Come into my Parlour (19 page)

It seemed certain that all this talk about a new gas had simply been part of the set-up, and that it existed only in Einholtz's imagination. As for her freedom, she doubted if Kurt had ever had any intention of giving it to her and, in any case, even if she could get back to Switzerland the evidence she had been given would now prove valueless. From what the
Gräfin
Bertha had said it was clear that Kurt had not gone with Einholtz to Switzerland until the middle of July, and August yet had over a week to run. That meant that he could not have been living there for much more than five weeks, and a minimum of three months' residence by both parties was an essential requirement before application could be made for the case to be heard in the Swiss courts.

Erika was aroused from her gloomy thoughts by a dark-haired maid in a brown uniform entering the room with a tray. This was evidently the old Countess's personal maid, Helga, and, knowing that her life would now lay in this woman's hands, Erika gave her both a friendly smile and a look of the keenest interest.

She was about twenty-five, tall, well made and, despite her rather heavy jowl and full, sensual mouth, by no means unattractive. After murmuring a formal greeting, she set the tray down on the bedside table and, without looking at Erika again, began to tidy up the room.

As Erika did not recall having ever seen her among the castle staff in pre-war days, she asked:

“Have you been with the
Gräfin
Bertha long?”

“I have been here just over a year,
gnädige Frau,
” the girl replied. “The former maid of the
Frau Gräfin, Fräulein
Patz, was knocked down in the village by a car and died. I had then just left a situation in Berlin and my godfather, Herr Schnaffer, who is head keeper here, recommended me for this post.”

Erika was just about to say: “I remember old Patzie—how tragic for her to have been killed like that,” but she checked herself in time. The fact that the maid had addressed her simply as “Lady” instead of “Lady Countess” showed that she was not yet aware of her identity, so the less she said about herself the better; and with no further remark she began the meal on her tray.

Half an hour after Helga had left her the
Gräfin
Bertha came in. Having enquired after Erika and learned that, apart from the ache in her shoulder, she felt none the worse for her midnight adventure, she said:

“I've told that girl of mine that you're my niece and that you arrived here late last night in a shocking state, having just run away from your husband; and that it would teach him a lesson if for a week or two he didn't know where you had got to; so I intended to keep you here very quietly, and on no account was she to mention your presence to anyone. I have always most strongly disapproved of discussing such matters with servants, or giving reasons for anything I do, but as she will have to bring your meals up to you it was necessary to tell her something to stop her tongue wagging.”

“I think that was very clever of you,” Erika smiled. “Perhaps it is just as well that she hasn't been here very long, and so didn't know me.”

“Umph!” grunted the old woman dubiously. “We would have been better off with Patz. She had been with me ever since my marriage and knew how to mind her own business without any telling. This girl is good with her needle and has learnt now not to speak until she is spoken to, but she's too fond of the men. I don't miss much and I've caught her more than once making sheep's eyes at my chauffeur when her mind should be on her work.”

Erika felt sorry for Helga. She could imagine few mistresses more exacting and tyrannical than her mother-in-law, and would not have applied for the post of personal maid to her had it been the last job on earth. Having no suitable comment to make, she said:

“I suppose most of the men have gone to the war by now?”

“All the young ones left on mobilisation, and a number of the others have been taken since. But Hans, he is the fellow that Helga has her eye on, is getting on for forty, and he was returned to us on account of some internal trouble. They had him and all the older men out to help search the woods for you this morning.”

“Then they told you about last night. Have you seen Kurt?”

The old lady nodded. “It was he who told me; but he said nothing about you. He simply said that they had brought a woman back with them to the castle because Einholtz wished to question her on a matter connected with their secret mission, and that she caused the fire by throwing a candelabra at him, and had then thrown herself out of the window. His suppressing the fact that you were the woman gave it away that he wasn't telling me the whole story, so I think you were right now in saying that he is not to be trusted.”

“If the Nazis
are
exercising some form of pressure on him,” Erika said slowly, “it is much better for his own sake that he should not know about my still being here. And, in any case, he would naturally shrink from telling you that they had used him as a stalking-horse to try to catch me. The description they will issue of me, with my hair its present colour, wouldn't convey to you that I'm the woman they are after, and I expect Kurt felt least said soonest mended.”

“It worries me, though,” the
Gräfin
Bertha confessed. “Kurt has always been a good son to me, and it is not like him to conceal his troubles from his mother. God will scourge those Nazis one day for the way they have broken sacred family ties and sown distrust between those who love one another. This morning Kurt said that he and this man Einholtz would probably be staying here for a few days now; but I shall speak to him and give him a stern warning that if he continues to mix himself up with such people trouble is bound to come of it. That may have the effect of stiffening his back sufficiently to determine him to break off this most undesirable association.”

Erika shook her head. “If you would permit me to advise, lady Mother, I would not do that. I feel sure that the Nazis have only made use of Kurt for the attempt to catch me. Once they are convinced that I have escaped Einholtz will leave the castle, Kurt will go back to his scientific work, and you will have no further cause to worry about him.”

“Perhaps you are right, child. But I have never tolerated deceit of any kind and I am loth to do so now. Still, I will wait a little and see if it turns out as you say. You had better have a bath now, and attend to those scratches on your face.”

When Erika stood naked in the bathroom she found that her body
was mottled, as though she had some terrible disease, with a score or more of multi-coloured bruises; but apart from their tenderness when she touched any of them, and the ache in her shoulder, she felt remarkably well, and realised that she had got off extremely lightly. On returning to her room she saw that Helga had cleaned, ironed and mended her clothes, so she dressed and sat down to read some of the magazines and books that her mother-in-law had put there for her.

This continued to be her principal occupation during the week that followed, as, to avoid suspicion, the
Gräfin
Bertha kept to her normal routine, and rarely came in to talk to her for long, except for an hour or so in the evenings before going to bed.

She thought the old woman had mellowed and softened a little with age, but she was still dogmatic and assertive.
Kirche, Kinder mid Küche
were her Germanic gods, and while she was worldly enough to accept the fact that many married women of her generation had had lovers and proved none the worse for it, she was wholeheartedly with the Church in condemning divorce because it broke up the home. Until his death, only ten weeks earlier, she had still regarded Kaiser Wilhelm II as her legal sovereign, and attributed all ills to the Hohenzollerns having gone into exile. The present war was, for her, merely the logical continuation of a struggle that had been forced on Germany in 1914, as the only possible alternative to eventual annihilation by a diabolical combination of the treacherous French, the greedy British and the barbarous Russians. She hated all three nations with equal intensity and, while she deplored Hitler's methods in his own country, every time she saw in the paper that a U-boat had sunk another British merchant ship or that an English city had been bombed, she exclaimed with fervour: “
Das ist gut! Gott strafe England!
”

In consequence, she and Erika had few subjects in common, except their detestation of the Nazis, and it took all Erika's tact and forbearance during her week in hiding to prevent herself entering on an open dispute with her mother-in-law on a score of matters concerning religion, international relations and the war.

They had both hoped that Einholtz would depart in the course of a few days but he still showed no signs of doing so; and on the eighth day after her arrival at the castle Erika was so weary of these pointless discussions, which called upon her for endless while lies and evasions, that she was quite relieved when it was decided that she should make her bid to recross the frontier that night.

Her shoulder no longer pained her, the scratches on her face were healed and only the worst of her bruises still showed as brownish discolorations. The order of her going had been discussed and settled some days before, and her courageous old hostess, despite the danger to
herself, had proved unshakable in her determination to take the fugitive back to the Bodensee in her own car. She had also dug out some clothes which had once belonged to her long since married younger daughter, so that no keen-eyed young policeman might recognise Erika from her Harris tweeds.

The question of her getting to the lake having been settled for her, Erika had thought a lot about how best to attempt to cross it. As there had been two launches in
Freiherr
von Lottingen's boathouse, in addition to that in which she had arrived, it seemed reasonably certain that at least one of them would still be there. She knew how to start and steer a motor-boat, so she did not see any reason why she should not cross the lake in one. There was the danger that the
Freiherr
's villa might have been taken over by the Nazis; on the other hand, it might be occupied only by his servants, who had been made use of by them. In either case they would probably have put a guard on the boathouse for the first two or three nights after her escape, but it was unlikely that they would keep one there indefinitely.

The only alternative was to lie low in Friedrichshafen, or one of the lakeside villages, until she could find a boatman willing to smuggle her across for a considerable payment; but any such delay would confront her with innumerable dangers, as she had no papers that she dared show if questioned, no food cards, and there was the ever present risk that someone might recognise her from her recently circulated description. An attempt to get away in one of the
Freiherr's
boats, therefore, seemed a far better bet.

Having set her hand to the task the
Gräfin
Bertha entered into the plan with all her accustomed vigour. In the afternoon she told her chauffeur that she wished that night to make a visit without the Count's guest,
Herr
Einholtz, knowing that she had left the castle, and that he was to take her car down to the local mechanic in the village to have some minor repair done, then collect it again in the evening and wait for her with it at the entrance to the forest road. She also instructed Helga to prepare a large packet of
Brötchen
for Erika to take with her on a journey, and to bring her up a really substantial meal at eight o'clock.

In due course she went down to dinner herself, as usual, while Erika ate hers upstairs, and afterwards discarded her own darned but still elegant attire for the heavy brogues, thick woollen stockings and ugly cloth costume that had once hidden from view the ungainly figure of her sister-in-law.

At half past nine the
Gräfin
Bertha joined her, and made her own preparations for the journey, which consisted of putting on a strong pair of lace-up boots and enough woollens, topped by a fur coat, for a trip
to the North Pole, although it was only the end of August and the night was fairly warm.

At about a quarter past ten they set off, the idea being to reach the north side of Lake Constance a little after midnight. The old lady took Erika down a back staircase and along several gloomy, echoing corridors which eventually led to a heavy oak postern gate that opened on to the courtyard.

There was now no moon and a slight wind rustling the trees fortunately drowned the sound of their footsteps, as the old Countess plodded heavily along, apparently having temporarily forgotten the necessity for caution. They crossed the court without mishap and after a quarter of an hour's trudge down the steep, winding forest road found the car at its appointed station.

“You remember
Freiherr
von Lottingen's place on the Bodensee, Hans?” said the
Gräfin
Bertha, as she climbed in. “It is there I wish you to take me.”

The man silently tucked a rug round them, bowed to his mistress and got into the driver's seat. The car was an incredibly old Rolls of a pre-1914 vintage, and it had the usual glass screen between the chauffeur and its occupants, so that the man could not overhear the conversation of his passengers.

As soon as it was under way the old lady said: “Now remember, child, if we are pulled up and questioned, it is I who will do all the talking. No one in Württemberg will dare to detain me for long, once they know who I am; you may be certain of that.”

Knowing that her mother-in-law still lived mentally in another age and that the new regime was no respecter of persons, Erika did not altogether share this admirable optimism, but she felt that by sheer arrogance and personality the
Gräfin
Bertha might easily bluff her way past anyone less than a fairly senior S.S. officer, and that was no small comfort.

As the shortest route between Schloss Niederfels and
Freiherr
von Lottingen's summer villa lay mainly through by-roads, they met little traffic until they reached Friedrichshafen and, passing safely through it, they arrived without accident within rifle-shot of their destination.