Death in Berlin: A Mystery

by M. M. Kaye

  The hideous hanging lamp above the dining-room table filled the room with harsh light, and there was no possible hiding-place in it. Even the curtains reached only as far as the windowsill, and their thin cotton folds could not have concealed a kitten. Nevertheless, from somewhere someone was watching her. She did not know why she knew it. She only knew that she did know it; and with an absolute certainty that left no room for doubt.

  Miranda stood up suddenly, pushing her chair back so violently that it fell with a crash to the floor. The noise, with its suggestion of uncontrolled hysteria, steadied her and made her realize that she was behaving in a panic-stricken and unadult manner, and that if she were not careful, would presently be rushing out of the house screaming. The house was locked up and no one could enter it except by the front door into the hall, which was clearly visible from the dining-room.

  She forced herself to pick up the fallen chair and replace it, and feeling unaccountably fortified by the act, walked firmly across the room and out into the hall.

  There was no one there. The staircase leading up to the shadowed landing was empty and nothing moved on or above it. Miranda turned towards the darkened drawing-room.

  After the brightly lit hall and dining-room, the moonlight beyond the drawing-room windows appeared faint and wan, but as Miranda’s fingers groped for the switch she thought she saw a flicker of movement outside the french window.

  The switch clicked under her fingers, and as light flooded the room the windows were once again dark. But in that fraction of a second she had ceased to be frightened: ‘Wally!’ said Miranda, speaking aloud in the silence. ‘I bet it’s Wally!’ Her curving mouth set itself in a determined line that boded no good for Master Wilkin, and switching off the light she tiptoed to the french window, unlocked it and slipped out into the garden.

  The night was cold and very still. No breath of wind stirred the branches of the fir trees and not a leaf rustled, and Miranda too stood motionless; waiting until her eyes were accustomed to the uncertain light and listening for sounds of stealthy movement that would betray the whereabouts of that fervent embryo detective, Master Wallace Wilkin. And this time, vowed Miranda, I shall tell his father, and I only hope that Wally will have to take his meals off the mantelpiece for the next week as a result!

  She held her breath to listen, but the garden was quiet and nothing moved. Perhaps Wally—if it had been Wally—had run for it as soon as he saw the drawing-room light go on. Or had that faint flicker of movement been only an owl or a bat? One thing at least was certain; she could not stand here indefinitely. She would walk once round the garden and then, if she found no one, would go in and lock the front door and turn on the wireless and every light in the house until Friedel or Robert and Stella returned.

  Miranda walked down the sandy path that led past the dining-room windows and turned right-handed to skirt the lawn, but when she reached the cherry trees at the far end of the garden she paused, and on an impulse sat down on the wooden seat that encircled a tree near the path.

  The windless night was full of stars and lights: stars in the sky and the red stars that warned aircraft away from the tall steel radio pylons. Twin stars, green and red, that moved across the sky and were the wing lights of an aircraft heading for Tempelhof airfield. A spangle of coloured lights that outlined the distant Funkturm …

  The path was a tangle of moonlight and tree-shadows, and the garden was fragrant with the faint, elusive scent of spring. The silent night was not frightening and hostile as the silent house had been, for the Leslies’ drawing-room windows made friendly squares of soft, orange light against the blue of the moonlight, and Miranda could hear voices and laughter and the sound of a radio playing dance music.

  She leant back against the rough bark of the cherry tree, and a few pale petals, dislodged by the slight movement, drifted down like snowflakes into her lap.

  For no reason at all she found herself thinking of Simon Lang, and the discovery gave her the same feeling of resentment that Simon Lang himself seemed to produce in her. She had not meant to think of him, but it was as though he had walked across the garden and stood in front of her, blocking out the moonlight and the white ghosts of the cherry trees, and refused to go away.

  Miranda shut her eyes, and found that she could not picture him clearly. She could make a list of features, but none of them added up to the same Simon. He was, as he had told her, an unobtrusive person. He was certainly a singularly quiet one; his voice and manner and movements providing a gentle and pleasant façade that concealed the real Simon Lang.

  The real Simon Lang, Miranda suspected, was a person who knew exactly what he wanted and invariably got it; and who, as a general rule, simply did not find it necessary, and could not be bothered, to use force or noise in any form in order to achieve it. He had interested her from the first moment she had set eyes on him, though she had not paused to discover the reason for this. And at the present time there was a more important question: why was he interested in her?

  Had he been almost anyone else, Miranda would have instantly supplied an obvious answer. But in the case of Simon Lang she was regretfully compelled to reject that simple solution, since she did not in the least believe that Simon was attracted by her personal charms. Did he, then, believe that she knew more about the murder of Brigadier Brindley than she had admitted? Or was he, as Robert suggested, using that as a blind?—allowing someone else to suppose that he suspected her, in order to put that someone off their guard?

  It was a possible solution, and an unpleasant one. But why should she, Miranda, be interested in Simon Lang?

  Miranda frowned at the shadows of the cherry trees and was unable to find an acceptable answer.

  Someone turned off the radio in the Leslies’ house, and a few minutes later their lights went out, leaving the house in darkness. Presently Miranda heard the sound of cars being started up and realized that the Leslies must have decided to take their party on to the Club or to some Berlin nightspot. Three cars, one after another, purred down the road on the far side of the house. And as the sounds faded and dwindled away into silence, Miranda shivered and awoke to the fact that she was wearing a thin woollen frock and the night was cold.

  A chill breath of wind sighed across the garden, bringing down a shower of white petals and bearing with it the threat of a stronger wind to follow, and she stood up to brush the fallen petals from her lap and resume her interrupted tour of the garden.

  CHAPTER 11

  Once or twice Miranda stopped to peer left and right into the shadows, but the gesture was a purely perfunctory one.

  If Wally had been there, he had gone, for the garden was so still that she would have caught the slightest rustle of movement. But all she could hear was the sound of her own breathing and the faint, faraway purr of traffic from the distant Herr Strasse.

  Overhead the white pencils of Russian searchlights, paled by the clear moonlight, swept across the sky and picked out scattered, drifting shreds of cloud, as Miranda walked quickly along the path by the hedge that formed a boundary between the two gardens. She was cold, and anxious to get indoors once more to the comfort of the friendly lamplight, for now that the Leslies’ house was in darkness, the moonlit garden seemed darker and somehow daunting.

  The sandy path was bone white in the moonlight except where an oddly shaped shadow blotted it near a clump of lilacs by the gap in the hedge. A shadow that, when she reached it, was not a shadow at all … but the body of a woman who lay face downwards with her feet towards the house and her head hidden by the darkness of the gap____

  For a long moment that seemed to have no beginning or end, Miranda stood staring down at the sprawling, silk-clad legs and the blur of silvery-grey fur; numb with horror, and caught once more in the web of a walking nightmare. Then all at once she was on her knees beside it, tugging at it, trying to lift it, her voice a harsh scream.

  ‘Stella! Stella! What’s happened?… Oh no!… Oh God, no!… Stella…!’


  The limp arms were outstretched, fingers clawed in the damp earth, and the body was slack and unbelievably heavy as Miranda put her arms about it and dragged it, panting, up and away from the black shadow of the hedge.

  The head lolled back against her shoulder and the moonlight bathed it in white light. And it was not Stella. It was Friedel …

  Miranda’s immediate reaction was one of violent relief. It wasn’t Stella! That, for the moment, was all that mattered, and she let the heavy head drop back onto the grass, and laughing a cracked, hysterical laugh of relief, fell on her knees again beside it.

  A thin wet trickle, black in the moonlight, crept across the white face from some wound concealed by the woman’s hair, and reached and darkened one staring eye. But the eye did not blink or close, and it was only then that Miranda realized that she was looking at a dead body. She had known it when she had first laid a hand upon it, but she had not really believed it until now.

  A sudden, shuddering horror brought her to her feet; and then all at once she was running. Running desperately across the lawn and to the shelter of the house.

  She had no clear recollection afterwards of entering the house or of fastening the french window behind her, but she had done so, and reached the telephone and had somehow managed to dial a number.

  The distant muffled bell purred only twice and then someone lifted the receiver. ‘Lang here,’ said a quiet voice.

  ‘Simon!’ the word was a sob. Miranda’s voice was shaking and she could barely control it. It seemed to her that she had shouted his name but to Simon it was no more than a soft, indistinguishable sound.

  ‘Who is it? I can’t hear you.’

  Miranda fought to steady herself, gripping the receiver in both hands until the fingernails of her left hand cut into the flesh below the thumb.

  ‘Miranda. Simon, please come quickly! Friedel’s dead, and I’m all alone—Simon!’

  Simon did not waste time asking questions. He said: ‘I’ll be along as soon as I can. Ring Dr Elvers, that’ll save me time. You’ll find his name in the book. Or get any doctor.’

  ‘It’s no good!’ said Miranda frantically. ‘She’s dead! The blood went into her eye and____’ But Simon had rung off.

  Miranda stood shivering, still clutching the receiver to her ear. And as she stood there, she heard a sound. It was a very soft sound, but quite unmistakable, and she stopped shivering and stood rigid; staring with widened, terrified eyes at the receiver in her hand.

  She had told Simon Lang that she was alone in the house. But it was not true. There was someone else there. Someone besides herself and Lottie. Someone who had listened to her conversation with Simon and then very quietly replaced the receiver of the telephone extension that stood beside Robert’s bed in the big front room upstairs …

  Miranda dropped the receiver and whirled round to stare up at the landing above the hall, her heart beating suffocatingly. But the landing was in shadow and from where she stood she could not see the door of Stella’s bedroom.

  She backed away towards the cloakroom. There was a bolt on the inside of the cloakroom door. She could shut herself in and wait until Simon came.

  And then, suddenly, she remembered Lottie. Someone was hiding upstairs in one of the darkened rooms—and Lottie was up there too, asleep.

  Miranda ran across the hall and raced up the staircase, heedless of what might be awaiting her in the shadows above the lighted hall, and flung open the door of Lottie’s room. She found the switch and pressed it, and the room was flooded with soft light.

  Lottie was sound asleep, curled up with her hands folded under her chin. She did not move or wake, and Miranda pulled the key from the outside of the door with trembling fingers and locked herself in.

  She knew that she should turn off the light again in case it should wake Lottie, but she could not bring herself to wait in the dark, and she found a small green cardigan and draped it over the light instead. The effect was dim and eerie, but at least it was better than darkness, and she leant weakly against the door, struggling to steady herself and regain control over her breathing.

  Once she thought she heard a stair creak and someone moving somewhere in the house, but though she strained her ears to listen she could not be certain of the sound or its direction.

  Whoever had been in Stella and Robert’s bedroom would not stay there: that much was certain. And it would be quite simple for anyone to leave, for they had only to walk down the stairs and out of the front door. Or if that was too public, the drop from the balcony outside the bedroom windows was not so great, and the small back landing, from which one flight of stairs ascended to the attic and another descended to the kitchen quarters, lay only a few yards to the right of the bedroom door. Once down the back staircase there would be no difficulty in leaving the house, since the locks were Yale ones and could be opened from inside.

  Oh, why didn’t Simon come?

  Miranda left the door and went quickly to the window, but there was no sign of any approaching car. Only the moonlight, and the yellow glow of the street lamps gleaming intermittently through the fretted branches of the trees that a rising wind was beginning to sway and shiver.

  She dropped the curtain back into place and as she turned away her eye was caught by her own reflection in the looking-glass above the small dressing-table. There were marks on the pale topaz-coloured wool of her dress. A dark stain near the shoulder.

  Miranda put up an unsteady hand and touched it.

  So it had happened again! The pattern had repeated itself. Once again there was blood on her dress—and now there was blood on her hand too … ‘Circumstantial evidence’.

  She could not let it happen again! She could not. Who would believe her this time? She must change her dress … hide it … burn it! She began to tear at the fastenings with frenzied, frantic hands.

  A fingernail caught and tore agonizingly in the catch of the zip-fastener, and her hair tangled about the dangling charms on her bracelet and wrenched free as she pulled the dress over her head and threw it from her as if it had been something alive and crawling. Her breath was coming in sobbing gasps and her hands were wet with sweat.

  A car turned into the road and its headlights licked the windows with brief, brilliant light; and then it had jerked to a stop outside the house. Quick footsteps sounded on the flagged path below and Miranda heard the front door open.

  Simon Lang! And she had sent for him herself. She had lost her head and sent for the one man who already had reason to suspect her of murder. She must have been mad! She should have said nothing; pretended to know nothing; changed the stained dress and waited for someone else to discover the murder. Instead of which she had run headlong into suspicion and danger as once before she had run wildly down the corridor of the night train to Berlin …

  ‘Miranda!’ Simon’s voice echoed strangely in the silent house. She heard him cross the hall and jerk open the drawing-room door.

  ‘Miranda!’

  Lottie stirred and murmured in her sleep and once again the instinct to protect the sleeping child overcame the nightmare numbness that had held Miranda in its grip. She turned the key in the lock and went out onto the landing, closing the door softly behind her.

  Simon was standing in the hall immediately below her, his body, seen from above, looking curiously foreshortened by the drop, and the pupils of his eyes so dilated that his eyes looked black, like a cat’s that has come in from the dark. He stood quite still for a moment, looking up at her; and then she saw his face change and he came up the stairs, taking them three at a time, and was standing in front of her, his hands gripping her shoulders, as he had stood in the corridor of the train on the night that Brigadier Brindley had died.

  He said sharply: ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Ssssh! You’ll wake Lottie,’ said Miranda automatically. She swayed and would have fallen but for Simon’s grip on her shoulders.

  Simon shook her savagely. The action was so unexpected that it acted upon M
iranda’s numbed faculties like a dash of cold water, and she gasped and jerked herself away.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Simon urgently.

  He caught her arm and pulled it through his, and holding it tightly against him, turned and walked her down the stairs and into the hall.

  ‘Now let’s have it,’ said Simon, swinging her round to face him.

  His eyes narrowed suddenly. In the dimness of the unlighted landing he had not noticed her unorthodox attire, and had imagined her to be wearing some form of evening dress. Miranda looked down, following the direction of his startled gaze, and her white face coloured hotly. She had forgotten that she wore no dress and was standing in the full light of the hall clad in the scantiest possible underwear.

  She tried to pull away, but Simon’s fingers tightened about her arm as his eyes took her in from head to foot—the tangled disorder of the dark curls, the white arms and shoulders, the absurd wisps of lace-trimmed, apricot-tinted transparency, long slender legs and small high-heeled slippers. And suddenly there was a cold anger in his eyes that frightened her.

  ‘What on earth,’ said Simon softly, ‘are you dressed like that for? Come on—out with it!’

  ‘I—I meant to burn it.’ Miranda’s voice was a jerky whisper despite her effort to control it, and her eyes were wide and enormous.

  ‘Burn what?’

  ‘My dress. There was blood on it. You see I—I touched her. And—and it was like the other time; and I thought you would think—that everyone would think…’ Miranda’s voice trailed away hopelessly and stopped.

  Simon said: ‘I see.’ There was, curiously enough, relief in his voice. He released her arm and Miranda sat down abruptly on the bottom step of the stairs.

  Simon turned on his heel, and going over to the coat rack by the cloakroom door, took down a coat at random and returning, tossed it at Miranda.

  ‘You’d better put that on.’

  It was a Burberry of Robert’s and far too large for her, but Miranda struggled into it, wrapping it about her as she sat on the hall stair.