In the living room, Michael and Carl were playing the same passage on the piano over and over, with variations in tempo and tone that were too subtle for me. The repetition began grating on me.
The door to the sunroom opened and Lotty came into the hall, pale but composed. “Sorry, Max,” she murmured. “Sorry to leave you alone to deal with him, but I couldn’t face him. Nor could Carl, apparently—he came in to castigate me for refusing to join you upstairs. Now I gather Carl has returned to the world of music, leaving this one in our possession.”
“Lotty.” Max held up a hand. “If you and Carl want to keep fighting, take it someplace else. Neither of you had anything to contribute to what was going on upstairs. But one thing I would like to know—”
The doorbell interrupted him—Morrell, returning with Don.
“He must live close by,” I said. “You were hardly gone a minute.”
Morrell came over to me. “He asked to be dropped at a place where he could get a cab. Which frankly I was happy to do. A little of the guy goes far with me, so I left him in front of the Orrington, where there’s a taxi stand.”
“Did you get his address?”
Morrell shook his head. “I asked when we got into the car, but he announced he would go home by cab.”
“I tried asking for it, too,” Don said, “because of course I want to interview him, but he’d decided we were an untrustworthy bunch.”
“Ah, nuts,” I said. “Now I’m back to square one with finding him. Unless I can track the cab.”
“Did he say anything upstairs?” Lotty asked. “Anything about how he came to think his name was Radbuka?”
I leaned against Morrell, swaying with fatigue. “Just more mumbo jumbo about these mystery documents of his father. Foster father. And how they proved Ulrich was part of the Einsatzgruppen.”
“What’s that?” Agnes asked, her blue eyes troubled.
“Special forces that committed special atrocities in eastern Europe during the war,” Max said tersely. “Lotty, since you’re feeling better, I would like some information from you now: who is Sofie Radbuka? I think you might explain to me, and to Vic here, why it had such an effect on you.”
“I told Vic,” Lotty said. “I told her the Radbukas were one of the families that you inquired about for our group of friends in London.”
I’d been about to suggest to Morrell that we go home, but I wanted to hear what Lotty would say to Max. “Could we sit down?” I asked Max. “I’m dead on my feet.”
“Victoria, of course.” Max ushered us into the living room, where Carl and Michael were still fiddling with their music.
Michael looked over at us. He told Carl they could finish the discussion on the way to Los Angeles and came over to sit next to Agnes. I pictured Michael with his cello stuck between his legs in an airplane seat, bowing the same twelve measures over and over while Carl played them on his clarinet at a different pace.
“You haven’t eaten, have you?” Morrell said to me. “Let me try to rustle you up a snack—you’ll feel better.”
“You didn’t get dinner?” Max exclaimed. “All this upheaval is erasing ordinary courtesy from my mind.”
He sent one of the waiters to the kitchen for a tray of leftovers and drinks. “Now, Lotty, it’s your turn on the hot seat. I’ve respected your privacy all these years and I will continue to do so. But you need to explain to us why the name Sofie Radbuka rattled you so badly this evening. I know I looked for Radbukas for you in Vienna after the war. Who were they?”
“It wasn’t the name,” Lotty said. “It was the whole aspect of that—” She broke off, biting her lip like a schoolgirl, when she saw Max gravely shake his head.
“It—it was someone at the hospital,” Lotty muttered, looking at the carpet. “At the Royal Free. Who didn’t want their name public.”
“So that was it,” Carl said with a venom that startled all of us. “I knew it at the time. I knew it and you denied it.”
Lotty flushed, a wave of crimson almost as dark as her jacket. “You made such stupid accusations that I didn’t think you deserved an answer.”
“About what?” Agnes asked, as bewildered as I was.
Carl said, “You must have realized by now that Lotty and I were lovers for some years in London. I thought it would be forever, but that’s because I didn’t know Lotty had married medicine.”
“Unlike you and music,” Lotty snapped.
“Right,” I said, leaning over to serve myself scalloped potatoes and salmon from the tray the waiter had brought. “You both had strong senses of vocation. Neither of you would budge. Then what happened?”