Hitler's Girls (8 page)

Mrs. Nairn came in with a basin and a carafe of water. Kirstie sponged the woman as best she could, rinsed the cloth—soaking it with drinking water—and held it to the woman’s lips. She sucked. Kirstie gave her more. Over her shoulder, she said, “Mrs. Nairn. Things are not going too well here, as I suppose you’ve seen. I’ll need your help.”

“What are you going to do?”

“She’s very tired. I don’t think she can do much to help herself, or the bairn.”

Jessie Nairn was rigid, her face a mask. She was terrified, Kirstie thought
.

“First, we’ll take away the pain. Then we’ll take away the baby,” Kirstie responded. “Will you fetch me the kettle of boiling water and another basin?”

“I have it boiling now.”

Kirstie bathed the woman’s face again and spoke soothingly to her. Desperate eyes met hers, with some vestige of recognition, but the moment of consciousness was soon gone, as another wave of pain swept over her
.

Kirstie opened her leather bag and was holding the forceps when Mrs. Nairn came in with the steaming kettle and another enamel bowl
.

“What are you going to do?” asked Mrs. Nairn
.

Kirstie took the kettle from her, poured water into the bowl, added disinfectant, and then soaked the forceps. Mrs. Nairn winced as she heard the clank
.

“We’ll get the baby out.”

“She’ll make an awful noise.”

“No, she won’t,” said Kirstie, taking a brown bottle of ether and a packet of gauze pads from her bag
.

“Will the baby die?”

“I can’t tell you. But you’ll have to help.”

“There’s no-one else,” said Jessie Nairn, as if to herself
.

“That’s a fact,” Kirstie agreed. With a steady hand, she poured ether on a gauze pad. She brought the pad close to the woman’s face, keeping her own head away to avoid breathing the fumes. The woman’s wide blue eyes were suddenly alert, for a moment, until they dulled, then closed. Kirstie quickly flung the pad of ether out of the window
.

“Don’t you go fainting on me, Mrs. Nairn,” she warned
.

“I’ll do what I must,” she muttered
.

“I couldn’t give her enough ether to prevent all of the pain I am about to cause, so you’ll have to hold her still.”

The woman moaned something that sounded to Kirstie like “Amadyss.” Meanwhile Mrs. Nairn, no longer able to prevent herself from showing her fear, held on to the woman’s shoulders as Jessie knelt between the woman’s legs, struggling to get a hold with the forcep on the baby’s head. The woman groaned and cried out in protest at the unnatural intrusion
.

As soon as Kirstie had the baby’s head in a grip, the woman cried out, flailing and wrenching her shoulders from Mrs. Nairn’s grasp
.

“You’ll have to hold her legs,” Kirstie said. There was no turning back now
.

“What’s her name?” she asked
.

There was a pause. “Clemmie,” Mrs. Nairn replied
.

“Well, Clemmie,” Kirstie announced confidently. “It’ll no’ be long now. So be a brave girl and keep as still as you can.”

The small body, blue as blue ink, lay motionless on the bed
.

“Have you any ice?”

“Ice—no.”

“Get some water, cold as you can.” Mrs. Nairn left the room and Kirstie cut the umbilical cord and propped pillows under the woman. She did not see attempting to revive the child as a priority. The child was probably dead and had been for some time. Only when she had done what she could for the mother did
she turn to the child. As she did so, the baby, a girl, gasped and gave a choking cry. Kirstie picked up the child and the woman on the bed said, “My baby.”

“Mrs. Nairn!” she shouted down the stairs. “The water—and some sheets.”

She went back to the bed. “You’ll be all right now, my dear.” The woman, Clemmie, tried to speak and could not. The baby lay where Kirstie had put her, on the floor, on one of the pillows. She was making a snuffling noise
.

Kirstie went to the door again. “Mrs. Nairn. Where are you now?” She started down, only to find Mrs. Nairn coming up. “There’ll be no clothes for the bairn?” she asked. The housekeeper shook her head
.

With the sharp scissors she kept in her bag, she cut up a sheet—pure linen, she noted—and wrapped it round the baby. She put the child at the mother’s shoulder
.

“My God, Jessie, what have you got yourself into?” she asked
.

“For good or ill, you’ll leave tomorrow morning on the boat,” said Jessie Nairn
.

Kirstie spent the night looking after the mother and child. At dawn, she dozed in a chair beside the bed in which mother and child lay sleeping. Later she rose, made tea and toast for the mother, and brought a little broth she found in the larder.
Mrs. Nairn was nowhere to be found. Clemmie, propped up in the bed, apologised: “Thank you. I’m sorry if I made a fuss.”

“It was very hard for you. The bairn seems well, after all that. What do you think of calling her?”

“Isolde,” the mother said
.

“A lovely name,” said Kirstie
.

Mrs. Nairn emerged at the front door with an envelope in her hand. “Your fee,” she said, holding it out
.

“Thank you, Mrs. Nairn. I require no fee for this night’s work,” Kirstie said
.

In the boat, watching Rob’s back as he bent over the oars, Kirstie could only wonder: “Isolde. What sort of a heathen name was that?”

Tea served in the library. Strawberry Hill Gothick. The unfortunate addition of Art Deco chairs and table. “Clouds” Morris carpet in excellent condition. No sign, as is so often the case in this type of establishment, of messy or indulged pets.

Lady Ray is elegant and well dressed. Tea: scones and anchovy paste. The ceilings have been repaired: good workmanship in evidence.

My National Trust connections turned out to be more than enough in the way of a calling card. I go so far as to flatter myself that the name Dr. Hastie was not unknown to Lady Ray. Almost immediately, our hostess invited us to walk down the Long Hall, pointing out various portraits or Ray ancestors (state of preservation: good) by Van Dyck and Sir Joshua Reynolds. She was quick to remark how much she regretted not selling St Ronan’s House to the Trust. Expressions of remorse
were slightly overdone—Lady Ray still has a pretty face and the air of a great actress. There was a trifle too much fluttering of her chiffon scarf; and heavy sighs at the mention of the Dutch financier who had acquired and then abandoned St Ronan’s. Perhaps Lady Ray suffered from the ennui of advanced age and a long winter in the English countryside and would answer our questions without any very great effort on our part.

I did not, alas, have an opportunity to test this impression. My companion had already boasted on the drive down the M3 to Amesbury of his past relations with Her Ladyship. At first, I paid no attention. I was at the wheel, having indicated to my companion that the aroma of a gin of far-flung provenance would prove undesirable to the constabulary of Hampshire and Wilts.

He lit an odious small cigar as he spoke, clenching it between his teeth as if in emulation of a screen character from America, a country I have visited but once. Americans care only for money, a subject to which I have seldom given more than a moment’s thought.

“Older women… Yes, Artemis was a great lay,” mused this impossible traveller. “She was on the stage, y’know, Jean. Not the real stage—more like a theatre for naked women. In those days they could stand there bare-arsed but if they moved, “here he had the temerity to put his hand over mine on the wheel,
“if they moved just one little bit, then the curtain was brought down and the audience was plunged into darkness. It used to be great sport to see if we could get Arty Miss Carter—her stage name—to run off the stage in a fit of giggles.”

The best way to silence a bore is to maintain absolute silence. I was so intent on doing this that I found myself shooting past the Palladian gates of Amesbury House. I had no option but to go right on, almost to Stonehenge. My state of mind was not improved by this mistake, nor by the loud laughter from my companion at my oversight.

I record this interlude—plus my unfortunate reversal onto the pineapple gate stoppe, which are now rare and found only at Syon Lodge, to remind myself, when I compile my file later, of the extreme provocation I was under on the occasion of accepting an invitation to take tea at Amesbury House.

This provocation contributed to a certain brusqueness in my manner when addressing Lady Ray. My companion was, I knew, leering at our hostess. I witnessed Lady Ray consumed by an emotion I could not identify, after hearing his muttered compliments. The chiffon scarf went repeatedly up to cover the mouth. She appeared to be shaking. She voiced further expressions of remorse over “losing” the island near Mull.

“Lady Ray, may I enquire whether your sister”—here the old lady bristled and all at once looked her true age—“whether
Miss Clemency Wilsford had—at any point before going to live at St Ronan’s—“

“I say old girl,” warned my unspeakable companion, “watch it, eh?”

Lady Ray, I observed, now looked at me with what appeared to be deadly hatred. “Whether she gave birth to a child,” I finished. “There is a reason—a good one—for my enquiry. I give you my word as a Trustee of the Ancient and Historic Buildings of Scotland.”

Lady Ray now employed the silent treatment, unnerving me considerably. I could hear my stomach rumbling as a result of the too-rapid ingestion of scones and anchovy paste.

“Certainly not!” Lady Ray said eventually.

It has been observed that persons of superior intelligence know, above all, when to deploy their advantages. Timing is everything. I dug into my bag, retrieving the brooch from Monica’s house. Its modest diamonds were eclipsed by the Amesbury House chandeliers. I put it down on the table, causing the tea cups to tremble (Rose de Sevres, no chipping nor stains: rare these days, but proof in my opinion of Lady Ray’s artificial nature, of a love for the flowery and unreal).

Lady Ray stared at the brooch. I turned it over so she could see the initials. I exhibited the preternatural calm of a hostage negotiator.

Lady Ray let out a long sigh.

I would not at this point have looked away from my hostess, down through the open library door to the Long Hall and the stone-paved vestibule beyond, if Lady Ray had not herself suddenly glanced—with an expression of great alarm—in that very same direction.

A figure in a nurse’s uniform was crossing the tesselated marble floor, carrying a metal tray. I could not see what was on the tray. There was a strong likelihood that medication of some kind was being taken upstairs. The figure paused momentarily at the foot of a particularly handsome Jacobean staircase—oak and well maintained—before ascending without a further glance at Lady Ray or her guests.

Lord Ray, I know, has been dead some years. Does she have a secret guest, someone desperately ill, perhaps?

It was Jim Graham who now seized the moment. Lady Ray no longer concealed her paroxysms of mirth. Her mouth trembled violently with barely stifled laughter.

“Artemis!” Jim Graham scolded. “We have a serious matter to discuss here. If your sister did in fact give birth to a child—a daughter—who was then given up for adoption…”

“No!” she cried.

“Then I must inform you that this daughter now has a granddaughter and that this granddaughter is in very great
danger. You must prepare yourself for a shock: your niece was brutally murdered last week. You cannot have known this, of course…”

Lady Ray leaned forward across the tea cups and the circular occasional table, edged in gilt. We could have been an Edwardian painting entitled “The Secret.” Though ill at ease, I must admit I was impressed by Jim Graham’s handling of this delicate matter.

“Her name was Monica,” said Jim Graham.

“Isolde,” said Lady Ray.

The next minutes were chaotic. I recall the brooch tumbling to the floor and the lock of youthful yellow hair falling from it. Lady Ray swore in German. I suddenly remembered that, according to the story, it was Lady Ray who had been sent to rescue Clemency from her romance with Adolf Hitler, shortly after the outbreak of war.

Indeed, she had been involved, along with other members of the family, in stratagems to “unite” the two countries long after hostilities had been officially declared. Pictures of Blackshirts in London’s East End and Hitler smiling in a sunny garden with a Wilsford sister on each arm, returned to me.

“It all went so horribly wrong,” Lady Ray said. She made no pretence to hide her amusement now, and Jim Graham stared at her in open revulsion, measuring this woman against
his possibly invented memory of the naked “actress” who had been such a “great lay.”

“We all adored Hittles,” Lady Ray said. “He had such charm. He would have taken this country from the mean little men and restored it to greatness.”

“Lady Ray,” I said, “I have had the need to study my friend’s bank accounts in order to try to penetrate the mystery of her death. Are you aware that your niece was receiving a great deal of money on a regular basis? Would you be so kind as to confirm for us the origins of this stipend?”

Though this was a total bluff, my instinct was correct and the timing of my question was perfect. Lady Ray stared at me in horror. I concentrated on evaluating a fine chinoiserie chest, late eighteenth century, upon which cavorted gold dragons and other imaginary monsters.

Before us was a true monster. I felt strongly that my goddaughter Melissa Stirling had become a pawn of destiny. She was the only direct descendant of Adolf Hitler. Had she been abducted by unscrupulous admirers of the evil man’s doctrine?