The Defeated Aristocrat (31 page)

‘The part about Colonel Dorfman arresting people for the murder of the officers. He’s arrested the wrong people.’

Wolf looked at her. Pale, exhausted, she still had the face of an angel. ‘How do you know?’

‘Because I enticed those men into the rooms where they were murdered, Colonel von Mau.’

‘Do you know who killed them?’ Like Wolf, Josef was incredulous.

‘Yes, Mr Baumgarten. I know who killed them.’

CHAPTER THRITY-ONE

The Green Stork, Wasser Strasse, Konigsberg, Sunday January 12th 1919

When Ralf ordered his father’s sleigh harnessed so he could visit Johanna Behn on The Kneiphof he expected the men Dorfman had left in the Green Stork to stop him from leaving the restaurant. They didn’t, but two of the officers trailed him in a hire carriage. They waited within view of her house while he visited her and one of them followed him and Johanna when he took her to a nearby restaurant for coffee and cake. When he left Johanna at her door, they followed him back to the Green Stork.

He knocked on the window of their carriage and waved cheerily after he alighted from his sleigh outside the front entrance of the restaurant. They both turned their backs to him. Ralf opened the door and offered them refreshment. They refused.

Still smiling, Ralf pushed open the door and walked through the restaurant and kitchens into his office. Manfred was sitting in the visitor’s chair.

‘Emil Grunman?’ Ralf asked.

‘Woke up. He started bellyaching so I stuffed a rag in his mouth and came out here.’

‘Open the door.’

‘You sure, boss?’

‘I’m sure.’

Manfred did as Ralf asked. Emil was still cuffed to the cot but he’d spat out the rag Manfred had jammed in his mouth. He sat up and started shouting.

‘One more word from you, Emil, and you’ll never see the light of day again.’ Ralf unlocked a drawer in his desk and lifted out a gun and a file of papers. He set both in front of him. ‘Are you going to be quiet?’

‘I haven’t much choice,’ Emil growled.

‘No you don’t. These papers,’ Ralf held up the file and showed Emil pages of closely written script, he closed it before Emil was able to read a word. It was the Green Stork’s recipe file but Emil had no way of knowing that, ‘are the sworn statements of Reiner Schult and Dolf Engels. While you were recovering from your concussion they returned here and made a full confession to me and Colonel von Mau.’

‘Confessed what?’ Emil demanded, his pallor at odds with his belligerence.

‘Everything.’ Ralf flicked through the papers and pretended to read. When Emil remained silent he ventured, ‘France … nuns … ’

‘They told you?’ Emil’s voice dropped to a whisper.

‘They confessed everything,’ Ralf reiterated.

‘Will they go to prison?’

‘That is entirely up to the judge. They made full and frank statements in the hope that the judge would see them as an indication of their contrition, remorse and sincere wish to make amends.’

‘You think the judge will look leniently on both of them?’

‘I believe their confessions will affect his judgement.’ Ralf took his time unscrewing the top from his inkwell and taking a pad of clean paper from his desk. He was careful to lock his cook’s file back in one of the drawers but not the gun. He held up a pen. ‘Are you ready, Emil?’

Emil pulled on the handcuffs that fastened him to the cot.

‘If I unlock the cuffs you’ll sit here quietly, and write a full account of everything that happened?’

‘If I don’t?’ Emil wavered.

‘The judge will set your obduracy against Reiner and Dolf’s full confessions.’

‘You want me to write down
everything
that happened?’

‘
Everything
,’ Ralf repeated.

‘If Dolf and Reiner said I took part. I didn’t. I was there but I didn’t do anything. It was the others. And Dorfman. He egged us on …’

‘If you don’t put your case forward, the judge won’t be able to take it into account.’

‘When I’ve finished you’ll let me go?’ Emil pleaded.

‘When you’ve finished I’ll return you to the cell and there you’ll stay until I’ve spoken to the judge tomorrow morning.’

‘And then I’ll be free to go?’

‘That will be up to the judge. It’s the best offer I can make you. Take it or leave it.’

Emil thought, but not for long. He held up his cuffed hand. ‘I’ll take it.’

Baumgarten’s Store, Konigsberg, Sunday January 12th 1919

Josef returned to the office with a pot of coffee, cheese rolls, and biscuits.

‘Sorry, Wolf, Cherie, the rolls aren’t as fresh as I’d like. They were made this morning for the staff who helped with the stocktake.’

‘The coffee smells good.’ Wolf warmed his hands on the cup Josef gave him before retrieving the envelope the girl had given him from his pocket. ‘Thank you for the warning, Cherie. I regret to say I didn’t open this in time to help the soldier who was attacked in the brewery last night, or the policeman who was murdered in the hospital this morning.’

‘I heard about them, sir.’ She bit her lip and looked down at her hands.

‘You know who killed the police officers?’ Wolf reiterated.

She refused to meet his eye.

‘Cherie … that is your name isn’t it, Cherie?’ Wolf checked.

‘It’s what they call me in the Green Stork, sir.’ She spoke so softly he could hardly hear her.

‘It’s not your name?’

She shook her head before taking the coffee Josef handed her.

‘This is going to be a very short conversation if you don’t talk. I promise you, neither I nor Mr Baumgarten will repeat a word of what you say, unless you give us permission.’

She finally looked up at Wolf. Her eyes seemed enormous. They were a deeper green than he remembered. He sensed he could lose himself in their depths if he wasn’t careful.

‘If you weren’t concerned about the men who’d been murdered you wouldn’t have given me that note,’ Wolf handed it to Josef.

‘I wanted to stop the killing. There’s been so much killing – in the war – and afterwards.’

‘You didn’t murder those men?’

Her eyes flashed momentarily. ‘I told you, I enticed them into the rooms. Nothing more. I could never hurt anyone or break one of God’s laws …’ her voice dropped even more. ‘Never!’

‘Yet you knew the killings were planned before they happened?’

‘They made me help them. They said I had to. That I owed it to God.’

‘Who are they, Cherie?’ Josef read the note and set it aside.

‘Please don’t call me that.’

‘What should we call you?’

‘My name was …’ she hesitated.

Wolf and Josef waited patiently.

‘When I was a child it was Colette.’

‘Colette is a pretty name,’ Wolf commented.

‘When I became a bride of Christ it became Sister John.’

‘You were a nun?’ Wolf was surprised a nun would leave a convent for the louche surroundings of the Green Stork

‘I admit I played a part by enticing those men to their deaths, Colonel von Mau, Mr Baumgarten, but I cannot – will not implicate anyone else.’

‘Innocent men have been murdered.’

‘If those men were innocent, they would still be alive.’

‘Every man is entitled to a fair hearing and trial in a court of law before he is condemned,’ Wolf said.

‘The Bible teaches us to take an “Eye for eye ”…’

‘ “… Tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. For the wages of sin is death”. I read the notes that were sent to Lilli Richter. But do you really believe any person has the right to kill another?’

‘It’s what the Bible teaches us.’

‘Psalms also says, “The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.” No matter what those men did they were entitled to be heard. If they’d been found guilty and sentenced by a judge, a guillotine would have ended their lives more swiftly and humanely than the torture they were subjected to.’

‘Some crimes do not deserve a humane death, Colonel von Mau.’

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

‘You know your New Testament, Colonel, but the crimes those men committed did not deserve to be dealt with mercifully. God punishes the guilty.’

‘No one will disagree with you on that, Miss Colette, but it seems to me that whoever killed those men considered their authority equal to God’s when it came to taking life.’ Josef topped up their coffee cups.

‘They considered themselves to be the instruments of God, Mr Baumgarten.’

‘Or the instrument of their own pride?’

‘You are a Jew, Mr Baumgarten?’ Colette asked.

‘I am.’

‘Then your God is not my God.’

‘Better men than me of all religious persuasions have debated that point, Miss Colette, but I believe the God who watches over us all is a just and forgiving God.’

‘The people who killed those men have suffered and are suffering for their actions but they had no choice. God chose them to carry out His will. You want to know who they are so you can persecute them through men’s courts, not God’s.’

Wolf imagined the hours of ‘persuasive arguments’ that had been used to make Colette believe what she was saying. ‘I want to know who the killers are to prevent Emil Grunman, Reiner Schult, and Dolf Engels suffering the same agonising deaths as the last four victims. Which you and I both know, they soon will.’

‘They might not die,’ Colette countered.

‘Do you know they won’t be killed, Colette, or is that just the wishful thinking of a guilty conscience?’ Wolf asked.

Josef sat opposite Colette, leaned forward and took her hand into his. ‘Tell us what you know and we promise not to reveal who gave us the information. You can leave it to us to decide what needs to be done to safeguard future victims. That way, whatever happens will be down to Wolf’s and my actions, not yours.’

Colette tensed as she looked at both men. ‘You promise, both of you, on the lives of those you hold dear, that you won’t tell anyone that it was me who told you who killed those men?’

‘I promise, on the lives of all I hold dear, that I won’t say a word of what you’re about to tell us without your permission, and I promise never to reveal that it was you who gave us the information,’ Wolf amended.

‘I swear on the God of my fathers and the lives of all those I hold sacred,’ Josef concurred.

‘You won’t punish them for doing what they felt they had to?’

‘That I can’t promise, Colette. No one can,’ Wolf said. ‘But I can promise you that I’ll listen to them and do all I can to help them.’

‘To escape from the police?’

‘You said they had no choice but to kill those men. I find that hard to believe.’

‘Then I must make you understand.’ Colette began to speak. Once she began, Wolf and Josef couldn’t have stopped her, even if they’d wanted to.

The words poured out, tumbling one after the other as she sat oblivious to everything except what she was telling them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Baumgarten’s Store, Konigsberg, Sunday January 12th 1919

‘My sister and I were brought up by our grandparents. It was common in the French villages. Our parents left to find work in Paris when I was two and Michelle four. After a few years they stopped writing, but our grandparents were kind and loving and Michelle and I sought consolation in the church. I received my calling when I was twelve and took my final vows in the spring of 1917. The convent that became my home was in a small village outside Rheims … you wouldn’t have heard of it …’

Wolf and Josef were sure they would have but they didn’t interrupt her.

‘The front line moved continuously. One day we’d be behind German lines, the next the Allies’. Four times we had to evacuate to a school in Rheims. That was the hardest. Having to pack up and move the convent’s sacred possessions as well as safeguard those who’d taken sanctuary with us or were convalescing in our care. Mother Superior said it was God’s will. He had placed us on the battlefield so we could help those who could not help themselves. We took in women and children whose homes had been destroyed in the fighting. They had nothing … no food, no blankets, only the clothes they were wearing. We nursed the sick, civilians and soldiers from both sides. British, Australian, Canadian – and German, but never the wounded. They were treated in the military hospitals. We only looked after men who’d succumbed to disease. In December 1916 there was an outbreak of …’

‘Measles,’ Wolf supplied.

‘You were there, sir?’

‘Five of my men died in that epidemic.’

‘Measles was followed by diphtheria. Last September there was an outbreak of scarlet fever. It spread from the villages to the trenches. The French first, then the Australians and British. There was a battle. The Allies retreated, the Germans advanced and the convent was once again behind German lines. Mother Superior took in the convalescent cases your medical personnel brought us. We ate in the kitchens so we could house ten officers in the refectory and we made up beds for twenty civilians in the gatehouse.’ She wrapped her arms around her shoulders, rocking herself to and fro on the chair.

‘Was Colonel Dorfman one of the officers?’ Wolf asked.

‘No, but he visited the men. He said it was to make sure they had everything they needed although he never brought them – or Mother Superior – supplies. We didn’t have enough food for the civilians, the patients and ourselves. The patients needed nourishment more than us, so we went without.

‘You didn’t get food from the German army?’

‘Not for the convent kitchen, but some of the men’s comrades brought them schnapps and cognac …’ her voice trailed. When she began talking again, it was at speed.

‘The evening before the officers were due to leave, Colonel Dorfman came with some of his subordinates. They were drunk, singing, shouting, making a lot of noise, and they gave the officers we’d been looking after brandy. Too much brandy. Mother Superior sent Sister Rachel, Sister Andrew, and me to the refectory to remind the officers there were sick women and children in the gatehouse. When we went in Sister Rachel asked them to be quiet but they took no notice of her … and then …’