Journey to Munich (15 page)

“Well, that's a relief,” said Leslie. “Nothing of note, everything in order—with a bit of luck, we won't have to see this place again.”

Maisie said nothing. Though there was no indication of what had happened in the days since his death, she felt sure Luther Gramm's body would not be found—and suspected Berger had orchestrated the removal and disposal of the young man's remains. Berger's attempt to hide his emotions while discussing the disappearance of the couple pointed to a deeper connection with either Luther Gramm or John Otterburn's daughter. Hadn't Mark Scott intimated as much? Or perhaps it was fear itself that had affected the officer—even if he was not implicated, perhaps he guessed that his colleague was dead.

But in truth, Maisie admitted to herself, she had no evidence that Berger knew anything about Gramm's disappearance. All she had was conjecture—and Mark Scott's innuendo.

“S
timme der Freiheit.”
Voice of Freedom
. Maisie saw the words torn to shreds, scattered across the floor as she peered through the lower ground-floor window into the darkened interior of an almost derelict house, flanked by others of the same age and in a similar state of repair. With her hands cupped around her eyes, she squinted, trying to see if there might be another way into the building.

Following the interview at Nazi headquarters, Maisie had been taken to the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, where a room had been reserved for three nights. She asked the clerk if the room might be available for an additional two nights, should they be required. Yes, he said, thus far the room was not booked beyond the Monday night.

Now she was free to do as she pleased—to a point. Without doubt someone would be charged with keeping tabs on her. In order to foil any surveillance of her movements, she took one bus after another and walked along byways she did not know, hoping they might lead her back to her map, and on her way. She had the name and address of the press for the journal Leon Donat had been accused of supporting, in a poorer district known as the Au, and though she knew it might be clear to anyone following her that this would be her destination, she wanted just a little time on her own to look around.

Maisie picked up the solid padlock again, felt its weight in her hand, and rolled it on its back. She let it drop in frustration. Leaning toward the window, she peered in, again searching for a way in. It was then that she noticed movement at the corner of her eye. She gasped, straining to see. A cat emerged from a corner of the room and stretched out, yawning. It clawed at the sheets of paper strewn across the floor, then sat down to lick its paws. Maisie stepped back.

She listened to the street above and then made her way up steps flanked by moldy green walls oozing freezing water, and looked both ways along the street before stepping out. At the next corner she turned
into a cobblestone alley. Which of these back doors led to the former home of the
Voice of Freedom
? The rear entrance of one of the houses was boarded up—the planks of wood rotten, the nails rusty.
Verboten!
The warning was clear. Maisie stepped toward the planks, pulling one back. The door was in a similar state, the wood soft and worm-ridden.

Maisie stopped for a moment. One of the elements of life in Germany that had impressed her was its citizens' attention to detail, as if every job worth doing—whether that job was building a house, cleaning a street, or boarding up a disused property—must be perfect. This work might have been good enough when it was completed, but it had not lasted—and that struck Maisie as unusual. But there again, the whole of Munich seemed to shout a warning, that you dare not cross the Reich.

The alley remained quiet, not a soul in sight. Wishing she had worn trousers, Maisie pulled away another plank, tried the lock, and pushed against the door. As she continued to apply pressure, she felt it begin to give. The lock was shearing away from the wood, but she needed something else to make the final break. She looked around and picked up a piece of old metal with which she might lever the lock from the door. It was rusty, but strong enough. She pushed the metal between wood and lock and pulled back, feeling the wood splinter. With a sound like a firecracker, the door fell open.

Maisie looked both ways along the alley, then up at the windows of the neighboring houses. A shaft of daylight from behind fell past her through the open door as far as the steps within. She opened her handbag, pulled out a box of matches, and struck one. It burned long enough for a glance around a room now revealed to be a scullery, with a large square sink to the left, an old cast iron stove to the right. Shelves hung on the walls, and the door to a larder stood open. The floor was wet, with water seeping from a leaking pipe under the sink. It
was so cold Maisie felt as if she were turning blue from head to toe. She lit another match, located an inner door, and stepped toward a narrow passageway. In the light of a fresh match, she saw dark brown smears across the wall. She drew closer, and as the match flickered and died, she knew it was blood. Plaster fallen from the ceiling above crunched underfoot. She reached out toward the door she knew was to her right, and pushed it open.

Two bright eyes peered at her. Light from the window at the front slanted across the black cat. Its coat rippled, and with a yowl it leaped past her and into the passageway. She turned back to the room. Enough light filtered in from the street to show her what had come to pass here. Copies of the
Voice of Freedom
, torn to shreds, were strewn across the floor. She suspected the remnants had been left as a warning to others who were thinking of crossing Hitler's regime. Fragments of cast iron were piled in the corner. She lit another match and brought the flame closer; they were parts from what had once been a small printing press. Ink had been poured across the floor, mixed with the reddish-brown stains that could only be dried blood.

It was all Maisie could do to remain on her feet. She held out her hand to steady herself. As if she were being taken back in time, she could see before her what had happened in this place. A small cadre of like-minded men and women had gathered here to write and publish what they believed to be the truth about Herr Hitler's Third Reich. They had been discovered, and they had paid the price. Were they all dead? No, not all. The young man to whom Leon Donat had offered a job had escaped, according to reports. But had Leon Donat been here? As she stood in the room, she believed he had—for no other reason than it was something she wanted to believe. Given all that she had seen in Munich, she wanted to believe that Leon Donat had supported
the dissidents who dared to speak out. She wanted to believe that he had, in fact, escaped with his life—or died because he was a man committed to truth. She shivered.

The meager light had begun to fade. She knew she should leave and return to the hotel.

As she stepped into the passageway, a feline sound, a squawk almost birdlike, caused her to stop.

“What
are
you doing here?” She bent down to run her hand across the sleek black coat. “I think you're a witch's cat.”

The creature wrapped its body around her ankles, so she chivvied it away with her hand. “Go on now, don't trip me up.”

Holding on to the now-broken door, Maisie stepped with care onto the rough ground that led to the street, only to be met by the screams of two little girls.

“Haben sie keine Angst. Ich werde dir nicht weh tun—ich war gerade auf der suche am Haus.”
Do not be afraid. I will not hurt you, I was just looking at the house.

“Bist du ein Geist?”

She laughed. She was not a ghost, she assured them, or a witch—even though a black cat was following her.

One of the girls had hair the color of wheat, her pale blue eyes mirroring the color of her coat, which had a dark blue velvet collar. A blue dress and leather lace-up boots peeked out beneath the coat, a blue scarf was wrapped around her neck, and gloves secured with tape hung below her sleeves.

The other girl's thick brown hair was tamed in two braids. She too wore a coat, with a matching hat pulled down almost to her eyes. Her gloves were secured to the sleeves of her coat in a similar fashion to those of her friend, and she wore almost identical lace-up boots.

“Is this your cat?” Maisie asked in German.

The dark-haired girl shook her head. “No, but we bring him food when we come.”

“I see, so that's why you're here. But it will be getting dark soon, and this doesn't look like a safe place.”

“This is my friend, Rachel,” the blond girl explained. “We can play together here. No one can see us.”

“And what's your name?” Maisie smiled to encourage the girls.

“Adele.”

Adele leaned toward Rachel and whispered in her ear. Rachel nodded.

“We've seen a ghost here,” said Adele.

Maisie widened her eyes and stepped closer. “You have? Goodness, that is a very scary thing to see.” She cupped her ear as if to hear a secret. “Tell me about the ghost.”

Soon both girls began talking at once, their words tumbling out to form a story. They explained that they came to the street to play together so Adele's parents could not see them, and on two different occasions they had seen the ghost going in through the door, but they'd never seen him leave.

“Though he might go back to his grave after we've gone home.”

The girls nodded in unison, as if in agreement about the ghost's final destination.

“Do you think he comes often?”

The girls shrugged. Maisie could see they were losing interest.

“We have to go now,” said Adele. “Rachel shouldn't really be here, because it's Shabbat. She has to go home before her mother finds out she's playing.”

“Well, take care on your way home.” Maisie watched as the girls
held hands and began to run away. They skipped toward the corner, dropping their hands as they entered the main street.

Maisie pressed her lips together and looked up at the now-darkening sky. She would have liked to go back into the basement, or at least look for whatever it was the “ghost” had come for. But it was time to return to the hotel. Time to go back to her plans.

As she walked away, she thought of all she had seen since arriving in Munich—of the veneer of ordinary life overlaying something much darker, a mood among the people that pressed down upon her heart so she felt the weight of it on her chest. At times she thought it might stop her breathing. And she knew she had seen something she would never forget, an image that would come back to her unbidden throughout the days of her life: two little German girls, playing in the rubble behind a derelict building because no one would be there to see them meeting.

M
aisie made her way back to the hotel by tram and on foot. She was surprised at how easily she was finding her way around, as if the geography of a place were another language and she was developing her ear for the sounds, oft-used words, and the way in which movement echoes speech. She had come to know that every city has its ebb and flow, its tide pools, rivers, and still waters; the time she'd spent wandering had aided her immersion.

She would return to the Au the next day and spend more time in the old building. She was not sure what she might find, but the pull to go back was strong. And Sunday would be a quiet day, though there might be celebrations to mark Austria being brought into the fold with Herr Hitler's Third Reich. In any case, she'd make the journey; she knew she had missed something. In addition, she wanted to return once more to the house where Elaine Otterburn had lived. More than anything, she wanted to find Leon Donat, though now even more she wondered if he was still alive.

In her room, she set to work. She pulled a large paper liner from one of the drawers in the dresser between the windows and placed it on the table. It was just the right size for a case map. On it she wrote Leon Donat's name and circled it, then those of Gilbert Leslie, Mark
Scott, Elaine Otterburn, and Hans Berger. Sitting back, she began to write notes across the sheet of paper, using a lipstick to make a cross here or circle another name or idea. She had a feeling that whoever the girls had seen coming to the basement where the
Voice of Freedom
was printed had been there to collect something—but what? She'd hardly been able to see the first time she stumbled into the building. She would need a torch. How would she obtain such a thing on a Sunday, when shops were closed? She would have to ask for one at the hotel, and come up with a good excuse for needing the
Taschenlampe
.

As she sat at the table, tapping her pen against the wood, already new thoughts and possibilities were coming to mind, and she suspected that if she managed to find out who was coming to the house—and why—she would in turn find out what happened to Leon Donat.

Maisie was thirsty and hungry. She sat back and decided to go downstairs to the restaurant for supper, and perhaps a well-deserved glass of wine. She thought of Priscilla, and wondered if after all that had happened, a gin and tonic would not be such a bad idea. A woman dining alone was already subject to enough attention, though. One enjoying a cocktail without a companion might inspire whispered speculation from other patrons. She rooted through her bag until she found a book Priscilla had given her to read during her journey.
Gone with the Wind.
She sighed. It would not have been her first choice, but any book was a good book for a woman alone who did not want the attention of others.

Entering the restaurant, Maisie noticed a copy of the
Times
on a chair set to one side. She picked up the newspaper and asked to be seated at a table in a corner of the dining room. She sat with her back against a banquette, where she could watch other patrons coming and going. With her newspaper folded to the first page—though she had to lean toward a wall light to see the print—she placed her order for
a glass of white wine and a fish dish with vegetables and potato. She took one look around the room, trying to establish whether anyone had followed her, then pulled out her book, placing it next to her on the table, ready to open as soon as her meal was served. For now she continued with the newspaper.

“If you can read it, you can speak it.” The voice was familiar.

Maisie looked up to the man staring down at her. She shook her head.

“English, I mean,” said Mark Scott.

“That sounds like a very bad line in one of those pictures at the cinema. What are you doing here?” She kept her voice down, her eyes scanning the room in case their conversation had attracted interest. “You of all people should be more circumspect.”

“Probably, but strange as it may sound, I am one of those guys easily forgotten by people in my midst. For some reason they don't remember me.” He set his hat on the banquette next to Maisie and drew back the chair opposite her. “Mind if I join you?” He continued to sit down without waiting for a reply. Once seated, he reached for her book and slipped into an accentuated drawl. “
Gone with the Wind
? Miss Donat, if the best you can do is a bit of southern romance, why, I do declare, you aren't the woman I estimated you to be.”

Maisie shook her head and looked away.

“Oh, come on—even at the worst of times, we must have something to smile about.”

“It's hard to forget what the worst of times can really be like, Mr. Scott, especially in the midst of another of those times.” She pushed the newspaper toward him, with its headline in bold letters: “Hitler Announces Union with Austria.” She looked up as a waiter approached with her glass of wine. “I'm not sure you should be seen here, Mr. Scott—or with me.”

“I'll make it quick, then.” He shook his head when the waiter asked if he would like to order a beverage. “What happened when you went along to see your friend Berger? Was he tap-dancing, trying to explain the disappearance of Leon Donat?”

Maisie shook her head. “No.” She sipped her wine, casting her gaze around the room once more. She wasn't sure Scott was as invisible as he considered himself to be. “Let's just say it was all very light and cordial—or as light and cordial as one would expect in that place. I'm allowed to stay here for about three days, which I will use to find Donat. They won't like me looking—the Germans
or
the British in Munich. But . . . there's something very amiss here.”

“Be careful—you have no idea how complex this situation is.”

Maisie sat back. “Oh, I think I do, Mr. Scott. I'm just surprised no one has found either Donat or the young man he was supposedly helping. Mind you, the Germans thought they had him. I cannot believe they were fooled.”

“Maybe they weren't.”

Maisie kept her voice low, took another sip of wine, and set down her glass. “That had crossed my mind.”

“It's a web, Miss . . . Donat.” He smiled as the waiter approached again and set a plate in front of Maisie.

She declined additional condiments, and the waiter left. Scott waited until he was out of earshot.

“Don't be the fly who gets caught in that web, Fräulein D. We're all skirting the edges—your friend Leslie too. Did you see anything interesting today? I lost you just as the tram made it to that stop close to the river.”

Maisie looked at Scott, folded the newspaper, and lifted her knife and fork. “That's annoying—I thought I'd managed to get rid of you before that.” She sighed, at once grateful for someone to talk to beyond
the stiff Leslie and officers of the SS. “I saw two German girls playing. They must have been seven or eight. Both wrapped up warm and looking for the stray cat they'd befriended, to give it some food. Then they went on their way.”

“That sounds riveting, Fräulein D.”

“Give it a little while, and it might be: one was Jewish, and the other wasn't. They were playing where they might not be seen, because one set of parents had forbidden their daughter to play with her friend—perhaps for the safety of both children, who knows? Given the climate here, one must be careful before pointing the finger of blame. But that's the great sadness of any act of discrimination, isn't it? When children cannot play together.” Maisie reached for her book. She wanted to be alone.

“Well, ma'am, I guess I had better take my leave.” Once again Scott sounded as if he'd come straight from America's Deep South. He stood up and was gone, passing into the shadows of the dimly lit dining room. No one looked up. No waiter paid attention to his leaving. He might never have been in the room.

B
efore going to bed, Maisie worked on her case map. She had identified two points to which she would direct her attention the following morning. She wanted to return to the place where the
Voice of Freedom
had been published, and to revisit the house where Elaine Otterburn had lived with the other girls. And where was Elaine, if not in England?

In the morning, on her journey toward the Au, Maisie thought about Elaine and how she'd come to the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten to find her, her clothing in shreds, blood on her dress, with barely an ounce of dominion over her thoughts. Was it real terror? Or an act? Maisie had
at once responded to Elaine's predicament. Her decision to help the young woman now seemed to be a poor choice—but there had been few options. She could hardly alert the police—Elaine would have been under immediate suspicion, and in all likelihood incarcerated. Had John Otterburn's daughter left Munich for another city—if not in Germany, then perhaps one of its neighbors? And if she was still here, then why had she remained?
I am not what I seem.
Then what was she? Was she more than Mark Scott's sometime informant? Maisie thought about the woman's character, the way she'd reacted when asked to recount the events that led to the disappearance of Luther Gramm. It was as if she were a doll dropped and broken in many pieces. She seemed to do well when told exactly what to do, but in this instance she'd shown no ability to retain her presence of mind, no fortitude under pressure. It occurred to Maisie that Elaine was only able to present herself as a certain type of woman—devil-may-care, lighter than air—when she had a safety net beneath her. On the ground it was her father's money. In the air it was her training. Maisie considered the relationship between Elaine and her mother. Lorraine couldn't cope with a daughter who had lost control of her emotions because the man she had a crush on was married to someone else. Maisie felt little shame when she whispered to herself, “She should have had Becca for a mother.”

The edge of the Au was as quiet as she'd hoped it would be on a Sunday. No children played, and the street in front of the former home of the
Voice of Freedom
was empty. She dispensed with looking through the glass-paned door that marked the entrance to the basement at the front of the building. But as she walked farther along the street, turned the corner, and stepped along the narrow alley that led to the back entrance, she wondered why people who played a dangerous game of risk would choose to house their press in a cellar accessible
via a door half-paned in glass? Or had it been disguised as something else—a small-time lawyer's office, perhaps? The workshop of a woman who took in mending? Or a tailor? But a printing press was not a small thing—unless there had been a disguise she had missed. Perhaps there was something so blatant about running an illegal press in a room with a part-windowed door that it would seem inconceivable to the authorities that anyone would take a risk in a place so vulnerable.

She stopped some way back from the rear entrance to study the boarded-up door she had breached the day before. There were three upper floors, all of which appeared empty—perhaps abandoned when the lower floor was raided, although one resident had of course left a cat behind. As Maisie looked up at the windows, she felt a soft touch on her ankles—the stray cat had returned to press its body against her, weaving a figure eight around her ankles. The animal stared up into her eyes and squawked a meow, so she reached down and ran her hand from its pointed shoulders to its tail. The thick throaty purr was loud, signaling pleasure—or a call for food. She had come prepared. Unwrapping a table napkin which was inside a paper bag she'd brought, she knelt down and laid out a feast of leftover fish. She observed the cat crouching, ever watchful for a predator in his territory, eating in ravenous mouthfuls.

After leaving the restaurant the previous evening, Maisie had asked the hotel desk clerk if he had such a thing as a
Taschenlampe
. She had nightmares, she told him, and sometimes awoke frightened in the night, so she liked to have one by her bedside. He smiled, informing her that one would be brought to her room without delay. And it was. Now she stepped toward the door, pulled back the boards once again, and used the torch to illuminate the rooms beyond.

She flashed the light around the kitchen, seeing clearly what had only been in outline before. It seemed strange that there weren't more
utensils, more pots and pans—if the place had been abandoned in a hurry, how would there have been time to collect those things? Of course, the area was far from well-to-do; people might well have pillaged the abandoned property for anything they could use or sell. She opened two cupboards above a table set against a wall—there was nothing inside—and another tall, wide cupboard, like a pantry, to the left. She turned on the tap; a trickle of brown water choked its way out. The pipe behind the sink shuddered, and more water came out in thick filthy spurts, then cleared and flowed into the sink. She turned off the tap. She moved forward into the corridor, again casting the beam up and down the walls. Squares of lighter plasterwork revealed places where pictures or notices had been removed. She looked down, stepping over the detritus of life in the basement. On the floor she noticed a broken pair of pinking shears, and pins spread across the boards. Perhaps the place had indeed been disguised as the workshop of a tailor or someone who took in clothing alterations and repairs.

The front room was spacious, larger than she had thought at first. She stepped toward the remains of machinery, moving the beam across the abandoned ironmongery down to the floor, stained dark with dried ink and blood. Looking closer, she noticed that underneath the broken press were several sewing machines, the cumbersome sort that might be used in a small factory. The whole mass of metal sat on top of torn rags. Maisie directed the torch up to the ceiling, where a rod extending from one side to another still held a few brass rings. Ah, that was it—from the front entrance all anyone would see was a clutch of seamstresses toiling away, yet behind the curtain a small press operated. The rattle of the sewing machines would disguise the sound of the press. The curtain played its part too—any visitor could have concluded that it was there to protect the modesty of customers who came for a fitting, or to protect garments awaiting collection. There would
have been little risk of the place being raided. There were so many small workshops of this type in any city, and not all could be policed.