Hitler's Girls (7 page)

My comments on this were neither understood nor appreciated by the staff when I joined. I made my way, despite a consistently unhelpful attitude, to the stacks indicated. I had asked for Twentieth Century History. Here a long gap ran along the wooden struts and I must have let out a sigh of frustration at the total absence of the works I sought in my pursuit of Monica’s identity.

“Dr. Hastie, I hope you will share my treasure trove!” Jim Graham said, beaming, tapping me on the shoulder, causing me to swing round. On his breath was the faint smell of gin—the type of gin one finds in far-flung posts of the ex-colonial empire. I remember wondering how this Foreign Correspondent of past days managed to supply himself with “Bombay Sapphire” or whatever the name of the revolting spirit may be. But I suppose anything is available in London these days: the Empire has struck back by exporting its poisons—and its peoples—to poor Britain, thus changing her identity more than anyone at the time of the dear Queen’s coronation could ever have dreamed.

“Eva Braun, I presume!” Jim “guided” me to his table. I saw it was liberally piled with books on Germany, the Weimar Republic, and included—I did not say this was what I had come in search of—a study of the illnesses and impersonators of Adolf Hitler called
Doppelgangers
by Dr. Hugh Thomas. Taking up the main part of the cheap desk, however, was an unlikely copy of
Burke’s Peerage
. This, I saw to my further annoyance, was open at the page of the Amesbury-Wilsford family.

Wilsford, I should now explain, is the family name; Amesbury the title. The latter descends through the male line. Only in Scotland, where justice has historically been more frequently obtained in these, and in other matters, may
a title go down to the eldest child, irrespective of sex. These thoughts made me wonder whether Clemency Wilsford had possibly been the eldest in the family. Had her infatuation with Adolf Hitler grown from a misplaced power complex, a case of transference as a result of being overlooked in the stakes of inheritance? These possibilities I will file on my return to Edinburgh. There is neither time nor space here at the Avondale Club to open a full dossier on the Monica Stirling case.

I began to realise in the sad little library in the long, ugly street that is Banesden Grove, that this is what my childhood friend’s death has become. A “case.” Something too explosive to discuss with police, and too sensitive to bring up with the refined ladies up from the country who reside here at the Avondale Club. A daughter of the greatest villain the modern world has ever known and the scion of an aristocratic English house living here in a corner of Northwest London.

“See that?” says Jim. He has forced me to sit opposite him at the desk and the Wilsford names look at me upside down from their prolific family tree. Let me hope to God I can prove that poor Monica had nothing to do with them.

“A shooting,” Jim says in the cheerful voice he appears to adopt whenever a shocking or tragic matter comes to mind. “Few weeks back, apparently.”

I looked in horror at the wall by the window that he indicated. Paint had been scraped off and a section of wall had crumbled under the impact of a hail of bullets. What had once been a fine edition of Audubon’s birds, donated in all probability to Banesden Grove in the days when there were still philanthropists, had been shattered by the shot-gun blast. Red and gold leather bindings were peeled away, some tatters stuck dutifully back in place with sellotape. I believe this was the first time I felt physically sick since coming south to find what had happened—and why—to Monica.

But there were more urgent matters. With an unsteady hand, I turned back the pages of
Burke’s Peerage
and examined the possible antecedents of my friend.

Lord and Lady Amesbury had married in 1920. Their eldest child was in fact a son, Jack (The Honourable John Wilsford). Then came three daughters, of whom Clemency Anne was the middle one. There was no further mention of Clemency. I was not completely surprised. Regrettably, noble families are no different from the rest, when it comes to obliterating the record of family members who have brought shame to them.

The brother, Jack, had died two years previously. He had never married. The youngest sister, Laura, had also died single in South Africa a decade ago.

But here was the anomaly: the eldest sister Artemis, married to Viscount Ray of Riddlethorpe, was a widow and lived at the address of her defunct brother, Amesbury House in Wiltshire. Jack had lost all his money, perhaps, and had to sell up to his brother-in-law. Whatever transpired, there is only one living relative of Clemency Wilsford. She is Artemis, Lady Ray.

“We better head off down there, Dr. Hastie,” Jim Graham said, when I looked up from the page. I frowned, an unnoticed frown I fear, as Jim expressed the identical thought that had come to me. The jovial tone had gone out of his voice and he was heaping up Hitlerabilia into a carrier bag, prior to carrying his booty over to the desk. A group of under-fives started bawling in the enlarged “Video Section” as their club ended and it was time to go home.

I found myself landed with half of Jim Graham’s trawl,
Hitler: The Myth
, the Trevor-Roper (of course), and new volumes proving the responsibility of all Germans for the war years and Hitler’s holocaust. The weight of information, of plots and counter-plots, of Hitler’s every minor illness and final madness in the Bunker, drove me into Jim’s car, grateful for a chance to off-load the books into the back seat.

I should have gone to Burnside to find Kim. If Chris had given me her name, there was a good chance she would speak to me, tell me who led the Gang to rob, and then to murder.

I could have saved Chris’s life. Instead, I climbed into Jim Graham’s ancient Mercedes and we set off then and there for Amesbury, the little town under the chalk downs—a town horribly spoilt, I fear, by its close proximity to that eyesore and tourist trap, Stonehenge.

The sea was calm on the night Nurse Christina McVey was called to the island and although it was ten o’clock the skies were still clear on that long, summer Scottish night. Had it been winter, and dark, with the seas rougher, her journey might have been difficult, even impossible. But a night-time summons was as commonplace to Kirstie McVey as one in the daytime, for Kirstie was a midwife and babies arrive, day or night, when they want to
.

Rob, the oarsman, looked back to where she sat at the stern, her brown leather bag beside her on the wooden seat, and asked, “What would be the name of the lady requiring your services, Mistress McVey?”

“I don’t know that,” she told him. If she had known, she might well not have told him. Kirstie was known for her discretion. In the throes of childbirth women curse their husbands, call on the names of men who are not their husbands, may say many things even worse, secrets that will not bear the light of day
.

Kirstie McVey had been a midwife for twenty years and had never once told what she heard, or guessed. But on this occasion she knew no more than Rob. The only permanent resident on the island was the housekeeper of the house overlooking the sea. Her name was Jessie Nairn, and she was a widow and past the age of childbearing
.

It was still light when the boat grated on the shore of the island. Rob jumped out and pulled the boat higher up onto the sands, then held out his arm to support her as she leaped for dry land. Jessie Nairn was already waiting for them. She was a short, wide woman. She came down the beach in her old-fashioned barred shoes and print dress, a brown cardigan over her shoulders. Without greeting Kirstie, she said to the boatman, “Rob, we’ll no’ be needing you till the morning. You’d best get back while there’s some light.” Rob frowned and opened his mouth to speak. It would be a longer haul back, with the tide against him; he was tired and could have done with a cup of tea in the kitchen, waiting, in case the midwife decided the woman should be moved to the mainland. Mrs. Nairn did not allow him to say anything, just told him, “On your way, now.” He nodded and moved to the boat, pushing it out again into the water. He would not argue with Jessie Nairn, the voice of the laird, who gave employment to many in the locality
.

Mrs. Nairn turned and began to trudge up the beach, Kirstie following. She, too, thought it would have been wiser to have made Rob stay, at least for a little while, until it was clear they did not need him. But she followed on until they reached the house and entered the empty whitewashed hall, where Mrs. Nairn spoke to her for the first time. “She’s at the back,” something which hardly needed saying, for Kirstie could hear the woman groaning from halfway up the stairs
.

Kirstie, still behind Mrs. Nairn’s straight back, saw the housekeeper flinch a little. “She’s in a wee bit of trouble,” said Mrs. Nairn. She took her past several doors, then through a door to the back of the house: servants’ rooms, Kirstie guessed
.

Kirstie’s practised eye took in the room and the woman lying on a narrow iron bedstead, and she did not like what she saw. The room itself was small and narrow with one window overlooking the hills behind the house. Apart from the bed, it contained only a painted chest of drawers and a small table. The paint was peeling on the drawers, and the small table beside the bed held only a spoon, a medicine bottle, and a Bible. The air in the room was hot with the warmth of the day, and rank with the smell of sweat and blood. The woman on the bed arched her back, threw her head to one side, and howled like an animal. The howl came to a crescendo; then died. Kirstie, kneeling at her side, saw movement at the door.
The housekeeper had taken a step backwards. Fair enough, Kirstie thought. Many had no taste for this sort of thing, would flee if they could. Kirstie wouldn’t let her. “Will you stay for a moment, Mrs. Nairn? There may be one or two things you can help me with.” To the woman on the bed she said, “Be brave, my dear. I’m here to help you now
.

“Turn the light on,” she told Mrs. Nairn. Under the harsh light from the naked bulb overhead she parted the woman’s legs and, as the woman was gripped by another burst of agony, she made her diagnosis. “How long has she been like this?”

“Since this morning,” said Mrs. Nairn from the doorway. “This was not meant to—the baby came early—”

“Aye,” Kirstie said in an easy tone. “Babies will always be too early or too late. They’ve no idea of time, that’s the difficulty.” But she knew from the state of the woman, the bed, and the bad smell in the room that this had been going on far longer than Mrs. Nairn would admit. The woman had been in labour for a day or longer. She should have been called earlier, but she had long ago ceased to be surprised by the lengths people would go to to conceal a shameful birth. The woman’s pulse was alarmingly fast. The woman moaned, she rolled her eyes, she contorted, she shrieked. “There, there. I’m here now,” said Kirstie, but she did not believe that the woman heard her voice. There is a point where pain—and only pain—rules
the mind and the woman in labour had reached it, reached it some time ago
.

“Will I go and boil some water?” asked the housekeeper
.

“Thank you, Mrs. Nairn, but will you first open the window? It’s a little stuffy in here.”

“Will she not take a chill?”

Kirstie was fairly sure the window was closed in case a random group of holiday makers strayed onto the beach, as sometimes happened, and heard the woman’s cries. “It’s worth the risk for the sake of the fresh air,” she said. “Have you given her anything to eat or drink?”

“She didn’t require anything.”

You offered her nothing, thought Kirstie. And Kirstie also noted Mrs. Nairn’s use of the word, “required.”

“Ah, well,” she said noncommittally. “She might manage a drink now. Would you be good enough to open the window, set some water to boil, and then bring back a flannel, a tumbler, and some drinking water?”

Mrs. Nairn went to the window and wrenched it open, yet only pulled the sash up a few inches. Then she left the room. Kirstie calmly tugged the eiderdown from the bed, rolled it up, and put it in a corner. She did the same with the blood-streaked top sheet. She eased the sweat-drenched pillows from under the woman’s head and put them with the other bedding. She
straightened the stained bottom sheet. The woman, she noticed, wore a nightdress of fine cotton, with embroidery at the neck Kirstie was puzzled. If she had none of her own, why was she not wearing one of Mrs. Nairn’s nightdresses? It looked as if Mrs. Nairn had raided her employer’s closets for this expensive garment and given it to the woman, who must be a relative, or a friend’s daughter she was hiding away for the sake of the family
.

The woman howled again, the great bump of the unborn child rearing up as her head thrashed to and fro on the bed and her eyes rolled back until there was little of the pupil to be seen. All for nothing, Kirstie thought: the child would not be born tonight, or tomorrow, or maybe ever at all. They might both die, that was the truth of it
.

An operation, a caesarean, was the best choice. On the mainland Kirstie would have had no hesitation in calling a doctor. But here they were on an island. The message for her to come had been delivered by Elliot, the strong but slow-witted boy who lived somewhere about the house and handled the heavy work. After delivering his message he had gone to the pub. Rob had the better boat and was the better oarsman so he had brought her here. But now Rob was gone, Elliot ensconced in a pub on the mainland. Neither of them would be back until morning. If the woman did not die overnight she might well
bleed to death in the boat. Any decision she made would involve a risk to mother and child, but Kirstie knew what she must do. Kirstie would not wait for the boat. She checked the woman’s racing pulse again and noted the softness of the woman’s hand, like a baby’s
.