Our Friends in Berlin Page 4

  ‘That, I believe,’ said Hoste, squinting, ‘is Miss Strallen.’

  ‘Correct. And that one –’ his fingertip hovered over the black-haired girl next to her – ‘is Marita Pardoe. Florian, as was.’

  He looked up sharply. ‘Are you sure?’

  Castle, enjoying his surprise, nodded slowly. ‘As sure as we can be. Taken on Beaumont Street, Oxford. You can just see the Randolph Hotel in the background.’

  Hoste stared at the face – thin, dark-eyed, watchful, aloof. After two years of searching this was the first picture of her he had ever seen.

  ‘Dates from ’34, we think,’ Castle continued, ‘when she and Strallen were at secretarial college. According to our researches a group of them were going on a day trip. These two must have got on well, because the following year they went on another – to the Fatherland.’

  It wasn’t much, but given how little else they’d got on Marita, it was significant. This was a woman who had made a point of covering her tracks – no letters, no documentation and, until now, no photographs. Recruiting her would be his greatest coup yet. Castle seemed to read his thoughts.

  ‘You’ve got that bloodhound look. Anything doing at Hastings?’

  Hoste shook his head absently. ‘Scoult knew that the husband had been interned. No clues about her. Looks like I’ll have to try Miss Strallen again.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t you ask Strallen in the first place if she knew Marita?’

  ‘Two reasons. First, we know Marita is a crafty operator. If she gets wind that someone’s looking for her she might turn tail and disappear for good. Second, we can’t be sure yet where Miss Strallen’s sympathies lie. They may have a bearing on whether she’d be prepared to direct us to Marita.’

  ‘How will you manage it?’

  Hoste’s expression was pensive. ‘With the utmost caution. Miss Strallen is still our only link – we mustn’t scare her off.’

  After a pause Castle said, ‘What’s this “marriage bureau” she runs, by the way?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, it’s a peculiar sort of agency that introduces people who, well, want to get married. I showed up pretending to be a client, which backfired somewhat.’

  Castle’s arch smirk gave way to a laugh. ‘Now that I’d like to have seen. She’d have her work cut out finding you a wife.’

  Hoste laughed along, conscious of being an object of light mockery to his colleague. But it had done the job: unpromising – inept – though his introduction was, he had made contact with her. As he watched Castle chuckling he was already planning in his head a way to secure the confidence of Amy Strallen.

  4

  The music lifted and rang around the vaulted ceiling of the National Gallery’s octagonal room. Amy glanced down the row of listeners, their faces uptilted, perfectly still. Some held their penny programmes on their laps. Not a seat unsold. The steam of damp clothes, with their damp dog smell, had slowly receded. She had had to queue in the rain for today’s lunchtime concert, but she didn’t mind and nor, it seemed, did anyone else – a solo performance by Myra Hess was worth getting soaked for. The final swirling cadenza approached; the notes were like tiny steps up a hill, surefooted as they neared the summit, then that trembling pause just before the purling descent down the other side – the wisdom and feeling of Chopin clinched in that lovely final chord.

  An ecstasy of applause.

  As people began to move around her Amy remained seated, trying to hold on to the fleeting sensation of joy. Just the merest trace lingered, then it was gone. She rose, folding her mackintosh over her arm, and joined the shuffle for the exit. She had just got through a knot of people chatting about the concert (‘awf’ly good’) when a man stepped in front of her. His distant smile suggested that they had met once, but for a moment she couldn’t place him at all. When he spoke she faintly recognised his voice.

  ‘Hullo again,’ he said. ‘Remember me?’

  And now she did remember – his face, but not his name. ‘Oh, hullo. You came to the bureau …’

  ‘Indeed I did. And you were very patient with me.’ He held out his hand. ‘Jack Hoste.’

  ‘Yes, hullo …’ She gestured with her eyes at the people streaming past on either side of them. ‘You’ve been at the concert?’

  He nodded. ‘I drop by when I can. May I – ?’ He indicated that he might accompany her out of the room, and they fell into step. The gallery walls, denuded of their paintings, prompted him to say, ‘I always feel melancholy when I see the blank frames here, don’t you? Like a lot of small emptinesses inside one large emptiness.’

  ‘But it’s not empty – look at all these people.’

  ‘True. I meant empty of things – the things the gallery was built for.’

  Amy squinted at him. ‘Yes, but they’ve filled it with music instead. Or do you think that has less value than paintings?’

  He heard a note of challenge in her voice, and smiled. ‘I just miss looking at the pictures. But you’re quite right. Myra Hess and Chopin are excellent compensation.’

  She nodded, apparently satisfied by his concession. They were now approaching the main entrance; outside on Trafalgar Square the rain had continued to fall. I’m going to be soaked, thought Amy, pulling on her mac. Hoste too was hesitating on the threshold. He wore a hat but no coat. They pushed through the doors and descended the steps.

  ‘So how’s business?’ he asked. ‘Fixed up any more farmers?’

  She smiled and shook her head. ‘No farmers lately. This morning I set up a garage owner with a lady who manages a shoe shop. Then I matched a solicitor with an antiquarian bookseller.’

  Hoste listened, and said quite seriously, ‘I suppose you have to be quite careful in your business. I mean, you couldn’t risk matching a dentist to a manicurist, for instance.’

  Amy frowned at him. ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Well, because they’d fight tooth and nail.’

  He waited a moment for it to sink in, and was pleased to hear her laugh – a surprisingly throaty laugh, at odds with her prim dark clothes. ‘That’s very silly,’ she said, almost accusingly. ‘But very funny.’

  He inclined his head in acknowledgement. As they quickened their step towards the edge of Charing Cross Road, a bus rumbled over a puddle, nearly spraying them both in its slipstream.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Hoste exclaimed, and turned to Amy. ‘What d’you say we get a cup of tea and wait for this rain to ease off?’

  She glanced at him, hesitating. It seemed rather presumptuous. But the rain was awful, and she didn’t have another appointment till four o’clock …

  ‘There’s a Lyons just round that corner,’ he added.

  ‘All right, then.’

  Arriving, they found the place full to the door, the windows steamed up with people crowding in from the rain. Their eyes met one another in a forlorn way, and they laughed. She supposed this would be the moment to part, but Hoste sensed an opportunity.

  ‘What am I thinking! There’s a flat I’ve rented up the street – we could have our cup of tea there for nothing.’

  ‘I thought you lived in a hotel?’

  ‘I did. I moved out a few days ago. Come on – it’ll save us getting drowned.’

  A port in a storm. He didn’t look a dangerous type, though the childlike watchfulness of his manner was disconcerting. He was what her friend Bobby would have called a rum cove, and yet rather compelling too, in a way she couldn’t yet fathom. She gestured for him to lead on. As they hurried up St Martin’s Lane they talked about the raids, and she thought: the war has allowed us to behave like this – to accept a sudden invitation to tea from a near stranger. They turned into a paved court lined on either side by bookshops. On reaching an unmarked door halfway along, Hoste let them in and led her through a narrow hallway to the stairs.

  ‘I should warn you,’ he said, as he put his key to the lock, ‘it’s not very homely.’

  She walked in, prepared to see a chaos of unpacking. But in f
act it only looked bleak; dust sheets shrouded the furniture, and the walls sported ghostly blanks from the previous tenant’s pictures. Unopened crates stood around. Naked bulbs depended from the ceiling, and the windows were uncurtained. He seemed to have adapted the front room as an office; papers and files were stacked in wobbly ziggurats on the carpet. A smell of dust and neglect coated the air. He was right about one thing, she thought – there wasn’t a trace of homeliness in it. But then he had lost everything at his last place.

  Grimacing in apology, he whipped the dust sheet off an armchair like a matador with his cape and asked her to sit down. ‘I’ve had to work here, too, as you can see. The electricity at my office has been out from the raids.’ He removed another stack of papers from the chair next to her.

  ‘I think – I seem to remember – you’re an accountant,’ she said.

  ‘Something like that. I work at the Inland Revenue – involves a lot of chasing unpaid taxes.’

  Before he repaired to the kitchen, Hoste did a little more stacking and squaring off, though as far as Amy could tell it was merely a light rearrangement of the mess. While he was gone she took a cigarette from her case and lit it. There was no bookshelf to view, nothing for a visitor to browse, and no pictures or photographs to brighten the room. It wasn’t just unhomely – it was woebegone in its sheer anonymity. She would never have allowed a stranger to inspect such a scene. Her gaze, starved of interest, happened to fall on the heap of files he had just been tidying. A name on the very top file leapt out at her, and she picked it up in disbelief. BERNARD PARDOE. Unable to resist she peeked inside at the client details. No question: it was him. What were the chances of that? Still with the file in her hands she didn’t hear him come back into the room.

  She looked up, startled. ‘Oh, I’m sorry – nosy of me. It’s just that –’ she held up the file – ‘it’s the strangest coincidence.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Hoste, not looking at her as he balanced the tea tray on another cairn of papers.

  ‘Well, this man. Bernard Pardoe. I know him – or rather, knew him. He married a friend of mine.’

  He looked at her keenly. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Marita Pardoe. Marita Florian, as she was.’

  ‘You still see her?’ he asked, keeping his tone casual.

  ‘Not for years. I was at a secretarial college with her. We were quite close for a while …’ He nodded, encouraging her to go on. ‘We went on a couple of holidays together before the war – one of them to Germany, as a matter of fact. Marita was very eager to go to Nuremberg, for the rally.’

  ‘You saw Hitler?’

  She nodded. ‘From a long distance. Quite a spectacle. This must have been in ’34. Or ’35. Most of the time we were walking in the Alps.’

  ‘Ah! I used to go on Alpine holidays. Kennen Sie Tirol?’

  ‘Er, no. You speak German?’

  He nodded. ‘We used to have summers in the Tyrol – I dare say it’ll be a while before we see another one.’

  They both fell silent at that.

  ‘So what happened – with Marita?’ he went on.

  ‘Oh, well, she got married. And got rather involved in politics. The British Union of Fascists. She and Bernard were both party members.’

  ‘Did you … fall out?’

  Amy paused for a moment, squinting at him. ‘You seem very interested in this, for some reason.’

  Hoste, excited by the tug on his line, had got ahead of himself. Her expression had become clouded with suspicion. It was absolutely imperative he didn’t rush her now. He sat back, and began pouring them each a cup of tea. ‘You might be able to help me, that’s all. Pardoe has been in the wrong tax category for years – he’s owed a considerable rebate. But he’s dropped out of sight. My best chance of tracking him down would appear to be through his wife.’

  She tweaked her mouth in regret. ‘As I said, I haven’t seen her in years. I know she and Bernard lived in Germany for a while. The last I heard of them was just before the war – they were back in London working for the BU.’

  She sensed him mulling over this information. It was a pity that Pardoe was not traceable – tax rebates were probably quite rare, and he and Marita had often been short of money. She sipped her tea and cast a look around the room. Without quite meaning to say it out loud she mused, ‘It must be hard to start all over again.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I mean, losing all your possessions. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.’

  He looked at her as though he hadn’t considered the problem before. ‘Oh, it wasn’t such a disaster. I didn’t really own a great deal – I’ve never been a collector of anything. Some stamps, when I was a boy, that’s all. I find it simpler not to be attached to things.’

  ‘But what about basic things – clothes?’

  ‘I bought some more. There’s government relief to be had, eventually, and my mother was kind enough to send me a few things that belonged to my father.’

  ‘You mean –’

  ‘He died a couple of years ago. It was rather fortunate that she hadn’t thrown it all out.’

  Her eyes strayed involuntarily over what he wore today, and she did notice something slightly old-fashioned in the cut of his jacket, and the shoes. A dead man’s shoes … She was impressed by his sangfroid, and somewhat repelled by it, too. It was surely not quite human to sound so carefree. But it fitted with the rest of him, his strange social manner, and the unpredictable shifts from blankness to warmth and back again. He was looking at her in a curious way.

  ‘Tell me, how did you get started in this marriage business?’

  She choked off a laugh. ‘You say that as if it’s something exotic, like snake-charming. I was a secretary in an advertising agency. One day I saw a notice for a situation that sounded … more interesting. I didn’t know what a marriage bureau was – nobody did, really – but I went along and met Johanna, whose idea it was. We took to each other pretty quickly. After a year she offered me a partnership.’

  ‘So you’ve made a success of it.’

  ‘We’ve not done too badly.’ She tilted her head slightly. ‘Are you thinking of trying again with us?’

  ‘Oh, no. No. That’s not why I was asking – I was just interested. Are you, um –’ he glanced at her hand – ‘married?’

  She shook her head. ‘I know, it seems odd. How can you be an expert in matchmaking when you don’t have a husband yourself?’

  ‘Well …’

  She assumed it was what he’d been thinking, and smiled. ‘You can be good at something even if it’s not part of your experience. You don’t have to be able to lay an egg to know whether it’s fresh.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said.

  Amy glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better be off – I have a client at four. Thank you for the tea.’

  She stood up, and straightened her skirt. He was on his feet, too, and directing at her that look of intense appraisal she found unnerving. ‘I’m very glad we ran into one another. Perhaps I’ll see you at another concert.’

  They were back in the hallway when she saw his ARP tin helmet hanging on the back of the door. ‘That must keep you busy,’ she said, with a rueful look.

  He nodded. ‘I’m on duty again tonight. A full moon, I hear. A bomber’s moon.’

  ‘Good luck,’ she said, and paused on the threshold. ‘I don’t know if it would be any use, but I might have Mrs Florian’s address somewhere – Marita’s mother. She lived up in Maidenhead, I think.’

  ‘That could be very helpful,’ replied Hoste, holding the door.

  ‘Cheerio, then.’ They shook hands, and she left.

  Amy got back to Brook Street with five minutes to spare. Her next appointment was a furrier from Whitechapel, in his early fifties. She quickly went through the requirements they had distilled from his letter.

  Not bossy, impatient, or a socialist.

  No bridge players.

  Someone who is ‘down to earth�
� and has no ‘airs or graces’.

  Would prefer a working-class girl of refinement.

  Good teeth essential.

  Just then Jo put her head round the door. ‘You seem to be in a good mood.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I could hear you whistling as you came up the stairs. How was the concert?’

  ‘Lovely. Holst and Chopin. Then I ran into someone I half knew, a client. He turned out to be a music lover, and an Alpinist. We had quite a lot to talk about.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jo, raising her eyebrows. ‘Good-looking?’

  She laughed. ‘Not my type. He was perfectly nice – but he was more interested in correcting tax claims. Takes his work very seriously.’ At that moment there was a ring at the door. ‘Talking of which –’

  From reception Miss Ducker called through that her four o’clock had arrived. Jo suggested that they might finish the day doing some ‘mating’ (the word still made them giggle). Amy had a quick primp in the mirror, composed herself and asked the secretary to send him in.

  Evening was coming on. Miss Ducker had gone home a while ago. Amy and Jo, on their hands and knees, had covered Jo’s entire office floor with registration forms, matching this one with that. It was companionable work, and they laughed as often as they rolled their eyes at the vanity on parade before them. Amy had in her hand a report from Mr Woodcock, their most annoying client, about a recent match-up.

  ‘Listen to this,’ she said, altering her voice – she was a good mimic – ‘“She is most agreeable, but I do not imagine I shall ever feel matrimonially inclined towards her. She is too tall, not very comely, rather too old in that she looks her age, walks badly, and her legs, though passable, are far from perfect. Mentally, she is delightful, but I cannot overlook the signal importance of the physical. Would you be so kind as to try again?”’

  ‘Oh, the pompous, conceited oaf!’ cried Jo.