Chapter 12: Seidl at the Table

I put on a dress for dinner.

It was the only one I had packed, dark green and plain, and I wore it with my hair down.

Seidl had asked Stefan which room was mine because he wanted to leave his card on my pillow.

Tobias took the card out of his hand in the corridor and said nothing, and Seidl had smiled.

Now the whole table was laid in the dining room under the antler lamp.

I sat at the head, in my brother's chair, and I put Tobias on my right and Jonas on my left.

Stefan and Felix took the foot.

Seidl came in last and found only one seat left, halfway down the long side.

He stood behind it for a moment.

Then he sat.

"A charming arrangement," he said.

"Thank you," I said. "Stefan, the soup."

We ate.

Seidl talked.

He talked about the hotel he would build on the lower slope, with a spa and four restaurants and a gondola to the ridge.

He talked about jobs for the valley.

He talked about my brother's good sense, and what a pity it was that he had died with the books in such a state.

Felix put down his spoon.

"The books are in perfect state," he said.

"Not for a bank in April."

"The bank has not said that."

"The bank will," Seidl said, "when I tell it to."

I let that hang.

I drank some wine.

"You mean you own the bank?" I asked politely.

"I mean the bank listens to me. I have been their best client for twenty years."

"And the loan on this house is already called?"

"The papers are drawn," Seidl said. "Unless the owners sign, in which case I tear them up."

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