With those words, Deadlight Hall’s shadows crept nearer, and the blind dead eye seemed to peer more intently through its smeary film.
Then Schönbrunn said, ‘Execution in a furnace room? Not worthy of you, Porringer, or your Nazi masters. Almost squalid, in fact. Or is it sufficiently bizarre to hold some distinction, I wonder?’
He turned to me as if for confirmation of this and, realizing he was playing for time, I said, ‘Squalid rather than bizarre, I’d have thought.’
Schönbrunn nodded, then set the torch on the floor as Porringer had ordered, angling it to shine on to the iron door. When he grasped the thick old handle it turned, and he pulled the door open. There was a faint sound as if ancient breath had been released, and a stench of old soot gusted out. For a moment I thought there was a movement in the corner near the furnace, almost as if our entrance had disturbed something, but it was only black beetles scurrying away from the light. Schönbrunn seemed hardly to notice. His eyes were already scanning the room, and I knew he was searching for a means of escape.
Porringer nudged the torch with his foot, so that the light fell more fully into the room, and gestured to us to move back to the wall. The furnace was on our left, and as the light fell across it, I saw that it had a round door, held in place by a long steel rod, placed diagonally and thrust into grooves. The rod would make a good weapon, but I could not see any means of snatching it from the door without Porringer seeing.
He seemed in no hurry to shoot us. Clearly he was relishing having the legendary Schönbrunn at his mercy, and would no doubt brag about it to his paymasters in Berlin.
Schönbrunn said, ‘What exactly is this place? Come now, Porringer, if this is to be our tomb, you can at least tell us where we are.’ He took an unobtrusive step towards the furnace, and my heart skipped a beat, because I knew he, too, had marked the steel rod.
‘We’re in the bowels of Deadlight Hall,’ said Porringer.
‘What is – or was – Deadlight Hall?’
Porringer gave a small shrug, and said, ‘A hundred years ago this house was a cross between an orphanage for the bastards of the rich and respectable, and what used to be called an Apprentice House. A sort of hostel for the orphans who were brought up here and sent to work in the local industries. As a matter of fact an ancestress of mine ran the place. Maria Porringer was her name.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought this part of the country would have much industry,’ I said, strongly aware of Schönbrunn taking another step nearer to the furnace, and wanting to keep Porringer’s attention on me.
‘There was more than you’d think,’ he said. ‘In particular there was a glass-making manufactory. Salamander House it was called. Most of the children who lived here worked there. It’s long since gone, of course.’
‘This house has a bad feeling. As if violent things have happened here.’
‘Oh, the locals will spin you any number of stories about Deadlight Hall,’ said Porringer. ‘No one will live here. It’s been empty for years, and—’
The sentence was never finished. Schönbrunn dived for the furnace door, seizing the steel rod and dragging it free, so that the door creaked slightly then began to swing open.
Faced with two victims in separate parts of the room, Porringer fired at me, but I had already dropped flat to the floor. (I may not be as resourceful as Schönbrunn, but I do have some instincts.) The bullet went harmlessly over my head and into the wall behind me. Tiny chips of stone and plaster flew out.
Schönbrunn did not waste time; he simply threw the steel bolt directly at Porringer. It caught the man a glancing blow and although it did not actually disable him, he instinctively threw up one hand in defence. In doing so the gun fell from his hands, clattering to the floor, and Schönbrunn snatched it up at once. Porringer bounded towards him, but then – I could not quite see how it happened – his body jerked abruptly backwards as if a string had been looped around his neck and tugged hard. He fell back, against the furnace, banging his head on its side. The round cover, already released by the removal of the steel rod, flew open, revealing the black yawning interior. Porringer scrabbled to get back to his feet, but he was slightly stunned by the blow to his head, and he could not get up.
Schönbrunn levelled the gun at his head. ‘Tell us where the Reiss twins are,’ he said, but Porringer seemed not to hear or understand. He was still half lying against the furnace, but he had grasped the rim of the opening and was using it as a lever to push himself back to his feet.
‘Listen to me, Porringer,’ said Schönbrunn very coldly. ‘If you don’t tell me where the Reiss twins are, I will shoot you in each ankle.’
Porringer shook his head, although whether in refusal or because he was trying to clear his head, I have no idea. I was in fact bracing myself for the sound of gunshot when the open furnace cover suddenly swung back, as if someone had pushed it to shut it. It was a massive, thick slab of iron and it crunched against Porringer’s head and on to his hands, which were still grasping the edges, knocking him halfway into the furnace’s mouth, and trapping him. He gave a dreadful grunting cry, and I sprang forward, grasping the edge of the door to pull it back.
‘Help me,’ I said to Schönbrunn, desperately. ‘It won’t move – it’s stuck – or the hinge has broken, or something. But it’s so heavy – it’s smashed the back of his skull half open—’
Schönbrunn thrust the gun in his belt and knelt next to me, at the side of the furnace. ‘Porringer,’ he said, ‘can you hear us? Listen then, if you tell me where the Reiss twins are, I’ll free you, I swear. I’ll get the door up somehow and we’ll get you out, and get you to an infirmary. But first tell me where they are.’
Porringer was struggling, and blood was dripping from his hands, which were trapped between the edges of the door, and he was shouting for help, his cries echoing hollowly from within the furnace.
But when Schönbrunn rapped out that question, Porringer said, ‘Damn you, no!’
‘For pity’s sake, man—’
‘You’ll only – shoot me – as a spy …’ The words were slurred and distorted and blood was running from his neck. Schönbrunn and I exchanged glances.
‘You won’t necessarily be shot,’ said Schönbrunn. ‘You could change sides. Become a double agent. I’d help you.’ I knew he would have promised Porringer almost anything to find out what had happened to the twins. ‘Where’s the torch?’ he said to me, urgently. ‘Shine it on to the door’s hinges. Between us we can lever it open, surely.’
Porringer’s lower body was twitching spasmodically, and he was groaning. Schönbrunn and I grasped the edges of the door, and threw all our weight into pulling it open. In the cold torchlight we could both see that blood had spattered the iron – blood, with tiny splinters of bone in it. I began to feel sick. As you know I am apt to be annoyingly squeamish.
But I said, with as much force as I could, ‘Porringer, tell us. We’re trying to get you free, but tell us about the twins, and we’ll do our best to help you.’
But either Porringer would not or could not speak by now, and I said, ‘We must get him out. There’s blood and brain matter spilling out. We can’t leave him like this—’
‘If there was something we could use as a series of wedges to force the lid open,’ said Schönbrunn, looking round the room, ‘we could get him out and to an infirmary.’
‘Should one of us try to find a doctor? There’d be one in the village – Mrs Battersby would know, I could ask her. Or if her husband’s still prowling around upstairs …’
‘I think Battersby must have gone,’ said Schönbrunn. ‘If he was still here he’d have heard us and come down to investigate. As for going in search of a doctor – by the time we managed to get one here …’ He looked at the trapped man and gave an expressive shrug.
‘Also,’ I said, very softly, ‘to do any of that would blow our cover.’
‘Quite. Dammit, there must be something we can do.’
That was when we heard the other sounds. A kind of rhythmic ticking, like the heartbeat of some invisible creature. We both looked towards the door leading out to the dark passage, but nothing moved. Then came a dull roar. At first I had no idea what it was, then Schönbrunn said in a voice of extreme horror, ‘Dear God, it’s the furnace.’
‘What—?’
‘It’s firing,’ he said.
‘It can’t be.’
‘But it is. Can’t you smell the hot iron? The door mechanism must have released something – set something working. If we don’t get him out in the next few minutes he’ll burn alive. His face—’
The thick pipes feeding the furnace were already scorchingly hot, and the smell of hot iron was increasing.
The torch spluttered and the battery died. We were in the pitch dark.
Porringer’s screams will, I believe, echo through my nightmares until I die. It is a terrible thing to hear the screams of a man whose brain has been partly crushed, and whose face is about to be burned off by the roaring heat of an ancient furnace.
After the first few nightmare minutes the darkness was not quite so absolute, because a flickering light began to glow from the furnace. That meant we could at least see what we were doing, but it would not have mattered if a hundred suns had shone down on us, or if a thousand bright lights had poured into the room, because there was nothing we could do to save Porringer.
If we had known how to disable the furnace that might have saved him, but we did not know, and we did not dare waste time trying to find out. Instead, we tore our hands to shreds trying to get the door open. To no avail. The door resisted our efforts as firmly as if something was leaning heavily against it, or as if – and this really will convince you I went temporarily mad in that hellish place – as if something on the inside was pulling hard on it to prevent it being opened. In the end, the heat became so unbearable that eventually we were forced to stop. Even so, we both had badly blistered hands for some days.
I cannot tell you how long it took Porringer to die, because time ceased to exist in that hellish place. The glow from the furnace turned the room into something from one of the ancient visions of hell. Our shadows, distorted and grotesque, moved across the old stone walls, and more than once I thought other shadows moved with them. Smaller, more fragile silhouettes, their arms outstretched. The old deadlight set into the room’s iron door was bathed in the sullen light; it watched us unblinkingly.
Porringer was screaming, and there was a stench of burning flesh – I cannot find words to describe that, nor is it something that should be described. But at one stage the nausea overwhelmed me, and I was sick, helplessly and messily, spattering on the floor. I think Porringer was dead by that time, for the sounds from the furnace had ceased.
One of the most bizarre, most sinister aspects of the entire incident was that once Porringer was dead, the furnace began to cool. The angry glow faded and the sound of the pipes clanking and growling ceased. There was a ticking as the metal cooled.
We left him – what remained of him – in that room, closing the iron-bound door, and groping our way back through the dark passages. I could not stop thinking about that smeared, blinded deadlight, and how it had seemed to watch everything that happened. That is something else that is in my nightmares.
I suppose Porringer’s body will be found sometime, but I am not sure if it will be possible for it to be identified. I don’t know if there will be enough of it left.
Schönbrunn and I walked rather shakily from the furnace room. Neither of us spoke. Both of us wanted, I believe, to simply reach the good fresh air and the normal world, and to get away from Deadlight Hall as fast as we could.
Neither of us can explain what happened to Porringer. There was no one else with us in the furnace room. It can only be that when Porringer fell against the furnace, the cover was dislodged by his fall and the hinges broke, so that when it swung closed, it somehow locked into place. That, we have agreed, is the likeliest explanation.
But we cannot explain how the furnace itself fired.
As we went up the stone steps to the main hall, Schönbrunn said, ‘There was no trace of the twins here, was there?’ and I heard a note of appeal in his voice.
‘No trace whatsoever. We’ve done all we can here to find them.’
‘Did he really know anything, do you suppose?’ I said, as we crossed the big hall. ‘Because there was that hesitation when we asked him.’
‘I marked that, as well. But …’ He stopped. ‘Listen.’
‘I can’t hear anything,’ I began, then broke off, because I was hearing it now. Through the dim dereliction of Deadlight Hall came the strange and vaguely sinister call we had heard earlier.
‘Children, where are you?’
‘It’s Mr Battersby,’ I said, but even I could hear the uncertain note in my voice.
‘I don’t think it is,’ said Schönbrunn, speaking quietly as if fearful of being overheard.
‘Then who?’
‘I have no idea.’
We went out of the old house without waiting to find out who was calling for the children – I don’t think either of us really wanted to know who it was. We stood for a moment, thankfully breathing in the fresh air, then we drove back to Oxford and our lodgings.
As to Sophie and Susannah Reiss, we still have no information. Porringer wanted us to believe Mengele had them, of that we are sure. And yet there was that hesitation. But we shall not stop trying to find out what happened to them.
Tomorrow I am going to London, and I will follow the twins’ trail from another source – that of the Prague golem that they took when they were smuggled out of Warsaw. It is just faintly possible that whoever took the girls will have tried to sell it – it’s so obviously valuable that it would be a considerable temptation. It’s also sufficiently unusual to be remembered. I have a few contacts in the jewellery quarter of London and I shall approach them – using extreme discretion, of course. I am not very optimistic about finding anything, but it is an avenue that must be explored.
As always, my best regards to you,
M.B.
London 1944
Dear J.W.
Forgive the rather long silence between letters, but since reaching London I have been very much involved in the search for the golem. Sadly, my cautious forays into the jewellery quarters of London have provided no information at all. My approaches met with courtesy and efficiency, but no one could help. One fine old auction house here – Ashby’s by name – has promised to correspond with me if they do hear of such an item being offered, and I have given the name and address of my bank for any possible letters. I am not, though, very hopeful.
I had to put off writing this letter for a while – the Luftwaffe had mounted one of their raids on London, and it was necessary to make for the nearest air-raid shelter. It was full of all kinds of people, and they passed round beer and sandwiches, after which they sang an extraordinary song which referred in the most derogatory of fashions to the physical, and very personal, limitations of the Führer and Herr Himmler. Schönbrunn sang as enthusiastically as anyone (I have no idea how he knew the words) and after the second verse I too found myself joining in. Then the All Clear sirens sounded and everyone went back into the streets and on their separate ways. These are remarkable experiences, even for people such as Schönbrunn and myself, who have seen cities laid waste and devastating tragedy across half of Europe.
Three days ago Schönbrunn heard, through one of his networks of informers and spies, that Dr Mengele currently has three sets of twins in his laboratories – and that two of the sets are girls around the age of the Reiss twins and closely match their descriptions. I do not need to tell you what a bitter blow this is. It may not be Sophie and Susannah, of course, but we dare not take any chances. Schönbrunn is making plans to leave England. His eyes shine with that reckless light, and there is the sense that the air around him crackles with an electrical force.
He has not asked if I will accompany him when he leaves England. I have no idea what I shall say if he does.
My good wishes to you,
M.B
London
1944
My dear J.W.
This morning a letter was delivered to my lodgings from Schönbrunn.
It seems that he left England four days ago and is now on his way to Oswiecim. My heart sinks even to write the name. For you and I, my good friend, know that the name of Oswiecim has been changed by the Nazis. And that it is now known as Auschwitz.
Auschwitz. The name strikes such terror into the soul.
Schönbrunn, cautious as a cat, puts no details of his plans in the letter, and clearly he arranged for it to be delivered after he had left, so that I could not try to dissuade him. Would I have done so? I have no idea.
He says nothing of how he intends to get into the camp, but of course that is what he means to do. You and I know he has got into other concentration camps, and has managed to bring out several of our people. But this is Auschwitz.
He has said he does not wish me to accompany him. ‘You would never pass unnoticed, my friend,’ he says, and I know this to be true. I cannot blend into a crowd; I cannot appear or sound anonymous. He also writes, ‘If you do not hear from me, do not assume I have failed.’
I think I do not need to say he will rescue the children whether they are Sophie and Susannah Reiss or not – assuming any rescue to be possible, you understand. But, as with everyone who has ever known Schönbrunn, I have utter faith in him. I cannot imagine he will go unchallenged on his journey, but you and I both know his capacity for creating an illusion – both of appearance and of nationality.
I intend to remain here for a little longer, following my own search for the golem.
My good wishes, as always, and a hope that I shall be with you again before too long – as well as a hope that the families we all know will one day be reunited.
M.B.