City of Shadows (34 page)

“What man?”

“I don’t know.” Frau Busse was becoming frightened. “A big man, he said, but Pieter is so small he—”

“You didn’t say this at the inquest.”

“No, because he’d gone, Siegfried. He couldn’t have seen ...what happened.”

Your punishment,
mein Herr. Something was coming. He dragged in breath and fought for slowness. “Sit down,” he said. “And you too,” he told the nun. “Now then, a man, a big man, carried my wife’s shopping down the street on the day she died.”

“Well, Pieter said so, but—”

“And
you
”—he turned on Sister Maria—“heard her come into the hallway. What did she say exactly?”

“ ‘God bless you. That would be so kind.’ I think so, but this door was between us.”

“He must have handed her the shopping and gone,” Frau Busse said. “When we heard ...Oh, Siegfried, we heard her shriek and fall, like we told the inquest. We ran out into the hall. There was nobody there. He’d gone. The hallway was empty except for—”

“Had she closed the front door?”

“Oh, Siegfried.” Frau Busse had her hands to her cheeks. “I can’t re
member, it was so terrible.”

“No,” Maria said. “The front door was open, but how could she close it with shopping in her hands?”

She’d have kicked it shut, he thought. It was a cold day, she’d have kicked it shut. But she didn’t because he was carrying her shopping up
stairs for her and would be going out again immediately.
Bless you, that would be so kind.

Your punishment,
mein Herr.

“He was carrying the shopping upstairs for her,” Schmidt said. He thought, I’m not going to be able to take this. He was carrying her shop
ping upstairs. He pushed her.

“No, Siegfried.” Frau Busse was kind but firm. “There was nobody with her. When I heard the noise—oh, dear, you know, when she fell— we went out into the hall, didn’t we, Maria?”

He was standing on the landing upstairs, in the shadows, watching them.

“There was nobody there, only...And then we ran next door to the hardware store to phone for an ambulance.”

Leaving the front door open for him to make his escape.

He left them both in tears without saying good-bye.

He went back to the Alexanderplatz and demanded an interview with Ringer. While he was waiting, he set the case before Willi—and did it badly. “She was murdered, Sergeant. The killer, the one who killed Tchichagova . . . this nun heard Hannelore thank him.
Not
just because he’d carried her shopping in the street. Because he was carry
ing it upstairs. She said, this nun says she said, ‘God bless you. That would be so kind.’ That
would be
so kind. Not ‘Bless you, that
was
kind of you for having helped me,’ but ‘Bless you, how kind you are for help
ing me
now
.’”

“I see, boss,” Willi said gently.

Oh, Christ, the semantics would defeat them. But he knew how she talked; they didn’t. He
knew.
She was always polite and her grammar perfect.

“He told me, Willi. I came out of the U-bahn, and I was running down the street, and he ...Oh, Jesus, he put himself in front of me. And he told me. I thought he was talking to somebody else. But he wasn’t. He was telling me:
Your punishment,
mein Herr.”

Willi walked with him to Ringer’s office, holding his arm as if he were injured.

He said it all over again to the chief, just as badly, hearing his babble bounce back at him from a wall of incomprehension.

“I led him to her, do you see, sure as if I left a trail. Clever fellow, me, walking into their lair in Kreuzberg. I should have carried a sign: ‘Come and get me.’ I didn’t need to. I threatened them, so I had to be hurt.”

“I see,” Ringer said, glancing at Willi. “Let me get this straight, In
spector. You believe your wife to have been murdered. ...You received our condolences, I hope?”

“Yes.” There’d been an official wreath as well as private ones from his fellow officers; he hadn’t got around to thanking anybody yet.

“Your evidence—forgive me, Inspector—is a remark your wife made, heard through a closed door, and that of a child who saw someone carrying your wife’s shopping for her.”

“Yes.” His fist on Ringer’s desk made the silver inkwell jump. “For Je
sus’ sake,
listen
to me. They got her instead of me, to warn me off. They got her because I think small and people like them think big. It’s their fucking universe; they can move around in it freely because . . . because they have no goodness. They’re untrammeled. They don’t have rules—”

He stopped, uselessness making him mute.

He started again. “Give me some men. Street interviews ...some
body must have seen him. And Kreuzberg, I’ll grill every one of those lit
tle bastards; somebody there’ll know. Röhm contacted him, told him.”

“Captain Röhm has already been to see me,” Ringer said. “He has filed a complaint. He alleges there is a photograph missing.”

And I bet he seemed your sort of man, Schmidt thought; ex-army, Old Germany, discipline
über alles
. But Ringer had rules, codes, procedures—he was circumscribed by them; Röhm had none.

He leaned forward.
“Did you give him my address?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, he fucking got it from somewhere.”

Ringer’s mustache twitched but his tolerance held for the discour
tesy of grief. “Very well, Inspector, the matter will be investigated, of course. Not by you.” He held up a finger to hold Schmidt back. “
Not
by you. Personal involvement conflicts with judgment in these matters. I’ll put Inspector Bolle on it, a competent officer as you know.”

Competence. He didn’t want competence, he wanted action. He ar
gued even as Ringer’s face became more set, even as he knew that every word confirmed his lack of balance. It ended with Ringer suspending him for two more weeks on compassionate grounds.

He couldn’t rest. He went up and down his street, questioning people, grabbing pedestrians, going into every shop. One or two said they
might have seen a man carrying Hannelore’s shopping, they couldn’t be sure, and no, they couldn’t remember the date. He went in to Alexanderplatz every day and pestered Bolle until the inspector banned him from the third floor altogether. Out of kindness, Willi met him most evenings for coffee. He said Bolle was doing all that could be done. At the Kreuzberg gym, Schmidt was remembered—not kindly—but there seemed general and genuine ignorance of his home address. Röhm, now back in Munich, had convinced the interviewing officer there that he knew nothing. Lotte Busse and her sister-in-law merely repeated their statements and could add no more.

“Could just have been an accident, boss,” Willi said carefully.

“It fucking wasn’t.” He knew it wasn’t.

Esther disliked Baron
von Kleist on sight, but that was only fair— he’d disliked her as soon as he’d been given her name. Kept standing in the large hall, she heard the footman announce her and then the baron’s loud “Solomonova? Now it’s a damn Jewess! I suppose we’d better see her.”

The footman who ushered her into the presence wore livery and a powdered wig—accoutrements she thought had died out with the waltz.

It was a large and beautiful room with wide windows looking over woods and a canal she couldn’t quite place—the city could still con
fuse her.

“Fräulein Solomonova.”

A man and a woman of late middle age were sitting in two easy chairs by a window, drinking coffee. Neither got up. The man crooked his finger. “Come here, young woman.”

Esther moved closer. The woman put down her cup and raised a pair of lorgnettes on a gold chain around her neck with which to study Es-ther’s scar.

“You are employed by Potrovskov?”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” Baron von Kleist said. He emphasized the word like someone who’d won a confession after intensive interrogation. “I believe you at
tended the grand duchess Anastasia for a while.”

“Anna? Yes.”

“The grand duchess, yes.” They’d got that straight. “Well, look here, my girl, it must be made clear to him that Her Imperial Highness has moved on. She has been taken up by the circle to which she belongs, and any unfortunate alliances she may have made in the past are be
hind her. I want it understood that we cannot have unsuitable, I may even say coarse, women hammering on the door and shouting . . .”

Oh, boy,
Esther thought with sudden happiness. Clara’s been here.

“It upsets the servants, it upsets the grand duchess, it upsets
me.
We can’t have every ragtag calling just when they like. We are doing every
thing to safeguard Her Imperial Highness.”

“The Bolsheviks are out to murder her, you know,” the baroness said.

“Filthy Reds. I’ve got no time for the Nazi Party, but the sooner this country’s cleansed of all Bolsheviks and their Hebrew backers . . .”

It could be the Landwehr Canal, Esther thought, studying the view. She said, “I’d like to see Anna now, please.”

The baron gave a disgusted “Tchah” and waved her off.

The baroness signaled to the footman waiting at the door. “Her Im
perial Highness has agreed to receive you, but you can stay for only a minute or two,” she said. “She is unwell, and we don’t want her agi
tated. Hans, show Fräulein Solova to the grand duchess’s room.”

She was announced into Anna’s room. It was nearly as magnificent as the one she’d just left, part sitting room, part bedroom. The curtains were carelessly drawn, allowing low winter sun to shine between open
ings and form shafts along the Aubusson carpet. Anna had done her best to untidy it but was presumably being thwarted by maids. Never
theless, a breakfast tray had spilled on the bed, a towel trailed on the floor from an open bathroom door, clothes from a wardrobe.

If these were evidence of Anna’s attempt to get up, she’d abandoned it and lay on the bed in a nightgown with her Pekingese clutched in her arms.

She looked at Esther without surprise. “This is Liu-bang, like the emperor. Who’s his mommy’s precious little baby, then?”

“Greetings, Liu-bang.” Esther picked up a little gilt Empire chair and took it to the bedside to sit on.

“I do not like it here,” Anna said.

“Why?”

“They bring people all the time. Always I tell them I want privacy, but no, they show me off to their friends. Madam Tolstoy comes and asks questions. Her, I do not mind—she knows I am Anastasia—but then they get Volkov.”

“Alexis Volkov?”

Anna nodded. “Mama’s groom of the chamber. They say he will report back to the dowager empress. He ask me questions, and when I answer, he cries and kissed my hand and said, ‘Your Imperial Highness’—the baroness see it with her own eyes—but there is no word from Grand
mama since he went back to Denmark to report.”

And there won’t be, Esther thought; the day the dowager czarina ac
knowledges Anna as her granddaughter will be The Day.

“You’ve got to stick it out for a while, Anna,” she said. “You’re safe here. I’m not keen on them either, but they believe in you and they’ll protect you until the killer’s caught. ...Oh, lovie, don’t.”

Anna’s small face had shrunk; she looked ill and old. Esther put out a hand to her. The dog growled. “Listen to me, Anna,” she said. “It can’t go on like this. You’ve got to help the police catch him. He can’t hurt you then. He’s not ...fabulous—he’s flesh and blood. They can get him for what he did to Natalya, finish him.”

Anna’s eyes wandered to the window. “These von Kleists, they tell everybody about me, show me like I am their pedigree cow, I am a dis
play. It gives me a headache. My sight ...everything is hazy.”

“I know about the baby,” Esther said. “The police know.”

There was a long pause. Anna held up the Pekingese and pursed her lips toward its flat nose. “You protect me, Liu-bang. You protect your little mistress, yes you do, yes he does.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“No baby.”

“I went to the hospital. There’s a woman in the almoner’s office who remembers that while you were in there you signed adoption papers.”

“No baby.”

“Tell me.”

Anna said calmly, “Sometime I wish I die then, so I would not re
member now. At Ekaterinburg. In the Ipatiev House. For Special Pur
pose.”

“You were raped?”

“You won’t tell? You wait for me to die before you tell?”

“I won’t tell.”

“It was Bolshevik devils, many, many. I fight, but they hold me. Many hold me. The pain was not the worst. It was the
words,
the
terri
ble
words.”