The Queen's Accomplice

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  Elise gave Fausten a sideways glance. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m walking you back to the Adlon.”

  “Why? Am I under surveillance?”

  He smiled. “No, I am a proper German gentleman. I will see you home.” They walked together in silence. “I had no choice, you know,” Fausten offered. “I didn’t choose this way of life. I went to law school, before I was conscripted. I wanted to be a lawyer. But not for the rich—to defend the poor.”

  “So, you’re educated. That fact makes it even worse. For it makes you not only arrogant but also willfully ignorant. You should have known better. You should know better now.”

  Fausten stopped her. “I’m not your enemy, Fräulein Hess.”

  Elise gave a bitter laugh. “Of course you are.”

  He rubbed at the back of his neck. “No, you don’t understand—I am Alexander Fausten. My favorite book is The Magic Mountain. My favorite composer is Bach, especially the Brandenburg Concertos. My favorite opera is The Magic Flute. I love mountain climbing and Pfannkuchen filled with plum jam. I love playing the violin but have no sense of pitch. I don’t always believe in God, but I go to church and try, every single Sunday. My mother, I’ll have you know, loves me and thinks I’m a great catch for any young German woman. I’m a person. I want you to see me as a person, not this uniform.”

  “Not like a Jew? Not like a Pole? Not like a ‘rabbit’? Of course your mother loves you. I’m sure Hitler’s mother loved him. But—let me ask you this—how can you believe in God, at least try, and do what you’re doing?”

  “I am many things and one of them is honest, Fräulein. Blunt, even. And I will tell you now, in all honesty, that in these times you must learn to be quiet and play the game—or else you’ll end up back at Ravensbrück.”

  “Would it be the worst thing?” Elise turned away.

  Fausten caught up with her easily. “Well, yes. Your chances of survival there are low, despite your Aryan blood.”

  “Would it be worth betraying Father Licht? All those dead children? All those parents who grieve now, whose children are dust in the wind or lying in unmarked graves?”

  “Would Father Licht really want to see you die?”

  “Why doesn’t the Pope protest about the roundups and the camps, do you think? It’s been bothering me—why doesn’t he speak out?” Snowflakes began to swirl, catching on Elise’s eyelashes.

  Fausten looked everywhere but her eyes. “His Holiness protested the deportation of non-Aryan Christians in the Netherlands—and forty thousand were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Every time he speaks out, more die. What if he protests again? Does he want that on his conscience?”

  “The Nazis have been the worst thing possible for our country. Tell me somewhere deep down inside, you know. You know we as a people are better than this.”

  Fausten looked around. But no one was in hearing distance as they walked past the wooded edge of the Tiergarten; there was only the sound of the occasional car and horse-drawn cart passing. “I am but one man. What can I do?” They crossed Unter der Linden, the snowflakes falling thicker and faster.

  “You could desert,” said Elise. “Go into hiding.”

  “I have no wish to hide, like an animal, never having a moment’s peace.” Fausten brushed snow from his coat. “And I know what the camps are like. I have no wish to end up there. And neither should you.”

  “What did you see in the concentration camp?” Elise asked, spotting a chink in his armor. “What did you do?”

  “I—I did what I was told,” he said curtly. “And I was rewarded with my current position here in Berlin.” There was silence as Elise realized what he must have been part of.

  He went on, “Please…Renounce your Father Licht for the sake of your survival! Then you can stay here. To go back to Ravensbrück is certain death for you, you must realize. We should obey orders—to hate the deviants and the Jews.”

  “So, you don’t really hate them? The so-called deviants and the Jews?”

  Fausten took a breath. “I loved a Jewish girl once. She was taken away—Dachau, probably. I pray, for her sake, she is dead.”

  “Ah, so you do have a heart! And, possibly, a soul.”

  “Villains are never the villains to themselves, Fräulein. Remember, to my mother, I am a hero. She would say, ‘My son, he was an excellent student, graduated first in his class. He plays the violin badly, but I’m deaf in one ear and just turn away. He was going to become a lawyer before the war.’ She is proud.

  “Then one day I was conscripted. Sent to training camp, taught how to kill. I had no choice. Now she is proud because I wear a uniform that brings our family respect. I do a job that gives me enough money to take care of her.”

  “There is always a choice.”

  “No. There isn’t!” Fausten’s eyes flashed with anger. Elise could feel it radiate off him, like heat. “Not all of us are willing to die for our ideals! I am not willing to die! I’m not willing to see my mother rounded up and sent to a camp. I want to be a part of the Germany that rebuilds itself. Eventually. See past the uniform, Elise. I didn’t choose it.”

  They had reached the entrance of the Adlon. The doorman touched his hand to his cap. “Let me take you to the cinema,” Fausten said.

  “Is that an order?” Elise asked.

  “No.” He looked pained. “It is your choice. I respect your free will.”

  Elise was silent.

  “I will be at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo for the two o’clock matinee. I will stand outside the theater with two tickets. And I hope you will come and meet me.”

  The hotel lobby’s warm, perfumed air seeped out toward her. Inside, concierges in gold braid whispered assurances to guests and rang tiny brass bells. Bellhops pushed Rimowa suitcases and Louis Vuitton trunks over the polished marble floors. It’s so easy, this world, Elise thought. So protected.

  “Good day, Fräulein Hess,” Fausten said.

  She waited for him to salute and say the seemingly inevitable “Heil Hitler!”

  He didn’t.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Miss Lynd of Baker Street had arrived in Beaulieu wrapped in furs and scented with Jicky.

  She knew Sarah and Hugh—Madame Sabine Severin and Monsieur Hubert Taillier—had been busy. Agents at the Finishing School learned evasion techniques by being shadowed by instructors around local towns such as Bournemouth, Southampton, and Portsmouth. They had also practiced shadowing other trainees, in and out of department stores and shops in the towns.

  Miss Lynd settled herself in Kim Philby’s office, with a view of three shaggy ponies chewing on the grass lawn, and waited until the two trainees knocked at the door. “Come in!” she called. She continued in French, “I’m pleased to say all of your instructors have given you excellent reports. How are you two feeling?”

  “It’s all a bit unreal,” Sarah confided, as they both took seats. “But thank goodness muscle memory is helping. And for Hugh, as well.”

  Miss Lynd nodded. “It will be real soon enough. You’ve been cleared to go during this full moon. Everyone feels you’re ready. And you’re needed in Paris.”

  Sarah leaned forward. “Can you tell us anything more about our mission?”

  “I’m sorry,” Miss Lynd said, not sounding sorry at all, “but you’ll have to wait until you arrive in France. Your SOE liaison there will have further instructions for you.” She studied them, her eyes kind. “As we’ve been saying from the beginning, it’s a dangerous mission. You have time to change your mind—and we won’t hold it against you.”

  “Of course we’re going!” Sarah exclaimed. “We’ve worked too long and hard not to!”

  “Indeed,” echoed Hugh.

  “All right then, it’s settled—you’re going to Paris.” Miss Lynd gave a half smile. “Oh, and there’s one more thing we need to take care of, before you go. Your codes. Mr. Philby tells me he’s gone over it with you and you know your codes will be given to you on sil
k. You’ll use each one once and then burn it. If you can’t remember the code, they can’t get it out of you.”

  The unspoken word torture hung in the air.

  “And, in case you’ve had to destroy your silks, you’ve both chosen poems to memorize. But remember, if the Nazis can’t find any codes on you, they will know you have destroyed them. They know about the memorized poems, and they’ll do everything in their power to get you to tell them. And it’s imperative you do not. Remember, if they learn your poem, they can transmit back here as you. Such an ability compromises us and all the agents coming into Paris after you. You’ll need to hold out for at least forty-eight hours. That will give your network time to scramble.”

  “One of the reasons we have our cyanide pills, I gather.” Hugh said it quietly.

  “Madame Severin,” Miss Lynd said, “I will now need to you to tell me your poem.”

  “I’ve chosen William Butler Yeats’s ‘Among School Children.’ ”

  “Well.” Miss Lynd raised a plump, ringed hand. “Let’s hear it, my dear.”

  Sarah closed her eyes and recited the poem, stiff at first, but then warming up, until she reached the last stanza:

  “O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

  How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Miss Lynd sniffed, her eyes moist. “Quite appropriate. And you, Monsieur Taillier?”

  Hugh looked out the office window, the breeze stirring the bare black branches, took a breath, and began Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”:

  “They flash upon that inward eye

  Which is the bliss of solitude;

  And then my heart with pleasure fills,

  And dances with the daffodils.”

  There was a loud sniff. “Well, that’s done then.” Miss Lynd rose. “I’ll be seeing you both soon, to take you to the aerodrome.”

  She smiled, a kind one this time, and genuine. “And I do believe there’s a dance at the Domus tonight. Why don’t you two take a break from all”—she fluttered a hand—“this…and go have some fun?”

  —

  At Scotland Yard, Maggie and Durgin went through book after book of fingerprints on cards, but they found no matches to the one he’d lifted from Olivia Sutherland’s eyeball. Still, they’d covered only a small fraction of the fingerprints in the books. “I’ll get some men on this,” Durgin said at last, closing the one in front of him. “But there are walls of these books. What you saw in the evidence room is really the tip of the proverbial iceberg. And we just don’t have the manpower right now.”

  “And even if every single record is checked, he might not have committed a crime?”

  “I’m sure he’s committed any number of crimes,” Durgin replied gruffly. “But either he’s been smart enough to get away with them, or he’s posh enough to talk himself—or buy himself—out of an arrest.” His expression was one of utter disgust. “Our august British class system at work.”

  “Although if—when—we catch the Blackout Beast and fingerprint him, the evidence linking him to all the murders will be absolute.” Maggie took a sip of tea, long grown cold. “You know, regarding the original Jack the Ripper case, there were all sorts of conspiracy theories: that Jack was a Mason, that he was a Royal, that he was related to Queen Victoria. Some theorize Jack could have been a woman. If we can only figure out what narrative our Beast’s using…”

  She sighed. “But theorizing isn’t going to help. Would Sherlock Holmes have theorized? No, he would have stuck to the evidence. The facts.” She looked up from the book to Durgin. “He would have loved your fingerprinting system.”

  “Holmes is a fictional character.”

  “Yes,” Maggie agreed, “but Holmes—or rather A. C. Doyle—changed the way we look at and treat evidence.”

  “As you know, I’m more of a Detective Blake man.”

  “Isn’t it funny,” Maggie mused, pulling at her scarf, loosening it, “how Jack the Ripper was a real person and Sherlock Holmes wasn’t—and yet we talk about them the same way? In some ways they both feel simultaneously real and fictional.”

  “When I talk about my gut, you know, I’m not talking about emotion—I’m using years of experience. And, of course, the facts.” As he spoke, Durgin took in the bruises on Maggie’s neck.

  “I understand. I just don’t have that experience—and until I do, I think it’s best to stick with the facts. I will be Holmesian.”

  Durgin stared her in the eye. “All right, Miss Tiger—now tell me what happened to your neck—go a round with the Queen?”

  Maggie put a hand to her scarf. She didn’t want to talk about it, certainly not with Durgin, who might start to worry for her safety and take her off the case. “It’s nothing. Really.”

  The detective quirked an unruly eyebrow. “Do I need to take you to the interrogation room?” He smiled to let her know he was joking—mostly.

  “Last night,” Maggie admitted, “after tea…with the Queen—I went to a pub with an acquaintance. He got a little…handsy on the walk home. So I had to put him in his place. He, I promise you, looks far worse than I do.”

  “Really?” The detective’s stormy look brightened. “What did you do?”

  “Broke his nose, I think.” Maggie tried not to look pleased and failed. “And knocked out a tooth. I’m sure he’ll have some explaining to do at work today.”

  “Good girl!” The telephone on Durgin’s desk warbled, and he picked up the receiver. “Yes? Which hospital?” He scribbled on a scrap of paper, then hung up.

  “Our Blackout Beast has claimed another, but not only did this girl survive—she’s awake and able to talk.”

  —

  Maggie and Detective Durgin caught a black cab to Fitzroy Square Hospital, where the latest Blackout Beast victim had been taken by ambulance.

  With a jolt, Maggie realized the hospital was familiar—and not because of any of the Blackout Beast’s victims. “When we’re done,” she told Durgin, “there’s someone else I’d like to visit here.” Across the street, the cinema’s marquee announced the new film The Wolf Man in tall red capital letters. Rows of posters on each side showed actor Lon Chaney, Jr., made up with fangs and fur.

  “Of course.”

  “The Beast’s on a roll,” Maggie mused as they walked up the front steps of the hospital together, taking them two at a time.

  “Almost through with his run, if he’s still following the Ripper murders. There’s still the double murder—Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes—and then the final murder—the most violent of them all—Mary Jane Kelly.”

  “Then what?” Maggie’s voice was bleak, thinking of Brynn and the murdered women. “Will he keep on killing?”

  “If we don’t catch him, he’s made his name for the history books, and most likely goes back to murdering women and disposing of their bodies in private. Or he keeps going as the Blackout Beast, charting new territory. He creates a new legend. Regardless…”

  “Regardless, we need to catch him.”

  They went to the reception desk and then sprinted up the stairs. Huge taped windows looked out over the street, while the stone faces of winged cherubs watched as the wind whipped through the naked branches, snowflakes spinning down from the sky.

  As they traversed the shining floor of the corridor, Maggie’s heels clattered. A doctor, a stocky, graying man with a large watch and fat fingers—one encircled in a thick gold wedding band—looked up from a chart as they approached. “You must be Detective Chief Inspector Durgin.” He and Durgin shook hands. “Miss Plunket’s awake,” he told them, snapping the chart closed. “But she’s extremely fragile. She can’t talk for long.”

  “What are her injuries?” Maggie asked. “How badly is she hurt?” She bit her lip, fearing the answer.

  The doctor looked down his nose at Maggie, as if just noticing her presence. “And you are?”

  “Waiting for your answer to her questions,�
�� Durgin said. “As am I.”

  The doctor shot him a look. “Her throat was cut, severing her left carotid artery. There were no other incisions or injuries.”

  She looked to Durgin. “Just like Elizabeth Stride, Jack the Ripper’s third canonical victim.”

  Durgin’s face was grim. “With all due respect, Doctor, we’re trying to save women’s lives. There’s a killer out there—the press is calling him the Blackout Beast. He might have gotten to Miss Plunket.”

  “I’ve heard of this Beast, but I can give you five minutes only. She’s extremely weak. With all due respect, Detective, I’m trying to save a woman’s life.”

  “Before we go in,” Maggie interjected, “what can you tell us about her? In Jack the Ripper’s day, his victim Elizabeth Stride died. What made the difference for Miss Plunket?”

  “We were able to get to her before she bled out. And we now have better medical care than in the Victorian era.”

  Durgin crossed himself. “Thank God.”

  “You might want to thank modern medicine,” Maggie countered.

  The doctor, leaving a trail of lime-scented cologne, led them to Daphne Plunket’s room and then left them. “Five minutes,” he admonished. “And then I’ll be back to throw you both out if you aren’t gone.”

  A petite woman lay in a narrow bed. She looked out the window at the falling snow, her eyes unblinking, her fingers worrying at a blanket’s silk-covered hem, which was pulled up to her chin. She had unwashed wavy strawberry-blond hair that fell to her shoulders and acne scars on her sunken cheeks.

  “Miss Plunket,” Maggie began gently, “I’m Maggie Hope and this is Detective Chief Inspector Durgin. We’re so glad to see you’re, well, awake now. We—we’d like to ask you some questions about what happened.” She shivered, wishing she could spare the blonde any further pain. But she had a job to do. “I know it might not be pleasant, but we’re trying to catch whoever did this to you—and stop him from doing it to anyone else. Whatever you can tell us is of utmost importance.”