Maud struggled to her knees and stared at Joachim. His eyes were wide and staring. His nose was twisted sideways. His skull seemed to be out of shape. Blood came from his ear. He did not appear to be breathing.
Carla knelt beside him, put her fingertips to his neck and felt for a pulse. There was none. ‘He’s dead,’ she said. ‘We’ve killed him. Oh, my God.’
Maud said: ‘You poor, stupid boy.’ She was crying.
Ada, panting with effort, said: ‘What do we do now?’
Carla realized they had to get rid of the body.
Maud struggled to her feet with difficulty. The left side of her face was swelling. ‘Dear God, it hurts,’ she said, holding her side. Carla guessed she had a cracked rib.
Looking down at Joachim, Ada said: ‘We could hide him in the attic.’
Carla said: ‘Yes, until the neighbours start to complain about the smell.’
‘Then we’ll bury him in the back garden.’
‘And what will people think when they see three women digging a hole six feet long in the yard of a Berlin town house? That we are prospecting for gold?’
‘We could dig at night.’
‘Would that seem less suspicious?’
Ada scratched her head.
Carla said: ‘We have to take the body somewhere and dump it. A park, or a canal.’
‘But how will we carry it?’ said Ada.
‘He doesn’t weigh much,’ said Maud sadly. ‘So slim and strong.’
Carla said: ‘It’s not the weight that’s the problem. Ada and I can carry him. But somehow we have to do it without arousing suspicion.’
Maud said: ‘I wish we had a car.’
Carla shook her head. ‘No one can get petrol anyway.’
They were silent. Outside, dusk was falling. Ada got a towel and wrapped it around Joachim’s head, to prevent his blood staining the floor. Maud cried silently, the tears rolling down a face twisted in anguish. Carla wanted to sympathize but first she had to solve this problem.
‘We could put him in a box,’ she said.
Ada said: ‘The only box that size is a coffin.’
‘How about a piece of furniture? A sideboard?’
‘Too heavy.’ Ada looked thoughtful. ‘But the wardrobe in my room is not so weighty.’
Carla nodded. A maid was assumed not to have many clothes, nor to need mahogany furniture, she realized with a touch of embarrassment; so Ada’s room had a narrow hanging cupboard made of flimsy deal wood. ‘Let’s get it,’ she said.
Ada had originally lived in the basement, but that was now an air raid shelter, and her room was upstairs. Carla and Ada went up. Ada opened her cupboard and pulled all the clothes off the rail. There were not many: two sets of uniform, a few dresses, one winter coat, all old. She laid them neatly on the single bed.
Carla tilted the wardrobe and took its weight, then Ada picked up the other end. It was not heavy, but it was awkward, and it took them some time to manhandle it out of the door and down the stairs.
At last they laid it on its back in the hall. Carla opened the door. Now it looked like a coffin with a hinged lid.
Carla went back into the kitchen and bent over the body. She took the camera and films from Joachim’s pocket, and replaced them in the kitchen drawer.
Carla took his arms, Ada took his legs, and they lifted the body. They carried it out of the kitchen into the hall and lowered it into the wardrobe. Ada rearranged the towel about the head, though the bleeding had stopped.
Should they take off his uniform, Carla wondered? It would make the body harder to identify – but it would give her two problems of disposal instead of one. She decided against.
She picked up the canvas bag and dropped it into the wardrobe with the corpse.
She closed the wardrobe door and turned the key, to make sure it did not fall open by accident. She put the key in the pocket of her dress.
She went into the dining room and looked out through the window. ‘It’s getting dark,’ she said. ‘That’s good.’
Maud said: ‘What will people think?’
‘That we’re moving a piece of furniture – selling it, perhaps, to get money for food.’
‘Two women, moving a wardrobe?’
‘Women do this sort of thing all the time, now that so many men are in the army or dead. It’s not as if we could get a removal van – they can’t buy petrol.’
