Page 37 of Hell to Pay
“Oh, so much of life is like a game,” I said, “with its winners and losers. Chutes and Ladders. In my day, it was called Snakes and Ladders. A very dull game, then and now. You land on the wrong square, you slide down. You land on the right square, you climb up. No strategy. Nothing but chance, but then, much of lifeischance, or combinations of circumstances that appear to us to be chance. Have I given you enough time to think of a second explanation?”
“Well, obviously,” Alix said reluctantly, “the Jewish girl. I can’t remember her name.”
I beamed at her. “Very good. You do have a clever mind. Yes, Andrea. She was twelve and I was sixteen, but she was tall for her age and I’m small, so we were much of a size. She was dark, of course, and I’m fair, but who was to know the difference, once the originalKennkartewith my photo was hidden? I could have died in the fire once I’d ventured out after the second bombing to check on the situation, and she’d heard my father tell me where to find the jewels. She’d have had every reason to have a new document forged with the correct photo but without the damning “J” stamped across it, at least until the war ended. Again, she couldn’t have come back to the palace, for she was obviously not me, and why would she have kept the originalKennkarte,unless it was to swap out her own photo for mine, which she didn’t do?But?—”
Alix said, “Oh! Wait. There’s no way. You met Grandpa when you were, what? Seventeen and lying about your age?”
“Sixteen,” I said. “Eighteen at my marriage. Barely. And no, I wasn’t lying to him. Him, I told everything to.”
“I think he’d have noticed if the girl he was into was twelve, though,” Alix said. “Somehow I don’t imagine he’d have failed to miss that.”
“Unless he was a pedophile,” Ashleigh said. “Hey, it happens.”
“I don’t see how we prove that somebody who’s dead wasn’t a pedophile,” Ben said. “Oh, wait. I know the third possibility. It’s obvious. Somebody stole your document thing and the jewelry when you were … whatever. Running away. Like, you fall asleep and they take your stuff.”
“Except that she said she sewed the jewelry into the sleeves of her coat,” Ashleigh said. “And put theKennkarteunder the insole of her shoe. It’s not like she’d have been wandering around the countryside saying, “Hey, you got any food? I’m a princess, by the way, and I’m carrying all this priceless jewelry with me.”
“OK, first,” Alix said, “Grandpa wasn’t a pedophile. No possible way. He was … he washonorable.He did the right thing even when it was harder. The same way you do, Sebastian.”
“Well, thanks,” Sebastian said.
“And second, “ Alix went on, “it’s too bad, Oma, that you don’t have any pictures of yourself with your parents. You don’t look the same now, but if you had a picture of yourself with Grandpa when you were younganda family picture with your parents, it would be obvious you’re the same person.”
“Sadly,” I said, “my father refused to be photographed. And my mother took only the two wedding photos with her to the cellars. It was a very confused time.”
Herr Eltschig, who’d been listening to all this with abemused expression, now cleared his throat. I said, “What have we missed?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Those are the possibilities I had envisioned, though I didn’t think of the Jewish girl, since she was much younger.”
“And,” I said, “she had a father and brother, unless our scenario posits that everyone but Andrea died, and she somehow had the wits to survive on her own as a twelve-year-old with an assumed identity. Her father would never have stolen my family’s property. Impossible. Oh, and in Scenarios One and Three—Lotte the scullery maid, or the random stranger—there would be no Andrea. Why introduce this other family, this other location, into the story?”
“I suspect that I’m going to need a diagram to remember all these permutations,” Sebastian said. He looked amused, which was good. He might keep Alix from exploding.
“Of course,” I said, “there’s another point of proof. Iama hemophilia carrier, as are my daughter and Alix. My grandmother was one as well, obviously. There should be a record of that, at least, somewhere.”
“Or of the Queen’s condition,” Herr Eltschig said. Not “your mother’s.” He was keeping his options open.
“No,” I said absently. “Not of my mother’s, or mine at the time. Hitler had a horror of genetic diseases and imperfections. That was his mania, after all: the fiction of a pure Germany populated only by strong, healthy citizens of unblemished Aryan blood. One didn’t advertise one’s hereditary health conditions in the Nazi era. One hid them. Oh, the horror of those athletic BDM sessions!”
“Those what?” Alix asked.
“The League of German Girls,” I said. “Like the Hitler Youth for boys, it was a mandatory program for all Aryan girls, but instead of training us for war, they trained us to be good German wives and mothers. Very tiresome it was, too,involving the singing of a great many dreary songs and also much physical exertion. We should be strong, you see, to bear children more easily. Swimming wasn’t bad, but gymnastics—well, you can imagine the bruising.”
“There,” Alix said triumphantly. “Unless you think this hypothetical imposter wasalsoa hemophilia carrier, which would be one heck of a coincidence, doesn’t that do it?”
“If there were a possibility of DNA analysis,” Dr. Eltschig said.
“Mass grave, on the parents,” Alix said. “Not so much.”
“What about the cathedral?” That was Sebastian. “Couldn’t you get your proof there?”
“Excuse me?” Dr. Eltschig said.
“Her ancestors are buried there, right?” Sebastian said. “Her parents aren’t, but her paternal grandparents are buried in the crypt. I know, because we visited the place yesterday. The heart of Augustus II is buried there, too. The Saxons sure liked that guy. There you go, though—material for a DNA test. Proof positive. She either is or isn’t their granddaughter.”
“Possibly,” Dr. Eltschig conceded. “Although we would need permission. It’s not a small thing to disturb the tomb of a king and queen and desecrate their remains.”
“And here you have their granddaughter to give that permission,” Alix said.
