Dead Man's Tale (4 page)

Unfortunately, the Swiss girl who had handled the Hacha business for CARE isn't with them any more. Her name is Gertrude Ohlendorf and she's gone back to Lucerne. But here is an odd coincidence: she left The Hague a few days after the arrival of Barney Street's last package, the one they couldn't deliver because Hacha had vanished. I guess if it's necessary we can look her up in Lucerne. They gave us her address.

At first it didn't look as if it would be necessary. We took the train to Oosterdijk, where Hacha was stationed during the war. The trip was across country so flat it makes Long Island look like the Alps. Travelling across the countryside like that, you get an idea of how crowded Holland is and how much building is going on here. Except in Oosterdijk, I gather.

Mayor Van Hilversum didn't seem anxious to talk about Milo Hacha at first; then the legacy hooked him. When he heard about that he seemed to get perverse satisfaction in telling us Hacha was dead. And on our second visit he gave us documents establishing Hacha's death beyond any legal doubt.

That seemed to end it and, frankly, I was disappointed. I think I had visions of our wandering all over the face of Europe looking for this mysterious Czech.

Then the mayor's wife dropped her little bombshell. I didn't get a chance to read her note until we returned, drenched, to the hotel. It said: “If you wish to learn more about Milo Hacha, see Old Joost.” When she slipped it to me I'd actually thought it was an assignation because of my sex appeal!

While Steve was taking a bath, I went downstairs to the concierge and asked him about Old Joost. Joost is an old blind man, he said, who has a farm about a mile out of town. He lives there with his granddaughter, and I gather he's something of a recluse.

When I went back upstairs I showed Steve the note. He didn't like it. He'd already been talking about catching the next flight back to the States, and the note jarred him.

We decided, over dinner in the hotel dining room, to see Old Joost first thing in the morning. I must have had a little too much wine, because for no reason at all I blurted out, “Steve, you
wanted
to find out Hacha was dead, didn't you?”

“What do you mean by that, kid?”

“I don't know. I'm asking you.” Now that I'd started it, I couldn't stop. “Well, what happens if you find out he's still alive?”

“Alive? You heard the mayor. He's dead. He's dead, kid. Go on upstairs and read the stuff the mayor gave us. It proves Hacha's dead.”

“But what about this note?”

“All right. All
right
. I said we'd see this Joost character in the morning, didn't I?”

It had stopped raining, so after dinner I went out for a walk on the red-brick streets of Oosterdijk. I admit it looks as if Milo Hacha is dead. Everything points to it.

But just mentioning the possibility that he's still alive scared Steve as much as reading about Barney Street's murder!

Why?

5

Old Joost liked the sound of the rainwater dripping from the eaves of the old stone farmhouse.

There were other sounds, too, which Old Joost liked: the windmill sails creakily turning as the wind moved them, music to the ears of a man who had spent most of his life in darkness; or the ringing hiss of milk in the metal pails as Katrina emptied the cows' udders, and their contented lowing afterward. But most of all, Katrina's voice as she sang to him after dinner in the farmhouse.

Now Katrina was asleep and there was the sound of the rainwater dripping from the eaves and the faint bubbling in the bowl of his big briar pipe as Old Joost smoked away. The pipe was forbidden, and Old Joost smiled. Heer Doctor Brinker had told Old Joost after the last attack, there would be no more tobacco or he, Brinker, would not be responsible for what happened. So the old man allowed himself one stolen pipeful at night, after Katrina was asleep.

Joost was an angular giant with a leathery face and very large hands which had been once formidable. But now the hands shook; the strength had slipped away. He marvelled at his trembling fingers. It hardly seemed possible that with these hands, not too many years ago, he had killed a man.

The man had had a name, but Old Joost no longer remembered it. An Englishman with a wry, clipped accent. His Dutch had been atrocious. He had come to Oosterdijk looking for Milo Hacha. He had not found Hacha, but he was a man of cunning. Because Hacha had once lived with Old Joost at the farmhouse, he had come here. When he had seen Katrina, the Englishman's shrewd mind had gone to work.

Old Joost had been able to tell; the Englishman's voice had changed at the sight of Katrina's dark, kinky hair and her widely-spaced Slavic cheekbones. The blind man had always known what Katrina looked like, all but the colouring; his fingertips had told him.

The Englishman had wanted to take Katrina away. So on a night like this night, with rainwater dripping from the eaves and gusts of wind snapping in the sails of the windmill, Old Joost had killed the Englishman with his hands.

The Englishman had not wanted to die, but Old Joost had not wanted him to take Katrina away, either. The old man remembered the blows the Englishman had rained on his chest and face, but he also remembered the terrible strength in his fingers as they strangled the life out of the stranger. Katrina had been very young then. Had she been in the room? Old Joost just couldn't remember.

He had buried the Englishman behind the windmill. Coming back to the farmhouse, he had stumbled over the dead man's bicycle. So he had dug another hole and buried the bicycle, too, and a few days later Vander Poel, the policeman, had come asking Old Joost about the Englishman, but Old Joost knew nothing.

Joost sighed, wishing he might see—with eyes, not fingers—Katrina's dark, Slavic beauty. But even before she had come to him the Gestapo had destroyed his sight. They had also killed his daughter and his son-in-law because they had been part of the underground that had helped British and American airmen reach the coast and the submarines which took them back to England.

He did not know what had happened to the real Katrina, their child. At first he had accepted the Katrina brought to him by Milo Hacha as his granddaughter. Later, when he realized that the child of his own blood had died with her mother and father in the Gestapo butchery, it no longer mattered. There was only one Katrina.

Until Katrina's seventh birthday a succession of hired girls came to live at the farm, to help in rearing “Joost's granddaughter.” There had been frequent visits by the mayor's wife, Johanna, bearing gifts. And for the first three years of Katrina's life Milo Hacha had also come frequently.

It was during those three years that Hilversum had been plotting in secret against the Czech, manufacturing evidence, Joost was certain, to prove that Milo Hacha had been a Nazi criminal. For how could that be? Of all the fighters in the underground the Czech had been the most valuable and courageous, for he worked inside the enemy's camp, in the enemy's own uniform.

Hacha had liked Oosterdijk, and after the war he had settled there. In more ways than one, it was whispered in the town. As for Katrina's true mother, one had only to think of the mayor's wife, with her visits to Joost's farm and her gifts and her concern for the little one's welfare.…

Milo Hacha had fled barely in time. Oosterdijk, of course, supposed him to have died. But dead men do not come in the stillness of night, stealthily, to clasp a seven-year-old child in a living embrace and utter a choked good-bye.

Katrina had known him as “Uncle” Hacha. Old Joost she had called “Grandfather,” as she still did.

He knew what they had begun to say about him, of course. He was getting old, growing soft in the head. He did not mind. It made things easier. His only fear was that Katrina would be taken away from him.

The years passed, and the Englishman had come for Katrina, and Old Joost had strangled him.

Now, on a night like the night he had taken a life. Old Joost sat smoking his pipe, remembering.

A car stopped on the road outside the house.

Old Joost waited motionless on his hard-backed chair. He sat facing the door. He sucked at his pipe once more, but it had gone out. He thought very quickly, confusedly, of his eyes, Milo Hacha, Katrina, the Englishman, Hilversum, Hilversum's wife.

There was a knock at the door.

Only then did Old Joost get up. He went to the door.

“Ja?”

“Joost? Let me in.”

It was Johanna Hilversum's voice. He unbolted the door and opened it. The night air was cool, with a smell of rain in it. He stepped back. Vrouw Hilversum brushed past him into the room.

“Shut the door,” she told Joost.

“I don't like you coming here.”

“It is for Katrina's sake. May I sit down?”

“Sit, don't sit. It makes no difference to me.” Old Joost shut the door and bolted it.

“There is hardly any air in here. You should open the windows. Katrina—”

“My granddaughter? She is healthy and happy. What do you want?”

“Yesterday two Americans came to Oosterdijk. They are looking for Milo Hacha.”

Old Joost felt his heart jump sickeningly. “Milo Hacha is dead!”

“There is a legacy, Joost. A fortune. For Milo Hacha.”

“Milo Hacha is
dead
. Doesn't everyone say so?”

“He has an heir.”

“Katrina,” said Old Joost in a trembling voice, “is my granddaughter.”

“Joost. Listen to me. No one wishes to take Katrina away from you.”

“You should not have come here. You are not welcome.”

“I want Katrina to have that money, Joost.”

“She is happy. There is the farm. We work together. She is content. I … am used to her.”

“You are sick, Joost. Heer Doctor Brinker says—”

“That fool! I will outlive him.”

“What will happen to Katrina when you die? Don't you love her?”

“Get out of here,” Old Joost said.

“Not until we have talked,” Johanna said in a surprisingly gentle voice.

Old Joost turned away. His heart was hammering against his chest. “I told the Americans nothing, I want
you
to tell them. I gave them a note. They are coming here.”

“When?” I must be calm, the old man thought. There is real danger again.

“I don't know. Tomorrow, perhaps. You must tell them the truth about Katrina.”

“Katrina is my granddaughter. Her parents are dead. They were killed by the Nazis. That is the truth about her.”

“You are not the simple-minded old gaffer you pretend to be, Joost. You know well enough who Katrina's real parents are.”

“They will never take her from me.”

“I've already told you no one wishes to do that. We all want only the best for her.”

Old Joost snorted. “Why didn't
you
tell the Americans, then?”

“Because Mynheer Van Hilversum—Coming from you, they would believe.… It was you Milo Hacha brought the child to. Her looks alone are not enough, but along with what you could tell them—” The woman, always so self-assured, was actually faltering.

Old Joost filled his pipe, pushing the tobacco down hard with his thumb. He felt strength in his hands now. They were hardly shaking at all. He lit his pipe, put out the match and dropped it on the floor. “When Milo Hacha brought me the child, surely it was with your consent?”

Ah, he had her now. It was coming out, in a stream, a torrent. “No! No!… It was right after the war. My husband had gone to Amsterdam. A conference of mayors, concerned with reparations. I was a … a big woman, stouter than I am now. I carried the baby without arousing suspicion. When my time approached I went to Hoorn. I could not keep the baby. I knew that.

“Milo Hacha came to Hoorn. When it was safe to do so, he took the child from the midwife's house. I loved my baby. Do you understand that? I loved her! But I let him take her away from me. What else could I do? I was frightened … my husband … I never dreamed Milo would take the baby back to Oosterdijk.”

She was silent. When she spoke again her voice was steady. “Afterward, when there was talk, he told me. I came here to see the baby, and I knew. Everyone knew. Even Mynheer—but that is nothing, now. You know the way he plotted against Milo Hacha. Why else would he have done that? Milo knew you would provide a home for Katrina. He knew you had lost everything, your whole family—”

“Yes,” Old Joost said. “And now Katrina is my whole family.”

“Then you will want to do what is best for her. I have never told this story before.”

That was true, Old Joost knew. He began to feel fear again.

“So now you know,” Johanna said. “Think of me as you wish. Call me whore. But I'm not sorry! If I had the whole thing to do all over again, it would be the same. Will you tell the Americans?”

Old Joost rose, sucking on his pipe. Katrina was asleep in the next room. If he crossed the floor and opened her door he could hear her gentle breathing. He turned toward Johanna Van Hilversum and said one word. “No.”

“Old fool—”

“Listen. Listen to me. The girl is my life. Without her I am helpless and empty. I will never give her up. No, don't interrupt. If they come here with their talk of money, what is to stop them from taking her away from me?”

“Simpleton! They won't take her away. And you'll have the money, too!”

“I don't want their money. And you, Johanna? Perhaps you want to claim your child—and get the money for yourself?”

Old Joost waited. When she finally spoke her voice was harsh. “What will you tell them? Because if you don't tell them about Katrina, I will. What will you tell them?”

Old Joost laughed. “I will tell them Milo Hacha is not dead. I will tell them he went away. I will tell them that I saw him after he was supposed to be dead.”

“What are you saying?” Johanna cried in a shrill voice.