Death in Berlin by M. M. Kaye Read Free Book Online

could not sleep.
    7 want to go home … 7 want to go home … I want to go home. ‘ That would be Stella. Poor Stella! It must be cruel to have to live
    a life you hated in order to be with the man you loved. Well you can’t have it both ways, thought Miranda. But why not? Millions of people did. Stella was just unlucky.
    ‘Shan’t go to bed! Shan’t go to bed! Shan’t go to bed!’ ‘Lottiethe-Devil-Cat’.
    ‘Cela suffit! Cela suffit! Cela suffit!’ Mademoiselle. A repellent woman, thought Miranda. Bony, greying and bespectacled: apparently suffering from a perpetual cold and given to nibbling caraway seeds like some desiccated Victorian spinster. It was difficult to realize that anyone like Mademoiselle had ever been young and lighthearted, yet traces of feminine vanity evidently lingered even in Mademoiselle’s flinty bosom, for despite the fact that her scanty hair was obviously grey she persisted in secretly doctoring it with the contents of a small sticky bottle of dye; although the resulting jetty blackness, especially after a fresh application, added to rather than detracted from her years. She had been in Lille when the German Army had swept through France, and had been unable to return to her native Switzerland. Later, under suspicion of being involved with the Underground Movement, she had been sent to a concentration camp in which she had spent the greater part of the war. Mademoiselle was
    46
     
    fond of enlarging on her sufferings during that time, but although one could not help feeling sorry for her, it was impossible to like
    her.
    Miranda yawned, wriggled, jerked irritably at her blankets, and wished fervently that she had accepted Brigadier Brindley’s offer of a sleeping pill. She had refused them, watching with inward scorn as the Brigadier swallowed two with his coffee, and thinking that he was just the sort of man whom one would expect to carry about little boxes and bottles of capsules. ‘Never travel without ‘em!’ said the Brigadier: ‘Can’t sleep in a train. I found that out years ago, so when I can’t avoid travelling by night I take a couple of these. Works like magic. Like to try one? No after-effects I assure you. Excellent stuff.’
    Mademoiselle, who had an incurable passion for pills in any form, had accepted one, and Stella had taken two, saying that she would try anything if only it would give her a decent night’s sleep after the torture of the Harwich crossing. She had broken the small capsules in half, and stirring the powdered contents into her coffee, drunk it there and then. Miranda envied them their forethought.
    There were not many passengers travelling to Berlin that night, and the train being half empty, Miranda and Brigadier Brindley had each been allotted a two-berth compartment to themselves. The Brigadier was next door to Miranda, and, she thought crossly, undoubtedly sleeping like a log. Somewhere down the corridor ‘Lottiethe-Devil-Cat’, soothed by hot milk, would be asleep and probably snoring (Lottie suffered from adenoids), while Stella and Mademoiselle, thanks to the Brigadier’s pills, would also be sleeping soundly. Only she, Miranda, was awake …
    The narrow compartment was close and stuffy and she wondered if she would do better on the upper berth, but a vague recollection that hot air rises caused her to abandon the idea. She threw off her blankets instead, and after a few moments discovered that it was, after all, colder than she had thought, and pulled them back again. She shut her eyes and tried to will herself to go to sleep,
    47
     
    but it was no use, and she opened them again and lay staring into the darkness.
    A latch clicked somewhere near at hand and a faint thread of
    light showed under the locked door that lay between the two compartments. So much for the efficacy of the Brigadier’s sleeping pills! thought Miranda.
    The light vanished, and Miranda yawned and presently decided that she was thirsty. She would have a drink of