“Au revoir! Merci beaucoup!” Delphine called out. Her words were drowned out by the revving of the engine as he pulled away. Clearly, the man didn’t want to hang around a moment longer than he had to.
“Major McMahon will be along shortly,” the guard said. “He’ll show you to your billet.”
Major McMahon reminded Martha of the owner of the grocery store on Wythe Avenue. He had the same shrewd eyes and paunchy stomach. But the voice was more Boston than Brooklyn.
“Good evening, ladies.” He gave a deep nod that was almost a bow as he shook each proffered hand. “Boy, am I glad to see you all!” He led them along a tree-lined track lit by electric lampposts. They stopped in front of a trio of wooden cabins that looked like the Cajun fishing shacks she’d seen as a child on the bayous in Louisiana.
“I hope you’ll be comfortable in here,” he said, as he unlocked the door of one of the cabins. “It used to belong to the officers.”
“Officers?” Martha echoed.
“The Nazis who ran the place when it was a labor camp.” He smiled at her startled face. “Don’t worry, they left it spotless. Hardly lived here, by all accounts. Spent most of their time at the blockhouse where their Polish mistresses were billeted.” His hands forked the air. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be crude. But in this place . . . well, you kinda get used to telling it like it is.”
He led them up a rickety set of stairs to a large mezzanine room with four single beds. “This was going to be for all three of you to share,” he said. “But since the others have gone, you can spread out a little. The places on either side are empty, so take your pick.” He tossed a bunch of keys onto one of the beds.
“Who’s gone?” Martha felt a prickle of apprehension.
“The guys who came last month. There was a Dutch fella in charge. He only stuck it out for a week. Hitched a ride home with a convoy headed up north. The doctor—Belgian guy—went with him.” Major McMahon shrugged. “There was a Texan, too; he was running the warehouse, getting in supplies. But he was a drinker: got hooked on the hooch the Poles make. It turned him blind, so he had to go home.”
“That’s awful.” Martha glanced at the others. “So, who’s left?”
“Nobody.” The major blew out a breath. “Just you three ladies in charge now.”
CHAPTER 3
The major’s words were still echoing in Martha’s head as she lay down in bed.
He only stuck it out for a week.
Why had her predecessor run away? And the doctor, too. What had made them abandon the people they had come to help after just days on the job?
She tried to imagine the people lying asleep beyond the trees that screened the cabin from the rest of the camp: hundreds of men, women, and children herded together in a place far from home. She thought of the newspaper image still tucked away in her handbag, of the frightened-looking woman with a baby in her arms and another child clinging to her skirt. How could anyone turn their back on someone in such dire need?
Martha glanced across the room, at the shapes in the other beds. They’d been too exhausted to investigate the neighboring cabins. There was something comforting in them all being in the same room—even though they barely knew each other. She wondered if Delphine and Kitty were already asleep, or if, like her, their minds were racing.
On the other side of the room, Kitty was staring at the dark shadows on the ceiling. She couldn’t shake the thought that the bed she was lying in had once belonged to a Nazi. What if her mother and father had ended up in a place like this? The thought of them being sent out in freezing winter weather to chop wood for hours on end made her insides shrivel. How could she close her eyes with that image in her head?
There was a creak of metal springs as Delphine turned to face the window. Like the others, she was imagining what lay beyond the trees. She was trying to picture the camp hospital. Who had been looking after the patients since the doctor disappeared? What was she going to find when she got there tomorrow morning? And there was something else hovering like a specter on the margins of her mind’s eye. Just a few miles beyond the boundary of Seidenmühle lay Dachau. What had she been thinking, coming here? She had hoped for a feeling of closeness to Claude and Philippe from being near the place where they died. But all she felt was the horror of it, the unfathomable injustice.
“Are you okay?” It was Martha who called out in the darkness.
“I can’t sleep,” Delphine replied. “Sorry—did I wake you? These beds are rickety, aren’t they?”