The Defeated Aristocrat Read Free Page A

exhausted her. Bertha opened the door and looked down.
    ‘Is he …’ Lilli faltered.
    Bertha examined him. ‘No bullet holes, more’s the pity.’ She retrieved the key from the door. ‘Better he were dead than dead drunk. I’ll lock him in here and help you to bed.’ Bertha was a large, solidly built woman with wide shoulders and strong limbs. She scooped Lilli into her arms, carried her out, and turned the key on the outside of the lock, effectively imprisoning Dedleff in the turret. She walked across the landing to Lilli’s apartment and laid her on her bed. ‘I’ll get bandages and iodine.’
    ‘Amalia and my father?’ Lilli whispered.
    ‘Amalia was asleep when I left. I hope the noise hasn’t woken her. Sister Luke is sitting with your father tonight. She said she’d check on Amalia if I wasn’t back in ten minutes. Ernst wanted to come up with me. I told him he’d only annoy Dedleff and you’d want him to stay and protect your father and Amalia.’
    Ernst Nagel had been the Richters’s caretaker before the war. He’d been invalided out of the army after losing a leg in 1915, just after Lilli’s father had suffered a debilitating stroke. Lilli had given Ernst his old job back together with additional duties as her father’s carer, but when her father’s condition deteriorated she’d been forced to employ professional nurses from the convent to watch over her father day and night.
    ‘Please, I’m all right, go to Amalia, Bertha.’
    ‘I’ll go when I’m sure you’re really all right. Or as all right as that bastard has left you. I heard him come up the stairs. When everything went quiet I assumed you’d hidden and he’d passed out drunk. I came up to give you this. Ernst found it in the letterbox.’ Bertha delved into her dressing gown pocket and handed Lilli a folded page of cheap grey lined paper that looked as though it had been torn from a child’s exercise book. Lilli Richter, Editor, Konigsberg Zeit was scribbled on the outside.
    ‘When did Ernst find it?’
    ‘Just before I came up. The street doorbell rang. Ernst looked out but didn’t see anyone. Just that jammed in the door.’
    ‘Thank you.’ Lilli could barely speak for the pain in her chest and arms.
    ‘I’d rather not imagine who’s out disturbing law-abiding folks at this hour but I thought it might be important. There are red marks on the paper. They could be blood.’
    Lilli opened the single sheet and scanned the few pencilled lines.
    Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. For the wages of sin is death.
    14 Wasser Strasse, Room 10. So the last shall be first and the first last.
    Lilli held it up to the lamp. ‘It could be blood, or paint or red ink. Ernst is certain he didn’t see anyone?’
    ‘No one. What does it mean?’
    ‘Nothing to me and nothing that can’t wait until morning.’
    ‘I’ll get the iodine and bandages.’
     
    Police Headquarters, Konigsberg, Saturday January 4th 1919
    The hands on Kriminalassistent Blau’s pocket watch hovered a few minutes before eight when he walked, heart pounding, through the gates of Headquarters. He returned the duty officer’s salute, glad the man was occupied in checking a delivery. Officers were expected to sign off the night shift by seven thirty, but he’d ignored von Braunsch’s order to wait no longer than five minutes. After fifteen minutes of walking in ever-decreasing circles in Wasser Street he’d knocked the hotel door. When no one had answered he’d headed for Headquarters. He walked quickly and ran in the streets where there was no one to witness his “haste unbecoming to an officer”.
    The log-in room was deserted but he could hear conversation in the kitchen next door where tea and coffee was brewed. Nervous, fearful of being caught signing in late and covering for an absent colleague he turned the book around, picked up the ‘off duty’ stamp, and marked the