Come into my Parlour (18 page)

The moon was now sinking towards the distant tree-tops, and Erika reckoned that about two hours must have elapsed since she had made her escape. As she had seen no lights she thought it a fair assumption that, after a quarter of an hour's search for her and notifying the police of what had happened, Einholtz and Kurt had had their supper and gone to bed, so the odds were that they were asleep by now. All the same, if her mother-in-law was suddenly startled into wakefulness, by hearing someone enter her room, her cries for help might quite well arouse them; so Erika decided to get in unheard if she could and wake the Countess very gently.

Removing her high-heeled shoes, she stuffed them toes down into the pockets of her tweed jacket. The solid leads gave out not the faintest sound as she crossed them. Reaching the door, she grasped its handle and tried it very gingerly. Under the pressure it turned and with only the faintest creak the door opened outwards. Stepping inside, she found herself faced by a heavy curtain. Having paused there a moment to still her breathing she edged gently sideways to get out from behind the hangings but, as she did so, the brass curtain rings jingled a little.

Instantly a light flicked on and a deep voice said angrily:

“Come out from behind there, whoever you are.”

Pulling the curtain back, Erika stepped into the room. For a moment she was dazzled by the light, then she saw the old lady sitting up in bed, staring at her. The
Gräfin
Bertha was a small, stout woman of over seventy, but still hale and hearty. Her grey hair had never gone white but always retained the black threads in it that it had had when Erika had first known her. She wore it in the severe German fashion, parted in the centre and plastered down each side with its ends twisted into a bun at the back. She had never used make-up in her life and her face was dry as parchment, having the slightly raddled appearance which often affects old ladies. Her sharp black eyes stared at the world aggressively from beneath heavy, arched unplucked brows, and her fleshy nose overhung a full, determined mouth.

“So you're a woman, eh?” she said sharply. “What do you mean by entering my room like this?”

In view of her dyed hair and bedraggled state Erika could hardly wonder that her mother-in-law had failed to recognise her, but the fact at least showed that she knew nothing of what had taken place in the castle earlier that night.

At the sight of this formidable old woman Erika instinctively
slipped back into the habit of the past and made a formal little curtsey as she replied: “I am sorry to disturb you, my lady Mother, but I am in great trouble and I come to ask your help.”

“
Teufel nochmal!
” exclaimed the Countess. “
Es ist die kleme Erika.
”

Erika shook her hair back from her face and advanced into the room. After her ordeal, the fall through the trees and her long tramp, she was now feeling desperately tired, but it would never have occurred to her to sit down without her mother-in-law first having asked her to do so. She stood there as the deep old voice went on:

“This is extraordinary! What sort of trouble have you got yourself into now? Have you seen Kurt? He got back tonight and is in the castle somewhere. I suppose you know that the Nazis want to kill you? I thought you were safely abroad. Where have you come from?”

Without waiting for answers to any of her questions the old woman pointed to a thick woollen garment that lay near her feet, and added, “Give me my bed-jacket, child.”

As Erika draped it round her mother-in-law's shoulders, she said, “Yes, I was abroad, but I came back because I understood that Kurt wanted me to do so.”

The black eyes gave her a sharp look. “You must have changed a lot then, to pay any attention to the wishes of my son. And what a sight you look, girl. How did you get yourself into that state?”

“I jumped out of one of the windows of the banqueting hall, into the trees below; and for the past two hours I've been tripping over roots and rabbit-holes as I made my way round here through the forest.”

“Hum!” the old Countess gave a grunt of grudging admiration. “It must have taken some pluck to jump into those trees from that height, but you always had plenty of that. Still, you're looking very shaken, and I don't wonder. In my bedside cupboard, there, you'll find a small flagon of
Branntwein
. Give yourself some; then sit down and tell me what you have been up to.”

Erika found the little wicker-covered bottle of brandy, poured a good tot into a medicine glass, drank it, gave a quick shudder and then, as the warm spirit coursed through her veins, felt better. While trudging through the forest she had worked out the story she meant to tell if, as she supposed, the
Gräfin
Bertha was ignorant of the trap which had been sprung that night. Knowing her mother-in-law's aversion to divorce she meant to say nothing about that, and she also wished to spare her, if possible, full knowledge of the cowardly way in which her son had acted. Sitting down she began her explanation:

“I've been in England. I didn't go there from my own choice but
I was seriously wounded just before Dunkirk, and they evacuated me while I was still unconscious. About a month ago I received a letter from an old friend through the Swiss Legation in London. It said that Kurt was living here, that he was very ill and desperately wanted to see me. It's getting on for two years now since the Nazis were hunting for me in Germany and they must know that I've been living abroad. I thought that if I dyed my hair and changed my appearance a bit there would be comparatively little risk of my being recognised if I just slipped across the Bodensee and came by by-roads as far as Niederfels and back. There's no point in going into my relationship with Kurt, but I felt that I ought to come if it could be managed, and I arrived here just before midnight tonight.”

“So the loving wife returned,” said the Countess sarcastically. “It is true that Kurt has been ill. I have been worried about him for some time, but, thank God, he has not been ill enough to wish for a death-bed reconciliation. There was nothing to be reconciled about for that matter. You always were a fly-by-night and I only let him marry you because I had a great respect for your father. I knew well enough that you'd continue your old tricks of slipping out of one man's bed into another's, but as you come of a good family I thought you'd have the good taste to conceal your amours after you were married, and I proved right about that. Still, you and Kurt married one another only because it suited you both to do so, and I don't believe a word of this story about the fond wife risking prison or worse to smooth her husband's pillows. You had some much more pressing reason for putting that pretty neck of yours under the executioner's axe.”

“You may believe it or not, as you wish, lady Mother,” Erika replied quietly, “but the fact remains that I left England because I was given good reason to believe that Kurt wanted to see me.”

“You have seen him, then?”

“Yes; but I found that he is no longer his own master. He is virtually a prisoner of the Nazis in his own house. Naturally, I had no idea of that, and I don't suppose you knew it either?”

“No,” admitted the old lady with considerable asperity, “I certainly did not. He seems to have got himself mixed up with these undesirable people recently. Towards the middle of last month he brought one of them here to stay for a few days; a man named Einholtz; and, I must say, he had better manners than most of Hitler's scum, although, of course, he was not the sort of person that I should ever have been willing to receive in the old days. Afterwards, they went off together on some mission to do with the war. Kurt returned only tonight and came up to see me about an hour before you came in from the roof. He seemed more ill than ever, and he stayed with me only a few
minutes, but he told me he had accidentally set fire to some curtains in the hall, and also that he had brought
Herr
Einholtz back with him. But I had no idea that he was this man's prisoner.”

“I'm afraid he must be, as he was obviously in no position to prevent Einholtz trying to arrest me, when I appeared. The fire was my fault. I threw one of the candelabra at him before I jumped out of the window.”

“You suggest then that the Nazis made use of my son's name to lure you back here?”

Erika nodded silently.

“Of course, he could not have been aware of what they were up to,” the old lady supplemented.

“I can hardly think so,” Erika lied, “although he must have realised the situation tonight. If he did have some idea of what was going on he probably felt that he was powerless to prevent it, or it may be that they threatened him with sending you to a concentration camp if he made any attempt to interfere. They are capable of any beastliness when they mean to get their own way, you know.”

“Yes, I realise that. How our sensible German people can have allowed themselves to be led away by such a set of scoundrels is still a mystery to me. But what are you going to do, child? I suppose you want help to get back over the frontier.”

“Please. I'd rather kill myself than let them catch me.”

“How did you come here?”

“In a car. I left it in the courtyard, but I dared not go back to it. I felt that Einholtz would expect me to try that and be certain to set another trap for me with it.”

“Have you any plan in your mind?”

“Yes. Hours ago Einholtz will have telephoned the Gestapo headquarters in Stuttgart, and every road in Württemberg will be patrolled by police cars on the hunt for me by now. For the next few days the whole countryside, right down to the Bodensee, will be much too hot for me to stand any chance of getting through it uncaught. But, after a bit, the excitement will die down. They'll think I've managed to get away on a train to some distant part of Germany. It's a lot to ask, but if you would let me hide in one of the disused rooms of the castle for a week, and could bring me a little food every night, I'd stand a much better chance of getting away safely in a week's time.”

“It is very little to ask,” retorted the old lady with rough kindness. “If Kurt's name was used to get you here, and for some reason he is unable to protect you, the least we can do is to shelter you here for as long as you wish.”

Erika sighed with relief as the
Gräfin
Bertha went on: “You have
been through a bad time tonight, child. You had better clean yourself up in my bathroom, then you must get some sleep. I will make you up a bed next door where my old fool of a husband used to sleep whenever one or the other of us was ill. You will be quite safe there, as no one ever comes to this part of the house except my maid Helga, and she can bring you your meals.”

“Thank you—thank you so much, but—” Erika hesitated. “One never knows whom one can trust in these days. Wouldn't it be safer if you could manage to smuggle me up something to eat at night? I could make do on very little.”

“Don't be a fool, girl,” was the prompt reply. “A pretty picture it would make if I were seen carrying a leg of goose out of my own larder. Helga is a lazy little good-for-nothing, but she won't give you away.”

“All right then,” Erika stood up. “You won't mention my being here to Kurt, will you?”

“Why not?” The old woman's eyes sparkled with a gleam of amused malice. “Are you afraid that he'll tell me the real reason why you came back to Niederfels? It was on account of some young man that you're in love with, I'll be bound.”

“No, it wasn't that. But to tell Kurt I'm still here, after what happened tonight, would embarrass him terribly. I'm certain that the Nazis have got some hold over him and I'm sure he would hate having to admit that to you.”

“Very well. What you have been up to is no concern of mine. It is enough for me that the Nazis are after you. I'll not allow one of my own kind to fall into the hands of those guttersnipes, if I can possibly prevent it. Off you go, now, and get those twigs out of your hair before you lay your head on one of my good linen pillowslips.”

Gladly enough Erika retired to the bathroom. Like its owner, it was a relic of the past, having a mahogany framed marble bath the size of an Egyptian sarcophagus in one corner and an ugly cylindrical wood-burning stove in another. The fire under the stove was out but the water in the cylinder was still warm, so Erika was able to have a good wash and bathe her sore feet. As she was completing her ablutions the
Gräfin
Bertha opened the door a few inches to thrust in a pink flannel nightdress and a brown woollen dressing-gown that had seen better days. With her lovely limbs encased in these strange garments and carrying her own clothes in a bundle under her arm Erika emerged to meet her hostess again.

The old woman led her through to her late husband's dressing-room, where she had made up a bed that in most British homes would have long since gone to the junk shop. Like her own, it was of black
painted iron, garnished with a soul-shattering variety of brass knobs and trimmings, and had upon it as its upper layer one of those mountain-like oblong bags of feathers under which all nineteenth-century Germans kept themselves warm at night. Nevertheless, Erika sank very gratefully into the soft depths of this monstrosity, although she gave a little moan of pain as part of her weight was taken by her wrenched shoulder.

On the Countess learning the cause of this, she hurried off to get some embrocation, and the unwilling Erika had to submit to some ten minutes' drastic treatment before she was finally allowed to sink back on the huge square pillow. With a “
Schlaf' gut, Erika,
” her mother-in-law put out the light and left her. Two minutes later she was sound asleep.

When she awoke it was broad daylight and she lay for a little while grimly thinking over the events of the previous night. The trap had been so cunningly devised, with its double lure of a divorce for her and the information of vital importance to Hitler's enemies, that she did not see how anyone in her own situation could have avoided falling into it. That she had temporarily escaped was due as much to luck, in having been left alone with Kurt for a couple of minutes, than to her own blundering effort to get away at the last moment; but she could at least congratulate herself on having appealed to the
Gräfin
Bertha for shelter, as that had been her own idea and had proved one hundred per cent successful. She felt that her chances of getting back across Lake Constance were not too bad, but the thing that maddened her was the thought that any prospect of securing the information she had come into Germany to get, or her divorce, was now extremely remote.