Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

She looked out the window again. Father did not often allow her to accompany him on his deer hunts. Usually she had to stay close to the forge, even when hunting season wasn’t officially open, but away from the water, away from the vortex. She played with stones and sticks, practiced on a Jew’s harp that she always had with her, dreamed to the accompaniment of the ceaseless thumping. That was the best time at the forge, a time no one could take away from her, not her unhappy mother, and later, not even Karl. Once Father had returned he would take her with him to the nearest pub where she got to sit near him with her soft pretzel and her sweet cider, observing him silently, not unlike his favorite hunting dog.

Oh! The young man had arrived! She watched as he got out of the car. The clothing that muffled the contours of his body could not disguise the familiar shape, the family resemblance. She noticed that she had begun to cry. Ageing was a punishment. What quick gestures he had! His strong voice sounded like a poem that she had forgotten long ago. It was not the words, it was his youth, his power, his joy. His certain knowledge of a future lying ahead.

She listened to him, watched the way he angled the corners of the bread into his mouth, polished off huge amounts of smoked meat, and made notes continually even as the cassette player recorded their conversation.

“You really need to get the forge renovated,” he said when they’d talked for a while, told little family anecdotes.

He had been there! Had poked around among the crumbling walls, inspected the decaying wood. The paddles had cracked, but some of the tools were still usable for display, at least after a professional cleaning, he told her. The region needed it. A beautiful spot. Great marketing possibilities. It roused her business sense, her curiosity. So had he lied about his thesis topic? No, but it was more than that. He was interested, yes, but so was the community. The forge directly adjoined a new hiking trail and lay at just the right distance to the next mill, the next restaurant. There were possibilities there. The valleys had to be innovative these days to survive, as far away from the highway as they were, and without the cider-apple trees. All of a sudden, it seemed like a virtue that time had stood still here.

“Were you there alone?”

He shook his head, and wanted to know why she hadn’t looked after the place during the previous decades, why she’d let it go to ruin and still refused every offer for it. She didn’t answer. He asked whether she could imagine what might come of developing it.

Again she heard the insistent clack-clack of the paddles and the mighty hammering echoing beneath the massive roof. Had her father ever suspected that Karl would try to take the forge away from her? Just to hurt her?

“Yes, I can imagine it. But aren’t there enough ruins for the tourists?”

He smiled. Historic tourism was a big thing, and the area desperately needed every opportunity it could find to bring in money. Investing in the future. That was a language she could understand. She’d been an entrepreneur for decades. She remembered the sign on her former warehouse. Her name and her maiden name with a née in cursive. It looked so trustable. During the war and even afterwards it had protected her, put her above every suspicion, so that no one questioned her widowhood.

“By the way, we had to stop the water briefly to check the condition of the wheel. The millrace isn’t really as decayed as you’d think. The mechanism still works.”

She held her breath and looked directly into his eyes.

“And you know what we found?”

Time passed before her mind like a rushing flow, loud in her head.

“Under the mill wheel — I mean, he must have jumped right into it — we found a skeleton. It’s old and damaged and the clothes are in shreds. It must have been lying there for fifty years, the doctor said.”

Karl.

“And the ethnologist thought it might be a good idea to integrate it as a tourist attraction — ghost of the mill, that kind of thing. If you don’t have any objections, as the owner. Or think it’s irreverent.”

She started to laugh. At first it was just a tortured cough, right up in her throat. The boy looked up, startled. But then she felt it move lower, rumble in her still-mighty belly, and let loose, rolling out a trombone staccato just like years ago. Oh, Karl! You old skunk! You never could have imagined that they’d make money off you, you with your endless complaints about the financial loss! Especially right here, where all you could see was loss and hopelessness and the poverty of these dark valleys. The worries and troubles of the years between the wars. My troubles.