She was a woman still of considerable beauty, though in her late thirties, it had already, as is its way, begun to betray her. A life of ease had added more than a few centimeters to thighs, buttocks, midsection, and breasts, and her pure silky black hair, once able to command second glances from any man young or old, now had more grey than she enjoyed seeing in the mirror during her ever-more-lengthy morning toilette. She had instructed her Friseur to try one of the new products that promised an end to the grey, but it had given a subtle greenish hue to the rest of her coiffure, insuring second glances again, but this time for the wrong reasons. She scrubbed her hair fiercely every day for months until the hideous effect was gone and resolved thereafter to put up with the grey as best she could, though she hated every new strand that revealed itself. The steady increase of her weight would have been more easily combatted, though the determination of will necessary for success involved a strength of character that had not been required of her early in life and thus was almost entirely absent now.

She and Count von Schmundt had had one of the region’s storybook romances during the Great War. They had courted before the outbreak of hostilities. He had gone off with great fanfare, had distinguished himself on a number of occasions, and had returned as a hero; and the wedding had been the largest social event of the decade. Their son was born the next year, and through the peaceful, prosperous, rebuilding years of the twenties and the Weimar Republic, the Schmundt villa outside Niedersdorf was the scene of countless parties and balls, attracting society’s elite all the way from Berlin.

The following years were the high point of Ingrid’s life. Unfortunately, the economic collapse and depression struck her husband—whose reckless speculations made him a wealthy man by 1926—with greater severity than it did their neighbor, the more cautious husband of her best friend.

It did not ruin him, but the count took to occasional drinking, left home for longer and longer periods of time, and made friends in the infant national socialist movement; and their life of ease and luxury had to be drastically curtailed. With little inner strength to fall back on, his wife’s interest in life slowly began to deteriorate. She poured herself into her son, far more than was good for either of them, lavishing upon him every advantage, every gift, every luxury she saw slipping through the fingers of her own vanishing youth, doting upon him as he grew, spoiling him with every fleeting reminder of privilege she could.

“I will speak with her mother, Gustav,” said the countess at length. “Perhaps I shall invite her for Kaffee trinken tomorrow afternoon.”

Gustav nodded, then made his exit before the conversation could come back round to his activities in the village.