Barry Maitland - The Marx Sisters

He didn’t move, so she went out herself, through the cluttered hall and found the kitchen door. It wasn’t as bad as she had feared-probably, she guessed, because not a lot of food got prepared there. There was a cup and saucer on the draining-board, half a dozen empty milk bottles in a corner, a bowl of half-eaten cornflakes on the small kitchen table. And in the fridge there was a homemade apple pie, with a slice removed.

She heard his shuffling footsteps behind her. ‘The apple pie looks good. Did one of your neighbours bake that for you?’

She was surprised when he answered, his voice quite clear, heavily accented and with that unexpectedly high pitch. ‘We always had apples. Even at the end of the winter, when everything else was gone, there was always an apple left at the bottom of one of the boxes.’

‘When was that, Dr Botev?’

‘After the war came to an end.’

‘Ah yes. Were you married then?’

He looked at her, puzzled. ‘No, no. The Great War.’

‘Oh… You must have been very young.’ She plugged in the kettle. ‘I wanted to ask you about Meredith again. You remember we talked about her last September? After she died?’ She turned and looked carefully at him to see if he knew what she was talking about, and was relieved to see a little of the old belligerence returning to his face.

‘Did you arrest someone?’

She shook her head. ‘We’re still looking. We need your help. I wondered if there was more you could have told us, about why Meredith was depressed, for example.’

He sat down on the only chair at the table and studied the cornflakes while Kathy found an open packet of tea.

‘The past,’ he said at last, ‘is a jealous mistress. No! A jealous mother!’ He corrected himself and nodded his head vigorously. ‘I remember every day more clearly the village where I was born. Pentcho and Georgi, Dora and Bagriana. The smell of the fires…’ For a moment he was lost, his face twitching between a smile and a frown. Then he continued, ‘But as to yesterday, or last week, or last September…’ He shook his head hopelessly.

‘But you do remember Meredith?’

He nodded. ‘She was so innocent. How could she be otherwise! She was English. The English are innocents. They have not had our experience.’

He thought some more. ‘ Her past was a jealous mother, all right. More jealous than most.’

‘Meredith’s?’

He looked at her, puzzled again. ‘No, Becky’s.’

Kathy’s heart sank. More distant memories. She put a cup of tea in front of him. ‘Who’s Becky, doctor?’

He shook his head. ‘She always listened to Becky.’

‘Who did? Meredith? Your mother? Who?’

He looked at her vaguely, and then seemed to come to a decision. He got firmly to his feet and said sharply to her, ‘Come!’

He led her into the other downstairs room which faced, like the kitchen, towards the snow-covered back garden. This time it was a bed which was crammed in among the boxes. He crouched and drew out a small suitcase from underneath it, and set it on the quilt. It was full of old photographs, all black and white.

‘Here.’ He indicated to Kathy to sit on the bed, and pulled a picture from the pile. ‘This is Dora. When she was sixteen. You see how she hated to wear shoes? It was the next spring that the soldiers took her.’

He handed it to Kathy, his eyes full of tears, and reached for another.

Depressed and no wiser, Kathy returned to Jerusalem Lane. It was past noon, and a steady stream of building workers and police were filing into Mrs Rosenfeldt’s shop with lunch orders. At least the old lady’s mind was entirely in the present, Kathy thought, even if she didn’t welcome the interruption.

‘This is coming up to my busy time,’ she grumbled. ‘Can’t you come back later?’

‘No, I can’t,’ Kathy said, making little attempt to keep the exasperation out of her voice. ‘Let the girls cope with it for ten minutes. I need to speak to you now, in private.’

Mrs Rosenfeldt shrugged and led her through to a small storeroom at the back of the shop, in which there was a scrubbed wooden table and two chairs. They sat down facing each other across a pile of invoices and receipts.

‘I’ve told you all I know about the vandals. There’s nothing else I can say about Eleanor’s death.’

‘Not Eleanor. I want to talk to you about Meredith.’

Mrs Rosenfeldt raised her eyebrows. ‘Six months, and suddenly it’s so urgent?’

Kathy hardly knew how to begin. After Dr Botev’s ramblings, and surrounded now by the bustle of a changing present, the ghosts of the past seemed increasingly irrelevant.

‘Do you know anyone called Becky?’

‘Becky?’ Mrs Rosenfeldt’s eyes glittered suspiciously through her steel-rimmed glasses.

‘Yes. A friend of Meredith.’

‘Of course. I am Becky.’

‘You? Ah.’ Kathy smiled. She would never have associated the name with this severe little woman.

‘Why?’

‘We heard she had a friend called Becky, but didn’t know who it was. It doesn’t matter.’

It does, Kathy thought, but how? What thing from Mrs Rosenfeldt’s past could have touched Meredith?

‘When you first spoke to us, you said we should look out for Nazis. Did you really mean that? Surely all that was far in the past?’

‘Really?’ Mrs Rosenfeldt snapped. ‘You think Nazis disappeared because the war came to an end? They never disappear. Don’t you read the papers?’ She rubbed a stick-like thumb angrily on her bony wrist.

‘But not in Jerusalem Lane, surely. I mean, I know Meredith discovered that business about the Kowalskis’ past during the war, but that was, well, a tragedy. They were victims too, weren’t they?’

‘Oh, you think so?’ Kathy could see that Mrs Rosenfeldt was holding herself tight as a spring.

‘Don’t you?’ She smiled innocently at the rigid face. She thought for a moment that the old lady wouldn’t respond, then she saw the thin lips open.

‘Don’t tell me about victims, young woman!’ She spoke with an intensity that made her frail body shake. ‘I have seen victims! Adam Kowalski was never one. His students were victims. He was one of them . I know. I can smell them, the way you can smell dog shit.’

Her vehemence unnerved Kathy. ‘He’s a frail old man,’ she protested.

‘So? Even Nazi murderers get old.’

‘And you told Meredith this? That Adam Kowalski was a murderer?’

Mrs Rosenfeldt bowed her head in a gesture which Kathy thought rather evasive.

‘What has this got to do with Meredith’s death, really, Mrs Rosenfeldt? What did Adam Kowalski do to Meredith?’

Kathy saw from the woman’s dismissive shrug that this was not the right question.

‘Marie Kowalski, then?’

Warmer. Mrs Rosenfeldt’s fingers had developed a sudden interest in the paperwork on the table.

‘What do you know about Marie Kowalski?’

The gaunt figure didn’t respond, and Kathy felt herself become angry. She got abruptly to her feet and leaned forward across the table. ‘What about Marie Kowalski, Mrs Rosenfeldt?’ She was aware that her voice was loud, almost shouting. ‘Did you see something?’

When the old woman looked up to meet her eyes, Kathy saw, somewhat to her shame, that they were filled with fear.

‘She came…’ Mrs Rosenfeldt began, and then hesitated.

‘To see you?’

She nodded, lowered her eyes.

‘Marie Kowalski came to see you. Yes?’ Come on.

With a small effort at bluster, Mrs Rosenfeldt tossed her head. ‘And I told her. Of course I told her. They couldn’t escape just by running away to the seaside!’

Kathy sat down slowly and stared at her. Is that it? ‘You told her that Meredith would go on telling people about them?’