The Marx Sisters

25

There had been a slight thaw the previous afternoon, followed by a sharp drop in temperature during the night, so that the snow and slush had now solidified into rutted, glazed mounds of ice. When she got out of the car, Kathy had to pick her way carefully across the pavement and down the short drive leading to the front door of the semidetached house. Like most of the originally identical pebble-dash houses on the street, this one had been through several cycles of improvement, the original timber casements of its bow windows replaced by modern aluminium windows with mock diamond pane patterning, and a recent bedroom extension inserted into its tiled roof. The drive was almost the only one on this Saturday morning not occupied by a car, and its surface had not been cleared of snow.

It took Dr Botev so long to come to the door that Kathy almost gave up. Then she heard a shuffling from the inside, the door opened a little, and the doctor’s thick lenses peered out at her.

‘Kathy Kolla, doctor. From the police. I phoned half an hour ago.’

He led her through a small hallway made almost impassable by open cardboard removal cartons, and into the front room where more boxes were heaped so that an orange settee and armchairs resembled life rafts floating in a sea of wreckage. He sat down heavily without a word, leaving her to clear a pile of old towels off a seat opposite him. After the cold outside, the warmth of the central heating was suffocating and she unbuttoned her coat.

‘Nice street,’ she smiled at him, hiding her shock at seeing him so changed. He had lost at least twenty pounds, his shoulders sagged, his complexion was grey, and the stubble on his chin had grown into a bristly white beard stained yellow around the mouth.

‘How long ago did you move in?’

He stared at her for a moment, then mumbled, ‘October.’

Five months, she thought, and not a single box unpacked.

‘What are the neighbours like?’

He shook his head vaguely and seemed to withdraw into the cushions of the armchair. Kathy wondered if it had been a mistake to sit down.

‘Look,’ she said as she got to her feet, ‘would you think it rude if I made us a cup of tea? I’m gasping for one.’

He looked up at her, vaguely surprised.

‘Could you show me where the kitchen is?’

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?’

Mrs Rosenfeldt’s head dropped low so that Kathy found herself staring at the silver bun of her hair. It was a nod of acknowledgement.

‘When was this?’

‘That afternoon.’ The voice was a whisper. ‘The afternoon she died.’

‘Marie Kowalski called on Mrs Rosenfeldt shortly after 2 that afternoon.’

Brock put down the draft report he had been reading to listen to Kathy, who was slightly out of breath from the speed with which she’d taken the stairs.

‘She came to say goodbye,’ Kathy continued. ‘She had never realized that it was Mrs Rosenfeldt who had been stirring the pot over Meredith’s discovery. For months Mrs Rosenfeldt had been telling Meredith she should do something about it, to unmask the Kowalskis. I think that’s what had been getting Meredith down. She didn’t know what to do for the best. Mrs Rosenfeldt was pretty formidable once she got an idea in her head.

‘That afternoon she just couldn’t let Marie get away without putting the knife in. She told her that she could expect big trouble. Their names would be in the papers. Meredith would see to it. Marie left at around 2.15 in a state. Three hours later Mrs Rosenfeldt heard that Meredith was dead, and drew her own conclusions. But she couldn’t tell us directly without revealing that she had inflamed the problem. I think she feels as guilty now as if she’d killed Meredith with her own hands.’

‘The past is a jealous mother.’ Brock repeated the phrase and shook his head. ‘It doesn’t sound like Dr Botev.’

‘I think he was quoting. An old Bulgarian proverb probably.’

‘Well, we’d better find out PDQ exactly what the Kowalskis’ movements were that afternoon.’

‘I think we know, sir.’ Kathy frowned. ‘I’m sorry. It’s in the file and I never realized. DC Mollineaux was still checking when the investigation was closed. His report was added to the file later, and I didn’t know it was there. I phoned him just a moment ago, and he told me.’

She opened the file she was carrying. ‘The book dealer in Notting Hill where Adam Kowalski and his son Felix went to dispose of the final load of books confirmed to Mollineaux that they arrived around 1.45 p.m., and were there for about thirty minutes. Then the van rental place in Camden Town turned up their records which showed the van was returned at 3.05 p.m. Marie must have been on her own in the Lane from about 1.30 p.m. to 2.30 p.m. or a bit later.’

‘That was what Adam Kowalski told us, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. It was Felix who said they were back around 2.00 p.m.’

Brock looked at his watch. ‘Looks like another trip to the seaside, Kathy. Let’s grab one of Mrs Rosenfeldt’s meat pies before we go. Bren says they’re excellent.’