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Inge Liptz, a trim blonde in her early thirties, was in the library with a small, wizened, nearly bald old man in a clerical collar, Pastor Heinrich Dannberg, who was first among equals in the Evangalische hierarchy of the area.
Inge, who was drinking champagne, walked up to Netty and Elaine and kissed both of them on the cheek.
“I see we’re all in uniform,” she said.
At a social gathering a year or so before, she had smi
lingly observed that she and Netty and Elaine were very similarly dressed, in black dresses, with a single strand of pearls.
Netty had replied, “I don’t know about you, Inge, but for Elaine and me this is the prescribed uniform of the day for an event like this.”
Inge, whose husband was the Oberburgermeister of Fulda, had never heard that before and thought it was hilarious.
“You know Pastor Dannberg, of course?” Erika asked.
“Yes, of course,” Netty said. “How nice to see you, Pastor Dannberg.”
He took her hand in his, made a gesture of kissing it, then clicked his heels and said, “Frau Lustrous,” and then repeated the process with Elaine.
A maid extended a silver tray with champagne flutes.
“Again, welcome to the House in the Woods,” Erika said, raising her glass. “I don’t think you have been here before, have you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Your husband has, many times, over the years,” Erika said. “He and my father have taken many boar together.”
“Yes, he’s told me,” Netty said.
“I first met your husband, Frauoberst Lustrous,” Pastor Dannberg said, “when he was a lieutenant, and he and his colonel came to Saint Johan’s School with a truck loaded with boar they had taken—very near here, as a matter of fact—and which they gave to us to feed our students.”
“I didn’t know that,” Netty said.
“Oh, yes. And they did that often. It was a great service to us. The woods were overrun with boar—they had not been harvested in the last years of the war. We needed the meat, of course, and, additionally, the boar, we knew, were going to cause the badly needed corn crops severe damage. I have ever since regarded him as both a friend and a Christian gentleman. ”
“That’s very kind of you to say so, Pastor,” Netty said.
And it is. So why do I feel I’m being set up for something?
“And my father, too, thought of Colonel Lustrous as an old and good friend,” Erika said.
And there it goes again.
“My husband, Frau Gossinger, was very saddened by . . .”
“My father killing himself and my brother by driving drunk at an insane speed on the autobahn?” Erika said very bitterly.
“Erika!” Pastor Dannberg said, both warningly and compassionately.
“It’s the truth,” Erika said. “And the truth, I believe the Bible says, ‘shall make you free.’ ”
“It also says, ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged,’ ” Pastor Dannberg said.
“I meant no offense,” Erika said.
“And certainly none was taken,” Netty said.
Erika signaled to the maid for another flute of champagne.
