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parents but by an old gentleman in the row behind who told her to sit down and be quiet.
    ‘You had better study the traditions of the Imperial Spanish Riding School before you come here again,’ he said sternly.
    Loremarie shrugged and sat down, and the dance went on.
    Then once more the riders raised their hats to the emperor, the horses’ ears came forward, acknowledging the thunderous applause – and it was over.
    ‘It makes you proud to be Austrian,’ said Ellie as they stood up to go, and nothing more was said about the money being better spent on new buildings for the university.
    The Eggharts hurried Loremarie away without speaking and were driven home in their enormous yellow motor, but the professors now led the way to Sacher’s restaurant, where they had booked a table, for on Found Days they were very democratic and ate with their servants.
    And at the end of the meal, they had something important to say to Annika.
    ‘We have decided that from now on you do not have to call us “Professor”. You may call us “Uncle”,’ said Professor Julius. ‘Not Professor Julius but Uncle Julius.’
    ‘And not Professor Emil, but Uncle Emil,’ said Professor Emil.
    And they smiled and nodded, very pleased with this gesture. Professor Gertrude did not say that she could be called ‘Aunt’ because she had wandered off inside her head, where she was composing a sonata for the harp, but she too nodded and smiled.
    So all in all it was a splendid evening and as they got off the tram in the Keller Strasse and turned into the square, the party was in an excellent mood, singing and telling jokes.
    Then suddenly they stopped.
    In front of the Eggharts’ house a white motorized van with high windows was parked. There was a red cross painted on the side and the words ‘Mission of Mercy’ written above it.
    Had there been an accident? No one liked the Eggharts, but that did not mean they wanted them to be hurt.
    The door of the van opened, and two nurses in navy-blue uniforms got out. Then they turned back to the van and fetched something – a bundle of shawls and blankets. One nurse took hold of one end of the bundle and the other nurse took hold of the other end and they began to carry it towards the house.
    ‘What is it?’ whispered Annika – for the bundle seemed to weigh more than one would expect from a pile of blankets.
    At this point the bundle twitched and said something. It gave a jerk and a nightcap with a ribbon fell out on to the pavement. Not a bundle then, a person. And a person who was not pleased.
    Meanwhile, the driver of the van had got out and rung the Eggharts’ bell. A maid came and seemed to be giving instructions, pointing upwards. There was no sign of the Eggharts, though Annika saw the curtains of the drawing room twitch.
    Then the manservant, the snooty Leopold, came out and opened the back of the van and took out a battered-looking trunk, which he carried into the house. When he had done that he returned and pulled out two wooden boxes and these too he carried in.
    Presently the door opened once again, and the two nurses got back into the van, the driver returned, and the van drove away.
    As the birthday party crossed the square to their own houses, they were very quiet. No one sang now or told jokes.
    It had been a strange arrival. Was it really a person who had been delivered so carelessly? And if so, what did it mean?

C HAPTER F IVE
T HE C OUNTESS OF M ONTE C RISTO
    F or a few days after the bundle, looking like a pile of unwanted clothes, had been carried into the Eggharts’ house nothing more was heard. The Eggharts didn’t speak to anyone and of course rumours flew round the square. The bundle was a madwoman like Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre , who laughed hideously and would set the place on fire . . . or she had bubonic plague and had to be sealed up and quarantined.
    Then Pauline read a book called The Count of Monte Cristo about a man who had been wrongfully imprisoned in a