Emma H. by II Magdalen

Emma H-? Well, Henning Forsell said - as if it were a matter of no great importance - she was all of nineteen when she was killed. Murdered, the old lady says, executed is what I hear around. Real name, Emma Hoofrad. Listed as Emma H. out of regard for social susceptibilities. Rich family, prominent people, but not really from here.

He didn't say how the old lady, Emma's aunt, had importuned him: written him, called him, telegraphed him, sent her lawyer after him. How she wasn't to be put off. Either way, he continued, very dead for some time, since 1945 is thirty-eight years ago and you and I didn't even exist.

She thought, queer man I've married. To her thirty-three might have seemed old - if she hadn't fallen in love so abruptly. And with a man who didn't usually talk that much.

Henning said, The old lady won't see me. Not in person. She does everything through her notaire in Liege, Luik, whatever you want to call the place. A certain Jacques Coquin. You know what those people - notaires not old ladies - are like. Cheat you blind with respectability. At least the French ones do. The man's name means something like a cute rogue. A rogue he probably is. Cute, no.

'Enning (she couldn't pronounce that opening 'h', hotels were 'otels), stop. You are trying to tell me something. At the same time you wish to distract me, is that right?

Yes, I'm telling you about this girl who was killed. The girl was her beloved niece, she was killed, Mevrouw Kerkevelde isn't satisfied, and because Emma's case has, let's say, 'political' overtones - something an Italian like you would understand - no Belgian will take up her cause. Apparently I'm it. Why, I wouldn't know.

I see. You told me already sometimes you will leave me for a while.

Not for long.

Henning was talking to his new wife Ludi (for Ludovica) in the very sort of place she hated most, a place where it rained all the time, even in summer, where you couldn't get a decent espresso, the tiled roofs drove you crazy with their patterns, the red brick of the houses dripped with the constant drizzle and unseen eyes were - you knew - peering out at you from behind lace curtains.

He'd had to pretend a bit, of course, to get her to Belgium at all, by suggesting the Formula One race at Spa/Francorchamps and then this little corner of Limburg. Because in Mevrouw Kerkevelde's first letter - it had reached him in London several weeks before his miraculous meeting with Ludi - she had sent him a photograph of the girl and that had been that. He had known right away he wouldn't refuse.

So he suggested the track because Ludi knew one of the drivers. More especially his wife Rita with whom Ludi had done her Liceo.

So the two girls and Henning had sat around freezing under umbrellas at the plastic tables outside the motor home and the girls had enjoyed a good gossip. Then, some time after Henning, (cars were not his thing, made too much noise), Ludi had got bored - she regularly got bored, twenty-one-year-olds often do - and they'd fled the track and the rain by a back road, even before practice started.