The Pursuit of Pearls (4 page)

If the Obersturmbannführer was abashed by his obvious faux pas, he didn't show it. A small sardonic smile danced on his lips.

“So you're an actress! That's the work you're so eager to get back to. And what are you acting in at present?”

“A romantic comedy.”

“Tell me about it.”

Clara kept her eyes concentrated pointedly on the street below. “Not much to tell. It's nearly finished,” she replied tersely, hoping he was not going to ask the name of her current project.

“And what's it called? Just so that I can look out for it?”

There was a sarcastic composure about him. It was clear he enjoyed prying the information out of her. Turning, she met his gaze and said, “It's called
Love Strictly Forbidden
.”

His smile broadened slightly.

“Very stirring. And is it
your
character who is forbidden to love?”

“You could say so.”

Liebe Streng Verboten
was a romantic comedy of the most frivolous kind. It was set in occupied Vienna, and Clara played a ditsy secretary who fell for her boss. Although the movie was sure to be a cast-iron success, secretly Clara understood the officer's disdain.
Love Strictly Forbidden
had as much in common with cinematic art as ersatz coffee had with a rich blend of Ethiopian Arabica. It would take no more than a couple of weeks to film, and the result would be the same as ninety percent of the Ufa output—frothy romance, as light and forgettable as a Haribo marshmallow candy. But although she knew this, Clara was not about to sympathize with this man's patronizing remarks. She wondered exactly who he was. He must be fairly secure if he was prepared to disrespect Goebbels so airily. She inclined her head.

“It's not often you meet someone who never visits the cinema. Presumably you never see the newsreels either. You must feel awfully out of touch.”

“Sometimes I think it's the only way to live at the moment,” he murmured; then the supercilious expression returned, and he said, “But you're right. The cinema is important and I'm attempting to embrace it.”

“Which films have you embraced recently?”

“I tried watching
Dance on a Volcano
.” He paused with a soupçon of scorn, his lips curled. “It was billed as a historical drama, though I'm still trying to work out what it had in common with history. But then, perhaps history is whatever Doktor Goebbels says it is.”

“A word means what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less,” mused Clara.

“Alice Through the Looking-Glass,”
the officer replied in English. “Lewis Carroll is a much underrated philosopher.”

Startled, by both his comment and his flawless English, she stared. “Have you read it?”

“I spent two years living in England. I was an aide to von Ribbentrop when he was ambassador there. So yes, I've read it. But I've omitted to introduce myself.” He clicked his heels and bent to kiss Clara's hand. His mouth was softer than seemed possible from such chiseled perfection.

“My name is Conrad Adler. And you are Fräulein…”

“Vine.”

“Vine?”

“That's right.”

Could she be mistaken, or did a transitory frown cross those perfect features, like a shadow momentarily darkening the sun? Clara was used to her name provoking an immediate reaction. Often it caused people to widen their eyes, or refer at once to her films, but the expression that flitted across Adler's face seemed more puzzlement than recognition. Almost as soon as she noticed it, however, it had vanished, to be replaced with a courteous smile.

She retrieved her hand. “Clara Vine.”

“Clara Vine.”
He repeated her name experimentally, as though tasting it in his mouth like a fine claret. “Yes. That's a good name for an actress.”

The smooth mask was back in place.

“So if you work for von Ribbentrop, Obersturmbannführer, what are you doing here?”

“I've been assigned to another task for three months.”

“Can I ask why?”

“I'm afraid not. I'm on loan.” He shrugged. “Like a painting in a museum.”

A gale of laughter reached them from across the room and Clara glanced instinctively over at the Propaganda Ministry bureaucrats, gathered tightly around Goebbels and guffawing unctuously at his remarks.

Adler followed her gaze. “And you're English…”

“Half English.”

“Yet you choose to live in Berlin? Why?”

Could he tell that this was the question she most often asked herself?

“It's an interesting time. Germany is changing fast.”

“I agree with that. To think ten years ago there were soup kitchens and people standing on the streets with boards around their necks and camps for the unemployed outside the city. And now this.”

He nodded towards the street, from where faint strains of the Horst Wessel song, the informal Nazi anthem, floated up. “No unemployment. Autobahns everywhere. Germany is great again. And all without a shot being fired.”

“I saw some pretty large guns in the parade this morning.”

A glimmer of amusement flickered behind his well-sculpted countenance.

“Ah. We must never forget there's a narrow boundary that separates the savage from the civilized. So, Fräulein Vine…” Still that teasing, probing smile. “At first glance you could be pure German. You have Aryan features, yet there's something distinctly English about you, too. A certain look you have—the one you're giving me now. It's like fire behind ice.”

He held her gaze deliberately, provocatively. For a moment, it was as though he was seeing through her, to the Clara Vine who hid behind the carefully composed surface. Heat entered her face, the sounds of the room fell away, and a silent connection sparked between them. It was an unspoken understanding, a charge of sheer energy between a man and a woman. His gaze swept over her body like a physical touch, and Clara found herself speechless.

“Perhaps,” Adler murmured, moving closer. His uniform exuded an aroma of starched linen and some sharp, citrus-scented pomade. “You might like to help me in my research.”

“How exactly would I do that?”

“As you're evidently the expert on these things, you could accompany me to the cinema.”

“I'm a little busy right now.”

“Busy filming
Love Strictly Forbidden
. Of course.” Amusement glimmered in his eyes like candlelight. “All the same, let me give you my card.”

He slipped a card into her hand, and she transferred it to her bag.

“You could tell me if I'm watching high-quality art or low-grade trash.”

Instantly Clara regained possession of her senses. The presumption, the arrogance of the man, took her breath away. She had told him she was an actress, yet still he was intent on disdaining her profession. She was about to issue a curt riposte when Hugh Lindsey appeared, inserted himself bodily between Adler and Clara, and thrust a glass of sparkling Sekt into her hand.

“Got you another drink, Clara. Oh, sorry. Am I interrupting?”

“Not at all,” replied Adler, his mouth tightening slightly.

“We're making plans to go to Erich Carow's cabaret soon. Have you heard of it?”

“Fräulein Vine is already acquainted with my deficiencies as regards popular culture.”

“Mary says it's unmissable.” Hugh turned to Clara. “There's a whole group of us going. Care to come along?”

“I'd love to,” said Clara.

“Excuse me, Fräulein. I should leave.”

Adler clicked his heels, nodded at her, and melted away.

“Thought you needed rescuing.” Hugh grinned. “Who was that?”

“Probably another of Goebbels's lackeys,” said Mary, coming to join them. “They never leave Clara alone because they've seen her onscreen.”

“Actually, he works for the Foreign Ministry. And he'd never heard of me.” Clara finished her drink and checked her watch. “You know, I'd better be getting back. The S-Bahn will be crammed.”

Mary's face creased in concern. “Be careful, after the news.”

“What news?”

“It just came through on the ticker tape.”

The ticker tape of the DNB, the German news agency, was stationed in a corner of the Press Club, from where it spewed out important information at all times of the day and night. Generally this important information concerned improved crop yields and record steel production numbers, but occasionally some actual newsworthy incidents seeped through.

“Everyone's talking about it. A girl's body was discovered by some construction workers close to the studios. They were building an air-raid shelter for the Artists' Colony. And that's where you're living, isn't it?”

“A body?” said Clara.

“In a shallow grave, apparently. Barely even covered. It was one of the Faith and Beauty girls.”

“Faith and Beauty?” Charles Cavendish frowned. “What on earth is that?”

“It's the Nazis' finishing school for young women. Hitler's ideal women. They join at seventeen, and they're groomed as consorts for senior Nazi men. They have a community building near there.”

“Extraordinary,” said Hugh, taking out a notebook as though he was about to begin a news report there and then. “They're groomed, you say?”

“What about this girl then?” interrupted Cavendish. “Could it have been an accident?”

“No. She was murdered apparently.” Mary checked the piece of paper in her hand. “Shot. Lottie Franke, aged twenty.”

Until then, Clara had been silent, but the girl's name went through her like an electric jolt and she tore the paper from Mary's hand.

“It can't be!”

She stared at it, but the name was there in stark type.
Lottie Franke
.

“Oh, Clara, did you know her?” asked Mary, gently.

“She's my student. She was assigned to me from the Faith and Beauty Society to study costume design. I was looking after her. She's such a talented girl. It has to be a mistake.”

Mary put a hand on her arm. “I hope so, too, Clara. But I can't see how it can be. The Criminal Police have announced it. They think the killer took advantage of the Führer's birthday because he knew everyone would be in town. What was she like, this girl Lottie?”

“She's…was…” Clara paused, and conjured up Lottie's exquisite face, with its wide cheekbones, ivory skin, and pale blue eyes. The slender, feline grace. “She was quite beautiful, but very intelligent, too. When I showed her round the studio she knew all sorts of details about the sets of
Metropolis
and
Nosferatu,
and she was terrifically knowledgeable about photographic technique. Hardly any young people in Germany know that kind of detail about Expressionist film anymore. I thought it was pretty daring of her even to talk about it.”

“Liking Expressionist film may not be encouraged, but it's not enough to get you killed,” remarked Mary somberly. “The police are telling women to be careful in isolated areas. There's a dangerous man on the loose.”

“Will you be okay going back on your own?” said Hugh, laying a solicitous hand on Clara's arm.

“Of course. But thank you.”

Mary looked doubtful. “Remember what I said, Clara. Please be careful.”

CLARA LEFT THE CLUB
and walked north, letting herself be carried in the tide of straggling crowds all the way to the S-Bahn at Friedrichstrasse. The news about Lottie Franke had obliterated all traces of Herr Conrad Adler and their conversation from her mind. As the cool air played on her flushed cheeks, her head filled with images of the girl she had known for just a few weeks, the flaxen hair cropped in a
Bubikopf
—the short bob frowned upon in these more conventional times—striding along the corridors of Ufa as if they were catwalks, impervious to admiring glances. Lottie had been unusually beautiful, yet her beauty was matched by an exceptional intelligence. Though Clara was supposed to answer Lottie's questions and show her around, quite often Lottie had been the one to provide information about Ufa's past, and the films she had seen. What a waste of a life. Clara tried not to imagine that slender figure sullied with earth, the perfect limbs crumpled and askew in a shallow grave.

At Friedrichstrasse the station was predictably packed, but the crowds that surged onto the trains were different from the normal commuting throng, more jovial and less truculent. Wedged in one of the steamy carriages, jammed with jubilant day-trippers, Clara looked out at the darkness flashing past, the necklace of lamps strung like pearls along the track, and the chill spring night fizzing with neon. Everyone on the train was tired and content. The Führer's fiftieth birthday had been a moment of excitement, a firework flash against an ever-darkening horizon. Yet for one family, she thought, the day would always be marked by loss. Clara had no idea where the Franke family lived, but she knew the Faith and Beauty building was nearby in Neubabelsberg, and she resolved to call there the following day and ask for Lottie's address. The least she could do was to visit the girl's parents as soon as possible.

L
ottie Franke's parents lived in Schulzendorferstrasse in Wedding, an industrial area of cavernous, gray streets and barracks-style, five-story tenement blocks grouped around dank courtyards. The blocks were more than six apartments deep, accessed from the street by a grimy archway and cramming together individual apartments with workshops, shared kitchens, and communal privies. All around, iron-framed chimneys belched smoke and men with cloth caps and collarless shirts trudged by carrying bags holding wurst and sandwiches for lunch.

As she climbed off the tram, Clara was instantly assailed by the yeasty stink of malted barley, wheat, and fermenting hops. It seemed to permeate everything from the bricks of the buildings to the paving stones beneath her feet. It issued from the Schulzendorf brewery, which provided jobs for hundreds of local workers and barrels of cloudy, sour
weiss
beer for their relaxation afterwards. Consumption of the traditional Berlin brew had soared in the past few years, and not even the new craze for Coca-Cola could begin to rival it.

Clara consulted her map and looked around. Wedding was a solidly working-class district, and before Hitler took power it was the scene of regular street fights between Communists and storm troopers. Though the ugly tenements dominated, Clara remembered that Mies van der Rohe's architecture could also be found here in the form of a series of experimental residential cubes he had designed and built in the 1920s.

The Frankes' home was not one of them.

Three floors up a stone stairwell reeking of urine and cooking, Marlene and Udo Franke's apartment was three cramped and dingy rooms. Lottie's father was moored on a sofa, his face stripped of animation and his eyes red-rimmed and pouchy from lack of sleep. A day's growth of stubble shadowed his chin. Marlene Franke was, by contrast, seized by frenetic activity, rushing in and out to fetch photographs of Lottie and asking repeatedly how Clara took her coffee. It was clear to see where the daughter's good looks had come from, though Marlene's blond hair was tied in a lank bundle and her startling blue eyes were crazily bright.

Everything about the apartment testified to an ardent faith in the Führer. The regulation picture of Hitler hung above the stove in a cheap gilt frame, its lurid coloring giving him a somewhat consumptive air, and set out on a veneer table dressed with a lace doily was the Führer corner. These shrines were everywhere now—in shops and offices, cafés and restaurants, as well as family homes. People believed they brought good luck. Mostly they featured a picture of Hitler and a candle, but the Frankes' shrine was an elaborate affair, with a copy of the
Jubiläumsausgabe,
anniversary issue of
Mein Kampf
, in honor of Hitler's birthday, and flanking Hitler, head shots of Goebbels and Goering, like the two criminals at some devilish crucifixion.

Marlene Franke backed into the room with a tray of trembling crockery, set it down, then sat next to her husband, rocking slightly.

“Lottie was a wonderful daughter. I don't know how we're going to cope without her,” she said, twisting a damp rag of handkerchief between her fingers. “She had such promise, didn't she, Udo?”

With a twitch of shaggy eyebrows, Udo Franke assented. “She wanted to be a costume designer. She saw all the movies.”

“I was impressed by how much she knew about film when she came round the studio with me,” Clara told them. “She was very intelligent.”

“And artistic,” said her mother, with a nod at the wall. “She modeled all her own designs. She had even been photographed by the fashion photographer Yva. Have you heard of her?”

Everyone had. Yva was one of the most celebrated fashion photographers in Berlin. Her pictures were in all the glossy magazines,
Die Dame, Elegante Welt,
even
Life
magazine.

“We kept them all.”

Every wall in the room was indeed plastered with photographs of Lottie wearing dramatic, elongated costumes in shapes that were plainly inspired by Expressionist film.

“My daughter said fashion was Art,” said her mother, with a touch of defiance. “And Art couldn't be categorized into acceptable and unacceptable. There's only good and bad Art. I'm sure we're not meant to think that—it's not what the Führer says, is it?—but you couldn't tell Lottie what to think. The most you could do was tell her not to say such things out loud. Now I'm tormenting myself thinking it was ideas like that which got her in trouble.”

“I can't imagine her views on Art could have led to her death,” said Clara gently. “Have the police anything to say about the investigation?”

“Nothing. They've just left. A Kriminal Inspektor Herz and some other rank. They said everyone was out of town. The Führer's birthday, you see. No one saw anything strange. They asked if our girl had a boyfriend, but I said there was no one.”

Marlene's face darkened with misery. “So much for that Faith and Beauty Society,” she spat savagely.

Clara couldn't help but agree. When she had called at the Faith and Beauty community home earlier that day, the grim-faced principal, Frau Mann, had met Clara's inquiries with a transparent lack of sympathy. It was as though Lottie had corrupted the whole idea of Faith and Beauty. If Faith and Beauty girls had to die, it should be gloriously for the Fatherland, not sordidly at the hands of an unknown murderer.

“They're supposed to look after the girls. Instead they filled her head with ideas about getting away. They took her to London, did you know?”

“To London?” Clara looked up, surprised.

“A couple of months ago.”

“What were they doing there?”

“It was a deputation.” Marlene Franke stood and began to scrabble in a drawer. “I kept the invitation. It was so beautiful.” She handed Clara a piece of card—precisely the same kind of stiff, high-quality invitation with embossed black italics as rested on her mantelpiece at home.

THE BRITISH WOMEN'S LEAGUE OF HEALTH AND BEAUTY

AT HOME

CLARIDGE'S HOTEL

Clara had heard of the British Women's League of Health and Beauty. It was an organization dedicated to improving the health of England's young women. It regularly held outdoor galas, where groups of trim girls in navy gym shorts performed synchronized athletics. Photographs of these events frequently appeared in the press, not always for the reasons the organizers imagined.

“Do you know Claridge's Hotel?” asked Udo Franke. “It's very grand. As big as the Paris Ritz and almost the equal of the Adlon. Marble everywhere, our Lottie said. And beautiful food, much better than you expect English food to be.”

“The people were charming,” added Marlene. “The dinner was given by something called the Anglo-German Fellowship. That sounds like a nice group of people.”

“I've heard of it.”

Clara had more than heard of it. Her father, Sir Ronald Vine, and her elder sister, Angela, were two of its most trenchant supporters. It was the last outpost in England of sympathy for the Nazi regime. With a jolt Clara realized that if the fellowship had organized the dinner, there was every chance that Angela would have been there. Angela might even have met Lottie, without knowing that her own sister knew her, too. Clara shivered as she felt the tectonic plates of her existence shifting beneath her, the two parts of her life clashing unawares.

“They said a visit to London would be valuable for her education. She would meet educated people, and converse with them about high-minded subjects. London!” The way Marlene spat the word out, the city might have been a sink of unimaginable depravity. “It must be a dreadful place. I wouldn't be surprised if she met the madman there!”

She burst into a torrent of sobs and buried her face in the sodden handkerchief.

“Now then, Marlene.” Udo Franke roused himself from his trance and placed a hand on his wife's juddering arm. “You're imagining things. Nothing happened in London. Lottie loved that trip. It was a big opportunity for her. How many girls get to visit London?”

“So much promise, and a few months later she's dead!”

Udo trained his weary gaze on Clara. “Fräulein Vine. My wife and I are touched by your visit. It's a great comfort to hear how talented our daughter was, and we would like to hear more. But I implore you, if you hear anything which could help us find the monster who killed her—anything, no matter how small—you will come back and let us know.”

Clara took his large, moist hand. She knew there was no possibility that she would be privy to any information that could help catch Lottie's killer, yet she also knew how unbearable she would find the grief if anything befell her godson, Erich, and he was not even her flesh and blood. Could people ever be truly happy again after the death of a child?

“I promise I will.”

On the way to the door, her attention was caught by a small, framed photograph of Lottie.

“It's special, that one,” Udo Franke told her. “It's from the dinner in London. It's only a snapshot, but it's the last one we have of our little girl, which is why we put it by the door.”

The photo was entirely different from the artfully posed and backlit studio portraits on the other walls. In it, Lottie sat beaming at the camera across a snowy tabletop, a picture of composure between the crystal decanters and silver bread baskets, surrounded by a gaggle of Faith and Beauty girls. Although it was a group photograph, the eye was instantly drawn to Lottie, the candlelight forming a dazzling halo that accentuated the flawless complexion and the perfect proportions of her face. Next to her, leaning into the picture, was a much plainer girl, with a round face and unbecoming braids.

“Who's that?” Clara asked.

“That's her best friend, Hedwig. They knew each other since they were tiny,” said Marlene. “Hedwig looked up to our daughter because Lottie was so good at everything, and so much prettier, of course. But Hedwig's a nice girl. Very upset, too.”

Clara stared at the picture for some minutes, far longer than she needed. It was full of the terrible poignancy that freights photographs of the past. Those smiling faces, so joyful in the present, so optimistic for the future, and so innocent of what was to come. A sadness washed over her as she realized she was really searching for another image—the face of her own sister, Angela.

She didn't find it.

OPPOSITE THE TRAM STOP
outside the Frankes' block, as if in direct mockery of the commuters shuffling their aching feet, was a poster featuring a gleaming new Volkswagen car with the slogan: “Save five marks a week and you will drive your own car.” Most people in the queue looked as likely to buy a rocket to the stars as a Volkswagen car. Erich's grandmother, Frau Schmidt, a nurse at Berlin's biggest hospital, the Charité, was saving from her meager salary and had worked out that it would take her five years before she could afford one. After another few minutes shuffling alongside the others in the queue, Clara decided to walk.

Berlin was changing. It still looked like Berlin, but every day it was a little different, as subtle as fashion that shifts from one season to the next, raising hemlines, adjusting shoulder pads, and tightening waists. It even smelled different. People used to talk about the famous
Berliner Luft,
the fresh air that blew into the city from the Grunewald, but now the city reeked of sour breath, bitter cigarettes, and stale, unwashed bodies. The only soap available was gritty and impossible to lather because there was no fat in it. People had taken to carrying their own soap with them, if they had any, because leaving it lying around risked finding it missing.

Clara's mind went back to the photograph of Lottie Franke, and the certainty that Angela would have been at the same event. Yet again she regretted the estrangement between her and her sister. She thought of the last time they were truly close, when she was sixteen and their mother had died. They'd been standing in a ragged group around the graveside, and Angela had hissed the reminder
Dig your nails into your hands to stop yourself crying
. Repressing emotion was an article of faith for Angela. Concealment was more than courtesy, it was a way of life.

Behaving properly. Being properly British. That was Angela's code. Yet surely the quick, intelligent sister Clara knew was still there—buried beneath the visits to Harrods and bridge nights and society teas. Angela's letters tended to focus on the interminable round of charity events that she conducted, the deaths of relations, and the relentless progress of her husband's political career.
Gerald is in line for a big promotion. Chamberlain is so impressed with him.
Clara responded with a dutiful list of parties, premieres, and work reports. Nothing intimate. Nothing political. Nothing real.

Right then she resolved that she would write to Angela very soon, and attempt something they had not managed for ten years. Communication.

CLARA PASSED A LOUDSPEAKER
lashed to the side of a building, blaring out
“Deutschland über Alles”
and obliging everyone to give a perfunctory right-armed salute. She generally avoided giving the
Führer Gruss
by ensuring she was carrying something in both hands, but that day, distracted by thoughts of Lottie, she failed to comply.

A hand on her shoulder made her jump like a coiled spring. A man was standing in her path.

“Documents please.”

He had a complexion the color of concrete and an expression that epitomized the
Berliner Schnauze,
the direct, graceless, skeptical manner so many of the city's inhabitants perfected. He flicked the lapel of his jacket to reveal the aluminum disk marking him out as Gestapo.

Clara handed over her ID and watched the stupidity and aggression warring in his face as he scrutinized it. Although the small piece of card was beginning to fray at the edges, she never had any doubts about the quality of her identity documents; such was the skill of their forgery. All the same, even if papers were in order, a policeman or Gestapo official could confiscate them if he didn't like you. Clara wondered what this man saw in her. The usual Berliner, cowed in the face of authority and determined to keep a low profile? How much did her face give away? Into her head floated the remark of Conrad Adler.