by Jane Thynne
She burst into a torrent of sobs and buried her face in the sodden handkerchief.
‘Now then, Marlene.’ Udo Franke roused himself from his trance and placed a hand on his wife’s juddering arm. ‘You’re imagining things. Nothing happened in London. Lotti loved that trip. It was a big opportunity for her. How many girls get to visit London?’
‘So much promise, and a few months later she’s dead.’
Udo Franke trained his weary gaze on Clara.
‘Fräulein Vine. My wife and I are touched by your visit. It’s a great comfort to hear how talented our daughter was and we would like to hear more. But I implore you, if you hear anything which could help us find the monster who killed her – anything, no matter how small – you will come back and let us know.’
Clara took his large, moist hand. She knew there was no possibility that she would be privy to any information that could help catch Lotti’s killer, yet she also knew how unbearable she would find the grief if anything befell her godson Erich, and he was not even her flesh and blood. Could people ever be truly happy again after the death of a child?
‘I promise I will.’
On the way to the door, her attention was caught by a small, framed photograph of Lotti.
‘It’s special, that one,’ said Udo Franke. ‘It’s from the dinner in London. It’s only a snap, but it’s the last one we have of our little girl, which is why we put it by the door.’
The picture was entirely different from the artfully posed and backlit studio portraits on the other walls. In it, Lotti sat beaming at the camera across a snowy tabletop, a picture of composure between the crystal decanters and silver bread baskets, surrounded by a gaggle of Faith and Beauty girls. Although it was a group photograph, the eye was instantly drawn to Lotti, the candlelight forming a dazzling halo that accentuated her flawless complexion and the perfect proportions of her face. Next to her, leaning into the picture, was a much plainer girl, with a ruddy-cheeked round face and unbecoming plaits.
‘Who’s that next to Lotti?’
‘That’s her best friend, Hedwig. They knew each other since they were tiny,’ said Marlene Franke. ‘Hedwig looked up to our daughter because Lotti was so good at everything, and so much prettier, of course. But Hedwig’s a nice girl. Very upset too.’
Clara stared at the picture for some minutes, far longer than she needed. It was full of the terrible poignancy that freights photographs of the past. Those smiling faces, so joyful in the present, so optimistic for the future, and so innocent of what was to come. A sadness washed over her as she realized she was really searching for another image – the face of her own sister, Angela.
She didn’t find it.
Opposite the tram stop outside the Frankes’ block, as if in direct mockery of the commuters shuffling their aching feet, was a poster featuring a gleaming new Volkswagen people’s car with the slogan: ‘Save five marks a week and you will drive your own car.’ Most people in the queue looked as likely to buy a rocket to the stars as a Volkswagen. Erich’s grandmother, Frau Schmidt, a nurse at Berlin’s biggest hospital, the Charité, was saving from her meagre salary and had worked out it would take her five years before she could afford one. After another few minutes shuffling alongside the others in the queue, Clara decided to walk.
Berlin was changing. It still looked like Berlin, but every day it was a little different, as subtle as fashion that shifts from one season to the next, raising hemlines, adjusting shoulder pads and tightening waists. It even smelt different. People used to talk about the famous Berliner Luft, the fresh air that blew into the city from the Grunewald, but now the city reeked of sour breath, bitter cigarettes and stale, unwashed bodies. The only soap available was gritty and impossible to lather because there was no fat in it. People had taken to carrying their own soap around with them, if they had any, because to leave it lying unattended risked finding it missing.
Clara’s mind went back to the photograph of Lotti Franke, and the certainty that Angela would have been at the same event. Yet again she regretted the estrangement from her sister. She thought of the last time they were truly close, when she was sixteen and their mother had died. Standing in a ragged group around the graveside, and Angela’s hissed reminder: Dig your nails into your hands to stop yourself crying. Repressing emotion was an article of faith for Angela. Concealment was more than courtesy, it was a way of life.
Behaving properly. Being properly British. That was Angela’s code. Yet surely the quick, intelligent sister she knew was still there – buried beneath the visits to Harrods and bridge nights and society teas. Angela’s letters tended to focus on the interminable round of charity events that she conducted, the death of relations and the relentless progress of her husband’s political career. Gerald is in line for a big promotion. Chamberlain is so impressed with him. Clara responded with a dutiful list of parties, premieres and work reports. Nothing intimate. Nothing political. Nothing real.
Right then she resolved that she would write to Angela very soon, and attempt something they had not managed for ten years. Communication.
Clara passed a loudspeaker lashed to the side of a building, blaring out ‘Deutschland über Alles’ and obliging everyone to give a perfunctory right-armed salute. She generally avoided giving the Führergruss by ensuring she was carrying something in both hands, but that day, distracted by thoughts of Lotti, she failed to comply.
A hand on her shoulder made her jump like a coiled spring. A man was standing in her path.
‘Documents please.’
He had a complexion the colour of concrete and an expression that epitomized the Berliner Schnauze, the direct, graceless, sceptical manner so many of the city’s inhabitants had perfected. He flicked the lapel of his jacket to reveal the aluminium disc marking him out as Gestapo.
Clara handed over her ID and watched the stupidity and aggression warring in his face as he scrutinized it. Although the small piece of card was beginning to fray at the edges, she never had any doubts about the quality of her identity documents; such was the skill of their forgery. All the same, even if papers were in order, a policeman or Gestapo official could still confiscate them if he didn’t like you. Clara wondered what this man saw in her. The usual Berliner, cowed in the face of authority and determined to keep a low profile? How much did her face give away? Into her head floated the remark of Conrad Adler.
Like fire behind ice.
‘Alles in Ordnung.’
Gracelessly, the man returned her identity card and she stuffed it back in her bag.
She carried on, remembering Mary Harker’s warning. They’re intensifying their surveillance. Goebbels has assigned a minder to each of us. Might that apply not only to foreign journalists but actresses too? She thought again of the man in the lobby of her apartment block; the lean, expressionless face, the trench coat belted loosely, the way he avoided her eye.
In the fortnight before he had disappeared, Leo had talked a lot about the techniques of espionage. One afternoon he had told her about a list that all agents were being trained to memorize, if they believed they were being followed.
Number One: look out for the unobtrusive. A shadow could be anyone. The young woman who clicked her painted fingernails on the counter beside you in a shop. The newspaper seller who slipped you a friendly remark each day with your change. The runner at the studio, or the car park attendant who joked about how he would always save the best space for you. Or a headscarfed Frau, like the one a few steps behind, grey-skinned and footsore, weighed down by a kilo of potatoes in her shopping basket.
Number Two: watch for anyone walking at a steady pace. A shadow would neither be nonchalant, nor too purposeful, though as far as vehicles went, the opposite applied.
Number Three: listen for a car that moves either too fast or too slow.
If surveillance was suspected, there was Number Four: change your appearance. Find a fresh coat, ditch your jacket, remove a hat. The slightest change could help to evade detection.
B
ut whereas it was easy to put on a headscarf or abandon a briefcase, it was far harder to shave off a moustache or disguise hair colour in the course of pursuit. Thus Number Five: check for distinguishing features. A shadow rarely had time to change their shoes. There was also Number Six: listen for what you don’t hear. And if surveillance was certain, there was Number Seven: stick to public places. In case of arrest or capture there was Number Eight: stay calm. Don’t react instinctively.
There were a couple of other points on the list and Leo had made Clara commit them to memory and recite it back to him.
‘That list will keep you safe, Clara. It’ll be more use to you than any creed.’
That was one relief about the trip she was to make the next day. In London, there was no chance of being followed. And it would not be the Gestapo she had to worry about, but Captain Miles Fitzalan, whoever he might turn out to be.
Chapter Five
Of all the beautiful places in Berlin, could there be any lovelier than the sunlit drawing room of the Faith and Beauty community building, with its marzipan-yellow walls, charming meringues of plaster on the cornices and tall windows propped open to allow a freshening waft of pine from the woods beyond? Outside, a flock of hens pecked in the shade of the orchard and horses were being saddled up for riding lessons. A group of rowers were preparing for an outing to the lake, and on the lawn, two girls in face masks were taking instruction from the fencing master, their bodies as quick and flexible as the sleek silver foils they wielded. The quiet of the morning was punctuated by the solid, comforting clunk of the grandfather clock, and the faint scrape of a violin issued from the music room on the other side of the house. It was impossible to imagine that near this idyllic place just a few days earlier, a crumpled body had been found beneath a heap of leaves.
When Hedwig Holz first saw the Faith and Beauty home she was open-mouthed with amazement. She had grown up in a drab apartment, with nothing but a window box to tend and a dank cobblestone courtyard below. Even though their apartment was slightly better than their neighbours’ on account of her father’s managerial job, it had still taken weeks to accustom herself to such refinement. When she told her parents about the classes in Art, home décor, fashion design, needlework, flower arranging and conversation, her mother could barely contain her amazement. Conversation! Who needed classes in that?
Hedwig felt much the same about Art. Sitting in front of her easel she sighed, squinted at the life model, made some further experimental cross-hatching, then rubbed out the face she had drawn. Already a murky patch testified to the number of times the sketch had been erased – the model was beginning to look like something from one of those old horror films, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, starring Conrad Veidt, with nothing but a shadowy void where her features should be. Hedwig dreaded the moment Herr Fritzl, the art master, turned up to linger at her easel, twirling his moustache while he tried to think of something constructive to say. Their portraits were supposed to mirror the correct proportions of the Nordic form – every figure must have broad shoulders, a long body, and slender hands – but Hedwig’s sketch could have been straight out of Grimm’s fairy tales.
The Saturday life drawing class had been Lotti’s idea. Hedwig didn’t have an artistic bone in her body and would gladly have signed up for skiing, rowing, even high board diving rather than humiliate herself with Art. Hedwig’s father, a stolid production line manager at the AEG engineering works, thought art training, like everything else on the Faith and Beauty curriculum, was a lot of effete nonsense, but he deferred to her mother, who had ambitions for her only daughter. Privately Herr Holz told Hedwig to concentrate on her job and think about her promotion prospects. If indeed she had time for promotion, before marriage and motherhood came along and put an end to all that.
Hedwig agreed. She had never imagined getting a job as a librarian and she loved it. Although her most taxing duty involved looking interested while doing very little, she enjoyed sitting at her desk, greeting visitors and being the only female in the building. She could think of a thousand better ways of spending her weekends than attending Faith and Beauty art classes, but Lotti had set her heart on it.
It was agonizing to think that Lotti had sat in this class only two weeks ago, sketching costumes, her bold, confident lines delineating impossibly glamorous women, their outfits carefully annotated in her flowing handwriting. Hedwig could picture her now, high eyebrows arched above aquamarine eyes, chin jutted forward as if she was born to it. As if, indeed, it was all slightly beneath her.
Hedwig knew Lotti only wanted company, yet where Lotti was concerned she could never say no. Faith and Beauty girls were encouraged to think of themselves as a spiritual sisterhood, but to her Lotti was more like an ordinary sister. As children their two families had sometimes taken holidays in the countryside outside Berlin together and Hedwig and Lotti shared a room. She recalled Lotti’s grave face, reciting German poetry, or expanding on her ambitions for life, requiring only that Hedwig be a devoted listener. And when Hedwig had confided her most precious memory, of the first time a man kissed her, Lotti had burst into peals of mocking, sisterly laughter.
Sister or not, she was dead now, and Hedwig felt an utter desolation.
The murder had sent shockwaves through the Faith and Beauty community, but although no one could talk of anything else, they were forbidden to talk about it at all. That was useless when it was all over the newspapers and a pair of steel-helmeted soldiers were shuffling their feet on permanent guard outside the front gate. A hasty set of new regulations had been formulated for the girls. Shooting was curtailed so long as the killer was at large and replaced with rowing. No girl was permitted to walk alone the short distance from the Griebnitzsee S-Bahn through the forest, though that was quite unnecessary advice because being alone was frowned on. The Party disapproved of solitude on the grounds that faithful citizens would always prefer communal life and privacy in all its forms was strongly proscribed for Faith and Beauty girls.
Hedwig stared out of the window and wondered if her mother would agree to her leaving now. Etta Holz adored the idea of her only daughter being here. Faith and Beauty training gave German girls such an advantage. No going to the Nuremberg rally and getting pregnant by the first Hitler Youth you encountered. Hedwig would be invited to parties with senior Party members. She would be cultivated and polished and pass into the top echelons of society with ease. ‘Once you’ve finished you’ll hold dinner parties for all the top SS men and you’ll be able to talk about . . .’ Here Frau Holz paused, having no idea what top SS men might possibly talk about. The Merry Widow, she finished lamely, recalling the Führer’s favourite operetta. ‘It will pay for itself, you’ll see.’
But the real reason that her mother favoured the Faith and Beauty Society was that it meant her daughter would grow out of Jochen Falke.
Jochen did not have the kind of looks deemed handsome among Hedwig’s friends. His high, Slavic cheekbones and skinny frame were far from the muscular athletes modelled by the Führer’s favourite sculptor, Arno Breker. But he had quick, hazel eyes which always seemed to flicker with amusement and a swagger about him that reflected his inner confidence.
He was an artist too – in a way. He worked at an art manufacturing plant in Kreuzberg, a humdrum place that carried out all forms of printing and publishing, as well as commercial artwork, signs and advertising. But the real money-spinner was merchandizing the Führer. Hitler souvenirs were big business. Birthday figurines, postcards, ashtrays, medallions, posters, cocktail forks and bottle stoppers. There was a whole variety of jewellery, and cameo brooches were especially popular because everyone wanted their Führer close to their heart. Jochen’s speciality was pictures. On a good day he could reproduce Adolf Hitler a hundred times over.
‘What takes the Fräulein’s fancy?’ he would laugh, parodying an unctuous shop assistant. ‘We have Hitler in a gilt frame, Hitler with children, Hitler at the Berghof, Hitler with Bismarck, or would Fräulein prefe
r the Führer’s hands alone?’
He worked with a photograph in front of him, softening the nose and making the eyes larger, adding a tint to the cheeks. ‘Just doing a little cosmetic surgery.’ He brought one back for Hedwig’s mother, who hung it proudly opposite her bed. Hedwig thought seeing the Führer’s scowl like that last thing at night would give her nightmares, but her parents seemed to like it.
She looked up to see Herr Fritzl approaching. He was bound to say something uncomplimentary about her efforts. Last time he claimed Hedwig’s approach smacked dangerously of Degenerate Art, which was tantamount to accusing her of treason. Apparently in the Weimar period Berlin had been a hell-pit of sexual depravity, and obscene nudes by Degenerate painters like Otto Dix corrupted the morals of an entire nation.
The thought of Otto Dix’s nudes only reminded her of Lotti, her graceful gymnast’s limbs askew in the clumsy crush of death. She pictured the diaphanous wings of flies glittering like cut coal in the air above her body. What had Lotti ever done to deserve that fate?
Hedwig picked up her charcoal stick and turned back to the horror on her easel, but found she could no longer see it because of the tears slipping down her face.
Chapter Six
On London’s King’s Road there was a queue to collect gas masks from Chelsea Town Hall. Whole families were waiting, the children jumping up and down, wriggling with excitement, the parents, anxiety etched on their faces, keeping up appearances because they were lining up alongside their cooks and housemaids. One little boy was singing, ‘There’s going to be a war!’ until he was abruptly hushed by his father. Those who were leaving, already issued with masks, were rather more subdued. Having had their first taste of the acrid rubber contraptions with their bleary glass panels at the front and straps fastened behind the head, perhaps the dangers of the future seemed suddenly more real.
Watching from the top deck of the number 11 bus, however, Clara was transported to the past. She had a vision of herself on this same bus with her mother, sitting in exactly the same spot – front row of the top deck – Helene Vine upright and proper, handbag balanced on her knee, and Clara herself, a small simulacrum, pressed warmly against her mother’s side. Angela, meanwhile, sat aloof across the aisle. Clara had always been her mother’s daughter – the only one of them named for a distant German ancestor rather than a resolutely English relation – and the only child who resembled her too. Angela, with her honey-blonde hair and long gangling legs, was already exhibiting the first coltish inklings of the glamorous model she would become.