There was no particular need for stealth – if challenged, we had only to say we were strangers to the area and curious about a local landmark – but we both moved quietly and cautiously. Sch?nbrunn and I have been in some strange places and menacing situations during the last two or three years, but I don’t think either of us had ever encountered anywhere as eerie as Deadlight Hall.
As we paused in the doorway, I said, very softly, ‘There’s no sign of the figure we saw. It was at that window by the door, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Sch?nbrunn produced a torch and shone it warily. ‘There’s thick dust on the floor,’ he said. ‘But it’s undisturbed, as if no one has walked in this hall for a very long time.’
‘No footprints,’ I said, and as I spoke, I felt as if something cold and unpleasant twisted at my stomach. ‘And yet to get to that window a person would have to cross the floor.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘Perhaps we didn’t see anyone after all. Perhaps it was a trick of the light.’
‘I think there was someone there,’ said Sch?nbrunn. ‘He – it could even have been a she – was standing in that window recess, looking out.’ He frowned, then said, with decision, ‘We mustn’t become distracted. We’re here to search the house, nothing more. Because if we’re believing that woman’s story, it’s from here that the twins vanished that night. So we need to find out if there are any clues.’
‘The police searched the house,’ I said, uneasily. ‘Mrs Battersby said so.’
‘Yes, but the police wouldn’t have been looking for the kind of clue we’re looking for.’
‘What kind of clue are we looking for?’
‘I don’t know until we find it,’ he said, which was exasperating, but Sch?nbrunn can be very exasperating sometimes.
‘But it was the depths of winter when they vanished. If they wanted to run away, wouldn’t they have waited for better weather?’
‘It would depend on why they ran,’ he said, then, with a note of near-violence, ‘I hope they did run away,’ he said. ‘Because if they didn’t, it means they were taken.’ Taken by Mengele’s people … Taken because he wanted Sophie and Susannah Reiss inside Auschwitz, and his agents had specific orders … The thought was in both our minds.
‘So,’ said Sch?nbrunn briskly, ‘it’s imperative that we pick up their trail. You marked what the Battersby woman said about people thinking there’d been a stranger hanging around – offering the schoolchildren sweets?’
‘Oh yes.’
Neither of us needed to say more. Both of us were aware of Dr Mengele’s behaviour inside Auschwitz; of how he played the part of a kindly uncle, securing the children’s trust by giving them sweets and sugar lumps, all the time luring them closer to the door of his laboratories.
Forcing the images away, I said, ‘Where shall we start?’
We surveyed the hall. I suppose we had expected to encounter a scene of dereliction, but although the plasterwork was peeling and the floorboards were dull and scarred, it was not as bad as we had expected. There was a stench of damp and mildew, but there was none of the miscellaneous, often squalid rubbish so frequently seen in abandoned buildings. You and I, my friend, have seen too many of those since our country was ravaged. I sometimes think I shall never wash away the clinging stench of bomb-damaged, smoke-blackened ruins.
Sch?nbrunn said, ‘They’d keep the children together, I think, so it’s likely they’d use the biggest rooms.’
‘Here on the ground floor.’
‘Yes. Let’s start here, at any rate.’
I don’t know what we expected to find, but what we did find, in an inner room, at least confirmed Mrs Battersby’s story. Carved on a wall, low down, at child height, was the Jewish symbol for S. I do not need to describe it to you, my friend, but to both of us, that mark was as clear as a curse. Sophie and Susannah Reiss had indeed been here – they had left their initial.
‘It’s reassuring on one level and terrifying on another,’ I said, straightening up from examining the mark. ‘And why would they leave their initial here?’
‘It needn’t be sinister,’ he said. ‘Did you never carve your initials on a schoolroom desk?’
‘I don’t think so.’