Death in Focus

by Anne Perry

  It was a good thirty minutes’ drive in the May dusk, and they passed through one brief shower of rain. Lucas parked a distance from Howard’s house, put Toby on his lead, and set out to walk. Caution was a lifetime habit.

  He had met Pamela Howard a few times, but he could not easily remember what she looked like. Fairer than Josephine, he thought, but not paler so much as lacking any color at all. She had beautiful skin, blemishless. He rather hoped she would not remember him well either.

  He checked the numbers on the gates, opened the correct one, and walked up the path to the door. The light was on in the front room; he could see tiny strips of it where the curtains did not quite meet.

  Toby sat obediently while Lucas rang the doorbell.

  It was answered within moments by Howard, who looked startled to see Lucas again so soon, and even more so when Toby bounded forward to greet him.

  “Sorry,” Lucas apologized, “but I have to speak to you. It really can’t wait.”

  Howard opened the door wide and Lucas stepped inside. “What’s happened?” Howard said instantly, his voice steady, but clearly only because he forced it to be.

  “Nothing,” Lucas replied. “I was going to go myself. I can’t leave Elena alone…”

  “You also can’t go. We went over that,” Howard said between his teeth. “I’m going to be brutal. Although you might be one of the most brilliant men I’ve ever known, you’re also as subject to age as anyone else. You’d be a bloody liability, even without a gimpy ankle—” He broke off.

  They were still standing in the hall, between the rack of coats with boots beneath them and the very nice oak half table with a salver for letters and small packets. It had probably been there in the past for people to leave calling cards.

  The door of the sitting room opened and Pamela Howard stood outlined against the light. She saw the dog first and took a step back.

  Toby did not move. He was still on his lead anyway, and practically standing on Howard’s feet.

  “You seem to have got lost,” Howard said to Lucas, smiling pleasantly. “I think you needed the last turning. Let me show you.” He glanced at Pamela. “I’ll be back in a moment. I’ll just show this gentleman where he needs to be…” He turned to Lucas, dismissing her, or at least that was what it looked like to Lucas.

  She went back into the sitting room and closed the door; she did not acknowledge either Lucas or his dog.

  Howard did not apologize, but the awkwardness he felt showed in his face. He led Lucas to the front door, and outside.

  “You can’t go, Lucas,” Howard insisted. “Apart from the fact that you’re not fit, has it occurred to you that you could be exactly the reason they’ll hold her? To flush you out and get you where they can take you easily, and no one will ever know? All the diplomatic complaints in the world won’t help. They’ll simply say they had no idea who you were. And you know as well as I do that it will be believed, and we can hardly prove otherwise without making total asses of ourselves. We’ve decided, I’m going! Now, I suppose you’ve got a couple of decent photographs of her, and a description?” Howard held out his hand.

  Lucas fished in his inside pocket and pulled out an envelope with two photographs in it. “I want them back.”

  Howard did not bother to reply.

  “She’s about five-foot-eight, or a bit less. Light brown hair, blue eyes. At first glance, I suppose she’s not beautiful, but after you’ve looked at her for a while, you realize that she is.”

  Howard stared at him, a sudden, intense gentleness in his eyes. “We’ll get her back. Now I’ll take you and show you where to go. I’d better, or Pamela will think I’ve lied to her.”

  Lucas nodded and turned to go down the path to the gate, Toby on his heels.

  CHAPTER

  19

  Elena woke up in the night, her heart pounding. Then she heard the noise again. It was someone moving quickly and trying to be silent. The soft sound of footsteps hurrying, then a gasp of breath.

  She slid out of bed, put on the wrap that Zillah had lent her, and went to the door. She opened it quietly and looked out. The hall light was on and Zillah was standing at the top of the stairs, her hair loose around her shoulders. She was staring downward. She had not heard Elena’s door open. She was holding something, an armful of towels.

  Eli’s voice came from below her. “Hurry. Maybe sheets would be better. We can replace them.”

  “I’ve got sheets, too,” Zillah replied. “We’ll burn them if need be. It hardly matters now.” She started down the stairs awkwardly.

  Without thinking, Elena went to her and took some of the towels.

  Zillah swung around, startled. She was ashen pale. “Go back to bed!”

  “I can help,” Elena replied. “Whatever it is, I can help. You don’t need to slip and fall down the stairs with that lot.”

  Before Zillah could argue, Eli’s voice came from below. “Let her! We need her. What will she do? She’s a fugitive anyway. This can’t make it worse.”

  Zillah let go of half the pile of sheets and towels, and Elena followed her down, carrying her share. They went after Eli into the kitchen. On the floor Jacob was kneeling with his arms around a young man covered with blood. The man’s upper body was naked and all the flesh raw. Elena had never seen anything so shocking. She stumbled as if her heart had stopped.

  Zillah was looking at her. “That’s what we all look like when our skin has been taken off,” she said quietly. “If we help him, keep it all clean, he’ll be all right.”

  Elena swallowed hard, trying to keep her stomach in place. The young man was conscious. The last thing he needed was hysteria. Or someone else’s horror. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Antiseptic. It’ll hurt like hell, but if it gets infected, it’ll kill him,” Eli told her. “Unfold the sheets and pass whatever you’re told to. We’ve no time to waste.”

  Elena obeyed. It was a nightmare of pain and blood, but the four of them worked on the young man with no words except instructions. Pass me this, take that. Fetch more water. Use the brandy. The pain cannot be helped. Now wash the floor. We can have no trace left.

  The young man, whose name she never learned, slipped out of consciousness, for a merciful time unaware of the pain. Zillah checked every few minutes, but he was breathing regularly, although his pulse was erratic.

  Elena met Jacob’s eyes once. He seemed to know what he was doing, as if he had seen it before. He worked silently, except for the requests for assistance.

  Gradually, Elena realized what had happened. It was not an accident, as she had first supposed, perhaps a bad burn. The outer layers of the man’s skin had been deliberately removed, flayed. Such a thing had been outside her imagination.

  She lost all sense of time. She was taken by surprise, and then fear, when there was a quiet, triple knock on the kitchen door, and Jacob went to let in two men. He greeted one of them by name.

  “Is he ready?” the first man asked.

  “Almost,” Zillah replied. “Five minutes.”

  The other man glanced apprehensively at Elena.

  “Wanted for shooting Scharnhorst,” Eli said simply.

  One of them nodded with a bleak smile. The other stared at her for a long moment, then turned away, not unkindly, simply more concerned for the young man. He spoke gently to him, not in German. Elena took it to be Yiddish.

  Ten minutes later they were gone, carrying the young man with them, and Elena was helping Zillah clean up the kitchen and remove all signs of blood. They washed the sheets that could be saved and burned the others. The first light of dawn was breaking when Elena went back to bed, exhausted.

  Before she could fall asleep, there was a light tapping on her door. “Come in,” she said.

  Zillah entered, a brown apothecary bottle in one hand, scissors in the other. “
We need to change your appearance,” she said. “We’ll begin with your hair.”

  * * *

  —

  When Elena woke in the morning, she felt stiff and had a pounding headache. She had been dreaming something terrible that she did not want to make sense of. She was in a strange room. A few cracks of light came through where she had not completely closed the curtains. She recognized nothing. There was a dressing table, and unfamiliar pictures on the walls. It was unique, nothing like any generic hotel room she could recall. What was she doing here?

  Then she remembered the young man covered in blood, and the flesh beneath the raw wounds. She had been doing what she could, helping Zillah. She could remember Eli’s tense face in the kitchen light, full of pity, and struggling not to show his despair. He was trying to defend Zillah from what she already knew.

  But Elena was safe, though only for the moment. They were Jewish, which meant that if they were not hunted already, they would be soon, and underneath the brave faces, they knew it.

  They might argue that it would not really happen. That was what Eli had said. Did he believe that now, after last night? Or was he saying it to comfort his family, because there was nothing they could do about it, whatever they knew? It wasn’t practicing their religion that was the problem; it was blood heritage.

  What time was it? She leaned over and picked up her wristwatch from the bedside table. It was just after ten! How could she have slept for so long, leaving everybody else to…what…carry on as normal, as if nothing had happened?

  Elena got out of bed quickly. She had her own small bathroom where she could wash, then get dressed in the plain dress Zillah had given her. Apart from that, she had only the clothes she had come with, and her camera. She would have to buy clothing again. This was getting absurd, like a repeating nightmare that became worse every time it completed the cycle and started over.

  She walked into the bathroom and nearly cried out when she saw her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was very blond, short. Who was that woman staring back at her? And then she remembered Zillah, the peroxide, hair covering the bedroom floor.

  She went downstairs, trying to remember the way to the kitchen. The others must have finished breakfast ages ago. She would just ask for a cup of tea and perhaps a couple of slices of toast. And apologize for having slept so long.

  As far as the rest of the day was concerned, she had no idea what she was going to do. No, she knew. She just did not want to admit it. She must leave this house. The Brownshirts or the Gestapo…or someone…would be looking for the young man, and they would come here. If they found her, God alone knew what they would do to Zillah and Eli. And to Jacob, if he was here. Being American would not save him. Elena had no other choice that she could live with.

  The kitchen door was open and she saw Zillah inside, apparently alone. She knocked on the panel, lightly.

  Zillah turned from the pastry she was making and smiled. “Good morning. I hope you slept after all that?” That was her only reference to the young man. “Jacob hasn’t arrived with the morning papers yet, but he shouldn’t be long. Would you like tea? Or do you prefer coffee? And breakfast?”

  The benches and the floor were clean and bright, no sign of blood, as if last night had never happened.

  “I’d love tea,” Elena accepted, walking farther in. The room was warm, perhaps from the sunlight, but also from the oven, and it smelled like clean cotton and new bread. It flooded back memories of Grandma Josephine’s kitchen a long time ago, when none of them even knew what war meant—it was something that happened to other people.

  “Sit down,” Zillah said with a frown of concern. “You must be terrified, although you mask it well. I’ll get you toast. We have plenty, so eat as much as you wish.”

  Of course, there would still be food restrictions in Berlin. She had not thought of that until now. How stupid of her. How self-centered.

  She sat at the kitchen table, unable to help because she had no idea where anything was. “I’m very grateful indeed for—” she began.

  “All right, now you’ve said it,” Zillah cut across her, but with a smile. “We know. These are hard times. Frankly, we’d help you even if you had shot that pig, Scharnhorst. But I believe you didn’t. I think you would be cooler about it if you had. And perhaps you would have prepared your escape rather better.” She met Elena’s glance for an instant and there was wry humor in her look.

  “I would,” Elena agreed emphatically. “For a start, I would not have gone back to the hotel where I was staying. I would have hidden the gun somewhere and gone in a different direction. Not opposite—that’s too obvious. Perhaps sideways?”

  Zillah looked at her, saw the harsh humor in her face, reflecting her own. “You’ll know for next time,” she said drily.

  For the first time in hours, Elena laughed. “Trouble is,” she replied, “I would have to find another rifle. I imagine they are expensive. Perhaps I should steal one? And learn to shoot straight. I don’t even know how to hold a gun properly.”

  “Good idea,” Zillah agreed. “When you are a good shot, you should aim at Herr Doktor Goebbels. He is the worst.” Her slight words had a passionate loathing behind them and a certainty deep as the bone.

  Elena thought of the young man, but she understood that he would not be referred to again.

  The kettle whistled and Zillah made a fresh pot of tea. A moment later she brought the toast, a tiny portion of butter, and homemade preserves.

  Elena thanked her and ate hungrily.

  Zillah watched her for a few moments, standing still, as if waiting to see if it was satisfactory. Even through the pleasure of the fresh food and the warmth of the kitchen, the tension remained. They both had to be thinking of the young man who had been lying there, just hours ago.

  Elena put down her toast and turned to Zillah. “What Eli said last night…he knows it’s not true, doesn’t he? He has to know now…except it’s not the first time it’s happened…is it? You knew what to do…”

  Zillah blinked, the tears suddenly flooding her eyes. “No. But this time was worse. It’s becoming harder to believe this persecution is just a temporary madness. Medicine, banking, art, the sciences, music—all the things that bring wealth and prestige to a nation—will not save us…” She trailed off, unable to finish.

  Elena knew what she had been going to say. “And Hitler feeds people’s resentment,” she finished. “Because it is the real wealth of the nation. It’s what people admire and envy. No one wants to believe so much of the best part of their culture was contributed by someone else.”

  “We are not someone else!” Zillah said between her teeth, but she did not look at Elena. “We are Germans!”

  Elena realized her own clumsiness. She felt the heat rise up her face. “I’m sorry. But they need to blame someone, someone different. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not! People are capable of believing anything they want, to justify what they feel. And of believing what they need to be true to justify what they are doing.”

  Zillah stared at her. Finally, she whispered, “I know that. But Eli still has hope. I need to believe he’s right. I need to.”

  Elena said nothing.

  “At least I need him to believe that I do,” Zillah amended.

  Elena could think of nothing to say. She was choked by emotion for this proud, gentle woman who had offered her hospitality at such great addition to her own risk. She shouldn’t have said what she did, and she couldn’t take it back. She ate another bite of the toast, and another.

  She had just finished and was insisting on washing the plate when Jacob came in, carrying several newspapers. He wished them all good morning, looking at Elena carefully but showing no surprise at her new appearance. He put the papers on the kitchen table, then made himself a cup of coffee, glanced to see what Elena was drinking, and made coffee for Zillah as well
.

  Zillah broke the silence at last. “What do the papers say?” she asked.

  “A lot about Scharnhorst, of course,” he replied, setting her coffee beside her and bringing his own to the table, opposite Elena. He seemed to be watching her closely. Normally it would have irritated her, but now she found it comforting.

  “Anything about who shot him?” Zillah countered.

  “An unknown person, believed to be English,” he replied. “And either a woman, or someone dressed as a woman.”

  “They can’t tell the difference?” Elena said with a ghost of a smile.

  “Covering themselves,” Jacob replied with a shrug. “In case they catch some poor man and decide to pin it on him. They’ll look like fools if they don’t get anyone at all. Hardly German efficiency. They can’t afford to have people think you can shoot the vermin and get away with it.”

  “I am a German,” Zillah asserted grimly, then smiled at him, to show she had no ill feeling.

  He looked back at her without a shred of humor. “You are a German Jew,” he replied. “If you don’t know the difference by now, God help us.”

  “Not that again, Jacob, please,” she said quietly. “I know what people are saying, and I fear there is some truth in it.”

  “Even after last night?” he said. There was anger in his voice and he was struggling to keep it gentle toward her.

  “Eli still thinks they wouldn’t be so…so self-harming,” Zillah said, looking down at her plate, as if she did not want Jacob to see her eyes. “We are a big part of German society. We have contributed far too much—we still do—for them to do anything more than make a lot of noise and exercise the basest of cruelty now and again. It will be unpleasant, but we’ve survived unpleasantness before.”

  “You sound like Eli,” he said grimly.

  “Of course I do. I’m his wife. But I’m glad someone killed Scharnhorst, whoever it was.”

  Jacob waited a few moments, eating his slice of bread and sipping at his coffee, still too hot to drink comfortably, his eyes on Elena, watching to see how she would react.