Orders from Berlin

by Unknown

  What a fool she had been! Seaforth had warned her not to make Bertram think that she suspected him. Yet within moments of her return to the house, she’d done exactly that. And now she wasn’t safe any more. He’d kill her if he got his hands on her and make it look like a suicide. He was a doctor; he’d know how to do things like that.

  Ava tried to clear her head, to beat down her rising panic. Bertram was outside, trying to get in – the door handle was turning this way and that. She thought of pulling back the blackout curtain, throwing up the window sash, and shouting down into the empty street for help. But she knew that that would do her no good. Even if the police came, they wouldn’t arrest Bertram. If they were going to do that, they would have done it already. They didn’t have enough evidence. Not yet, anyway. It was like she’d said to Seaforth – proof required more than just motive.

  There had to be something connecting Bertram to the crime. There was no such thing as the perfect murder. She thought suddenly of the cuff link that Trave had shown her at the police station. Maybe it was Bertram’s; maybe it had come off his shirt while he was struggling with her father, and he hadn’t been able to find it when he came back and the police were there; maybe he’d been stupid enough to keep the other one. But if she did find it, would it be proof? Surely it would at least be enough to have him arrested.

  Bertram had begun to hammer on the door. This wasn’t like the last time she’d locked him out, when he’d gone meekly to sleep on the sofa on the night before the funeral. This time he wasn’t giving up.

  ‘Let me in, Ava,’ he shouted. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  But she ignored him, concentrating instead on ransacking the drawers of the chest in the corner where he put away his underwear. There was a case where he kept his cuff links with a black velvet cover and a silver clasp. She found it in the top drawer, but the cuff link she was looking for wasn’t there, nor was it in any of the pockets of the suits and tweed jackets that were hanging in a neatly pressed row in the closet. Perhaps it was locked up in his desk in the sitting room with the letters from his creditors, but if so, it might as well have been on the moon for all the good it did her. There was no way she was leaving the safety of the bedroom while Bertram was outside.

  He was still banging on the door. She worried that it would give way. She needed something to hold it against him through the night. She looked back at the chest of drawers. It was heavy, constructed of solid nineteenth-century mahogany. It would do. The drawers were already half open, spilling ties and socks and underwear onto the floor, and now she pulled them fully out and threw them aside, then used all her strength to push the empty chest into place behind the door. Surveying her handiwork, she thought it would be enough. He couldn’t get in and she couldn’t get out. Now they could wait for morning.

  She woke up to the sound of the siren, and when it stopped, she could hear the noise of distant explosions. She got out of bed and went over to the window. She pulled back the blackout blind and looked out. It was the early dawn. The sun was still below the horizon, but there was just enough light in the northern sky for her to pick out the black dots that she knew were the enemy bombers flying in from the east, guided by the treacherous silver ribbon of the river lit up by the pale moonlight. Below them, streams and flashes of whitish-green incandescent light came and went as chandeliers of incendiaries fell, hanging in the sky like Roman candle fireworks cut through by the bright weaving lines of the searchlights. The billowing clouds were turning pink, although she couldn’t tell whether that was from the light of the invisible rising sun or the reflected glow of the fires below.

  Ava remembered going as a child with her mother to a fireworks display in Hyde Park to celebrate the end of the last war. But she hadn’t been able to see because she was too small, so her mother had lifted her onto her shoulders. ‘Look, Ava, look at all the pretty colours. Aren’t they beautiful?’ Ava could hear her dead mother’s voice echoing back to her through the years. It was almost as though she were standing next to her now. These lights were beautiful too – beautiful and terrible – and Ava was glad her mother wasn’t alive to see them.

  The incendiaries had done their work. The fires were beacons, lighting up the streets below for the planes circling overhead. Now pluming columns of black smoke began rising through the air as the high-explosive bombs started to fall. Ava pulled up the sash of the window and stood listening to the unsteady drone of the enemy aircraft and the booming ineffective chatter of the anti-aircraft guns and, louder than both, the shriek of the falling bombs and the terrifying explosions as they hit their targets. The whole northern sky was a mass of flame and smoke, but to the south there was nothing – just the sun coming up serenely through the clouds. It was obvious that Chelsea and Fulham were both being heavily attacked, but for now Battersea was unscathed. A line Ava had read in a newspaper or magazine somewhere came floating into her mind: ‘There was white dew on the grass and a nightingale sang and I felt ashamed of being human.’ She shivered in the cold.

  There was no sound from next door. She wondered whether Bertram had gone out to the shelter, but she thought not. She sensed his presence on the other side of the barricade she’d erected the previous evening.

  He knocked on the door at half past eight. The bombers had gone, and the break in the silence was a relief. She’d been sitting fully dressed on the edge of her bed, watching the clock on her night table, willing the hands to move for what seemed like hours.

  ‘Open the door, Ava,’ he ordered. ‘I’ve got to go out in a minute and I need to talk to you.’

  She stayed where she was. She had nothing to say.

  ‘I’m sorry I smacked you,’ he said. ‘I lost my temper. But you shouldn’t have lied to me. I’m your husband, you know.’

  He kept saying that, as if he had rights over her, as if he could tell her what to do or say. But that was over. He’d lost his rights when he murdered her father. She wanted never to see him again for as long as she lived.

  ‘Damn you, Ava, let me in,’ he yelled, getting angry again. ‘I need to change my clothes before I go out.’ He kicked the door hard when she didn’t answer. She flinched but stayed where she was.

  ‘All right, have it your own way,’ Bertram shouted. ‘I’m going to the Probate Office. We’ll talk about this when I get back.’

  She went to the door, leaning over the chest of drawers to listen with her ear against the panel. His footsteps were receding; the front door closed. She was alone.

  Ava forced herself to wait for five minutes in case Bertram’s departure was a ruse or he changed his mind and returned, but there was no sound. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer – she pushed the chest of drawers out of the way and opened the door. She walked from room to room. The flat was empty. The only trace of the night’s events was a small dent in the bottom of the bedroom door where Bertram had kicked it before he left.

  She needed help. The police were no use – smacking her across the face and kicking the bedroom door may have convinced her of Bertram’s guilt, but that wouldn’t get him arrested. No, what she needed now was a friend, someone to advise her on what to do next; somebody who would be on her side whatever happened; somebody she could rely on. She needed Alec. She remembered his offer of assistance at her father’s funeral. She’d ignored it at the time – she’d been too busy feeling angry and staring at Charles Seaforth – but now she felt she’d give almost anything to have Alec by her side. She rummaged through her handbag, searching for the card he’d pushed into her hand outside the church, and finally found it caught in the lining when she emptied all the rest of the bag’s contents onto the kitchen table.

  She was in luck. Thorn answered the telephone almost straight away.

  ‘I’m in trouble, Alec,’ she said. ‘I need your help.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ he asked. She could hear the concern in his voice.

  ‘It’s Bertram. He hit me, and I think he was the one who pushed my father. I’m frig
htened—’

  ‘Where is he now?’ asked Thorn, interrupting.

  ‘He left to go to the Probate Office a few minutes ago, and I think he’ll be gone for quite a while, so I’m fine for now. But I’m worried about when he gets back. …’

  ‘Stay there,’ said Thorn. ‘I’m on my way. You did right to call me.’

  The line went dead and Ava breathed a sigh of relief. It was going to be all right. Alec would deal with Bertram. She went into the kitchen and made herself a sandwich and ate it standing up. She hadn’t eaten since the previous day, and she was ravenously hungry. But then, just as she was about to make herself another, the doorbell rang. At first she ignored it, but the caller was persistent and eventually she became curious about who could want to see her so badly, so she went out into the communal hallway and answered the door.

  Seaforth was standing outside on the step. She was shocked. He was the last person she’d expected to see. She’d enjoyed her lunch with him at the Corner House and she was grateful to him for alerting her to Bertram’s status as the prime suspect in the police investigation, but she hadn’t expected to see him again, or at any rate not as soon as this.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, and then went on without waiting for an answer: ‘You can’t keep coming over like this, you know. It isn’t right.’

  ‘I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is cause trouble,’ said Seaforth, holding up his hands palm outward, as if to acknowledge that he was in the wrong. ‘It’s just I was worried about you. You know how yesterday I said I thought you’d be safe? Well, I kept thinking about it last night and then I wasn’t so sure …’

  Seaforth stopped in mid-sentence, noticing how Ava’s hands had started to tremble as he was speaking. ‘What’s wrong, Ava?’ he asked, looking concerned. ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’

  She looked away, biting her lip. She hardly knew Seaforth, and she didn’t want to confide in him. It was Alec Thorn she had called, looking for help. But in the state of fear and anxiety she was in now, she would have welcomed kindness and sympathy from almost anyone.

  ‘Bertram hit me,’ she said, speaking almost in a whisper. ‘And I did what you told me not to – I got angry and accused him – and he went crazy. I think he’d have killed me if I hadn’t barricaded myself in the bedroom. He did it, Charles. I know he did. He killed my father.’

  She felt faint and thought she would have fallen if Seaforth hadn’t taken hold of her arm and helped her back inside. The door of her flat was open, and he steered her to a seat at the kitchen table.

  ‘Can I get you something – a drink, maybe?’ he asked, looking down at her solicitously.

  Ava nodded, wiping her eyes and watching as Seaforth fetched Bertram’s whisky bottle from the sideboard and poured a generous measure into a glass that he’d found on the draining board beside the sink.

  The alcohol revived her. ‘The awful part is that knowing he’s guilty isn’t enough,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘The police need more evidence to arrest him or they’d have done so already.’

  ‘What kind of evidence? Have they told you what they’re looking for?’ asked Seaforth.

  ‘They showed me a cuff link that they found on the landing outside my father’s flat. They wanted to know if it was Bertram’s.’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘No, I didn’t recognize it. But I thought that maybe he might still have the other one, so I searched his drawers last night and it wasn’t there. And it’s not in any of his clothes pockets either. He’s probably thrown it away.’

  ‘Is there anywhere else he keeps things?’ asked Seaforth, looking round the room.

  ‘In his surgery. That’s where he has all his patient records.’

  ‘No, here – in this flat. He must have a desk, somewhere he writes letters.’

  ‘Yes, in there,’ said Ava, pointing through the open door at Bertram’s oak bureau standing against the wall in the sitting room. ‘But he keeps it locked.’

  ‘Well, then we’d better open it.’

  ‘How? I don’t have the key.’

  ‘We don’t need a key. I’m good at things like this, remember?’ said Seaforth, going over to the bureau. He squatted with his back to Ava, examining the lock. ‘Have you got a piece of wire of some kind – the thinner the better?’ he asked.

  She looked around in the kitchen cupboards but despaired of finding anything until her eyes lit on the old wire soap basket by the sink.

  ‘Will this work?’ she asked, carrying it over to Seaforth.

  ‘It should do,’ he said, working at the wire with his fingers. Once he had a section free, he straightened it out and inserted it in the lock, turning it this way and that. ‘There,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Now you can look.’ He had the lid of the bureau open, resting down on the two wooden supports that he’d pulled out on either side, and he’d also opened the two drawers underneath.

  She hesitated. Bertram had never let her near the bureau; he didn’t like her even to be in the same room when he was working at it. Searching it was crossing a line from which she would not be able to return. She shut her eyes, thinking of Bertram smacking her, thinking of her father falling through the air and lying dead at her feet; and she began going through the drawers.

  She pulled out bundles of cards and letters tied together with rubber bands, tossing them aside without opening them, although she recognized several of the envelopes, ones that she had steamed open behind her husband’s back in a futile effort to find out what he was keeping secret from her. But the letters hadn’t explained anything – just demands for obscene sums of money from south London financial firms that she’d never even heard of. She was sure that Bertram had been lying when he blamed his debts on bad investments, and she wondered if she would ever find out the truth. Perhaps the answer was here among these letters, but there was no time to read them now.

  She dug down, turning over cardboard files tied with red ribbon and a small photograph album – pictures of her wedding that made her feel ashamed of herself for a moment – and finally found the cuff link in the drawer where she’d started, the thin one at the top with the stationery. Pens and pencils; drawing pins and paper clips; and in amongst them the cuff link – it looked like it was made of onyx, with a gold crown embossed on a black background. She recognized it immediately and held it up in triumph.

  ‘Thank you for helping me,’ she said excitedly. ‘Bertram’s a hoarder. He never throws anything away. I should have remembered that. God, I hope it’s enough,’ she added as she went over to the telephone. ‘I’m going to call the police. I need this to be over – for my own sake as well as my father’s.’

  ‘Ava, wait,’ said Seaforth, putting his hand on her arm just as she was about to dial. ‘Do you think maybe you could keep me out of this, say you were alone when you found the evidence?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it’s not the best thing in my line of work to have a lot of public exposure, and being a witness at a murder trial—’

  ‘Is something you’d rather avoid,’ said Ava, finishing his sentence. ‘Yes, I can understand that, and believe me, I’m sorry that I got you involved in this. But I can’t lie any more, Charles. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.’

  Seaforth hesitated, as if considering a further appeal, but there was something about the steady, unwavering look in Ava’s green eyes that made him realize he’d be wasting his time. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Make the call.’

  She spoke for several minutes and then replaced the receiver. ‘That was Inspector Quaid,’ she said. ‘He’s coming right over. We’re to wait here and not touch anything.’

  ‘Not even the whisky bottle,’ said Seaforth, raising his eyebrows in mock dismay. ‘I think we’d better put it away, don’t you? We don’t want the inspector to think that that’s what you usually drink with your breakfast.’

  Ava smiled, grateful to Seaforth for defusing the tension.

  CHAPTER 9

&n
bsp; Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang. Ava knew straight away that it had to be Thorn. She couldn’t believe that she had forgotten he was coming, or maybe she’d unconsciously not wanted to tell Seaforth for fear that he would leave in order to avoid an encounter with his enemy. She couldn’t be sure Bertram wouldn’t come back, and she didn’t want to be left alone.

  ‘Who is it?’ Seaforth asked. Something about her change of expression made him think that she knew who was at the door.

  ‘Alec Thorn,’ she replied, looking embarrassed.

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Seaforth, horrified. ‘Of all people …’ He looked as if he were going to say more but stopped himself.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I called him earlier before you came. I needed help. I should have told you, but with all that’s happened since you got here, it went out of my head. I’ll see if I can get rid of him.’

  The doorbell rang again and she went out into the communal hallway and opened the front door. As she’d suspected, Thorn was waiting on the step.

  ‘Ava, are you all right?’ he said, giving her a hug as he went past her into the hall. ‘I came as quick as I could. I got a taxi all right, but there are lots of roads blocked off. The bombing was bad last night, all along the Embankment down as far as Putney.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘And Alec, I’m really sorry to have put you to all this trouble, but I’ve got the police coming and I think maybe it’s better if I see them on my own …’