Death in Berlin (7 page)

‘You say you all saw him take the pills. Who do you mean by

“all”?’

‘Well, all of us. That is, Robert and Stella - I mean Major and Mrs Melville, and the governess - Mademoiselle Beljame - and Lottie, Charlotte - she’s only seven. But everyone else was having coffee in the hall too, and people were wandering in and out of that little office-cum-reception-desk thing in the hall, paying their bills and so on. I should think almost everyone must have seen him. He gave us a long lecture on sleeping tablets; apparently he had tried every known brand.’

‘Let’s have some names, please. Who else would you say was actually in the hall at the time?’

‘Why? What does it matter?’ Miranda was suddenly angry and completely exhausted. She had slept little during the crossing from Harwich and not at all during the past day. It was long past midnight, she had been subjected to a violent and horrible shock and she was very tired. So tired that she wanted to lean her head back against the wall behind her and sleep … and sleep …

Simon Lang said: ‘I think we shall find that it matters rather a lot. Whoever killed the man in there must have known that he had taken a sleeping draught and was unlikely to wake. You can’t just stab blindly at people in the dark. Or if you do, the chances are about a hundred to one against your hitting them in a vital spot. This was a quick stab straight to the heart, and whoever delivered it must have either turned on one of the lights or carried a torch. And known that it was safe to do so.’

‘There was a light,’ said Miranda tiredly. ‘Mine was off, so I could see it at the edge of the door. It wasn’t on for more than half a minute.’

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‘When was that?’ * ., ^.-.

‘I don’t know. But only a few minutes before I went out in the corridor. I remember thinking “so much for the Brigadier’s sleeping pills”. And then I heard someone in the corridor and I thought it must be the sleeping-car attendant, so I got up and went out. But there wasn’t anyone there …’

‘This person you heard in the corridor-which way did they go?’

Miranda wrinkled her brow, and then shook her head. ‘I can’t remember. I don’t think I knew at the time. It was such a soft

sound; more an impression than anything else. Perhaps there wasn’t anyone there after all.’

‘Unfortunately we know only too well that there was,’ said Simon Lang grimly. ‘Now about the people who were in the hall of that hostel, please - and then you can go to sleep. Who else would you say was there at the time that the Brigadier took those sleeping pills?’

Miranda pondered the question. She tried to tick them off on her fingers as she spoke, and their faces seemed to float in front of her. Sally Page with her wild-rose face and her pretty shallow laugh, smiling that revealing smile at Robert. Andy Page, with his red hair and angry blue eyes. Eisa Marson, black-haired, darkeyed, with her unmistakably foreign voice. Harry Marson, redfaced, cheerful, pugnacious and Anglo-Irish. Colonel Leslie, thin, tall and grey-haired, with an expression of dreamy boredom and a clipped military moustache. Mrs Leslie - dark hair streaked with grey, brightly coloured tweeds, Welfare and ‘My wives’ who had looked at her, Miranda, with such hate … No, not at her … at someone else, surely? Who? She could not remember

Who else? Mrs Wilkin, a bedraggled hedge-sparrow coping with a brood of unruly fledgelings. Wally, with his plain, freckled, pugnosed face and his endearing grin. A German waiter - several German waiters. And then there was Brigadier Brindley. Of course: he had been there too. But why had he forgotten to put back his teeth? He looked so very odd without them. Odd and old and pathetic…

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Another face floated in front of her and blotted out the jumble of different faces. A strange face, and yet somehow familiar. It was someone she did not recognize, and yet felt that she had known all her life.

‘It’s time you got some sleep,’ said the unknown face.

That’s a very sensible suggestion,’ murmured Miranda. ‘Goodnight, Guinness.’ She smiled drowsily at it, and was instantly asleep.

Miranda awoke to find the train at a standstill and cold grey daylight filtering into the carriage around the edges of the windowblind.

For a moment, between sleeping and waking, she thought that she was in her own bedroom and wondered why her bed seemed so narrow? Then almost in the same instant she remembered. She

was in Germany - probably by now in Berlin - and on the other side of a door in her compartment lay the body of a murdered man.

Miranda’s mind jerked away desperately from the memory of Brigadier Brindley as she had last seen him. She did not want to think of it. The thought of blood and that slack-mouthed dead face brought back too many things - forgotten and shadowy pictures of other dead faces; the sight and smell of death, and the horror and fear of that long-ago time when a small girl had been lost and alone in the terrible storm of war.

Pushing those memories resolutely back into a locked room of her mind from which they were threatening to escape, she sat up abruptly, knocked her head against the reading-light above her pillow, and pulling back the bedclothes was surprised to find that underneath them she was not only still wearing her dressinggown, but was swathed in a cocoon of blankets.

That man - what was his name? - Simon Lang, must have pulled the bedclothes over her and subsequently tucked her in. Who was he? What was he? What had he been doing in the corridor so late last night and by what right had he questioned her? Why hadn’t she refused to answer those questions and ordered him out of her compartment? She should have rung for the atten-60

dant to fetch Robert. Instead of which she had sat meekly on her berth for hours on end waiting until a complete stranger should decide to come back and question her; and then, to make matters W0rse, she had made a gauche and personal remark about his appearance.

Miranda flushed hotly at the recollection and wriggled herself free of the enveloping blankets. He had probably thought that she was a gushing film-fan attempting to compliment him by comparing him to a popular actor, and had not realized that what had prompted her remark was less a matter of personal resemblance than the fact that it had suddenly occurred to her that he possessed an actor’s face. A face that was in itself unremarkable, yet capable of altering completely to each change of its owner’s mood; becoming a blank mask, or assuming a dozen different characteristics at will.

She bundled the blankets to one end of the berth and pulled aside the edge of the windowblind. It was daylight outside, and the train was standing at a station. There were several men who appeared to be policemen on the platform; one of whom stood with his back to the train, immediately outside her window.

Someone tapped on the door, and as it opened to admit Stella, Miranda saw that the blinds were no longer drawn over the corridor windows, and that beyond them a grey morning sky dripped a thin drizzle of rain onto railway tracks and gaunt buildings.

‘You’re awake,’ said Stella. ‘We were told to let you sleep for a bit. ‘Randa, what a ghastly thing to happen! You found him, didn’t you? Hurry and get your clothes on. They want to see us. No, don’t pull up the blind. The platform is cordoned off and crawling with policemen. I’ll turn the light on. Here’s a cup of tea for you. It’s not very hot, I’m afraid.’

She turned on the light, and closing the door behind her, sat on the edge of the berth and continued to talk while Miranda swallowed the lukewarm tea, washed in cold water and dressed in a hurry. , .,,.. ……..

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Stella looked both excited and resentful, and her voice had an injured edge to it as she explained that their section of the train had been shunted into a side platform on arrival at Charlottenburg station, and that no one had as yet been allowed off it - although all the passengers from the other coaches had left. A police guard had been placed on it, and hot tea and sandwiches produced by a uniformed member of the W.V.S. But they had already been stuck there for over two hours while police and special service officers had, according to Stella, swarmed all over the train taking photographs and hunting for clues and fingerprints.

‘And they’ve taken all our luggage off,’ complained Stella indignantly. ‘They wouldn’t let us keep a thing. They just came and took everything, and said that we’d find it all ready for us when we left. A man called Lang seems to have arranged it all. He was on our train from the Hook and he seems to

be something to do with police or intelligence or M.I.5. He told Robert what had happened and explained that since you’d been kept up pretty late over all this, you might as well be allowed to sleep. He says that we shall all have to answer a few questions and then they’ll let us go. It’s only a matter of routine, or something silly. He let Robert and Colonel Leslie talk to some people who had come down to meet us. Oh, and he said to tell you to leave all your things in the carriage. He’ll see that you get them back.’

‘So I should hope!’ said Miranda crisply. ‘Switch off the light, will you, Stella.’ She pulled up the blind and let in the wet daylight. ‘Have I got to leave my bag as well? It’s got my passport and all my papers and things in it.’

‘No. We’re allowed to keep those. But I gather they’ll want to have a look at them too before they let us leave.’

‘Well, I think it’s a lot of nonsense,’ said Miranda unreasonably. ‘I suppose it’s just that officious Guinness creature throwing his weight about!’

‘Who?’ inquired Stella, puzzled.

Miranda flushed and bit her lip. That man Lang. Why on earth

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can’t he just let us go off to our own houses and answer questions

later on?’ ‘But don’t you understand?’ said Stella impatiently. ‘They think

one of Mi did it!’

‘Don’t be silly,’ begged Miranda, shivering. ‘Of course they can’t. It was obviously some thief who got into the carriage at one of those stations we stopped at during the night. It must have

been.’

They say it couldn’t have been. I don’t know why, but they seem to be quite sure. They say it must have been someone in this coach.’

Stella gave a little shudder that was half disgust and half unwilling excitement, and Miranda, looking at her, realized suddenly that none of this was real to her. It was merely some fantastic story in which she did not believe and had no part. She might resent the temporary inconvenience that it caused her, but her resentment was to a certain extent offset by interest in what was, to say the least of it, an unusual situation.

But then Stella, thought Miranda, had not seen the dead face of Brigadier Brindley, or that hideous, sprawling stain across his breast and on the carriage floor.

Miranda shivered again and turned away to touch up her mouth with lipstick, annoyed to find in the process that her hand was not entirely steady, and that the face that looked back at her from the square of mirror was unnaturally pale in the cold light: the grey eyes with their lovely tilting lashes wide and frightened. She pulled the collar of her soft squirrel coat close about her throat and said: ‘I’m ready. What do we do now? Just wait here until someone comes to put the handcuffs on us?’

Stella said: ‘Darling, you are upset! I’m so sorry. What a pig I am: I forgot how utterly hellish it must be for you. I ought to have been distracting your attention instead of talking about this sordid mess. Leave all this clutter and come and sit in our carriage. I daresay the police are very neat packers.’

‘What about the children?’ asked Miranda, closing the door

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behind her. ‘Lottie and the Wilkin kids? It’s a bit tough on them being kept hanging about like this with no breakfast.’

‘Oh they’re all right. A charming W.V.S. girl turned up and took them all off to have a meal in some refreshment room or other. I don’t envy her the job; the Wilkin gang are a bit of a handful. Mademoiselle is madly upset because she wasn’t allowed to go with Lottie. She’s soaking herself with smelling salts and muttering in French. What a trial foreigners are! Robert darling, here’s Miranda, and we’re both famished. When do you suppose they’re going to let us off this beastly train?’

Robert, who had been staring out of the window with his hands in his pockets, swung round and smiled at Miranda, and she thought fleetingly, and for perhaps the hundredth time, how astonishingly goodlooking he was. It was what most people thought when they looked at Robert, and some of them added as a mental note ‘too goodlooking’.

‘Hullo, ‘Randa. I hear you had a pretty hectic night?’ He put his arm about her slim shoulders and gave her a friendly hug. ‘What exactly happened? Why didn’t you call me?’

‘I meant to,’ admitted Miranda, sitting down tiredly on the edge of the lower berth, ‘but I couldn’t remember which compartment you two were in. How much longer are we going to stay here, Robert?’ She did not wish to discuss the happenings of the past night and hoped that the question might sidetrack him.

‘Not much longer, I imagine,’ said Robert, turning back to the window again. They appear to be taking the Brigadier away at last: can’t think why they didn’t do it earlier.’

Stella went to stand beside him and their bodies shut out the view of the grey platform so that Miranda did not see the stretcherbearers carry a blanket-covered burden past the window.

A few minutes later a military policeman walked along the corridor and told them they were to leave the train, and Stella slipped into a silver-grey musquash coat and picked up her handbag: ‘Ready, Miranda?’

They left the compartment and were ushered, with the other

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passengers of the coach, along endless yards of wet platform under the curious gaze of the police guard and a sprinkling of unidentified bystanders, down a flight of steps, along a chill, vaulted passageway and, eventually, into a hastily cleared waitingroom where several officials and three British officers in uniform were grouped about a table. Suitcases, hatboxes, and other pieces of hand luggage that had accompanied the passengers on the sleeping coach, were neatly arranged against the wall.