by M. M. Kaye
A woman wearing a starched white apron passed along the landing carrying a pile of clean linen, and Miranda caught at Stella’s arm:
‘Who’s that?’
‘That’s Friedel.’
‘Madam?’ The woman turned, thinking she had been addressed.
‘Es ist nichts, Friedel,’ Stella waved a hand in dismissal. ‘What is it, ’Randa?’
‘I’ve seen that woman before. She was at the hostel yesterday.’
‘Was she? Probably collecting her papers or a reference or something. She used to work there once. Now I’m going to leave you to your unpacking while I go down to wrestle with the cook. What’s the Deutsch for “braised”?’
Stella ran down the stairs to the hall, but Miranda stood gazing into space. There was no reason why Stella’s explanation of the woman Friedel’s presence in the hostel should not be the right one. It seemed obvious enough. And yet standing there in a square of bright spring sunlight in Stella’s house, Miranda had a swift and fleeting impression that she was looking at part of a pattern.
It was as though everything that had happened since she had left Liverpool Street station less than three days ago was all part of the same pattern, and that if she could only stand back from it, and see it from far enough away, she would be able to see a shape and a meaning. But she could not do so, because she herself was part of it. A small, coloured thread caught up in the machinery and woven in and out, willy-nilly, with other threads of other colours …
I’m being Aunt Hettyish again, thought Miranda ruefully. I’m worse than Aunt Hetty! At least when she had a feeling that there was a cat about, there always was, while I keep peopling the place with imaginary cats. I must need a dose or a tonic or something.
Towards twelve o’clock a Mrs Lawrence arrived to call, and Friedel produced coffee and cakes in the drawing-room.
Mrs Lawrence, the wife of Robert’s commanding officer, was a tall woman with auburn hair and an energetic personality. She was, Miranda surmised, more interested in the murder than in Stella’s possible domestic problems, for having accepted their assurances that they were in no immediate need of assistance, she turned to the more interesting subject of Brigadier Brindley’s death.
According to Mrs Lawrence, the B.B.C. had mentioned the murder in a news broadcast, a London daily had headlined it, and several German newspapers had already printed columns on the subject. But both Stella and Miranda had made their accounts as colourless as possible. Stella because she had slept throughout the entire proceedings, and Miranda because she had been too closely and unpleasantly involved to relish discussing the matter.
Mrs Lawrence was thrilled and sympathetic, but a little disappointed. She gave it as her opinion that the police would undoubtedly discover that the poor man had committed suicide after all, urged them once more to call upon her if they needed anything, mentioned that there was a Wives’ Meeting at her house on Monday at three o’clock which she hoped Stella would attend, refused the offer of a glass of sherry, and left.
During the afternoon two members of the Public Safety Branch called at the house, and once more Stella, Miranda and Mademoiselle were interviewed in turn. The two men were friendly and pleasant and managed to give their visit the atmosphere of an informal call rather than that of a police inquiry, so that even Mademoiselle thawed and remarked after their departure that they were ‘très gentils, très comme il faut’!
The remainder of day passed quietly enough except for one small, disturbing incident that occurred in the late afternoon. Stella, who was lining her dressing-table drawers with paper, looked up from the task to ask Miranda if she would telephone Robert and remind him to bring back ration cards for them. There was a telephone extension on the bedside table, and Miranda, who had been lying on Stella’s bed reading a new copy of Vogue, reached out and idly lifted the receiver.
Someone was talking on the other end of the line: a quick, low voice speaking in German. The girl at the exchange, thought Miranda, turning a page of the magazine and waiting for the voice to ask what number she wanted.
The voice changed suddenly to a mixture of German and English.
‘Speak then in English! Es wäre mir sehr angenehm? I must meet with you this night. If you come not I come myself upstairs to your house, and that will make trouble for you!… Nein, danke!… wie du willst … By the third house then, where the light is not … Das ist gut!…’
Miranda broke firmly into the conversation: ‘Exchange?’
There was an indescribable gasp at the other end of the line, followed by a sudden click as a receiver was replaced. And then silence.
‘Exchange!’ repeated Miranda impatiently.
Stella looked up from cutting lengths of paper and said: ‘Don’t be silly, darling. It’s a dial phone.’
‘But someone was speaking in German.’
‘I expect you got a crossed line or something. Robert’s number is at the top of that pad.’
Miranda reached out, and turning the telephone to face her, dialled a number; but with no result.
‘It’s not working. I can’t get a sound out of it.’
‘What an idiot I am!’ said Stella, dropping the scissors and standing up. ‘This is only an extension of course, and it won’t work unless you switch it up here from the hall. Don’t bother. I’ll run down and put in a call from the one downstairs.’
She left the room and Miranda sat looking thoughtfully at the telephone …
The downstairs telephone. Of course, that was it. She had been listening to the conversation of some person in the house. And that person could only be the woman Friedel, for the cook spoke no English.
Who had Friedel been talking to in that half-whispered, threatening voice?
* * *
Robert returned about six o’clock bringing Major Marson with him. The Marsons lived in the same road, their house being separated from the Melvilles’ by that of colonel and Mrs Leslie, who were next door.
Robert mixed gin and vermouth and he and Harry became immersed in regimental shop.
Harry Marson’s usually high spirits seemed to have temporarily deserted him. He looked tired and morose, and his comments appeared to be mainly confined to criticism of the Army. Presently Stella smothered a yawn with nicely calculated effect, and the conversation became more general.
Harry, who before the war had spent three weeks’ leave in Berlin with an uncle in the British Embassy and knew the city reasonably well, described it in the days of its Nazi glory when the flags had flown and panzer divisions and steel-helmeted, goose-stepping ranks had paraded down the great stretch of the Kaiserdamm.
The house that Brigadier Brindley had talked of, from which Herr Ridder and his wife had disappeared, was, said Harry, less than half a mile away. It was only a burnt-out shell now, but the unfinished garage still stood. He had driven past it only that day and had stopped out of curiosity to look through the rusted iron gateway. ‘Tell you what—I’ll take you round on Sunday,’ offered Harry. ‘That is, if you’re interested.’
He, too, it appeared, had been interrogated by the S.I.B. on the subject of the murder, as had Elsa, Colonel and Mrs Leslie, the Pages and Mrs Wilkin. Elsa Marson had apparently not taken the inquiries in good part. She had wept and been what Harry described as ‘a bit upset’. In other words, had behaved on the same lines as Mademoiselle, thought Miranda. Stella caught her eye and pantomimed foreigners! and Miranda’s attempt to turn a fit of the giggles into a cough was not entirely successful.
Next morning Robert had rung up from the office to say that he could get three seats for a bus tour of Berlin on the following day, and would they like to go? It would, he said, take the best part of four hours, as the buses toured the British, American and Russian sectors of the city. Shortly afterwards, Mrs Leslie made an unexpected appearance and offered—somewhat surprisingly in view of her attitude during the journey from England—to take Miranda to see the shops. An offer that Miranda accepted with alacrity, since Stella, who
was far more interested in overseeing the hanging of her newly unpacked curtains, plainly did not need her help.
Norah Leslie drove up the Herr Strasse, circled the Reichskanzler Platz and proceeded by way of Masuren Allee and Kant Strasse, to the Kurfürstendamm, the luxury shopping street of Berlin.
She parked the car not far from the fantastic ruin of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, and Miranda stood in the clear spring sunlight and looked up at the broken towers and the vivid colours of the mosaics that could be glimpsed through the shattered walls, and marvelled that a ruin could look so beautiful. Before war and bombs had blasted it, it could not have been a particularly impressive building, but now, lifting against the pale sky out of a surge of shops, cinemas, hotels, apartments and the clatter of trams and traffic, there was something strangely ancient and oriental about its shattered silhouette; as though it were some beautiful, lost ruin from Angkor Wat—instead of the wreckage of a late-nineteenth-century Christian church.
Mrs Leslie touched her arm, and Miranda turned away and followed her through a maze of traffic and hurrying pedestrians, across the busy street. But it soon began to dawn on her that there had been an ulterior motive in Mrs Leslie’s offer to take her to see the shops, although she certainly fulfilled the letter of her promise. Together they gazed at china shops and antique shops, admired hats, dresses, shoes and glass, and wandered through the crowded aisles of the KaDeWe, a hive-like multiple store. But this window-shopping was only a background and an opportunity for talk, and the talk was almost entirely on the subject of the Melvilles …
Mrs Leslie, it seemed, had known Robert for many years. They had played together as children, and the families had only lost touch when Robert’s father had sold his house on his wife’s death in 1935. Norah had been in India then, newly married. But it was obvious that she did not wish to talk of herself: it was the Melvilles who interested her, and Miranda was as yet too young and inexperienced to be able to parry her questions with much skill. Besides, the questions themselves appeared to be harmless enough, and no more than one might have expected from someone who had once known the family well and took an interest in their affairs. Yet Miranda felt vaguely uncomfortable. There was something behind Mrs Leslie’s questions. A hint of animosity? An undertone of spite? Miranda could not quite place it, but she gained the impression that Norah Leslie would not have been displeased to hear that Robert and Stella were unhappy, and their marriage a failure.
She was especially curious about Stella: her character, her interests, her clothes. She had heard of Stella, but had never met her until Robert had introduced them at Liverpool Street station. ‘She’s very pretty,’ said Mrs Leslie in a brittle voice. ‘You would hardly know that she was older than Robert. Somehow I had not expected her to look so—soft. I had imagined something harder. But appearances are very deceptive, aren’t they? Of course women have a sort of instinct about these things, but men only go by appearances.’
She stopped to look at a window containing an exquisite display of modern porcelain, and added in a bright, conversational voice: ‘She killed Johnnie, of course.’
‘What?’ Miranda checked, unable to believe that she had heard aright, and a stout German hausfrau, hurrying along the pavement behind her, cannoned into her and muttered crossly under her breath before continuing on her way. But Miranda had not even noticed. She was looking at Mrs Leslie with eyes that were bright with anger, and she said the first thing that came into her head. ‘So you knew him well enough to call him by his Christian name, did you? Then why did you pretend that you had never met him before?’
Mrs Leslie turned to stare at her. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Brigadier Brindley. You’ve just accused Stella of killing him.’
‘Brigadier Brindley? You must be mad! I said she’d killed Johnnie Radley, her first husband. And it’s quite true.’
‘I don’t think you know what you’re talking about,’ said Miranda icily. ‘Stella’s first husband was killed in Libya in 1941. He got a posthumous V.C. I’ve read the citation. I think it is you who must be mad!’
Mrs Leslie gave a short mirthless laugh.
‘It’s odd how women like that can always get people to stick up for them. And people like Johnnie—and Robert—to marry them…’
Her voice cracked a little on the last word, as though she was suddenly near tears, and all at once Miranda was sorry for her. There was some tragedy in Norah Leslie’s past; a tragedy that was still real and alive and unforgotten. Perhaps she had once loved Robert, or Johnnie Radley, or both, and had lost them in turn to this unknown Stella?
Miranda thrust her hand impulsively through the older woman’s arm and said quickly: ‘You don’t really know Stella at all. How could you, when you only met her for the first time about three days ago? She’s a darling. Really she is; wait until you know her better, and then you’ll see for yourself.’
Mrs Leslie smiled. It was a smile that did not quite reach her eyes, but her voice had lost its hard, brittle tone when she spoke: ‘I’m sorry. I should not have said that. You are her cousin and her guest. It was unpardonable of me to discuss her with you. I don’t know why I____Oh well, shall we forget it? There’s a shop near here where they sell all sorts of odds and ends of china and glass. Let’s go in and poke about.’
The Melvilles were not mentioned again and the remainder of the morning passed pleasantly enough. Mrs Leslie dropped Miranda back at the house a little before one o’clock, and actually accepted an invitation to come in for a drink.
Stella was in the drawing-room arranging sprays of cherry blossom in a green celadon vase. She had hung her own cream brocade curtains in place of the somewhat uninspired cretonne ones supplied by the Army, her own pictures were on the walls, and the room already looked individual, elegant and essentially Stella’s. She dispensed sherry and admired the tiny china roses that Miranda had bought at a junk shop, and Mrs Leslie, possibly in an effort to atone for her outburst in the Kurfürstendamm, was friendly and pleasant until Robert arrived home, when she rose abruptly, and with something of a return of her former manner said she had no idea it was so late, and left.
‘You know, she’s really quite a nice woman,’ said Stella. ‘I thought she was utterly beastly when we first met her.’
‘Oh, Norah’s all right,’ said Robert easily. ‘I wonder why she married old Leslie? Nice chap, but a bit of a bore. Funny, I always had an idea that she’d married a foreigner. But perhaps that was Sue, her kid sister. I wonder what happened to Sue? I must ask Norah.’
CHAPTER 8
The two buses, both full of sightseers and provided with English-speaking guides, left for their tour of Berlin from the Naafi building in the Reichskanzler Platz, and rolled off down the magnificent sweep of the Kaiserdamm towards the Charlottenburg Gate and the Victory Column.
The guides began to point out places of interest. The Opera House. The heap of rubble that had been the Technical University, from the battered steps of which Hitler had stood to review his bombastic military parades. The Charlottenburg Gate …
Miranda looked out at the shattered ruins and began to wish that she had not come. It was interesting no doubt, but also appalling. The magnificent work of men’s hands—the colleges built to increase knowledge and the boastful monuments to commemorate past glories, the golden-winged Victory atop a towering column whose decoration consisted of the gilded barrels of guns captured in the Franco-Prussian war—all pockmarked and disfigured by man-made weapons of destruction, or blasted into senseless heaps of rubble.
The stupidity of it all! The waste and horror of man’s inhumanity to man.
She gazed at the scowling statues of Moltke and Bismarck and Roon, joint architects of this ruin, and, a few hundred yards away, at the new Russian war memorial—a signpost pointing the way to more and greater destruction—and she shivered in the airless warmth of the overheated bus.
Above the Brandenburg Gate flew a great red flag, flapping out against the
sky. ‘We are now entering the Russian sector,’ said the guide: ‘To the left you will see the ruins of the Reichstag that the Nazis burnt as an excuse for a purge of the Communists.’
The palace of Marshal Blücher; the French Embassy; the Adlon Hotel—more ruins. Mile upon mile of ruins. The skeletons and skulls and bones of houses. The evil birds let loose on Rotterdam and Coventry, London and the Loire, Malta and Crete, and a thousand towns and hamlets of Europe, coming home to roost …
It will take years and years to clear all this away and build it up again, thought Miranda with horror.
‘Well, they asked for it, and they certainly got it!’ commented a stout lady in a puce coat and a magenta hat who was sitting next to Miranda: ‘Serve ’em right, I says. But it’s a proper mess, ain’t it. Seems a pity some’ow.’ She sighed gustily and relapsed into silence.
Marx-Engels Platz. A noticeable absence of pictures of Stalin. Lenin Allee and the headquarters of the People’s Police. Stalin Allee and the First Socialist Road—the New Utopia and the New Hope personified by a long canyon of newly built and half-built apartment houses; block upon block of ‘Workers’ flats’, identical, yellow-tiled, ugly. The Unter den Linden, that once-gay thoroughfare, now a drab street where the famous linden trees were smashed and stunted and the few pedestrians wore sullen and unsmiling faces. The Waterloo Memorial, ironic reminder of the days when the great-grandfathers of the Luftwaffe and the S.S. had been the admired allies of Britain.
The buses drew up outside a pair of ornamental park gates and the guide said: ‘We are now at the Soviet Garden of Remembrance. It is the burial place of many hundreds of their soldiers. We may dismount here and enter the park. It is requested that you do not light cigarettes or make jokes in the sanctuary, and gentlemen who enter must remove their hats.’
Stella and Robert, who had been sitting together just behind Miranda, waited for her by the door.
‘You’re looking very seductive, Miranda,’ commented Robert, tucking her hand under his arm. ‘Isn’t she, Stella? Who would have believed that such a hideously plain kid could grow up into such a delectable eyeful? When I left for Egypt she was a scruffy schoolgirl with a perpetual sniff and a gym tunic; and now look at her!’