by M. M. Kaye
Miranda did not answer. She looked across the pool to where Sally Page dangled her pretty feet in the vivid blue water and wondered where Sally had obtained her information. There was a quick way of finding out.
Miranda stepped back, took two running steps and dived cleanly into the pool. But it seemed that Sally had no desire to speak to her, for when Miranda surfaced Sally had already risen and was running lightly along the edge of the pool towards the diving-boards. Miranda swam to the side and sat watching her as she climbed one ladder after another until she reached the highest board, thirty feet or more above the water. Her tall, slender figure seemed absurdly small seen from below, and Miranda, who had no head for heights, shuddered and felt a little sick as young Mrs Page walked calmly out upon the narrow plank and looked down at the clear blue depths below, her hands at her sides.
Sally tested the spring of the board, waiting, it seemed deliberately, until the attention of the other bathers was focused upon her. Then she turned and walked back again, swung round and ran lightly along it, and springing upwards and outwards, somersaulted once in the air and finished with a perfect swallow dive. Her body entered the water like a silver arrow, so smoothly that it appeared to cause only the slightest splash, and one or two spectators applauded vigorously.
It was a surprisingly competent performance, and Miranda felt a glow of admiration. She was a tolerably good swimmer herself and could dive prettily, but she knew that she would never have dared walk out upon that slender plank so near the high ceiling, and that she did not possess either the nerve, judgement or coordination of brain and muscle to execute such a dive.
Sally rose to the surface, shook the water out of her eyes and swimming easily to the edge of the pool hoisted herself out of the water and walked quickly away in the direction of the changing-rooms.
Colonel Leslie, employing a stately breaststroke, swam across to Miranda and paused beside her, keeping himself afloat by duck-paddling. ‘Norah tells me that your cousin’s governess has bolted,’ he remarked. ‘Very useful of her. I should imagine that this lets us all out. Well, no one can say that it has not been an interesting experience.’
‘What has?’ asked Miranda bleakly.
‘Being a murder suspect.’
‘I don’t think they know yet that it was her.’
‘No. But provided she doesn’t turn up again, the supposition will be that it was. The various police forces of this city are fairly efficient, my dear, and as they have been unable to trace her as yet, we can be reasonably sure that she is well and truly behind the Iron Curtain.’
Miranda looked at him in some surprise, but he appeared to be unaware of any discrepancy in his words. Yet if it were true that he had only just this moment heard of Mademoiselle’s disappearance, how could he know that she might not already have been traced? However, as she did not want to talk of Mademoiselle, she said: ‘I expect so,’ in a colourless voice. Mrs Leslie swam across to join them, and after a few minutes of desultory conversation, offered to race Miranda a length, and having lost by a couple of yards, left the water and went off with her husband to talk to some friends on the steps at the far end of the pool.
It was almost an hour later that Miranda, who had become involved in a game of water-polo, strolled down from the changing-rooms in the wake of the Leslies, who had gone on ahead some ten minutes earlier in order to collect their car, which they had parked a good distance away, telling her that they would pick her up by the gate that gave access to the swimming-pools. The air outside felt very cold after the overheated atmosphere inside the building, and the clear spring evening was faintly scented with fruit blossom and the fumes of petrol.
A reclining nude in bronze, several times larger than life, stood near the edge of the open-air pool against an angle of the wall that bore the word Herren largely lettered upon it—the word apparently directing attention not to the bronze statue, but to a shadowy flight of steps that descended to a door in a narrow area behind it. The bronze itself, like the wall and the stone-paving below, was pockmarked with bullet holes, and Miranda looked at it critically as she passed.
The entire Stadium was littered with similarly pockmarked statuary, and she was pondering over the Nazi passion for outsize representations of the unclothed male and female body, when she was surprised to see that the Leslies had gone no further than the other side of the open-air pool—the one flanked by the bronze cattle—where they seemed to have been way-laid by one of the swimming instructors, a Herr Kroll.
Herr Kroll, talking excitedly, was gripping the Colonel’s arm with one hand and gesturing with the other, and presently all three of them bent to peer down into the dark, stagnant depths of the water below. Miranda heard Colonel Leslie say, ‘Rubbish!’ and Herr Kroll retort, ‘Nein! I tell you, no! It is not the rubbish!’ and presumed that the instructor had been explaining how the sea-green tiles of the pool were protected from cracking in the winter frosts by a grid of ropes, each the thickness of a man’s body, that were made from bales of straw and hay, partially submerged, on the surface of the water, where they moved sluggishly to every breath of wind and thus prevented ice from forming. Either that, or he was telling them a tale that Harry Marson had told her; about how the Russians, when they had first occupied Berlin and used some of the nearby buildings as stables for their horses, had found no better use for this huge, pale-tiled pool than to use it as a dumping place for manure.
A last ray from the setting sun gilded the flanks and tipped the long, curving horns of the bronze bulls with gold, and across the dark green water of the pool the ruined columns of a bomb-damaged wing of the building began to take on the outlines of some pyloned temple of the Nile Valley. Miranda quickened her steps, and joining the group at the pool side, demanded to know what all the excitement was about?
Colonel Leslie, who had been bending down to peer shortsightedly into the water, straightened up and said irritably: ‘Herr Kroll here thinks there’s something down there—a body; or something equally ridiculous. He swears he saw a face. Well, if he did it isn’t there now, for I’m damned if I can see anything. Come along, Norah.’
‘No, wait a minute, Ted. I believe I can … There! Over there! I’m sure I…’ Mrs Leslie gripped Miranda’s arm and pointed: ‘Look—down there, just below that … No. It’s only a hank of straw. Funny, I could have sworn I saw a face too.’
‘Probably your own reflection,’ grunted her husband, bending again, hands on knees, to peer in the direction in which she had pointed. ‘Your eyes are better than mine, Miranda. See if you can see anything.’
The sun slid below the horizon, and a little breeze awoke and sighed through the branches of a group of pine trees that stood near the edge of the lawn behind them, momentarily ruffling the quiet surface of the pool so that a half-submerged rope of straw immediately below Miranda drifted a little way and disclosed the pale, distorted reflection of her own face looking up at her, Narcissus-like, from a patch of dark water.
The breeze passed and the water steadied again … And it was not her own face that was staring up at her from the pool, but another face. A ghost out of the terrifying, shadowy past. A pallid face, open-mouthed, with wide, staring eyes and lank, straw-coloured hair. Suddenly and horribly familiar …
A second catspaw of wind ruffled across the pool, and the heavy blond hair drifted before it and was once again only a swathe of sodden straw. And below it lay the grey face and black, scanty locks of Mademoiselle Marie Beljame.
Miranda did not know how long she stood there looking down at that drowned face, for she had stepped back into the past and was a child again—several hundreds of miles and fifteen years removed from the battered city of Berlin.
Every sound of the quiet evening came clearly to her ears with an unnatural distinctness; but now each one possessed a different and terrifying meaning. The muffled shouts and laughter of the few remaining bathers from the indoor swimming-bath were the cries of fleeing, panic-stricken people. The whisper of the breeze through the pine
needles was a frightened man whispering orders in the shadow of fog-shrouded whin bushes. A passing car was the drone of an enemy bomber, and the faint lap of water against the sea-green tiles at the far side of the wide pool was the lap of waves against a pebble beach …
She became aware that the swimming instructor was shouting, ‘You see now how I am right?’ That Colonel Leslie was swearing and that Norah Leslie had screamed—though mercifully only once—and that other departing bathers were hurrying up to swell the group and add their voices to the babble of sound.
The sky behind the tall, spidery lines of the wireless masts had turned to a clear green flecked with gold and the bronze cattle that stood at the head of the pool were no longer warmly gilded, but dark and clear-cut in the gathering twilight.
Miranda stepped back from the rim of the pool, moving very carefully, as a person may move on a surface of ice. Edging her way through the rapidly growing crowd, she reached the top of the flagged steps, and turned down the wide path towards the entrance gates, past the shell of the ruined, roofless wing where the budding boughs of young trees thrust up through the fallen rubble around a small, white, concrete square that was a newly built fire-station.
A car was coming up the road past the hockey field, and as it reached the junction of the road opposite the gates to the swimming-pool, and slowed for the turn, Miranda broke into a run.
Simon Lang jammed on the brakes, and after one quick look at her face threw open the car door, and she stumbled in and sank down beside him.
Simon did not ask any questions. He leant across her and shut the door, and turned the car into the road that ran past the Sports Centre; bringing it to a stop by the curb a few yards from the gates to the pool, with the engine still running.
There was a babble of voices from the path beyond the gates, and as Colonel and Mrs Leslie and a tall woman in a persian lamb coat came into view, Miranda said with stiff lips: ‘They’re looking for me.’
There was a queer singing sound in her ears and she felt cold and oddly light-headed. She was aware of Simon calling across the road something about giving her a lift home, and the car moved forward again before she heard the reply.
Simon said lightly: ‘I imagine, from their expressions, that they are all under the impression that I have arrested you.’
Presently he brought the car to a standstill by some trees and switched off the engine. He turned to look at her and said abruptly: ‘Do you want to be sick?’
Miranda shook her head. The gold had faded from the sky, and dusk was gathering over the scattered lawns and gardens and buildings of the Stadium. Simon lit a cigarette and sat relaxed and silent, leaning back against the worn leather seat and letting her take her own time, and after a while Miranda said jerkily: ‘Mademoiselle Beljame—’ and he turned his head and looked at her; his face indistinct in the twilight and his quiet eyes reflecting the faint glow of his cigarette.
‘I knew her!’ whispered Miranda: ‘I didn’t realize it before. I never recognized her. I don’t know why I never recognized her. It was the hair, I suppose: and she looked so old, and—and I never thought of it. I only knew that I didn’t like her. I suppose that was why I didn’t like her.’
She stopped, and after a moment or two Simon said quietly: ‘Who was she?’
‘I don’t know. But years ago, when I was a child, my parents were killed in Belgium, while we were trying to reach the coast. The road we were on was bombed and our car was wrecked, but I must have been thrown clear. I don’t remember much after that; except how Mother looked, and—and my father. I wasn’t very old, but I knew they were dead. There were a lot of other people who were dead too. There was a head in the middle of the road; only a head. It had its eyes open and it was looking at me. It’s funny that I should have forgotten that until now. I thought—I thought I didn’t remember it. But it’s come back again …
‘I was frightened of the head, and I picked up my doll and ran away screaming. Then sometime later on—or perhaps it was days later, I don’t remember—a woman spoke to me in French. There was a man with her and they took me with them and gave me some food, and the woman pointed to my doll and said: “That is how we will do it.” I thought she meant to take it away, but she didn’t. I was afraid of them, but there was no one else. I think we must have walked a long way, but we only walked at night and hid in the daytime. Then we joined some other people, and one night we got into a boat and there was a lot of shooting and it was dark and misty, and the woman got left behind …
‘When we got to England the man was ill, and I was left on my own. I heard people talking English so I spoke in English too, and I remember someone saying: “Good God—the child’s English!” I didn’t see the man again: I think he died. I’d forgotten about the woman, but now I’ve remembered her again. It was Mademoiselle Beljame…’
‘Why have you remembered now?’ asked Simon quietly.
‘Her hair,’ said Miranda in a whisper. ‘She had a lot of thick yellowish hair, and she wore it banded across her forehead; not strained back and dyed black, like Mademoiselle’s. The straw looked like hair, and—and her face was puffy, and not so old. And then I remembered where I had seen eyes like that before. They weren’t the same colour: I don’t know how I could have forgotten that. Someone—someone only the other day—said that you never forgot a physical defect. But I had forgotten it. Until—until now.’
Simon said: ‘Where is she?’
Miranda turned to look at him, her face no more than a small white blur in the shadows, and tried to speak and could not.
Simon reached out a warm hand and laid it over the two cold ones that were clutched together so tightly in her lap, and her chilled fingers turned and clung desperately to his. He said: ‘Tell me, dear.’
‘In—in the open-air pool near the swimming-bath.’
She felt rather than saw the sudden involuntary movement of Simon’s body, but his hand remained steady and his voice unhurried.
‘She’s dead then.’ It was a statement and not a query.
Miranda nodded dumbly, and when she spoke again he had to bend his head to catch the words.
‘The swimming instructor, Herr Kroll, found her. Or—or perhaps it was Mrs Leslie … I don’t know. They were arguing and pointing, and Colonel Leslie told me to see if I could see anything … and—and at first I thought it was only the reflection of my own face, but then the wind moved some straw and … And I saw her face—’
Simon did not ask any further questions. He released her hands and restarted the car, and before the sudden flood of light from the headlights the violet evening turned to night as the car swept down a long curving road bordered by trees, and turned in the direction of the Herr Strasse.
There was a rigidly enforced speed limit in Berlin, but Simon must have disregarded it, for in an astonishingly short time the car drew up before the Melvilles’ house. He had not spoken during the swift journey from the Stadium, but now he turned to look at Miranda; his face unwontedly grim in the reflected glow of the headlights.
‘You are not to say a word of this to anyone—about recognizing her. Anyone at all. Do you understand?’
Miranda nodded wordlessly. He studied her face for a moment or two, and what he saw there evidently satisfied him for he laid the back of his hand against her cheek in a brief gesture that was somehow more intimate than a kiss, and then leant across her and jerked open the door of the car: ‘And another thing,’ said Simon. ‘Don’t go out of the house until I’ve seen you again. No matter who asks you. And if for any reason you are alone in the house, lock yourself into your room. Is that understood?’
Miranda nodded again and stepped out into the dark road, and Simon gave a little jerk of his head in the direction of the gate: ‘Go on. I want to see that you get safely into the house.’
Once again it was Robert who opened the front door for her, and turning to look back, she saw the car move away down the road.
‘Who was that?’ inquired Robert, s
hutting the door behind her. ‘That wasn’t the Leslies’ car, was it?’
‘No,’ said Miranda, looking curiously dazed. ‘Captain Lang gave me a lift back. He—he wanted to ask me some questions.’
Robert laughed—he appeared to have recovered his good temper. ‘Still Suspect Number One, are you? Don’t worry, darling! It’s my guess that Lang is merely using this business as an excuse for enjoying your society. And who can blame him? Cheer up, ’Randa!’ He put an arm about her shoulders and gave her a companionable hug as Stella leaned over the landing rail to ask if Miranda had brought the Leslies in for a drink.
‘No,’ said Miranda; and was spared explanations by the ringing of the telephone bell. Robert released her and went over to answer it, and she saw his face stiffen and after a moment relax again. He said: ‘Yes. She’s here,’ and turned towards Miranda holding out the receiver: ‘It’s for you.’
It’s Simon, thought Miranda, her hands suddenly unsteady, but he can’t have got there as soon as this: he can’t have found her yet!
She took the receiver and steadied her voice with an effort, glad that Robert had walked quickly away. But it was only Sally Page, ringing up to ask if she would like to make a fourth to dine and dance at a nightclub on Grünewald Strasse with Andy and herself and a young American; they could pick her up in about twenty minutes.
Miranda, feeling weak from a mixture of shock and emotional reaction, murmured excuses and thanks, and rang off. She went to bed early that night, but could not sleep. The past that she had buried deep in oblivion for so long had returned to her, and when at long last she dropped into an uneasy sleep it was to dream of a blond woman with curious eyes, who smelt of caraway seeds and dragged her by the hand through a clinging fog down a long road pitted with shell holes …
CHAPTER 15
‘Pssst!’
The bushes underneath the drawing-room window rustled, and a twig, accurately aimed, flipped against the pages of the morning paper that concealed Miranda’s face.