listless during the drive from Stockholm, and he had wondered whether it was worth sacrificing two days of his holiday for a wedding, when he did not know either party very well, but then Anneli was his own mother’s goddaughter, and if there were one woman for whom he had a permanent weakness, then it was his mother. So his disinclination vanished as soon as he had, with considerable difficulty, swung his black Mercedes through the narrow gateway of the Wick home and contentedly noted that all was as usual; the lawn, which needed cutting, the long low house with its peculiar brown colour and white balconies, the almost finished jetty down by the lake and first and foremost the dignified owner of the whole. He almost lifted her off the ground as he hugged her.

“You get younger and younger,” he said happily. “How old are you, exactly?”

“I’ve got my pension this year, you know. I have lots of money every month. It’s very nice.”

They smiled at each other, and although his eyes were bright blue and hers as brown as chestnuts, and although she did not even come up to his shoulder, the likeness between mother and son was striking. They had the same smooth black hair, the same high forehead and also the same friendly ironic twist of the lips and the same clever, slightly penetrating look in their eyes.

With his arm round her, Christer walked round the house.

“You obviously don’t use your money to pay a man in the garden, then? You need one here.”

“I’ve got a man,” said Helena Wick.

“But,” she added thoughtfully, “I’m not sure he’d be any good at cutting grass. And it doesn’t matter anyhow, for I like it as it is.”

Christer looked curiously at the gable window on the ground floor of the house. Behind it was a flat—two rooms and a miniature kitchen—which Mrs. Wick usually rented to a lone educated woman.

“Yes, of course, you wrote and told me that you had a bachelor for a change. The bridegroom of tomorrow, isn’t it? Joakim Cruse …”

Later that evening, after Christer had eaten a meal of home-made brawn, pickled herrings and steak and onions and had drunk three cups of his mother’s speciality—black coffee—he filled his pipe, and leaned back in his favourite chair.

“A bit of gossip, please now, Mama,” he said. “What’s he like, this man Anneli’s going to marry? Is he good enough for the child of your heart?”

Helena sighed.

“I wish I could answer that. He’s of a very good family, Scottish aristocracy on his mother’s side—and that perhaps explains a good deal—and he’s said to be immensely wealthy. He came to the town in November after buying the coat factory …”

“So he’s that rich, is he? That’s quite a firm. But he’s relatively young, isn’t he?”

“He’s thirty-five. If one follows the old rule that says the husband ought to be ten years older than the wife, then the auspices are singularly favourable …”

“You’re prevaricating. Why? Come on, out with it, Mama. We’ve never had any secrets between us, have we?”

Mrs. Wick had let her sewing drop into her lap. She screwed up her dark eyebrows as if she were puzzling over some unsolved riddle. Then she suddenly laughed at her own broodings.

“The worst of it is that there aren’t any secrets. There’s absolutely nothing but a. . .