The Poellenberg Inheritance (6 page)

He spent the day in St. James's Park, feeding the birds. He had bought some sandwiches, and sat by the water's edge, throwing crumbs to the sparrows and coaxing them on to his hand. A group of children had surrounded him watching. Black liked children; he gave them pieces of bread and showed them how to hold it still to tempt the fluttering assault of the sparrows. He smiled and talked a little to them, enjoying his day in the sunshine. He had been married, with a son and daughter. Both were dead. His daughter had been killed in an air raid on the Berlin hospital where she was nursing, and his son had died in Poland. He had divorced his wife in the early part of the war, and even now he never thought about her. After the last child she had been sterilised, and it was impossible for Black to remain married to her. It set a bad example to the younger officers. She had taken his decision very badly, especially since the court awarded him the custody of both their children, and he decided it was better if she did not contact them. There had been great bitterness and reproach on her side.

He had forgotten about his dead son and daughter now. So many had died. So much had dissolved in ash and disintegrated in blast. He had dozed in the sunshine on his seat. He had kept his promise; it made him happy to think that after all these years, he had been able to be of service to the General.

The resemblance between father and daughter was extraordinary. She had the same blue eyes, so bright and piercing. The women used to go mad about the General because of those eyes. He was a handsome man; impressive, with a natural swagger to him. No matter who he was with, the General always stood out. Truly, Black had loved him. There was nobody he admired more. The General had befriended him, taken him into his confidence. They had fought in the last campaign in Russia together, when the Red wave crashed against them and rolled on towards the Fatherland. There had been death and destruction during those last months. Black had a dream even now, where he walked through a passage and the walls were built of the dead. It wasn't a nightmare which frightened him. It was just a dream. He had lived through the reality and emerged sane, determined and skilful enough to survive. The years of exile had unhinged him a little; the loneliness taught him to talk aloud to himself; people in the streets stared after him as he walked along. He had admired the General's daughter. She had spirit, like her father. She had received him well, until she spoilt it all at the end by refusing to believe and telling him he ought to see a doctor. That was the mother coming out. The stupid mother, concerned only for her own survival, trying to stand apart from the General and his work. He had recognised the General immediately at Zurich airport; he was older and his hair was completely white, but he carried himself with the same arrogance, he stood unbent by the years; when he took off the tinted glasses for a moment his remarkable eyes were as blue as he remembered. Schwarz was not a homosexual, but he admitted to himself that there was something stronger than normal allegiance in his attitude towards the General. It had always been so; he had conceived hero-worship for the man when he began to serve him as A.D.C. The General personified the idea by which Black lived; all Germans ought to look and act as he did. Black had followed him like a dog, and the General had honoured him with his confidence and occasional marks of favour which might be interpreted as friendship. He had got the General out when the war was ending, because he had been chosen by the organisation as one of its key men. He had taken the General through Germany and into Switzerland and then been ordered to leave him and vanish out of sight himself. Since he had never disobeyed an order, Black had done what he was told. Twice in the twenty-odd years that followed, he had spoken to the General; on both occasions it was to answer a request for fresh papers and a new place to live. Black had procured papers and made the arrangements. He had heard nothing of the General since, and as the number of men living in disguise was diminishing, he had less to do for the organisation. Time had weakened him and shifted his equilibrium until it was delicately balanced.

He lived now for the simple pleasures of existing, like spending the day in the park in London and feeding the birds with English children hanging round his knee. His meeting with the General had induced a powerful upsurge of old feelings; he had shaken his hand and wiped tears from his eyes. They had gone to have a meal together and to Black it was like a dream in which the past had swung back as if time were a pendulum. He had listened to the General and promised to do as he asked.

He accepted the General's money, and repeated the curious clue which he was to give the General's daughter. Black had sensed, although he was too proud to put it into words, that what the General really wanted was to establish a contact with his daughter. But even if she rejected him, his love for her had provided the means of her finding the Poellenberg Salt. Black had seen it once; it was the most beautiful thing he had ever imagined. Too beautiful, too rich with jewels and gold. The possession of such a thing would be beyond him. He would have melted it down and taken out the priceless stones. Only a man of the General's stature could have owned such an object. He understood that the General hadn't trusted him with a plain message; he accepted that caution. He hoped, because he knew it was what the General also wanted, that the girl would come out on the side of her father and ask to be taken to him direct. He hoped but without much conviction. The idea of her disappointing her father made Black angry. He would telephone her the next day, before he left. He hadn't delayed after he left her office. He had sent the General a telegram. ‘Contact has been made and your instructions carried out.' The General had flown to Paris and remained there, waiting. He wanted to be near in case his daughter came. It had seemed an unnecessary risk, but then Black didn't dare to argue. Paris was closer than Switzerland. Closer to what – Black put the thought away from him. The Poellenberg Salt was not his concern. Had the General told him to go and recover it, he would have done so without thought of personal gain. He opened the door and switched on the light. There was a gas ring and a gas fire; he filled a tin kettle and put it on to heat for some coffee. He had just made a large mug when he heard somebody knocking gently on the door.

‘Heinrich, let me in!' The Princess banged on the door panel with the handle of her stick. She rapped once, twice. ‘Open the door! I know what you're doing!'

There was a shuffling sound from the other side, a heavy lurch against the wood and the noise of a key being twisted the wrong way. When the door did open, Heinrich, Prince Von Hessel stood leaning on the door jamb. His mother walked past him and turned round.

‘Close that and get out of sight. I don't want a servant to walk by and see you in that disgusting state!'

‘I am not in a disgusting state,' her son said. ‘I am a little drunk, but that is all. You knew I would be, Mother, why did you come in?'

‘Because I want to talk to you,' she said. ‘Go and sit down before you fall over.'

She herself sat stiffly in an armchair; she was a woman who had never slouched in her life. She looked at her elder son with a mixture of distaste and despair. ‘Couldn't you have waited till that detective was out of the house? Couldn't you control yourself for just one day and night?'

‘I didn't have to be there,' Prince Heinrich said reasonably. He made his way across the room, picking a path across the carpet as if it were strewn with rocks. He sat down on the end of his bed.

‘This business is nothing to do with me. I've told you; I'll have no part in it.'

‘You had a part in it,' she said fiercely. ‘If it weren't for you … Ach, what is the use of reproaching you? What is the use of talking to you at all?'

‘Don't let me keep you, Mother. I shan't be down to dinner.'

She looked at him. ‘Philip could search this room. We could smash every bottle you've got hidden.'

‘You could have me committed,' he said. ‘That would be more sensible. If you take my bottles away, Mother, I only get more. Why can't you leave me to get drunk in peace? It isn't much to ask. I don't bother you, I keep to myself.'

‘Except when you're driving.' The Princess's voice rose. ‘Then you take your car and kill some wretched child, and who has to pay the parents and silence the police? Your family! Always your family …'

‘You didn't want the scandal,' he said. He shrugged. ‘I don't even remember an accident.'

‘How could you. You were unconscious over the wheel, stinking of brandy. Philip could hardly get you out of the car.'

‘Being a Von Hessel has its uses.' He laughed at her, his mouth wide in a drunken grin, his eyes taunting. ‘There's nothing we can't buy, is there? Even the parents were calling you Highness and bowing and scraping when you paid them off! Go down and deal with your detective, Mother. Get Philip to impress him. I don't matter, so long as you have Philip.'

‘If he sees you drunk,' the Princess said, ‘if he asks questions or gets curious, this whole thing could blow up in our faces. I saw him watching you in the drawing room. You were swaying on your feet, I could feel it!'

He shrugged again, spreading his hands. ‘If you say so. Why don't you leave it alone? Why try to dig the dead out of their graves? It's a mistake, and you'll be sorry. You and my brother, who is always right, of course. But not this time. This time it's a mistake.'

‘I'm not digging out the dead, I'm trying to make sure they're still buried. If he's dead, then we can rest in peace. If he's alive …'

‘Yes,' her son said. The drunken grin was a leer. There was hatred in the look he gave her. She didn't see it, her own gaze was distant, fiercely concentrated upon something else. ‘Yes, suppose that newspaper was right. What are you going to do about it, Mother? You can't buy
him
off. He has the Salt. What are you going to do then?'

The Princess turned round to him; slowly she rose from the chair, supporting herself on the cane. ‘I am going to get it back,' she said. ‘That's all I will say. I want you to stay here and not come down tonight. Fisher is with your brother in the library, looking at some of our records. He mustn't see you, and I want the key of your room. Give it to me.'

‘It's in the lock. Take it, Mother. Lock me up like a naughty boy. I'm in my fifty-second year, but you can lock me in my room if you like. I have a bottle to occupy me, and I shan't batter the door down to get out.'

‘Make sure you don't,' his mother said. ‘Finish your bottle. I don't care what you do so long as the world never knows what you are.'

She took the key and went out. He heard her turn it and saw the handle move from the other side to make sure. He opened the cupboard by the bed and took a full bottle of cognac from the chamber-pot compartment. There was an empty one standing at the back of the recess. He poured some into his water glass and raised it to the door. ‘Prosit, Mother,' he said. ‘Let's hope he really is alive. By God, he'll be a match for you!'

Fisher caught the early morning plane. He had paid off his taxi cab and was walking through to the departure lounge when he felt a touch on his arm. He turned and saw Prince Philip Von Hessel.

‘Good morning.' He looked very handsome; he had a charming, frank smile. In spite of his disinclination to unbend towards any of them, Fisher had found himself liking the younger son. ‘I hoped I'd be able to catch you. Have we time for a cup of coffee?'

Fisher looked at his watch. ‘I should think so. Let's go through to the lounge.' People turned to look after them, and Fisher knew it was the other man who was attracting their attention. He was very tall and he moved with purpose, fast but without hurrying. The majority of people travelling, scurried, anxious about the time, about their luggage, about the flight. This superior German wouldn't be discountenanced by anything. Fisher followed and let him order. The smile was still there, but a shade less bright. Perhaps, Fisher thought, he's not quite as invulnerable as he appears. Something has brought him here at this God awful hour, and it's not to have coffee and wave me goodbye.

‘I wanted to talk to you alone,' the Prince said. ‘That's why I came.'

‘Go ahead.' Fisher offered him a cigarette.

‘Do you think it's possible this man is still alive?'

‘I don't know. I shouldn't have said so; your mother seemed certain you had covered all angles after the war, but a lot of them did slip through. I couldn't answer that till I've done some digging around myself. What do you think?'

‘I think we should drop the whole business.' The Prince leaned forward. ‘So does my brother. The Poellenberg Salt has gone for ever. It's a terrible loss but compared to other people we were lucky. We have survived.'

‘That's putting it mildly,' Fisher said. Philip Von Hessel laughed.

‘My mother is a very determined woman. When my father died during the war she ran the business, the factories, the estates, everything. She's remarkable; we owe everything to her. But this time, Herr Fisher, I think she's going too far. She has an obsession about the Salt. She wants it back; I know her, I know how tenacious she is. She'd accepted its loss as a fact, and then she saw that newspaper with the report of him being seen in Paris, and the whole thing was reopened. It's become an obsession.'

‘What are you trying to say, Prince?' Fisher finished his coffee. There was an announcement over the tannoy.

‘I'm trying to suggest that you cut this investigation short. Your fee will be met, Herr Fisher. You won't lose by it. Humour my mother for a time, but don't take this assignment seriously. It's a waste of time. He is dead. That report from Paris was just nonsense. I'm convinced of it. Would you do that?'

Fisher stood up. ‘No,' he said. ‘One thing is essential in my kind of business, Prince Philip, and that's integrity to the employer. Your mother engaged us to find this man if he's alive and get back the Poellenberg Salt. And that is what I'm going to try to do. If he is dead, and that report was nonsense, then you've nothing to worry about. That was my flight. I've got to go. Thanks for the coffee.'