The Winter Garden (2014) by Jane Thynne Page A

Nationalists at the last moment. Then in February I was on the Andalusian coast, where there were thousands of refugees fleeing the advance
on Malaga. I passed mothers who actually begged me to take their children, because they were so certain they would be killed. Everywhere you go there are ruined buildings and desolation. This
spring I moved all the way up to the Basque country. That’s where most of the Republican resistance movement is and I can’t tell you the things I saw there.’
    Mary stopped for a moment and passed a hand across her eyes.
    ‘I will tell you. Only not now. Anyway, I freelanced for various outfits and filed a little copy for United Press and I begged and wheedled Frank Nussbaum, the
Evening
Post
’s editor, to take my stories. But what I really wanted was to get back into Germany. This was where I wanted to report from. Then I had the most enormous piece of luck. You’ve
heard of Charles Lindbergh?’
    ‘Who hasn’t?’
    Everyone knew Charles Lindbergh. The celebrated American aviator, world famous for his solo flight from New York to Paris, had had his life torn apart when his baby son was kidnapped and
murdered. To escape the hysteria of the ensuing murder trial, the family had moved to a peaceful village in Kent.
    ‘As it happens, Colonel Lindbergh comes from New Jersey, near where my parents live, so we knew him a little. I prised the address out of my mother, went over to England, drove down to the
village and knocked on the door. I dropped my family name very heavily and asked if he would do an interview and to my amazement, he said yes. I suppose I must have been talking about wanting to
come to Germany, because it seems he spoke to someone and the next week, a visa came through.’
    ‘Lindbergh must have German contacts.’
    ‘Sure he does. He’s great pals with Goering. I’m certain it was Goering who had my visa approved. Anyhow, the
Post
were ecstatic when I offered them my Lindbergh
interview, and the result was they agreed to take me on at the Berlin bureau again for sixty dollars a week.’
    ‘Sixty dollars! You’ll live like royalty here on that.’
    ‘That’s the easy bit. Now I just have to find some stories. It’s harder than before. Restrictions on foreign journalists are tighter. I just want a good story. Something meaty,
that gets my by-line above the fold.’
    ‘There is something,’ Clara hesitated. ‘I heard about it the other day, but there’s been nothing in the papers here.’
    The death at the Reich Bride School had been preoccupying her. Not that violent crime was unusual in Berlin. It was more of a daily occurrence. The fact that the girl’s shooting had gone
unremarked was hardly surprising. Why bother to report on a murder in a city where sudden death was the prime instrument of law and order? It was just that the woman was called Anna Hansen. It
couldn’t be the same Anna . . . could it?
    ‘There was a woman shot last week at the Schwanenwerder Bride School. They think . . .’
    ‘Hold on right there.’ Mary cocked her head. ‘Did you say Bride School?’
    ‘There are Bride Schools all around Germany. They’re Himmler’s brainchild. You need to attend one if you’re going to marry into the SS.’
    ‘What do they teach? Which flowers go well with roses? Where to seat a bishop at dinner, that sort of thing? How to use an oyster fork?’
    Clara laughed. ‘More like herring recipes and how to hem curtains. Whatever it takes, in the National Socialist mind, to be a good wife.’
    Mary rolled her eyes. ‘Presumably this girl wasn’t shot for her cooking skills?’
    ‘That’s just it. We don’t know. There’s been nothing about it in any of the papers, I’ve looked. And I wouldn’t be interested, only the dead woman was called
Anna Hansen, and I used to know a girl called that. I wondered if it could be the same one.’
    ‘Sounds like a pretty common name to me.’
    ‘I suppose. It was just a thought. The woman I knew