by Jane Thynne
‘But to kill her, Hugh? Why would you need to do that?’
‘She was threatening me, I’m afraid. In the most extortionate way. She wasn’t a nice person, Clara. She’d stolen from me.’
‘I know all about that. She stole a jewel.’
‘A jewel? No.’
For a moment he looked baffled and his bloodshot eyes blinked as though Clara was speaking a foreign language. Then he smiled.
‘Ah. That’s what the Führer’s dealer called it. Hildebrand Gurlitt. A jewel. I suppose it is, in its way. One of the great gems of Western culture. But it wasn’t a real jewel. It was a book.’
‘A book? That can’t be true.’
‘But it is. I had come by a rather lovely manuscript. I knew what it was because, without being immodest, Roman literature of that era is my speciality. And this was a copy of the Tacitus Germania.’
‘You’re lying. I met an expert at the Ahnenerbe who told me it was in Italy.’
‘As indeed it was. The Codex Aesinas. Hitler’s dearest wish. The one manuscript above all others he would like to possess. But there was another codex. It had spent hundreds of years at a monastery in Austria until it came into the hands of an antiquarian dealer there. Who was unfortunate enough to have his collection thieved by Nazi louts. I’d heard of it years ago, in Vienna, and once my contact described it, I knew exactly what it was. I just had to have it. I went to Austria to find it, but no luck. It had already been carted off back to Berlin. So I followed it, and once I arrived here I discovered I’d come in the nick of time. The stash was being held in a warehouse in Kopernikusstrasse under the auspices of Hildebrand Gurlitt. The riches there were mouth-watering. Paintings, silver candlesticks, porcelain, all sorts. But most importantly the Germania.’
The fragments that had been spinning around Clara’s mind began to pair and come together.
‘So that was what Goering wanted.’
‘Goering wanted it passionately because the Führer wanted it too. The competition between them is pitiful. Goering was a regular visitor to the warehouse and when he heard about the Germania he was determined to have it. He’s engaged in some kind of race with the Führer and knowing how much the Führer desired the Tacitus made it all the more desirable to him. I managed to buy it the day before Goering turned up. It was better in my hands than his, I reckoned.’
Clara felt a choking emotion. Pure rage that this man had dispensed with a life so casually.
‘So Lotti had to die for that? Just that?’
‘To my astonishment the girl recognized the Codex for what it was. Apparently she’d heard about the Tacitus at the Ahnenerbe. Anyway, because she imagined I was having some affair with another woman, she took it upon herself to steal it. I assume she wanted to teach me a lesson, but I don’t need lessons from young ladies. Particularly not on the subject of Latin literature.’
‘But to strangle her?’
He dragged a handkerchief from his pocket, dabbed at his brow and gave a faint wince of what might be remorse.
‘I didn’t want her to die. I wanted her scared in order to get my Codex back. That’s what I told the man. But he was a local communist hoodlum and he killed her in an excess of patriotism.’
‘Is that what you call murder?’
‘The chap assumed she was an enemy of the Soviet Union. Indeed she probably was.’
‘And where is this precious Codex now? The one that’s worth a woman’s life?’
‘That’s my greatest regret. It’s lost. I’m afraid it will have to remain a casualty of war. It’s a shame. I must be one of the very few people in the world who could recognize that Codex right off for what it was. I was a Greats scholar at Oxford, you know. There was only one man above me. He took the Newdigate Prize. Just pipped me to it. And it still rankles, if I’m honest.’
Hugh had entered a kind of reverie. The whites of his eyes were cracked and yellowish, like the glaze on an old painting. Clara realized he must have been drinking all evening. He leaned against the mantelpiece and turned the photograph of Clara’s mother around to face him.
‘I suppose whether one likes Stalin, or England, Fascism or Communism, it’s all a question of taste, isn’t it? Like the difference between Vermeer or Klimt . . .’
He took another swig of whisky, then placed the bottle on the mantelpiece with the deliberation of the profoundly drunk.
‘I’m not proud of this, Clara. I’ve been a faithful servant of the Soviet Union since my twenties and if Stalin wants me to dispose of British agents, that is what I must do. No matter how much I might personally like or admire them. I do like you, very much.’
He reached downwards and she saw the sudden glint of metal in his hand.
‘But I suppose betrayal is one of those things we English do so well. Like garden parties and well-made gentlemen’s shoes.’
‘You wouldn’t shoot me, Hugh. Think how easily you’d be traced.’
‘As a matter of fact everyone imagines I’m in Prague. I was obliged to leave my car in the care of the Adlon and I’ll be heading off tonight.’
She looked down at the pistol. It was bigger than the tiny Derringer she had possessed. As Hugh moved the muzzle a fraction, pointing it more directly at her chest, a cold fear clutched at her. She looked over at the pictures of Erich and her mother on the mantelpiece and wished passionately that she had kept a photograph of Leo after all. Yet it was still Leo’s face in her mind as the shot rang out.
The noise filled the room and blasted out into the darkness. Hugh Lindsey staggered, as if surprised, a dark treacle of blood beginning to stain his suit. As his body jerked sideways and backwards, and then fell awkwardly to the floor, Clara spun around to see Hedwig Holz. Her arm was shaking so much that the muzzle of the gun was a blur. The room smelled of gunpowder and perfume.
‘I never thought I could shoot someone.’ Hedwig’s voice was trembling, but she lifted her chin resolutely. ‘All those lessons must have counted for something.’
Clara forced herself to remain calm. She wondered if Hugh might die, and how quickly, but looking at him sprawled awkwardly on his back she saw that his skin was already becoming chalky, and his eyes were open and motionless, as if surprised. She moved swiftly to the front window and looked out.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Hedwig. ‘They’re always hearing shots round here. They’ll think it’s the Faith and Beauty girls having night-time pistol practice in the forest. Either that or someone shooting geese.’
Clasping her arms around her chest, as if to protect herself from the trauma, Clara walked off into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. She felt a violent nausea at the sight of Hugh Lindsey lying there, and her own surprise at not being dead.
Something he had said, a comment she barely registered in the fear of the moment, now resounded.
I was a Greats scholar at Oxford, you know. There was only one man above me. He took the Newdigate Prize. Just pipped me to it. And it still rankles, if I’m honest.
The Newdigate Prize was Oxford’s great honour for poetry. John Buchan had won it in his time, and Matthew Arnold and Oscar Wilde. And, more recently, it had been awarded to another gifted classics student: Leo Quinn.
Hugh Lindsey must have fostered a grudge against Leo. A grudge that had stretched for decades all the way from the golden stone cloisters of Oxford to the other side of Europe. And finally, years later, he had found a way to take his long desired revenge.
Hedwig had followed her mutely to the kitchen and was standing, shivering violently, as shock took hold. Gently Clara removed the gun from the girl’s shaking hand and put her arms round her.
‘I owe you my life.’
Hedwig leant her head on Clara’s shoulder and for a moment the two women stood motionless in the deep silence, aware only of their own beating hearts. Then Clara stepped back and gazed searchingly into Hedwig’s unassuming countenance.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’
The blood ha
d drained from Hedwig’s face, but her voice was steady. Clara hoped she would not be burdened with guilt at the idea of having killed a man.
‘I can’t ever thank you enough. That was very brave of you.’
‘I wasn’t brave.’ Hedwig’s jaw clenched. ‘It wasn’t courage; it was anger. That man killed my best friend. I shot him for Lotti’s sake as much as yours.’
‘I’m grateful all the same. More than I can say.’
There was something about this young woman that belied the apologetic posture and the hesitant demeanour, Clara realized. Behind the awkward exterior there was steel in her.
‘Why are you here?’
‘I had to get a gun for my boyfriend. He’s in trouble.’
‘I thought you were going to the ball?’
‘I was. I went to the afternoon practice but I was terribly nervous. I made quite a hash of it. I kept getting out of time. At the end of it, Fräulein von Essen took me aside and said I stood out too much. I didn’t stay in line. If I took part in the dance I would let down not just myself but the entire Faith and Beauty movement and probably the Führer himself. She had been considering making the whole group withdraw because of my laziness, but instead she had decided that I should suffer the shame alone. I would not be able to come to the ball and should just stay quietly at home.’
‘So you came here.’
‘I went to the Faith and Beauty home. I knew it would be deserted, and it was the ideal opportunity to collect my pistol.’
Clara’s head was still spinning, trying to piece together the fragments of information.
‘Why does your boyfriend need a pistol?’
‘He works as a forger. He makes documents for Jews in hiding. Identity documents. Recently he undertook a job and he thinks he was followed. He was providing a document for a lady . . .’
‘A forger, you say?’
‘Yes. He had a job and when this lady left, he could tell she was being watched.’
‘How could he tell?’
‘He saw she was being shadowed.’
Fragments of information were colliding in her head, like shards of a broken vase forming together into a whole.
‘But that’s not the point,’ continued Hedwig. ‘If this lady was being tailed, then it’s likely that they saw Jochen too, so he’s worried now that the Gestapo are on to him as well. He’s already left his job. And he wanted me to get him a pistol.’
‘But why come here? To my house?’
‘I was on my way back to the S-Bahn and I saw a man ahead of me. I recognized him at once.’
‘Because you’d met him in London.’
‘Lotti was obsessed with him. I told you. They’d become lovers. As soon as I saw him again I realized it must have been him that Lotti had been meeting. That was the man she was terrified of. The man who must have killed her. But I still don’t know why.’
A sudden, sharp clarity possessed Clara and she took hold of Hedwig’s hands. Circumstance had brought the two women together, but fate had interlaced their lives and the events of that night made a lasting bond between them. Now she wanted to do everything she could to help.
‘You were right about the jewel, Hedwig. Lotti died because of it. And I think I can tell you what and where it might be.’
Chapter Forty-one
Elsa Neuländer-Simon’s photography studio was in a tall stucco building in Schlüterstrasse, just off the Ku’damm in the west end of the city. For years, Studio Yva had been the most successful studio in Germany until the Nazi regime blacklisted the photographer and obliged her to carry out all work under the auspices of an Aryan studio manager. It would take more than that to stop Yva working, however, and every part of the house, from its pillared entrance, to its grand balconies and winding staircases, continued to be used as backdrop to her legendary shoots. The door was opened by a fey young man in a sleeveless sweater and bow tie who ushered Hedwig into a parquet hall and yelled, ‘Yva! Ein Fräulein to see you.’
A reply floated down from several floors above.
‘If it’s another one of those girls collecting for the Winterhilfswerk, tell them we don’t want to buy any more tanks.’
The young man gave a camp little shrug and said, ‘Follow me.’
The studio, a sparsely furnished, open space running the length of the house, had a vacant, abandoned air. It was furnished only by a couple of chairs, a cabinet and a pile of dustsheets. In the midst a slight woman was kneeling on the floor dismantling a cumbersome tripod.
‘You’ll have to wait.’
Awestruck, Hedwig looked around. The girls whose portraits hung on these walls were entirely different from the images of womanhood she had seen anywhere else in Germany. Here were no hearty, fresh-faced mothers, none of the wholesome members of the Faith and Beauty Society or the League of German Girls, but glacial blonde goddesses who emitted a cool artifice that seemed to say although they may be advertising cosmetics, shoes or jewellery, their bodies remained their own. Their limbs were hard as marble, their eyes heavy-lidded, and they had a smouldering erotic charge.
One picture in particular caught Hedwig’s attention. It was a young woman, platinum hair rippling in tight waves, fur coat flicked aside to reveal a slash of ivory flesh from the top of her stockinged leg to the snow of her exposed breast. The composition was all geometric lines and oblique perspectives like an old silent movie, its dramatic lighting and edgy glamour breathing a sense of violence and danger. The expression on the girl’s face, the poise of her body, and the cigarette dangling from one hand, was at once decadent and rigidly controlled. It was as though all the sex that had been suppressed in Germany was distilled in a single photograph.
The subject was Lotti Franke.
‘Everyone loves that one. It was taken by my apprentice, Helmut Newton. He loved big blonde girls in high heels,’ said Yva, getting to her feet. ‘Especially naked ones. He’s left me now, unfortunately. He could have been quite a talent, but he would insist on emigrating. Perhaps he was right. I had an offer from Life magazine to go to New York but I turned it down.’
‘Why didn’t you go?’
‘My husband wasn’t keen. Only now he has lost his job and been given a new occupation as a street sweeper, he’s regretting his decision. But there we are.’
Yva finished folding away the tripod and began meticulously dismantling the camera. Her angular, intelligent face, framed by dark brows, looked in no mood to expend any niceties on Hedwig.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this studio is officially closed. They’ve given me a new job too, as it happens. A technician in the Jewish hospital, working with X-ray cameras. Is that a joke, do you think?’
‘I think they have no sense of humour.’
‘You’re probably right. Anyhow, if it’s photography you’re after, I’m unavailable.’
‘That’s not what I came for.’
‘Then . . .’ The eyebrows lifted slightly.
Hedwig nodded towards the photograph on the wall.
‘Did you know her well? Lotti Franke?’
Yva’s voiced hardened with suspicion.
‘Who are you exactly?’
‘My name is Hedwig Holz. I was her best friend.’
‘Ah.’ Yva abandoned her business with the camera and rose. She made her way to the solitary cabinet.
‘In that case, perhaps you’ll share a drink with me.’
She poured two large whiskies into cloudy tumblers and handed one to Hedwig, who gulped it like lemonade, the unfamiliar burn causing her to choke. Yva perched on one of the chairs, extended one long, fishnet-stockinged leg and stroked it thoughtfully.
‘I first met your friend Lotti a year ago. Perhaps she mentioned it.’
Hedwig nodded silently.
‘She came to me with some sketches for clothes and wondered if I would photograph the finished products. Perhaps I would speed her progress as a designer. But though they were good, it wasn’t only the clothes I was interested in. I could se
e your friend had quite another talent. I said I would only photograph the clothes if she modelled them and she agreed straight away. She had drive, that girl, and a hard ambition. I recognized something of myself in her. I was one of nine children – my mother was a milliner – so I knew what it was to work hard and graft. To use everything God gives you to succeed. Lotti was not ashamed of using her body if it helped her. Helmut Newton loved her. He said Lotti was his ideal woman. But then, with a body like that, I daresay she was a lot of men’s ideal woman. Even the Führer’s.’
Her needle-sharp glance grazed Hedwig’s own legs, causing her to blush fiercely. But she persisted.
‘The last time you saw Lotti, did she seem distracted by anything?’
‘If she was, I wouldn’t have known it. She was far too professional.’
‘The fact is . . . the day before she died she told me about something she had. And I wondered if perhaps she left it here.’
For a long moment Yva continued to scrutinize Hedwig, as if trying to decide whether she was worth trusting, then she nodded.
‘She asked me to look after it. Just for a few days. She wouldn’t say what it was, or why she wanted me to take it, and my first instinct was to refuse. You don’t hide other people’s possessions without a very good reason nowadays. But your friend had the face of an angel, and I was not about to lose a model that good. Unfortunately the next time I saw that face it was on the front page of the Berliner Tageblatt.’
Quietly, so quietly that her voice barely travelled across the narrow distance between them, Hedwig said, ‘Where is it now?’
Yva remained motionless for a moment, then she stubbed her cigarette on the floor, ground out its embers with the toe of her shoe and rose decisively. She crossed to the cupboard where she had found the whisky bottle and rummaged behind rows of satin dresses until she retrieved it.
