The maid came into the room at this point and Patricia demonstratively kept her lips closed.
‘Excuse me, but are you Beate or Benedikte?’ I asked the maid as she approached with the dessert. I should not have done that. She looked questioningly at Patricia, who chose to answer on her behalf.
‘That is most definitely Beate. And, may I add, she is the only one you will see here now, because if Benedikte was here you would have no problem telling them apart.’
Patricia sighed and shook her head in exasperation, while the colour drained from Beate’s face and she looked as though she wished she was anywhere other than here. I could of course not help but ask what had happened to Benedikte. And I should not have done that either. Patricia immediately transformed into a gossiping teenage girl. And a rather self-centred and unbearable one at that.
‘Well, would you believe what the ninny has managed to do now? She let the latest of her halfwit boyfriends get her pregnant and so will now be busy with the preparations, delivery and consequences of childbirth for the entire summer. It is very tempting to say that she made the bed so she could lie in it. But it is Beate and I who have to bear the brunt of it, Beate because she now has to work every day for the whole summer, and me because the help I get will not be so good!’
Sometimes I seriously doubted whether Patricia was actually joking or not. This was one such time. I sat there, waiting for the laughter that never came. Patricia composed herself and apologized for her outburst. But she still looked more irritated than self-deprecating when she added: ‘It is all very inconvenient for me, just before summer. And I could never bear little children, not even when I was one myself. Excessive IQ is really not a problem in that family. Let us hope that Beate is smarter than her sister, though she barely knows what IQ is, all the same.’
Beate’s face blanched even more and she made a hasty exit as soon as she had gathered up the plates.
There were times when I wondered whether Patricia was serious, but knew that she could be truly horrible. And this was certainly such an occasion. But at such a critical stage in a murder investigation, it would perhaps not be prudent to raise the issue. So I took the episode as another example of how self-centred Patricia could be, and how vulnerable she became when the order in her domestic universe was threatened. In order to lighten the situation as swiftly as possible, I quickly asked how she knew the Wendelboes’ telephone number off by heart.
