The Fragile Hour

by Rosalind Laker

  There was also another reason why he wanted her company again. If Anna was dabbling in some underground treachery, however slight, he needed to know. Several times recently he had mulled over her behaviour when he had found her in his room. A check was made in the rooms every evening for fresh towels or anything else that was needed, and so there was nothing suspicious in that, but she had been in no hurry to leave, her attitude very friendly. She had been quick to take his coat and hang it up before returning, almost provocatively, to the bedside. She had even sat on the bed, which had struck him as something very close to an invitation. But when he had taken her up on that after the party, she had caught him entirely off guard with her deft act of self-defence.

  Yet that wasn’t all. Anna had been in Tresfjord when a saboteur was caught, and the young woman with him had eluded capture with another man. At first it was believed that they had lost themselves and perished in the snow, but since then it had become known that there was a mountain cabin they might have reached. On her own admission, Anna had acquired her tan by skiing on the slopes in that area.

  As yet he had kept his suspicions to himself, not wanting the Gestapo to interrogate her. He knew what they would do to her beautiful face and body if they thought she had anything to tell. It was far better for him to handle the matter himself and, if she was innocent, there should be no hindrance to a satisfying relationship with her.

  Within a few days Anna accustomed herself to Klaus pausing to chat with her whenever they met. It was a beginning, although she did not foresee achieving any-thing worthwhile from this growing truce between them. She had found nothing in his room to give her a clue as to what next he would take under his command. If her hunch was right about his being unsure of her, he would take care that nothing important was left for prying eyes. In case he had hidden relevant papers elsewhere than in his files, she had searched diligently, running her hand along the back of drawers, checking for any loose floorboards that could be raised, and tracing her fingers under shelves where his helmet and caps were kept. Nothing had come to light, except a tiny charred triangular-shaped scrap of paper that was blank, but might have been the corner of a letter. Although the waste-paper bin had been emptied by the cleaning-woman, it had caught in the decorative trim and a few black ashes had remained inside. For some reason Klaus had chosen to burn this letter and let it drop into the bin.

  Anna could not put the scrap of paper out of her thoughts. She had brought it away to her room and it was presently housed in a small wooden box carved with a view of the local mountains. She was convinced it could provide a clue to what she had been entrusted to find out, if only some will-’o-the-wisp connection could be brought to the forefront of her mind. But so far it was eluding her.

  It was raining hard when the officers returned to the hotel one evening early in May. Emil took their greatcoats from them in turn to dry in the laundry room. Klaus was the last to come in and, after Emil had taken his greatcoat, he came across the deserted lobby to where Anna was alone at the reception desk.

  “Good evening, Anna,” he said, putting his rain-damp cap and gloves on the desk. “I prefer snow to these downpours. We’ve had days of it now.”

  “Surely you’ve been here long enough to know how unpredictable the weather is on the west coast?”

  “I have, and I would not mind another posting, but the coastline needs a strong defence.”

  She guessed he did not want a repeat of the Anglo-Norwegian commando raids that had ripped into two places further south. “Dinner is well under way,” she said, indicating the direction of the dining-room.

  “Never mind that.” He lifted the flap at the end of the desk and entered to stand facing her.

  She stiffened at his presence, but did not draw back. “What do you want, Major Schultz?”

  He sat down on a tall stool that was there, resting the heel of his boot on the low rung. “I want to apologise for what happened between us that unfortunate night. I regret what I said and how I acted towards you.” He spread his hands appeasingly, determined not to admit to the jealousy he had felt when she had danced with others, the Norwegian in particular. It was an emotion he had not experienced previously over any woman since his first youthful love affair. “My only excuse is that I’d drunk too much, but that was because I had to pass the time somehow while you had a variety of different partners for most of the evening.”

  She had no patience with him and was glad he did not know it. “I’d told you early on I wouldn’t refuse to dance with anybody else.”

  “At least say that’s all in the past.” His jaw clenched involuntarily, for he was unused to apologising for anything he did, but he had to break the deadlock between them. “The amount of alcohol in me had a bad effect upon my behaviour.”

  “As it did on those officers that night the French women were here.”

  “All right!” he snapped, dark colour rising in his face. “I admit I behaved no better and with less excuse. Does that satisfy you?”

  She had met jealousy before, Nils having been almost beside himself when she had chosen to spend time with other people that long-ago summer, and she could see that Klaus had been equally tormented. Unlike Nils, who was of a different temperament, he stirred fear in her. “Why are you saying all this to me?”

  “Because I want us to begin all over again! Can we make a fresh start?”

  She drew in her breath, steeling herself. “It’s not in my nature to harbour a grudge.”

  “Then forgive and forget,” he urged, certain now that he was gaining the upper hand.

  “Very well, Major Schultz.”

  “Call me Klaus as you did before.”

  She nodded and conjured up a smile. “Now you’d better go to the dining-room, Klaus, or there’ll be nothing left.”

  His mood lifted. He was highly pleased with himself and convinced now that she had wanted to mend the rift all along. “I’ll do that, Anna.”

  This encounter led Anna back to open the carved box and study once more the scrap of charred paper lying in it. What was it that continued to elude her? She asked Margot if she had any helpful ideas about it, but nothing was forthcoming.

  Klaus did not let his advantage rest. He went to Greta’s office the next day with a bottle of French champagne.

  “I’d like you and Margot to share this with me, Fru Sande. Perhaps you’d allow Anna to join us too.”

  It was an awkward moment for Greta. She had come through from her bedroom, having been listening with Anna to the BBC news bulletin while her daughter took it down in shorthand.

  “They’re both with me as it happens. We’ll need champagne glasses. I have some very fine ones in my sitting-room.” She played for time, giving the girls the chance to get right away from the radio, which had been turned off at his tap on the office door. “What are we celebrating, Major?”

  He could not reveal the main reason, but he gave her another. “My winning this bottle at cards last night. One of the players was getting low in funds, but as he wanted to stay in the game, he put up this bottle that he’d been hoarding. I scooped the jackpot and the champagne!”

  “It was your lucky night.” Greta led the way to her sitting-room. To her relief, Anna sat with a newspaper and Margot was knitting as if they had been there all the evening. Both looked up as she and Klaus entered. “Major Schultz has invited us to have a glass of champagne with him.”

  Anna helped her to take the glasses from a display cabinet. They had belonged to Greta’s grandmother and Anna saw they were the same as some that Aunt Rosa had kept for special occasions. It gave her particular pleasure to see the bubbles rise in her glass as it was filled. In her thoughts she disassociated Klaus from the champagne as she sipped it.

  He was very amiable and smiling, full of buoyant good humour. Sitting deep in the cushioned sofa as if he had installed himself for several hours, he had one long leg crossed over the other, his high, polished boots gleaming in the light. Margot was fuming inwardly tha
t she had missed taking down all the news, but Klaus was totally unaware how unwelcome he was and did most of the talking. He did not single Anna out in the conversation, but every time she looked in his direction, his eyes were waiting for hers.

  It was his suggestion that they listen to some classical music, for he knew Greta had a large collection of gramophone records. Margot made the selection and placed the records in turn on Greta’s radiogram, which was an elegant piece of furniture that she had bought not long before the war. The radio itself was missing, having been surrendered when the Germans had confiscated all radios. They had not known she had hidden another.

  The evening ended at last. Margot came into Anna’s bedroom for a final chat.

  “What a tedious three hours!” she complained bitterly.

  “I felt more like breaking those records over his self-satisfied head instead of playing them. I wasn’t interested in anything he talked about.”

  Anna had washed her hair and was drying it with a threadbare towel, replacement household goods having vanished from the shops. “I always listen as a matter of course just in case anything of slightest importance comes up, but as usual with him, there was nothing. I’d like to know why he was in such good humour.”

  “That’s obvious. As you told me, he thinks he’s back in your good books.”

  Anna lowered the towel and flicked back her hair. “I don’t know. It seems to me he would take that as a matter of course.”

  “My grandmother would have been afraid you’d wear your brain out,” Margot said teasingly with a grin. “You’re always turning something over in your mind. I’m glad I haven’t got your job. You’re getting like Sherlock Holmes with your suppositions and clues. I wonder you didn’t examine that half-burnt paper with a magnifying glass!”

  Anna slept well that night. Afterwards she did not remember dreaming at all, but subconsciously her mind must have remained active, because when she awoke it was with a start that made her sit upright in bed. Her thoughts were entirely clear and she knew where the charred paper had come from. It was the corner of an underground news-sheet.

  She sprang out of bed and rushed to the carved box. Rubbing the scrap of paper between her finger and thumb, she realised that it had been the particular quality of it that had haunted her. How could she not have thought of that before? Klaus had had a news-sheet in his room, but had wanted none of the domestic staff to know it, otherwise he would simply have crumpled it up and tossed it into the wastepaper-bin, for it was nobody’s business what he read. Why did he take the trouble to burn it? She was still no nearer the solution.

  At mid-morning Anna was in the kitchen helping Cook, which she did at least two or three times a week, when Emil returned from an errand. He looked as grey as his hair as he opened the door from the staff hallway and stood there without entering.

  “The Germans have located the Freedom press!”

  Cook gave an unhappy moan, for she and all the rest of the staff read the news-sheet avidly whenever a copy came into their hands. One of the cleaners, a mop and bucket in her hand, shook her head in dismay. Anna was rigid with shock. She should have guessed! That was what Klaus had been planning! It was why he had been so cock-a-hoop yesterday evening. He had known the net was drawing tight around his quarry. And she had sat in the same room with him, drinking his looted champagne, while all the time he was gloating over his achievement.

  “Are you sure, Emil?” she demanded harshly, feeling terribly responsible for failing to decipher the clue that had been in her possession.

  “I saw the soldiers pouring into a house. A crowd soon gathered and, although we were kept back, the Germans wanted us to watch. They brought out bundles of tied up Freedom news-sheets and made a bonfire with broken up shelves, chairs, tables and a desk that they threw from an upper window. Even a baby’s high-chair was thrown into the flames. Major Schultz is in charge.”

  “What of the people living there?”

  “I thought at first they had been warned in time and fled, but after a while, they were all brought out — Martin, the editor, Solveig, his wife, their two teenage sons and his brother-in-law, all of whom work there.”

  “The baby? Little Inga! What of her?”

  “I didn’t see her. The mother was sobbing.”

  “Oh, my God! Was she left inside? I must go there!” Anna threw off her apron and darted past him into the staff hallway. As she opened the street door, he caught and held it, not letting her out.

  “No, fröken! You mustn’t get involved!”

  His gaze was piercing, reminding her that she could be asking for her own death sentence if she allowed suspicion of any kind to fall on her, but she pulled free of him. “I have to make sure little Inga is safe!”

  She wrenched the door open and ran out. He let his arms flap once at his sides in exasperation and then he followed her. Both Cook and the cleaner went outside in their wake to watch them go, but Anna and Emil had had to stop only a few yards away. In silence, the two women joined them to watch as the little group Emil had already listed was driven past, seated in an open army truck under armed guard, together with ten more people, who, Anna guessed, were distributors of the news-sheet and had been rounded up. She recognised several of them, including the owner of the shop where she had twice met Rolf in the storeroom.

  As soon as they had gone past, watched by silent people all the way, Anna set off in the direction of the printer’s building where she had sometimes made a delivery of Margot’s transcripts. She saw it was in the process of being boarded up, Klaus still in charge of what was going on. He saluted her with a smile as she approached him.

  “I’m busy, Anna, but I’ll see you later.”

  “I can see there’s plenty going on,” she remarked easily, looking towards the building where the shop front was already half covered, hammering going on there and elsewhere. “The people you’ve arrested lived above the shop. Do you think their baby is still sleeping up there somewhere in spite of the noise?”

  “I don’t know anything about a baby.”

  “It’s a little girl. She is nine months old.”

  “You know the family?”

  “Only because printing was done here for the hotel, just as posters and leaflets were done for your Command. The baby wasn’t with her mother in the army truck when it went past the hotel, and a bystander told me what had happened here.”

  “Is that why you came?”

  “I’d be concerned for any child. May I go indoors and make sure she isn’t sleeping somewhere in spite of the noise?”

  “That’s unlikely.” Klaus smiled again. “You can go in if that will satisfy you, but don’t be long.” He turned to a sergeant. “Send a man in with Fröken Larsen.”

  The soldier, helmeted and with a rifle, clumped in after her. She passed the open door leading to the cellar where the secret press had been kept, but showed no interest. Upstairs there was devastation, drawers pulled out, contents scattered, the living-room almost devoid of furniture and the windows still open where it had been thrown out.

  “Bit of a mess, isn’t it?” the soldier remarked cheerfully. He had enjoyed looking at her legs all the way up the stairs. “What did you want to come in here for?”

  “A baby might have been left behind.”

  “There’s no baby here. It would be bawling its head off after all the commotion. Anyway, I think someone must have taken care of it. The wife here was in a real state. We had to drag her out, but just as she and the rest were being driven off, she shrieked out something to a woman with a baby. She wouldn’t have been allowed to keep it with her in any case, not where she’s going.”

  He did not elaborate, but Anna could guess the destination. Although she was relieved the baby appeared to be in safe hands, she still looked in every room on both the upper floors until they returned to the living-room again.

  “You’d better close those windows,” she advised. “You’re right,” he agreed with a grin. “I’ll only be sent ba
ck in again to do it.”

  As his back was turned, she picked up a family photograph that had slipped free of its frame and broken glass when it had fallen to the floor. She slid it into the pocket of her skirt and continued downstairs. Sooner or later she would hear who was taking care of Inga. The child might never be reunited with her parents, but at least she should have a family photograph to keep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  After the arrests Anna felt herself to be in an intolerable position. She could not show where her loyalties lay by hostility towards Klaus and yet the sight of him sickened her. He was in a triumphant mood, making no secret of his satisfaction with himself and what he had achieved. In addition he seemed to think that his benevolence in allowing her into the printer’s house to look for the baby had further cemented his relationship with her.

  “I have to go away tomorrow for a couple of days, Anna,” he said on the fourth morning after the arrests. “So would you come to the cinema with me this evening?” Then, noticing that she appeared to hesitate, he added, “Remember, we are beginning again.”

  It was still daylight when they came out of the cinema and quite a lot of people were about, for the curfew had been extended with the long, bright days and short dusky nights that were the forerunners of the midnight sun in the far north.

  Back at the hotel Klaus suggested that they sit and talk for a while. “I’ll order coffee,” he said.

  “There’s nobody in the kitchen now,” Anna answered.

  “Then you show me where the coffee is kept and I’ll make it.” Playfully he caught her hand again to set off in the direction of the kitchen, but Anna held back. There would be trouble from both Greta and Cook if she allowed him to cross the threshold of that last sanctum of the hotel.

  “No, wait! Put a couple of logs on the embers in the peisestue and I’ll bring the coffee to you.”

  To her relief he did as she said. When she brought the tray of coffee into the room, flames were dancing along the birch logs in the high-canopied corner fireplace. Only one shaded lamp had been switched on, creating a seductive atmosphere. He took the tray from her and set it on a low table.