by Judy Nunn
‘Ruth, I am your doctor, and your friend,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I am Maarten Vanpoucke.’ He put his arm around her, expecting her to pull away, surprised when she didn’t. ‘Now come inside and let me look after you.’
She allowed him to lead her away, glad that he was behaving true to form, as she’d presumed he would. Klaus always believed he had total control. He could have disappeared into his house and she would have been left to harangue the passers-by, embarrassing them, or perhaps making them apprehensive and fearful, but certainly appearing like a madwoman. This suited her purpose far better.
At the open gate, Maarten turned back to the gathering, most of whom were shuffling about awkwardly, pretending they hadn’t stopped to watch. He addressed Frank Halliday, although his words were intended for all those present.
‘Ruth is a patient of mine,’ he said. ‘She suffered cruelly at the hands of the Nazis. It is sad to see her so deeply disturbed.’
Frank nodded, feeling conspicuous and profoundly embarrassed. He felt he should walk on – he never got involved; he made it a habit to mind his own business.
Ruth delivered her final accusation directly at Maarten.
‘You are Klaus Henkel,’ she stated clearly for the benefit of those watching. ‘You are a murderer.’
‘Yes, yes, my dear.’ His tone was one of infinite compassion and understanding. ‘Now come along.’
He unlocked the door and took her inside, and those gathered in the street dispersed, muttering among themselves, agreeing that the poor woman was mad. But most were unsettled by the impact she’d had upon them.
It was not unheard of for some new arrivals in the region to display peculiar or confused behaviour now and again, and people were generally sympathetic. Most were also aware of the reported sightings of Nazi criminals throughout the world, and wondered how much of it was hysterical paranoia, part of the sad aftermath of the war. But here in Australia such demented accusations were an unexpected and disquieting reminder of the past.
Ruth was aware that they probably considered her deranged, but they had all witnessed him take her inside the house, she thought. And they would remember that.
The front door closed behind her and they stood in the hall. She said nothing as Maarten grabbed her roughly by the wrist, and she didn’t struggle as he opened the door to the left and propelled her into the reception area of his surgery.
Looking down at the front hallway from her carefully concealed position on the upstairs landing, Mrs Hodgeman found the doctor’s brutal attitude towards his patient a little surprising.
Maarten released Ruth, locking the door behind them, and roughly pushed her into his consulting room.
It was gloomy, with the drapes drawn over the bay windows, and he flicked on the switch of the overhead light. He locked the surgery door also and, taking off his spectacles, he tossed them onto the desk in a gesture of frustration and anger. It was only then he spoke.
‘Why have you done this? Why have you betrayed me?’
She was pleased that he’d dropped the pretence. The Dutchman had gone; he was Klaus Henkel now.
‘It’s over, Klaus,’ she said.
‘You think you can do it just like that, a few random words from a madwoman in the street?’ He grabbed her again by the wrist and hauled her to the bay windows, thrusting aside the drapes, careless of who could see. ‘Look. They’ve gone.’
She looked out at the street. The dozen or so had left and there was just the odd passer-by, paying no heed, but it didn’t matter, she thought. The harm had been done.
‘They don’t care,’ he snarled, pulling the drapes closed. ‘They want to mind their own business, as people do. Your little outburst meant nothing! Nothing at all, just the ramblings of a woman demented by the war. That’s what I told them, and that’s what they believe.’
‘I’m sure you’re right …’ Ruth felt supremely in command. He was sounding desperate and already he was cornered. She goaded him with the fact: ‘But word will get around, as it does in Cooma. You’ll be the centre of attention, and you don’t want that. You’ll have to leave town. The sooner the better, I would think.’
He’d known he would have to. He’d known it the moment he’d heard her call out his name. He wanted to kill her for it.
‘Yes, Klaus,’ she could see the murder in his eyes and she acknowledged it, ‘you’d better kill me, because if you don’t, I’ll follow you. I’ll follow you and denounce you wherever you go.’
It had been a deliberate plan, he realised. She’d made sure they’d all seen him take her inside; it was why she hadn’t resisted, why she’d played along with the game of demented patient. How very clever. And now she thought that, because there’d been witnesses, she was safe. But she wasn’t. He’d trusted her; she’d betrayed him and she would die for it.
‘So you wish to martyr yourself, do you, Ruth?’ he said disbelievingly. ‘How very noble.’
‘Perhaps I do,’ she answered. ‘If that’s the only way. Someone has to stop you, and it appears there’s only me.’
So she did wish to martyr herself, he thought. How very surprising. He was willing to oblige, but her death would not serve the noble cause she appeared to believe it would – he had no intention of being caught. Neither would he kill her because she posed a threat. He would kill her for the pure satisfaction of it.
‘And what makes you so bent on dying, Ruth? You’re young, you’re beautiful – it seems a strange choice.’
‘It’s meant to be, isn’t it? Fate, you said so yourself. But fate brought us together in order for me to destroy you, Klaus. There is no place for you here. You’re a Nazi and a murderer. There is no place for you anywhere – there never was. You and your kind should never have existed.’ She felt so strong as she said it. ‘You have innocent blood on your hands, Klaus. You have untold deaths to answer for.’
‘I do indeed.’ He laughed; he was starting to enjoy himself. ‘Oh yes, yes, indeed I do.’
Outside in the surgery waiting room, Mrs Hodgeman’s ear was pressed to the door. She’d let herself in – she had a key to every door in the house. She was appalled by what she was hearing. She left to fetch her son Kevin, and to get the gun that she knew the doctor kept in the locked drawer of his study desk; the drawer to which she also had access – she knew where he hid the key.
‘And you believe your death will destroy me, do you?’
Klaus was now finding the game most pleasurable. She was brave and noble, a zealot with a mission. How he would enjoy seeing her bravado crumble. How he would enjoy watching her beg for her life.
‘Yes, I believe so.’
It was as if she were teasing him, flirting with him; he found it titillating.
‘And how should I kill you, Ruth?’
‘Perhaps the same way you did Pietro,’ she said, wandering around the room. ‘This is where you killed him, isn’t it? Where exactly did he die? On this bed?’ She ran her fingers along the crisp white cotton cover. ‘How did you do it?’
She expected a denial; he would surely not admit to Pietro’s murder. But he made no denial.
‘I know that you killed him, Klaus.’ She was emboldened by his silence. ‘How did you do it?’
He smiled. Oh yes, he was enjoying this game. ‘Shall I show you?’
He raised an eyebrow when she didn’t answer. ‘I’m quite happy to show you, Ruth,’ he said, taking off his jacket and placing it neatly over the back of a chair. He took his time methodically rolling his shirt sleeves up over his elbows, then he crossed to the bench with its sink and dispensary cupboard.
‘In fact, I would very much like to show you,’ he said, washing his hands and drying them on the towel that hung there, ‘if that is what you truly want.’
She watched, mesmerised, as he lifted a vial and a syringe from the cupboard. Her bravado had deserted her, just as he’d known it would.
He looked at her in the cupboard mirror. ‘Potassium chloride,’ he said, opening the vi
al. ‘Very simple. A heart attack; it was soon over.’ He filled the syringe, noting with pleasure that her eyes were focussed upon what he was doing, and that she was terrified. ‘It will be a heart attack for you too, Ruth. I would like to assure you that you will feel no pain,’ he said, testing the syringe with a flick of his finger, ‘but I can’t be sure. What you will feel, however, is regret. Regret for the uselessness of your death.’
‘You’ll incriminate yourself, Klaus.’ She tried to keep the tremor from her voice. ‘You won’t be able to get away with it a second time.’
He laughed as he turned to face her. ‘A second time? Oh my dear, you underestimate me. I’ve eliminated many. Like Pietro, you have become just one more. But you must understand, Ruth, that your death will be of no consequence. It will serve no purpose. I will disappear as I have in the past, I will become another person. They will never find me.’
In the waiting room, Noreen Hodgeman fiddled frantically with the unfamiliar weapon. She knew a bit about firearms – she’d used a .22 and a .303 on many an occasion – but this appeared a most complicated piece of machinery.
Kevin crept quietly back into the room. ‘I phoned them,’ he whispered. ‘Merv Pritchard’s on his way.’
‘How do I work this bloody thing?’ she hissed.
‘You cock it like this.’ He showed her how to clasp the toggle bolt between finger and thumb and pull it back. He’d seen Nazis do it in the pictures. Kevin loved going to the pictures, he especially loved American war films, and he’d always had a very good memory for details.
Klaus walked towards Ruth with slow deliberation, relishing her terror and his role as executioner.
‘I do not kill you because you are a threat, my dear. I kill you because you have been disloyal to me. You betrayed the pact we had, you and I.’
She backed away as far as she could, then felt the edge of the bed behind her; she could go no further.
‘I kill you, Ruth, because it gives me pleasure to do so.’
He reached out for her. She dived desperately to one side. He grabbed her by the wrist with his left hand, the syringe in his right.
Behind them, the door was thrown open. Klaus turned.
In the open doorway stood his housekeeper and her son.
He curled his fingers around the syringe, secreting it in the palm of his hand. ‘What is the meaning of this, Mrs Hodgeman?’ he said, outraged. ‘Can’t you see I’m with a patient? Get out at once.’
But Noreen Hodgeman extended her arms, the pistol held unwaveringly in both hands. Looking down the sights of the barrel, she aimed directly at his head.
‘Let her go,’ she said.
Klaus released his hold on Ruth’s wrist, and Noreen Hodgeman took several paces into the room.
‘I heard what you said and so did Kevin. You killed that boy. You’re a murderer.’
He wasn’t listening to her. The weapon that was trained on him was his own SS army-issue Luger. Did she know how to use it? he wondered. Was it cocked?
She could see him studying the gun; she knew exactly what he was thinking.
‘Oh it’s cocked, all right,’ she said, ‘you can bet on that. Kevin showed me how.’
Klaus glanced at the simpleton son who’d also stepped into the room.
‘He’s not as stupid as you think,’ she added.
‘How very clever of you, Kevin,’ he said. The boy was big and probably quite strong, but he could finish him off easily with the needle. If he could only tempt the woman a little closer so that he could grab the Luger from her. ‘And you too, Mrs Hodgeman.’ He took a step towards her.
‘Stay right there,’ she ordered. Noreen wasn’t having a bar of it. She stayed very still, the pistol unwavering, her eyes trained steadily on the pistol’s sights.
‘Very well.’ He backed away and perched casually on the side of the desk, watching her for the slightest movement. She would falter soon; such a stance and such concentration were tiring.
‘You’re a bloody Nazi too,’ Noreen said. Her Leonard had died at Tobruk fighting the bloody Nazis, she thought, and all this time she’d been working for one! Poor Len’d roll in his grave if he knew. ‘I heard that part as well. Kevin and me, we’re witnesses.’
‘Good for you.’ He was pleased she was talking. The more she talked, the more her concentration would falter.
Ruth didn’t dare say a word. She could sense he was ready to pounce, and she knew he still held the syringe in his hand, but she couldn’t risk distracting Noreen Hodgeman’s focus.
A car screeched to a halt outside.
‘That’ll be Merv Pritchard,’ Noreen said. ‘Go and let him in, Kevin.’
Kevin did as he was told.
They’d called the police, Klaus thought as he watched the boy walk out into the waiting room. Of course they’d called the police. Why had it not occurred to him that they would?
There was no way out of the surgery, except through the door that led to the hall. As he heard the front door open, Klaus knew there was no escape.
Noreen Hodgeman’s concentration finally faltered. She was surprised as she peered down the pistol’s sights to see him, shirt sleeves still rolled up above his elbows, casually cross his arms as he perched on the side of the desk. He was accepting his fate very calmly, she thought. He was a cool one, she’d give him that much.
They’d hanged them at Nuremberg, Klaus thought. No military execution, no firing squad. They’d hanged them like common criminals. And that was just what they would do to him. Goering had had the right idea, he thought as he pumped the muscles of his left arm and felt with the fingers of his right hand for the vein. Goering had escaped such an ignominious death.
He threaded the tip of the needle into the vein and positioned his thumb over the plunger of the syringe, but he made the mistake of glancing at Ruth. Just one last look, that was all he wanted, and he was pleased at first. She knew what he was doing, and she was saying nothing. She was saving him, just as he had saved her at Auschwitz. He pressed the plunger, injecting the potassium chloride into his vein.
‘You’re a coward, Klaus,’ she whispered.
At the very last moment, she had robbed him of his dignity.
Nineteen fifty-six was going to be an important year for Australians. They eagerly awaited the much heralded arrival of television, and they anticipated with fervent and patriotic pride a plethora of gold medals at the Melbourne Olympics.
But in Cooma, life went on much as usual. It would be some time before they’d see television, and few would travel to Melbourne for the Olympics. They’d follow it like they did any major event, gathered around the wireless, listening to the ABC.
Progress on the Snowy continued. The fourteen-mile Eucumbene-Tumut tunnel ploughed its way relentlessly through the mountain, and new world records were set in tunnel excavation.
The water started slowly encroaching on Adaminaby. A dam wall over four hundred feet high would one day encompass a water capacity eight times as great as Sydney Harbour, and the doomed town would lie beneath a mighty lake.
There were changes in the workplace. Kaiser brought in thermoses to avoid billy tea breaks – and as fast as the Aussies busted them, the bosses replaced them.
For some there were events of more personal significance.
Cam Campbell and his sons won a record haul of ribbons and trophies in the Cooma Show of 1956.
Lucky married Peggy Minchin. Rob Harvey was best man and Ruth was Peggy’s sole bridesmaid; Peggy hadn’t wanted a fancy wedding. ‘I’d ask you to be matron of honour,’ she said to Ruth, ‘but the matron of honour has to be married, I’m told.’ Ruth kept the joke to herself; she didn’t share it with Lucky.
But the most important event on the calendar for Violet was July 26, her son’s first birthday.
Her mother Marge decided to make a party of that week’s Sunday roast in order to celebrate the occasion. Just family and a few close friends – best to have it on a Sunday, she said, so the men didn’t ha
ve to go to work.
This time they ate in the dining room, with the doors to the lounge room wide open in order to catch the heat from the open log fire. It was midwinter and it had been snowing heavily all morning.
With ten of them crammed around the eight-seater dining table, Marge wondered whether she should have got Dave to lift the kitchen table in as well. But no-one seemed to mind, so she stopped worrying.
She stopped worrying about the boys’ table manners too. Dave and Johnno were paying no deference to the fact they were in the dining room, spearing their spuds and meat with their forks although she’d pointedly handed them the serving spoons.
Marge let herself to relax. Everyone was having a very good time, and she was basking in the compliments coming her way. It was an excellent roast, if she said so herself, but then it was so easy now she had the new stove.
She felt very much the proud matriarch as she looked around the table; her sons on either side of her; Cam at the other end. Violet was seated to his left, Maureen to his right and the baby was sleeping in his bassinet nearby. Cam would turn to rock the bassinet every now and then, no doubt hoping the baby would wake up and give him a smile.
‘Don’t, Dad, you’ll wake him up,’ Violet said.
‘Sorry.’
God, but he was a sook of a grandfather, Marge thought.
Lucky and Peggy were seated on one side of the table, and opposite them was Ruth. Marge was pleased that she’d brought her friend Rob Harvey along – such a nice man. She hoped they’d get married; he was obviously dotty about her.
Marge liked Ruth immensely. Well, why wouldn’t she? she wondered as she glanced at her daughter, happy and healthy. Marge Campbell was more indebted to Ruth Stein than words could possibly express. In bringing Pietro’s killer to justice, Ruth Stein had saved Violet’s sanity. Funny, she thought, how she used to have a bit of a set against Germans – only because of the war, of course – and now there were two of them sitting at her table. Well, she wasn’t sure if Lucky really counted as a German. He’d hardly been one of the enemy – Lucky was a Jew. Fancy her grandson’s godfather being a German and a Jew. Who would have thought it? But then her grandson was half-Italian, wasn’t he? Who would have thought that too? My goodness, but the Campbell family was becoming sophisticated.