"The Millers lived here in 1952?" Kincaid asked, beginning to look interested.
"Since the forties. Melody said Joss Miller prospered after the war. He bought this house, and a country place as well."
"So you're thinking Rosenthal came across Miller's picture in the paper that day, and that's why he came here, to Chelsea. To see Joss Miller?" He looked up at the town house, frowning. "But what was the connection between them? And why was Rosenthal murdered?"
"Are you thinking Miller did it?" Cullen asked, with a skeptical expression that would have done Kincaid justice.
"Why isn't it possible?" The more Cullen argued, the more certain Gemma became. "The detective-Hoxley-came across rumors that David Rosenthal might have been involved with some questionable people. There were offshoots of Jewish terrorist organizations operating in London after the war, as well as in Europe."
"Vengeance groups?" asked Kincaid.
Gemma nodded. "According to Hoxley's notes, there were those who felt that the war crime tribunals had not even skimmed the surface. And a man who worked alongside Rosenthal at the British Museum said he thought Rosenthal was working on some sort of exposé."
"You're not suggesting that Miller was a war criminal?" Cullen laughed in disbelief. "He was English, for God's sake."
"I don't know," said Gemma. "Maybe Gavin Hoxley was just paranoid, but I got the impression from his notes that he felt our government was somehow complicit. And it seems an unlikely coincidence that Hoxley should die so conveniently with David Rosenthal's murder unsolved."
"But even so," argued Cullen, "it still doesn't add up. You're saying that if Miller was a war criminal, that the powers that be would have let Rosenthal kill him. But it was Rosenthal who ended up dead. And what does any of that have to do with Kristin Cahill and Harry Pevensey?"
"I don't know," Gemma repeated, frustrated. "But there's something here we're not seeing, and I just can't quite-"
"We can start by asking Ellen Miller-Scott if her father knew David Rosenthal," Kincaid suggested.
"No," Gemma said slowly, as she thought it through. "I've got to talk to Erika first. And I'm worried about her." She turned, gazing at the redbrick town house, thinking of what they had found inside. "Dominic Scott is the third person connected with the Goldshtein brooch to have died. And I kept trying to ring Erika all last evening. She didn't answer."
Gemma stopped by Notting Hill Station, to pick up a proper print from Melody and to borrow a car from the pool. She didn't want to take the time to walk to Arundel Gardens, nor to walk home for her own car. Melody had offered to come with her, but she'd refused again.
"I'll ring you," she said. "If-Well, I'll ring you."
She parked with unexpected ease, just across from Erika's house, and when she glanced at her watch she saw with surprise that she had missed lunch. But she felt hollow with anxiety rather than hunger. And she had not yet made it to hospital. At the thought of her mother, the knot in her stomach tightened even further.
Reaching Erika's door, she rang the bell. Her heart gave a little skip. She waited a moment, then rang again, punching at the button, then trying the door, but it was firmly locked. Why had she never thought to ask Erika for a key in case of an emergency?
The shade was pulled down in the bedroom that faced on the little yard, so she could see nothing inside. She had taken out her mobile to ring Melody for reinforcements when the door swung open and Erika looked out at her.
"Gemma, my dear, whatever is the matter?"
Gemma's knees went wobbly with relief. "Are you all right?" she asked in a rush.
"Of course," said Erika, looking bemused. "I was out in the garden. And you look as if you're about to collapse on my doorstep from heatstroke. Come in."
"But where were you last night?" Gemma asked as she followed her into the house. "I rang and rang."
Erika led her into the kitchen. "Sit, and I'll get you some water." When she had handed Gemma a glass filled from the tap, she said, "I was out at a university dinner. For some reason they saw fit to trot me out for an award, but I have to admit I enjoyed being made much of. But why should you have worried?"
"Erika, last night…how did you get home from your dinner?"
Erika looked more puzzled than ever. "I took a taxi. The cabbie fussed over me as if I were doddering and waited until I got in my door. Why should it matter?"
"But before you got in, did you see anything unusual?"
"No, I can't recall-" Erika's eyes widened in surprise. "Wait. There was a car idling a few doors down, but I didn't think anything of it-"
"What sort of car?"
"Oh, one of those big square ones. Like a Land Rover."
Gemma felt as if all her muscles had turned to jelly. "Thank God for that cabbie."
"Gemma, what on earth is this about?" Then the penny dropped, and Erika looked frightened. "Does this have something to do with that poor girl?"
"It might do," said Gemma. "I think I'd better start from the beginning." She reconsidered, and said, "Or better yet, I need you to start from the beginning." She sipped at her water, warm as a bath straight from the tap. "Erika, why did you never tell me that your husband was murdered?"
"David?"
"Unless you were married more than once," Gemma answered a little tartly, and realized she felt hurt by Erika's silence.
Sinking into the chair across from Gemma, Erika said, "It never occurred to me. It was so long ago, and I thought that part of my life long buried-why should I have burdened you? And why should it matter to anyone now?"
"Would your husband have read the Guardian the day he was killed?"
"My article." Erika closed her eyes. "Yes. David would have bought the paper. It was my first published piece, and David was dutiful, if not deeply interested. But I still don't understand."
Gemma pulled the print Melody had made her from her bag and handed it across the table.
"Oh, dear God." Erika stared at the page. "Where did you-How did you-"
"It was in the Guardian, on that very same day. In the society page."
"But this-" She looked at the photo again and pushed it away, as if it were contaminated. "That's Joseph Mueller. Why does it say his name is something else?" She had gone pale as the white lilies in the vase on the kitchen table. "I never thought to see that face again."
"Who was he, Erika? How did you know him?"
"He was German," Erika insisted, her voice shaking. "What is he doing in an English newspaper, with an English name?"
"He is English," Gemma assured her. "His name was Joss Miller. He was a financier, and an art collector, and he just died two years ago."
Erika stared at her, her face contorted, then turned her head and spat. "That is lies, all lies. This man was a German, and a trafficker in human lives. He took money from Jews, promising to get them safely out of Germany. And if we had no communication with others he said he had helped escape, we assumed it was because they didn't dare write to us. But now I wonder if anyone whose money he took ever came out of Germany."
"But you did," said Gemma, frowning.
"Only by the grace of God and the kindness of a German farmer. I went back, after the war, but I couldn't find the farm. Perhaps it was destroyed. Perhaps my memory was faulty. I never knew the family's name, but I fear they cannot have gone unpunished."