Death in Focus Read online

  Zillah smiled, but only with her lips. In her eyes there was a dark fear. “He thinks that we are Germans first, and Jews only by chance,” she said softly. “We are necessary. He is a research chemist. They cannot do without people like him. He credits them with more sense than I do.” Her voice wavered very slightly. “I don’t think they care what we do, how long our forebears have been here, or anything else.” She straightened her shoulders. “But you must be hungry! When did you last eat? Breakfast, I imagine? You can do nothing well on an empty stomach. I’ll find a good plain dress for you, and Marta will get you something to eat.” She turned from Elena to Jacob. “Don’t stand there, my dear! Do something useful!”

  He shot a quick smile at Elena, then looked back at Zillah. “Would you like me to attend to the dress, or the lunch?”

  Zillah did not bother to answer him, but she smiled. “Come,” she said to Elena. “We must be quick and quiet about this.” She led the way out of the room, and Elena followed her.

  CHAPTER

  16

  Margot was really annoyed with Elena. It was nearly three days now, and she had not bothered to send any message at all as to where she was. If she had stopped off in Paris and decided to stay there with Ian, or alone, she could at least have said so! It took very little effort to send a telegram and say something, even if it was only an apology for tearing off like that with only a brief note. Not that Margot blamed her entirely, if she was honest. She might well have done the same thing. Indeed, she had, more than once. But she had had the decency to let people know, and apologize, more or less.

  Margot had wired her parents, and they had heard nothing either. She had not thought it possible to become bored with Amalfi, but she had. There was no choice but to see if Elena was sitting in a heap in Paris, miserable that the affair had gone no further, too proud to tell anyone, and unable to go home until she had pulled herself together. Katherine had always expected Margot to look after her younger sister. Now she was going to have to do it again. Actually, Elena was perfectly capable of looking after herself. She just wouldn’t do the expected things. And to be honest, she had made an awful mess of the Aiden Strother business. She took everything so deeply! She had been loyal to him far longer than had been realistic. But alas, Elena was not a realist.

  Margot checked out of the hotel very early in the morning and took the long, rather tedious train journey to Rome, Milan, and then Paris. The first place to look, of course, was the small Hôtel de l’Abbaye, on Rue Cassette, where they usually stayed. She went there and asked, but the staff had seen nothing of Elena. Margot booked herself a room anyway, then set out to walk in the usual places, to the cafés where she and Elena had gone together in the past. Damn it, they had lived in Paris long enough, when their father was British ambassador here. There must be some old friends still around.

  She walked along the street with a swing in her step, with no particular care where she was going. She was wearing a black-and-white silk dress, and she felt the swirl of it with pleasure. They might not know if they had seen Elena or not, but they would remember Margot!

  Three hours and many questions later, she was fed up with this and decided she would go home, whether she found Elena or not. She had memories of looking for her as a little girl, when Elena was rather sweet. Always asking questions. “How does this work?” “What does it do?” And more than anything else, “Why?” She supposed that they had grown apart while Margot fell in love with Paul. There had been no room for anyone else then. How could there be? Who wanted a little sister along on the short visits they had together? So short…Elena had never fallen in love, not really deeply in love, as far as Margot knew. She did not court Aiden Strother. That was infatuation. She never even saw the real man behind the façade. Now there were hardly any real men left to fall for, and Elena was far too serious for most of them, yet not domestic enough for someone who wanted a traditional wife.

  Margot was sitting in the shade of the Luxembourg Gardens the next morning. It was beautiful, an island of enormous trees, sudden statues, whispering leaves above.

  Where in hell had Elena got to? Why couldn’t she at least have the decency to let people know? She was so bland on the surface, people might not remember her, even if she had walked by them some time ago! She wore too much blue. Empty blue, like the sea, or the sky.

  Margot was all fire and ice. Nobody forgot her.

  She went out through the gates into the street and passed a newsstand with the morning’s front pages displayed.

  Margot slowed her pace. The woman staring at her from the newspaper bore a striking resemblance to Elena. But it could also be any one of a half million other young women. She pushed the thought away, passed the newsstand…and then turned back.

  That really could be Elena. It looked like her…a lot. Margot took a couple of steps closer.

  It was the woman suspected of having assassinated Friedrich Scharnhorst! Not that he didn’t need assassinating; he was a monster, well nicknamed the Hyena! Apparently it had happened in Berlin a day ago.

  She really did look like Elena. Odd. Wonder what her name was? She was probably German.

  Margot leaned forward and looked at the picture more closely. Then the coldness seized her with a grip like iron. It was Elena. The slightly winged eyebrows, the high cheekbones, the unexpectedly sensuous mouth.

  Margot read the caption underneath. “Englishwoman wanted for the murder of Friedrich Scharnhorst. Possibly Elena Standish, daughter of a previous British ambassador to Berlin.” And it gave the dates.

  Margot stood frozen. That couldn’t be true! Not Elena, of all people. What the hell had happened? Had that apparently harmless-looking young man, Ian what’s-his-name, done it and left Elena to carry the blame? Was that what he wanted all along? God, he was convincing! Margot would never have guessed, and she was pretty skilled at judging character, especially in men. First Aiden Strother, and now this! But this was infinitely worse.

  “Madame?”

  She realized the newspaper seller was speaking to her. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a few coins and gave them to the man. Snatching up the paper, she turned and walked quickly away. What on earth had Elena got herself into? How could Margot help?

  Obvious! First thing was to go to Berlin, to the British Embassy. Roger Cordell was still there. He had been a good friend to their father, and he had liked Margot. He had always made that clear, though he had never overstepped the mark and been overfamiliar. His own wife had never recovered from the losses of the war. In Margot’s opinion, she didn’t seem to have tried very hard. She had retreated from caring. Perhaps Margot judged her harshly because she needed to believe that grief could be overcome, because she was so deeply afraid of it herself!

  Of course, Cordell was loyal to Winifred. He understood, and in some ways perhaps he had not recovered either? People who lose themselves in grief do not realize how they suck others down into the depths with them, like exhausted swimmers drowning their would-be rescuers.

  Had Margot done that to anybody? She didn’t think so. She hurt almost unbearably inside, but she tried very hard to look all right to everyone else. She kept hoping, trying to fall in love again. But the lightness she had felt with Paul made everything else seem dull, second rate, a pretend thing rather than a real one.

  Was she remembering him as he had been? Or had she seen him always in that first flush of dizzying happiness? She would never know. It did not matter now. She must go back to Rue Cassette, get her things from the Hôtel de l’Abbaye, and catch the next train to Berlin. What on earth she was going to do when she got there, she did not know. Except find Roger Cordell, of course, and ask for his help. She did entertain the idea, for a very short time, of wiring her father and asking his advice, but that might only make matters worse. The Germans might well dig in even further, make a bigger incident of it, impossible to draw back from. She thought of her
grandfather. He had always loved Elena the most, but what could he do to help? He was in his seventies now, a retired civil servant. He could achieve nothing.

  No, Roger Cordell was best. He could send for Charles Standish if there was any point. It was probably all some idiotic mistake.

  * * *

  —

  Margot told herself that all the way to Berlin. It was late in the afternoon when the train pulled into the station, still early enough to get a taxi as far as the British Embassy.

  Berlin was just as gray as she remembered it, but the young men in brown uniforms, standing around everywhere with guns, were new. Everything seemed very orderly, very brisk and military. That was Herr Hitler, getting the trains to run on time! A good thing, no doubt, especially for those who had to rely on them, but cold and mechanical all the same.

  She found a taxi immediately and fifteen minutes later was at the embassy gates. She had thought she would have to make her way through a cordon of Brownshirts, as described in the Parisian newspaper, but they must have dispersed since the previous day, with just two or three on street corners. She told them who she was and found a guard who remembered her from her father’s time there. She had no trouble being shown to Roger Cordell’s office.

  He was waiting for her, standing in front of his desk. It was at least five years since she had seen him last, and he looked older, even a little gray at the temples. He was too young for that! Younger than her father. Then she remembered Winifred, and the grief she carried with her like a fog.

  She smiled at him, with all the charm of someone who remembered him only with pleasure, from a younger and happier time. She was still wearing the black-and-white silk dress, and she knew it looked good. She did not need to see the expression on his face to affirm her.

  “Margot!” he exclaimed. “You look marvelous, but then you always do.” He held out his hands and she laid hers in them. He gripped her tightly, met her eyes for a moment, then kissed her cheek lightly. “I think I know why you are here,” he ventured, looking grave.

  “I imagine you do,” she replied, stepping back. She had forgotten how direct he could be, unlike her father. But perhaps that was why Charles was an ambassador, and Cordell only a cultural attaché. “I saw Elena’s picture in a newspaper in Paris. Is it true? Are the German police, the Gestapo, or whatever they are called, looking for her? It’s ridiculous! Not only wouldn’t she do anything like that, she couldn’t! You know Elena. She isn’t competent to do that, even if she wanted to. She couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a machine gun, let alone kill a man from a hundred yards away with a sniper rifle!”

  His face looked suddenly bleak. “I knew she couldn’t before, my dear, and I assume she still couldn’t, although people learn…”

  “Not Elena!” Margot said impatiently. “And for heaven’s sake, why? I know she made a bit of an ass of herself over Strother, but he took everyone in. And he was a traitor, not an assassin. I’d be willing to bet she’d never even heard of Scharnhorst when she left Amalfi. She may have been in love with Ian Newton, but she hadn’t lost her wits!” She made a little gesture. “She’s a bit naïve, but not stupid. Do you know anything about it? I mean really know, not just assume based on whatever you’ve been told?” She stared at him, searching his eyes. For all his dark good looks, he had gray eyes. At another time, she would’ve been fascinated by them. Perhaps in the past, a few times she had been. “Roger! Please…I’ve got to know if she is all right. She just swept out of the hotel in Amalfi and left me standing. Now she’s in the papers, suspected of shooting someone! What has Newton done to her? And where on earth is he anyway?”

  Something in him yielded. There was sorrow in his eyes. “She came to see me the evening before. Ian Newton was murdered on the train.”

  She must have misheard him. “You said…‘murdered’! You don’t really mean that?” Now, in spite of the pleasantness of the room, she was cold to the bone. She knew from his face that he had made no error.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. Margot, do you want to sit down?”

  “I want you to tell me what the hell is going on!” she said hotly. “What did you do to help Elena? What did you tell her? Why did you let this happen?”

  He took a deep breath. There was a faint flush on his cheeks. “She came to me with a warning from Ian about an attempt on Scharnhorst’s life. I told her I would inform the authorities,” he said levelly. “Which I did. They either made a series of errors, or more likely they simply ignored the warning.”

  “Ignored it?” she demanded. “And let one of their own get shot to death in a public rally?” Her voice dripped sarcasm.

  “Margot,” he said patiently, “what do you know about Scharnhorst?”

  She sensed a change in his tone, and it frightened her. “What does that matter?” she demanded. “He’s a monster! And Elena is being blamed for killing him.” She could hear the rising panic in her voice. She was getting out of control. “Roger…please…”

  “I’ll do whatever I can, but it is at least a possibility that the best thing they could have is an Englishwoman to blame for getting rid of one of their most dangerous extremists. They can bury him with ceremony, as a martyr, and at the same time blame us for it. And be rid of the lunatic who was, frankly, becoming an embarrassment to them.”

  “Doesn’t he represent all they want, but only half dare to say?” she accused.

  “No! Not at all.” He looked startled. She had seen exactly the same look in her father’s face at some of her remarks. “Hitler uses the extremists sometimes, but they can get out of hand. Scharnhorst had done exactly that. Hitler may be profoundly grateful to whomever killed him, but the worst element of the crowd would never stand for it. Now Hitler can claim to be entirely innocent and blame it on a hysterical Englishwoman. Somebody has presented him with precisely what he wants.”

  “Somebody?” Margot made it only half a question. She looked at Cordell’s face and saw the exasperation in it. “All right! Elena is a fool, or gullible. We all know that. Aiden Strother proved it, the bastard. And somebody certainly used her this time, too. But she doesn’t have either the skill or the nerve to have shot anyone. Especially not at a distance. And quite honestly, she wouldn’t anyway. She would see it as wrong. She’s…” She looked for the right word to use. Elena felt things deeply, but she was very traditional, like Lucas. “She wouldn’t go out on a limb…morally,” she finished. “Somebody took advantage of her. Set it up to look as if she did it. You’ve got to…I mean, will you please help her?” She was no good at looking pathetic, and she knew it. No woman ever looked less pathetic than Margot Standish—or Margot Driscoll, as she now was. The Widow Driscoll. God, how she hated that word. “Roger, please.”

  He looked at her steadily. It was only seconds, and yet it seemed ages. “Yes, of course. But you must stay out of it, Margot. You are very easily recognizable. You will lead them to her, no matter your intentions.”

  “Well, what are you going to do?” Now was not the time to argue recognizability, although she had to admit that, though she had not thought of it before, what he said was true.

  “Tell me the names and addresses of friends either of you still have in Berlin,” he replied. “Elena will in all probability seek out at least one of them. She’s alone with limited money. She’ll need help. Think about who she would trust, who has the means and the nerve to help, who can be held hostage to fortune that you know of, and therefore could be forced to hand her over. Think like Elena and give me them in order of likelihood. If I can find her, I can probably get her out of Germany.”

  Margot felt a twinge of guilt. He would be endangering his career at least, possibly his life. But Elena was her sister. Damn her for being impossibly stupid! Didn’t she learn from experience? It looked as if she had trusted the wrong man—again!

  “Thank you,” she said quite humbly. She had some idea w
hat she was asking, and she really was grateful. “I’ll give it a few moments’ thought, try to see it from her point of view, then I’ll make the list.”

  “Good. Would you like a cup of tea while you’re thinking? We have some pretty decent biscuits here. We get them sent over, of course.”

  “Yes, please. I seem to have forgotten to eat.”

  He smiled. She guessed he was wise enough not to make any promises he could not keep.

  She respected that.

  CHAPTER

  17

  When Margot had gone, Cordell stood for several moments wondering what to do. He had her list. He was always seeking knowledge, and he had wanted Margot to believe that he would be all the help he could.

  Tragedy had touched her deeply. There was perhaps a little bitterness in her, but he did not find it repellent. He could understand it only too well. She was angry, but she had not lost her capacity to hope, and to feel. There was still a hunger for life in her. He felt certain that if she had ever given up, it had been for a few moments in the loneliness of the night, but in the morning, when the light came back, she would be ready to fight again.

  If you struck Margot, she would strike you back. Not like Winifred, who would do nothing, as if she did not feel. As if she were essentially alone, and you did not exist, except peripherally, seen and heard but never felt. Was that his fault? He had tried, hard, though perhaps in the wrong ways? One way or another, he had failed.

  He remembered Margot from her time in Berlin. She was like her father in that she was clever, angry, but a realist. She had more hunger for life than her father, but the same ability to see and acknowledge the truth. She had her mother’s elegance, not a traditional beauty, but alluring…that was the word. And never a bore. There was nothing about her at all that was tedious, or cold. At least that was what she seemed from the outside. She might be hiding a coldness inside, but then so might anyone.