by Sarah Rayne
There was still no sign of Father, who was most likely talking to the manager of the hall, or the caretaker, arranging about locking up. When he came in, they would probably not wait for Herr Eisler, but go home on a late-night tram. It sounded as if the SS man had gone, but you could not be sure – people said Schutzstaffel officers were as sly as a whole skulk of foxes when they wanted to be.
The dark auditorium began to feel vaguely eerie, and at last Christa got up and walked quietly down the hall to the stage and up the steps, pushing her way through the thick, bunched-up curtains. The side of the stage was very dark, but she picked a careful way between discarded stage props and bits of scenery and lengths of rope. There was a smell of dust and glue and of paint and old timber.
There did not seem to be anyone around, and everywhere was quiet. Or was it? Christa paused, listening intently, hearing something coming from beyond the stage. A knocking sound, as if somebody was knocking on a wall. Could someone be shut in somewhere? The sounds came again, and Christa began to feel nervous. She moved forward again, and as she did so something stirred in the gloom and reached out to touch her face with thick, rough-feeling fingers. Christa gasped and clawed wildly at the air, then realized it was one of the ropes that dangled from overhead. She pushed it out of the way, and went towards the door that led to the long room behind the stage. This was where performers and actors assembled before a performance. It was large and untidy and friendly, and she had often been there to help with running errands and finding things people had forgotten or had lost. The sounds seemed to have come from here; perhaps someone was repairing a bit of scenery, although it was a bit late for that. And it had sounded more as if someone was hammering on a door.
‘Dad? Are you in here?’
Her voice echoed a bit spookily in the empty room, but there was no response, although her father’s jacket lay across the back of a chair, so he could not be far away.
There did not seem to be any places where anyone could be shut in – the room had no cupboards or anything …
Except that it did. It had the inner door in the far corner – the door that led to a costume store. It was always locked, because costumes and stage props had to be kept safe, and Christa had never been in there.
The sounds had stopped, but she thought she should make sure no one was shut into the costume place. If the door was locked, the keys were probably in Father’s jacket, because he was always loaned keys to the hall for his concerts. Might he even be the person shut into the costume store? It would be easy for the caretaker to lock the door not realizing anyone was in there.
Christa reached for Father’s jacket, and the keys were in a pocket, just as she had thought – a heavy bunch on a clanking metal ring. Good. She had to try several of them before she got the right one, but it slid home and the lock turned. She was starting to wish somebody would come into the room, or even that the knocking would start again, because this was starting to feel a bit scary. But then rooms that were always kept locked were bound to feel spooky. You had the feeling that they might hold macabre secrets, like in the story of Bluebeard, where the heroine was warned never to enter a particular room. ‘You can have the keys to all these rooms in the castle, my dear, except this one, and that you must never enter …’
But she was only going to take a quick look in this room, which was hardly Bluebeard’s castle with its sinister seventh chamber, or the Arabian Nights’ copper castle with its forbidden and fateful Golden Door. Christa dropped the bunch of keys in her own jacket pocket, pushed the door wide open, and stepped inside.
TWENTY-TWO
The store was bigger than she had expected, but it was quite narrow. A faint bluish light trickled in through a tiny window high up in one wall.
Christa fully expected to be greeted by Father or one of the musicians – certainly by someone laughing with relief at being rescued from a ridiculous predicament – but there was no sign of anyone at all.
Or was there? She stood in the doorway, and as her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she began to have the uncanny impression that the room was full of people – no, not people, creatures. Beings with massive, distorted heads and faces, and monstrous ears and evil, gap-toothed grins beneath thick thatches of hair. Grotesque things with misshapen heads, and eyes like saucers, like mill wheels …
But the impression lasted no longer than a few seconds, because of course these were the costumes from The Tinder Box that she and Stefan had seen a few weeks ago. All the costumes had been flung in here and they lay in untidy floppy heaps on the floor and against the wall.
Pieces of scenery were stacked against the walls, as well. They were painted with fragments of caves and forests and leering trees, so that it looked as if somebody’s nightmare had been chopped up and the pieces thrown down. There was a scent of paint and sawdust, and of clothes that might not be very clean because they had been worn under hot lights by people with sweat on their bodies and greasepaint on their faces. But there was a smell of something else, as well. It was not something Christa recognized, but it lay on the air like copper and it made her feel slightly sick. It was clear that Father was not here, though, and that nobody else was here either.
But she could not stop looking at the distorted heads and the staring faces. There were the heads of the giant dogs that guarded the treasure from the soldier-hero – those were the dogs that had frightened Stefan so much. Seen like this it was obvious that they were only canvas and pretend-fur and glass eyes. In another corner were the costumes of the trolls who had slept while the soldier had tiptoed through the hall of a hundred lamps. Christa had quite enjoyed the trolls in the play, but seen like this, shadowy and close to, they were quite scary. The costumes were made from sack-like material, thickly padded to make their bodies look heavy, and there were massive deep-soled boots at the bottoms of the trousers. The heads had been left in place, propped into the necks of the jackets. The nearest three had lopsided faces with garishly painted mouths that hung open, and huge hollow eyes. The fourth—
The fourth did not have a lopsided face or thick lumpen features, and it was not lying down. Somebody had hung it from a large black hook on the wall, but had not done so very neatly, because it flopped down in a jumble, the head lolling forward on to the chest. The hook was smeared with paint, and the curved tip had burst all the way through the costume so that the jacket’s padding was spilling out.
Something cold and frightening began to stir within Christa’s mind. There was something dreadfully wrong, but she could not work out what it was … Was it because the fourth troll did not look like the other three? Because it had been hung on the black hook, rather than folded up? She took a step nearer, and the thing she had been trying to pin down in her mind fell into place.
There had only been three trolls in the play.
The room suddenly seemed very still, as if something might be waiting and watching to see what she was going to do. Christa’s heart was thudding uncomfortably, and the palms of her hands were suddenly wet with sweat. The figure was not wearing sack-type clothes like the others – it was wearing a long black overcoat, but the overcoat had fallen off the shoulders, and beneath was a uniform. Around one of the arms was an emblem that even in the dim light was clear, and it was an emblem that everyone Christa knew dreaded. The Nazi swastika. The badge of the Schutzstaffel, the skewer-eyed men who came to your house without warning, who hammered on doors and came into bedrooms, and stole people away from their beds, and sometimes murdered them.
The iron hook was not glistening with paint, but with something far worse, and what she had thought was the torn costume padding spilling out of the front of the jacket, was something that was sloppily and messily wet …
It was Bluebeard’s forbidden room after all. It was the room with the mutilated, clotted bodies of previous brides hanging from butchers’ hooks …
Sickness rose in Christa’s throat, but she forced it back and took a shaky step closer, to reassure herself she was mist
aken. She was not mistaken, of course. It was the Schutzstaffel officer, and he had been pushed back against the wall, then lifted and impaled on a huge iron hook, so violently that the hook had burst all the way through his body to the front.
Christa thrust her fist into her mouth, praying not to be sick. In a moment she would be able to move, and she would run somewhere to get help, and something would be done. Even though the man was dead, things would have to be done for him.
And then something far worse happened. The feet in their smart leather boots moved. They did not quite reach the floor, but the heels began to drum against the wall behind, and Christa realized this was the sound she had heard earlier. Because he was not dead – he was writhing on the iron hook like a fish writhed on the end of a line when it was caught, struggling to twist itself free …
Almost as if these frantic thoughts had reached the man’s brain, the dreadful head lifted, moving inch by tortuous inch, until the eyes – cold, steel-splinter eyes – stared straight at Christa. The features were distorted with pain and fear and blood dribbled out of the mouth. One hand came out to her, as if reaching for help. The fingers were bloodstained, and the death’s head ring glinted faintly in the thin light.
‘Help me …’
The words were barely audible, but the thin cobweb string of sound seemed somehow to have tugged at Christa’s own hands, because she discovered she had taken the man’s hand in hers. Blood from the fingertips smeared her skin. Dreadful. Sickening. But beneath the panic and the repulsion, a dark layer of thought was forming.
Because this man whose guts had been half ripped from his body was one of the hated, hateful Schutzstaffel. He was one of the men who burned the homes of Jewish people and shut them inside the grim labour camps, and forced them to work until they dropped from exhaustion … Who stole children away and pulled out their bones, then threw them into the ovens …
I could lock the door and just go, thought Christa, staring at the man’s distorted features. No one would know and no one would find him for ages – months, even, because hardly anyone ever comes in here. And murderers deserve to die, don’t they?
She could not do it. When the man’s hand clutched at her again, she clasped it in both her own hands, trying not to mind that his fingers were wet with blood, and his skin was clammy and heavy, like a piece of dead meat. It was then she realized he was holding a small oblong of card. Trying to give it to her? Trying to tell her something? Or was it something he was trying to see in his dying moments?
It slithered from his grasp, and lay, face upwards, on the ground. The faint light fell across it, and Christa looked down and felt as if something had dealt a blow across her eyes. The small room, smelling of blood and fear, tilted and spun around her.
The piece of card was a photograph. It was creased and worn, and one edge had become dabbled with blood, but the image was clear. A woman, standing in a cobbled square, immediately beneath a lettered sign that said, Felix Klein, Music lessons by appointment, musical instruments and sheet music sold and bought … The sign was the old sign that Father had had there for years and that he was always going to have replaced, and never did.
Christa had no idea how long she crouched there, staring at the photo of her mother, seeing the dark eyes that could smile and light up, feeling the ache of loss all over again. But then she became aware that the SS man had stopped struggling, and that a deep silence had descended on the small room. He’s dead, she thought, raising her head to look at him. He really is.
She had no idea what to do. She felt as if she had been shut into a frozen nightmare, and that if she ever managed to fight her way out of it, it might be to find other terrors lying in wait for her. Who killed him? said her mind. Because supposing the killer is still here?
With the thought came the sound of footsteps crossing the stage, coming towards her. Christa’s heart jumped with new fear, but then Father’s voice was calling her name, wanting to know where she was, because it was high time they thought about getting home. This was so normal, so reassuring, that Christa was able to call out a reply. Her voice sounded dry and cracked, but Father heard it, because he walked across the big room outside, and then he was in the doorway.
As he took in the scene before him, Christa waited for him to say something that would make it all right, that would make the world come back to normality. But he did not. Then she saw that immediately behind him was the stranger.
Christa did not remember how they got back to The Music House, but somehow she was in the familiar room by the fire, with the various instruments scattered around, and the stacks of music score everywhere.
Father and the stranger were drinking whisky from Father’s small secret stock. Christa had a mug of hot milk.
The stranger said, ‘You have an appallingly difficult situation to handle, Herr Klein, but it’s possible that I can help.’
‘I don’t need anyone’s help—’
‘You do. The man who died tonight was a high-ranking officer of the Schutzstaffel. I locked the door of that storeroom, but he’ll be found. And however careful we are to cover things up, the trail could lead back to this house. If so, we both know you’ll be suspected, Herr Klein.’ He paused, then said, very deliberately, ‘And we know why.’
‘The Mendelssohn ban?’
‘We both know it’s not because of the Mendelssohn ban,’ said the man, impatiently. ‘The man who died tonight was SS-Obersturmbannführer Reinhardt. The man who …’ He broke off, and something seemed to pass between him and Father.
Then Father suddenly said, ‘Christa, it’s very cold in here. Would you be a dear girl, and make a pot of coffee?’
It was impossible to refuse, but as she went out Christa left the door slightly open so she could hear what else was said.
‘Herr Klein, what exactly were you told about your wife? About her disappearance?’
‘That man – Reinhardt – was her lover. There was a letter from her— I was shown it.’ There was a break in Father’s voice, then he said, ‘If I hadn’t read it, I wouldn’t have believed it. I still try not to.’
‘Life can deal some unexpected blows. But we should focus on what happened tonight. Because when the Gestapo find Reinhardt’s body – which they will – you know what your punishment will be.’
‘Execution,’ said Felix, whispering the word.
‘Yes. But this is the death of one of their own, and the Gestapo would inflict their own punishment before you even reached the death chamber. We can delay the discovery a little, but only a little. You locked the door of that room – I saw you do so. You brought the keys back here?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many sets of keys are there? Who has them?’
‘Two sets. One is kept at the hall – there’s a caretaker. The set I have is kept for people who use the hall for concerts and plays. I was given them a week ago for rehearsals and for tonight’s performance. It’s a usual arrangement. It’s understood that I’ll return them tomorrow or the day after.’
‘That can be dealt with. Keys can be altered and they can be switched for keys that don’t fit the locks. But it will have been known that Reinhardt was at that concert, and that hall will be searched. If I could get rid of the body I would do it, but it’s too risky. I’ll cover your tracks as much as I can, but bodies aren’t so easy to dispose of. But I’ll help you to evade the Gestapo.’ In a voice that was somehow strong and gentle both at the same time, he said, ‘Felix, I could get you away from here. Into hiding.’
‘I won’t leave this house—’
‘You must. You may be prepared to risk your own life, but you can’t risk the lives of Christa and Stefan.’ There was a movement, as if the man had leaned forward. ‘Felix,’ he said, ‘this is not just you who will be suspected; it is also Christa.’
‘No one would suspect a sixteen-year-old girl of—’
‘Of murder? But girls of that age have murdered,’ he said. ‘They are emotional – intense. Their feeling
s run deep. And Christa was in that concert hall tonight. Also, she would have hated her mother’s lover almost as much as you do.’
‘She didn’t know about him. I never told her.’
‘Oh, Felix,’ said the man, almost indulgently, ‘of course she would have known. She would have listened – heard gossip. If she’s suspected – and she would be – her youth won’t save her.’
Pain was blurring Father’s voice, but he said, ‘Where would we go?’
‘Have you ever heard of Wewelsburg Castle?’
The name dropped into Christa’s mind like a black, icy lump of rock, and instant and dreadful recognition scudded into her mind. Wewelsburg Castle. The place that’s old – that’s always been old.
‘Wewelsburg,’ said Father, very quietly.
‘It would not be the castle itself. There’s a house nearby – it stands on its own piece of ground, and it’s called the Torhaus. You would be safe there.’
‘I don’t quite understand—’
‘At times,’ said the man, ‘the Torhaus is used to hide people of your kind—’
‘My kind?’
‘Jewish people.’ It came out quite courteously. ‘There have been painters there and writers – sometimes as many as eight or a dozen. At the moment there is also a very gifted silversmith. And now there can be a musician.’
‘Why would you do this for me?’
Christa could almost hear the man thinking how to answer, then he said, ‘The Nazis are salting away a great many treasures. Paintings, statues, silver and gold objects. Probably they won’t be seen again until the war is over. I deplore what they’re doing, you understand, but their principle can be applied in a different way – a benign way. So I’m salting away not inanimate objects, but the people who create them – the people currently in danger from the Third Reich. And as a Jew, you must understand and even embrace the principle of a commune.’
