Death in Berlin (31 page)

‘Stella, you can’t!’ gasped Miranda. ‘Don’t you understand? It’s too dangerous. You know no one is allowed inside these houses! Colonel Leslie said so … he said they could fall down at any

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moment, and that it was even dangerous to go anywhere near them. He said … he said …’

‘/said you were to go inside,’ said Stella. ‘And you’ll do as I say!’

Her voice was the voice of a stranger - as changed as her face - and Miranda turned obediently and walked through the gaping doorway into the silent house. Nothing made sense any more. This could not possibly be real. It was only some fantastic and melodramatic nightmare from which she would presently awake.

A torch flashed on behind her and the thin, yellow pencil of light played on the rubble-strewn space that had once been a hall, and a dark ruined archway beyond.

A cold ring of metal pressed against Miranda’s neck and she walked forward, following the beam of the torch that Stella held in her left hand. They passed through a gaping doorway and then another one, into a room where the moon peered down from a roofless square above them. A curving flight of steps, choked with debris, descended into blackness and Miranda groped her way down them, following that inexorable bar of light, into what appeared to be part of a ruined, vaulted cellar, with other cellars opening off it.

Loose bricks, rubble and bomb debris slid and clattered under their feet, every step dislodging miniature landslides that continued to rattle down even after they had reached the foot of the stairs. The crash and patter of falling odds and ends filled the darkness with echoes, so that it almost seemed as though not two, but ten or a dozen people were descending in Indian-file to the ruined cellar, following the two women down …

Moonlight lay in one small, cold patch at the foot of the broken steps, but in the blackness beyond and around them the torch light seemed to gather strength.

Stella said: ‘Now take off that bracelet and hand it to me. No, don’t turn round!’

Her high, gasping voice reverberated hollowly around the unseen, empty spaces, and a Greek chorus of ghostly voices re—

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peated ‘don’t turn round,.. turn round… round… ‘ And once again there came a soft, ominous clatter of falling debris

Miranda’s fingers fumbled with the stiff clasp, but the instinct of self-preservation was strong enough to keep her own voice calm and reasonable: ‘You can’t use that revolver, Stella, because if you do, you’ll die too. The noise and the explosion, in a ruin like this, will be enough to bring the roof down on us - and the walls as well. If you fire, you may kill me. But you’ll be buried alive!’

But it was no use. Stella was beyond the reach of reason, and though she must have heard that deadly rustle and fall of displaced rubble, it conveyed no warning to her obsessed brain. Her voice shot up and she said: ‘If you think you can frighten me, you’re wasting your time. Stop talking and give me that bracelet!’

If I turn quickly, thought Miranda, I might be able to knock the torch out of her hand … she couldn’t do anything in the dark. She’s never fired a gun in her life. She’d miss except at short range. If the torch went out I’d have a chance …

But she could not do it. She seemed to be gripped by a deadly inertia that prevented her body from obeying her will; it could only obey that high, unnatural voice that was, unbelievably, Stella’s.

The bracelet slipped off her wrist and she held it out behind her and felt it taken.

‘Now go and stand over there.’

Miranda moved forward again and turned, her eyes dazzled by the full glare of the torch.

‘I told you not to turn round!’ cried Stella, shrilly. ‘I won’t have you looking at me! I can’t do it while you look at me!’ Her voice broke suddenly into a high, childish babble: ‘It’s not my fault! I can’t help it! You shouldn’t have spied on me. I wouldn’t have touched you if it hadn’t been for that. But you’d have told. And I won’t hang for Mademoiselle. I won’t! And you tried to get Robert, so it serves you right… it serves you right!’

She lifted the revolver in a shaking hand; and as she did so Miranda saw a movement in the blackness behind her.

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There was someone else in the cellars. Someone who had followed them down. Two people - three

‘No one will know!’ gabbled Stella. ‘No one found the diamonds, and no one will find you.’

She steadied the wavering revolver, and a hand came over her shoulder and twisted it out of her grasp.

Til take that please, Mrs Melville,’ said Simon Lang gently.

Stella screamed. A high, horrible scream like a trapped rabbit, and the torch fell to the floor and went out.

Someone brushed past Miranda in the dark, and then the blackness was rent by a flash of flame and the crashing reverberations of a shot.

Miranda heard Simon say savagely: ‘You bloody idiot!‘and then there was another sound; a slow, ominous mutter like a growl of thunder; and a slither and rumble of falling stone.

The vaulted darkness was suddenly full of dust and torch beams and someone was shouting: ‘Get on up those stairs!’ and someone else had caught her arm and was dragging her, stumbling and running across the uneven floor and up the slippery, broken steps and through the rubble-strewn, roofless rooms to the safety of the moonlit garden.

The rumble grew to a roar and the gaunt black shell of the house appeared to sway and dissolve against the night sky as one wall leaned tiredly inwards and slowly, very slowly, collapsed upon itself.

The ground shook as though it had been hit by an earthquake, and for a minute or two the moonlight was thick with dust and mortar and flying splinters of stone. And when the garden was silent again only one wall of the house remained, and a gasping voice was saying over and over again: ‘I tried to get her, sir, but she twists away and runs back. She twists away and runs back … I tried together …’ ……

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‘It was the German, of course,’ said Simon. ‘I should have remembered that a continental cop is apt to be a bit quick on the draw. He imagined that she could escape and fired at her. But you can’t go loosing off firearms in a building of that description without asking for trouble.’

Miranda said: ‘Was she - was she alive?’

Simon looked down at her and glimpsed something of the horror that lurked behind the small white face.

He looked away again and spoke in a completely matter-of-fact voice.

‘Yes. For a time. Long enough to make some sort of a statement. It was the best way out for her, you know. She knew it too. The last thing she said was: “I never thought I’d live to be grateful to a German.”’

Miranda’s mouth twisted and she bent her head hurriedly over the suitcase to hide the fact that there were tears in her eyes.

Over two days had passed since the night that Stella had died, and although Miranda had been questioned and asked to make and sign statements, and been interviewed exhaustively by a number of persons in authority, she had not spoken to Simon until this morning, when he had walked unannounced into her bedroom at the Lawrences’ house and found her kneeling on the floor packing a row of shoes into the bottom of a suitcase.

Simon said dryly: ‘There is no need to be sentimental over her just because she’s dead. She wasn’t an admirable character. She connived at one murder and committed another. And would have committed a third if we hadn’t prevented it. It’s her unfortunate

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husband you can be sorry for. This has just about broken him up. He loved her very much: more than she knew, I think. I hear he’s going home on compassionate leave.’

Miranda nodded without speaking, and Simon looked down at the bent head and the hands that were attempting to wrap a shoe in tissue paper and bungling the job because they trembled so, and realized that talking might ease that intolerable strain. He sat down on Miranda’s bed and said in a casual and conversational

tone: ‘When did you realize that it was Mrs Melville?’

Miranda dropped the shoe onto the floor and sat back on her heels.

‘It was the window,’ she said. ‘The little window by the front door in the hall was open, and I knew quite well that it hadn’t been open before. It scared me stiff, because I knew that there was no one but Stella and myself in the house, so I thought that someone must have tried to get in. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And when I saw the window of the Ridder house I suddenly realized that of course it couldn’t possibly have been opened from the outside. It could only have been opened from the inside. And I knew just when it had been opened, because the draught from it had blown into the drawing-room. But Stella had been in the hall then, and she would have seen if anyone else had been there. So she must have opened it herself. And then all at once I remembered that the doorbell and the telephone bell sounded alike, and I - I don’t know why, but I had a sudden picture in my mind of Stella reaching out and pressing the bell, and then going quickly to the

telephone. And I blurted it out, and ‘ Miranda stopped and

gave a hopeless little shrug of her shoulders.

She picked up another shoe and began to wrap it mechanically in paper, but her hands were steadier and presently she spoke again, and without lifting her head.

‘Simon, why did it have to happen? I don’t understand!’ ť.

‘What is it you don’t understand, dear?’

‘Anything! Anything at all. It’s all such a ghastly muddle.’

‘Not now,’ said Simon. ‘We’ve sorted it out by now.’ He leant

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back against the bed-head with his hands behind his head. ‘Lottie helped us there. Lottie and Wally.’

‘Lottie!’ Miranda turned swiftly: ‘Why how could she ‘

‘Ssh! Don’t interrupt. Mademoiselle, who was Frau Schumacher, thought that Brigadier Brindley might possibly have recognized her, and when he took those sleeping pills she saw her chance. She took one herself you remember; intending, I’m fairly certain, to give it to Lottie. But Lottie poured her hot milk down the back of the basin while Mademoiselle was out of the carriage for a few minutes.’

Miranda said quickly: ‘So she wasn’t asleep after all!’ ‘No. She only pretended to be. She was still awake when her governess left the carriage that night, and she saw her come back. She saw something else as well. Mademoiselle had worn a pair of black gloves, and when she returned to the carriage she rinsed those gloves in the basin and the water turned red.’

Miranda caught her breath in a hard gasp. ‘But why didn’t she

tell?’

‘For a very simple reason - from a child’s point of view,’ said Simon. ‘She had been told so often that hot milk at night made her sleep that she was afraid to admit that she had not slept, for fear that it would give away the fact that she had thrown away her milk instead of drinking it! All the same she did tell someone: she told Wally. And then a little later she told her stepmother - that was just before Mrs Melville walked into your room at the Berlin hostel and found her governess rifling your suitcases.’

‘So you were right about that! Was it my bracelet she wanted?’

‘It was. And for a very odd reason. We all thought that she and her husband murdered the Ridders for the sake of the diamonds, but it turns out that they knew nothing whatever about them. They had planned the murder for the sake of the money and the jewels alone. They knew there was a safe in the cellar, and had once seen it open; but they thought it only contained special wines. They had no idea that it concealed a second safe.

‘Herr Ridder had mentioned on arrival that night that he had

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managed to acquire some Napoleon brandy, and he carried it directly down to the cellar. They must have killed him when he came up. When they came to strip his body they found the bracelet with the Egyptian charm.’

‘Why did they keep it? Did they think it meant something?’

‘No. They threw it in with the other stuff merely because it had to be removed, since Herr Ridder was known to have worn it. Schumacher escaped to England, where he died, but Greta Schumacher was left behind and ended up in a concentration camp under a false name. And in that same camp she met someone she knew: a distant cousin, Rosa Millier, who with her husband, Kurt, used to be called in to help as extra staff whenever the Ridders entertained - Rosa as parlourmaid and Kurt as footman-cumwaiter…

‘The Milliers had no idea why they had been arrested, for the Ridder story was not public property at that time - or for some considerable time afterwards - but I presume it was known that they worked regularly for Herr Willi and his wife. Poor Kurt was interrogated on arrival and died in the process: apparently he had a heart condition, and had been poorly for some time. Because of their kinship, the two women, Greta Schumacher - or whatever she was calling herself then - and Rosa Miiller naturally gravitated together, and one presumes that Greta swore Rosa to secrecy in the matter of her identity, and cooked up a good story to account for it…

‘They liked to talk over old times together, and one day, in the course of conversation, Rosa told how her husband, who had been helping clear up after a late party at the Ridders’, took several unopened bottles of wine back to the cellar, and surprised Herr Willi opening a safe in the back of the one in which he kept his special wines. He’d already opened the back of that safe; and was fiddling with the dials of an inner one: reading off the numbers, or the code or whatever, from a small, oddly shaped key attached to a chain bracelet. When he heard Kurt he whipped round so that his back hid the safe, and told him off like a pickpocket. Fortu-244

nately, Kurt had the sense to play the idiot-boy so convincingly that it all blew over, but Willi’s fury had scared him so badly that he didn’t even dare tell his Rosa about it until over a year later by which time Hitler had marched into Poland and the incident didn’t seem in the least important

‘Greta certainly didn’t think anything of it. She had always known that Herr Ridder had a wine safe built into a wall in the cellar, and if there was a second safe concealed behind it, she supposed that he kept his top secret documents there. And since she was not interested in official documents, she never gave it another thought. Until Brigadier Brindley came out with that talk about the diamonds, and you told him about the Egyptian charmand actually handed it around so that everyone could have a good look at it! It was only then that “Mademoiselle Beljame”, née Greta Schumacher, remembered cousin Rosa’s story and started putting two and two together; and came up with the right answer.’