It was smart, as all the villas were out in the affluent suburbs west of Berlin: Schlachtensee, Nikolassee, Wannsee, Griebnitzsee. Groups of large, turn-of-the-century villas with gravel drives and high gates that allowed only a glimpse of a world framed by curly wrought iron, of sunlit lawns screened by abundant pines. It was the heartland of Berlin’s aristocracy. Back in their heyday, in the 1900s, there would have been carriages in the drives and families photographed on the front steps, plump men in swallowtail coats and ladies in wide hats, flanked by their servants. There would be dances that went on until dawn, with fairy lights strung in the trees and views across the lakes. All the big house owners were rich industrialists, lawyers and bankers; patriarchs with wide moustaches who were a picture of confident prosperity. Many of them were Jewish, and they had plenty of good taste to go with their money. They hung their halls with fine art and their gardens were garnished with statuary. But in 1933 everything changed. Most of the owners were moved out of their villas as fast as it took to pack a suitcase. Some of the new residents reported finding the coffee pots still warm.
The Faith and Beauty home was an ornately decorated house whose builder had, in common with many around here, regarded the Austrian Tyrol as the apogee of architectural sophistication. Stained-glass windows and Jugendstil decoration were garnished with a pair of antlers affixed above the doorway. Little gables and cross timbers gave it the air of a hunting lodge plucked from the Bavarian countryside and transported intact to the plush districts that edged up against the Grunewald’s dark heart.
Inside, sun swirled up to the icing sugar cornices of the high ceiling, filling the room with a wash of pale gold. An early bee butted softly on the window, like an inaccurate bomber failing to reach its target. An opened window carried the smell of grass on the breeze and as she waited Clara glimpsed a group of girls practising gymnastics on the lawn, shiny braids swaying in unison. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of clear girls’ voices singing a marching hymn to the Führer.
Uns’re Fahne flattert uns voran.
Uns’re Fahne ist die neue Zeit.
Und die Fahne führt uns in die Ewigkeit!
Ja! Die Fahne ist mehr als der Tod!
Our banner flutters before us.
Our banner represents the new time.
Our banner leads us to eternity!
Yes! Our banner means more to us than death!
Their singing unfurled into the air, rising and falling in uncertain counterpoint, a tapestry of sound that occasionally achieved harmony but then frayed and fell apart. Every now and then it was interrupted by the staccato of the singing instructor. ‘Enough! Again! I remind you, ladies, the Führer requires perfection!’
Clara had deliberately arrived a few minutes early to allow for a look around. As she stood in the hall, she felt the glance of passing girls sweep over her. It might have been recognition, but it felt different, as prickling and hostile as stinging nettles, as though her intrusion in their domain was some kind of threat. But a threat to what? To their privacy, their togetherness, their beliefs? Or was it merely the natural distrust that any stranger inspired after the recent trauma that had taken place in their midst?
Hedwig Holz came hurrying down the stairs, apologizing as she went. She had changed since the last time Clara had seen her. Her face was taut with misery and her eyes grey and hooded. She stood before Clara, pushing the sleeves of her smock up and then pulling them down again.
‘Shall we go in the garden?’ Clara suggested.
They navigated the path past the gymnasts towards a bed where a display of tulips stood to attention at the end of the lawn. Even the grass was of a higher quality here, soft and springy, its fragrance floating in the air. As the two women passed, the crunch of their feet on the gravel turned curious probing eyes on them.
‘Thank you for your call, Hedwig. Can I call you Hedwig?’
‘Please.’ A quick smile that lifted her features. ‘Though I hate my name actually. There’s only one person who doesn’t call me Hedwig and he calls me Hedy.’
‘I’ve just been in France. There they would call you Edwige.’
‘Would they? That sounds so much better. Edwige. It’s beautiful. I’d love to visit France. Lotti promised that if we joined the Faith and Beauty we would end up visiting all sorts of foreign places.’
‘Was that why she wanted you to join?’
‘I suppose. She said she wasn’t going to be some old hausfrau, shuffling around in slippers with a load of brats at her ankles. She was going to travel. She wanted to live somewhere glamorous. She had expectations.’
Hedwig used this word reverently, as if it conjured all the magic of foreign places, of haute couture and a life where she would never again wear her hair in braids or sit around with a hundred identical girls sharing the greasy contents of an Eintopf stew.
They walked past the flowerbeds and through an arch of budding roses, towards the dapple of sun and blur of shadow at the end of the lawn. Beyond it lay the fringe of forest separating the order of the garden from the wild and unknown. Conrad Adler’s comment came into Clara’s head. There’s a narrow boundary that separates the savage from the civilized. Here, in this temple to female purity, that boundary had grown thin and permeable and savagery had seeped in.
‘That’s where they found her.’
At the edge of the trees Clara could see a flutter of tape marking off an area of the ground.
‘We’re not allowed to go near.’
Clara wanted more details, and thought about asking Hedwig outright, but she seemed like the kind of girl who would clam up at a direct question. She was the kind who let her twisting hands and involuntary glances do the talking.
‘Did she often go into the woods?’
Hedwig was kicking at the gravel with her foot, scuffing it and turning over the stones.
‘She used to say that solitude was essential for the development of character. She was quite a private person.’ Clara remembered the composed and secretive smile that Lotti gave. ‘She said that was what was wrong with our country – I’m sorry, Fräulein Vine – that people were never alone. She felt it was impossible to be a creative person if you didn’t have solitude.’
‘But why could she not be alone?’
‘You don’t know what it’s like here. All the women in one group stay together throughout their membership. In that time we’re encouraged to share everything – we eat together and learn together and sing together. It’s hard to feel different. They don’t want you to. But other people don’t realize that.’
Clara did. She had felt it standing there in the hall. A silent sense, like pheromones in a hive. She could feel the emotion in the place pressing up against the walls, all eyes alert, hearts beating as one, the sense that everyone there was part of something bigger than themselves. That was a powerful emotion. It was the emotion that the Third Reich relied on. It was the kind of emotion that could move mountains.
‘Most of the people here have known each other since they were girls, anyway. All their parents know each other too. Lotti and I were the only ones who came from the east of Berlin. That’s good, I suppose. They always used to point Lotti out to visitors, to prove that there was nothing stopping a girl from an ordinary background being special in the Reich.’
They stared together, into the blurred shadows.
‘So was there a reason that you asked to see me?’
‘I should have told you this before. I think . . .’ An instinctive glance behind her. ‘I might have a thought about why Lotti was killed.’
Her voice had layers of secrecy in it. She was concealing something.
‘You said there was a boyfriend, and that she was frightened of him?’
‘That’s true. But it’s about something that happened, just before she died. It was a Saturday like this, and Lotti came into the house. She had make-up on but her face was dirty and you could see the tear stains on her cheeks. She laughed a little when she saw me – she always laughed – but I could see something was wrong. She was late to the art class and I know she had spent the night with him. She was flustered, which was so unlike her, Lotti was always perfectly turned out. Anyway, after the class was finished, she came out here and told me a secret. She said she’d stolen something.’
Her words hung in the air, glinting with meaning.
‘I had to promise not to tell anyone else about it. She was very aggressive. She frightened me. She made me swear on my life.’
‘What was it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And where is it now?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Didn’t you ask her?’
‘I would have done. But that was the last day I saw her. The next thing I knew, they found her body.’
Hedwig swallowed, reliving the horror of the moment.
‘I’ve tried so hard to think what she stole and where it might be. I visited her parents and went into her bedroom, saying I wanted to spend a last moment alone with Lotti, and I searched everywhere but there was no sign of anything.’
As they walked back to the house the high clear voices of the girls were finally rising in harmony, coming together in clear, pleasing unison in their hymn to the Führer.
‘The only thing she said was, “It’s precious, Hedwig. It’s more precious than you can imagine. There are a lot of big people in Germany who would kill for this.”’
Clara had a sudden, spiky sense of dread. Perhaps the murder of Lotti Franke was not, after all, the random act of a lone madman. Perhaps it had roots that went deeper. Roots that stretched and touched and entangled others, and ultimately reached out to the darkest places of the Reich.