The House by the Lake (21 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Paris, June 1940

Camille had taken everything in hand. The girl seemed to know exactly how to navigate the narrow streets in the Left Bank, while insisting on carrying Isabelle’s bags for her, while deftly avoiding any troublesome strangers who crossed their path.

Isabelle did not have to think.

For this, she was grateful.

Her mouth had set into a grim line. Her entire body was rigid with tension. Her mind swirled with worries. Was Max safe? Marthe’s things—would they all be stolen by the Nazis? Had she locked everything well enough? Should she have hidden more of Marthe’s treasures?

She looked at Camille’s steady, strong back in front of her. It was as if the girl were almost scouting the dark streets. She had noticed the way the maid’s eyes darted about, checking down alleys before they turned into them. It was as if Paris itself held dark secrets that Isabelle had never glimpsed before. It was as if it were a different city, a strange city. Almost a foreign place.

Isabelle suddenly found herself to be immensely grateful for the loyalty of this strange, dark girl who had waited on her so faithfully without once complaining of her lot. She’d earned so very little and had hardly any life outside the apartment; she’d never experienced any of the fun that Isabelle and Virginia had known. And yet, here Camille was, leading Isabelle now.

And after they reached Camille’s hometown of Honfleur, they would travel south toward Spain.

“Mademoiselle?” Camille’s voice cut into the warm air.

Isabelle stopped.

“We have two options here.” Camille’s dark eyes scouted up and down the street.

“Camille. You are ten times wiser than I out here in the streets. I am not sure how I would have fared, doing this alone.”

Camille’s eyes flared brightly for a moment. Isabelle felt Camille’s hand clasp her own.

“This way then,” Camille said. And she turned down a cobbled, dark alley. “This will be the quickest, Mademoiselle.”

The lane was narrower than Isabelle expected. Its buildings loomed overhead as though forming an arch in the black sky. All was silent. There were no others about.

Camille still held her hand. She stopped all of a sudden. “Stay quiet,” she whispered.

They stood stock-still.

Someone was around. There it was—and again—a shuffle, farther up the alleyway. It was slipper soft.

Two men stepped out. They were in uniform. Isabelle gasped before Camille did. She dropped the girl’s hand. Was she dreaming? Was it finally all going to be all right? She took a step closer. He was here. Of course he was. He had come to take her away from this nightmare.

She would have known him from any distance. His silhouette, his gait, the shape of his head—everything. Thank heavens. A flood of relief—because he would make sure not only that she was safe, but that her loyal Camille was safe too. She wanted to run to him, to hold him in her arms, to stroke his face. He was here.

He had come for her.

She took another step.

“Camille Paget?” a voice called. A German accent. Not friendly—but then, that didn’t necessarily mean anything, did it?

“They know your name?” Isabelle turned to Camille.

“Get away from me,” the girl whispered. “They are after me. Go! Run!”

Camille pushed Isabelle away.

“What are you talking about?” Isabelle almost wanted to laugh. She felt tears of relief stinging her eyes. “It will be all right,” she whispered. “Max is here.”

She took a step toward Max. There was shouting.

When the shot rang out, and her chest exploded with pain, Isabelle choked a little at first. Then she turned to Camille.

“What?” She managed it—but the word hurt. It was too hard to think now. She seemed to be looking up. The sky was there.

“Oh, my God.” Camille had her in her arms. “Bastards!” she shouted.

Isabelle looked up at the girl—her loyal friend, for that was what she was. That was what it all amounted to. Friendship, in the end. Her breath came in short little gasps now.

“Run!” she heard. A male voice. Max?

Isabelle tried to lift her head, tried to reach him. If she could reach him, then everything would be all right . . .

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Berlin, 2010

The sun, the fearless, shining sun, sent slivers of its own brightness through the gaps in the curtains the morning after the meeting with Ingrid, throwing light onto Anna’s brass bed. She sat up after a while, her thoughts dancing around each other in that half state between wakefulness and sleep.

She had to decide what to do now, so she made a list of the facts. She had found Max’s ring. The situation with the Schloss seemed hopeless. Anna could hardly take on the largest landowner in Prussia. Nor could Wil, who might be risking his job and everything he had worked so hard for if he were to do so.

So, what now? She should probably leave it alone. Leave Wil to his life, leave the Schloss to Ingrid. Let everyone think what they liked about Max. She knew differently. That was the most important thing.

And she, Anna, should go back to the life she had created for herself, the life that afforded her security and peace of mind.

Things could be far worse.

She was better off without all those feelings that seemed to confuse her here. She would do what she had always done—rely on herself.

Anna climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom. She looked at herself in the elaborate mirror. Who had she been kidding? This was not some fairy tale where she could save her family palace from ruin and run off into the sunset with her gorgeous German knight in shining armor.

Anna hummed a determined little tune to herself as she packed her bags for the flight back to San Francisco. She had been in luck: there were a couple of seats left on a flight later that day.

And now she took one last look at her room before she closed the door behind herself and stood in the corridor of the hotel. Her stomach swirled with nausea. In spite of all her resolution, her thoughts still kept flashing back to what Ingrid had said.

Anna shook her head and dragged her suitcase toward the tiny elevator. One step at a time. One foot after the other.

Two months later, Anna was convinced she had put the matter to rest. She was back in a routine, she was back in her house, and the past was back where it belonged. It was a cool, misty fall morning, and sodden amber leaves blanketed the streets. This suited Anna’s mood—things ending, time to let go.

But now a young man stood in front of her at the café and repeated his name after placing his coffee order. As she wrote his name on the cup, her mind started to spin.

Hans. The young man had said he was Hans. That was the name of Ingrid’s father. He had been Max’s valet. What if he were still alive?

Max had only just died. Hans Kramer had been Nadja’s lover. The name had etched itself in Anna’s mind.

Hans was far more than a servant.

He would have been Max’s right-hand man.

After Anna had finished fixing the coffee, her hands working fast but shaking and stumbling as she fixed the lid on the cup, she called one of her staff to take over and swung off to her office, almost smashing into another employee on the way. She ripped off her black apron and turned on the computer at her desk.

She could ask Wil to contact Ingrid and ask her about her real father, but that could open up a jar of snakes. Or she could google the valet.

Anna chose option two.

She turned up a businessman, an actor, and a university lecturer. If Max was born in 1916, Nadja was older than Max, and the three of them had grown up together, as Ingrid had said, then it was likely that Hans was born in or near Siegel around 1913 or thereabouts. Anna spent half an hour doing research—but there was nothing obvious on the Net. The businessman was only twenty-seven. The actor was thirty-two. And the university lecturer was based in Hong Kong and in his late forties.

Dead ends, no answers—and nothing more to look up.

And then an ad appeared on the screen. Anna shook her head at it in annoyance. What use were those things anyway?

But it didn’t go away. It lingered there, and she found her eyes lingering right back on it.

Ancestry.com. Had the computer really been that smart?

An hour later, she was staring at a birth certificate on the screen. He had been born in the village of Siegel in 1914.

When Anna found a photo of him, she had to sit right back in her seat. Blond, handsome, regular features. No wonder Nadja had fallen for him. Anna found his military records. He had served in the German army, yes, yes . . .

She clicked on marriages and deaths. Hans died in 1989. Aged seventy-one.

And he had left one son.

A Gabriel Kramer.

Anna searched Gabriel. Ten minutes later, she picked up the phone. And then put it back down. It was the middle of the night in Amsterdam. But the man she had found had to be Hans’s son.

She switched off her computer and picked up her jacket, slinging it over her shoulder and turning off lights as she left the café. It had closed while she was shut away in her office—Cass was away, but her manager had popped her head in the door to say goodnight to Anna a while back.

Anna’s mind was still reeling when she went to bed. Unable to sleep after tossing and turning for hours, she got up and went to her computer to read some more. Gabriel owned an art gallery in Amsterdam. He looked like his father and appeared to be around the right age for someone born in 1960. His bio said he had moved to the Netherlands from Berlin in the 1980s. Anna tried not to allow her thoughts to leap too far ahead. Instead, she focused on what she was going to ask him. How on earth was she going to explain what she wanted?

She had a pen in her mouth as she worked, and she sucked on the cold plastic tip. It was a terrible but lifelong habit. She smiled as she thought of Wil flipping his pen when he was thinking.

Wil. Several times, she had seen someone who reminded her of him on the street in San Francisco. A couple of times, she had looked inside BMWs similar to his to see if the driver was in fact him. It had become silly. But time and again, she had forced herself to push away thoughts of how he seemed perfect for her. How he listened, his sense of humor, the way he had helped her, his friends. But he hadn’t been in touch. He was done. It had been a couple of months.

Anna turned back to her screen.

It was nearly three a.m. in San Francisco, but the gallery in Amsterdam would be open now. She had rehearsed a speech. She knew what to say. All she had to do was pick up the phone. Now.

“
Met
Gabriel Kramer.”

Anna stood up and walked. She had researched this.
Met
meant “with”—you are speaking with. She had to announce herself now.

She stopped at her living room door. “Anna Young,” she said. “I am calling from America. Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” he said. Sounded casual. Sounded friendly enough.

Thoughts rushed into Anna’s mind. He would think she wanted to buy a painting. How ridiculous. But logical. She shook the idea away.

Focus.

“Mr. Kramer—”

“Gabriel.”

“Thank you. I. Look. I am calling about a personal matter.”

“Oh?” Still he sounded relaxed.

“Okay. I’ll introduce myself properly first.” She had researched that this was an important part of Dutch etiquette. “My grandfather was Max Albrecht. I understand that your father, Hans Kramer, was his—”

“My father was his valet.”

Silence down the phone line.

Anna had to sit down. She slumped into her favorite armchair. “Okay. Well. Look. This is a bit awkward, but I’m researching some family history. No. That’s not it. I’m looking into why my grandfather never returned to Siegel after the war. He came to America and never went back. And I’ve done everything I can possibly think of, but I’m getting nowhere. I know it’s a long shot, but I didn’t know whether your father, Hans, may have said anything to you about Max. Whether he might have known him . . . well. At the time that he left everything behind. It was in 1940, I’m pretty sure of that.”

“Anna,” he said. “Look.”

Anna could almost sense him thinking.

“I think we need to talk.”

“Yes.” Anna closed her eyes. The relief. She leaned back on her cushions and waited.

“Look, I think, if you have come this far, if you have found me, then, well. I think we need to talk this through together. I know this might be hard, but do you think you could come to Amsterdam and meet me in person? Are you based in the US?”

“Yes,” Anna said again. She was exhausted, but she would go to Mars if it meant she could put this to rest.

“Yes, you could come here? Because that would be best, I think, Anna,” he went on.

“Tell me where you are.” Anna stood up and swayed over to her neat kitchen bench. She picked up a pen.

Gabriel spoke quickly, giving her more contact details, and told her he would be available any time.

After Anna hung up, she went straight back to her desk and searched for flight times.