The Queen's Accomplice (Maggie Hope Mystery #6)(33)

Alsatian dogs barked as they went through the black metal gates, and Elise let out a soft sigh of relief as they finally left the sinister walls. As she walked behind Frau Jaeger, she saw, on the other side of the road, beautiful houses, gardens, and even two chubby little children playing and laughing in the snow.

One, a boy about seven, ran up to the chain-link fence to stare at her. Elise tried her best to smile, her dry lips cracking in the cold. She was aware that her bald head, even under the scarf, marked her as a prisoner. What do they know about us? What do any of them know? They’re so close, and yet a universe away.

She and the young boy locked eyes, blue to gray. Even in her time at the camp, she had never seen such a vicious glint, such a brutal expression. The boy bent down and scooped up a stone.

He threw it.

It struck her on the face, hard, causing her to flinch and take a step back.

Elise raised one hand to her face, a red mark already blooming on her pale skin. As the boy ran off, she stood still, watching. She’d become accustomed to random cruelty during her time at Ravensbrück, but it was still startling to see it from a mere child.

“Schnell!” Frau Jaeger ordered, seeing only that Elise had stopped. Then, in a milder tone, realizing she wasn’t talking to a number anymore, but Fr?ulein Elise Hess: “Come, please. You don’t want to miss your train.”

Elise looked wide-eyed at everything as they trod over the slithery snow to the station. She’d never seen it; she’d come to Ravensbrück in a van with black-painted windows.

On the platform, people stared at them—such an unlikely couple, a prison guard in her gray uniform and a former prisoner. The train arrived in a cloud of steam and a shriek of brakes. “Here,” an older woman urged, pressing bread and butter wrapped in a coarse cloth into Elise’s hand. Elise gasped at the woman, speechless, as she disappeared into one of the cars.



Frau Jaeger raised an eyebrow but decided to ignore the transaction. Instead she asked, “Now, do you know where you’re going in Berlin?”

“I still know where I live,” Elise stated flatly.

“No.” Frau Jaeger pulled out even more papers. “Your family’s home in Grunewald has been requisitioned and taken over for official Party business. You will be joining your father, who has been set up in the Adlon Hotel. The address is here.”

Elise knew the hotel, a short distance from the Brandenburg Gate. “Thank you,” she managed.

Frau Jaeger’s face turned red, and she spoke quickly. “Would you mind very much inscribing something in my album?” she asked, pulling out a small leather notebook. “Just a few lines? In remembrance of our meeting?”

Is the woman mad? Elise could not process the request. Once again, reality seemed to float away and she tried hard to remember names for things before they left her. Book, pen, guard, she made herself think.

Frau Jaeger continued, “For instance, a few lines from the Liebestod, in the last act of Tristan and Isolde? It’s just—your mother was so wonderful. I have such fond memories of her.”

Elise wrote as though it were someone else performing the task:



Do you not see?

How he shines

Ever brighter.

Star-haloed

Rising higher

Do you not see?

Then she wrote, underneath, Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner. And then, Clara Hess, soprano. Under her mother’s name, she added her own: Elise Hess. She handed the book back to Frau Jaeger, who took it with a shy smile.

“Good luck, Fr?ulein,” the guard said, as Elise struggled with her suitcase up the steps of the train car.

“Frau Jaeger—” Elise tried to decide what to say. So many things went through her brain, from profanity to prayers.

Then, finally, she called back, “There’s no need of luck where there’s faith.”

—

Freedom.

Elise nearly fell onto one of the worn upholstered seats. What a feeling! Life! Vita nuova!

With a screech and snorts of steam, the train pulled away from the station. Elise, grateful to sit on soft cushions, gazed out the window. The sky was the purest blue, and not even a gentle breeze stirred the naked branches. This was Germany, forests and lakes and ancient trees, as it could have looked during any period of history. Germany’s story is long, she thought. I pray this is but a short black mark on the totality of it, not the end….

Up in the clouds, Elise glimpsed a bird, a crane. Now it soared above a lake, then over the forest, flapping its wings, flying higher, faster. Birds have the most precious gift in the world—freedom! Her eyes tracked its flight. All of the wretched people, robbed of their freedom in prisons, penitentiaries, and concentration camps, envy you, little bird. I’m ecstatic to be free—and grieving for my fellow prisoners, whom I left behind in hell.



She closed her eyes and recited the Lord’s Prayer. That is, until she reached the line As we forgive those who trespass against us.

The words stuck in Elise’s throat.

To forgive those who trespass against us—unimaginable.

To forgive was an impossibility. Elise couldn’t lie to herself or to her God, and so she was silent during that line.





Chapter Six


“We always go to the loveliest places, Mark,” Maggie deadpanned as they hurried into the Paddington Mortuary, following in DCI Durgin’s long-legged wake.