Death in Berlin (8 page)

‘Isn’t it thrilling?’ whispered Sally Page, catching at Miranda’s arm. Her blue eyes were wide and excited and she looked impossibly fresh and dewy - in marked contrast to the majority of her fellow-passengers, who appeared jaded and travel-worn: the men unshaven and the women weary.

Mrs Leslie, huddled inside a shapeless coat of purple tweed and wearing a muffler and fur gloves, was looking cold and cross and managing to convey without words that in her opinion the wife of a commanding officer of a regiment should be entitled to more consideration. She said acidly, for the benefit of anyone who might be listening: ‘I can see no reason why we should be kept here. It’s not as if I had even seen the man before.’

Colonel Leslie was looking bored and resigned, Major Marson amused and Andy Page sulky, while Eisa Marson and Mrs Wilkin were talking earnestly together in undertones; discussing, incongruously enough, the respective merits of gas and electric cooking stoves. Mademoiselle, wearing an expression of the deepest suspicion, had ostentatiously taken up a position by her own and Charlotte’s luggage as though she feared that at any moment it might once again be reft from her.

There was no sign of Lottie or the young Wilkins, but Simon Lang was there, standing with his back to the window; his slight figure dark against the grey daylight and his bland, actor’s face entirely expressionless. His eyes seemed to be focused on nothing in particular and he appeared to be relaxed and almost lethargic. He did not look at Miranda, or indeed appear in the least interested in the proceedings, but she had an uncomfortable conviction

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that he missed no word or gesture or fleeting expression from anyone in that room, and that he was in fact about as relaxed as a steel spring.

The proceedings were mercifully brief. Each passenger in turn produced a passport or identity card, gave the address to which they were going, and, in the case of the women, handed over their handbags for a cursory inspection. Sally Page’s, Mrs Leslie’s and Stella’s each contained a cigarette lighter, and these were taken away and put into envelopes marked with the owner’s name. Robert, Andy Page and Colonel Leslie also handed over lighters, which were treated in the same manner and added to a row of six torches that lay on the table and had evidently been removed from the passengers’ luggage.

A small snapshot had fallen unnoticed from among the jumbled contents of Sally Page’s bag, and Miranda, seeing it, stooped and picked it up: ‘Here, Sally, you’ve dropped this.’ She held it out, and Sally turned, and glancing at it, snatched it from her hand and crumpled it swiftly in her own.

‘Oh … thank you.’ Her cheeks were scarlet, and Miranda was seized with a sudden and uncomfortable suspicion as to who had been the subject of the snapshot. She looked thoughtfully across the room to where Robert stood talking in an undertone to one of the British officers, and as though he felt her gaze, Robert looked up at that moment, and catching her eye grinned at her. Miranda flushed guiltily, ashamed of her suspicions, and Simon Lang saw the flush and misinterpreted it.

The last handbag was returned to its owner and the passengers were informed that they could now remove their luggage, with the exception of the torches and the lighters which would be returned as soon as possible. There were cars outside to take them to their several destinations.

A middle-aged man wearing a dark blue uniform with the crown and star of a lieutenantcolonel apologized charmingly for any inconvenience they might have suffered and thanked them for their patience and co-operation. Mrs Wilkin was led away to

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collect her offspring, and Mademoiselle hurried off in search of Charlotte, clutching a piece of luggage in each black-gloved hand and refusing all offers of assistance. Only Miranda was still luggageless.

‘When do I get my things?’ she inquired of the affable gentleman in the blue uniform. ‘I was told to leave everything in my carriage and I’ve left two suitcases and a hatbox in there.’

>Well - er It’s Miss Brand isn’t it? I am sure your luggage

will be along soon. If you would not mind waiting ‘ The

affable gentleman looked suddenly less affable, and Simon Lang abandoned the contemplation of his shoes and spoke for the first time.

Til send them along to the hostel. There’s no need to wait for them. I expect you could all do with some breakfast.’

He looked directly at Miranda, but voice and look were as blankly impersonal as though he were addressing someone he had never seen before.

Til wait,’ said Miranda flatly. She was both annoyed and frightened. Why had they kept all her hand luggage? Why was Simon Lang behaving as though she were some complete stranger?

‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said Simon Lang softly. ‘We are a little busy just now and it might mean waiting an hour or so. You shall have them as soon as possible.’

Miranda wanted to cry out to him: ‘You mean when you have looked for bloodstains! But you know there are bloodstains-you saw them last night! I showed them to you myself. Why do you have to look again?’ She choked back the words with an effort that made her hands tremble, and turning blindly away, caught at Robert’s arm, and clinging to it, walked quickly out of the room.

Stella, following, said: ‘Darling, don’t look so upset! I’m sure they’ll let you have your stuff soon, and if there’s anything you need in the meantime I can probably lend it to you.’

‘He’s a suspicious, soft-spoken, officious little man!’ said Miranda furiously; unaccountably near to tears.

Robert said: ‘Who? Lang? I think he’s rather a decent type. He

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went quite a bit out of his way to be helpful this morning. Why have you got your knife into him, Miranda?’

‘I haven’t. I mean … is this the car?’

‘Yes. Get in. This is a Volkswagen. The Families’ Hostel, please, Corporal.’

Stella said: ‘What about Lottie and Mademoiselle? We can’t all

fit into that.’

‘I’ve sent ‘em on ahead with the Leslies. Colonel Leslie very decently offered to drop them at the hostel. The Pages are going there too, so Andy will keep an eye on them.’

Robert bundled them into a small khaki-green beetle of a car driven by a corporal in battledress, and they drove away from Charlottenburg station in the thin, drizzling rain.

Looking back on it, Miranda could never remember much of her first sight of Berlin. She had stared out with unseeing eyes at grey buildings and grey rain. At blocks of shops and houses, interspersed with open spaces where only a rubble of bricks and stone and blackened, twisted steel remained to show where other houses had once stood. At unfamiliar notices that said Fleischerei, Friseur, Bdckerei, Eisengeschaft…

Robert, who had been in Berlin for several months before he had returned to fetch Stella and Charlotte, pointed out various places of interest as they passed.

That’s the Rundfunk, Stella; the Soviet-controlled wireless station, the one the Russians still keep in our zone. It’s a bit of a mystery still. Looks as dead as a morgue, doesn’t it? You never seem to see anyone going in or coming out of it, and I’ve never met anyone who has even seen a face at one of the windows. But I suppose there must be a collection of comrades circulating around somewhere inside it. That? … That’s a circus that’s doing a season here. Very good one. I went with a party one night. We must take Lottie, she’d love it. That’s the Funkturm. Sort of Eiffel Tower effect. You can go up it in a lift and have a look at Berlin from the top, or eat in the restaurant in that bulgy bit halfway

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up __ if you can afford it. It’s supposed to be the highest building with the highest prices in Berlin; one of those places where they soak you ten bob for a cup of tea and fifteen-and-six for a biscuit to go with it. That’s the Naafi building, where you’ll do a good bit of your shopping; this used to be called Adolf Hitler Platz, but it’s now called the Reichskanzler Platz. Here we are; out you get. Down that paved path and the door’s straight ahead of you. Run,

or you’ll get wet.’

Robert had decided that it was better for them to spend the first night at the Families’ Hostel, so that Stella need not bother with meals and housekeeping while taking over the new house, which they would move into on the following day.

The hostel was a large, tall building where they were taken up in a lift and then down a long passage, vaguely reminiscent of a hospital, to two rooms on the third floor. There were sounds of splashing from an adjoining bathroom, and Lottie’s voice and Mademoiselle’s singing ‘Malbrouck s’en va t’en guerre’.

The Melvilles’ luggage was carried into the larger bedroom, the smaller one being already strewn with toys and redolent of caraway seeds. Stella went off to talk to Lottie, and Robert turned to the German who had carried up the suitcases: ‘Where is this lady going? We need another room. A single room for thefrâulein.’

The man nodded cheerfully. ‘Jaja. Thefrŕulein will come with me, please.’

He led Miranda back down the passage, and after several turnings ushered her into a small room that looked down upon an open concrete space and the ruined shell of a bombed building, and departed.

Miranda pushed open the window and stood looking out at the grey sky and the falling rain, and down at the ruined walls.

So this was Berlin! It had sounded so exciting. ‘Where are you going for a holiday this year, Miranda?’ ‘I’m going to Berlin!’ ‘Berlin? My dear, what fun! Bring us back some lovely cut-glass and don’t get arrested by the Russians!’

Well, she was here; and she wished passionately that she was

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back again in the tiny flat near Sloane Street. Oh, how right Stella had been! Travelling in foreign countries was all very well when things went smoothly, but when everything went crazily awry, as they had last night, it was an additional horror that one was in a strange land and surrounded by unfamiliar things and people. She had not felt like this - frightened and unsure and lost - since she was a small girl wandering through terrible, ruined streets and crying for parents whom she was never to see again.

It was not only the sight of a murdered man that had brought those days back, dragging them out of that dark attic in her mind into which her conscious and subconscious mind had thrust them. She should never have come here, to this shattered city where the very language in the streets tugged at shadowy memories that were better forgotten.

:fť.

Robert had left for the barracks, and Stella, Mademoiselle and Lottie had all gone off to see the new house. There had not been room for Miranda in the Volkswagen.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind being abandoned like this?’ Stella had inquired anxiously. ‘I’d leave Mademoiselle and Lottie instead, but I know Lottie would only rampage up and down the passages with that awful Wally, and Mademoiselle may as well start making herself useful in the new house.’

‘No, of course I don’t mind,’ said Miranda untruthfully. ‘In fact I’d far rather stay quietly here and have a hot bath.’

But she did mind. She did not want to be left alone in this large, strange, impersonal building with its rabbit-warren of passages and stairways that smelt faintly of disinfectant, hot pipes and stale cooking, and its windows that looked out upon grey rain and grey, bomb-scarred buildings.

Her own luggage had still not arrived, but the Melvilles had left a cake of soap and a bath towel in the bathroom adjoining their rooms, and Miranda lay and soaked until the water cooled, and then dressed slowjy,. But there was still an hour and a half to fill in before the others would return for lunch.

She combed back her dark, shining waves of hair, pinning them so that they curled above her ears, and wondered if the Pages were still in the hostel - only to remember that Andy too had left for the barracks and Sally had announced her intention of taking over her new flat, which was less than five minutes’ walk away. And neither the Leslies nor the Marsons would be at the hostel, for they had driven direct to their own homes.

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Miranda decided to go down to the lounge and see if there were any papers or magazines she could read.

She did not use the lift, but walked down by the stairs, and turning left at the first landing found that she had lost her way. There was no lounge or diningroom here: only a narrow hall with bedrooms leading off it. She paused, at a loss. Should she have turned to the right, or was she on the wrong floor? As she hesitated, she heard the lift come up from below and stop at the landing that she had just left. There was a subdued clash of metal as the doors slid back, and someone began to talk swiftly and urgently in German.

Once, long ago, Miranda had spoken German with a child’s fluency; but she had forgotten it, with much else, and the conversation on the landing, even if she could have heard it clearly, meant nothing to her. But the voice that spoke in an undertone barely above a whisper held an unmistakable ring of desperation that was oddly disturbing.

It was a woman speaking; a woman not far from tears, who was answered by another; a sullen voice this time, clearer and harsher. ‘Not so loud!’ begged the first voice, unexpectedly in English. There were footsteps on the stairs above the landing and Miranda heard one of the women gasp in alarm, and realizing that she herself would seem to be eavesdropping she turned and walked around the corner and back onto the landing.

A dark-haired woman, hatless and wearing a wet raincoat, was standing with her back to Miranda, and a second woman was entering the lift. The steel gates clashed together and the lift sank out of sight as the woman in the raincoat turned on her heel, and brushing past Miranda disappeared round the corner into the passage.

Miranda stood on the narrow landing and frowned into the darkness of the empty lift-shaft, thinking that she must have been mistaken. She had only caught a brief glimpse of the back of the woman who had entered the lift, but the colour and cut of the coat had been familiar, for Mrs Marson had worn a similar one during

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the journey to Berlin. But Mrs Marson spoke no German. She had said as much on the platform at Bad Oeynhausen, when there had been some difficulty over a porter, and Stella, whose German was halting and rusty from disuse, had had to act as interpreter.