Death in Focus Read online

  “Don’t waste your time or endanger yourself, Margot,” she advised as she kissed Margot’s cheek on the doorstep. “One question in the wrong place and you never know where it may lead you. You might find Elena but you could also find yourself in deep trouble.”

  “Thank you for your advice, Frau Kopleck. I’ll be careful,” Margot said, then with a smile and a wave she set out to find the next person on her list.

  But each acquaintance she visited said much the same as Mitzi Kopleck. They did not know where Elena could be—they certainly didn’t think she could have shot Friedrich Scharnhorst—and they expressed sympathy for both the Standish sisters. But they also could not help.

  It was after five, too late to do anything really useful, and yet too early to give up, when she decided to make one last effort. She was near where Cordell lived, or used to. Perhaps he still did? Cecily was likely to be home at this time. If she was going out for the evening she would be changing for the event. Margot had no qualms about intruding, or being an inconvenience.

  She gave the taxi driver directions and thanked him when he dropped her there.

  It was as she hoped. Cecily was twenty-two now, and she had always been pretty, friendly, and full of life. Winifred was another matter, but Margot was not about to be refused—by anyone.

  The butler opened the door and she gave him a ravishing smile.

  “Good evening. I am Margot Driscoll—used to be Standish—the daughter of a previous ambassador. I am in Berlin just for a day or two, but I couldn’t leave without calling in. Is Mrs. Cordell at home? And Miss Cecily? She was great friends with my sister…”

  However surprised the butler was at this unexpected visit, he would never be rude to a woman so closely related to one of Mr. Cordell’s previous superiors. He backed away, opening the door for her.

  Margot stepped inside. “So kind of you,” she accepted, still smiling.

  He showed her into the elegant drawing room and went to inform Mrs. Cordell of her presence.

  Margot sat down and forced herself to look casual. She was wearing a pale silk dress, not quite formal enough for this hour in the early evening, but very flattering. It was not like her to be ill at ease in any circumstances. However, this was desperate, dangerous. Intelligence was required, not self-control.

  Winifred came into the room and closed the door behind her. She was wearing a greenish-blue afternoon dress, very fashionable and, Margot guessed, very expensive. She looked far happier than Margot remembered.

  “How pleasant to see you,” Winifred said graciously, holding out both hands, as if to welcome an old friend.

  “You are looking so well,” Margot said, meaning it. “And I adore that dress. The color is perfect.”

  Winifred gave a smile and a slight shrug. “Thank you. We are entertaining the French this evening and they always set the standard in elegance. I must…keep up with things, you know…”

  “I am sure you are ahead of them,” Margot responded, knowing that Winifred meant fashion and society. “The French ambassador’s wife will be terribly polite, and green with envy!”

  “Oh, it’s just a quiet dinner,” Winifred demurred. “I would invite you to stay and join us, but we are inviting the parents of Cecily’s fiancé, Herr and Frau Weissman, and of course Kurt and Cecily. It is the first time they will have been here.” She smiled tentatively. “Very charming, but…”

  “You are afraid I will say something…incorrect?” Margot said gently.

  “Not at all! I am afraid I will,” Winifred confessed. “They are of the new aristocracy…” She stopped, looking at Margot to see if she understood what that meant.

  “Connected to the Führer?” Margot said with a sudden catch in her voice.

  “Yes. Herr Weissman is something in the new government. I asked Roger to find out exactly what. We ought to know. And Kurt is in the police—the Gestapo.” She smiled as she said it. Could she possibly mean it? Perhaps he was a nice young man…if any nice young men joined such a body? Margot must not judge too quickly.

  Winifred was waiting for her reaction.

  “He must be doing very well,” she said. “I hear they are a very elite group…”

  “Yes, they are. And Kurt is already rising.” Winifred clearly did not know what to say next.

  “If he loves Cecily, then he has excellent judgment.” The words sounded hollow even to Margot. “And if Cecily loves him,” she went on, “then there must be a lot of good in him.” What a hypocrite she was. “And perhaps she will sustain even more…as time goes by.”

  “Yes,” Winifred agreed. “Yes. I…all I want is her happiness.”

  “Of course.”

  “Roger has only just met him. I am…I am hoping this evening will go well…”

  “I am sure it will,” Margot lied. Now she understood Cordell’s silence. She wished profoundly that she had not given him a list of Elena’s friends. Some of them were Jewish.

  Almost as if hearing her thoughts, Winifred spoke again. “You are just visiting Berlin for a short time? A pity. We would like to have seen more of you. Are you here with your sister? Elena, isn’t it?”

  Margot looked at the woman. Was it possible she didn’t know of the manhunt for Elena? Of course she knew! But nothing was going to interfere with her daughter’s engagement dinner. Before she could respond, Winifred spoke.

  “In these uncertain times,” she said with a smile, “I am so happy to see Cecily settled. And in such a…a fortunate family.”

  Her voice wavered, and Margot realized in that instant how afraid for her daughter Winifred was. If Cordell was moved, and Cecily wanted to stay here, where her friends were, she would be desperately alone. Winifred would have to go wherever Roger went. But if Cecily married here, she would not be so alone.

  “Of course,” Margot said quickly. She understood only too well. She could see why Winifred might have done all she could to foster this romance, this apparent safety for her only child. This was not a heroic marriage to a dissenter, or worse, a Jew who would be hunted down, driven out. This was a son of the master race. Cecily would be as safe as anyone could be. “And you like him?” she asked, hearing the false note in her own voice.

  “I like anyone who keeps Cecily safe, and happy, I…I don’t really know him yet. Perhaps you would like to stay and meet them? They should be here quite soon. And Cecily would be very sorry to think that you were here, and she missed you. Perhaps a cup of tea?”

  The last thing Margot wanted was to stay, to be forced to see this young man. She could remember perfectly the night she and Paul were engaged. Her happiness was like a tidal wave, sweeping everything in front of it. “Of course,” she said, and instantly regretted it. “And I’d love a good cup of tea.” That at least was true. And perhaps she would see in this young man something of what Cecily saw. She should not prejudge. Just don’t mention Elena!

  She had not long to wait. She had barely finished her tea and was feeling refreshed when they arrived. She heard them in the hall, and a moment later the drawing-room door opened and Cecily came in, her arms outstretched in greeting. She was all elegance, dark curls untidy but gorgeous, silk skirt brightly colored.

  “Margot! How wonderful to see you. You’ve made my day perfect.” She hugged Margot warmly, then turned to the young man in a stiff, gray uniform behind her. “This is Kurt. We are going to be married—very soon.”

  Margot looked into the almost handsome face of the young man. “Congratulations. I hope you will be very happy.” The words were dead on her lips as she met his perfect smile, his eyes as steady and cold as a polar dawn.

  “I am sure we shall,” he replied, putting his hand on Cecily and drawing her a little closer to him.

  Margot’s smile froze on her face. Oh God, Roger! What have you got into? she thought, and tried frantically to think of something to say.


  CHAPTER

  27

  Elena spent a long, difficult night in the police cell. She was so tired she thought she might sleep, but every time she drifted off into troubled dreams, she was disturbed by footsteps, voices, and now and then the door opening and someone shining a light on her. Then before she could ask what they wanted, the door was closed and the iron flanges of the lock slammed into place.

  The bed was uncomfortable, a straw-filled palliasse on a wooden frame. The ends of the pieces of straw poked through the canvas ticking. The single blanket was gray and smelled of rancid butter.

  Perhaps she did not have much time left? If they found her guilty, they would execute her, surely. How? Shooting? Hanging? Did the Germans hang people, or was that just an English thing to do? The French used a guillotine. Bloody, but quick. Except in the case of Louis XVI, poor soul. They had botched it and had to make three attempts before they succeeded. At least that’s what the history books said.

  Was this really it, the end? Was there a heaven? An afterlife? Would she find Mike there? She had accepted the idea of heaven, in the pain of losing him. People did. They were too dazed to it; they wanted to give one another comfort. If you say a thing often enough, at least some of the time you believe it. And who would say to a grieving mother, or widow, that death was the end?

  She had never felt so utterly alone. Would anybody ever tell her family, her mother, or Lucas, what had happened to her? Please God—if there was one?—let her do this with courage.

  She thought of famous people whose deaths had been witnessed and recorded.

  Charles I, who had been executed at the end of January, and asked if he could wear two doublets, so he would not shiver in the cold and have people think that he was afraid.

  How did you keep from being sick when you knew you were going to be shot any minute, absolutely for certain? She didn’t want to be pitiful. She would look them in the eye and tell them to go to hell!

  She drifted in and out of sleep, sometimes dreaming, sometimes falling into a soft, gray oblivion.

  When she woke it was light and someone was standing by her cot with a dish of porridge and a wedge of bread. There was something in an enamel mug that looked like tea. It steamed gently, so at least it was hot.

  She thanked the guard and took it. Please heaven she was not so clenched up inside that she would throw it up. Was torture better on an empty stomach or a full one? She ate it anyway. It tasted stale, but it was edible, and perhaps she was better for it.

  They came for Elena far sooner than she had expected. She was still sitting with the breakfast dish before her and the dregs of her tea, black and bitter.

  “Stand up,” one of the policemen ordered. These three were men she had not seen before. She obeyed. There was no point in causing more trouble than she already had, just for the sake of pride. There was no one to impress.

  The thing that hurt perhaps even more deeply than fear was the sense of being so alone. These policemen were all people who looked like most Englishmen. Only their uniforms and their language differentiated them. And yet she had never felt so violated.

  Had Mike felt something like this, just before going over the top of the trench into the gunfire? She tried to think of him, to imagine he was there in spirit with her. “Chin up, kiddo,” he would have said, with a slightly twisted smile.

  She was walked through the station and out to the back, where a car was waiting for them.

  One of the police caught her surprise and smiled, without warmth. “We’re giving you to the Gestapo,” he said with satisfaction. “You did not know Scharnhorst, did you.” It was a statement.

  “No…I didn’t!” she said fiercely.

  “Then it’s not a domestic murder, it’s assassination. That belongs to the Gestapo. It’s an offense against the state, not just a local thing, like killing to steal or committing some crime against a neighbor.”

  “I didn’t kill him at all!” she said levelly, almost.

  “Bad shot, eh?” he said sarcastically. “You saying you didn’t mean to kill him? Who did you mean to kill?”

  She started to deny it again and realized there was no point. They would think whatever they wanted to. Perhaps their own careers depended on catching the assassin. Or at least seeming to.

  There was a driver sitting at the wheel, on the left-hand side, and for a moment she forgot where she was. It was all unreal. This was not the Germany she knew, the place in her memory where she had been happy, even amid the destruction and loss immediately following the war.

  An officer got out of the other side of the car and came around to escort her. Not that she would really have escaped, with her hands manacled together behind her back, and the police on either side of her.

  He looked at her curiously, with cold, careful eyes. Then he opened the passenger door at the back and nodded for her to get in. She obeyed rather awkwardly, hands behind the back not being the natural way to climb into a car and sit down, unable to straighten your skirt or rearrange yourself.

  The door slammed and he walked around to the other side.

  They pulled away from the curb into the traffic. Were the doors locked? She looked. Yes. Of course they were.

  It was a clear day, sun shining, and to judge from the movement of people along the pavement, the flutter of summer skirts, the occasional hand to steady a hat, there was quite a breeze.

  She saw groups of Brownshirts. You could tell them by the way they stood, not just their uniforms. There was a confidence in them. A sense of power. They could do whatever they wished, and everybody knew it. The only thing worse was the Gestapo, the secret police. Everybody knew that, too.

  The questioning at the police station had been no more than a few hard slaps. The Gestapo interrogation would be much worse.

  Suddenly, she was drenched in a cold sweat. What if they believed that Ian had intended to warn of the assassination, and she had killed him so that she could go ahead and do it? It fit perfectly with the facts they would know.

  And Cordell? What would he say, if they had even questioned him at all? That she had said nothing to him about Scharnhorst? There was no proof that she had. She could have gone to the embassy for any reason.

  She was trapped. Anything she said, true or not, could be twisted to condemn her. And there was no escape from the physical captivity. Both of her guards were armed, and she was manacled and could not run, even if she had anywhere to run to.

  They turned a corner into a smaller street.

  It was another few minutes at least before they pulled up outside a very ordinary building, just like thousands of others. The man in the front passenger seat got out and opened the door for her.

  “Out,” he said, jerking his hand very slightly to make his meaning clearer.

  Awkwardly, Elena climbed out, having to balance with difficulty. He took her arm when he thought she might fall. Or did he imagine she would use it as some kind of chance to run? And be shot in the back, of course, guilty of attempting to escape.

  Reluctantly, trying to walk upright and stumbling on the step, she went inside. The room was small, anonymous-seeming. A narrow-shouldered man with a round belly was waiting for her. He looked ridiculous in his uniform. His rimless glasses were sliding down his nose.

  Her manacles were undone, and then relocked with her hands in front of her.

  She was forced to sit down in a chair opposite him, and the questioning began. He established her name, her nationality, then the facts of her trip to Berlin from Italy. It was all the details that she had already admitted. His voice was higher than one might have expected, and nasal. She could feel the hatred emanating from him the way heat does from a fire.

  Neither of the other men had left; they were standing to attention, one at the door, the other at the window.

  The questions went on. The man with the gla
sses lit a cigarette and blew smoke out with an expression of distaste, as if he did not like the flavor of it. She looked at him very steadily. His eyes were neither green nor brown behind the magnification of his lenses.

  “You do not agree with Herr Scharnhorst’s plans for the destiny of the German people…” He made it more of a statement than a question.

  How much should she lie? If she said she agreed with Scharnhorst, would that save her life? Or at least, end it without too much pain?

  Probably not. And if there was a hereafter, how would she face Mike, and all the others who had died, especially those who had never denied who they were, or what they believed? And if there was nothing? Oblivion? It would hardly matter anyway. Please God, she could do this with some dignity.

  “No, I don’t. But it’s none of my business,” she replied.

  He took a deep draw on his cigarette, took it out of his mouth, then stubbed it out, hard, on the back of her hand. The pain made her gag. The room swam around her and she thought she was going to vomit.

  “So, you shot him,” he said.

  “No…” She knew immediately that it was a mistake. Carefully, as if he were preparing for something he was going to enjoy, he took another cigarette out of his case and lit it, pulling the smoke into his lungs, then after barely a moment, letting it out again.

  Could she bear it? The pain was appalling. It shot up her arm as if the red-hot ash were still there on her skin.

  The telephone rang, sharp and shrill, like a scream.

  Reluctantly, he picked it up. He listened for a moment, and agreed with whomever was on the line, apparently with reluctance.

  “Orders,” he said to the man near the door, who was the senior of the two. “They want her right now. You’re to take her to headquarters.”

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t stand there, you fool! Get her into the car and take her!”

  The man snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!”