The Winter Garden (2014) (46 page)

She stumbled, and pulled herself up again. Her breathing had become ragged, and a hoarse note sounded in her throat, like a bird’s cry. She should never have left the house. She
shouldn’t have gone out to see what was making the puppies whimper in their kennel and the geese cackle and call. She had wanted to comfort the dogs and run her hands through their soft fur,
but she shouldn’t have stepped out of the warmth of the kitchen, where the glimmering stove was reflecting in the copper saucepans that sat above the range and the baking spices hung in the
air, only to find the door slammed shut by an unseen hand, a terror which had set her running into the night.

The sweet, pudgy face of Otto came to her. What would Otto do without her? Otto’s parents would tell him they always knew he could have done better. They thought little enough of Ilse
anyway, and to have her die an undignified death would be a further slur on the family name. And what about her own parents, on their farm? Poor Papi and Mutti had never wanted their only daughter
to marry a man who lived so far away and now they would be left with no daughter at all.

Images flashed through her brain. Ilse thought of the American lady and felt glad that she had talked to her. She had lovely kind eyes and a laugh that made you think nothing really mattered.
Ilse tried to remember the address on the card she had given her. It was Winterfeldstrasse, wasn’t it? If only she could remember it she could head there, then perhaps Fräulein Harker
would look after her. But that was a crazy hope. How could she possibly reach the city from here?

She ran on and on until her thoughts became a jumble, a kind of harsh music. All she had ever tried to do was obey the Führer’s ideas on how to honour the Fatherland and behave the
way a good German woman should behave. She had been good, hadn’t she? What more could the Führer ask of a girl? She began to pray, the new kind of prayer, the Führer’s prayer.
‘Führer, mein Führer, bequeathed to me by the Lord. Protect and preserve me as long as I live.’

It was late afternoon by the time Clara got back to her apartment. She sat down, kicked off her shoes, exhausted, and lay back in her chair as the light leaked out of the sky
and the yellow glow of streetlights took its place.

After some time she sat up again. She had dumped Anna’s case down on the floor, but now she took it up and looked at it. Anna had her secrets. Secrets she kept even from her oldest friend.
And it was those secrets which had killed her in the end. Because everything that had happened to Clara – being followed, Erich being threatened – had happened since she took care of
Anna’s case. Yet she had looked at it a thousand times, she had been through Johann’s letters time and again. The theatre programmes, the souvenirs. If there was anything secret about
this case it was either invisible, or hidden in plain sight.

She remembered what Strauss had said to her about aerial photography.
Some of the most important things are hidden in plain sight.

Clara opened the case again and shut her eyes. Then she felt around it like a blind person, her fingertips feeling out the sleek plush of the velvet lining, the tooled edge of leather that
formed the writing insert, the drawers with their little ivory knobs. She pulled them out again, but they were empty. She ran her fingers along the outside of the case and swept down to the bottom
and then up again to the top.

A ledge.

Her fingers sensed a dip in the velvet. She opened her eyes and looked again but could see nothing. Her eyes said there was nothing to see, but her fingers told her it was there. A slight
depression that ran along the entire upper edge of the case. She pressed experimentally, and the depression rose smoothly to her hand. So that was it! A partition. Concealed in the upright of the
lap desk. She pulled it all the way out and looked at the contents.

There were four packages about six inches square, each made from four flaps of brown paper, constructed like envelopes so that the flaps overlaid each other. Opening one she saw that it
contained an old-fashioned glass plate negative. You never saw them now, not since everyone worked with rolls of film.

Now we see through a glass darkly.

Holding them up to the light she squinted to see what they represented. It was hard to make out at first, but she discerned a group of people, at a party perhaps. Men in uniform, with their arms
around each other. Two of them, she thought she recognized. Rudolf Hess, with his beetle brow and lantern jaw, and Ernst Röhm, the commander of the SA, an intimate of Hitler’s since he
was an education officer in the army, a devoted friend from the days of the Munich beer hall and the only man who was allowed to address the Führer as ‘du’. She knew it was
Röhm from the way the cap sat on his bullet head, the sleek outcrop of hair, centrally parted, and the dimpled fold of fat on his face. Röhm, who had been slaughtered on Hitler’s
orders back in 1934, when the Führer feared that the power of his storm troopers threatened the Wehrmacht. In the picture Röhm had his arm around another man and something about the
composition of the group reminded her uncannily of the picture painted by Bruno Weiss in the Degenerate Art exhibition.

She spread the negatives out on the rug and scrutinized the second, then the third. More groups of people in close embraces. Squinting at the fourth, it was then that she found the most
extraordinary thing. This time the man in it was unmistakeable. The intense burning eyes, the mirthless grimace which passed for a smile. It was that picture, Clara realized at once, which held the
key to Anna’s death.

Kneeling there on the floor, she looked at the photographs in amazement. She switched from one to another as her eye accustomed to the negatives, and adapted to seeing everything in reverse. It
was the reverse, too, of what everyone believed. An astonishing opposite. As she looked a chill crept over her and the implications became clear. Anna’s old boyfriend cared enough about these
pictures to kill Anna. He had pursued Katia Hansen, too, so much that she had fled to the other end of Germany in fear of him, and the same man knew that Clara had these pictures now. How far would
he go to get them back?

For a long time she stared in panic from one picture to another, then rocked back on her heels and put her face in her hands. She felt a throb of fear that rose within her and then a plummeting
sensation, like falling from a great height. She had no idea what she could do now. Like Arno Strauss, she felt as though she had seen too much.

There was a rap on the door. Clara froze. Then she heard a woman’s voice. An English voice, young and imperious.

‘Come on Clara! Let me in.’

Unity Mitford was wearing a powder-blue evening dress, with a velvet cape draped across her shoulders and a fur-trimmed hat on her shining blonde head. Her complexion was powdered alabaster
white and she had quite unusually applied a slick of cherry lipstick, but the elegance of her appearance was diminished by her breathlessness at climbing several flights of stairs. The swastika
brooch that was, as usual, pinned to her breast, bounced up and down as she caught her breath. Her eyes were bright with nervous excitement and she clutched an evening bag, like an eager puppy
holding its lead.

‘Guess what, Clara. The Führer says yes!’

‘Hello, Unity. What on earth are you talking about?’

Unity stared at her petulantly.

‘I told you. At the Goerings’ party. I said I was going to ask him to invite you to the Wintergarten to see
The Merry Widow
. And the Führer said that was fine. So hurry
up. We’re due at the Reich Chancellery in fifteen minutes. My man is waiting outside. What’s all that on the floor?’

For the first time Unity seemed to register the negatives which Clara had pushed behind her on the rug. She poked one with her foot. ‘What are all those?’

‘Nothing interesting. Just some historical pictures.’

Unity approached and took one up. ‘Really? I say, that looks like the Führer.’

‘Don’t touch them, please, Unity, they’re fragile.’

Clara’s request was ignored as Unity dropped to her knees and picked up the negatives, staring from one to the other. Her lower lip pushed out in a childish pout.

‘And that must be . . . Ernst Röhm? But . . . what are they?’ Then she turned to Clara savagely. ‘Where did you get these?’

‘They came from Hoffmann’s studio. They were taken a long time ago. Back in the twenties. Before you knew him, Unity. It was a party in Munich. They got up to some wild
things.’

‘But the men. They’re kissing!’

‘I know.’

‘It’s lies. These are lies.’ Unity jumped up. Her face had gone from pale to scarlet. Uncomprehendingly she waved them in the air. ‘Pictures are manipulated all the time.
Goebbels does it non-stop in the propaganda department. These are just shoddy. They’re fakes.’

‘Of course they are.’

Unity turned to Clara, anger and bewilderment warring in her face.

‘So what are
you
doing with them!’

‘I found them. I’m keeping them safe. You’re right. No one must get hold of them.’

‘You’re planning to use them against him, aren’t you?’

‘Don’t be silly. Just the opposite. I want to stop them falling into the wrong hands.’

Unity was still staring at the pictures, but now she started crying, great gulping sobs like a toddler, swiping the tears angrily away from her face. ‘It’s not true. They are a
despicable scandal. The Führer is the finest of men.’

‘Stop it, Unity!’

‘He is a man of the highest emotions. He would never engage in . . . he would never . . .’

She was weeping wildly. Her nose was streaming and her milky complexion was mottled with emotion. With a sudden movement she slammed the negatives to the ground so they rebounded on the wooden
floor and splintered into dancing fragments.

‘They’re lies. Lies should be destroyed. That’s what the Führer says.’

The glass negatives lay in shards, some of the bigger slivers embedded upright into the parquet. Unity stared momentarily at the splintered glass, as though slightly stunned by what she had
done, then turned to Clara, defiantly.

‘I don’t want you to come to the opera any more, Clara. I shall tell the Führer you’re not coming. And don’t worry, I’m planning to tell him everything.
He’s going to be very upset.’

As soon as the door had slammed behind her, Clara went to the window and watched Unity dash towards a large Mercedes that stood in the street with its engine running. She saw
the peaked cap of the driver turn, and Unity jump into the back seat. As the car pulled away, Clara knew she had no time to lose. She didn’t doubt that Unity would tell Hitler exactly what
she had seen. She would inform him furiously that Clara Vine, the actress who had been so kindly invited to accompany them to the Wintergarten that evening, had a photograph in her apartment of him
kissing another man. A photograph that, although it lay in shards, pieced together the dark puzzle of the Führer and presented him as he was. Like a crossword put together, complete and
comprehensible. A picture that could drag him out of the shadowy glamour of celebrity and expose him to the common light of day. Truth lay around her in a litter of broken glass.

Clara looked at the wreckage of the negatives. She had no doubt that these pictures could destroy Hitler. They could slice through the Führer’s reputation throughout Germany and stop
his plans for domination of Europe in its tracks. Homosexuality was the vice, after all, for which Röhm and his SA associates had been executed. If Hitler, the object of adoration for millions
of women, should be found to have indulged, should be seen as a sexual deviant . . . well, the Nazis had a word for behaviour like that. Degenerate.

There was no chance that Unity would stay silent. She had the deadly combination of slavish devotion to the Führer and the political instincts of a teenager. There was no doubt she would
boast about how she had personally destroyed the negatives. As if that was an end of it. As if the Führer would be overcome with gratitude and perhaps give her a medal as a reward.

If Unity was making her way to the Chancellery now, Clara might have an hour before police arrived at her door. Probably less than that. Wildly, she considered her options. She longed to run
straight out of the apartment and head for Duisberger Strasse, but her desire to seek refuge with Ralph was swiftly quelled; she couldn’t risk drawing the police to him. There was only one
person in Germany who could save her now, and she needed to find him before she herself was found.

Fighting the urge to flee immediately, she forced herself to hesitate, then went over to the cupboard and selected a navy satin dress that perfectly emphasized her curves, navy elbow gloves,
pearl necklace, diamond earrings and dark glasses. She needed to use all the persuasive skills she possessed. She paused for a second to survey herself in the mirror, twisted her hair up into a
chignon, then drew on the long coat with the frosted fox-fur collar. Picking up a cut-glass atomizer she sprayed a cloud of
Evening in Paris
about her and finally, with her gloves on, she
carefully collected up the shards of glass from the floor and stuffed them into a beaded black and white clutch bag. Looking around her she saw something else. Erich’s knife. Sheathed, with a
red ribbon tied around it. She slipped it into the bag and left the apartment.

She made herself walk calmly down the stairs and nod to Rudi, who was immersed in
Der SA-Mann
. Looking up, he seemed about to comment on the young foreigner who had just slammed out of
the door and insert some reprimand for Clara about visitors needing to have respect for other tenants, but she left before the words were out of his mouth and headed into the chill evening air.

She walked the length of Winterfeldstrasse, crossed Potsdamer Strasse and headed north. It was busy now. People were hurrying out to their evening’s entertainment, to the cinema or a show.
She tried to stick to the side streets, with her head down, keeping her pace firm and steady. After fifteen minutes’ brisk walk she had reached halfway down Wilhelmstrasse, past the Aviation
Ministry, to the wrought-iron gates of the Chancellery. Across the road and slightly set back from it was the Propaganda Ministry. Even at this time of the evening, most of the windows were still
lit. The Ministry was never really shut. The message of the new Germany was too important to keep to office hours.