Jennifer Hart stepped into the foyer of the ice rink as if winter had lingered outside solely to provide her with the perfect entrance.
The wind battered the heavy glass doors behind her, swept a few snowflakes across the black marble threshold, and then vanished into the muffled sigh of old seals. For a moment she stood between outside and inside: behind her Chestnut Mountain, snow-capped, sharply defined, edged in silver by lamplight and falling ice dust; before her the foyer of an ice rink that had been transformed once more into a ballroom for this final gala evening.
Or at least bravely pretended to be.
Above her hung a chandelier of cut glass, which had probably once been magnificent. Now it was missing a few prisms, and the brass mountings bore the dull sheen of many decades. The light refracted beautifully nonetheless. It fell in shards upon Jennifer’s ivory-coloured coat with its narrow fur collar, upon her gloves, upon the soft waves of her hair, and upon the necklace around her neck.
Platinum, moonstones, tiny fragments of black coral.
The fragments were set in such a way that they did not look like jewellery, but like a wave of real coral beneath the shallow sea of an African coast. 
“Mrs Hart.” A young man in a dark green formal livery stepped forward, pale with a sense of duty and the cold. “Welcome to Chestnut Mountain. May I take your coat?”
Jennifer smiled at him, and for half a second the young man forgot his cloakroom tags.
“Only if you promise I’ll get it back.”
“Of course.”
“That’s what an art dealer in Jilib said too,” remarked Jennifer, unfastening her coat and letting it slide over his arm with the casual care of a woman who knew exactly how expensive fabrics were. “After that, we needed two lawyers, a harbour master and Jonathan with his friendliest smile.”
The young man laughed uncertainly, not knowing whether the story was true. Jennifer liked people who asked themselves that question. They were usually still salvageable.
“Jilib?” he asked.
“A place where the sun is so bright that even lies cast shadows. On the Somali coast.” Jennifer touched the necklace briefly. “Jonathan bought a black reef there so it wouldn’t be cut up by polluting speculators, sold off, and distributed among the aquariums of rich women.”
The young man looked at the black coral fragments.
Jennifer noticed his gaze and raised an eyebrow. “Don’t worry. They’re old. Broken off before Jonathan even saw the contract. I don’t wear rescued things just to exploit them all over again—at least, not usually.”
“That’s very nice,” he said.
“Above all, it was very expensive. Beauty is sometimes just the politer sister of the bill.”
Music rose from the back of the foyer. A string quartet was playing on a small platform between two palm trees. The two violins led an elegant melody, the viola responded more warmly, and the cello laid down a tone beneath it that sounded of old wood and secret cellars. On the bar tables stood mulled ginger ale glasses in which candied slices of ginger floated like golden coins. Beside them lay maple syrup tartlets on silver platters, each decorated with a tiny sugar leaf. They’d gone to a lot of trouble. That was precisely why Jennifer saw the cracks.
The lengths of fabric hanging down from the gallery were yellowed at the ends. Behind the reception desk, the paint was peeling from a stucco rosette. Above the ticket window hung an old wooden sign listing admission prices for schoolchildren, soldiers and “members of the Chestnut Boars Hockey Club”. Someone had tried to touch up the word “Boars” with fresh gold paint; the boar’s head next to it looked not refreshed, but even more frayed as a result.
Jennifer took a glass of mulled ginger ale from a tray. It smelled of ginger, cinnamon, lemon and the sort of optimism that organisers develop just before a demolition.
“On the house?” asked the waitress.
“To houses that stand long enough to collect secrets,” said Jennifer.
The waitress smiled. “Then you’ve come to the right place.”
The foyer was well filled. City councillors in dark suits, ladies in velvet and silk, elderly gentlemen with hockey pins on their lapels, young athletes in jackets that were too stiff. Everything sparkled: jewellery, glasses, ice decorations, camera flashes, feigned cheerfulness. The gala programme lay on an easel next to the reception desk. The cover was dark blue, with silver embossing: Chestnut Mountain Ice Hall Farewell Gala. Beneath it, a stylised boar leaping over a frozen chestnut.
Jennifer picked up a copy, leafed through it, and let herself drift as if she were merely looking for the order of the speeches. In truth, she read programmes the way other people read police reports. Who was being honoured, who was missing, who had suddenly turned up as a sponsor, who was listed in small print: society revealed itself in the footnotes.
On page three was the history of the building.
Founded in 1752 as St Ignatius Jesuit Grammar School on Chestnut Mountain.
Jennifer lingered on it for a moment. She liked old schools, at least those that believed in the value of language, conscience and a proper library. The illustration in the margin depicted a narrow wing of the building with a chapel, beneath which was a Latin motto, the print so small that it suggested ambition rather than information.
She read on.
1812, following the independence of the United States, secularised and continued as a state boarding school.
1889 Demolition of the boarding school building; construction of an ice rink on the old foundations.
Last major renovation: 1947.
Since the massive slump in winter sports tourism from 1968 onwards, increasingly the home and training ground of the local ice hockey club, the Chestnut Boars.
Jennifer looked up.
The numbers did not line up like well-behaved data. They stood out. 1752. 1812. 1889. 1947. 1968. Each number was a door, and each door led into a different century of displacement. Jesuits, boarding school, demolition, post-war renovation, loss of tourism, hockey club. An ice rink was rarely just an ice rink. Especially not when it stood on the site of a boarding school that had been built on religious foundations and was now being bid farewell with sponsor tables, caviar canapés and demolition plans.
“Mrs Hart?” A woman in a pearl-grey dress and a name tag stepped up beside her. Eleanor Price, Gala Committee. Her hair was immaculate; her eyes were not. “We’re absolutely delighted you’ve come. Mr Hart isn’t accompanying you today?”
“Jonathan will be here shortly. Reporters have cornered him outside, but it was too chilly for me.” Jennifer smiled as if that were the whole truth. “He has a soft spot for hopeless rescue missions, which is why he spontaneously agreed to our participation in the gala, even though we’d actually only intended to spend a few quiet days at the chalet.”
“How charming.”
“You’d be amazed at how isolated the little cottage is, nearly a thousand metres above Chestnut Mountain.”
Eleanor Price laughed a touch too late. “Well, calling it a ‘cottage’ when it’s a forty-room mountain lodge is a slight exaggeration. All the more reason to thank you for your support here in the valley: we won’t be saving anything today. Today we’re bidding farewell to this version of the house and laying the foundations for the Democracy Sports Centre.”
“That’s an optimistic approach.”
The quartet moved on to a piece that began almost like a waltz and then glided into a cool, modern harmony. Jennifer took a maple syrup tartlet. The filling was excellent, the crust a little too hard. She bit into it anyway, because she didn’t want to be a rude guest.
“The programme is nicely put together,” she said. “The history of the building is fascinating. A Jesuit grammar school, a boarding school, then an ice rink. One might think this place has always disciplined young people; only the skates have become narrower and the falls faster.”
“A very poetic thought.”
“I try to stay poetic so that no one mentions boring balance sheets.” Jennifer turned the page. “The renovation in 1947 must have been substantial.”
Eleanor’s hand lingered briefly on her pearl necklace. “Oh, only the archives here know the details of that now. After the war, they wanted to make the place prestigious again. Ice revues, winter balls, international youth tournaments. Chestnut Mountain was a name back then.”
“And 1968?”
“The beginning of the end. Air travel became cheaper, Alpine resorts more fashionable; the big families went elsewhere. We were left with a very beautiful hall that needed a great deal of heating.”
“Beauty and heating bills,” said Jennifer. “An old married couple.”
Eleanor smiled again, but this time without pleasure.
Jennifer turned to the sponsors’ page. Logos in silver, gold and dark green filled the lower section. Banks, construction firms, sports foundations, a watchmaker, two medical institutes. At first glance, it all looked like the usual mix of money, a clear conscience and an opportunity to have one’s name printed on a banner.
Then she saw a full-page sponsors’ list: 1947 Founders’ Circle – Nordtisch. Next to it was a boar’s head, drawn in a darker, more aggressive style than the modern Chestnut Boars emblem.
Jennifer ran her thumb over the paper. The silver ink didn’t stick to her glove. Freshly printed, but set in the old style.
“How charming,” she said.
Eleanor followed her gaze. “We’ve gone to great lengths to preserve the hall’s historical significance and architectural style as far as possible. The North Table used to be the table of honour for the major patrons.”
“Used to be?”
“Until the sixties, I think.”
“And today?”
“Today, only our ‘Philanthropist’ sits there – as everyone here calls him – the generous Dr Walter Franklin.”
Eleanor Price’s smile froze like the ice flowers on the upper windows, where the warm air from the old-fashioned radiators could no longer do anything against the poor insulation.
“May I recommend our house cocktail? With plenty of alcohol, naturally only for non-athletes and adults. Mulled ginger ale with chestnut liqueur.”
“Why not?” said Jennifer. “If the drinks are as old as the paint on the stucco rosette, the higher the proof, the healthier they are, aren’t they?”
For a moment, something flickered across Eleanor’s face that was part annoyance and part hurt. Then she was called away by a city councillor who couldn’t find his name badge. Before that, she had waved to one of the waiters.
Jennifer remained alone by the easel.
She took the seating plan from the golden cord she was holding at the desk, doing so with the calm self-assurance of a woman who had learnt across five continents that no one immediately considered a lady wearing a platinum necklace to be dangerous.
A waiter stopped beside her. “Here you are, our house drink.” The young, lanky waiter, wearing his grandfather’s confirmation suit, grinned shyly at the elegant lady: “Adults only, you know.”
“Oh, what a pity.” She took the glass, tossed her bouffant hair back and smiled at the waiter with her most charming smile. “Then you haven’t even been able to taste what you’re serving others.”
The waiter stammered: “Yes, ma’am. Er, no, I haven’t either. But our school cook brews the potion.”
“School cook?”
The waiter lowered his voice. “Alberica Alkba. She was already cooking in the school canteen when my mother was still a little girl and went to school. That’s why I’m sure she knows how to make good mulled ginger ale.”
From the podium, the violin rose higher, and the chandelier cast a black reflection across Jennifer’s necklace. In one of the moonstones, she saw not the foyer, but Jilib: water standing over dark coral.
Here, in Chestnut Mountain, everything smelled of wood polish, ginger and wet fur. Yet beneath this scent lay something older. Dust from classrooms. Oil from heating pipes. Cold metal. Perhaps even what remained when institutions changed their names too often and never confessed their foundations.
Jennifer closed the programme.
On the cover, the silver boar was still leaping over the frozen chestnut.
“All right,” she said quietly. “Let’s see who hasn’t delivered tonight.”
She turned away from the reception desk, raised her glass towards the chandelier and gave the whole foyer a smile warm enough not to warn anyone.
That was precisely where the danger lay.