by Sarah Rayne
There was a blurred time after that; she hoped, much later, that she had not actually fainted, which would have been spineless of her. Through the blur she was dimly aware of being half carried, half dragged outside, and of two jeeps roaring up to the house. Where had they come from? Had they been parked somewhere out of sight, waiting until this last captive could be taken? And why had they come back for Giselle – for one lone female who surely could not pose any kind of threat to the Third Reich?
The man from the train sat next to her in the jeep. He did not look at her, but after they had travelled several kilometres, Giselle said, ‘Why have I been taken prisoner?’
It was a stupid question. The SS did not need reasons for anything, even for imprisoning people.
But the man surprised her. He turned to meet her eyes, studying her as if he might find her of some slight interest. With an unexpected note of politeness, he said, ‘I am SS-Obersturmbannführer Reinhardt. Your cousin and her family were taken by the Schutzstaffel because they infringed laws passed in Nuremberg in 1935.’
‘You always quote Nuremberg as your excuse,’ said Giselle, angrily. ‘The truth is that you incarcerate Jewish men and women in labour camps because Herr Hitler is frightened of them. I heard he’s even becoming frightened of people who are half- or only a quarter-Jewish.’
She could hardly believe she had said this, but furious defiance was driving her. She would not have been surprised if the man struck her, but he only said, ‘The Führer is striving for a pure race. But in this case, the man who I think is your uncle has involved himself in forbidden financial dealings and been part of secret negotiations that could damage the Third Reich.’
Giselle thought: but you don’t know that there’s another secret within that family – a secret that has nothing to do with shady financial deals. If you knew that secret, you’d already be taking them to the death trenches to be shot.
She looked out of the window, and said, ‘I haven’t arranged secret loans or anything. I haven’t a clue about money or banking. Except for never having any money.’
Reinhardt – Giselle refused to think of him by his rank – said, ‘You’ve been taken for a very different reason.’
Cold fear clenched Giselle’s stomach. He doesn’t know about Silke – about what she did – but perhaps he suspects. Perhaps that’s why he’s taken me – so he can torture me to find out.
But Reinhardt said, ‘We have watched you – and your own family in Lindschoen – for some while.’
This did not sound as if it had anything to do with Silke, but it brought a different fear. Giselle was aware of sick repulsion at the thought that she and Felix could have been watched – that Christa and Stefan might have been followed to and from their small innocent activities.
‘Today we followed you from your husband’s music shop, and we boarded your train at a later station,’ he said. ‘During the journey I checked your identity papers to make sure we had the right person. You know that, though.’ His eyes swept over her. ‘And now here you are, Giselle,’ he said, softly.
The situation was starting to feel as if it had been spun from nightmares, but there was an unreal element to it, because when Reinhardt said her name, Giselle felt a bolt of sexual interest from him. For several seconds she could not look away, but when finally she did so, her thoughts were in chaos. He’s finding me attractive, she thought. He’s even wondering if he might take me to bed. Am I imagining that? But she did not think she was. It might be purely because she was his prisoner – that he had power over her. But with the conviction that a spark had been lit, she knew that if Reinhardt were to beckon, and if it might mean escaping, she would acquiesce without hesitation. I wouldn’t care who or what he is, thought Giselle; I’d get into bed with Hitler and the entire Third Reich if it meant I could get back to Felix and the children.
But he turned away from her, watching the passing scenery through the jeep’s window, clearly regarding the discussion as at an end.
Keep that spark alive, thought Giselle. Don’t let go of it. Keep him talking; move your leg slightly along the seat so that your thigh touches his. Good. He’s reacted, I know he has. Forgive me, Felix.
In a gentler voice, she said, ‘Would you at least tell me where I’m being taken?’ It would almost certainly be Sachsenhausen. The place with the death trenches and the experiments. The humpbacked surgeons and the scissor man … Stefan, you odd, precious little scrap, where did you get those images? Because I have a terrible fear that I’m being taken to the black core of them.
Reinhardt said, ‘You are being taken to Wewelsburg Castle.’
As he spoke, the driver engaged a lower gear, and the jeep began a steady ascent. Above them, grey and grim, exactly as Giselle had described it in her letter to Felix, (the letter that would never, now, be sent), the dark outline of Wewelsburg Castle came into view.
EIGHT
The journey to Greymarsh House was enlivened by Toby’s enthusiastic plans for the compilation of an anthology of bawdy ballads, together with their origins. Phin vaguely remembered this possibility having been broached during the party.
Toby thought it was a splendid idea. They could do it together in their spare time, he said, and Phin became so swept along by Toby’s enthusiasm that he scrabbled in his case for a notebook and pen.
‘We’d have to go back as far as we could,’ he said, trying to ignore Toby’s erratic method of driving. ‘Medieval at least. And divide the sections into the centuries, I should think. The Elizabethans would take up a big section.’
‘Some very good Elizabethan drinking songs,’ agreed Toby. ‘And what about twentieth-century war songs? All those rude choruses about Hitler and Goebbels. Or would that be regarded as racist nowadays?’
‘Well, it might.’
‘Fair enough. Did the Germans have rude propaganda songs about us, do you think?’
‘They certainly had propaganda, but I think it was a bit different. Postcards showing scantily clad German ladies tempting English soldiers who were supposed to be fighting the war. The Luftwaffe used to drop them over the Kent coast. I remember my grandfather telling me. He was in the Battle of Britain – he was shot down and taken as a prisoner-of-war.’
‘Maybe we’d better leave war stuff alone,’ said Toby. ‘How about French boudoir ballads? Oh, and Bavarian drinking songs – we’d want to include those.’
It was at this point that Phin suddenly saw the proposed anthology as a genuine possibility. He wondered how his agent would view the prospect of trying to sell to publishers a book on the history of bawdy ballads, given that the name of Phineas Fox was more usually associated with the lives of serious composers and musicians. Most likely his agent would say, cheerfully, ‘Sex sells,’ and start firing off emails to publishers there and then.
They had lunch in Maidstone, where Toby consumed two platefuls of roast beef and assorted vegetables, followed by treacle pudding and custard. Phin fared more modestly on ham salad. He suggested he take the wheel for the rest of journey, although he did so hesitantly, having by now realized that the driving of Toby’s car was an art form of its own. And in fact the car, when they went back to it, was grumpily reluctant to start at all, and had to be persuaded to fire by Toby bouncing up and down on the bonnet, which was, he explained, usually helpful in dislodging the recalcitrant starter motor.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll catch in a minute, it always does … No, don’t press the accelerator yet, it’ll only flood the engine … Good thing I had that treacle pudding, isn’t it, it adds a bit of weight to the bouncing … There it goes, what did I tell you? I’d better drive after all, if you don’t mind – the clutch has a habit of slipping.’
As they drove off, Phin remembered he still had no idea what Toby actually did for a living.
‘Eternal student,’ said Toby, airily. ‘No – that’s not absolutely accurate. More what they call a mature student. The only difference is that it takes twice as long to get a degree.’
The student thing probably explained a good deal of Toby’s current lifestyle, but Phin said, carefully, ‘What exactly are you—’
‘Medicine, old chap. Blood and bones and muscles and identifying a measle. Wasn’t it obvious from the mad companions – everyone letting off steam after a solemn day on the wards or at the dissecting tables. It’s a bit of a family thing, medicine, so after I’d racketed around, doing sod all, it was put to me that it was time I got down to some real work.’ He frowned at a set of traffic lights. ‘Three years along now, and the fourth looming. It’s a lot of hard work, but I rather like it. I’ll never be one of those high-flyers, finding a cure for something obscure, or performing complicated surgical procedures. Although I might trot over to one of those Third World places sometime and lend a bit of a hand there.’ He shot Phin a half-embarrassed glance. ‘Actually, I’ll probably end up sewing cuts in A&E or changing catheters and dishing out antibiotics. Although I don’t think I’d mind that.’
‘I don’t know whether to be astonished or full of admiration. A bit of both, I think.’
‘Oh, it’s no big deal. All you do is memorize everything, and quote the Latin, which impresses people, and not get mixed up between hypo and hyper.’
Phin said, ‘No lady in the picture? There were one or two very attractive ones at your party.’
‘Haven’t met one I’d fancy as a permanency,’ said Toby. ‘I like to love them all a little bit. Safety in numbers. Also, more fun.’ By way of illustration of this, he launched into a verse of, ‘If I Were the Marrying Kind,’ which was abruptly terminated when he spotted the sign for Thornchurch and swung the car across the road.
As they went deeper into the marshland county, the landscape began to flatten and the roads were intersected by drainage ditches. There were glimpses of river walls within the rolling marshlands, and here and there, old Martello towers jutted up – most of them were derelict or completely ruined, although one or two appeared to have been restored, and looked as if they were even inhabited.
On the outskirts of Thornchurch itself, Toby pointed out an old corn exchange. ‘The godfather used to give language lessons there. Adult learning classes – German language, obviously, but with a sprinkling of German literature alongside, and a dash of Jewish stuff here and there. Unusual mixture, isn’t it? He was a very good teacher, though, I think. Very patient and imaginative. Arabella’s picked up a fair amount of German from him over the years.’
Phin liked Thornchurch, with its skewed buildings, and the nice old shops in the main street. There was an air of contentment about it, although he could not decide if this would be restful, or if it was something that might start to seem slightly complacent and a bit annoying after a while. But he could certainly sympathize with Arabella, who apparently regarded the place as somewhere to commune with nature and reach an inner gothic soul.
As they drove through the main street, his mind was racing ahead to Stefan Cain’s house. Would there be clues there about Christa – about Giselle? Would there be dusty attics or cellars with fragments of diaries or old music? This, however, seemed to be straying so far into romantic novel territory that Phin abandoned the images. Even so, as Toby turned into a hedge-lined road just beyond the little town, he thought it would be a bit of a let-down if Greymarsh turned out to be a square modern box with symmetric walls and windows, and false cladding glued on to its front.
But Greymarsh was not square or modern at all. It was a nice old greystone house in modest gardens, with fields stretching all around it, and it had the air of having stood up to buffeting east coast winds for a good many years, and of being prepared to do so for a good many more. Twisty chimneys adorned the roof – in colder weather the mist would rise from the marshes and cling to those chimneys. Two tiny windows immediately under the eaves proclaimed the existence of attics, and old trees had grown up around the house. One was so close to the house that on windy nights its branches must tap eerily against the panes. Stefan Cain would know the sounds for what they were, though, and they would not spook him. Had they ever spooked Arabella? But Phin thought Arabella probably wove gleeful and improbable tales around any night-time window-tappings.
It was growing dark, and shadows had crept over the garden. Phin found the place so satisfyingly close to the secretive marshlands house he had been visualizing that he sat in the car absorbing its appearance for several minutes, until Toby’s voice broke in, saying would he mind moving his arse and helping to get the suitcases from the boot, and not to forget Christa as well.
‘We don’t have to grub around under flowerpots for concealed keys or scale the walls to get in through the bathroom window, because I got the spare key from Arabella’s flat yesterday,’ said Toby, leading the way to the front door, which was set in a shallow porch. Once inside, he stooped down to pick up a couple of letters that lay in the hall, and Phin carried the painting in, propping it against a wall. He looked around the hall, which was larger than he had expected, and looked as if it might occasionally be used as a living area, because there was a deep button-back sofa against an open stairway, and two soft chairs. A large oak box-shaped piece of furniture stood at the centre – Phin thought it might be an old dower chest, pressed into service as an occasional table. Light filtered in from the narrow windows on each side of the main door and from a landing halfway up the stairs; it was a thick, blue-tinged light, and shadows lay everywhere. But they were gentle, comfortable shadows, and Phin had the feeling that over the years they had probably shaped themselves to fit round the furniture. Then Toby reached for a light switch, and the shadows jumped back and the hall came into friendly, well-lit focus.
‘I’ll go through all the rooms and check windows and things in case the intruder did rampage through the house,’ said Toby. ‘We can go along to The Woolpack for supper later if you want, but I daresay Stefan won’t mind if we plunder the pantry.’
‘Let’s not bother trekking out again,’ said Phin, conscious that Toby had done all the driving that day. ‘If there’s food in the house, we can put together a meal. Can I make a cup of tea while you look round, or d’you want me to come with you?’
‘Cup of tea’d be just the ticket. The kitchen’s through there.’
As Phin went into the big kitchen, Toby clattered around the house, calling out comments to Phin at intervals, none of which Phin could properly hear.
‘All fine as far as I can see,’ said Toby, coming into the kitchen. ‘I haven’t checked the attics, but you have to climb up through one of those hatches in a ceiling, and I shouldn’t think anyone could get in that way. So for the moment I can’t see how the burglar did get in. I suppose Stefan might have left a door unlocked, although that’s not very likely.’
‘He might have known whoever it was, and simply let him in,’ said Phin, putting the mugs of tea on the kitchen table.
‘Yes, although the police said it was very early in the morning. He heard someone and went downstairs to investigate.’
‘There’s plenty of bread and milk,’ said Phin. ‘And eggs and cheese in the fridge, and tins in the cupboards. Oh, and a few pizzas and things in the freezer. So we’d be all right for a meal here tonight – and tomorrow as well, from the look of it. And I checked the kitchen door – it leads to the garden, doesn’t it? It’s locked and the lock’s fine.’ He drank his tea. ‘Where did the portrait live?’ he said.
‘Stefan’s study. Sort of extra sitting room. I’ll show you. Bring your tea.’
His sister’s portrait must have faced Stefan Cain every night. Clearly he had sat in the deep wingchair with Christa in direct sightline. The portrait had left its ghost outline against the wallpaper.
It was a comfortable room. Books filled shelves set into the alcoves on each side of the fireplace, and there was a television and a stereo. Had Stefan Cain listened to music or watched television or read his books, with Christa looking down? Had he felt at home like that? If so, why had he so abruptly got rid of the painting?
T
oby broke into Phin’s thoughts, by remembering the letters he had picked up from the hall floor.
‘When the medics told Stefan I was coming down, he asked if I’d check any post for him, and any phone messages. There were only these two letters – they both look like bills or circulars, and—’
‘What’s wrong?’ said Phin, as Toby broke off, and stared at the top envelope.
‘This one’s from Arabella.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, she’s put her address on the back. Stefan hasn’t got an internet connection – Arabella usually phones him, but sometimes she writes. I’ll have to open this.’
‘But it’s addressed to your godfather. You’ll see him tomorrow – you can let him have it then.’
‘Yes, but … Arabella hasn’t been at her flat for forty-eight hours, if not longer, and somebody broke in here and bashed poor old Stefan on the head, and this might tell us something about what’s been going on. Even the few hours between now and tomorrow’s visiting time might matter.’
He looked at Phin like a hopeful spaniel, and Phin said, a bit reluctantly, ‘Yes, I do see that. All right.’
Toby tore at the envelope and drew out the single sheet inside. It was printed, but the signature at the foot was a generous scrawl. At the top was the address of the Pimlico flat. Arabella had written:
Dearest godfather,
Didn’t we have a terrific supper party for your birthday? And I’ve managed to match up that Sèvres bowl that so unaccountably broke – you were absolutely right when you said it wouldn’t be ovenproof. But I found the exact same bowl in the Portobello Road. It’ll be a copy, but it’s a very good copy, and no one will ever know.
‘That’ll be Stefan’s birthday dinner,’ said Toby. ‘She was going to cook a meal for him and a few neighbours. She can cook quite well, but you can’t guarantee the results. You either get a five-course cordon bleu banquet, or it goes disastrously wrong and she has to phone for pizza delivery or send somebody out for fish and chips.’ He returned to the letter.