by M. M. Kaye
‘She looks marvellous,’ agreed Stella, taking her other arm and giving it a little squeeze.
‘You look pretty good yourself, darling. But far too expensive for this sort of party,’ said Miranda. ‘With so many red-hot comrades surging around, you look almost offensively capitalist.’
Stella laughed. ‘Then it only goes to show how deceptive appearances can be!’
Her words brought back an echo of Mrs Leslie’s conversation of the previous day, and Miranda frowned at the memory, and turned to look at her. She has changed, she thought; but could not be sure in what way or even why she should think so. Perhaps it was something to do with the way in which Stella looked at Robert. It was, thought Miranda, a new look and one that she had only noticed during the last few days: a strange compound of anxiety and strain; a look at once protective and possessive.
Had Sally Page been the cause?
Sally was there now, walking buoyantly on the other side of Robert and chattering in her clear, high voice; her inexpensive teenage clothes making Stella’s tiny grey-feathered hat and silvery-grey fur coat appear sophisticated and expensive and mature.
Miranda looked up at Robert and was conscious of a sudden pang of anger and resentment. It wasn’t fair, she thought. Robert would continue to look outrageously handsome when Stella was old and grey-haired and Sally middle-aged and faded. When Robert was sixty there would still be women who would sigh when they looked at him. His hair would be grey at the temples but they would think it added to his attractions, for the clean, beautiful planes of his face would still be there and his grey eyes would still crinkle at the corners when he smiled—as he was smiling now at Sally Page.
Robert was a darling. Good-tempered, indolent, charming and entirely lacking in vanity, and Miranda had a deep affection for him. Nevertheless she was suddenly sorry for Stella.
Turning a corner, they stopped in involuntary admiration at the sight before them. They had been walking along a wide path between neatly kept flowerbeds towards a large statue of a dejected and drooping woman—‘Mother Russia mourning for her children,’ murmured the guide behind them—that stood at the convergence of paths and faced a long, wide, stone-paved causeway that ended in a short flight of stone steps. Flanking the steps on either side rose a wall of polished red marble that had once formed the floors of Hitler’s Chancellery, but had now been fashioned into the shape of two vast, stylized red flags, half lowered in salute to the dead.
Below each flag, at the top of the steps, was a statue of a kneeling Russian soldier, his bared head bent in homage—statues, steps and the towering expanse of red marble dwarfing the stream of sightseers to pigmy proportions.
Robert gave a low expressive whistle, and Andy Page said, ‘Crippen!’
The expression might have been inappropriate, but the tribute was none the less sincere.
From the top of those steps they looked down upon a sunken garden with stone-paved paths that skirted grassed lawns, each lawn bearing an immense iron laurel-wreath and flanked by large blocks of stone sculptured in low relief with scenes depicting Soviet soldiers in battle, Soviet citizens being bombed by German planes and Soviet troops liberating cities. At the end of each block were inscriptions in Russian, evidently extracts of speeches by Stalin, and at the far end of the sunken garden stood a tall, grassy mound.
A steep flight of stone steps led up the face of the mound to the sanctuary; a small, circular building on its summit that was topped, and entirely thrown out of proportion, by a gigantic bronze statue of a Russian soldier, sword in hand, holding a ‘liberated’ child and crushing a huge broken swastika under one booted foot.
‘They certainly do things in a big way,’ said Andy Page, busy with a camera. ‘How long do you suppose this will stand?’
‘Until about five minutes after the Russians move out of East Germany, whenever that is,’ said Robert. ‘A pity, because it would make a magnificent ruin. Something that future ages would run tourist trips to see—like Karnak and Luxor and the Acropolis. Let’s go and take a look inside that sanctuary arrangement.’
They moved down the steps towards the sunken gardens, and Miranda released Stella’s arm and fell back. She did not in the least want to join the slow-moving queue of people who were filing up that steep stairway towards the tiny building on top of the mound. It gave her an unpleasant claustrophobic feeling even to look at it, for the small sanctuary seemed a wholly inadequate pedestal for the colossal bronze figure it supported, and strongly suggested that it might collapse at any moment under the strain of the weight above it.
Miranda preferred to remain outside in the sunshine and the cold spring wind.
She walked slowly round the sunken garden, looking at the bas reliefs, and presently turned into a shaded path between shrubs and flowerbeds that led away from that part of the garden.
The path was deserted except for a solitary woman wearing a small black hat and a dark red coat trimmed with black passementerie. And this time there was no mistaking Elsa Marson.
There was no reason why Mrs Marson should not be there. She had obviously travelled in the other bus, which accounted for the fact that Miranda had not noticed her before. But why was she behaving so oddly?
She stood at the junction of two intersecting paths and peered furtively down them, first on one side and then on the other; quivering anxiety in every line of her body and turn of her head; and when footsteps sounded from the path to her right, she shrank back, stiff and tense, until they died away again.
An entirely natural and unmentionable reason for her display of agitation occurred to Miranda, and stifling a laugh she moved discreetly back round the angle of the path where a cluster of bushes and young trees provided a thin screen of leaves between herself and Mrs Marson. If anyone approached them from this direction she could at least cough loudly to warn her!
But she had been wrong about Elsa Marson.
Quick, light footsteps crunched the gravel of one of the paths, and a man wearing a shabby raincoat and a dark, peaked German cap appeared beside her.
Miranda saw him look swiftly over his shoulder to the right and left as Mrs Marson had done: a frightened, furtive look. It seemed impossible that he should have failed to see Miranda when she herself could see him so clearly through the thin screen of leaves, but he obviously did not do so, and there was that in his face, and in Elsa Marson’s white-faced fear, that kept her from moving.
The man spoke quickly, but in so low a tone that she could not make out what he said or even in what language he had spoken. She saw Elsa Marson’s stiff lips move in reply, and once again the man threw a swift, hunted look around him. Then drawing a small packet from under his coat, he handed it to Mrs Marson, and turning on his heel walked quickly away.
Elsa Marson opened her capacious handbag and stowed the packet away with trembling fingers. Even at this distance Miranda could see that her hands were shaking uncontrollably. She managed to shut the clasp, and then with another hunted look up and down the paths, she turned and hurried away in the opposite direction to which the unknown man had gone.
Miranda remained where she was, staring down the deserted path. What had Elsa Marson been up to? Stories of the notorious Berlin black market flashed across her brain: was that why she had looked so frightened? Had Harry Marson accompanied his wife on the conducted tour, and if so, where was he?
A bank of cloud had come over the sun and the day was suddenly cold and drab. Miranda shivered.
‘Bird’s nesting?’ inquired a gentle voice behind her. Miranda started violently and whipped round.
‘Captain Lang!’
‘Simon, to you.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, just seeing the sights you know.’
‘And keeping an eye on your suspects at the same time, I suppose!’ said Miranda angrily.
‘That, of course—among other things.’ He met her indignant gaze with a bland look that held a trace of amusement; though whether the amus
ement was directed against her or himself she could not be sure.
She said abruptly: ‘Why did you go in for a job like this? Being a policeman. Did you have to?’
‘Frankly, because I like it. For an unspectacular type with a morbid taste for drama and the seamy side of life, it offers a pleasurable escape from monotony. Or were you merely inquiring as to whether I have an adequate private income? It’s all right. I have.’
Miranda turned and began to walk rapidly away down the path, Simon Lang beside her.
‘What are we training for?’ he inquired after a moment. ‘The quarter mile, or London-to-Brighton?’
Miranda’s sense of the ridiculous overcame her temper, and she laughed.
‘That’s better,’ approved Simon. ‘Now suppose we walk gently back to the bus at a normal pace.’ He glanced at his wristwatch and said: ‘We’ve got about five minutes more here.’
‘How did you get here?’ demanded Miranda.
‘The same way as you did. As a matter of fact, in the same bus.’
‘But I didn’t see you!’
‘Why should you? I’m a very unobtrusive sort of chap,’ said Simon Lang regretfully.
‘Only when it suits you!’ retorted Miranda tartly. And stopped suddenly to turn to look at him: ‘Why is it,’ she demanded, puzzled, ‘that I always seem to quarrel with you?’
Simon Lang looked slightly surprised. ‘Do you? I can’t remember quarrelling with you.’
‘Oh, you don’t quarrel,’ said Miranda impatiently. ‘I can’t imagine you quarrelling with anyone. You’re too-too____’
‘Dull?’ offered Simon Lang.
‘I was going to say “lazy”. Or too detached.’
‘Let’s just say that I have a nice, peaceable disposition.’ He took her arm and turned her into a long, gravelled path that ran parallel with the paved way that led up to the red marble flags: ‘You only try to quarrel with me because you feel on the defensive. There’s no need for you to be you know. I’m not your enemy.’
‘Then why do you behave like one?’ said Miranda with a quiver in her voice. ‘If you don’t suspect me, why don’t you tell me things straight out?’
‘What sort of things?’ asked Simon gently.
‘Things like why you had my room searched, and why you have followed me here and____’
‘What’s that?’ Simon’s voice was suddenly sharp and he stopped dead and pulled Miranda round to face him: ‘When was your room searched?’
‘While you were so conveniently interviewing me in the lounge of the hostel, I imagine,’ said Miranda bitterly. ‘Or are you going to pretend that you didn’t know anything about it? Surely your underlings don’t do anything like that without orders, or a search-warrant or something?’
‘Wednesday afternoon…’ murmured Simon Lang. He was looking directly at Miranda but his eyes appeared curiously blank and opaque as though they did not see her but were looking inwards at some picture in his mind.
A knot of East Berliners in the drab clothes and shabby raincoats that seemed to be almost a uniform of the sector passed by and stared at them curiously, but Simon did not move.
‘What is it?’ asked Miranda uncertainly.
His eyes seemed to focus her again and his fingers tightened about her arm. ‘I don’t know. That’s the devil of it. Listen to me, Miranda, if anything like that ever happens again—or anything odd or unusual—will you tell me at once? I mean that. This isn’t just a social gesture of the “let me know if there’s anything I can do to help” variety. This is important.’
He did not wait for an answer, but releasing her arm, took a small flat leather-bound notebook out of his pocket, and having scribbled something on a leaf of it in pencil, ripped the page out and gave it to her: ‘That’s my personal telephone number. If I’m not there myself there will always be someone who is and who can contact me.’
He glanced at his watch again and said: ‘If we don’t get a move on, we shall find that the bus has got tired of waiting for us and we’re stranded behind the Iron Curtain. In fact here, I think, is a search party.’
Sally Page ran towards them, waving. ‘Where on earth have you been?’ she panted. ‘We’re all waiting for you and the driver is fuming. We thought you’d been kidnapped by the Kremlin or something. Do hurry!’
The remainder of the tour was uneventful. They did not again leave the bus, but were driven through the American sector, past the Tempelhof airfield where something like a huge, curving, three-fingered hand groped helplessly at the impersonal sky, and was, the guide explained, a memorial to the Airlift: an ‘abstract’ in concrete, symbolizing the three air corridors by which West Berlin had been fed and fuelled during the Russian blockade of the Allied sector.
More ruins; a honeycomb of roofless, ruined walls like a modern stage setting for hell.
The Kurfürstendamm; the Haffensee Brücke; the tall, steel trellis work of the Funkturm. The Reichskanzler Platz once more, and the parked cars waiting to take the sightseers to their homes in the swiftly gathering dusk.
CHAPTER 9
It was raining again next morning and Robert drove his family to morning service at St George’s in a steady downpour.
Stella huddled the collar of her fur coat about her ears, its delicate silver-grey exactly matching the heavy rain outside the car window. She looked cold and tired, and the eye-veil of her smart little hat failed to disguise the dark shadows of sleeplessness under her blue eyes.
Mademoiselle, lean and taciturn in black, also appeared to be in poor spirits. She had discovered, with considerable annoyance, that the Wilkins lived in a small house less than a quarter of a mile from the Melvilles, and Wally, exploring the neighbourhood, had been caught by Mademoiselle on the previous afternoon plastering Charlotte’s face with coal dust in the Melvilles’ boiler-room. Mademoiselle had pursued him, armed with one of the boiler-room pokers, but Wally had been too quick for her.
The three houses now occupied by the Melvilles, Leslies and Marsons had previously been lived in by three families whose children had been inseparable friends, and gaps in the hedges and the wire that separated each garden from the next had been made for their convenience, so that they could go from one garden to the next without running out into the road. These gaps still remained open, and Wally had darted through the one in the Melvilles’ hedge and escaped across the Leslies’ lawn and by way of the Marsons’ garden into the no-man’s-land beyond.
Mademoiselle had been forced to abandon the pursuit, and had not been appeased by Charlotte’s assertion that she had asked Wally to make her face black, as how could she be Eliza crossing the ice with a white face?
Despite the rain there was a large congregation, and Miranda, glancing surreptitiously around her during the singing of the psalm, saw that they were all there—Simon Lang’s eleven suspects. We ought to get up a cricket team, thought Miranda wryly: ‘Suspects versus the Rest’.
She did not realize that Simon was also present until the service ended and the congregation were streaming out of the church. She had not seen him out of uniform before and thought how different and unfamiliar he looked in a dark suit.
I suppose he’s keeping any eye on us, even in church! she thought bitterly; and then remembered what Simon had said of her only the day before. She was being on the defensive again.
Stella stopped to speak to him while Robert went to fetch the car, and Miranda said sweetly: ‘I didn’t recognize you without your uniform.’
‘I practise being a plain-clothes man on Sundays,’ explained Simon Lang, straightfaced. He turned back to Stella, and Miranda walked quickly over to the car, feeling both snubbed and childish.
The rain had stopped and there were patches of blue sky overhead, and a rainbow drew a gleaming arc over the distant skeleton tower of the Funkturm. The air held a fresh, clean smell as of newly mixed mortar—that characteristic smell of Berlin on a wet day, that has its origin in rain falling on mile after mile of rubble.
They did n
ot go straight back to the house, but drove instead to the Lawrences: Mrs Lawrence having buttonholed Robert and asked them to come in after the service for drinks.
Colonel Lawrence, in contrast to his wife, was small, thin and vague, and looked more like the popular idea of an atom scientist than the commanding officer of a regiment. He obviously did not know who Miranda was, or catch her name, but he smiled kindly, pressed a glass into her hand and made a few observations on the weather before drifting off to meet more of his wife’s guests.
‘What did you think of old Snoozy?’ inquired Robert, exchanging Miranda’s pink gin—a form of drink that she detested—for a tomato juice. ‘The Colonel. He always behaves like that on social occasions, but don’t let it fool you. It’s protective colouring. He loathes large gatherings, unless they are strictly in the way of business.’
‘Like Simon,’ said Miranda thoughtfully.
‘Like who? Oh, you mean Lang? I shouldn’t have thought he hated large gatherings.’
Miranda flushed. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant what you said about protective colouring. He seems to have quite a lot of that.’
Robert looked interested. ‘I think I see what you mean. You don’t notice him unless he wants you to.’
‘That’s it,’ approved Miranda. She slipped her hand through his arm and smiled at him. ‘Oh Robert, you are such a comfortable person! I don’t have to explain things to you.’
Robert grinned affectionately at her. ‘Probably something to do with blood being thicker than water,’ he suggested. ‘Are you by any chance getting interested in young Simon Stylites?’
‘He’s interested in me!’ said Miranda bitterly. ‘And not in the way you mean, either!’
‘You mean you think he suspects you of having bumped off the Brigadier? Don’t you believe it! If he’s given you that impression you can take it from me that he’s after something quite different. That young man has not acquired a reputation as the best poker player in the combined British, French and American sectors for nothing. You should hear “Lootenant” Decker on the subject. Hank Decker says it’s plumb against all the laws of nature that a limey should be able to clean out a bunch of boys who cut their teeth on poker chips and could say “I’ll raise you” before they could say “Da-da”!’