As Alice took a cautious step on to a lower stair, from the street door a voice said, ‘I am the Kreisleiter for this part of the City, Herr Kline, and it was I who gave the order for your arrest.’ And this time the horror engulfed her entire body.
The voice was the voice of a man she would never forget. A man who, all those years ago, had caused her to be thrown out of his parents’ house into the street.
Leo Dreyer. Miss Nina’s brother.
Alice pressed back into the shadowy curve of the stair at once. She was shaking uncontrollably, and she was more frightened than she had ever been in her entire life.
Conrad recognized Leo, of course. In a startled voice, he said, ‘Dreyer? What the devil is all this? For God’s sake tell these men they’ve made a mistake.’
‘No mistake has been made, Herr Kline.’ The voice was no longer that of the young man in the Vienna house; it was colder, more authoritative, and Alice recognized that it was laced with rancour. Was Dreyer still bitter against Conrad for abandoning his sister, and was it possible that he was using his position in the Nazi Party to mete out a punishment he thought due? Hardly daring to breathe, Alice edged a little way out of the shadows and peered down into the foyer. Yes, it was Dreyer all right.
‘You are to be taken to a place where you will be kept with other Jews,’ said Leo Dreyer. ‘We are seeking them all out, and we shall find them, Herr Kline, be very sure that we shall find them.’ A pause. ‘We shall also find their families, and those they consort with,’ he said, and Alice felt a fresh wave of fear. Their families, and those they consort with…
At Dreyer’s signal, the soldiers pushed Conrad through the main doors and out into the street. There was the sound of several car engines being revved, and then the cars snarled away into the darkness. By the time Alice, still barefoot, had tumbled down the remaining stairs and reached the pavement outside, the cars were out of sight and there was nothing except the swirling exhaust fumes tainting the sweet-scented spring night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The spacious apartment rooms that Alice had furnished with such delight no longer provided the haven they once had done.
We are seeking them all out, the Schutzstaffeln man had said. We are seeking out all the Jews, and their families and those they consort with…
Their families. Alice was not especially concerned for herself, but there was Deborah, sweet, helpless, trustful Deborah, who was known to be Conrad’s daughter. But surely they would not harm children, not even those steel-eyed, rat-trapped SS men would do that, not even Leo Dreyer with the bitter hatred burning in his face.
And yet…
And yet she found herself whisking around the apartment, flinging clothes into suitcases, calculating and planning as she did so, and rapping out orders to Deborah’s nurse, who only partly understood what was going on, but who had heard the marching soldiers in the streets earlier on and had grasped that this was not just one of Madame’s tantrums. She dragged out suitcases under her mistress’s directions, stammering fearful questions. Where were they going? How were they to travel? Alice stopped in the middle of her bedroom for a moment, her mind working.
‘England,’ she said, very positively. And then, seeing the woman’s surprise, said, ‘It’s perfectly possible if you keep your head and do exactly what I tell you. You have your passport here, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, from when I first came to you from Eindhoven, madame, but—’
‘Good.’ Alice spared a moment to thank whatever gods might be most appropriate that when she engaged a nurse she had chosen a Dutch girl who had at least travelled a little and who possessed a passport. ‘Then listen carefully. What you must do is to take Deborah now – tonight—’