Mrs Renouf had wasted no time. Dido stiffened. She hadn’t expected the Germans to come so soon. She’d thought they might have another day’s grace at least before a big search.
‘We received two to be precise,’ the officer said as they entered the kitchen. He turned to his colleague and indicated the back door. His colleague exited, presumably to search the grounds.
‘Two letters?’ Dido said, looking out the door and then turning her attention to the officer. She remembered to give him a charming smile.
‘The first stated you and your sister were complicit in hiding a Jewish woman who failed to register at the First Order in 1940. It was clear. It went into a great deal of detail. The woman in question used to work with your older sister. It stated you knew her too and would most likely know of her whereabouts. The anonymous letter was very uncomplimentary about you and your … behaviour.’
‘Two letters?’ Dido asked in confusion. ‘Are you sure?’ She absent-mindedly stirred dried bramble leaves into the teapot and put the kettle on the range to boil.
‘The second, short, to the point said specifically that we were to ask Persephone Le Roy the whereabouts of a missing Jewish woman. This house was mentioned. And in particular, so was she.’
Dido looked away. ‘Two letters?’ she repeated. She couldn’t work it out. Why two? Why one mentioning her and then one not?
‘So of course, we come to talk to you. But we come to talk to Persephone Le Roy in particular.’
‘There’s no woman. What a malicious letter.’
‘Two malicious letters,’ he pointed out.
‘You don’t believe it, do you?’ she asked.
‘We must look into everything that sounds plausible and not in line with the Reich. Regardless, I will need to speak with your sister soon. And we will search the house. We will search your room. I assume you have no objections to us searching your room.’
‘No,’ Dido said. ‘None. Just don’t break anything please.’
It wasn’t her room that worried her. It was Persey’s. What had Persey done with the carbon copies of her shorthand notes? Had she destroyed them? All of them? Why oh why had she sat downstairs waiting for Persey and Stefan to return instead of going upstairs and checking that everything was as it should be?
The soldier returned from the garden and shook his head. He had found nothing outside.
She had to think quickly. What could she do to stop them? What could she do to prevent them from searching upstairs? Nothing. There was nothing. They would look. And what if they found the notes. That was Persey done for, arrested and … then what? Good God, what would happen to her older sister? It didn’t bear thinking about.
‘You do know Captain Keller lives here, don’t you?’ she repeated, grasping at anything that might deter them.
‘We do, yes,’ the officer said.
She turned to lift the kettle from the range as it began singing and while she poured the water into the pot she began humming a tune, hoping to win them round in some way. She continued her song distractedly, her back to the officer as she stirred the leaves around the pot, thinking … thinking of anything she could do to stop them looking upstairs.
‘What is that lovely tune?’ the officer asked. ‘I have heard you sing many times before. You have not sung that I do not believe. Will you sing a little more for me now?’ Dido felt her chest tighten in panic. Oh good Lord, she wasn’t supposed to knowany new songs. She wasn’t supposed to own a wireless in order to hear any.
‘I just made it up. It doesn’t have words to it yet,’ she brushed him off.
‘Hum it again.’
‘I …’
‘Again please,’ he demanded.
She’d been singing a few bars of her latest favourite ‘Love is a Song’. She’d heard it only a few weeks earlier and the radio announcer had spoken about it being from Walt Disney’s newest film,Bambi. Dido couldn’t wait for American films to be released again. She and Werner were sick to death of all this German propaganda they’d been sitting through at the Gaumont cinema and she wondered how many musical films she’d have to catch up with. That would be a treat worth waiting for. She hummed a little of the song for the officer now, forgetting on purpose the next bar and as for the rest she purposefully sang a little off key. She stopped suddenly, cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me,’ she said as she coughed.
‘I know that tune,’ the officer said.
‘How can you?’ Dido gave a tinkle of a laugh. ‘I’ve just made it up,’ she lied.
‘No. You have not. I have heard it. It is a new tune.’ He stood up. ‘Where are you keeping it?’ he asked quickly, rising from his position at the kitchen table and splaying his fingers out on the surface of the wood.
‘Where am I keeping what?’ she asked.
‘Your wireless.’
