While Still We Live (7 page)

“What
is
this, anyway?” Sheila said angrily in English. She struck herself sharply free. She was hot with temper. She ran to the door. It was already opened. Two men, as neatly dressed as the man who had gripped her arm, stood there quite placid and immovable. They were broad enough to fill the doorway. Sheila halted, let her anger cool. She had to: she needed to think very clearly.

“You must come with us,” the young man was saying. He was angry. He was rubbing his arm where she had hit him, and
his eyes had narrowed and didn’t look at all so pleasant now.

“Why?” Sheila’s voice was cold and hard She returned his angry stare with equal vehemence.

“Security police. You may as well resign yourself. There is no choice for you but to come with us. And please don’t make any scenes. There is no need...a matter of routine.” He looked sharply at Sheila. “Do you understand what I say?”

“I don’t understand anything.” But the word “police” had reassured her. She walked outside, shrugging off the young man’s arm. The girl at the table stared after her as if Sheila were a leper. Sheila found herself firmly wedged between two large men in the car which had been standing at the entrance to Mr. Hofmeyer’s place of business. She was quite convinced by this time that she wasn’t going to see Mr. Hofmeyer’s house either.

INTERROGATION

The journey was as unpleasant as she expected. It was a hot afternoon. The men on either side of her filled most of the car’s seat. And whenever she tried to see a landmark to help her guess where she was being taken, the young man who sat opposite her would watch her keenly. When she relaxed, he watched her speculatively. He had relieved her of her handbag unexpectedly and very neatly, as she had left Mr. Hofmeyer’s office. He now held it determinedly if incongruously under his arm. It was a relief when the car’s speed slackened, and it stopped before a large square building of modern structure. She couldn’t recognise the street when they ushered her firmly across the pavement into the large doorway, and her heart sank still further. She tried to believe that foreigners straying about the city had to be counted like so many sheep. Probably the Security Police wanted to send her home to England. Probably. But her heart kept on sinking.

The two bodyguards, their mission accomplished, had gone. She was left alone on a stone bench with the first young man. She found it difficult to restrain herself from fidgeting as she felt his eyes watching her closely. As they waited, their backs against an impressively panelled wall, their feet on the highly polished floor of intricate design, neither spoke.

Hurrying men, worried men, men carrying papers which they still studied, men walking urgently from one doorway in the long hall to another, men and only men passed by. Most looked at her with a quick impersonal glance. Some nodded to the silent man beside her, and gave her a second look. There were other benches in the hall. Four other people sat there, as silently as she did, each with a neatly dressed, watchful man beside him. One of these people was a woman: a middle-aged, defiant-looking creature with a face carefully camouflaged to conceal the wrinkles, with expensive clothes cut to flatter the contours. Of the others, one seemed a prosperous business-man, one was a hotel porter, one was a workman with an excessively honest face. The three men shared the woman’s defiance. Sheila wondered if they were here for the same mysterious reason which had brought her to this place. She watched their faces, and she felt still more worried. No reason seemed to link together such a varied collection of people. They certainly were not British, nor Americans, nor Frenchmen.

Sheila glanced at her watch nervously. It was almost half-past five. Ten minutes later, the man beside her rose and motioned her to enter the doorway which had just opened. The three men and one woman still sat and waited in the hall. They were getting restless now. The woman was trying hard not to cry.

The room which Sheila entered was unexpectedly simple
after the impressive entrance hall. Simple and business-like. So was the uniformed man with a dark moustache who sat at the desk, with a window behind him. On one side of him was a man in civilian clothes, seated, waiting with a notebook and an open fountain pen. On the other side of the desk stood another uniformed man, as neat and slender as a French general. An empty chair faced the desk, the three men, and the window. A series of office cabinets covered the wall on her left; to her right, there was nothing but a door leading to an adjoining room.

Sheila determined to be equally business-like. She crossed the room quickly, sat down on the obvious chair, and looked at the man with the black moustache. He didn’t seem an unreasonable man: cold, perhaps, and impersonal; but not unreasonable. She waited while he adjusted his pince-nez and a black leather folder in front of him.

He looked up suddenly at the young man who had escorted Sheila here. “Better get the Special Commissioner, if he is available,” he said. “He has had much to do with the case of Margareta Koch.” He transferred his look, as he pronounced the name, to Sheila.

She took a deep breath of relief, as the young man placed the handbag on the desk and went to look for the Special Commissioner. This, she told herself, was nothing else than a complete mistake. Well, it would soon be cleared up.

She said with a smile, “May I speak in English? My Polish is very weak.”

“Any other language you can speak?” the man with the black moustache asked very gently.

“French, or German.”

“Oh... Well, we all understand German. Would you speak in
the language?” But it was more of a command than a question.

Sheila began eagerly. “Am I supposed to be this Margareta Koch?”

“What makes you think that?”

“By the way you looked at me when you said her name.”

The men exchanged quick glances. “And do you deny that you are Margareta Koch?”

“Of course. I am Sheila Matthews.”

The man behind the desk smiled. Sheila began to feel that this wasn’t going to be as easy as she had thought.

“An Englishwoman?”

“Born in England. My father was Scots.”

The man with the fountain pen began writing. The man with the moustache smiled again. “Just answer these questions, please. Your name is Sheila Matthews? Spell it.”

Sheila did so.

“Born where, and when?”

“In High Wycombe: a small place just outside of London. On August 7, 1916.”

There was another interval for more spelling.

“Your parents?”

Sheila suddenly lost her resolve to be patient. “Is this necessary?”

“Most necessary. Your parents?”

“Both dead. My mother died in September 1916. My father, Charles Matthews, was killed in December of the same year.”

“Killed? How?”

“In action.”

“In France?”

“No.” Sheila found that her uncle’s insistence on silence over
her father’s death was even, at this moment making it difficult for her to talk about it. “In Poland,” she said reluctantly.

“Really?” All three men were watching her intently, now. “Just where in Poland in December 1916?”

“Here in Warsaw.”

“There were no Allied troops fighting in Warsaw by December 1916. By that time, the Germans were in possession of the city.”

“The Germans shot him. There’s a tablet erected to his memory in the Citadel.”

The man who looked like a French general said aside in Polish, “This is devilish clever.”

“That can be verified,” the man behind the desk continued. “You speak very calmly of your father’s death.”

“Well, after all, I never saw my father.” And Uncle Matthews wouldn’t talk about him, either. “All I can feel,” Sheila added honestly, “is pride, and curiosity, and regret that I never knew him.”

“Who was responsible for your education?”

“My father’s only brother, John Matthews.”

“Profession?”

“He is a business-man. His firm is Matheson, Walters, and Crieff. Exporters.”

Her interrogator nodded. “Verify that,” he said to the secretary. And then he continued, “Any other relatives?”

“None. My uncle is unmarried. My mother had two brothers, but they were killed in the war. France and Gallipoli.”

“How is it that you came to visit Poland at this time?”

“I came at the end of June, on an invitation. I stayed longer than I should have.”

“Why are you still here at this time?”

Sheila shrugged her shoulders. There were so many explanations to that, all little, all very personal, that it seemed useless to start listing them.

“Who invited you?”

There was a sound of the door behind her being opened, and closed; of footsteps which halted just inside the room, so that she couldn’t see the newcomers. Her eyes seemed to be stuck at the desk. She couldn’t look over her shoulder.

“Who invited you?” The question was sharper, this time.

“A Polish family.” Sheila wondered desperately how she could keep the Aleksander name out of this stupid mess. She probably couldn’t without rousing more suspicion. She told them quickly of Andrew Aleksander’s visit to London last winter on a Purchasing Commission; of her visit here this summer at the invitation of Madame Aleksander; of her stay at Korytów.

“How did Aleksander come to meet you in London?”

“His aunt, Pani Marta Korytowska Madalinska, had given him a letter of introduction to my uncle. Her husband was killed by the Germans along with my father.” Sheila felt more confident again. All these facts could be checked, and her story would be proved. But the next question left her gasping.

“Then why did you visit Hofmeyer’s shop, today? Why did he leave money for you in an envelope? Quite a large amount?”

“Why don’t you ask Mr. Hofmeyer?” Sheila said angrily. Surely she didn’t have to start explaining all that, too...

“Unfortunately, Mr. Hofmeyer disappeared half an hour before our men arrived to arrest him. He has been in contact with German agents. He met one of them—who has since
been arrested and given us the necessary information about Hofmeyer—at Lowicz yesterday evening. Lowicz is near Korytów. We have traced his visit to you there. Yes, you may look dismayed, Miss Koch. When we arrest him, which should happen any minute now, you may find he is less thoughtful of you than you have been of him.”

“But I am not this woman Koch. I am Sheila Matthews.”

“Koch used many names, sometimes English or American ones. Matthews would have been an excellent one to choose.” He said to the secretary, “Now check all these main points in her story.” The man rose obediently, and hurried through the communicating door.

The man who looked like a French general was watching Sheila coldly. He picked up the black leather folder: “‘Margareta Koch, age twenty-five, born at Grünwald near Munich, medium height, slender, straight fair hair, brown eyes, for three months employed by Johann Hofmeyer (Polish citizen) as secretary. Disappeared without trace on March 17, 1939. Believed to have returned secretly to Germany, and then to the United States.’ Complete evidence on her undeniable guilt as an organiser of diversionist activities and of spying then follows...”

“But my hair isn’t straight,” was all that Sheila could say with complete inadequacy.

The uniformed man waved her silent. “Forgetting about permanent waving, Miss Koch, or Miss Matthews, what course of action would we take when we heard that an envelope with money was to be delivered to someone who was to call at the business address of a man who faces charges of being a traitor? Especially when the person who called was a blonde young woman of medium height, with brown eyes? Especially
when some of us believe that the rumour of Koch’s departure for Germany and America was merely, a fake, to cover her continued presence in Warsaw? What would you have done in our place?”

Sheila, watching the secretary’s face as he returned with a slip of paper which he handed to the man with the black moustache, watching that man reading it with interest, said slowly, “I’d arrest her, of course, in a time like this. And then I’d find out who she was. And then I’d check her story. And then I’d release her and apologise.”

The slip of paper had now been passed to the French general. He read it with one eyebrow raised.

“What if,” he continued still more coldly, “a London directory of business firms lists all men who have any important positions in the various firms; lists Matheson, Walters and Crieff, and all its directors; but doesn’t mention a John Matthews? Or is he now an unimportant clerk, so that we can’t check on his name?”

Sheila said, “But he is important.” Remembering Uncle Matthews’ clothes, his house, his friends, she added lamely, “At least, he had money enough.”

“Have you visited his office?”

“No.” Uncle Matthews didn’t approve of that. “But I’ve ’phoned there, often enough, to leave a message for him. His secretary always took the message.”

“For Mr. Matthews?”

“Yes. For Mr. Matthews. For Mr. John Matthews.”

“I see. What if we have found the record of Charles Matthews, found that he was murdered along with Andrew Madalinski by the Germans, but that there was no mention of any child?
It was known to his friends that he had a wife and a brother, who doesn’t happen to be named on this report. But there is absolutely no mention of either the wife’s death, or of a child.”

Sheila sat very still. She could only think: he didn’t know, he didn’t know I even existed... He didn’t know.

The man was talking again. She tried to listen, but her thoughts were with her father. For him, she had never existed. If the men in this room had tried their best to find some argument to end her resistance, they couldn’t have succeeded more brilliantly, more cruelly. Suddenly, as her silence remained unbroken, they realised something had had an effect.

The man with the moustache pressed home the advantage. He said quickly, “If Koch, knowing that she was in danger of being discovered, and yet knowing that her work in Poland was still to be finished, wanted an excellent and safe means of returning here, what could be better than to become the daughter of a man who died for Poland some twenty odd years ago? Then she could enter a Polish family of good standing, and as their guest she could spend the summer safely and quietly until the time came for her to finish her work. And that time is now. Now, with war threatened...”