The Dressmaker of Dachau

by Mary Chamberlain

  ‘How do you plead?’ the judge said.

  She could say guilty, have it over and done with, go back to her cell. But she’d hang if she did, and Stanley Lovekin wasn’t going to have that over her. She was going to survive. She was a survivor. Lucky.

  ‘Not guilty,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Speak up.’ The judge’s voice. The room was hollow, she’d have to project. From the diaphragm. She could hear Miss Skinner’s voice in her head all those years ago. You can look like a swan but if you talk like a sparrow, who will take you seriously?

  ‘Not guilty.’ E-nun-ci-ate.

  The judge leant towards Mr Wallis.

  ‘Not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter through provocation,’ Mr Wallis said.

  ‘Thank you.’ He wrote something on the pad in front of him. His pen was gold. Must be worth a bob or two.

  ‘This is a most unusual defence,’ the judge said, turning towards Harris-Jones. ‘I trust you have acquainted the prosecution with the law on provocation, as it stands?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Wallis said.

  The judge turned to address the jury. ‘The jury must decide whether the person charged has been so provoked as to lose self-control, that is, provoked beyond reason. Normally,’ – the judge paused, eyed the jurors one by one, eyed Ada, head bowed, picking at the skin on the side of her nail – ‘the provocation would fall under the following expectations.’ He held up his hand, fingers splayed wide. ‘First, by witnessing the sodomy of his son.’ He took a deep breath, pulled down his index finger. ‘Second, by witnessing the adultery of his wife.’ He smacked his lips tight, bent his middle finger over. ‘Or, third, the unlawful arrest of an Englishman, and, fourth, the mistreatment of a relative.’ He said the last bit all in one breath, as if he was singing, his voice higher and higher, pulling down his third and fourth fingers simultaneously, turning as he did so to Mr Wallis again.

  ‘Yes, your honour,’ Mr Wallis said.

  ‘And there is only one possible line of defence left? A most unusual line?’

  ‘Yes, your honour.’

  ‘Of a grossly insulting assault?’

  ‘Yes, your honour.’

  ‘Very well.’ The judge grunted like a walrus.

  The jury were looking at her. Judging already. Appearances matter, Ada knew that, better than them all. I thought you were one of the customers, looking so smart. They’d see her in prison togs, looking guilty, condemn her before they began the trial. The jury foreman had a moustache and a row of ribbons across his top pocket. War hero. Ada never trusted men with moustaches, not after Stanislaus. She put her hand to her hair, made sure that it was in place, watched as Mr Harris-Jones stood up, stacked his folders on the desk before him and turned to face the jury.

  ‘The case for the prosecution,’ he said, looking at the jurors, ‘is straightforward. There is no issue that the deceased was unlawfully killed by the administration of gas when he was unconscious. There is a confession, corroborated by the evidence, which can be taken quickly. The only issue is whether there was a grossly insulting assault causing her to lose control in circumstances where a reasonable person in her position and with her background would have done so.’

  Fear. She remembered how it tasted, how it charged through her body like an engine and left her quivering in its tracks. There was a policeman who stood behind her in the dock. She turned, wanted to catch his eye, snatch a crumb of sympathy, but he was staring straight ahead, expressionless.

  ‘The case for this grossly insulting assault, members of the jury,’ he spoke the words slowly, carefully, like it was a foreign language that no one understood, ‘goes back some ten years, to the start of the war.’

  Mr Harris-Jones laid it out: Stanislaus von Lieben. Seducer. A cad and a coward, undoubtedly. But did he abuse her? Assault or insult her? He twisted his hand in a so-so manner. ‘Did he abandon her? Or were they separated in the anarchy of war, through no one’s fault?’

  He laid out her life like a corpse, dissecting it. Here’s the head, here’s the feet, large intestine, small intestine. But there was nothing about love or guts or heartache or fear, nothing about the inside of her, Ada Vaughan.

  Internment by the Nazis. Secret pregnancy and a birth. Herr Weiss. Years locked up in that room. Perhaps scared, hungry. A little boy, Thomas, Thomas, in German. German, members of the jury. The loss of this child.

  ‘Was she so haunted by his memory? Driven to murder by it?’ His voice was sarcastic.

  He was looking at her, directing the jury to follow his eyes, to see her dressed as a common-or-garden villain, incapable of knowing right from wrong.

  Lovekin. Stanley Lovekin. Stanislaus von Lieben. Had he been the architect of her torments for the last ten years, the cause of her suffering? Her fall from grace, into a life of sin and despair? Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Or was he simply a man like any other?

  ‘What was the nature of the assault? That he had reappeared?’ He paused and looked at the jury, man to man, eyeing each one, before he stared back at Ada. She stood in the dock barely above the railing, like a caged animal, or a lunatic. ‘If, indeed, it was him.’

  ‘It was,’ Ada shouted out.

  ‘Silence,’ the judge said.

  He had no heart, this man, Ada could see.

  The jury had her confession. I, Ada Margaret Vaughan … She had signed it. A policeman said how he found the body on the bed, wearing only a shirt and vest, no trousers. Reeked of whisky. A detective said that the sole fingerprints on the gas tap were Ada’s, and on the window frame, where she’d closed the gaps in the curtains, and on the bottom of the door where she had wedged the draught excluder. Those were the facts of the case. Incontestable. Guilty of murder. But manslaughter? Provocation? Grossly. Insulting. Assault?

  Sister Brigitte had plumped up since the war. She stood in the witness box with a clean, starched wimple and dark grey scapular over her black tunic, her brass crucifix glinting under the electric lights. It was odd, seeing her here in London. It seemed as if she belonged somewhere else, on the Continent, in war.

  Yes, Ada had sought refuge in the Mother House in Namur. They understood she had been separated from her husband, Stanislaus von Lieben. After the Nazi occupation of Belgium the British nuns had been interned, taken to Munich, forced to nurse the elderly.

  Sister Brigitte. Hearing her words breathed life into Ada’s memories, reanimated the corpse which Mr Harris-Jones had laid out. Ada knew she was trembling. She could hear the bombs and the shouting, smell the cordite and the burning, and the fear that had surrounded her that day in Namur.

  ‘If you had refused to nurse them,’ Mr Harris-Jones said. ‘Would you have been shot?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Sister Brigitte said. ‘We never put it to the test.’

  ‘You made no attempt to resist?’

  She looked hard at Mr Harris-Jones, as if she could see through him to his soul.

  ‘Our vocation,’ she said, ‘is to nurse the elderly, wherever and whenever it is needed. Our vocation knows neither politics nor war. Nor does old age.’

  ‘High principles,’ Mr Harris-Jones said. ‘Convenient, in the face of the most evil regime in history, would you not say?’

  ‘Only those without principles resort to cynicism,’ Sister Brigitte said, eyes level with his. She stared until he looked away to his notes. Sister Brigitte had faced the Nazis down. She wasn’t fazed by a smarmy barrister, even if he was a King’s Counsel.

  ‘I understand you stayed on in Munich for several months after the war was over,’ Mr Harris-Jones said. ‘Can you tell me why?’

  ‘We couldn’t abandon our old people. Not until we were sure that their welfare would be taken care of.’

  ‘The defendant, Ada Vaughan—’ Mr Harris-Jones said.

  ‘Sister Clara.’

  ‘Sister Clara. That was how she was known?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she work?’

  ‘Yes. She wasn’t a trained nurse, but s
he could carry out the menial tasks.’

  ‘And she behaved as a nun?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sister Brigitte said, ‘obviously.’

  ‘And the Nazis never guessed she was not whom she claimed to be? Even though she was pregnant?’

  ‘She wore a borrowed habit, from a nun much larger than herself. It did not show.’

  ‘And when she gave birth?’

  ‘Fortunately, there were no complications. The baby came in the night. Our dormitory cell was out of earshot of the guards.’

  ‘Coincidence?’

  ‘No, good fortune.’ Sister Brigitte smiled. ‘We had prayed.’ Ada knew that smile. ‘The Virgin Mary was looking after us.’

  ‘And the baby? What happened?’

  Sister Brigitte swallowed, looked over to Ada. Who did she see in the dock? What was she thinking?

  ‘The baby was born dead.’

  No. His delicate skin, marbled purple and blue, like the inside cover of a prayer book. She’d pulled the edge of the towel from his face, so she would remember it. His eyes were closed and puffy, deep folds round the sockets. His hands were clutched in little fists, pressed to either side of his cheeks. He was bald, his head slicked with blood and mucous. He lay there with naked shoulders and creases in his neck. He was sleeping.

  He was alive.

  Ada remembered the black stole fluttering in Father Friedel’s bag from Thomas’s breath, his nostrils flaring as the air filled his lungs, as he moved his chest, in out, in out. It was his breath, not the breeze from the bag as she clicked it shut.

  Sister Brigitte had baptized him, so he didn’t go to Limbo, had held Ada’s hand as Father Friedel left. ‘May his little soul rest in peace. Say it with me, Sister Clara.’

  ‘No,’ Ada had said. ‘He’s not dead.’

  ‘Say it with me, Sister Clara, may the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace, Amen.’

  No. Thomas was alive and kicking.

  ‘He was alive,’ Ada screamed out. ‘Sister Brigitte, he was alive.’

  ‘Miss Vaughan,’ the judge said, ‘silence.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘The priest helped us. He smuggled the baby’s body away.’

  ‘Where?’

  Sister Brigitte shrugged. ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘How did he dispose of the body?’

  ‘We don’t know. But there were funerals almost every day. He could slip the baby’s body in one of the old people’s coffins. No one would know.’

  ‘And Sister Clara?’

  Sister Brigitte looked towards Ada. Tenderness was there, contrition too. ‘She found it difficult to accept.’

  ‘That he was dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Postpartum depression is a terrible condition as is,’ Sister Brigitte said. ‘We couldn’t have it get any worse. It was prudent all round to humour her.’

  ‘Lie to her, you mean? Let her believe the baby was alive?’

  ‘Sometimes a white lie is for the best, for the greater good. God forgives those little venial sins.’

  No, Ada thought, no. This wasn’t what happened. Thomas was alive. Sister Brigitte knew this. Why was she saying this?

  ‘And when she returned at the end of the war, did you continue with the white lie?’

  ‘We had to,’ Sister Brigitte said. ‘She was in a dreadful state. She was half dead, out of her mind. She couldn’t take that news.’

  ‘Did she try to find her son?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you not tell her then?’

  ‘We thought it best that she try to find him, and learn for herself that he couldn’t be traced, rather than have us tell her he was dead. We thought if she still had hope, it would help her recovery.’

  ‘You knew she was lying, didn’t you?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘About being married.’

  ‘I didn’t take a judgement on that.’

  ‘You were told by Sister Monica that Ada Vaughan was not married to Stanislaus von Lieben. Her passport was in the name of Vaughan. Vaughan was her maiden name. We have an affidavit from Sister Monica to attest to that. Jury,’ he turned to the men sitting in rows, hands poised on their files. ‘Item 1 in your bundle. Ada Vaughan wore a curtain ring as a wedding band. You must have known that she was a liar. A fantasist.’

  ‘It was war,’ Sister Brigitte said. ‘It was all confusing. Terrible. People do anything to survive. I wouldn’t condemn someone for that.’

  ‘You said that you were above war.’

  ‘You’re twisting my words. I said old age does not know war.’

  That’s what they did, these lawyers. Show the facts out of context, so they sat skewed, like a picture hanging crooked on a wall, or one of those mirrors in a fairground that show you squat or stretched. Ada wanted to shout out to the jury, Can’t you see what he’s doing?

  ‘Did Ada Vaughan visit you after your return to England?’

  ‘Sadly not,’ Sister Brigitte shook her head. ‘She would have been welcome.’

  ‘Let me ask one more time. You are certain that her baby died?’

  ‘There was no pulse, no heartbeat, no breath. The baby was born dead. Without doubt.’

  ‘Ada Vaughan would be lying when she said he was alive.’

  ‘She would be deluded. There is a difference.’

  ‘Fantasist,’ Mr Harris-Jones said. ‘No difference.’

  Sister Brigitte stepped down from the witness box, kissed her crucifix, left the room without a backward glance. Ada should have gone to visit, she should have. But what would they have talked about? Do you remember when …? There was no joy there, no happiness to look back on. Just emptiness and sadness.

  Ada was back in her cell at the end of the first day. Mr Wallis came with a packet of sandwiches and a bottle of ginger beer, face like a wounded weasel.

  ‘The baby was dead,’ he said. ‘You didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘I didn’t know it,’ Ada said. Sister Brigitte’s words clanged in her head. She wanted to crash her skull against the wall, drive out the demons that had settled there.

  ‘I can’t defend you if you don’t tell me what happened.’

  ‘I swear to God,’ Ada said, ‘I never knew.’

  ‘Or you just denied it, to yourself?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ Ada said. Her voice quivered. ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Couldn’t?’ It was a cruel question. Mr Wallis bit into his sandwich and Ada watched as his tiny mouth rotated. She couldn’t eat, not now. All she saw were the empty pits and the mottled skin of the cadavers buried underground. Little Thomas lay stretched out in a coffin with a stranger, an old man who’d emptied his life and flushed away his love.

  ‘Death.’ She sat with her hands clasped round her waist, rocked herself, forwards and back, forwards and back, as if her mind was splitting in two, the memories of hopelessness driving a wedge between the parts. ‘Death and darkness.’

  ‘Talk to me, Ada,’ Mr Wallis said. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Ada shook her head, rocking, rocking.

  The next morning the gallery was just as full. Ada twisted in the dock, tried to see who was there. Maybe her mother had come today.

  Mr Wallis had warned her that the prosecution would jump round in time, like a jack-in-the-box, calling witnesses so that the jury saw her in a certain way. It was their job to prove that there was no provocation. He’d said that Scarlett would be called, though Ada didn’t see why. Scarlett had nothing to do with the war, or Stanislaus; she didn’t even know about Thomas, hadn’t seen a thing that evening when Stanley Lovekin died. Ada stood in the dock, nervous and on edge.

  Scarlett entered the courtroom. Low-heeled shoes, shabby checked coat, headscarf knotted at the front, not a trace of face paint. She could be anybody, a plain, anonymous woman.

  ‘Would you tell me your name?’ Mr Harris-Jones said.

  ‘Jo
yce Matheson.’ It was the first Ada had heard her real name.

  ‘Your relationship with the defendant, Ada Vaughan?’

  ‘Friends.’

  ‘Good friends?’

  ‘Yeah, well. We help each other out.’

  ‘And your occupation?’

  Scarlett stuck out her chin and looked the jury square-on. ‘I’m a prostitute.’ Scarlett wasn’t afraid of the law, so what. She had been in front of the beak more times than Ada’d had hot dinners.

  ‘Is Joyce Matheson your only name?’

  ‘Sometimes I call myself Scarlett. When I’m working.’

  ‘And do all prostitutes use an alias?’ Mr Harris-Jones asked.

  ‘Some do.’

  ‘Did Ada Vaughan?’

  Ada took in her breath sharp. They were making her out to be a whore. Two of the jurymen were shaking their heads. She knew their types. Bloody Christians. Baptists. She felt like shouting, Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. She was on a helter-skelter, up and down and round and round, frightened of what else would come.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Scarlett was saying. ‘She called herself Ava Gordon. Ava, after the film star, you know, Ava Gardner.’ Mr Harris-Jones nodded, letting her talk. ‘Don’t know where the Gordon came from. Gin, perhaps. She liked her Pink Ladies.’ She smiled, warming to her theme. ‘Scarlett’s from Gone with the Wind. Have you seen it?’

  Harris-Jones was stitching her up and now he’d laid a trap and Scarlett had fallen into it. She could see Scarlett fidgeting on her feet.

  ‘Would you describe Ada Vaughan as a common prostitute?’

  ‘Not common,’ Scarlett said, looking across at Ada. ‘Classy. Charged more than the girls up West.’ She smiled, a satisfied pout. She was proud of Ada, proud to be her friend. ‘But then it wasn’t just a fifteen-minute job she gave them. She worked out of Smith’s.’

  ‘As I said,’ Mr Harris-Jones sneered, ‘a common prostitute.’

  ‘No,’ Scarlett said. Her cheeks had gone red and Ada could see she was riled. ‘She wasn’t a streetwalker. Didn’t solicit. Nothing like that. I mean, she only did it for pin money. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘Pin money or a regular living, it doesn’t matter. Selling your body for sex is prostitution.’