by Kate Parker
But I wouldn’t shield a murderer.
We were allowed to go back to the ground floor. Reina kept going up, her heels clicking on the stairs. With manners drilled into me since childhood, I thanked Mimi for showing me her new salon as if nothing untoward had happened.
Upstairs, the sound of hammering and sawing had resumed. The police apparently hadn’t started asking the workmen questions.
Mimi stared at the ceiling as she showed me to the front door. “I’d hoped to be happy here. Now I am not so sure.”
“Will you tell me who he was someday?” I asked.
“Perhaps. If I learn. I cannot see the future.”
Drat. I’d hoped Mimi would have fallen for my trick. She was incredibly talented, more so than I’d realized before today. But I still couldn’t tell if she was telling me the truth.
“Who’s running your Paris couture house while you’re here?” I asked, wondering at the possibility of the whole fashion house leaving the country. “And who will make all the frocks for the show?”
“More staff will come over next week to help with the show.” Mimi gave a Gallic shrug. “My manager, Simone, is running my Paris salon. The top assistants to Fleur, Reina, and Brigette are there as well. Who knows, in time I may have two separate couture houses.”
Not only was Mimi a brilliant designer, she was also a clever businesswoman. The articles on her in the French press said she had started with nothing and rose to the top of her profession by incredible talent, hard work, and determination.
And she sounded determined to stay, even with a body in the basement.
There was nothing newsworthy in what she’d told me, but it didn’t matter. Nothing I learned would earn a byline. I’d been at the Daily Premier for almost a year and I’d never seen my name in print.
My pay was earned by my secondary duties. The publisher of the Daily Premier thought having my name appear in a byline would endanger my other role, as smuggler and spy.
I doubted this would be one of those occasions when the publisher would want me involved.
* * *
I wrote up and turned in my articles on Lady Patricia’s upcoming wedding and Mimi Mareau’s maison in London, wondering if I’d hear more from Mimi about the murder victim.
The article on Lady Patricia featured Jane’s photograph of her with Mimi. It didn’t feature my byline. My article on the new couture house was reduced to a notice.
Two days later, I was called to Mr. Colinswood’s office. I went upstairs to the foreign desk where he was editor. He waved me in, his ear to the telephone receiver and a cigarette burning in the overflowing ashtray. I walked in and sat down, waiting for him to finish his call. By the way he was rapidly scrawling notes on a sheet of scrap paper, there had to be a story breaking somewhere.
He hung up and said, “Lord Runciman has been recalled from the negotiations about the Sudetenland to confer with Chamberlain.”
I shivered, knowing war with Germany was that much nearer. Captain Adam Redmond, British army officer and my very good friend, was that much closer to danger.
“But that’s neither here nor there,” Colinswood continued. “What you need to know is the identity of the man found murdered in Mimi Mareau’s basement. Elias. That’s his nom de guerre. A German communist and a Jew. The Nazis have been looking for him for some time. No one knows how he got out of Germany.”
“Had he been hiding in that building? I’ve done a little digging and found out it had been empty since June, until Mimi moved in.” I couldn’t imagine what a wealthy Paris fashion designer and a German communist had in common.
“Don’t know. I only know I was told to put you in the picture and send you up to see Sir Henry.” Mr. Colinswood rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter, obviously anxious for me to leave.
Sir Henry Benton. The publisher of the Daily Premier and our boss. After my husband died, he’d saved me from having to move home with my father by offering me a well-paying job, but it came with certain odd requirements. Sir Henry used my facility with foreign languages and knowledge of foreign diplomatic procedures to help his late wife’s Jewish family escape Nazi territory.
I went up to Sir Henry’s office on the top floor. His secretary sent me right in, where Sir Henry greeted me from behind his massive desk. “Olivia. Good. Colinswood told you?” At my nod, he simply said, “Good.”
I took a chair opposite him without being asked, something I would never do as a lowly society reporter, the job he officially hired me for. But in the task I suspected I’d been called up here for, as Sir Henry’s personal inquiry agent, we were more equal.
“You need to know I attended a meeting with Elias,” Sir Henry told me.
“Does Scotland Yard know?” I didn’t want to step on the toes of the police. They had an official murder investigation to carry out.
“Someone in our group is alerting them to his reason for being here.”
“‘Our’ group?” What group was Sir Henry involved with?
“We call ourselves ‘the committee.’ Mostly a collection of wealthy Jewish businessmen and professionals, with a few like-minded Christians, determined to help save as many European Jews as possible before war traps them inside Nazi Germany and its client states. Because of Esther, James and I are involved.”
Esther Benton Powell, Sir Henry’s only child by his German Jewish wife and my closest friend from our school days, had been raised as a Christian after her mother’s death. Sir Henry had been born a Presbyterian in Newcastle, but that didn’t stop him from helping his in-laws.
Sir Henry leaned back in his massive stuffed desk chair. “What I want, Olivia, is for you to learn who sold out Elias. I suspect a leak in our group, a turncoat who led a Nazi assassin to a meeting with him. Here, in the supposed safety of London.”
CHAPTER THREE
I shut my eyes and considered the impossibility of what Sir Henry asked. He wanted me to ferret out a specific Nazi sympathizer in a city that had too many of them.
I opened my eyes and stared at Sir Henry. “If you don’t believe Scotland Yard can solve this murder, how do you expect me to?”
“Oh, Scotland Yard will solve it, but the killer is not the danger.” He leaned forward, watching me closely. “Thugs can be bought for a shilling, especially the ones in Mosley’s group. I want to know—no—we need to know who gave away Elias’s identity and location. That’s the person Scotland Yard won’t look for. But that is the person who will lead others to their deaths.”
“You don’t believe Mosley’s British Nazi group is behind Elias’s murder?”
“No.” Sir Henry shook his head. “They haven’t the brains.”
I leaned back to make myself more comfortable. “Then I am going to need to know everything you know about Elias and the names of everyone in this group who knew he was in town.” The more information I had, the more chance I had of finding the person he sought.
“Elias had found a way to move German Jews out through Poland and then across the Baltic to Scandinavia. We know it was a sophisticated plan involving forged papers and Swedish and Danish fishermen and had been attempted twice. Both times successfully.”
“How do you know this?” The breadth of Sir Henry’s knowledge was amazing.
“Elias met with several of us five nights ago. He had left with the second group of refugees using his escape route. He needed more money to keep the route open, to pay both the forgers and the fishermen.”
“Had you given him money? There was none found on him.” Once more, in my mind I saw his body crumpled on the basement floor and my stomach churned.
“There’s a group who had agreed to send money by way of a Swedish bank. We’d given him a couple of pounds for while he was in London, but not enough for someone to kill him over.”
“Considering the times we live in, I’d suspect his work rather than robbery would be the motive. There was nothing random about this attack. Are these people friends of yours?” I asked.
/> He shook his head. “You’re going to have to be very tactful with them. I’m tolerated because I’m wealthy and male. By helping my late wife’s relatives resettle here, safe from Nazi Germany, I’m considered trustworthy.”
“Wouldn’t Esther be a better person to approach this group?” Esther was my best friend, starting in boarding school and then at university. She seemed like the logical person to work with this committee.
Sir Henry nearly came out of his chair. “I don’t want her traipsing around London with my grandchild.”
She was four or five months pregnant with her first child, and with that attitude, I suspected Sir Henry was driving her crazy. “What does Esther think?”
“No, Livvy. You are not to ask her. I forbid it.”
“If she finds out you are keeping her from doing something in London that she no doubt agrees is very important, then you are going to be in trouble.” Esther had been instrumental in having me travel to Nazi-controlled territory twice to help her mother’s family escape.
Esther couldn’t go because of her heritage, and that would make her more determined to help out in London.
“How is she going to find out?” he demanded.
“This is Esther we’re talking about. Do you really believe we can coordinate on something this involved without her finding out?” And I didn’t want her mad at me.
“But she’s carrying my grandchild,” came out in as close to a wail as I’d ever heard from him.
“How about if I come over to the house tonight? Have Esther come over and we’ll discuss this like rational adults. Presumably she knows some of the people in this group and can give me some suggestions, if nothing else.”
“She knows some of them better than I do,” Sir Henry said in what sounded like a grudging admission.
“Then I need to speak to her.” I held his gaze.
“Is Redmond in town?”
Adam Redmond was the only reason I’d try to postpone a special assignment from Sir Henry. “No, he’s somewhere for the army.” It was that unknown where that kept me awake at night.
“Come to dinner. We’ll dine at eight. You’ll not only have to convince me; you’ll have to convince James.”
James Powell was Esther’s husband. So far he’d been more reasonable than Sir Henry about this pregnancy, allowing Esther a measure of freedom around London. However, at the word murder, he was likely to become more difficult.
I nodded and headed downstairs to my desk, thinking about the impossible task given to me. Germany was the most powerful country in Europe. They’d taken over the Rhineland and Austria. It appeared that, at any moment, they’d take over the Sudetenland. And while Hitler might want another war, England didn’t. Too many people remembered the losses in the Great War.
Besides all the people who didn’t want another war, the Jews were unpopular. Some aristocrats were in debt to Jewish bankers, while working men wanted all foreigners kept away from hard-to-find jobs, which meant it wouldn’t be hard to find Nazi sympathizers in London. But how would I find the one who killed, or brought in the assassin to kill, Elias?
* * *
Shortly before eight that evening, I arrived by taxi at Sir Henry’s London home. Esther greeted me with a hug when I entered, saying, “I am so glad you agreed to do this, Livvy. Elias didn’t deserve to be murdered. He may have been a communist, but he cared about people. About families.”
“Had you met him?” Another reason to involve Esther if they had met.
“Yes. Come and sit down. Dinner’s not quite ready.”
As she turned sideways, I caught a glimpse of her profile. Esther was beginning to show. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. This baby is agreeing with me. And how is Adam?”
“Well, the last I heard.”
“He’s disappeared again?”
I nodded.
“Oh, Livvy.” She gave me another hug. “I know how much he means to you.”
“I lost Reggie. Not hearing a word from Adam for days and weeks on end is getting on my nerves. Especially with all this war talk. I can’t lose him, too.” A sob escaped as I spoke.
Esther patted me on the back before I took a deep breath and pulled myself together.
We bypassed the formal drawing room to join the men in Sir Henry’s large, book-lined study. The footman offered me a glass of sherry, which I accepted. Everything to eat and drink here was delicious, I knew.
“Glad you could join us, Livvy,” Sir Henry said, coming forward to shake my hand. As I was wearing two-inch heels, I could see over the top of Sir Henry’s head. I wondered if everyone who grew up in Newcastle in the Victorian age was short.
I blinked away my idle thoughts and said, “I’m eager to hear more about this business.”
“Quite. Sit down and we’ll tell you,” Sir Henry said.
James Powell came forward and said, “Thanks for helping, Livvy. Esther has involved me in this, too.” James was as Church of England to the bone as I was. Esther was Anglican, and had attended St. Agnes School with me, but the faint memories of the mother she had lost as a child and fears for her mother’s family had pushed her into action. Action made necessary since the moment Hitler began showing his true colors.
I grinned. “Knowing Esther, do we have any choice?”
“All right, you two. Sit down and listen.” Esther had put on her bossy voice, but she’d matched it with a smile that reached her eyes.
We sat.
“Elias came into Britain a week ago on the ferry that sails the Esbjerg to Harwich route. His documents proclaimed him to be Jan Kryszka, Polish national.” Sir Henry paused. “They were very good forgeries. And that was one of the reasons Elias needed money. Forgeries of this caliber don’t come cheap. He also needed to bribe Swedish and Danish fishermen and Polish border guards when they cross out of Germany.”
“How much success had he had?”
“The first group, who also used the Esbjerg to Harwich ferry, had three families totaling eleven people. The second, two families and himself, had a total of twelve.”
I had more questions. “How exactly does this work?”
“The refugees cross the border from Germany to Poland when his bribed guards are working. Once into Poland, they are taken to a place where they receive new identities and burn their old papers. Then they are taken to the coast where they board fishing trawlers. Once they are in Sweden or Denmark, they are led to Esbjerg and put on the ferry to England,” Sir Henry said.
“Presumably, anyone against bringing German refugees into England would want to stop Elias. Is there anyone like that in your group?” I asked.
“No.” Both Esther and Sir Henry spoke at once.
“Did anyone else know he was in the country? Did he have any known enemies here? How many knew he was a communist?” I had questions. I really hoped they had some answers.
“He was keeping his visit secret, since he was on a list of assassination targets drawn up by the Nazis. He’d barely escaped attempts on his life twice while in Germany. We all knew he was a communist, but he said political affiliation shouldn’t matter in such perilous times. The Nazis are everybody’s enemy.”
Sir Henry set down his glass and stared at me. “His enemy is a Nazi sympathizer here in London. But how could anyone find him? I don’t know. We took precautions. He took precautions.”
“He did say he had personal business here,” Esther said in a quiet voice.
All three of us turned to look at her.
“When I attended the meeting with Father, I had a chance to say a few words to Elias. I asked how he was enjoying London. He said he’d never been here before, but he was meeting an old friend while he was in town and was looking forward to their visit.” Esther looked at each of us in turn.
Now I had even more questions, but at that moment, the footman signaled Sir Henry, who said, “Let’s go in to dinner. We can discuss this afterward.”
Dinner at Sir Henry’s hadn’t changed since
my university days. Sir Henry was widely read and had fascinating stories to tell, most of them humorous. The food was excellent, the company charming.
But Sir Henry had one rule. No talking business at dinner. No one said a word about Elias.
Still, he was the ghost at the banquet.
After dinner, we went back to the study for our coffee. After we were settled, I said, “Did Elias mention who this friend was? Or where he was staying or meeting this person?”
“Elias was staying at the Hotel Gloucester, where one of the group members had made arrangements for him. He wasn’t observant, so there weren’t any restrictions on where he could eat,” Sir Henry said.
“Not an Orthodox Jew?” I asked.
“No, and he didn’t mention who this old friend was,” Esther said. “Another thing in his favor was he was wiry, athletic. I don’t see how anyone could have won a fight with him, if there was only one person.”
“The communists have been involved in all sorts of strikes and dock brawls here in England. Is it the same way in Germany?” James asked.
“It was until the Nazis consolidated their rule. The communists have been outlawed there for years,” Sir Henry told him.
“Then maybe he was out of practice in fighting,” I suggested. “But do we know how he died? Have you seen the autopsy report?”
“I had one of the local desk reporters get a copy,” Sir Henry told me. “Elias died from several massive blows to the back of the head. The first one would have rendered him unconscious. He didn’t put up a fight.”
“That means he turned his back on his killer.” I looked at the others in the room. “He knew that person, and wasn’t afraid of him.”
“Or her,” Esther added.
Her words immediately made me think of Mimi. She hadn’t seemed surprised to find his body in her basement, and she’d appeared to have recognized him. “The body wasn’t moved?”
“No.”
“Then he was killed in the basement of a house in Mayfair. One that was rented a week or so ago to Mimi Mareau for a couture house.”
