Free Death in Berlin by M. M. Kaye Page B

see anyone going in or coming out of it, and I’ve never met anyone who has even seen a face at one of the windows. But I suppose there must be a collection of comrades circulating around somewhere inside it. That? … That’s a circus that’s doing a season here. Very good one. I went with a party one night. We must take Lottie, she’d love it. That’s the Funkturm. Sort of Eiffel Tower effect. You can go up it in a lift and have a look at Berlin from the top, or eat in the restaurant in that bulgy bit halfway
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    up __ if you can afford it. It’s supposed to be the highest building with the highest prices in Berlin; one of those places where they soak you ten bob for a cup of tea and fifteen-and-six for a biscuit to go with it. That’s the Naafi building, where you’ll do a good bit of your shopping; this used to be called Adolf Hitler Platz, but it’s now called the Reichskanzler Platz. Here we are; out you get. Down that paved path and the door’s straight ahead of you. Run,
    or you’ll get wet.’
    Robert had decided that it was better for them to spend the first night at the Families’ Hostel, so that Stella need not bother with meals and housekeeping while taking over the new house, which they would move into on the following day.
    The hostel was a large, tall building where they were taken up in a lift and then down a long passage, vaguely reminiscent of a hospital, to two rooms on the third floor. There were sounds of splashing from an adjoining bathroom, and Lottie’s voice and Mademoiselle’s singing ‘Malbrouck s’en va t’en guerre’.
    The Melvilles’ luggage was carried into the larger bedroom, the smaller one being already strewn with toys and redolent of caraway seeds. Stella went off to talk to Lottie, and Robert turned to the German who had carried up the suitcases: ‘Where is this lady going? We need another room. A single room for thefrâulein.’
    The man nodded cheerfully. ‘Jaja. Thefrŕulein will come with me, please.’
    He led Miranda back down the passage, and after several turnings ushered her into a small room that looked down upon an open concrete space and the ruined shell of a bombed building, and departed.
    Miranda pushed open the window and stood looking out at the grey sky and the falling rain, and down at the ruined walls.
    So this was Berlin! It had sounded so exciting. ‘Where are you going for a holiday this year, Miranda?’ ‘I’m going to Berlin!’ ‘Berlin? My dear, what fun! Bring us back some lovely cut-glass and don’t get arrested by the Russians!’
    Well, she was here; and she wished passionately that she was
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    back again in the tiny flat near Sloane Street. Oh, how right Stella had been! Travelling in foreign countries was all very well when things went smoothly, but when everything went crazily awry, as they had last night, it was an additional horror that one was in a strange land and surrounded by unfamiliar things and people. She had not felt like this - frightened and unsure and lost - since she was a small girl wandering through terrible, ruined streets and crying for parents whom she was never to see again.
    It was not only the sight of a murdered man that had brought those days back, dragging them out of that dark attic in her mind into which her conscious and subconscious mind had thrust them. She should never have come here, to this shattered city where the very language in the streets tugged at shadowy memories that were better forgotten.
    :fť.
     
    Robert had left for the barracks, and Stella, Mademoiselle and Lottie had all gone off to see the new house. There had not been room for Miranda in the Volkswagen.
    ‘Are you sure you don’t mind being abandoned like this?’ Stella had inquired anxiously. ‘I’d leave Mademoiselle and Lottie instead, but I know Lottie would only rampage up and down the passages with that awful Wally, and Mademoiselle may as well start making herself useful in the new house.’
    ‘No, of course