Free The Seventh Child by Erik Valeur Page A

distance: MAL 12.
    “Hello.”
    Knud spun around, startled by the unfamiliar voice.
    She’d approached them without making a peep. “My name is Susanne Ingemann. You’re earlier than expected.”
    She wore a beautiful green dress that fell nearly to her ankles. Nils grasped how lovely she was faster than his shutter could capture her image: tanned feet in light-brown sandals; dark-brown hair with a reddish sheen, gathered in a tight bun with a black clip. She greeted them with a small, deprecating gesture—gracious but reserved—without any effort to make physical contact, not even a handshake. “Welcome to … Kongslund.”
    Nils noted her hesitation at the name Kongslund. And had she actually curtsied?
    “Let’s go inside,” she suggested. Before they could reply, their hostess was halfway to the door.
    The entry hall had very high ceilings paneled in tall, dark mahogany. Behind the sandstone fireplace that looked as though it hadn’t been used in decades, the wall was covered with black-and-white photographs in small, square black and brown frames. Several hundred of them in fact, all of children: tiny faces shining in the light of those old flashcubes they used to use.
    Standing motionless, Nils stared at the photographs, which for some reason reminded him of his childhood home, though he couldn’t say why. Where he’d grown up the only sentimentality on display was in the golden romances he’d read—with their damsels in distress—or from Bjørn Tidmand’s love songs that played on the radio. He looked away, and his eyes fell on a broad staircase that wound its way over the main entrance and rose into the darkness. On the wall high above the staircase was a tall painting of a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat and standing in an idyllic clearing. Like Susanne, she wore a deep-green dress with long sleeves and flounces. The abundant fabric stretched to the ground, cascading in folds at her feet.
    “N.V. Dorph painted that,” the matron said, interrupting the two men from their thoughts once more. “Presumably it’s Countess Danner, the commoner wife of King Frederik VII.”
    Knud was suddenly seized with another coughing fit.
    Susanne politely ignored him and simply raised her voice. “Dorph furnished the house for the old sea captain who lived here before Mother’s Aid Society, and he painted the pictures,” she said. “Or at least some of them. So it would be appropriate to begin with a tour, wouldn’t it?”
    She let them go ahead of her on the broad staircase, and when she followed, Nils heard the green fabric of her dress rustle softly. The beautiful matron had an eerie resemblance to the woman in the painting.
    “The house was built between 1847 and 1850 by a famous architect,” she said, “by all accounts in consultation with the last absolute ruler, King Frederik VII, during the same period when the Constitution was written.”
    Knud coughed as if to indicate his skepticism on such a peculiar and cryptic statement.
    They were in a long, dark corridor now with three or four closed doors. “This is where the governesses lived, and the matron. Staff resided at the orphanage among the children, which was completely natural.” She stood motionless with her back to the enormous painting. “The architect loved this place so much he couldn’t bear to leave it, so he built a home for himself next door—on the southern slope—the decrepit white house you might have seen when you drove in. He lived there with his wife and son, and later on the son lived there with his wife … and their daughter.”
    She’d added the last three words after a strange pause that Nils didn’t understand.
    “The daughter had cerebral palsy,” she said, as if by way of explanation.
    “Kongslund itself was passed down for generations before Mother’s Aid Society bought it in 1936.” Susanne Ingemann stopped to open a door. After several minutes in the dark hallway, the light was blinding. The room could’ve