Nights in Berlin Read online

  Naturally she was full of what she called “the scandal of the evening,” Belinda’s absence. Not unprecedented, Sabine assured me. “She’s run off with a fellow, you’ll see.” I shrugged and said nothing, but I wondered if that could be a positive. Could it have been what the Germans so expressively call a Lustmürder? A crime of passion with nothing to do with Uncle Lastings or me? A nice idea, but I couldn’t quite convince myself, not even with Sabine, shoes off now and wig askew, telling me about previous Belinda escapades. “She’s looking for true love,” Sabine said contemptuously.

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Darling, not at the Eldorado!” She burst out laughing, and I had to fight an impulse to strangle her. Wanted for one killing and vulnerable to questioning about another—it would almost make sense to commit one for real, albeit in the back of a Berlin taxicab. You can see I was not in a normal frame of mind.

  To save myself, I focused on everything else: the back of the seats, Sabine’s pink-and-lavender makeup, and the lights shimmering on other cabs and winking in the puddles. I would remember it all down to the smallest detail, a trick I had learned years ago when I was the unhappy child of a disappointed family and there were lots of painful things to ignore. Sitting in the back of the cab, I worked to replace the dim shape, the faint glitter of the tiara, and the gossamer ostrich plume with the cracked leather of the cab seats, the wen on the back of the driver’s neck, the angle of Sabine’s knee in her green dress.

  Look and don’t listen, because Sabine’s a malicious bitch. “… too close, I’ve thought, with Belinda … not the best reputation. And you know she’s a Pole, probably a Jew. Why are people like that taking work from honest Germans, eh? That has to end. Sooner or later, we’ll have it all back.”

  “What?” I asked finally. “What are you talking about?”

  “Where have you been! The bastard Polish Republic and Silesia, of course. Hundreds of thousands of Germans in the east have been abandoned to Slavs and barbarism. We didn’t fight four years to lose our ancestral lands to treachery and a treaty.”

  And so on. They’d been halfway to Moscow with the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, which apparently had been as much of a pact as Versailles was a scandal. The bastard republic had been mostly German; Danzig had been safe and Mitteleuropa free from Bolshevism. “All good things, right?”

  “I’m not interested in politics,” I said and signaled for the cabbie to stop. I never rode all the way to the flat, not with Sabine. With a quick Gute Nacht, I made a feint toward one of the tall houses clad in smoke-washed stones. Once the cab was out of sight, I walked back to the previous street and up to Miss Fallowfield’s flat. I could not stomach talking about Belinda in fancy dress, so I changed my clothes before I knocked at my landlady’s door.

  She was as I had found her the other night: fully dressed but sitting up on her bed with a book. I laid the cigarette packet beside her. “It may be just cigarettes,” I said.

  She examined the stain on the packet along with my expression and immediately went to her kitchen, returning with two large tumblers of whiskey. “What happened?”

  I told her about finding Belinda.

  “What did you do, Francis?” Her voice was suddenly sharp, and I knew that she understood all the implications, including some beyond my imagination.

  “Nothing. I washed off my hand and checked my dress for blood and went back inside.”

  “Good. That was the right thing to do. Difficult, but the right thing.”

  “It does not feel like the right thing at all. She cannot be left in the alley. The police must be notified.”

  “Indeed,” said Miss Fallowfield, lighting a cigarette. “And so they shall be. But not by you. I will phone Mac, and he will arrange an anonymous tip.”

  The anonymous tip was a perennial in Nan’s favorite crime stories, and I had to suppress a giggle. Control the nerves, Francis!

  Miss Fallowfield took my empty glass through to the kitchen and returned with it full. And with a slice of dark bread and a piece of cheese.

  “Tell me again, everything you remember,” she said. “And anything else that might be useful.”

  By the time I finished, my head was aching.

  “She was in her working clothes,” Miss Fallowfield observed, “suggesting she was on her way to the club when she was attacked.”

  “Probably. I don’t know. She seemed—she seemed to live the role. If you understand what I mean.” It was all so sad and bizarre that I said, “Why on earth would Uncle Lastings have picked her? The most unlikely person!”

  “Who is likely to be a patriot?” Miss Fallowfield asked. “Your friend’s real name was Arek Jagoda, and he fought in the Battle of Warsaw.”

  “The Miracle on the Vistula?” That took some imagining. Take away the tiara, the oversize heels, the satin skirts, and silk stockings. Add a rifle with fixed bayonet or envision a cavalryman’s saber; I couldn’t quite do it.

  “That’s right. He was with the Sixth Army, who turned the Reds back from Warsaw. We’ve been checking up on him. His military record appears quite genuine. As ex-Polish army, he would not have been eager to see the German military forces reconstituted.”

  “No, I can see that he wouldn’t. I’m just having a hard time putting Belinda, whose great ambition was to visit Ascot in a garden-party hat, into anybody’s front line.”

  “People are endlessly surprising,” Miss Fallowfield said. “Especially in wartime. Especially in extremis.” She stood up and went into the hallway, where I heard her calling Mac.

  When she returned, she asked, “Could there be anyone in the club itself who would want to do her harm?”

  “Just all the other hostesses. But not really. They’re a catty, competitive bunch.” And then I stopped, half-surprised.

  “What is it?”

  “Something Sabine said in the cab coming home. She was going on about politics. I was trying not to listen, but she shares the general hostility toward immigrants from the east. And she was talking about the treaties. And Poland. That’s right. The territory of what she called the ‘Bastard Republic’ that should belong to Deutschland.”

  “Now that is interesting,” Miss Fallowfield said.

  I shrugged. “Half the Eldorado’s clientele probably thinks the same.”

  “Were they otherwise on good terms, Belinda and this … Sabine?”

  “Sabine, otherwise known as Sigi. Sigi Egger, I think it is. A different sort altogether. And no, they weren’t on good terms. Belinda was …” I paused for a minute, too tired to put my thoughts in order. “There was something genuine about Belinda. She was ridiculously big and tall, and yet, she was glamorous and feminine and natural, if that is possible.”

  Miss Fallowfield shrugged. “Nature sometimes makes mistakes,” she suggested.

  “Maybe. And I think Belinda was goodhearted. Maybe that was it. She wasn’t quite as hard and cynical as the usual item, so the others were jealous when people responded to that. Even the sort of people who go slumming at the Eldorado. Now she’s lying dead in an alley,” I said, and I suddenly hated Berlin, which had been such a respite, such fun, allowing me such freedom to be myself.

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time we were finished talking, I was semiconscious—a combination of shock, fatigue, and single-malt whiskey; Miss Fallowfield drank nothing but the best. She sent me to bed, and it was late the next morning before I became aware of voices in the flat—Mac’s and Harold’s to be exact. I pulled the covers over my head and tried to shut my ears. The murmur went on and on. Then the neighboring church clock struck an amazing number of times. Could it really be eleven?

  There was nothing I could do. I had to get up. I put on my clothes and shuffled down to the WC, before, unshaven and hungover, I appeared in the kitchen.

  Miss Fallowfield poured me a cup of coffee and presented a rack of toast. I
looked at both and considered whether either would be a good idea.

  “Eat,” Mac said. “Good for shock. And for Miss F.’s whiskey.”

  “My medical advisor,” I said sarcastically, but I sampled a slice of toast without ill effect.

  “We’re in a serious situation,” Harold said.

  That was pretty rich. He wasn’t torturing his toes in Dolly’s heels night after night. He had diplomatic immunity, so he didn’t have to worry about the Kripos, and one of his coworkers wasn’t lying dead in an alley.

  “Normally, at this stage of an operation, we would remove all civilian personnel.”

  I figured I was “civilian personnel” and the word normally put the wind up. “Normally,” I said. “What about abnormally?”

  “The situation we find ourselves in at the moment does not allow for normal operating procedures.”

  “You’re not sending me home,” I guessed.

  “Impossible at the moment. You cannot leave the Eldorado without becoming the prime suspect. Am I correct that you left the club for a time last night?”

  “To get some air, yes. And,” I added because it was sure to come to light, “to purchase a packet of cocaine for a coworker.”

  “So there is a witness to place you near the alley. That is most unfortunate, because dealers are vulnerable to coercion.” Harold gave a sniff, as if this whole situation was my fault instead of his harebrained scheme.

  “The body was cold. Belinda was expected at the club much earlier. She was supposed to be in no later than eight, ever. Herr K. was beside himself at her being so tardy. She’d certainly been dead quite a while before I found her.”

  “No one here suspects you, laddie,” Mac said, “but we must understand the Kripos’ thinking if we are to keep you safe.”

  “And useful,” I said.

  “It is rare,” Miss Fallowfield said in her dry, clear voice, “that one is able to be useful to one’s country.”

  “I’ll be more useful alive, not lying in a pool of blood like Belinda.”

  “Belinda, or I should say Arek Jagoda, now rests in the Berlin morgue. He was found early this morning.”

  That was good to know, even if Harold’s schoolmaster precision annoyed me. “About time,” I said.

  “The best we could do. Now,” Harold said, fixing me with a glacial look, “it is vital that you return to the Eldorado tonight. That you be shocked and surprised at what will by then be the common knowledge of Belinda’s death.”

  I didn’t like that at all. Suddenly, the toast and coffee was a bad idea that set my stomach twitching. “If I am there, I will be questioned, because surely, they will talk to everyone. And as you say, I can be put near the alley.”

  “An alley you did not go into. You were wearing patent leather heels and a silk frock. Why you went in, I don’t know.”

  “You haven’t seen the Eldorado’s staff WC,” I said.

  Mac cracked a smile at this. “Let’s hope the police don’t have to use it.”

  “My papers are phony, and the police have that damn drawing.”

  “Not a terribly good likeness,” said Miss Fallowfield, dexterously lighting her new cigarette from the stub of her last.

  “You must be interviewed in your working clothes.” Mac’s face told me that he wasn’t joking. “No,” he said to the others, “the boy’s right. Even in an identity card photo, Francis Wood looks far too much like the missing Francis Bacon. And using the same given name was an error.”

  “We thought keeping your own first name would make it easier for you,” Harold said. “We did not expect you to entangle yourself in a capital crime.”

  As if I’d gone out of my way! “All I want is to return to London. I didn’t ask to go to work in the biggest transvestite night spot in the city.”

  “Where,” Miss Fallowfield pointed out, “you have been successfully hiding in plain sight. It’s a matter of nerve. Keep yours, stick with—Dolly, is it?—and you have a good chance of escaping police notice.”

  I must have looked as dubious as I felt, because she added, “Tears are often efficacious. Shed them liberally in tight spots.”

  I wondered if she had ever practiced that strategy. She seemed a singularly dry-eyed sort.

  “But don’t overdo it,” Mac said. “A little work with the handkerchief goes a long way.”

  “I don’t know that I’m much of an actor.” I’d played the third shepherd in the Christmas pageant and one of the senatorial crowd in Julius Caesar. Neither seemed quite adequate preparation.

  “You’ll just have to do your best,” said Harold, “because if you fail, you will wind up in custody, where I fear your documents cannot sustain you.”

  “Give me a passport, and I’ll take my chances,” I said.

  But Harold shook his head, and both Mac and Miss Fallowfield cautioned against anything so precipitous. “There is still the operation to consider,” she said.

  “Let me guess: My uncle needs more money.”

  “Worse, he suspects that his identity has been discovered. It is fortunate the killer did not see that cigarette pack—or assumed that it was just ordinary tobacco.”

  “So you have Uncle Lastings’s information,” I said, annoyed that I was getting no credit for forcing myself to search poor Belinda’s corpse. “You must already have what you need.”

  “What we have,” said Miss Fallowfield, “is a desperate request for new documents.”

  “I hope you’re quicker with his than you’ve been with mine.”

  This did not go over well. I got a lecture on patriotism and, more effective, Harold’s threat to turn me over to the Kripos forthwith. Though I extracted such concessions as I could from them, come five o’clock, togged out and painted up, I arrived at the Eldorado. I hesitated in the doorway, undecided how best to enter. I felt miserable, totally down in the dumps, but wouldn’t you know it, Dolly was always full of fun. Anything less tonight could suggest a dangerous foreknowledge, although the Geschlossen sign on the door could excuse a puzzled apprehension.

  I settled on that, swung open the door, and pranced in. I waved to Herr K. and blew kisses to the rest of the girls, then stopped dead as if surprised. I actually was surprised. The reality had a different edge than even my most vivid imagining. Herr K. was up on a high ladder, hanging black bunting over the tops of the mirrors. “One of our own!” he wailed when he saw me. “One of our own has come to grief!”

  The tables below, which should have been full of revelers in silk and pearls with dead birds in their hats, were occupied by various uniformed and plain-clothes officers. They were busy interviewing the staff, who were lined up along the rear bar, waiting their turns and whispering behind their fans. Half of the hostesses were wearing black so that, with their long legs and big faces, they looked like giant crows. An unpleasant effect, but I was mostly startled that the police were there so soon. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to ask who had died.

  “Belinda!” came the response from the bar, much to the annoyance of the detectives, who wanted to keep everything under control. Good luck with that at the Eldorado, the home of sexual anarchy! I saw at a glance that Belinda’s death had caused genuine sorrow for some, sly satisfaction for others, but actual regret for all, because, as the staff complained in a shrill chorus, we would be closed for the whole night.

  Shocking news all around! I managed to smear my eyeliner and eye shadow, and I made liberal use of my handkerchief. A good thing, too, because as a foreigner, I was already suspect, and my brief absence the previous night had been revealed and no doubt amplified. The hostesses were gossips, every one, and totally faithless. Where was the famed solidarity of the working classes with this lot?

  I had more anxiety. My German, which is quite sufficient to order a meal, pick up a boy, or flirt at the coat-check counter, is not serviceable for anythin
g complicated or serious. When it was my turn at the table, the young officer, very pale, very Norse, very straight—in every way, I guessed—knew no English. We struggled together for a while, with me inserting an English word whenever my German deserted me. Soon after I was dismissed, I was recalled for an older, English-speaking officer.

  This one was wearing a mouse-colored topcoat over a tweed jacket and dark pants. He was plain of face, dark and bony with bags under his eyes, and tobacco on his breath—but I really do prefer older men, and he had the air of authority that I always find appealing. Be careful, Francis! The fact of the matter was that I was so nervous I was lured toward recklessness. “She was my friend,” I said in English and put my hand on his knee. “A fine person. Her makeup was divine. And her dancing!” How thick could I lay it on? I was tempted to find out, but he was all business.

  “You went out last night,” he said, after consulting his notes. “At what time?”

  I wiped my eyes, which really were streaming; the police favored a particularly vile brand of cigar, and the café was already toxic with smoke. I told him the time and wheezed enough to make my asthma attack plausible. I certainly needed fresh air right at that moment.

  And what had I done?

  “I took a walk and made a little purchase. For a coworker.”

  “A likely story,” he said. His eyes were dark and intelligent. I reminded myself again to be careful.

  “The dealer,” I said, deciding to risk all, “is a perfect Apollo. You have to see him to believe him. I fancied my chances.” I patted his knee for emphasis. If nothing else, I’d certainly learned to camp it up in Berlin.

  “Doubtless I will see him.” The detective’s tone was heavy. “We will be checking your alibi. And your papers.”