The Winter Garden (2014) by Thynne Jane

Author:Thynne, Jane [Thynne, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical/Fiction
Published: 2014-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

So the Hansen sisters had quarrelled. And now Katia had moved to the other end of the country and probably didn’t know that her sister had been murdered and that they would never be reconciled. How long might it be before she found out?

She shook her head and folded Anna’s letter back into its envelope, then bundled the papers up and shut the case again. After she had done that she undressed, lay between the chilly sheets and stared up at the ceiling, riddled with damp like a map of Africa, turning the day’s events over in her head. There was one thing that puzzled her. The remark the old woman had made.

You people need to leave us alone.

Evidently Clara wasn’t the first person to come looking for Katia Hansen. Someone else had been to visit Anna’s sister. It might be the authorities, seeking to contact the family over Anna’s death. Though if that was so, surely the visitor would have explained to the landlady that Anna had died? Yet it was clear from the old woman’s reaction that she knew nothing about it. So why had someone tried to locate Katia, and more importantly, who?

The next morning she skipped breakfast in her hurry to leave but then found herself with half an hour to wait for the train. Idling in the street that led to the station, she saw a shop front containing a display of Hitler Youth knives. There, in the forefront, was exactly the one Erich had told her about. The latest model. She sighed to herself as she realized she was going to have to buy it. When she went in and asked to see it, the shopkeeper, a huge man with a barrel chest and a moustache, put it straight in her hand and it fitted her palm perfectly, as if it was made for her. It was a curiously pleasurable sensation. It lay there, heavy and smooth, with its black checkered grip and gleaming silver blade engraved with the HJ motto Blut und Ehre in antiquated Gothic script. Blood and Honour. Two perfectly ordinary words whose meaning the Nazis had managed to pervert. Frankly, she thought as she paid for the knife, it was hard to think of a phrase she hated more.

‘Heil Hitler!’ said the shopkeeper.

Clara nodded.

Except for that one, of course.

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