DEATH AT THE INN
Dittmar had won that round, and he had won it entirely by the force of surprise. The first moment, when someone might have had a chance to snatch the initiative away from him, was gone. Now they were standing, controlled by the large efficient pistol, along one wall of the room. Amazement gave way to a feeling of foolishness as they stared at the man opposite them. Dittmar leaned against the little table near the door. His eyes and mouth were as determined, and ruthless, and impersonal as the Luger. He was in complete control.
He consolidated his gain effectively. The emotionless voice said, “Any move by any one of you, or a shout for help, and I aim for Kati. Any move from Kati, and I shall blow a hole in her Zygmunt. At this range, a Luger doesn’t leave much of a face.”
He looked at them in turn, made himself comfortable on the table, and his mouth loosened into a pleased grin; but the hand and the eyes never relaxed. “You won’t have very long to wait.”
“You’re lying,” Sheila challenged him. “You haven’t got any word out of this village. There’s no ’phone working from here or from Zorawno.”
“What a clever girl you are,” he answered mockingly. “Three days ago, before I reached Zorawno, I was in touch with my assistant—but of course you’ve met him. You remember Hefner?—Well, Mr. Hefner had found traces of an old woman and a little ragged dog as far as Nowe Miasto. Three days ago it seemed that we had both come to an impasse; now Hefner will have quite a lot of surprises. He’s reporting to me here, today. For before I left Zorawno to come to this God-forsaken hole, I gave a message to a helpful fanner to take to Nowe Miasto on market day. That message would reach Hefner last night.” His tone changed. The words were like flint, now. “Incidentally, if you have any stupid ideas about attacking me, please abandon them. Herr Hefner will want to know the reason why I am not here waiting for him. And he comes officially, not in this kind of fancy dress.” Dittmar pointed to his stained and torn suit of cheap poor cloth. “And there will be others with him. This village will be another example of what the disobedient can expect—if you try any little tricks.”
“You are boring us,” Kati said. “Your voice is as bad as your breath.”
“You keep quiet. You’ll answer when I get round to asking you questions.”
“Will I indeed?” said Kati. “Just you wait until Zak warns the village. They’ll deal with you, and have answers ready for your uniformed friend.”
“Zak will not warn the village.” His smile was as confident as his voice was decisive.
Even Kati was silent now.
“Interesting district this,” Dittmar went on. “Where were the old woman and the boy going, I wonder?” He paused; and then added, “To the forest where you came from, my little cousin Magda?”
Sheila didn’t answer him.
“For you came from there, didn’t you?”
Sheila looked at the others, pretended to smile, tried to look as if she were secretly pleased by the question. Let him waste time on the forest, was the implication: that’s all right with us. We all know there’s nothing there.
“I told you once before, Cousin Magda, that you would go far with the right boss. I didn’t know then that you were on the wrong side, that the only end for you would be either your back against an execution wall or a soldier’s brothel. If you don’t talk, you’ll get both.”
She was silent.
“Come on, now. You could give one just a few facts. You could tell me about Kordus. You could tell me about Herr Hofmeyer, for he’s in this too, isn’t he? You could tell me who has been hiding you in this district, and where you could hide when you weren’t to be found in any of its villages. If you told me just those few facts, you could spend the rest of the war in a prison camp. That’s quite pleasant compared with other places.”
No one answered him. There was a restless look in Zygmunt’s eye. He was planning something.
“Come on, now, Magda. Or do you prefer to be called Anna; or is it Sheila?”
Sheila thought, if I keep him talking, perhaps Zygmunt can work out whatever he’s planning. She said, “You take a great deal for granted. How do you know that Madame Aleksander and her son have left here? Perhaps you are being too clever.”
“People carrying a bundle are not out for morning strolls. Or is it usual that a man accompanies them to the end of the village, or waits there until be sees them safely out of sight behind a stretch of trees leading south—where there are no more villages, no more houses, merely forest? Is it usual that the man runs back to tell the others in the inn? Not, that is, if the woman and the boy have been only taking a morning stroll.”
He watched Peter’s openly crestfallen face with increasing amusement. Like all winners, Dittmar couldn’t help pointing out the loser’s weakness. “The mistake you made was to think that I would be content to sit in a barn with Zak blocking the door so innocently.” Now he was laughing at Zygmunt. “Or to think that I would never imagine you might suspect me. That incident in the hall was unfortunate for me, in one way. If it hadn’t happened, I should now be sitting peacefully in a cabbage patch, and the woman Aleksander and her son would no doubt have been still here, waiting with you all in this house—until my friends arrived. We’d have got you with no effort at all. But, in another way, the hall incident was fortunate.” He shook his head slowly at Kati. “Your cousin had very slender bones for a country girl. Her hands were very smooth for cleaning out a bar. Except for one hand.” He looked at Sheila now. “The left one. The skin was still healing.”
Sheila took a deep breath.
“Did you think your boy’s hair would cheat me?” Dittmar asked her derisively. Then his voice sharpened. “Keep still there!” He rested the Luger on his left forearm. His eyes narrowed.
Zygmunt’s body stiffened and obeyed.
“I am going to drop my arms. Otherwise I shall faint,” Sheila announced. Twenty paces, Sierakowski had said when he had given her the gun. If she could only lower her arms, pretend to rest one hand casually at her waist, near her heart.
“Keep them up. Higher. Quite the English little miss, aren’t you? Men at Fort VII have stood in ice-cold rain with their hands above their heads all through the night. Don’t tell me that you patriots here are less patriotic than they were.”
Through the half-open shutter came the sound of a village stirring into life. A woman singing as she worked; children’s voices laughing, quarrelling, calling to each other, the noise of a wooden-wheeled cart lumbering slowly away.
Sheila looked at the rafters above her head, at the bright paper flowers and stencilled patterns along the whitewashed wood. Zygmunt, she felt, was going to do something desperate. She looked at the others. Did they know that when Zygmunt moved they must all move, or else be mowed down like ripe corn in a harvest field? If they all moved, all attacked at once, two would perhaps be killed. Dittmar wouldn’t have time to shoot more than that in a room of this size. If they all acted together... Looking at their faces—Jadwiga, thin, wrinkled, impassive, her bright eyes steady; Kati, an angry scowl drawing her straight thick brows into an ugly fold; Peter, stolid, expressionless almost to the point of stupidity; Zygmunt, his weight balanced on his uninjured leg, his dark face brooding, his eyes restless—Sheila knew they were waiting, waiting for the right moment. Zygmunt would give it to them: Zygmunt, who was no doubt cursing his wounded leg at this moment.
The tension increased in the silent room. Dittmar felt it too. His eyes narrowed once more, his watchfulness tautened. Sheila’s eyes closed. Perhaps that way, the hard face opposite her wouldn’t be able to read her thoughts. For she had the beginning of a plan. If only Zygmunt wouldn’t make his move until she managed it. If she could give a good imitation of a faint, just the moment before Zygmunt moved, then Dittmar’s eyes might for one moment be off guard. And from the floor she could use her revolver: and that was something Dittmar would not expect. Dwór, like every village and town in Poland, had been looted of its guns; even the possessio
n of a child’s toy revolver had been enough to condemn a man to the firing squad. Last night, Dittmar had obviously discovered that neither Peter nor Zygmunt was armed.
Sheila looked sideways at Zygmunt. Yes, he had noticed her expression. She hoped he understood it. And now her arms sagged, she swayed on her feet, one hand went to her brow.
“Keep your hands up!”
Dittmar’s voice was worried and angry.
A slow faint—that would have to be the way. Dittmar didn’t want to shoot her yet. He wanted to question her. Knees bending, head bending, and then a relaxing of her body until it could sprawl forward and lie inert. Not too violently—no point in knocking herself out cold on that hard floor, still less in falling on the gun—just like this...on her left side...leaving the right arm free... She let her body sag forward. Her left shoulder struck the ground with a sharp shock.
The Luger’s crash seemed to split her ears. Peter’s leap finished in a stumble, and then his body huddled almost at Dittmar’s feet. It had been Peter and not Zygmunt—Peter standing so quietly, so stupidly—who had fully understood Sheila’s pretence. Zygmunt, a fraction of a minute too late, dropped, as a second bullet was fired. Sheila fumbled for her gun. Her waistband held it too securely. She tugged at it secretly, desperately, as Jadwiga and Kati rushed Dittmar. A third crash, and Jadwiga’s hand let the uplifted candlestick fall. Kati alone had reached Dittmar, Kati unarmed, Kati hitting and kicking and clawing. Dittmar wasn’t shooting any more. He could handle two women. They must be kept alive, or he wouldn’t get his information. He smashed his fist into Kati’s face, and, as she reeled, kicked her heavily in the stomach. The girl lay half gasping, half moaning, her body in a rigid angle of pain. Dittmar looked down at her, kicked twice again. The small strangled cries were silenced.
“That takes care of her meanwhile,” Dittmar said. He looked towards the other girl. She was raising her head and shoulders now, supporting her body with one hand flat on the floor. The other hand was covered by the wide-spreading shawl. She looked white, and weak, and terrified. Dittmar’s calm voice said, “A little of the same will keep you quiet, too, my friend.” He walked over to her slowly. He was quite confident.
Sheila fired two bullets. The floor splintered beside her as the Luger cracked once more. At least she had spoiled Herr Dittmar’s aim. His astonished face suddenly became quite expressionless. A shoulder tilted, an elbow dug into his left side. His rigid body listed sideways, and then pitched forward.
Sheila moved away from the sprawling arm that pointed towards her. He must be dead. One in the stomach, one at his heart. Two bullets. A third, to make sure? This time she found herself turning her head away and half-closing her eyes as she pressed the gun to his ear and pulled the trigger. She noticed her hand was beginning to tremble. Dropping the gun, she walked unevenly over to the bench by the door. Her whole body was trembling now, as though racked by some fever. It wouldn’t, couldn’t stop.
Outside, the sounds of the village had given way to a startled silence. There was a long pause. Then a shout broke the silence, unleashed the alarmed voices and the running footsteps. She could hear the movement of people round the window, the movement of people along the corridor. Behind it all was the rustle of questions. What is it? What’s wrong? What’s happened?
The door opened, and a white-haired man in shirt-sleeves, with his cap on the back of his head and a scythe held as a weapon in his hand, stood looking at her. And then at the room. And then at her again. A black-robed priest entered. His quick glance passed over Jadwiga and Peter and rested on Zygmunt. He knelt beside him, holding Zygmunt’s shattered leg tightly above the knee.
“Call Tomasz,” he said to those who tried to press curiously through the doorway.
“Tomasz—Where’s Tomasz?—Tomasz, you’re needed!”—the voices echoed.
Sheila rose, and the man with the scythe tightened his grip. She went over to Kati, knelt beside her. She was afraid to lift her or to try to straighten the unconscious body.
“What can we do for her? She wasn’t shot. He kicked her insensible,” she heard herself say.
The man with the scythe laid its sharp blade carefully against the wall. He took off his hat, and crossed himself, as he passed Peter and Jadwiga. He stood beside Sheila, equally worried and useless.
“What’s wrong here?” a woman’s voice said sharply from the door. She pushed her way past the two old men guarding the entrance, and then stood aghast. A tall thin-faced man followed her, hurried over to the kneeling priest. By the way he handled Zygmunt’s leg Sheila judged he must know something about doctoring. This must be Tomasz.
She called over to him unhappily. “Kati has been kicked in the body. She’s unconscious. What can we do?”
“Leave her there till I can look at her,” Tomasz said sharply. He was tearing his shirt into strips, winding them tightly round Zygmunt’s leg above the knee.
The woman’s stupefied horror broke. She gave a scream, rushed to the window. “They’re dead, they’re all dead! They’ve been killed!” The villagers outside were shocked into silence, and then the chorus of voices began.
“How? How? What happened?”
There was restlessness in the corridor outside. The people wanted to see for themselves. The priest rose and took the woman’s arm, quietening her. “Zofia,” he said, “unless you want to stay and help, you must leave.” To the people pressing against the window, he said, “There has been violence and death in this house. Some of its people have been killed, some injured. We do not yet know how. Be patient, my children... We will find out.”
Once more there was silence.
Zofia crossed her arms and rocked herself slowly. She was weeping now. She looked down at Kati’s mother, whom Sheila had known only as “Jadwiga.”
“Aunt Katarzyna,” she moaned. And then, “Peter, too. And the stranger who came last evening, God rest his poor soul.” There was an echo of sympathy from the doorway. And then Zofia stared at Sheila as if she were seeing her for the first time.
“Who’s that? Who’s that?” Her voice changed from grief to fear, and then to anger. She pointed at Sheila. “What’s she doing here?”
Sheila looked up at the woman in sudden alarm. She had been assuming that they would all understand at once. Now she saw a long series of questions and answers, of explanations disbelieved. She saw Hefner and the other Gestapo men arriving in the village while the explanations still dragged on. She saw Korytów repeated.
She rose and went over to the priest, quickly marshalling her thoughts. “The village is in danger,” she said urgently. “That man was a German spy. He killed Zak in the barn, then came here and held us up with his revolver. He knew we had become suspicious of him. He was going to keep us until his Gestapo friends arrived. He had arranged to meet them here. But Peter rushed him, then Zygmunt, and Kati’s mother was shot too. He struck Kati, and then kicked her. He wanted to keep her and me alive for questioning. I shot him.”
The priest’s large-boned, hollow-eyed face watched her curiously. Even Tomasz had paused in his work to stare at her. The woman’s nostrils dilated. “What does she say?” she cried incredulously.
“I said that man was a German; other Germans are coming!”
The woman looked scornfully at her, her mouth twisted. “He was a Pole. He was looking for his wife.” Her anger increased at Sheila’s slander of the dead. “If there’s any German here, it’s her. She can’t even speak Polish properly. She shot them. She’s waiting for her German friends.” The woman’s grief had become hysteria. Her face flushed. Her arm kept pointing.
“She did it. She’s the one.” Voices again rose from the corridor and the window.
Sheila sat down again on the bench. She looked at the priest and shook her head slowly. “There’s the revolver I used,” she said, and pointed. “There’s the one he used. Anyone who knows about guns can see the difference in the wounds.” What’s the use, she was asking herself, what’s the use? She looked at th
e grimly silent faces, suspicious, watchful. Damn them all, she thought savagely; let them take what’s coming to them. I’m tired. I can do no more.
The priest was still studying her.
“Who are you?” he asked. His voice was kindly. He, at least, was willing to believe her.
Sheila Matthews, the daughter of Charles Matthews, shot in Poland, 1916; niece of John Matthews of London... How would that sound?
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness,” she said bitterly.
“Hush, my child.” The priest crossed himself.
“Sorry, Father. I’m just tired of explaining while the Germans are acting.”
“But we must know who you are. Why did you come here?” It was as if the priest were trying to prompt her to give the right answer.
“Ask Kati. Ask Zygmunt. I came here last night, looking for Jadwiga.”
The faces around her became guarded.
“Who sent you?” There was relief, almost gladness, in the priest’s voice.
“The Reapers. Peter was to guide me towards Radom tonight.” Sheila felt as if she had won that point. There was interest now, as well as watchfulness, around her.
“She knows too much,” said Zofia. “She will betray us to the Germans when they come.”
“I must be away from here before they come. They are searching for me.”
“Are they now?” Zofia was quite unconvinced. “You leave us with guns and dead people. The Germans find the guns. The village will be lost.”
Sheila’s anger vanished as quickly as it had arisen. Looking at the worried faces around her, she felt ashamed of herself.
“It will be lost unless you hide the guns and can explain the bodies,” she said quietly. “We must plan now, while Tomasz is doing what he can for Zygmunt and Kati. When they can talk, they will tell you the story. First of all, see what has happened to Zak. Zak was guarding the German in the barn. He must have been struck down. For in here, the rest of us heard nothing until the German stood at the door with his gun.”
The priest silenced Zofia’s reply with his upraised arm. He moved to the window and instructed two men to go round to the barn. Then he spoke to the white-haired man, still standing speechless, motionless. “Take the guns. Hide them with the others.” To Tomasz he said, “What about Zygmunt?”