Woman in the Shadows

by Jane Thynne

  Another sound interrupted her thoughts. A man’s step, it sounded like. A hard leather sole with a steel tip in the heel making its way out onto the flagstones. She shrank back into the darkness. Light spilled from the open doors, illuminating a swath of the terrace, and she saw it was Ralph Sommers prowling—that was the word for it—like a predator in search of its prey. He braced his shoulders backwards and stretched his arms wide, like a wild animal, then reached up a hand and massaged his neck. Even from where she stood, she could tell he was tense and preoccupied. Clara folded herself more closely against the wall and tried to regulate her breathing. She was certain he couldn’t see her, yet he still looked curiously in her direction. He cupped his hand to light a cigarette and seemed to gaze right at her, before turning and going back into the house.

  CHAPTER

  7

  It was ten o’clock before Clara got back to Winterfeldtstrasse and wearily parked the car. The hall was deserted, though she noticed that a couple of chicken soup cans had been tossed into Rudi’s collection point, enough perhaps to make a few bolts for an airplane wingtip. It was Party night, she remembered, Rudi’s only evening out of the week, from which he would regularly reel back reeking of beer and filled with SA songs.

  By contrast, Clara was stone-cold sober. She had drunk nothing at the Goebbelses’ party, keenly aware more than ever that she needed to keep her wits about her. She had held a glass of champagne throughout, because that was the kind of detail Goebbels noticed. Yet even with her sobriety and her heightened state of alertness, she had managed to make a foolish mistake.

  At least the lift was mended. She sighed as she waited and rubbed her legs. Her black patent heels were killing her. She was longing to fling herself down on her bed and let herself relax. She could not get the face of Ralph Sommers, aeronautical businessman and Nazi sympathizer, out of her mind. Something about him unnerved her. The cool gleam of his eyes, the current that ran through her as they shook hands. Her inexplicable desire to see him again.

  The lift shuddered upwards and stopped with a grunt at the top floor. Pushing the cage door back, Clara flicked on the hall light and rummaged in her bag for her key. But as she approached the door, her senses quickened like those of a cat. She hesitated. The film of Max Factor powder on the door handle was gone. That could mean anything, of course. Rudi, perhaps, snooping around. A Hitler Youth, or a girl from the BDM, selling their publications and aggressively rattling the door as they shook their collection boxes. And yet…Clara felt unsettled. Something wasn’t right. Turning the light off again, she felt her heart pound as, swiftly and quietly, she inserted the key in the lock.

  She pushed the door open a fraction, then stepped inside. An eddy of cool air touched her face: had a window been opened? There was a distinct, indefinable fragrance that she didn’t recognize. Someone had been in the apartment. Perhaps he was still there. Two steps in allowed her a view of the kitchen, where she could see a used cup on the table. A single blue china teacup without a saucer and a teaspoon by its side. Yet the table had been bare when she left. The kitchen window was slightly ajar, but surely it was impossible that anyone should have climbed in from there. From that window into the cobbled courtyard was a sheer five-floor drop.

  Clara froze. From where she stood there was no other sign of an intruder, none of the casual wreckage a burglar might create. Whoever had entered her apartment that evening did not have destruction on his mind. She slipped off her heels. Standing in her stockinged feet, she strained for the slightest sound. Although the apartment was silent, there was a ripple in the air. A strange, subliminal frisson that suggested the presence of another human being. Another heart beating, very near.

  Walking as slowly and as silently as possible, she approached the sitting room, then flung back the door. There was no light on, but to her shock, there was the dark mass of a figure in the chair, framed in shadow against the uncurtained window. Even as she looked, the woman stood up and addressed her with a laugh.

  “Clara Vine! I might have guessed you’d never actually be at home on a Saturday night. And looking so glamorous. You cut your hair!”

  The adrenaline coursing through Clara turned to joy. Tears stung her eyes.

  “Mary! Mary Harker. What on earth are you doing here?” She enfolded her friend in her arms.

  The visitor returned her hug, tightly.

  “Long story.” Mary had a languid American drawl with a bubble of humor beneath it. “Which I have every intention of telling in great and exhausting detail, so you’d better not be tired.”

  “But…” Clara snapped on the lamp, shrugged off her coat, and dropped it over a chair. “How did you even get in here?”

  “Rudi let me in. I caught him off to one of his Nazi nights out. He was thrilled to see me back. He’s a nice guy really, under all that Nazi bluster. While I waited I had a good look around to see what you’ve done with my apartment, and I admit I’m impressed. It was never this tidy when I was here. I never even saw the floorboards under all my junk. I love all this furniture. And I simply adore that painting in the bedroom.”

  Mary Harker had aged since the day Clara had last seen her, in 1933, as she prepared to leave Germany for America. Her bosomy figure had filled out, and her face had gained a few lines. Yet in all other ways she was exactly the same ambitious reporter who had briefed the readers of the New York Evening Post on the early days of the Third Reich. Same thick tweed suit. Same heavy glasses and earnest air. Tousled hair, which she cut herself and which was barely acquainted with a brush. Gray-green eyes that could switch from serious to humorous in an instant. The merest lick of makeup. Freckles, a voice that sounded like she gargled gravel, and a gap-toothed smile that warmed every corner of the room.

  “But God, it’s cold in here! I forgot how freezing this city can be in winter.”

  “And it’s getting colder. Winter’s not even here yet. I’ll stoke up the stove. First let me get you some food. You must be starving.”

  Clara opened the refrigerator to find a single bottle of beer and some milk, a hunk of dark brown rye bread, and a rind of cheese.

  Mary peered gloomily over her shoulder. “I thought actresses were supposed to keep champagne and cold salmon in their refrigerators.”

  “Not this one. I haven’t been shopping in a while.”

  “What do you eat?”

  “I tend to eat out. Or at the studio. It’ll have to be coffee for now.”

  As Clara put on the kettle and got out the cups, Mary scrutinized her critically. “You’re looking thinner. Not starving yourself, I hope, for some role.”

  “Oh, Mary. You’re going to find a lot has changed here.”

  How could you explain, to someone who had been away for four years, just how Germany had changed in that time? Now, in the autumn of 1937, food was so much scarcer. Under Goering’s four-year plan, there was a new slogan, “Guns not butter,” to drive home the sacrifices everyone needed to make for the nation’s rearmament. Not that it was such a sacrifice, given the state of the butter when you did find it.

  “There are food shortages all the time. You can’t find eggs. Any butter you get is rancid. The milk is so watered down they call it corpse juice. People have to save their crusts. On top of that, there are all sorts of rumors whirling round. Like the reason you can’t buy onions is that they are being used for experiments with poison gas. And out in the country, you can be hanged for feeding grain to pigs. There’s this song they sing. Der Hitler hat keine Frau, Der Bauer hat keine Sau, Der Fleischer hat keine Fleisch, Das ist der dritte Reich. Hitler has no woman, the farmer has no sow, the butcher has no meat, that’s the Third Reich for you.”

  “Catchy.”

  “Yes, and liable to get you arrested if you get caught singing it.”

  “The place doesn’t look too different to me. The restaurants are full.”

  “Sure, but they only serve two dishes. Try ordering anything else and you’ll find it’s sold out. And the waiters scrape
the plates and take the scraps home to their families. According to the Reich Food Corporation, we need to make the nation self-sufficient. The only problem is, the government says if Germany is to be self-sufficient, it’s going to need more land.”

  “Somebody else’s land, I assume.”

  Clara handed her friend a cup of coffee, then tucked her feet beneath her on the sofa.

  “Exactly. But let’s talk politics later. First things first. I want to know everything. What’s been going on in your life? What brings you back to Berlin?”

  “Apart from the biggest story in Europe, you mean?”

  “I mean how did you manage it? Being expelled by the Propaganda Minister himself isn’t an achievement all journalists can put on their résumés.”

  “Oh, getting accreditation was a nightmare. I’d gone back to spend time with my father, and when he died, my mother wanted me to stay at home to entertain her. Given that her idea of entertainment is playing bridge at her country club and peekaboo with her grandchild, I was dying to escape. We never saw eye to eye. Keeping out of journalism was killing me. Once the civil war broke out in Spain, I said, Damn it, I just have to go. Mother’s always saying she wants there to be more between us. So I thought, Let’s make it the Atlantic Ocean.”

  Clara laughed. “You went on your own?”

  “Sure. I decided I was going to be a one-woman band. I took out a thousand-dollar bank loan and booked a passage. Took my Remington”—Mary tapped the typewriter case beside her—“and my lucky hat”—she pointed to a battered black felt creation that Clara recognized—“and set sail for Europe.”

  “I can’t imagine what it’s like out in Spain. The reports are terrifying.”

  “Words can’t describe it, Clara. I went to Madrid first, while it was being besieged by Franco. The International Brigades were fighting from street to street. I’d never seen a sight like it. They saved the city from the hands of the Nationalists at the last moment. Then in February I was on the Andalusian coast, where there were thousands of refugees fleeing the advance on Málaga. I passed mothers who actually begged me to take their children, because they were so certain they would be killed. Everywhere you go there are ruined buildings and desolation. This spring I moved all the way up to the Basque country. That’s where most of the Republican resistance movement is, and I can’t tell you the things I saw there.”

  Mary stopped and passed a hand across her eyes.

  “I will tell you,” she continued, after a moment. “Only not now. Anyway, I freelanced for various outfits and filed a little copy for United Press, and I begged and wheedled Frank Nussbaum, the Evening Post’s editor, to take my stories. But what I really wanted was to get back into Germany. This was where I wanted to report from. Then I had the most enormous piece of luck. You’ve heard of Charles Lindbergh?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  Everyone knew Charles Lindbergh. The celebrated American aviator, world famous for his solo flight from New York to Paris, had had his life torn apart when his baby son was kidnapped and murdered. To escape the hysteria of the ensuing murder trial, the family had moved to a peaceful village in Kent.

  “As it happens, Colonel Lindbergh comes from New Jersey, near where my parents live, so we knew him a little. I pried the address out of my mother, went over to England, drove down to the village, and knocked on the door. I dropped my family name very heavily and asked if he would do an interview, and to my amazement, Lindy said yes. I suppose I must have been talking about wanting to come to Germany, because it seems he spoke to someone, and the next week, a visa came through.”

  “Lindbergh must have German contacts.”

  “Sure he does. He’s great pals with Goering. I’m certain it was Goering who had my visa approved. Anyhow, the Post was ecstatic when I offered them my Lindbergh interview. They agreed to take me on at the Berlin bureau again for sixty dollars a week.”

  “Sixty dollars! You’ll live like royalty here on that.”

  “That’s the easy part. Now I just have to find some stories. It’s harder than before. Restrictions on foreign journalists are tighter. I just want a good story. Something meaty, that gets my byline above the fold.”

  “There is something.” Clara hesitated. “I heard about it the other day, but there’s been nothing in the papers here.”

  The death at the Reich Bride School had been preoccupying her. Not that violent crime was unusual in Berlin. It was a daily occurrence. The fact that the girl’s shooting had gone unremarked was hardly surprising. Why bother to report on a murder in a city where sudden death was the prime instrument of law and order? It was just that the woman was named Anna Hansen. It couldn’t be the same Anna…could it?

  “There was a woman shot last week at the Schwanenwerder Bride School. They think—”

  “Hold on right there,” Mary interrupted. “Did you say Bride School?”

  “There are Bride Schools all around Germany. They’re Himmler’s brainchild. You need to attend one if you’re going to marry into the SS.”

  “What do they teach? Which flowers go well with roses? Where to seat a bishop at dinner, that sort of thing? How to use an oyster fork?”

  Clara laughed sourly. “More like herring recipes and how to hem curtains. Whatever it takes, in the National Socialist mind, to be a good wife.”

  Mary rolled her eyes. “Presumably this girl wasn’t shot for her cooking skills?”

  “That’s just it. We don’t know. There’s been nothing about it in any of the papers, I’ve looked. And I wouldn’t be interested, only the dead woman was named Anna Hansen, and I used to know a girl named that. I wondered if it could be the same one.”

  “Sounds like a pretty common name to me.”

  “I suppose. The woman I knew came from Munich, and she was the least likely candidate for an SS Bride School I can imagine. She was a model for Bruno Weiss. My artist friend. I don’t think you ever met him, but he knew Helga Schmidt.”

  Helga Schmidt. The actress whose death had brought Mary and Clara together. Mary was shaking her head in disbelief.

  “Whoever the girl was, this Bride School sounds like a story in itself. I’m sure my editor would adore the idea. I’ll get on it first thing.”

  Clara stifled a yawn. “Sorry, it’s been quite an evening.”

  “So which room’s mine?”

  Mary gazed innocently at Clara, then burst out laughing. “Don’t worry. I’m not moving in. It would be far too compromising for you to share an apartment with a journalist. I’ll just need to stay a night until I find somewhere else. I’ll bunk on your sofa. You’ll never even know I’m here.”

  Clara felt a guilty twinge of relief. She said, “Of course. Stay as long as you need. Whatever you want.”

  “What I really want is a drink. Where shall we go?”

  “Now?”

  “Why not? Unless Berlin nightlife has changed out of all recognition, things are only just getting started at eleven o’clock.”

  At the prospect of an evening out with Mary Harker, Clara’s fatigue evaporated. Mary’s enthusiasm was like a transfusion of something life-giving. The kind of substance you couldn’t get in one of Magda Goebbels’s clinics.

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “Do you know anywhere a couple of women on their own could drink a martini without being bothered?”

  “I think so. Why?”

  “That’s exactly the kind of place I want to avoid.”

  —

  GIVEN THEY’D SPENT SUCH a raucous evening, it was strange that Clara should wake so early. The pearly morning light was beginning to penetrate the curtains’ edges like a negative developing in its chemical bath, seeping into the room and transforming the solid black shapes of furniture to watery textures of gray. Clara woke in a state of exhausted clarity. Even though, for the first time in ages, there was another person sleeping in the apartment, she had never felt so alone. Her solitude seemed to envelop her in an invisible cocoon as she lay listening
to Berlin waking up, car horns, the rumbling of trams on Nollendorfplatz, and the metallic screech of the S-Bahn trains on the high stilts of their elevated tracks.

  Mary had been full of questions last night. How long can you stay here? Are you happy? Is there a man on the horizon? Clara had smiled and shaken her head at that. The truth was that, despite the occasional flings of the past few years, she had never met anyone she was deeply attracted to. There had been love in her life once, but since Leo’s departure, no man had managed to penetrate her defenses. She could laugh with them and sleep with them, but she could also leave in the morning without a backward glance. Perhaps it was testimony to the strength of the carapace she had erected around herself, but no one had ever had the effect on Clara that Leo had. The frisson she had felt from the very moment she met him. No one, until perhaps Captain Ralph Sommers.

  What about your private life? Mary wanted to know. Clara couldn’t tell her that there was no such thing as a private life for someone in her position. Her private life was where her professional life—her unofficial professional life—took place. At parties and premieres she was always on the alert, always attentive for useful pieces of information. Any snippets of gossip that the women let drop about the Führer’s thoughts, or the feuds between their husbands, or the grumbles about the Reich’s intensifying military preparations, would be memorized until she could feed them back to Archie Dyson. Yet although Clara batted away Mary’s questions, it was increasingly difficult to silence the clamor of questions in her own head. Which, thanks to a succession of gin martinis in a Westend bar, was feeling distinctly muzzy.

  Her eyes fell, as they always did, on the Bruno Weiss painting on the opposite wall. What happened to you, Bruno? When she had gotten to know him, after Helga died, she had grown to love his mordant Berliner humor, and his brave decision, as a Jew, to turn down a visa for England. That kind of decision was absolutely typical of Bruno. It was simultaneously bold and foolhardy, because life for a German Jew, let alone a former Communist agitator who had already been arrested for pamphleteering and whose paintings were everything the National Socialists considered degenerate, was perilous in the Third Reich. Other artists, like Bruno’s friend Georg Grosz, had already emigrated. Otto Dix had been forced to join Goebbels’s Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, but as a Jew, Bruno couldn’t follow his example and retire to the country to paint inoffensive landscapes. Under Reich law, Bruno couldn’t even paint, so how was he earning a living? Was he living a life in the shadows somewhere, trying to get by? Sleeping on the street and in shop doorways, risking a beating from any passing Nazi? Or had he been captured, imprisoned, and sent to a camp? Bruno was the only German Clara had ever trusted to know what she did and what she was. It was impossible not to conclude that it must have been Bruno, under interrogation in some police cellar, who had aroused the suspicions of the men in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.