Come into my Parlour (8 page)

“We'll fix them both one way or another, even if I have to fish my guns out of the Thames and take a last trip to Germany.” Gregory
smiled, with an attempt at lightness. Then he lifted Erika off the balustrade and set her on the ground, as he went on:

“Let's not talk about them any more tonight. Time's too precious. Look, the moon's just coming up over the yew hedges of the maze. Let's get ourselves lost in them.” And with their arms about one another's waists they walked down the stone steps to cross the moonlit lawn.

When Gregory compared notes with Kuporovitch the following morning he learned that Madeleine had taken the news of Stefan's departure equally bravely. After a year spent in the French Resistance Movement and as one of the earliest members of it she was much too courageous to harrow her man with a scene because he had elected to go back into the battle.

The two girls stood the test to the end, although their eyes were dimmed with tears as they stood, hand in hand, at the porch, to watch the car drive off that carried Gregory and Stefan to unknown perils; but when it had vanished from sight round the curve of the long drive they went in and wept together quietly for a little. Then the time came for Madeleine to go on duty in one of the wards, and Erika went up to her room.

From the drawer of her dressing-table she took a letter that had arrived in the post only that morning. It had been re-addressed to her from London, but it bore the frank of the Swiss Legation and the original superscription was in a thin spidery hand which she had recognised immediately as that of her husband.

Erika had read the letter immediately on its arrival. She now ran through it again more slowly. It was headed,
Villa Offenbach, Steinach, bei Rorschach, Bodensee, Switzerland
; and said:

My dear Erika
,

I expect you will be surprised to hear from me. That is, of course, if this letter ever reaches you; but I hope it may, as I have good reason to believe that you were in England a few months ago. You are much too beautiful to escape remark—wherever you may be—and it is to that I owe receiving news of you
.

You will see from the above address that I am now in Switzerland. One of my few friends here is a Red Cross Welfare officer at the camp in which the Swiss intern such Allied airmen as are compelled to make forced landings in their territory. In the course of his work my friend was talking to a young British flying officer who had only recently been put on the active list again, after being wounded and spending some weeks at a convalescent home somewhere on the borders of Wales. They were speaking of the women of various countries and this young man declared that he thought German girls generally plain, but knew of two remarkable exceptions. Then he mentioned Marlene Dietrich and yourself, and it transpired that you had been doing some clerical job at this home to which he had been sent as a convalescent after leaving hospital
.

Unfortunately, this conversation took place some time before I left Germany, so my friend could only remember the bare fact, of which he is quite positive; but he has such casual talks with many officers and cannot now recall which of them it was that mentioned you. So I have no means of ascertaining the address of this home at which you were, and perhaps still are, and I am sending this to the Swiss Legation in London, in the hope that their Red Cross people may be able to trace you through the British Police Department that deals with enemy aliens
.

You will also, no doubt, wonder what I am doing in Switzerland. It is a long and sad story. You will remember that when I last saw you I was working in one of Krupps' laboratories. That was just before you
fled the country. Some weeks later I saw Hermann Goering, and he told me all about that. Apparently you not only crossed swords with the Nazis, but got yourself mixed up with some good-looking Englishman who was spying for the British, and the Gestapo were out for your blood. How lucky for you that Hermann is not only such an old friend of yours, but was in a mood when it amused him to do down Himmler by getting you out to Finland
.

Naturally I assumed that you would remain in Finland, or some other neutral country, for the duration of the war. I thought you too good a German to go over to the enemy; but perhaps the good-looking Englishman has something to do with that
?

To return to myself. Last spring I was transferred from Krupps to special, even more secret work, at an experimental station miles from anywhere. At first I did not fully realise what the outcome of the work going on there would be; but as I gradually got to know about the experiments which were being conducted I was able to form a picture of the final results at which my colleagues aimed—and I was utterly appalled
.

No one could be a keener devotee of science than myself, but science should be for the benefit of humanity, and not its destruction. I am, I believe, a good German, and would do anything in reason which might contribute to the victory of my country; but certain forms of attack are, I consider, carrying warfare too far; and the use of this new weapon which I was assisting to bring to perfection would have an effect so horrifying on an enemy's civil population that no decent man of any nationality could countenance its use
.

I thought of asking to be transferred back to my old work, or even to be allowed to enlist in a fighting unit; but you know how ruthless the Nazis can be. By the time I had decided that on no account would I continue to assist in this dreadful task, I knew too much to be permitted to leave it. Even a request for a transfer would have been enough to cause them to regard me as no longer secure, and this secret is of such importance to them that, rather than jeopardise it even remotely, they would have shot me out of hand
.

In consequence, I felt that my only course was to fly the country. I made very careful preparations, collected as much ready money as I could and succeeded in getting through to Switzerland. I fear that many of my friends will consider me a traitor, but at least I shall not have the agonised deaths of hundreds of thousands of helpless women and children on my conscience
.

I have rented a tiny chalet here on the shores of the Bodensee, under the assumed name of Dr. Gustaf Fallström, and have given it out in the village that I am a Swedish naturalist engaged in making a study of the water life of the lake. The Gestapo has a long arm and even here I am far
from safe as, if they could find me, to make certain that I shall not give away Germany's terrible war secret, they would certainly kill me. Needless to say, nothing would induce me to do so, but being completely lacking in integrity themselves they would never believe that
.

From fear of being recognised I live very quietly; but, even so, there are so many Germans in Switzerland now, either on war missions or for health reasons, that I am most anxious to get further afield as soon as I possibly can; and if only I can complete the necessary arrangements I shall-try to get to South America
.

My passport and passage could, I think, be arranged by my friend in the Red Cross, but the main difficulty is money. The small amount that I could bring out in cash is barely enough to support me for a few weeks longer, and all normal sources of obtaining funds are now closed to me. I am wondering therefore, if you could help me
?

I do not suggest that we owe each other anything, either on financial or sentimental grounds. I have always loved beautiful things and I derived much pleasure from having the loveliest woman in Germany for my
Frau gräfin;
moreover you were very generous in enabling me to purchase expensive equipment for my hobby. On the other hand, I gave you the enjoyment of my honourable name and carried out my part of our bargain by refraining from interfering in your affairs. But what of the future
?

I think there is a reasonable prospect of my being allowed to return to Germany after the war, but I doubt if you will ever be able to do so. Hermann's love of salacious gossip is sure to have resulted in his having related the story of your affair with the Englishman to a considerable number of people, and the fact of your having taken refuge with our country's enemies is bound to become generally known in due course; and with such matters to your discredit you would be received nowhere
.

It seems, then, that you will have to remain abroad for good; and will be faced with the problem as to how you are to live. The Nazis have already confiscated your great private fortune and, in view of our relationship, I do not think you will consider me particularly ungenerous when I tell you that I have no intention of supporting you out of my comparatively slender income. You will still, of course, possess the great asset of your remarkable beauty but, unfortunately, that will decline with the passing of the years. Therefore, the answer to your problem seems to be that, having lost one fortune, you should acquire another for yourself, as soon as it is reasonably possible for you to do so, by marrying again
.

The fact that you are at present tied to me should not prove an insurmountable bar to such a prospect if we can come to a satisfactory arrangement. Our both being in exile complicates matters to some extent, but my enquiries through my friend has led me to believe that we could secure a decree through the Swiss courts if we were both resident in this
country for three months. The proceedings, would, of course, take much longer, but that period would entitle us to apply for the case to be heard and once it is on the list, if the case were undefended, we could leave the matter in the hands of the lawyers
.

If, therefore, you would like to acquire your freedom, I am quite prepared to give it to you; but I make one condition. Somehow or other you must find a sum sufficient to enable me to pay my passage to South America and live there in reasonable comfort until I can find a way to support myself
.

At the moment, of course, you may have no desire to marry again, and if you cared to send me this sum of money merely as a gesture of goodwill I should be under an eternal obligation to you. But as our ways will be so widely separated in the post-war world there seems little sense in our remaining tied together, and a time may come later when you will wish to remarry. And by then you might have lost all trace of me, so it would take you years to obtain your freedom legally
.

I have no desire to make things difficult for you, so the sum I have in mind is the modest one of £1000. That you were reported to me, not as in an internment camp, but as a free woman working in a convalescent home for officers, shows that you still have powerful friends in England. With your abilities it should not be difficult for you to raise such a sum and secure a permit to travel to Switzerland
.

If you can, it means security for both of us. I should be able to start life again in a country where I could earn a little money without fear of being recognised, while you would have a clear future ahead of you without any entanglement which might, just at the wrong time, spoil your chance of accepting an offer of marriage that would guarantee you against a penurious old age
.

I hope that you are well and will regard my suggestion favourably, in which case I trust I shall hear from you—or see you here, fairly soon
.

Your affectionate husband
,

K
.

Erika laid the letter down with a little sigh. When she had first read it after breakfast that morning, while Gregory was finishing his packing, her immediate impulse had been to run upstairs to him shouting: “Darling! I'm free! I'm free! I'm free! Or as good as free. Kurt is willing to give me a divorce”; but after a second she had realised what the results of such an act would be.

Of course, he, too, would be overjoyed on first hearing this splendid news, but when it came to the practical necessity of her going to Switzerland and living there for at least three months he would begin to worry. Kurt was right about Switzerland being full of Germans and
there was even more chance that she might be recognised by one of them than him. If she was, and Grauber got to hear of her presence there, he would certainly try to get her. She knew of innumerable cases in which the Gestapo agents had murdered their enemies in neutral countries or kidnapped them and taken them back to the torture chambers in Germany.

Gregory was just about to set out on an important mission. It was absolutely essential that he should leave England with an unworried mind and all his wits about him. She had made up her mind instantly that she would go to Switzerland. If he could have gone with her, that would have been a different matter. But he was no longer free to do so, and it would not be fair to him to send him away to Russia with the knowledge that she was risking capture by the Gestapo, however slight that risk might be.

Personally she did not think the risk a matter for serious concern. She too would take a little chalet there and live extremely quietly. She would dye her hair, make friends with nobody and never go further than the village shops. Like Kurt, she would also take another name and give herself out to be a neutral, so that neither German nor British agents would be liable to take an unwelcome interest in her. But all such precautions would mean little to Gregory if he were not on the spot to take care of her. Out there in Russia he would probably be thinking of her and worrying himself silly just at the moment he ought to be watching his step, and get caught in consequence.

Her decision once taken she had endeavoured to put the whole business out of her mind during their last hour together; but he had no sooner gone than her thoughts became full of it, even while she and Madeleine were endeavouring to console one another.

Having read the letter again more carefully, she tried to analyse its contents. The long, rather pompous sentences were typical of Kurt, and it was just like him to have thrown his hand in owing to disapproval of inhuman methods of warfare. He had always been a peculiar mixture of the dreamer with high ethical standards where broad issues were concerned, yet with a canny streak which sometimes led him into, apparently unconscious, immorality in matters that affected him personally.