Chapter 12 #2
Her heart plummeted. It’d once been an upright piano. The metal strings had snapped and were dangling inside the shell, and a mess of dark and light lay on the floor beside it, which seemed to be the remains of the piano’s keys.
Nothing was left: no curtains at the windows, no books on shelves, no cushions, or coats on a stand. There was no sign of a body.
She wasn’t sure if she should be relieved, or just horribly sad. There were just ashes, dark grey, some pure white, which the wind shifted around on the floor.
She looked up at the ceiling and tensed in every limb as she saw that the beams were charred. How long would it be before it collapsed?
‘We mustn’t stay here long, Bea,’ Margot warned.
‘Did you know he had a family?’ asked Beatrice. Her voice was a hushed whisper now, as though someone might hear them in the wreckage of what had once been a home. ‘Come and see. There’s photos in the cellar.’
‘A family?’ Margot froze. She’d never seen him around the village with a wife or any children. ‘I didn’t know.’ She sighed. ‘I had no idea…’
A hole gaped at them from the floor, and Margot craned her neck to peer down. It was the cellar, and Beatrice had left the charred hatch open. A flight of stone steps led into the ground, with small footprints left in the ash.
‘You lead the way, Bea,’ Margot said. Beatrice released her hand and trotted down the steps.
As she went, she pulled on a cord and a pale light stuttered into life, illuminating the cellar beneath.
When Margot had made her way downstairs, Beatrice closed the trapdoor shut with a bang, sealing them inside.
Although a thin layer of ash had penetrated down, the room Margot found herself in seemed only recently abandoned. The cellar had been carved from the rock of the cliff, with a small desk and chair. A radio stood on the desk, and a coffee pot stood in front of it.
Margot went over to take a closer look, that strange Marie Celeste feeling only increasing as she saw a pencil and a pen, a pot of ink – she recognised them at once, as she sold them in her shop. And there were some scribbled notes. She tried to make sense of them, but they were in German.
She wondered what on earth he’d been doing down here in his basement. The radio and the notes written in German must’ve put the thought into Beatrice’s head that he was spying on the village and reporting back to Berlin.
She scanned the walls and saw photographs in frames.
An oval photo showed a smiling baby, not much older than Isabelle was now, bundled up in knitted clothes and propped up on cushions, kicking tiny feet.
Next to it was a group photo. Margot looked closer and wiped away the ash that had settled on the glass.
She saw a younger version of the Professor standing in a garden somewhere, his arm round the waist of a pretty, fair-haired woman.
From the style of her dress, Margot supposed it was taken in the previous decade.
There was a girl standing with them, a little older than Beatrice, perhaps, with neat blonde plaits cascading over her shoulders.
He didn’t have the haunted look she’d always seen in his eyes. He was full of joy.
Margot looked at more and more family photographs.
The same girl carrying the huge horn of sweets that German children were given on their first day at school.
A wedding photo of the Professor with his wife, looking so incredibly young and happy.
There was a studio shot of the wife and daughter, their heads close together, then more group photos: a whole extended family, it looked like, going for an outing in a charabanc.
She saw the Professor, in his seat, grinning and waving to the camera.
And then a photo of the girl, sitting at a grand piano in a silk dress, as if she was playing at a recital.
A whole life was here, and a whole family. What had happened to them?
Margot looked again and noticed a smaller photo on the desk.
She wiped the ash away and saw the Professor with his wife, young, and happy, and leaning against a low wall.
Behind them was Cordeval. It was the harbour.
They’d been photographed down there, light-hearted and smiling.
Perhaps it was their honeymoon. They looked so young.
So he’d been here before, years ago. That was why he was here again, why he’d arrived before the war.
Margot went to lay the purple flowers on his desk, but then she stopped. Her gaze was drawn to the notes he’d written in German, and she thought of Beatrice’s theory again.
But as she heard again the bleak, metallic whistle of the wind blowing through the wrecked plane, she knew she couldn’t leave without making some sort of tribute to him.
She noticed Beatrice suddenly tense. The little girl pressed her finger to her lips and Margot realised what she could hear: echoing footsteps. There was a rickety door that opened into the cellar, and Margot knew that it must open into the tunnels. Someone was coming.
Margot put the flowers on the Professor’s desk, then glanced up at the cellar steps. ‘We need to leave,’ she whispered. Beatrice didn’t even have time to move before the door handle turned and a figure emerged from the tunnel shadows.
She held her breath. In the weak light, she saw a face.
The face of a man who was dead.
‘Professor Lauterborn?’ Margot gasped. For less than a second, she wondered if she was seeing a ghost.
The Professor’s eyes darted to the radio as Margot felt a vibration in her feet, which seemed to grow more insistent as the sound of rumbling filled the air beyond the trapdoor.
‘You should go,’ the Professor said urgently, and Margot heard heavy tyres crunching overhead. It sounded like more than one vehicle, and then there were German voices, shouting to one another over the sound of the engines. Fear thrummed through Margot.
‘I bet they’ve come for the plane,’ whispered Beatrice. ‘They’ll take the gun too, I bet.’
The Professor opened the door to the tunnels and barked suddenly, ‘Go!’
Her mind in turmoil, Margot grasped Beatrice’s hand, and together she and the girl ran through the doorway and were swallowed by the darkness.