Death in Berlin (3 page)

Sally Page had married a junior officer in Robert’s regiment when she was barely eighteen, and despite four years of matrimony she still looked and behaved like a charming and giddy teenager. Andy and she had been stationed in Fayid during the two and a half years that Robert had been in the Suez Canal Zone, and now they too were rejoining the regiment.

If Stella looked like a florist’s rose, thought Miranda, Sally Page looked like a wild rose: sweet and fresh, heartbreakingly young and essentially English. And from behind Stella’s shoulder she was

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smiling now at Stella’s husband. It was a revealing smile, as revealing as Mrs Leslie’s look had been; and Miranda, observing it, was aware of a swift little jab of anxiety. No; perhaps it had not been such a good idea after all, this holiday in Berlin …

‘Number twenty-eight, did you say?’ said Brigadier Brindley. ‘Why, of course I know the house. And I can assure you that you will find it most comfortable. Quite one of the pleasantest houses in Charlottenburg. You have been fortunate.’

That’s what Robert says,’ said Stella. ‘But you know what army husbands are like. They tend to overdo the selling angle just to cheer you up.’

‘Well, in this instance he is perfectly correct. A charming house, and quite undamaged. Interesting too: though only by association.’

‘How do you mean?’ Robert leant forward and joined in the conversation: ‘Did it belong to some spectacular Nazi?’

‘No, but it belonged to the mother of Herr Ridder - Willi Ridder. And I suppose one could almost call him a spectacular character. Or if not spectacular, at least mysterious and intriguing.’

‘Do tell us,’ begged Stella. ‘I adore being mystified and intrigued.’

The Brigadier had a reputation as a raconteur, and was not at all averse to holding forth to an interested audience. He cleared his throat and took a small sip of wine.

‘Willi Ridder,’ began Brigadier Brindley, ‘was a prominent member of the Nazi Secret Service. He was not one of those who took the spotlight at the front of the stage, but rather one of the puppet-masters who stayed in the background and pulled the strings. As far as outward appearances were concerned, he was merely a wealthy Berliner in high favour with the Nazi hierarchy.’

‘And he lived in our house? It sounds as if it ought to be very Park Laneish,’ said Stella.

‘No, it was only his mother who lived in your house. He and his

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wife lived in another house not so very far from yours, which is a ruin now: it stopped a stray bomb fairly early in the war, I believe. In spite of his wealth he lived comparatively simply. No large staff, just a married couple who lived in; one of them the cook-housekeeper and the other a sort of valet-cum-major-domo. There were the usual “dailies”, I suppose, and reliable extra help who were called in only when required, for special occasions.’

The Brigadier paused as though he had made a point, and took another sip of Niersteiner, and Robert said; ‘I don’t suppose big shots in any Secret Service like having a lot of hangers-on around the house. Two dyed-in-the-wool trusties are probably preferable to a platoon of doubtfuls, even if it does mean that the soup is sometimes lukewarm and there is the odd spot of dust on the drawing-room chimney piece.’

‘Quite,’ agreed the Brigadier. ‘But in the light of after-events I am inclined to put a less obvious and more sinister interpretation upon it. In my opinion it was part of a plan.’

‘What plan?’ said Stella. ‘How exciting you make it sound! Did you know this man Ridder?’

‘I did,’ said the Brigadier impressively. ‘I met Herr Ridder in

1937 when he was over in England visiting the Gore-Houstons. Lady Gore-Houston was a cousin of mine, and she was, unfortunately - like some others I could name - inclined to be somewhat pro-facist in those days. In the following year I happened to be in Berlin for a short spell, and Herr Ridder invited me to stay with him. I spent only one night in his house, but my memory of that visit is most distinct - probably because I have thought of it so often since then …

‘In the ordinary course of events I do not suppose I should have had occasion to recall it, and so the details would, in time, inevitably have become blurred in my mind. But owing to what happened afterwards I have frequently thought back over that brief visit with great interest.’

‘What did happen?’ begged Miranda, still young enough to wish to leap to the point of a story, and impatient of frills.

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‘All in good time, my dear,’ said Brigadier Brindley, who disliked being hurried towards his dénouement and preferred to extract the full flavour of suspense from his story. He refreshed himself with another sip of wine before continuing.

‘Perhaps you will remember - those of us who are not too young,’ (here he made a courtly little bow in the direction of Miranda) ‘that in the late spring of 1940 Germany made a savage and unprovoked attack upon Holland. Well, at that time there happened to be, in Rotterdam, a fortune in cut diamonds ready for transhipment to Britain and the United States. The Nazis were aware of this and their capture was an important part of the surprise attack. They knew exactly where they were, and they dropped special paratroops to surround the house. Only one of the men who was concerned in that operation knew what they were after, and that man was Herr Ridder, who was entrusted with the task of taking over the diamonds and bringing them back to Berlin. The plan worked admirably, and Ridder took possession of several million pounds worth of diamonds.’

Brigadier Brindley, well aware that conversation at the two neighbouring tables had ceased and their occupants were openly listening, paused to help himself with some deliberation to stewed fruit and custard.

‘Oh, do go on,’ urged Stella. ‘What happened then? That isn’t all, is it?’

‘By no means!’ said the Brigadier, accepting the sugar bowl handed to him by an interested German waiter: ‘No, that is not all. Danke.’

A well-aimed bit of bread landed with a thump on the table, narrowly missing Brigadier Brindley’s glass, and the Brigadier closed his eyes briefly and shuddered.

‘May I eat my pudding at Wally’s table?’ asked Charlotte.

‘Mais non!’ said Mademoiselle firmly.

Then I shan’t eat my pudding,’ said Charlotte, equally firmly: ‘Why can’t I? Wally’s mother wouldn’t mind. Daddy, can I eat my pudding at Wally’s table?’

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‘You heard what Mademoiselle said, Lottie.’ • ‘>iV:.

‘But she doesn’t like Wally. She says he’s a nasty, rude, rough boy. But I like him. Why can’t I go? / shan’t let him throw bread.’

‘Oh, let her go,’ said Stella impatiently, ‘and then perhaps that child will stop heaving crusts. Don’t let’s have a scene. All right, darling, you can go and ask Mrs Wilkin if she’d mind your sitting at her table. But do behave nicely. No, there’s no need for you to go too, Mademoiselle.’ She turned back to Brigadier Brindley: ‘Do go on. You were telling us about how Herr Ridder got the diamonds.’

‘Ah, yes. The diamonds. Well, of course we knew - that is, our Intelligence Service knew - that the diamonds had fallen into German hands. And from our point of view that, so to speak, was that. We did not learn the end of the story - if indeed it can be said to have ended, which I doubt - until the war was over. It was only then, through the medium of captured documents and a certain amount of interested evidence, that we learned the rest of the story.’

The Brigadier paused and looked impressively about his audience, which now included all the occupants of the two adjacent tables.

‘Willi Ridder, supposedly carrying the diamonds, returned to Berlin. He was flown in by night, and landed at Tempelhof airfield. His arrival was, purposely, as unobtrusive as possible. There he was met by his personal car and driven to his house. And neither he nor his wife was ever seen again.’

‘You mean they were - liquidated, or purged, or whatever they called it?’ asked Miranda. ‘Because they knew about the diamonds?’

‘No, they simply disappeared.’ .’.•*• “

‘But what about the diamonds?’

‘Those disappeared too.’

‘You mean they skipped with the lot?’ asked Robert.

The Brigadier gave him a reproving look, cleared his throat

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again, and said: ‘Possibly no one will ever know whether Herr Ridder and his wife had planned it carefully beforehand, or whether the fact that he suddenly found himself in possession of this fantastic fortune proved too much for him. But after reading some of the files on the case I am inclined to think that it was all planned. Ridder knew that Holland was to be attacked, and that he was to be sent in person to take over the diamonds. Then, you see, there was the new garage that was in the process of being built at the end of his garden …’

The Brigadier paused expectantly, and Miranda did not disappoint him: ‘What on earth had a new garage got to do with it?’ she demanded, puzzled.

‘Ah, what indeed! It was to be built of stone and brick, and large enough to take two cars. Stone needs mortar, and mortar needs quicklime. There was a pit of quicklime behind the garage so that the mortar could be mixed on the spot, and the building had been completed all except the roof. When Herr Ridder failed to report next day, a search was made of the house. There was no one in it, and no diamonds either. Later, the wreckage of the car and the body of the chauffeur were found in a town near the Dutch border. And later still the bodies of the cook and the valet were found

buried in quicklime at the back of the unfinished garage in the Ridders’ garden.’

There was silence for a moment, and Stella shuddered audibly.

‘Did no one ever find out what had happened to the Ridders?’ asked Robert.

‘No. They could only guess. Their guess - and mine - is that Ridder and his wife murdered their two servants and used their passports and papers to conceal their own identity. The names of Herr and Frau Schumacher would have meant little to anyone; but far too many people in the S.S. knew Herr and Frau Ridder. The driver of the car was a picked S.S. man, but he would have thought nothing of being told to drive his employer and wife to some place outside Berlin. He would not have known about the diamonds only a very few people knew. He obeyed Herr Ridder’s orders,

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while at the same time sending a detailed report of all Herr Ridder’s movements to his chief in the S.S. The Ridders presumably shot him on a lonely stretch of road, and drove as far as they dared towards the Dutch frontier, leaving the car and the corpse in a town that was being bombed at the time. After that they ceased to be Herr and Frau Ridder and became Karl and Greta Schumacher, refugees.’

‘But what do you suppose they meant to do?’ demanded Robert. ‘Where are they supposed to have gone? They couldn’t have expected to get away. Why, I mean to say, the place must have been crawling with panzer divisions and all the rest of it at that time.’

The supposition is that the diamonds never left Holland. That Herr Ridder managed to conceal them in some safe hidingplace and returned with an empty bag to Berlin. His intention being to go back and collect them, after which he and his wife would escape in the guise of refugees to England or Spain; and from there to America, which was not at that time in the war. With a fortune of such magnitude in their hands it must have seemed worth taking very great risks. And in the chaos of those days there were many people who escaped out of Europe. All the same, it should have been a fairly simple matter to trace them; and it is certain that the S.S. had no doubts as to their ability to do so.’

‘And yet they got away.’

‘They got away. And from that day to this they have never been heard of again; although ever since the war ended not only the German police but the police and Intelligence Services of four continents have been looking for them. They had a young child

- a daughter I believe - who vanished too; though there was a story that the Ridders had sent her to relatives in Cologne some months before, and that she and her aunt had subsequently been killed with a great many other people when an air-raid shelter they were in received a direct hit. That may well have been true. Herr Ridder’s mother was taken to a concentration camp and died there, but Willi and his wife and the diamonds apparently vanished into thin air.’ •••- • •• • -,• • • - *.•.-.••.••.? ,-•; •-•>> j ?y..

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‘Has nobody ever found a clue? Or heard even a rumour?’ asked Stella.

‘Yes, there was a clue. And though nothing ever came of it, I myself have always thought it provides the most intriguing part of the story. The unexpected and fantastic twist!’ The Brigadier’s voice was all at once less pedantic and almost eager, and it was obvious that the tale held a peculiar and recurrent fascination for him.

‘In May 1940 a little band of refugees were landed in England from a small fishing boat. Among them was a child.’

‘You mean you think it may have been the Ridders’ child?’

‘Oh no. This was an English child. Her parents had been in Belgium when the German attack came, and they had both been killed. None of the other refugees appeared to know anything about her and they had all imagined her to be French, for until an Englishwoman at the Centre spoke to her in English, and she replied in that language, she had only spoken French. She was sent with a batch of sick refugees - England was full of refugees in those days - to some hospital or home in Sussex, until she could be identified. She was carrying a large doll from which she refused to be parted.’

The silence about the table changed in an instant, and became curiously intent and charged with something far more than interest in an unusual story. But if the Brigadier noticed it he evidently put it down to his powers of narration.

‘Some time later she broke the doll, and a kindly doctor offered to see if he could mend it for her. It was then discovered that the hollow body of the doll was stuffed with jewels and over five thousand pounds in high-denomination British and American banknotes. The child had no idea how they came to be there and could offer no explanation for their presence. She insisted that the doll had been given her for Christmas, and that nobody had touched it but herself. The jewels were later identified as being the property of Frau Use Ridder.’