Don’t think about him, don’t think about him. Damn him, he may be right in every possible way for a man to be right, but he’s wrong about this.
If Anna had been compliant in the disposal of the child, why should its father go to such lengths—such lengths—to kill her?
Esther had been so preoccupied she had to look around to get her bearings and found she’d reached Dolls’ Alley, the name Berliners gave to the avenue of statues with which Kaiser Wilhelm had insisted on enhancing the park. Up ahead was the sprouting column of Victory celebrating the former Prussian habit of winning wars. Berliners found it ridiculous and called it “Victory Asparagus.”
Esther stared up at the kaiser. I don’t think the baby comes into this, she told him. Schmidt’s got it wrong.
Suddenly she was decided. “And so did you,” she snapped at the kaiser before directing her steps back the way she’d come, to Lützowstrasse and the Elizabeth Hospital.
IT TOOK TIME to win Fräulein Schechter’s trust and the secrets of the almoner’s office, but at the end of the week, Esther Solomonova walked into Police HQ at Alexanderplatz and asked to see Inspector Schmidt.
“Not here, Fräulein,” a duty officer told her. “I have information for him. When will he be back?” “Better leave a message.” He gave her paper and a pen. She wrote “I know Anna’s real name.”
She signed it “Solomonova.” She said, “You’ll see he gets it, please. It’s to
do with the murder at Charlottenburg.” “Inspector Bolle’s handling the case now.” She stared at him. “Is Inspector Schmidt ill?” “His wife’s been killed.”
16
IT LOOKED LIKE an accident.
Accident, Schmidt thought mildly when he emerged out of the U-bahn on his way home and heard the ambulance go by with the bell on its roof ringing.
“Christ, an accident,” as he turned the corner of his street and saw that the ambulance had stopped in the region of his building.
He began to run, dodging pedestrians coming the other way. One of them blocked him for a moment, and as he teetered, then dodged again, a voice addressing someone else said, “Your punishment, mein Herr.”
A crowd had gathered outside the front door.
A weeping Frau Busse tried to interpose her body between him and the open hallway. “No, Herr Schmidt, don’t go in. Siegfried, don’t. There’s been an accident.”
When he pushed her aside, the ambulance men attempted to stop him from seeing the body. “An accident,” they said. “She fell downstairs. Wait for the doctor.”
He pulled off the sheet they’d covered her with. There was no point in calling a doctor. The fall had flipped her beautiful hair to one side so that it spread itself almost neatly against the hallway’s tiles. Her head was crooked at the angle made by a broken neck, like a dead bird’s.
Around her, and strewn on the stairs leading up, were groceries—the two brown paper bags she’d been carrying them in had split and released their contents—tins, packets, bottles. Sugar was still trickling from its burst packet. A piece of raw rabbit stuck obscenely out of its newspaper wrapping.
She’d been to see Willi’s wife again. Schmidt didn’t think it then, but later he blamed and cursed himself over and over at having sent her to connive in the petty corruption that had helped to kill her. If both her hands had been free, she could have clutched at the banister.
His first reaction was rage that she’d always insisted on polishing and buffing the stairs. As he picked her body up and nursed it, he yelled at it, “I told you, how many times did I tell you? They were bloody lethal.”
Weeping, Frau Busse persuaded him to put her down at last. “You did, you did. But she was such a good housewife, such a good housewife.”
After the inquest—accidental death—he took her coffin by train back to Bavaria so that she could be buried in the church where they’d got married.
He was stone up to the interment, but the image of the little curled fetus in her womb that was going under the ground with her broke him, and he bawled until the mountains echoed back the noise he made.
Willi Ritte met him at the station when he returned, and offered to take him back home to Frau Ritte and the children. “You don’t want to be alone for a bit,” he said.
“Thanks, Willi, but I’ve got to face it sometime.”
Willi was right, though. The apartment was intolerable. The unfinished baby jacket she’d been knitting from the wool of her sweater was on top of the needlework bag by her chair. Her cookbook was open at a recipe for “Rabbit in Morel Sauce” that she’d been going to make for him from her ill-gotten gains.
Frau Busse came in to ask him if he’d like to join her and the family for a meal. He thanked her but said he’d be going out and probably wouldn’t be back for a few days.
He went to Ikey Wolff ’s parents’ house in Wilmersdorf. They’d leaned on him when Ikey died; he leaned on them now.
Joe Wolff spent three days a week at his private dentist’s practice; the rest of the time he provided free dentistry for the poor. Minna gave her services to a Jewish ex-servicemen’s charity. She usually had trouble persuading Aryans that Jews had fought in the war. “I tell them Ikey got the Iron Cross. I tell them there was as many Jews fighting for Germany as goys,” she said.
“Pro rata the population,” Joe interrupted.
“You and your rata, but it’s true, eh, Siegfried? Even in Herr Hitler’s regiment there were Jews.”
“Ikey was a regiment all by himself,” Schmidt said.
They coped with grief for their son through hard work. “Not that it stops,” Minna Wolff said.
“You learn to live with it,” Joe said.
“You lock it up,” said Minna. “Keep it in a room in your head.”
“Comes out rampaging, of course, knocks you down,” said Joe. “But yes, you learn to live with it.”
Schmidt stayed with them for a week, but in the end he had to leave; they were talking about a different grief. His own was poisoned with guilt. Maybe at the moment Hannelore had been struggling up the stairs with her shopping, he had been thinking of Solomonova. The unease that had followed him on this case—not from any specific cause, just a heightened awareness of the quickness with which people could be erased—had been centered on a foreigner he hardly knew. He’d attributed vulnerability to the wrong woman.
All the times when he could have gone home to his wife but had stayed to work in his office returned to haunt him. He’d ripped Hannelore out of her natural environment, dumped her in a strange city, and then neglected her.
His defense that she’d seemed happy enough was overridden by stray words picked up from a stranger’s conversation as he’d passed: Your punishment, mein Herr. Apt, they wrote themselves on every wall as at Belshazzar’s Feast like a judgment. He hadn’t loved her enough, and a ruthless Jehovah of the Old Testament had snatched her and the baby away from him. In the extreme moment, he had bumped into God coming the other way, speaking through His instrument: Your punishment, mein Herr.
Crumpling under the judgment, other times defying it, he found the Wolffs’ stoical acceptance of an ultimate justice to be intolerable. He thanked them, assured them he loved them, and left.
He asked for and was granted one of the police flats near Alexanderplatz, then went back to his old apartment to arrange the move.
He arrived at the same time as the furniture van that was to take the Busses to their new home. Despite the inconvenience to her, Lotte Busse insisted on making him coffee and sat him down on a packing case to be entertained by her sister-in-law, catching up on Schmidt’s news and imparting her own while she popped in and out of the room, directing the movers. The children were at school.
Maria Busse had her brother’s obsessive stare and, in Schmidt’s opinion, though not in that of Hannelore, who’d been fond of her, had always shown a simplistic and unhealthy devotion to religion. Her wide eyes regarded him out of the wimple of a novice nun at the Convent of the
Holy Trinity down the road.
“Herr Schmidt, I have not had an opportunity of condoling with you. May the Lord and His mother help you through this time of trial.”
He could tell from the look of her that she was building up a head of steam. He got up, but the nun’s voice pursued him, telling him—him— of Hannelore’s virtues.
“. . . so strong in her faith, so gentle in her life. ...You must take comfort. ...She died certain in the love of God. ...Even her last words were a blessing. ...We grieve, but we must not be jealous that she has joined the holy saints in paradise.. . .”
If she mentions the baby, I’ll knock her down.
Frau Busse came in with the coffee. Schmidt began saying he had to go, then stopped. “Her last words?”
“To the man who carried her shopping.”
Schmidt looked from the wimpled face to Frau Busse’s. “What man?”
“I didn’t hear it, Siegfried,” Frau Busse said. “Maria was visiting on another dispensation, weren’t you, Maria? Sitting by the door to the hall, and she heard dear Hanne come in.”
Sister Maria nodded. “And she said, ‘God bless you, that would be so kind.’ ”
“Why? Who’d she say it to?”
“Well, it must have been to the man who carried her shopping, Siegfried,” Frau Busse said. “Little Pieter was playing in the street, and he said she came back from shopping with a man who was carrying the bags for her.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know.” Frau Busse was becoming frightened. “A big man, he said, but Pieter is so small he—”
“You didn’t say this at the inquest.”
“No, because he’d gone, Siegfried. He couldn’t have seen ...what happened.”
Your punishment, mein Herr. Something was coming. He dragged in breath and fought for slowness. “Sit down,” he said. “And you too,” he told the nun. “Now then, a man, a big man, carried my wife’s shopping down the street on the day she died.”
“Well, Pieter said so, but—”
“And you”—he turned on Sister Maria—“heard her come into the hallway. What did she say exactly?”
“ ‘God bless you. That would be so kind.’ I think so, but this door was between us.”
“He must have handed her the shopping and gone,” Frau Busse said. “When we heard ...Oh, Siegfried, we heard her shriek and fall, like we told the inquest. We ran out into the hall. There was nobody there. He’d gone. The hallway was empty except for—”
“Had she closed the front door?”
“Oh, Siegfried.” Frau Busse had her hands to her cheeks. “I can’t remember, it was so terrible.”
“No,” Maria said. “The front door was open, but how could she close it with shopping in her hands?”
She’d have kicked it shut, he thought. It was a cold day, she’d have kicked it shut. But she didn’t because he was carrying her shopping upstairs for her and would be going out again immediately. Bless you, that would be so kind.
Your punishment, mein Herr.
“He was carrying the shopping upstairs for her,” Schmidt said. He thought, I’m not going to be able to take this. He was carrying her shopping upstairs. He pushed her.
“No, Siegfried.” Frau Busse was kind but firm. “There was nobody with her. When I heard the noise—oh, dear, you know, when she fell— we went out into the hall, didn’t we, Maria?”
He was standing on the landing upstairs, in the shadows, watching them.
“There was nobody there, only...And then we ran next door to the hardware store to phone for an ambulance.”
Leaving the front door open for him to make his escape.
He left them both in tears without saying good-bye.
He went back to the Alexanderplatz and demanded an interview with Ringer. While he was waiting, he set the case before Willi—and did it badly. “She was murdered, Sergeant. The killer, the one who killed Tchichagova . . . this nun heard Hannelore thank him. Not just because he’d carried her shopping in the street. Because he was carrying it upstairs. She said, this nun says she said, ‘God bless you. That would be so kind.’ That would be so kind. Not ‘Bless you, that was kind of you for having helped me,’ but ‘Bless you, how kind you are for helping me now.’”
“I see, boss,” Willi said gently.
Oh, Christ, the semantics would defeat them. But he knew how she talked; they didn’t. He knew. She was always polite and her grammar perfect.
“He told me, Willi. I came out of the U-bahn, and I was running down the street, and he ...Oh, Jesus, he put himself in front of me. And he told me. I thought he was talking to somebody else. But he wasn’t. He was telling me: Your punishment, mein Herr.”
Willi walked with him to Ringer’s office, holding his arm as if he were injured.
He said it all over again to the chief, just as badly, hearing his babble bounce back at him from a wall of incomprehension.
“I led him to her, do you see, sure as if I left a trail. Clever fellow, me, walking into their lair in Kreuzberg. I should have carried a sign: ‘Come and get me.’ I didn’t need to. I threatened them, so I had to be hurt.”
“I see,” Ringer said, glancing at Willi. “Let me get this straight, Inspector. You believe your wife to have been murdered. ...You received our condolences, I hope?”
“Yes.” There’d been an official wreath as well as private ones from his fellow officers; he hadn’t got around to thanking anybody yet.
“Your evidence—forgive me, Inspector—is a remark your wife made, heard through a closed door, and that of a child who saw someone carrying your wife’s shopping for her.”
“Yes.” His fist on Ringer’s desk made the silver inkwell jump. “For Jesus’ sake, listen to me. They got her instead of me, to warn me off. They got her because I think small and people like them think big. It’s their fucking universe; they can move around in it freely because . . . because they have no goodness. They’re untrammeled. They don’t have rules—”
He stopped, uselessness making him mute.
He started again. “Give me some men. Street interviews ...somebody must have seen him. And Kreuzberg, I’ll grill every one of those little bastards; somebody there’ll know. Röhm contacted him, told him.”
“Captain Röhm has already been to see me,” Ringer said. “He has filed a complaint. He alleges there is a photograph missing.”
And I bet he seemed your sort of man, Schmidt thought; ex-army, Old Germany, discipline über alles. But Ringer had rules, codes, procedures—he was circumscribed by them; Röhm had none.
He leaned forward. “Did you give him my address?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, he fucking got it from somewhere.”
Ringer’s mustache twitched but his tolerance held for the discourtesy of grief. “Very well, Inspector, the matter will be investigated, of course. Not by you.” He held up a finger to hold Schmidt back. “Not by you. Personal involvement conflicts with judgment in these matters. I’ll put Inspector Bolle on it, a competent officer as you know.”
Competence. He didn’t want competence, he wanted action. He argued even as Ringer’s face became more set, even as he knew that every word confirmed his lack of balance. It ended with Ringer suspending him for two more weeks on compassionate grounds.
He couldn’t rest. He went up and down his street, questioning people, grabbing pedestrians, going into every shop. One or two said they might have seen a man carrying Hannelore’s shopping, they couldn’t be sure, and no, they couldn’t remember the date. He went in to Alexanderplatz every day and pestered Bolle until the inspector banned him from the third floor altogether. Out of kindness, Willi met him most evenings for coffee. He said Bolle was doing all that could be done. At the Kreuzberg gym, Schmidt was remembered—not kindly—but there seemed general and genuine ignorance of his home address. Röhm, now back in Munich, had convinced the interviewing officer there that he knew nothing. Lotte Busse and her sister-in-law merely repeated th
eir statements and could add no more.
“Could just have been an accident, boss,” Willi said carefully.
“It fucking wasn’t.” He knew it wasn’t.
ESTHER DISLIKED BARON von Kleist on sight, but that was only fair— he’d disliked her as soon as he’d been given her name. Kept standing in the large hall, she heard the footman announce her and then the baron’s loud “Solomonova? Now it’s a damn Jewess! I suppose we’d better see her.”
The footman who ushered her into the presence wore livery and a powdered wig—accoutrements she thought had died out with the waltz.
It was a large and beautiful room with wide windows looking over woods and a canal she couldn’t quite place—the city could still confuse her.
“Fräulein Solomonova.”
A man and a woman of late middle age were sitting in two easy chairs by a window, drinking coffee. Neither got up. The man crooked his finger. “Come here, young woman.”
Esther moved closer. The woman put down her cup and raised a pair of lorgnettes on a gold chain around her neck with which to study Es-ther’s scar.
“You are employed by Potrovskov?”
“Yes.”
“Yes,” Baron von Kleist said. He emphasized the word like someone who’d won a confession after intensive interrogation. “I believe you attended the grand duchess Anastasia for a while.”
“Anna? Yes.”
“The grand duchess, yes.” They’d got that straight. “Well, look here, my girl, it must be made clear to him that Her Imperial Highness has moved on. She has been taken up by the circle to which she belongs, and any unfortunate alliances she may have made in the past are behind her. I want it understood that we cannot have unsuitable, I may even say coarse, women hammering on the door and shouting . . .”
Oh, boy, Esther thought with sudden happiness. Clara’s been here.
“It upsets the servants, it upsets the grand duchess, it upsets me. We can’t have every ragtag calling just when they like. We are doing everything to safeguard Her Imperial Highness.”
“The Bolsheviks are out to murder her, you know,” the baroness said.