Deborah Crombie - Where Memories Lie

"Erika," Gemma managed to whisper, "why did you never tell me?"

"I thought-I thought it would only add to your pain. And I-I had never spoken of it to anyone. Not even-" She shook her head. "And we-David and I-he could never bear to touch me afterwards. Perhaps he felt I was defiled. But I think it was also that he felt he had failed me, failed himself, failed utterly as a man.

"He became a shell, a ghost of a man. Until he began to write his book and to speak with strangers in whispers. I never knew what he was writing, or who these people were. I suppose I was a coward myself, because I did not ask. It was only when Gavin told me what he suspected that I began to guess what David had been doing."

Of course Erika would have known Gavin, Gemma realized. He had interviewed her. She started to ask, but Erika began to speak again. "Perhaps David felt retribution would somehow absolve him. But if, on that day, he saw a photo of Joseph Mueller in an English newspaper-Mueller was here, in London?"

"In Chelsea. He lived not far from Cheyne Gardens."

"Chelsea? My God." Erika was trembling. She pressed her clasped hands to her lips, then dropped them again as she said, "I would never have thought to glance at the society page-such things had no interest for me. But David-David always read whatever newspaper he bought from front page to back. It was a compulsion. If he had seen that photo, he would have found where this man-"

"Miller."

Erika nodded. "Miller. Where Miller lived. But if David went to his house, how did he…"

Gemma finished it for her. "End up in Cheyne Gardens? Maybe Miller arranged to meet him there. To talk."

"Yes." Erika nodded. "David still expected people to talk, to be rational, even after everything that had happened."

"But Miller would never have allowed David to connect him with his past. It's said his money came from construction after the war, but he had to have started with something-"

"The profit from theft, and murder. Mueller, Miller," Erika said slowly. "His family must have been Germans who Anglicized their name. That would explain his fluency with the language, his knowledge of the countryside, how easy it was for him to go back to the German version of his name, to pretend to be German."

"If David found him, he would have had much to lose. And…he enjoyed violence."

"So he arranged to meet David, planning to kill him." Gemma felt certain of it now. "But was taking the manuscript just a bonus?"

Erika sighed. "David might have believed he could threaten him with it. How could he have been such a fool?"

"And instead, Miller took it and stripped David of any identification. But then you reported David missing, and identified his body. Miller hadn't counted on that. So he tried to have the investigation stopped."

"Gavin said the order came from the top," said Erika. "And if…Miller…had found out that Gavin had made the connection with the newspaper-"

"Gavin." Gemma looked at her friend with a sudden knowledge that wrenched her heart.

Erika met her eyes, but there was no need for her to speak.

"I read his notes," Gemma said after a moment. "He was a good man, and a good police officer. And I thought it very odd that he died just after he was told to leave off looking into David's murder."

"His superintendent said it was suicide, but I never believed it."

"If Gavin had shown you that day's paper-"

"I would have known who had killed David, and why," said Erika.

"If Miller heard from some of his pals that Gavin had connected David with vengeance groups, he might have thought it too close for comfort, even before Gavin made the connection with the newspaper photo," Gemma mused. "And if making a few discreet suggestions that David's death wasn't worth pursuing didn't do the trick-"

"Francis Tyrell, the superintendent, didn't seem to care for Jews. Perhaps Miller knew that it wouldn't take much urging to convince him."

"But Tyrell didn't convince Gavin Hoxley, so Miller arranged a meeting with him, an anonymous tip, perhaps-"

"Gavin," said Erika, her eyes bright with tears for the first time. "Gavin was a strong man. But he would not have known what he was facing. And if he'd thought he might learn something about David's murder, he wouldn't have rung me until he was certain. But he never had that chance."

"But what about the brooch?" asked Erika. "I still don't understand why that poor girl was killed. Or why the brooch was never sold in all those years."

"I'm afraid it's a bit more complicated than that." Gemma stood, and discovered that all her muscles had cramped, as if she'd been tied in knots for hours. "I'm going to make us some tea. And something to eat. Are there any biscuits?" She needed time to process what she'd learned, and she wasn't eager to tell Erika the things she hadn't yet been told.

"I made braune Zuckerplätzchen. Brown-sugar cookies. For Kit and Toby."

Gemma looked up from filling the kettle in surprise. Had she ever heard Erika speak German?

"I found myself wanting to remember things," Erika explained. "I hadn't had them since I was a child. They're in the tin."

The red-and-green tin, incongruously Christmassy, sat next to the cooker. Gemma put the comfortingly lumpy biscuits on a plate and got out cups and saucers. Erika, who usually quickly took charge in her own kitchen, sat and watched her without protest.

She looked exhausted, and yet it seemed to Gemma that some of the strain had gone from her face. And Gemma thought, as she often did, how beautiful Erika was, still, and wondered what she had been like when she had known Gavin Hoxley.

"Erika," she said, realizing something she had never consciously noticed as she popped tea bags into the pot and filled it from the kettle, "why don't you have any photos of yourself?" She didn't ask why there were none of David, not now.

"I brought nothing out of Germany." Erika gave a little shrug. "Not that it would have mattered, as things happened. And then, I don't know. David never touched a camera, and I-" She frowned. "I think there is one, taken not long after the war, by a neighbor. It's in the top drawer in the secretary."

Leaving the tea to steep, Gemma went into the sitting room and opened the top drawer of the little writing desk. Among the bills and pencils, she found a few loose photographs. Some were obviously more recent, taken in color, and were of Erika at various university functions. But there were a few in black and white at the bottom of the drawer, and these Gemma removed and took through into the kitchen.

They appeared to have been taken on the same day, and she recognized the communal garden behind Erika's house. The trees were in full leaf, and groups of people she didn't recognize smiled into the camera. The women wore sundresses and cotton blouses, the men had opened their collars and rolled up their sleeves.

"It was a victory party," Erika said. "That August. For those of us who had made it through."

And then Gemma found the photo. Erika must have been only a few years younger than Gemma, but she looked slight as a girl. Her dark hair was loose, and her deep brown eyes looked into the camera with the gravity that Gemma had come to know so well. She was astonishingly lovely.

Erika took the photo from her, gazing at it. "I remember her as if she were someone I knew once." She put the photo aside and took the teacup Gemma offered her. "Now," she said, "what is it you don't want to tell me?"

Elated by her success in finding the photo of Joss Miller in the same edition of the paper that had contained Erika Rosenthal's article, Melody was more than a little disappointed when Gemma wouldn't take her along to talk to Dr. Rosenthal.