Where Memories Lie (24 page)

“Erika,” Gemma managed to whisper, “why did you never tell me?”

“I thought—I thought it would only add to your pain. And I—I had never spoken of it to anyone. Not even—” She shook her head. “And we—David and I—he could never bear to touch me afterwards. Perhaps he felt I was defiled. But I think it was also that he felt he had failed me, failed himself, failed utterly as a man.

“He became a shell, a ghost of a man. Until he began to write his book and to speak with strangers in whispers. I never knew what he was writing, or who these people were. I suppose I was a coward myself, because I did not ask. It was only when Gavin told me what he suspected that I began to guess what David had been doing.”

Of course Erika would have known Gavin, Gemma realized. He had interviewed her. She started to ask, but Erika began to speak again. “Perhaps David felt retribution would somehow absolve him. But if, on that day, he saw a photo of Joseph Mueller in an English newspaper—Mueller was here, in London?”

“In Chelsea. He lived not far from Cheyne Gardens.”

“Chelsea? My God.” Erika was trembling. She pressed her clasped hands to her lips, then dropped them again as she said, “I would never have thought to glance at the society page—such things had no interest for me. But David—David always read whatever newspaper he bought from front page to back. It was a compulsion. If he had seen that photo, he would have found where this man—”

“Miller.”

Erika nodded. “Miller. Where Miller lived. But if David went to his house, how did he…”

Gemma finished it for her. “End up in Cheyne Gardens? Maybe Miller arranged to meet him there. To talk.”

“Yes.” Erika nodded. “David still expected people to talk, to be rational, even after everything that had happened.”

“But Miller would never have allowed David to connect him with his past. It’s said his money came from construction after the war, but he had to have started with something—”

“The profit from theft, and murder. Mueller, Miller,” Erika said slowly. “His family must have been Germans who Anglicized their name. That would explain his fluency with the language, his knowledge of the countryside, how easy it was for him to go back to the German version of his name, to pretend to
be
German.”

“If David found him, he would have had much to lose. And…he enjoyed violence.”

“So he arranged to meet David, planning to kill him.” Gemma felt certain of it now. “But was taking the manuscript just a bonus?”

Erika sighed. “David might have believed he could threaten him with it. How could he have been such a fool?”

“And instead, Miller took it and stripped David of any identification. But then you reported David missing, and identified his body. Miller hadn’t counted on that. So he tried to have the investigation stopped.”

“Gavin said the order came from the top,” said Erika. “And if…Miller…had found out that Gavin had made the connection with the newspaper—”

“Gavin.” Gemma looked at her friend with a sudden knowledge that wrenched her heart.

Erika met her eyes, but there was no need for her to speak.

“I read his notes,” Gemma said after a moment. “He was a good man, and a good police officer. And I thought it very odd that he died just after he was told to leave off looking into David’s murder.”

“His superintendent said it was suicide, but I never believed it.”

“If Gavin had shown you that day’s paper—”

“I would have known who had killed David, and why,” said Erika.

“If Miller heard from some of his pals that Gavin had connected David with vengeance groups, he might have thought it too close for comfort, even before Gavin made the connection with the newspaper photo,” Gemma mused. “And if making a few discreet suggestions that David’s death wasn’t worth pursuing didn’t do the trick—”

“Francis Tyrell, the superintendent, didn’t seem to care for Jews. Perhaps Miller knew that it wouldn’t take much urging to convince him.”

“But Tyrell didn’t convince Gavin Hoxley, so Miller arranged a meeting with him, an anonymous tip, perhaps—”

“Gavin,” said Erika, her eyes bright with tears for the first time. “Gavin was a strong man. But he would not have known what he was facing. And if he’d thought he might learn something about David’s murder, he wouldn’t have rung me until he was certain. But he never had that chance.”

“But what about the brooch?” asked Erika. “I still don’t understand why that poor girl was killed. Or why the brooch was never sold in all those years.”

“I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that.” Gemma stood, and discovered that all her muscles had cramped, as if she’d been tied in knots for hours. “I’m going to make us some tea. And something to eat. Are there any biscuits?” She needed time to process what she’d learned, and she wasn’t eager to tell Erika the things she hadn’t yet been told.

“I made braune Zuckerplätzchen. Brown-sugar cookies. For Kit and Toby.”

Gemma looked up from filling the kettle in surprise. Had she ever heard Erika speak German?

“I found myself wanting to remember things,” Erika explained. “I hadn’t had them since I was a child. They’re in the tin.”

The red-and-green tin, incongruously Christmassy, sat next to the
cooker. Gemma put the comfortingly lumpy biscuits on a plate and got out cups and saucers. Erika, who usually quickly took charge in her own kitchen, sat and watched her without protest.

She looked exhausted, and yet it seemed to Gemma that some of the strain had gone from her face. And Gemma thought, as she often did, how beautiful Erika was, still, and wondered what she had been like when she had known Gavin Hoxley.

“Erika,” she said, realizing something she had never consciously noticed as she popped tea bags into the pot and filled it from the kettle, “why don’t you have any photos of yourself?” She didn’t ask why there were none of David, not now.

“I brought nothing out of Germany.” Erika gave a little shrug. “Not that it would have mattered, as things happened. And then, I don’t know. David never touched a camera, and I—” She frowned. “I think there is one, taken not long after the war, by a neighbor. It’s in the top drawer in the secretary.”

Leaving the tea to steep, Gemma went into the sitting room and opened the top drawer of the little writing desk. Among the bills and pencils, she found a few loose photographs. Some were obviously more recent, taken in color, and were of Erika at various university functions. But there were a few in black and white at the bottom of the drawer, and these Gemma removed and took through into the kitchen.

They appeared to have been taken on the same day, and she recognized the communal garden behind Erika’s house. The trees were in full leaf, and groups of people she didn’t recognize smiled into the camera. The women wore sundresses and cotton blouses, the men had opened their collars and rolled up their sleeves.

“It was a victory party,” Erika said. “That August. For those of us who had made it through.”

And then Gemma found the photo. Erika must have been only a few years younger than Gemma, but she looked slight as a girl. Her dark hair was loose, and her deep brown eyes looked into the camera
with the gravity that Gemma had come to know so well. She was astonishingly lovely.

Erika took the photo from her, gazing at it. “I remember her as if she were someone I knew once.” She put the photo aside and took the teacup Gemma offered her. “Now,” she said, “what is it you don’t want to tell me?”

Elated by her success in finding the photo of Joss Miller in the same edition of the paper that had contained Erika Rosenthal’s article, Melody was more than a little disappointed when Gemma wouldn’t take her along to talk to Dr. Rosenthal.

But she knew Gemma always made an effort to include her when possible, and she had to trust Gemma’s judgment on this one. She was nervous, though, as Gemma had said she might call for backup, and Melody knew little more than that Dominic Scott had apparently committed suicide, and that Joss Miller might have had some connection with David Rosenthal.

The minutes ticked by and Gemma didn’t ring. Melody ate a cheese-and-pickle sandwich at her desk and drank a nasty cup of vending machine tea that tasted like pond sludge. She sorted through incoming reports, initialing the things that didn’t need Gemma’s perusal, then, checking the time again, she realized her access to the
Guardian
’s digital archives had not yet expired.

Turning back to the computer, she put in an advanced search for articles or clippings concerning Joss Miller from the war onwards. She found articles on investment mergers and art acquisitions, and a few photos similar to the one in the May 1952 edition. Her attention had begun to waver when she saw the notice of a wedding in June 1953 between Josiah Miller and the Honorable Lady Amanda Bentley.

So Miller had married a minor but well-funded title—if her memory served her, the Bentleys had been in the biscuit trade. But by
that time, Joss Miller had probably been more interested in the title than in the money.

Alert again, Melody kept on with her search. Ellen Ann Miller had been born in 1955, according to the birth notices. And in 1960, the Honorable Amanda had quietly passed away, according to the obit, “after an illness.”

“No fuss, no muss,” Melody said aloud. Apparently Amanda Bentley had served her purpose, for Josiah Miller did not remarry, although there were occasional reports of society liaisons.

In the early seventies, photos of Ellen Ann Miller began to appear at society parties. Melody whistled through her teeth. Even in her late teens, Ellen Miller had been stunning. Not beautiful, exactly, but she had possessed a feline, predatory sexiness that practically oozed off the page.

And then, in 1978, Ellen Miller smiled out of a photo captioned
High Time at the Roxy,
and beside her name was that of the handsome, dark-haired young man with his arm round her shoulders. Harry Pevensey.

“This other man, killed like the girl,” Erika said when Gemma had finished. “And Joseph Mueller’s grandson hanged himself? Dear God, there has to be an end to it.”

“So what if Joseph Mueller kept the brooch because he was afraid it might be identified, or perhaps just because he liked keeping reminders of his cruelty,” Gemma mused aloud. “And when Dom was desperate for money, and his mother wouldn’t help him, Dom took it and had it put up for sale.” Had he found it by chance? she wondered.

“Then, when I told Kristin that you had made a claim on the brooch, she told Dom, and he panicked.”

“Even if he didn’t know how it had come into his family,” agreed Erika, “he couldn’t afford to be associated with it.”

“The barmaid at the club where Dom met Kristin said they argued that night,” she went on. “If he told her she had to take the brooch out of the sale, that he had to have it back, and she told him she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—then he must have been desperate. But I still don’t see where he got a car in time to get back to Chelsea and wait for her to get home.”

“And the other man, this Harry—”

“Pevensey. A washed-up actor. Dom used him to cover his connection with the transaction. He was protecting himself from the first—”

“And then you think this young man, who could kill so ruthlessly, took his own life out of guilt?” Erika shook her head. “That I find difficult to believe. The suicide is an act of a different type of character entirely.”

“Perhaps not guilt, but desperation—if he meant to run you down last night, and failed—” Gemma shuddered, not only at the thought of how close Erika had been to peril, but because by sending Kit to check on Erika she might have put him in danger, too.

Erika set her cup in its saucer with a clink. “I think you’re wrong, Gemma. If he failed last night, why not try again? And how would he have known that my recognition of the brooch would damn
his
family? Even if the sale had been traced back to him, why not claim he picked it up at an auction or an antiques stall?”

Gemma stared at her, trying to fit all that they had learned into a cohesive whole. “Unless Joss Miller kept David’s manuscript,” she said slowly, “and in it David revealed everything—”

“You think this young man would have put the brooch up for auction knowing its history—knowing how his grandfather had come by it?” Erika raised her delicate eyebrows in disbelief.

Gemma thought of Dominic Scott as they had first met him, white and sweating, collapsing at the news of Kristin Cahill’s death.

They knew now that he had been a junkie, strung out and ill—was it conceivable that he had taken an object that he knew tainted
his family, then planned and carried out two murders, and attempted a third?

Dom Scott, who had been so bullied by his mother that he had hated to go into her sitting room, with its reminders of his grandfather’s success?

Dom Scott, whose grieving mother had compared him to his grandfather, even as his body hung cooling upstairs, and found fault?

“Oh, no,” Gemma breathed. “We got it wrong. We got it all wrong.”

“Bingo.” Cullen came into Kincaid’s office looking jubilant. “I’ve got the bastard. I found a Land Rover still registered under Joss Miller’s name. And, in the property tax rolls, I found a lockup garage in Chelsea Square, also in Joss Miller’s name. That’s where Dom Scott will have kept the car. I’ve put in a request for a warrant to search the garage. We need to get any trace evidence from that Land Rover before his mum twigs and cleans it. You know she won’t want her son to go down as a murderer.”

Kincaid pushed back the reports he’d been poring over and sat back in his chair, frowning. “Another car. And a lockup. Of course.” He shook his head. “But even assuming we found trace evidence on the car, we still couldn’t put him in the driver’s seat at the scene of the accident.” He straightened the papers, thinking. “Not that proving him guilty would do anything other than tidy up our case results. We can’t prosecute a dead man.”

“No,” said Cullen. “But it won’t be prosecution that will worry Dom Scott’s mother. Just the rumor of her family’s involvement would be enough to send her into a tizzy. You know she—”

“Reputation.” Kincaid sat up so quickly the chair rocked. “Nothing matters more to Ellen Miller-Scott than reputation. What if Gemma was right? What if Erika Rosenthal’s husband had some proof that Joss Miller was involved in war crimes?”

“David Rosenthal has been dead for years,” Cullen argued. “Whatever he knew obviously died with him.”

“But what if it didn’t?” Kincaid glanced at his watch. It was long past time for Gemma to have checked in. The formless anxiety that had plagued him ever since they found Dom Scott’s body suddenly coalesced into a hard knot of worry, and he reached for his phone.

“Where are you?” Kincaid said sharply in Gemma’s ear. “You’ve been ages—”

“I’m still at Erika’s. I’m sorry, my signal’s iffy—”

“We found the Land Rover, still registered to Joss Miller. And a lockup garage in Chelsea Square, about a seven-minute walk from the house. But I don’t think Dom—”

“I know.” Gemma stepped out into the garden, where her mobile reception was better. “It was Ellen.”

She told him all she’d learned from Erika, then added, “What if Dom came across the brooch and chanced selling it, because he was desperate and had nowhere else to turn? He probably had no idea of its history or of its true value until he showed it to Kristin.”

“But Ellen would have known,” Kincaid continued. “Either because she’d seen David Rosenthal’s manuscript or—”

“Or because her father told her.” Gemma’s voice was flat with disgust. Could Joss Miller possibly have bragged to his daughter about rape and murder?

“Deathbed confession, maybe,” Kincaid said more charitably, but then he hadn’t heard Erika describe what Joss Miller had done. “But if Ellen learned the history of the brooch, no matter how or when she came by the knowledge, she would have known that if the piece were publicly connected with her family, it could prove disastrous.

“She would have been livid when she found it missing.” Gemma imagined Ellen going to her father’s desk or safe—surely the Millers had a safe—perhaps to get a piece of her own to wear, and realizing
the brooch was missing. “Oh, God, she’d have ripped poor Dom to shreds. And she would have told him he had to get it back, at all costs.”

“So then Dom sent Kristin flowers,” Kincaid continued, “and got her to agree to meet him that night at the Gate. But Kristin told him she couldn’t take the brooch out of the sale—”

Gemma thought of the girl she had met. “My guess is that she was fed up with him. And she wanted the money from the commission. That four percent of the sale price would have meant something to her, if not to Dom. And she would have told him that we’d been there, saying someone had claimed the brooch, that it had been stolen during the war. That would’ve put the wind up Dom completely. But then…how did Ellen—” Gemma hesitated, still not quite sure she could put it together.

“I think,” said Kincaid, “I think that Dom rang his mother, after Kristin left him at the Gate that night. We’ll have to ask Eva, the barmaid, if she remembers him using his mobile. And Ellen…” Kincaid paused, and Gemma knew he was running his free hand through his hair until it stood on end, the way he did when he was working something out.

“Maybe at first she just meant to talk some sense into Kristin,” she said. “Ellen’s Mercedes was in for repairs, so she might have had the Land Rover out for a small errand, then parked near the house rather than in the lockup—”

Kincaid picked it up. “But the car had no plates—from the records I’d guess it’s an old mud car from their country place—and that might have occurred to her while she was sitting in front of Kristin’s building, waiting for Kristin to come home. And Dom’s news about Erika coming forward would have raised the stakes enormously. It meant not possible ruin, but certain ruin. She must have realized that if Erika came forward, it wasn’t just reputation, but the possibility that the Millers and their business assets could have faced a lawsuit. There are enough precedents. There have been both individuals and
corporations sued for profiting from atrocities committed against Jews during the war.”

“And then she saw Kristin walking down from the bus stop, alone.” Gemma watched the leaves of Erika’s fig tree move in the breeze. “And she knew Kristin would have to cross the road—”

“And Ellen would have guessed that she could risk the CCTV, because the car had no plates, and the camera would never get a clear view of the driver’s face.” Kincaid paused, and when he went on, his voice held a hint of awe. “What a risk she took. But she couldn’t stop there. She still had to try to get the brooch removed from the sale. So the next morning, she sent Dom to see Harry Pevensey. That was the row Harry’s neighbor heard. But Harry refused as well—even a percentage of the reserve on the brooch would have been a godsend to him—”