She lowered her voice. “It was a nest of communist spies.”
“No, really?”
The woman folded her arms over her corseted bosom. “They were arrested last Wednesday, the whole pack of them.”
Hermia felt a chill of fear, but she made herself keep up the pretense of idle gossip. “Goodness! How many?”
“I couldn’t say, exactly. There was the tenant, young Mr. Toksvig, who I wouldn’t have taken for a wrongdoer, though he wasn’t always as respectful to his elders as he might have been, then lately an airman seemed to be living there, a nice-looking boy, though he never said much; but there were all sorts in and out of the place, mostly military types.”
“And they were arrested on Wednesday?”
“On that very pavement, where you see Mr. Schmidt’s spaniel cocking his leg against the lamppost, there was a shooting.”
Hermia gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, no!”
The old woman nodded, pleased with this reaction to her story, not suspecting that she might be speaking of the man Hermia loved. “A plainclothes policeman shot one of the communists.” She added superfluously, “With a gun.”
Hermia was so afraid of what she might learn that she could hardly speak. She forced out three words: “Who was shot?”
“I didn’t actually see it myself,” the woman said with infinite regret. “I happened to be over at my sister’s house in Fischer’s Gade, borrowing a knitting pattern for a cardigan. It wasn’t Mr. Toksvig himself, that I can say for sure, because Mrs. Eriksen in the shop saw it, and she said it was a man she didn’t know.”
“Was he. . killed?”
“Oh, no. Mrs. Eriksen thought he might have been wounded in the leg. Anyhow, he cried out when the ambulance men lifted him onto the stretcher.”
Hermia felt sure it was Arne who had been shot. She seemed to feel the pain of a bullet wound herself. She was breathless and dizzy. She needed to get away from this awful old busybody who told the tragic story with such relish. “I must be going,” she said. “What a dreadful thing to happen.” She turned away.
“Anyway, I should think the place will be to rent, before too long,” the woman said to her back.
Hermia walked away, paying no attention.
She turned corners at random until she came to a cafe, where she sat down to gather her thoughts. A hot cup of ersatz tea helped her recover from the shock. She had to find out for sure what had happened to Arne and where he was now. But first she needed somewhere to spend the night.
She got a room at a cheap hotel near the waterfront. It was a sleazy place, but her bedroom door had a stout lock. At about midnight, a slurred voice outside asked if she would like a little drink, and she got up to jam the door with a tilted chair.
She spent most of the night awake, wondering if Arne had been the man shot in St. Paul’s Gade. If so, how badly was he hurt? If not, had he been arrested with the others, or was he still at large? Whom could she ask? She could contact Arne’s family, but they probably would not know, and it would scare them to death to be asked whether he had been shot. She knew many of his friends, but the ones who were likely to know what had happened were dead, or in custody, or in hiding.
In the early hours of the morning, it occurred to her that there was one person who was almost certain to know if Arne had been arrested: his commanding officer.
At first light, she went to the railway station and caught a train to Vodal.
As the train crawled south, stopping at every sleepy village, she thought of Digby. By now he would be in back in Sweden, waiting impatiently on the quay at Kalvsby for her to arrive with Arne and the film. The fisherman would come back alone, and tell Digby that Hermia had not appeared at their rendezvous. Digby would not know whether she had been captured or merely delayed. He would be as distraught about her as she was about Arne.
The flying school had a desolate feel. There were no aircraft on the field and none in the sky. A few machines were being serviced and, in one of the hangars, some trainees were being shown the innards of an engine. She was directed to the headquarters building.
She had to give her real name, for there were people here who knew her. She asked to see the base commander, adding, “Tell him I’m a friend of Arne Olufsen’s.”
She knew she was taking a risk. She had met Squadron Leader Renthe, and remembered him as a tall, thin man with a moustache. She had no idea what his politics were. If he happened to be pro-Nazi, she could be in trouble. He might phone the police and report an Englishwoman asking questions. But he was fond of Arne, as so many people were, so she was hoping that for Arne’s sake he would not betray her. Anyway, she was going to take the chance. She had to find out what had happened.
She was admitted immediately, and Renthe recognized her. “My God-you’re Arne’s fiancee!” he said. “I thought you’d gone back to England.” He hurried to close the door behind her-a good sign, she thought, for if he wanted privacy that suggested he was not going to alert the police, at least not immediately.
She decided to offer no explanation of why she was in Denmark. Let him draw his own conclusions. “I’m trying to find out where Arne is,” she said. “I fear he may be in trouble.”
“It’s worse than that,” said Renthe. “You’d better sit down.”
Hermia remained standing. “Why?” she cried. “Why sit down? What’s happened?”
“He was arrested last Wednesday.”
“Is that all?”
“He was shot and wounded while trying to escape from the police.”
“So it was him.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“A neighbor told me one of them had been shot. How is he?”
“Please do sit down, my dear.”
Hermia sat down. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Renthe hesitated. Then, in a low voice, he said slowly, “I’m dreadfully sorry to have to tell you that I’m afraid Arne is dead.”
She cried out in anguish. In her heart she had known this might be so, but the possibility of losing him had been too dreadful to think about. Now that it had come, she felt as if she had been struck by a train. “No,” she said. “It’s not true.”
“He died in police custody.”
“What?” With an effort, she made herself listen.
“He died at police headquarters.”
A terrible possibility entered her mind. “Did they torture him?”
“I don’t think so. It seems that, in order to avoid revealing information under torture, he took his own life.”
“Oh, God!”
“He sacrificed himself to protect his friends, I’d guess.”
Renthe looked blurred, and Hermia realized she was seeing him through tears which were streaming down her face. She fumbled for a handkerchief, and Renthe passed her his own. She wiped her face, but the tears kept coming.
Renthe said, “I’ve only just heard. I’ve got to phone Arne’s parents and tell them.”
Hermia knew them well. She found the steely pastor difficult to deal with: it seemed he could relate to people only by dominating them, and subservience did not come easily to Hermia. He loved his sons, but expressed his love by laying down rules. What Hermia remembered most vividly about Arne’s mother was that her hands were always chapped from being in water too much, washing clothes and preparing vegetables and scrubbing floors. Thinking of them drew Hermia’s thoughts away from her own loss, and she felt a surge of compassion. They would be distraught. “How dreadful for you to be the bearer of such news,” she said to Renthe.
“Indeed. Their firstborn son.”
That made her think of the other son, Harald. He was fair where Arne was dark, and they were different in
