A Song Unheard

by Roseanna M. White

  He chuckled and braced his arms against the wall on either side of her, as if he were a man with his sweetheart. But he angled his body, wisely, away. “Now, pretty Willa. Is that any way to speak to your business partner?”

  “My what?”

  He leaned his head close to hers, his mouth at her ear. “Had De Wilde been here, I would have thought you were in his room for predictable reasons. But he is gone. Yet you are here. And whatever it is you are stealing from him, I want a cut.”

  Breathing even. Pulse normal. No tells. No flinches. She lifted a brow. “I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about. I was simply here to return some music I’d borrowed—the clerk let me up to slide it under his door.”

  “Oh, ja, because music would not keep until tomorrow. Just like that man’s wallet in London jumped into your hand? At the shoeshine’s booth?”

  Blast. She hadn’t seen him there—which made the second person she hadn’t noted following her about London. This wouldn’t do at all. And no one—no one—ever saw her pickpocketing.

  No one but another thief.

  She leaned back against the bricks with a sigh. “I didn’t get anything. He left nothing in his room worth taking, he must have had it all with him.” Let him think it nothing but money she was searching for. It was the safest way to play it.

  He clucked his tongue. “An easy story to tell, pretty Willa. But I am not such a fool as to believe you. Something brought you all the way here for this—it must be a big score. You let me in . . . or I tell De Wilde that I saw you in his room and let him try to determine what it is you were after.”

  Double blast. She didn’t need Lukas’s suspicions any more than she did a bobby’s attention. He would close up, at the best. Set those cops on her at the worst.

  And she could just see the way he’d look at her. She could imagine the pain in his deepest brown eyes.

  Triple blast. She couldn’t think that way. Her breath hissed out. “You’re right that it’s a big score. But I didn’t find it tonight. Check my pockets if you like. They’re empty.”

  The sliver of moonlight trickling between the buildings caught on his teeth as he smiled. “Thank you for the invitation. I believe I will.”

  She gritted her teeth as his hand slid into one coat pocket, then the other. He reached next, of course, for her handbag and rummaged through it as well, snorting in what sounded like appreciation as he pulled out her picks.

  “Nice ones.”

  “Thank you. Old friends.”

  “I could use new ones myself.” He actually reached to slip them into his pocket. Actually thought she’d let him.

  She jammed her heel into his toe and snatched them back. “Get your own. And try that again and you get the knee.”

  He muttered something in Flemish that she imagined to be a rather colorful expression of his opinion of her—and held out her bag.

  She jerked it from his fingers. “I told you I didn’t find it.”

  “But you will.” He caught her chin and leaned close. “And when you do, you will split it with me—the price of my silence. And when you think that perhaps I have done something, you will also be silent. Or I go to De Wilde. Do you understand?”

  “Why? What do you plan to do?” And why did it send a shiver through her to wonder? There were other thieves at work all the time, under each other’s noses. As a rule, she had no problem with them, even if they didn’t often obey the same codes she kept to. They knew, at least, to steer clear of the family that met at Pauly’s. No one ever picked their pockets. They all got out of their way when they saw them coming. They knew where to send little ones they found on the streets, sniffling and sniveling and starving.

  But Cor Akkerman wasn’t a London pickpocket, and he wasn’t playing by the rules.

  He grinned and backed away, all charm again. “You think I will ruin the surprise? No, no, pretty Willa. That is not the way it works. But you will know.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned. “Goeie avond, pretty Willa.”

  He’d said it to her before. But the first time, leaving Pauly’s that day she’d lifted the blighter’s wallet, she had thought it was a good evening. Tonight, not so. She bit her tongue and said nothing while he sauntered away.

  But she wasted no time in getting back to the Davies house and slipping in the back. Nor in tiptoeing down the hall to the study with the telephone. The sisters and Miss Blaker were still out, from the looks of it. No lights on anywhere down here, no noise from above.

  She checked her watch—nine o’clock. Barclay should be home by now. And her hostesses no doubt would be soon, for they were not often out past ten. Unbuttoning her coat as she sat, she picked up the phone and waited for the operator’s greeting.

  “Hammersmith-1528, please.”

  “One moment.”

  It rang. And it rang. Willa shrugged off the coat and loosened her scarf while she willed her brother to pick up the blighted phone.

  He did, on the thousandth ring—or perhaps the fifth—with a laugh. “Hello?”

  “Tell me you had a better evening than I did.”

  Another laugh. “No doubt, given that I’ve been passing it with the person you have apparently been passing yours with, Willa. When were you going to tell me about the dates with our delightful Mr. De Wilde?”

  “Barclay Reginald Pearce, you didn’t!” That wasn’t the way the Wimbledon worked! He wasn’t supposed to introduce himself. Be friendly. Let the mark know who he was.

  But the blithering fool just laughed again. “We’re finishing up our supper now. Did you want to say hello?”

  “You’re . . . he’s there? At Peter’s house?”

  “Well, why should I let the chap who’s in love with you stay in a hotel when I’ve all these rooms? The girls were with friends tonight anyway. Other than Lucy, Lucy’s here. She’s entertaining ol’ Luke with stories of discovering how our sister married a novelist.”

  The only safe stories. Though Lucy could make up others in a pinch and keep them all straight for the rest of her life—she’d probably begun tonight’s tales with some fabulous tale of how she came to be Barclay’s sister, when she quite obviously had Indian blood and he quite obviously did not. And Lucy was the only one not involved in the job—she wondered briefly where Elinor and Retta had gone for the night, but they had scads of places to fall back on. One never knew when a job would leave one in need of a corner to duck into.

  Willa groaned. “Why are you so awful?”

  “I’ll have you know I’ve been an excellent host. And he’s not a bad bloke, really, Will. You could do worse.”

  “Ha. Ha. Ha.” And blast him, but it made her nose clog up and something hot press against the backs of her eyes. Which was stupid. “Will you please just tell me how work went today?”

  A beat of silence, filled with nothing but static. Then the words that were no more telling, really. “Bust. How was your day?”

  “I led with that, didn’t I? Lousy. Though I ran into the puppy again—not the German shepherd, the other one. Finally puzzled him out for sure. His name’s Robbie.”

  Barclay muttered something she couldn’t quite make out.

  “What?”

  “Just . . . I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. He give you trouble?”

  “I’m fine. I . . .” She hadn’t the words. Not that she could say over the telephone lines.

  “Yeah. Listen, we’ll take care of it. We will. We always do.”

  This felt different. There was more at stake than usual. There were governments involved. She wasn’t sure how to “take care of it” assuming she succeeded at the primary goal, much less what to do with failure. “Right. Well. Good night, Barclay. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  His snort came over the line loud and clear. “I wouldn’t tell you if I meant to do so, as someone I know once said. But relax. I’m just getting to know him.”

  Stupid. “Mm-hmm.”

  “Night, Willa. See you soon.”

&n
bsp; Not if she didn’t find this blighted key. At this rate, she’d be stuck here in Wales for a decade, searching for something that she suddenly doubted even existed. But there was apparently nothing Barclay could do to help, so she said goodbye and hung the receiver back in its cradle. Then let her head fall to the cold desktop with a whimper.

  Antarctica was beginning to sound like a viable place to relocate. She didn’t know where else she could go to escape from all the people she was in danger of making angry.

  Margot folded the papers back up and slid them into the box. She’d never given much credence to all the talk of feeling and emotion and such nonsense, but just now it felt as though her heart had sunk all the way to her stomach. And turned to stone.

  Claudette had smuggled three different papers in this morning. Three. Two in English and one in French, but Belgian—printed in London, apparently. Her hands had shaken when she’d taken them, she’d been so excited. Her heart had rocketed into her throat when she saw La Famille in one of the headlines. She’d devoured the story about the king’s family . . . but there had been no paragraph with a number. No coded words.

  Coincidence. That was all. No message from Lukas.

  She slid the box into its hiding spot under her bed and then sat there on the floor, trying to convince her heart to come back up where it belonged. Her stomach to unclench.

  She counted the floorboards. Twenty-two planks, as always. The flowers in the wallpaper—seven hundred forty-eight. No, that wasn’t factoring in the rectangle missing where the window was. What was wrong with her? How could she forget to factor in the window? Had she even subtracted the area of the door?

  “Margot?” A knock accompanied her name and made her jump. She hadn’t heard Maman’s footsteps in the hall.

  Something was the matter with her. “Yes, Maman?”

  “The generalleutnant is back. He would like to play Go with you.”

  Her nails bit into the wood of the floor. She didn’t want to play Go. She didn’t want to look at his ugly, smug face. She didn’t want to think about how he was here, his men were outside, and her brother was gone. Like her father was gone. Like everyone was gone. “I don’t want to play.”

  “Margot.” The door creaked open, and Maman’s beautiful, frowning face poked in. “He is in a strange mood. Please. I cannot think that angering him would be wise. Come and play.”

  She wanted to say no. Plead illness. Plead something. But Maman didn’t ask that much of her. And she was right that they ought not to invite Gottlieb’s anger.

  She nodded. “Just a minute. I have to . . .” Push this aside. Lock it away. But she could find no words for that.

  Maman didn’t demand any. She offered a small, apologetic smile. “Thank you, ma petite.” The door clicked shut again.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Drew in a breath for one, two. Held it for three, four. Let it out for five, six. Repeated the process until the knot in her gut loosened a bit. Prayed. More with numbers than with words, but God would understand. He always did.

  It took her three minutes and fourteen seconds to deem herself calm again, but then she tucked her legs under herself and stood. Walked with the same pace she always used toward the room at the top of the stairs and turned into it.

  Maman was already in her usual seat, her knitting in her lap. Madame Dumont was in her rocking chair, a book open and held too close to her nose—she needed spectacles but refused to wear them, saying they were unwomanly.

  Gottlieb stood at the table they kept set up with Go, surveying the board. They’d not finished their game yesterday, so the pieces still sat where they’d been left. He looked up when Margot entered, and his lips went up at the corners. But it wasn’t a smile. Not a real one.

  Only then did she realize that he usually smiled at her. Not baring his teeth as she’d first thought of him as doing, but smiling with sincerity. What was the matter with him today? Certainly he hadn’t scoured a newspaper hoping for word of his brother only to get none.

  “Ready, fräulein?”

  She sat by way of answer. Pretended to study the board as he had been doing, though she had no need. She already had it all in her head. What she would do if she dared play honestly, what she would actually do, his likely responses to both sets of moves.

  Gottlieb sat as well, but he didn’t meet her eye as he usually did throughout the game. Didn’t ask her if she had read anything interesting today, though she’d spent an hour this morning working through Hegel so she could quote it to him. Didn’t ask her whether her friend had come by again.

  Good. She didn’t want him prying into her life. But Maman was right—he wasn’t himself. And that could be a bad thing.

  Well . . . he was, at the core, just a person, wasn’t he? Perhaps he needed someone to ask him why he wasn’t himself. His men probably wouldn’t. Nor would Maman or the Madame. Margot picked up a stone, though it was his turn. “Are you all right, Generalleutnant?”

  Her mother’s sharp intake of breath hit Margot like a rebuke, though Gottlieb didn’t seem to note it. He selected one of his stones and kept his attention on the board. “I am well.”

  “No, you’re not.” His respiration wasn’t at its normal rate—it was slower, as if he were deliberately controlling it. His chin wasn’t at its usual angle. And his heel kept tapping against the floor. “You’re agitated. Have I done something to upset you?”

  Adults never knew what to do when a child asked them a question like that. And sure enough, his gaze flew up to meet hers. “Of course not. What could you have done?”

  She shrugged and pasted on a look she hoped came off as uncertain. “I rarely know what I’ve done when I upset an adult. Perhaps I insulted a book you like. Or was so very clever at our game yesterday that you cannot think how you will beat me, and it is a terrible affront to your pride.”

  A breath of laughter slipped from his lips. “You played well, spatz. But not that well.”

  His spine straightened a degree, bringing him closer to his usual perfect posture. Margot grinned. “Give me time. I will crush you.”

  “Perhaps. But not today.” He put down his stone in an utterly incomprehensible position that gave him no benefit whatsoever.

  So stupid it was itchy. And unlike him. “Are you quite certain that’s what you meant to do?”

  “What?” He blinked, took in the board again, and made a disgusted noise. “Nein. But it is done, I cannot take it back. Perhaps you will crush me today.”

  “Hmm.” She fingered her stone. If she put it there, above his, it would give her a considerable advantage. If she placed it there, below and to the right, it would be smart but not crushing—though the more advantageous one was obvious. He would know she’d seen it—anyone would see it.

  Sighing, she put it to the right. “I’m feeling merciful. Though I shouldn’t, since you were obviously lying. About being all right.”

  “I am just . . . tired. It was a long day.”

  He looked exhausted, to be sure. A decade older than he usually did. He must be in his fifties, but he didn’t usually wear the years on his face like this. In ragged lines and deep shadows under his eyes.

  “Did you not sleep well?”

  “I slept perfectly, as always.” He leaned back against his chair and rubbed his eyes. “It is nothing, spatz. Nothing you need to worry about.”

  Something to do with his job, then, she would bet. She sneaked a look at Maman. How much could she press him before she earned another chiding breath? Her mother never drew the line in the same place. Which made it unnecessarily difficult to know where that line was.

  Well, she would never know until she tested it today. “When I was waiting in the bread line today—”

  “When you were what?” Gottlieb’s hand dropped from his face, revealing tension in those too-ragged lines. “Why were you in the bread line?”

  He hadn’t made her this itchy in weeks. “To get bread.”

  “No, I—” He paused, sighed, rested a ha
nd on the edge of the table beside the board. “I told you I would make sure you had food enough. If you were running so low, why did no one tell me?”

  “We meant no disrespect, Generalleutnant,” Maman said in her sweetest, stubbornest voice. “But we cannot expect you to provide for us.”

  He barely glanced at Maman. “I do not like it. Bread lines can get unruly—I have had to post soldiers there to keep the order. You ought not to be in such places.”

  True enough. But what choice did they have? “That wasn’t the point of my story. May I continue?”

  He looked as though he might refuse. His jaw was clenched, his nostrils flared. But he nodded.

  “I heard in the bread line that your army has been dismantling our factories and shipping the parts back to Germany. Is that true?”

  She’d scarcely believed it when the old men had whispered of it in line that morning. It was one thing when the army confiscated machines that could be used for weapons or other war-related operations. That was, at least, recognized as a valid move of an occupying force by the international community.

  But these were just regular factories. And they weren’t being pressed into use here or shut down to stop the production of items that could harm the German army. They were being torn apart, the pieces shipped away.

  As if Germany were saying that when this was over, they had no intention of letting Belgium regain its footing. Of doing honest work again. Of being.

  Gottlieb’s swallow was visible. “It is.”

  No explanation. No apology.

  Margot curled a stone into her palm. “And I suppose you do not question it. Because the German war machine makes no mistakes. Which means you want to destroy Belgium.”

  “Margot.” He had no right to say her name on a sigh like that, as if he were a brother or a father or a friend. He had no right at all. “Do you really think I want to destroy your country? Me, Wolfgang Gottlieb? Do you look at me and think that my goal? Have I ever once acted in a way to indicate this?”

  “You have never acted in a way that said you oppose such things. And not to act is to be complicit.”