The Winter Garden (2014) Read Online Free

by the lake, and my little girls
presented her with posies of wild flowers. We gave them a twenty-volume set of the works of Goethe. It was so romantic.’
    At this, it was as if Magda realized she had confided something she shouldn’t have. As if she had stepped into some territory that had been declared forever out of bounds. A blush bloomed
momentarily in the pallor of her complexion and her whole body stiffened.
    ‘Anyhow, they’re coming over for the day. I had planned a whole day of sightseeing, only . . .’ she hesitated momentarily, as if uncertain over imparting any further
information. Clara concealed her curiosity with careful sips of scalding tea.
    ‘Only I’ve had to cancel a local outing I had planned for them. I had hoped to show them round the new Bride School just down the road from here, but unfortunately there’s been
an incident. Well, a bit more shocking than that, actually.’ She flicked an eye towards the door as though the maid might be eavesdropping and lowered her voice. ‘One of the brides was
found murdered.’
    ‘Murdered?’ The word rang harshly in the tranquil, teatime air.
    ‘Yes. In the garden, apparently. A girl called Anna Hansen. Terrible, isn’t it? It’s so sad for her fiancé.’ Magda grimaced in annoyance. ‘And rather
inconvenient for us. The visit can’t possibly go ahead. It’s obviously cast a cloud. It wouldn’t be the right atmosphere.’
    Anna Hansen. For a second, the name snagged in Clara’s mind. Then she realized she used to know a girl of that name, though it could hardly be the same one. The Anna Hansen Clara knew was
an easy-going, bottle blonde from Munich who would be more at home in a negligée than an SS Hausfrau’s apron; indeed, when Clara first met her, she hadn’t been wearing any
clothes at all. She had been a life model for the artist Bruno Weiss, whom Clara had met through Helga Schmidt, the small-time actress who had been the first person to befriend Clara when she
arrived in the city. After Helga died in 1933, Bruno and Clara had become good friends and Clara would often drop into his Pankow studio to watch him working and bring him meals he might otherwise
forget to eat. Since Helga’s death Bruno had been working with feverish intensity, his canvases becoming bloodier and more grotesque, his hatred for the regime erupting in livid clots of
paint. It was on such a visit one day last year, bearing a couple of rolls and some sausage, that Clara had encountered Anna. Her naked form was arranged obligingly on Bruno’s crusty velvet
sofa, her legs splayed and a cigarette dangling from a long amber holder in her hand. She had the kind of flexible, muscular limbs which came from a dancer’s training. The idea of
Bruno’s Anna Hansen marrying an SS officer was too incongruous for words.
    The inconvenient death of the Reich bride seemed to have caused a chill in the room. Magda rose with unexpected haste and clacked across the parquet floor. ‘Anyway, Fräulein Vine,
don’t let me keep you any longer.’
    She held the door open.
    ‘The party will be next Saturday at seven p.m. Only twenty or so people. Is there . . .’ she hesitated, ‘a guest you might like to bring? A fiancé perhaps?’
    ‘No, there’s no one.’
    ‘Then we shall be most pleased to see you.’
    With a peremptory nod she disappeared across the hall and up the stairs.
    Clara walked back to her car, her mind working furiously. Her mouth was dry with nerves and she found herself unexpectedly shaking. An invitation after all this time? Magda had said it was her
idea, but could it be really? She tried to analyse the request. There was nothing especially strange about the Goebbels’ entertaining English visitors. There were plenty of high-ranking
Britons arriving in Berlin, even now when Germany’s march into the Rhineland and her backing of Franco’s faction in Spain had opened the eyes of most British people to the intentions of
the regime. Last year,