The Star and the Shamrock

by Jean Grainger

  His words crashed over her like an icy shower. Was he serious? Was she under arrest? She’d told him everything she knew.

  ‘I can’t go now! I have to find Erich!’

  ‘I don’t want to arrest you, Mrs Klein, but I will if I need to.’ Suddenly all friendliness was gone; the detective’s voice was cold.

  ‘You can’t seriously think I had anything to do with –’ she began.

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs Klein.’ He opened the door, gesturing that she go ahead of him. ‘All I know is the man we have in custody as a spy was a close personal friend of yours, and now another man who is sending messages to Nazi Germany has your address in his wallet. I’d say that warrants a few questions, wouldn’t you?’

  Elizabeth was dumbstruck. ‘I must speak to Liesl. Please! She’s upset enough… Let me just…’

  Gaughran nodded, and Elizabeth went into the sitting room. Liesl was describing Erich’s blue jersey and grey flannel short trousers.

  ‘Liesl, darling, I need to go with Detective Gaughran for a little while, so can you go to the farm? Find Levi or Rabbi Frank or Ruth’ – she deliberately didn’t mention Talia – ‘and ask them to take care of you until I get back. I won’t be long.’

  Liesl looked stricken. ‘But what about Erich? We must look for him!’

  Detective Gaughran spoke. ‘Liesl, I’m going to put Officer Wilson here in charge of finding Erich. We’ll make contact with the RAF base officially, and they can let us know if he’s there. In the meantime, we’ll search everywhere we can think of.’

  The detective didn’t make any false promises that Erich would be found safe and well, Elizabeth noticed. Liesl ran into her arms, and she held the girl tightly, kissing the top of her head. ‘Be a brave girl now, and I’ll be home soon.’ Elizabeth gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile and followed Gaughran out to the police car.

  Chapter 24

  Once at the station, she was escorted into an interview room. It was almost identical to the one where she had met with Daniel.

  ‘Now, Mrs Klein, you understand you are not under arrest? You are here giving a statement of your own free will?’

  Elizabeth nodded.

  ‘So you don’t know Xavier McGuinness?’ he asked again.

  ‘Apart from meeting him in his gallery, no. I didn’t know his name.’

  She repeated everything she’d told Gaughran in her kitchen, and apart from one or two questions for clarity, he let her speak. A uniformed officer took copious notes. Gaughran already had the paintings in his possession.

  Then she went on to explain how Levi said that Daniel drew all sorts of things and they were to be found all over the farm. Diagrams of the boiler, plans for various structures – anyone could have had access to them, could have copied his drawing style. She even explained about the legend on the wall beside the boiler, denoting the meaning of different symbols.

  ‘And do you think this Talia Zimmermann would have known the details of the shipments coming into the RAF base this week?’ he asked, his eyes giving nothing away.

  ‘Yes,’ Elizabeth confirmed, feeling treacherous. ‘Talia was going out with an RAF serviceman, an American with a British mother.’

  ‘And his name?’ Gaughran was writing in his notebook now.

  ‘Corporal Thomas Johnson, but everyone calls him Bud.’ She thought of Bud’s enthusiastic innocence and how he comforted Liesl. She prayed she wasn’t getting him into trouble.

  ‘So let me get this straight. This painting, and others you attest were done by Miss Zimmermann – underneath the paint are markings of some kind?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And you found this piece of paper in her bag earlier, and you think it is reused paper, that something else is underneath the paint?’

  Elizabeth flushed. It sounded so silly when he said it out loud. People reused everything these days. With each passing minute, she felt like she’d made a terrible mistake. ‘Look, I don’t know, but whoever is passing on information is still at large and free to do so. Daniel couldn’t be –’

  ‘So tell me again from the beginning, in as much detail as you can,’ Gaughran interrupted.

  Over and over the same ground they went: the visit to Daniel confirming that he’d never written to Talia, seeing Talia go into the gallery, Elizabeth’s subsequent encounter with McGuinness, going to see Rabbi Frank, Talia crying in the synagogue, the incident with the younger children and the bag, then having a late lunch with Talia and the children.

  ‘And she stayed in your house all afternoon?’ He interrupted again.

  ‘Yes… Well, actually, not all the time. Erich was talking about all the planes and everything landing on the base and the tanks going by on flatbed trucks. He’s an expert in all that stuff, and he can name all the different types of military vehicles. And Talia didn’t know that these new deliveries were why Bud couldn’t see her. Apparently, she’d gone to the base earlier that morning to try to see him before he was shipped out.’

  ‘So she left your house?’

  ‘Yes, she said she wanted to run up to the post office to see if the gallery owner had left her a message. Apparently, he would telegram if he sold one of her paintings, and there had been someone browsing that day that she thought might buy one, which I knew was a lie. She was only gone a few minutes. Then she came back and we had lunch. We chatted afterwards for a while in the garden, and then she left for the farm.’

  ‘And did anything else happen?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, I know you find this hard to believe, Inspector, but I was coming to see you. I just wanted to be sure I was doing the right thing. My foster children are very connected to the farm, and Talia is one of the refugees. It would have done irreparable damage to their relationships and to my professional career as their teacher if I went about accusing Jews of being spies without any evidence. I knew that she’d lied about the letter and this McGuinness lied about who had done the paintings, but that did not make Talia a spy. I couldn’t see a link between those facts and Daniel’s arrest, not until I found the paintings in her bag. And…’ – she felt her face flush – ‘Daniel Lieber and I are close, so I knew that anything I said would be seen as an effort on my part to blame someone other than him.’

  ‘But you told me there was no relationship between you?’

  ‘There isn’t, not as such.’ She felt so foolish but wanted to be totally honest. ‘But we do care for each other, and if things were different, then perhaps we would have a relationship.’

  ‘I see.’ The detective was grim. ‘We are going to need to search your house, Mrs Klein.’

  ‘Fine,’ Elizabeth said with a sigh. ‘I’ve nothing to hide.’

  Gaughran left the room and returned a few moments later with a lukewarm cup of weak tea.

  Over and over, he asked the same questions: Daniel and his relationship with Talia, had Daniel ever been to the gallery, had she ever collected post for anyone at her house, what was it about Talia’s behaviour that was suspicious, what exactly had Bud revealed about the shipments of supplies, when did Talia know about it, when did Elizabeth know about it? Round and round the questions went, and Elizabeth fought the urge to panic. They already had one man facing trial for something he didn’t do – did they seriously think that she might have had anything to do with betraying national security?

  Gaughran then changed tack; he started asking about Rudi and then about her uncle and his German wife.

  ‘And you claim to have never met Peter Bannon or his wife?’

  ‘I’m not claiming I have never met Peter or Ariella, I am telling you I have never met them. Ask Liesl, she’ll tell you.’

  ‘And you have never been to Germany?’

  ‘No, of course I haven’t,’ she snapped exasperatedly. ‘I’ve told you. I lived in Ballycreggan, then I lived in Liverpool, and now I’m back here.’ Elizabeth was trying and failing not to lose her temper. She was worried sick about Erich, but every time she raised the issue, Gaughran just said the
police were doing all they could.

  ‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’ He slipped the question smoothly into the middle of the conversation.

  ‘What?’ she asked, confused.

  ‘Deutsch?’ he repeated.

  ‘German? Are you asking me if I can speak German? No, I learned a few phrases before the children came in case they had no English, but it turns out their mother spoke several languages and she conversed with them in not just English and German but French and Italian as well.’

  Suddenly, she was very tired. Bone-crushingly weary. The last twenty-four hours had been hell, and the stress was not over yet.

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong, Detective Gaughran. I swear to you on Liesl and Erich’s lives. Neither did Daniel. Surely you can see that now? Someone else is feeding information to the Germans, but it’s not him and it’s not me. Now, can I go?’

  Her eyes searched his face for a trace of empathy, or any sense that he knew she was telling the truth, but there was none. Eventually, he nodded at the uniformed officer, who packed up his notebook and pen and left the room.

  ‘Of course. Thank you for your help.’ He nodded again and stood.

  Elizabeth walked past him as he held the interview room door open for her. She glanced at him, noting again the inscrutable face, but she was past caring.

  ‘Can you check to see if they have found Erich?’ she asked Gaughran as he went to say something quietly to a passing officer.

  ‘Officer Wilson will keep you updated, Mrs Klein,’ he said, and she thought she heard a note of comfort in his voice. He stood in front of her, looking almost as weary as she felt. ‘Please be assured, I will personally make sure everything that can be done to find the boy is done.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She buttoned up her coat and tried to fix her hair so she wouldn’t be the talk of the parish.

  ‘See Mrs Klein is driven home,’ Gaughran instructed the young policeman on the desk as they passed the public area of the station. He escorted her outside, and she longed for some fresh air; she felt dirty.

  Elizabeth sat in the back of the police car, visibly shaken. They drove in silence past the Crumlin Road prison, where Daniel awaited his fate, oblivious to everything. She longed to see him, to talk this whole thing through with him, but they would never allow it, and besides, she needed to get home.

  ‘Have you heard anything from Officer Wilson?’ she asked the policeman driving her.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he replied.

  She sat back and thought they would never get to Ballycreggan. The roads were clogged with military vehicles trying to manage the carnage. The main street was closed off, but she got out at the top of the village by the decimated Catholic church and ran to her house, ignoring the despair on the faces of her neighbours at the sight of their village in ruins.

  The key was in the front door, and she turned it. Liesl greeted her with a squeal of delight. ‘Elizabeth! He’s all right! Erich is back!’

  The little boy ran to her and launched himself into her arms, nearly knocking her over.

  ‘Oh, Erich, oh my love, where were you? We nearly went out of our minds!’ Only then did she spot Levi and Ruth standing in the kitchen beside Officer Wilson. She noticed two other officers out in the shed. She wasn’t surprised; Gaughran was nothing if not thorough.

  ‘He was on the road to Belfast,’ Levi said quietly.

  ‘What? What were you doing there?’ Elizabeth bent down to be eye level with the child, and her eyes raked his face, searching for an explanation.

  ‘I wanted to see Daniel. I thought if I went to the prison, they might let me see him, or even he could look out the window at me.’ Erich’s brown eyes filled with tears. ‘I don’t want them to hang Daniel, Elizabeth. He didn’t do anything wrong.’

  She pulled him close and held his little body close to hers. ‘I know he didn’t,’ she whispered into his ear.

  ‘We’ll let you to it, ma’am. I’m glad the lad is home safe. The house has been searched thoroughly as per Inspector Gaughran’s orders, so it’s just the garden to do now.’ The policeman excused himself and left to join his colleagues outside, but Levi and Ruth hung back. Elizabeth wished they’d go too. Ruth and Levi had done their best to clean up the mess after the raid, the windows were broken but they’d swept up the shards of glass and stuck card over the biggest of the holes. She would have to see to getting the glass replaced, though how she would achieve that she had no idea. Glass, just like everything else was in very short supply. She longed for a bath and a change of clothes, and she then wanted to go up to the school to see what damage had been done there.

  ‘Liesl, can you take Erich upstairs and give him a wash and get him some clean clothes? He looks a bit the worse for wear – we both do.’ She smiled and ruffled his hair.

  As the children went upstairs, Levi spoke. ‘Talia has gone missing now.’

  ‘Really?’ Elizabeth asked, wondering how much they suspected.

  ‘Do you think it was her?’ Ruth asked.

  Elizabeth raked the Irish woman’s face for signs of malice. Could Ruth have set Talia up? They didn’t like each other… Was she the spy? She mentally shook herself – she was becoming paranoid. Ruth looked worried and tired, just like everyone.

  Elizabeth shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but it looks strange.’ She decided to trust them. ‘According to the police, the man she was dealing with is IRA, and apparently, they have been in cahoots with the Nazis for ages, the Germans promising them guns and a United Ireland and all sorts if they helped the Nazi cause. Maybe her association with him is innocent, but I found some paintings of hers, and there looked to be other drawings underneath the watercolours. I handed them over to the police, so it’s up to them now.’

  The Czech man looked at her, and she thought she saw something there – a flash of mistrust?

  ‘Do you want us to stay or…?’ Ruth was uncertain.

  ‘No, thanks, I’ll be fine. I’ll let you know.’ Elizabeth walked with them to the door. ‘Thank you for helping so much to find Erich,’ she said, locking eyes with Levi.

  ‘He’s one of us,’ the man replied. He nodded and left with Ruth.

  Her eyes fell on the photograph of her parents on the side table in the large square hallway, an old sepia one of her mother sitting on a hardbacked chair looking austere and her daddy behind her, a smile threatening around his eyes. Margaret Bannon would have a stroke if she’d been around to see the house crawling with police and Jews and Americans and all sorts. That was the thing about her mother – she hated almost everyone equally, but Elizabeth most of all. Now that she had Liesl and Erich in her life, she could not understand how her mother could have just cut her off like she did. No matter what either of the children did, she would always forgive them.

  Wearily, she climbed the stairs to the bathroom. She filled the bath with the regulation five inches of water and allowed herself the luxury of adding some of her mother’s rosewater. When she’d arrived from Liverpool, the bathroom was full of all sorts of bubble bath and bath salts and soaps, but she and the children had almost worked their way through it all.

  She sat in the bath, longing for the prewar days when she could fill the bath with warm water, drop in bath salts and luxuriate, topping it up with her toe when it got cold.

  Washing, like everything else these days, was reduced to its most utilitarian basics. She scrubbed her hair and rinsed it in cold water and emerged feeling a bit better. She dressed in a clean dress and cardigan and pinned her hair back. At least now she looked like the capable schoolteacher she was, even if inside she was in turmoil.

  When she went back downstairs, Erich and Liesl were sitting on the sofa, the girl’s arm around her little brother. His hair was damp and brushed, and he was dressed in clean clothes. Liesl was reading to him as he leaned against her, his eyes heavy with tiredness.

  As Elizabeth was about to go into the kitchen to make something for them to eat, there was a knock on the door. She sighed. What now? It was
Gaughran again.

  ‘Inspector,’ she said, without enthusiasm.

  ‘Mrs Klein, may I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’ She stood back to allow him to pass, and gestured that he should proceed down the hall to the kitchen.

  She shut the kitchen door behind her, as she didn’t want the children to hear whatever he had to say now – they’d had more than enough upset for the time being. She was also anxious to get to the point. She was tired and hungry, and the children needed her.

  ‘Talia Zimmermann is not at the farm, nor has anyone seen her in the village. Based on your evidence, we are very keen to speak to her.’ He paused. ‘I believe you, Mrs Klein.’ His voice was unusually kind. ‘This has been very hard for you and the children, and I apologise for dragging you through it all, but it is a matter of the utmost importance, as you can appreciate. Can I ask you something, off the record?’

  She turned to face him. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who do you think is feeding the information? Someone is, that’s for sure. Do you think this Talia Zimmermann is capable?’

  Elizabeth thought about the question before answering. Did she think Talia could do that? The young woman was always sunny and cheerful, and all of the children apart from Liesl loved her. Bud loved her, and everyone on the farm seemed charmed by her – except Ruth, but that could have been born out of jealousy. But there was something about her, something Elizabeth couldn’t put her finger on.

  ‘I don’t know, and that’s the truth. It seems implausible, as she is such a nice person. Maybe she made some drawings of the base. I have met her out on that headland painting landscapes – maybe she painted over the drawings? Perhaps watercolour would be easy to remove? The colours were very pale, and she didn’t go into a lot of detail or dark colours, but I really don’t know. And if this man, this Xavier McGuinness, is IRA as you say, and they have links to the Nazis, it would be a way of her transferring back the information.’