CHAPTER TWO

Mr. Black was a small man. Paula was behind her desk when he was shown in, and she was surprised to find that he was a head shorter than she was. She had expected someone tall.

But Black was thin and small-boned; he took off a dark felt hat and his hair was completely white, brushed back from a wide forehead. It was a Slavic face, high cheek-boned, with heavy-lidded grey eyes and a narrow mouth.

Paula held out her hand and he made a little bow and kissed it. It was not a real kiss, just an upper-class German gesture where the lips never made contact.

‘How do you do, Mr. Black,’ she said. ‘Please come and sit down.’

‘How do you do, Mrs. Stanley. Thank you. Over here?’

She pointed to one of the two modern armchairs which furnished her office. It was a cheerful room, the walls covered with Paula’s own fabric designs. This room and what it represented was a very important part of her life. During the latter part of her marriage to James, her career as a designer had provided self-respect.

‘What can I do for you?’ she said. ‘Have a cigarette?’

‘No, thank you, I don’t smoke. Mrs. Stanley, I have something very important to tell you, but I think I should explain myself a little first.’

‘You said something on the phone,’ Paula said. ‘You mentioned knowing my father. I’d like you to tell me about him. Please.’

‘What do you want to know?’ he asked her. ‘I served under him for three years and I was also his friend. And his devoted admirer. He was a great man, Mrs. Stanley. I hope you realise that.’ The grey eyes were dilated; his stare made her uncomfortable. ‘A very great man. I was with him and I know. You resemble him very much, did you know that?’

‘No,’ Paula said slowly. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘You have his eyes,’ Black said. ‘The moment I came into the room, it was like seeing the General again. He was very proud of you; he carried a photograph of you in his wallet. He used to show it round. You don’t remember him, do you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I was too small. I haven’t even a photograph of him. I don’t even know what he looked like.’

‘Ah,’ he said slowly. ‘Your mother married again, didn’t she – to an English officer? Yes, I heard about it. She would prefer to forget the General. They both would. You didn’t tell her I had telephoned, did you?’

‘Yes,’ Paula admitted. It seemed pointless to lie. There was a fanatical look about him which disturbed her. For a small man, white-haired and frail, he was rather frightening. She had never met anyone like him before, and she couldn’t have described why she was afraid. Then he smiled, and his face became gentle again.

‘I am not criticising her, please don’t misunderstand. She was always charming to me,’ he said. ‘Things were very difficult after the war. We had to survive as best we could. It’s a pity you don’t remember your father. He was very fond of you. Very fond.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Paula said. ‘I’ve never been told anything about him.’

‘He loved you,’ Black said. He leaned a little forward in his chair, his hands clasped tightly on his knees. ‘He loved you as no man has ever loved a child. He told me in the last months before the end, that if he was killed his only regret would be leaving you. He felt your mother would be able to take care of herself.’

‘She did,’ Paula said. She was surprised by the sensation of bitterness. ‘She married and got out.’

‘She was very fortunate. Most of the prominent families lost everything, apart from the unlucky ones in the East, who were taken away by the Russians and never seen again. Many of us committed suicide. I chose to live, Mrs. Stanley. And I have a question to ask you. A very important question.’

‘What is it?’ The pale-grey eyes were glittering at her. It struck Paula suddenly that what made the little man frightening was the unhinged expression which came and went on his face. She found herself gripping the arms of her chair. ‘What question, Mr. Black?’

‘Would you like your father to be alive or dead?’

‘There is no question of what I would like,’ she said. Now she was frightened. He looked completely crazy. ‘My father has been dead for twenty-five years. He was killed in Russia.’

‘A lot of people were said to be killed in Russia.’ He smiled and his look was sly. ‘Or in Berlin during the final Russian advance. But supposing he had escaped, by some miracle – how would you feel, Mrs. Stanley?’

‘I don’t know,’ Paula said. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t take any of this seriously. I know my father is dead, and that’s all there is to it.’ She raised her wrist and looked at her watch. ‘Mr. Black, I have an appointment in a few minutes …’

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘You want to get rid of me. Very well, Mrs. Stanley. But I promised your father I would give you a message, and I must keep my word. The General’s money and properties were confiscated after the war. He guessed this would happen; he guessed we would be defeated. So he put something away for you, Mrs. Stanley. Something very, very precious. Does the name Poellenberg mean anything to you?’

‘No,’ Paula said. ‘Nothing. I’ve never heard of it.’

‘In the sixteenth century,’ Mr. Black said gently, ‘there was a Count von Poellenberg who married a niece of the Medicis. They were married in Florence, and part of the bride’s dowry was at the wedding feast. Benvenuto Cellini had made it. It was the wonder of the city, Mrs. Stanley. A salt, a marvel made of solid gold and covered with jewels, made by the greatest goldsmith the world has ever seen. A huge ornament, so heavy it took a man to lift it. And it was known afterwards as the Poellenberg Salt. For four hundred years it was one of the treasures of Germany. Then during the war it was given to your father.’

‘Given?’

‘Given,’ Black repeated. He said the word with emphasis. ‘The General accepted is as a gift. He had done the owners a favour and they wanted to show their gratitude. They knew he was a man of taste, a connoisseur. They gave him the Poellenberg Salt. And he bequeaths it to you.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe any of this. Either you’re trying to hoax me, Mr. Black, or you should see a doctor.’

He got out of his chair. He looked at her and there was something cold and authoritative about him, an echo of the past when he had been young.

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. The whole story is too fantastic. I don’t know why you’ve come here, and I shan’t take it any further if you’ll please leave now. If you bother me again with this sort of thing, Mr. Black, I shall go to the police.’

The little man stood up. ‘I told the General this might be your reaction.’ His expression was contemptuous. ‘He believed in your love for him; more than he trusted me. He wouldn’t tell me where the Salt was hidden. But he gave me this clue to give you. Paris, 25th June 1944. Tante Ambrosine and her nephew Jacquot. If you want the Poellenberg Salt, without your father, then you will have to solve this little riddle. If you want both of them, then you can get in touch through me. I will telephone once more. I leave the day after tomorrow.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ Paula got up. ‘I think you’re mentally unbalanced, coming here with a story like this. There’s no such thing as a Poellenberg Salt, and all that nonsense about a riddle and my father being alive. If he was alive he would have come to find me himself!’

‘You don’t know very much about him, do you, Mrs. Stanley? You can believe me or not, as you like. But I have told the truth. Think about it. You may change your mind. Good morning.’

His heels came together with a click and he bowed. Before Paula could move he had gone out of the office.

The reference room at the British Museum smelt of must. The attendant looked up at Paula and shook his head. ‘Never heard of it, miss. Look in the section on Cellini; you’ll find a book listing all his known works, some of ’em are illustrated. Then there’s the European Treasures, the History of Gold and Silverwork, Art Treasures of the Renaissance. Try Cellini first; if it’s a major piece by him it ought to be in there.’ Paula got out two volumes and sat down at one of the long reference tables. A scattered group of students and two elderly men were reading and making notes. It was her lunch-time, and she had been telling herself all the way from her office, what a fool she was being, wasting a lovely summer’s day on a wild goose chase to prove a harmless lunatic in the wrong. Of course Black was an eccentric; perhaps he had known her father or been in the army with him. That part she was inclined to believe, probably, as she suspected afterwards, because she wanted to hear about her father, whereas she didn’t in the least want to hear about a hidden treasure made by Benvenuto Cellini. It was obviously a figment of the old man’s sick imagination. She was disappointed and angry, and she assured herself that she was setting out to prove the whole story was nonsense. There would be no Poellenberg Salt, made of gold and covered with jewels. It was just fantasy.

It was illustrated in the last third of the book on Cellini’s work. It was photographed in colour, detailed as being thirty-six inches high, set with a hundred and eighteen diamonds, eighty-three rubies, a hundred and five sapphires and twenty-five Baroque pearls of large size. Brought to the Poellenberg family as part of Adela de Medici’s dowry. Now in the possession of the Prince Von Hessel at Schloss Würtzen in the Rhineland. Paula sat looking at it.

All right. There was a Poellenberg Salt. That part was true. But it belonged to a prince, not to her father. Then she turned to the front of the book. It was dated from before the war. Black must have seen it somewhere, perhaps in a museum, or in a magazine illustration, and woven the whole crazy story round it. Just because one thing was true, it lent no credence to the rest. Of course the Salt was still in the possession of the Bavarian prince, Von Hessel. She had remembered the name. What she really needed was an up-to-date book on Cellini, not something written forty years ago. Something which could identify and place the Salt in its present ownership. She replaced the book and began to search among the shelves. Then she chided herself for being ridiculous. She was behaving as if there might be some truth in the old man’s fairy story. She looked at her watch and told herself it was late and she should go.

But towards the end of the shelf there was a recent volume on Great Art Treasures of Europe. She took it down and turned to the index. Poellenberg, page 187. It was illustrated again, gleaming and glittering in colour. The figures of nymphs and centaurs intertwined round a rock basin hollowed out of solid gold to take the salt. A massive collection of gems glittered round the base and in the leaves of a spreading golden tree which surmounted the whole.

The figures were so beautifully moulded that they could have moved. There was a paragraph written under the photograph giving the same history as the book on Cellini but in less detail. The last sentence semed to enlarge as she started reading. ‘Tragically the Poellenberg Salt was among the art treasures looted by the Nazis during the war and its whereabouts have never been discovered.’ Paula shut the book and put it back on the shelf. It was heavy and her arm ached. He must have read about that too. She walked out of the room; the attendant called softly after her, ‘Find anything, miss?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ Paula said. Outside it was sunny and warm; she had left her car round the corner of Bedford Square. She walked towards it slowly. It was all lies. The man was mad, unbalanced. He had looked mad at times during that meeting. Then why had the name Poellenberg upset her mother? She had been hiding away from that question, because it somehow made sense of what Black had said. Her mother had heard of it and not just as a national possession.

Looted by the Nazis during the war. Given, the sinister little man had said, biting on the word. Given out of gratitude. If you want to find it go to Paris, ask for somebody called Tante Ambrosine and her nephew Jacquot. June 25th 1944.

What was the truth? Had her father really owned the Salt and hidden it? Was there any use asking her mother, trying to force the forbidden subject out into discussion – Paula started the car and swung into the traffic. Just supposing it were true – just suppose for a moment the strange visitor was telling the truth that morning. Her father was still alive and had hidden a priceless art treasure … At first it had all seemed to be nonsense; fantasy was the word which described it. But now there were enough facts to cast credibility upon the rest. She didn’t even know where to find Black. And her mother wouldn’t help. Why would it be better to leave the past alone? Paula had demanded that over the weekend and the answer came back to her. Because there was nothing to be gained from it. Now she saw that answer for what it was: not only a cliché but a lie. If there was nothing to be gained perhaps there was something to be lost. Lost to her mother and the Brigadier in their cosy life from which the General’s daughter had been excluded. Just supposing the most important part of Black’s story were a fact and not the delusion she had first believed it – supposing her father were not dead, supposing he were only missing and her mother had lied, contracting a bigamous marriage to rescue herself …

No wonder she wouldn’t want the matter raised, no wonder she preferred to keep consistent silence about the past. Now some of it was beginning to make sense. What a fool she had been to dismiss Black. How hasty and arrogant, to call him a liar or a madman and let him go with nothing but a promise to contact her before he left. Back in her office Paula tried to work, but concentration was impossible. The facts she had read about the Poellenberg Salt chased round her brain. It had been looted by the Nazis. That part did not accord with Black, who insisted that it was a gift. And her father was an army general, not a Nazi. Perhaps this cast doubts on Black’s story – perhaps she was building insane hopes upon something which was only a delusion after all. By five o’clock her head was aching, and she had wasted the afternoon; everything she had done would have to be thrown away. She had a date for dinner that evening; the prospect of making conversation with the man who had invited her was only one degree better than spending the evening alone waiting for the hours to pass until Black might telephone again. If he didn’t she would be left with an insoluble mystery which could never be answered. Tante Ambrosine and her nephew Jacquot. It sounded like a nursery rhyme. And a rhyme which she would never try to solve in terms of any hidden treasure. Because from the confusion and doubt which assailed her, one fact had emerged, taking precedence over everything else. If any part of Black’s story were true then all that concerned her was the possibility of coming face to face with her father at last.

‘I wish you wouldn’t go to London.’ Mrs. Ridgeway had never nagged or frustrated her husband when he wanted to do something. Only her intense concern for his health would have made her repeat herself so often during the morning. He still had the cough, and he looked pale and puffy under the eyes. He had made up his mind to go to London and see Paula and nothing she could say would stop him.

‘Your cold is so bad. That trip on Monday morning made it worse,’ she said. ‘You know the doctor told you to stay in bed; going on a train journey could make you very ill! Why must you go up again?’

‘I’m much better,’ the Brigadier said. ‘The pain’s gone and those pills have done the trick. Don’t fuss about me, darling, it’s not necessary. What’s much more important is to stop this damned nonsense with Paula. I know you haven’t had a night’s sleep since she came down.’

‘You won’t be able to do anything,’ his wife said. ‘I tried. I appealed to her to leave it alone, but she’s determined. She wants to dig up the past. And she’ll be more sorry than anyone else when it all comes to light!’ Her husband came and put his arm around her. He kissed the pale brow and held her close to him.

‘Not as sorry as you and I,’ he said gently. ‘We have everything to lose. Your peace of mind, your happiness; that’s what matters to me. I know what this means to you. I couldn’t give a tinker’s curse for myself, but I can’t bear to see you unhappy. I never could, you know that. We’ve made our lives, my darling, and nobody’s going to come in and start ruining our last years on any pretext. I like Paula, she’s a good girl. I think she’s messed up her life, leaving James and going off on her own, but that’s her business. The General and everything connected with him is our business – I’m going to see her and make her drop it. And don’t you worry. Promise me, you won’t worry.’

‘I’ll try,’ his wife said. ‘But it’s like a nightmare. After all these years – why should anyone contact her, why should anyone even mention the Poellenberg Salt!’

‘That’s what I’ll find out,’ the Brigadier said. His breath caught and he coughed. ‘I’ll go and see Paula; I’ll even frighten her if I have to. But I promise you, sweetheart, you won’t have to worry. Now I must go, or I’ll miss the train. I’ll be back after tea.’ He kissed her again and she went to the car to see him drive away. He was a gentle man; his gentleness had attracted her from the first, that odd mixture of diffidence and kindliness which she knew now was so typically English.

The General was not a gentle type; diffidence was not within his comprehension. Fanatical, disciplined, courageous, and completely without feeling as far as she could ascertain in the thirteen years they had been married. He had behaved towards her with scrupulous correctness and complete indifference. They had existed together rather than lived. In the beginning he had made love to her to satisfy his impulses and to beget children. He had not been cruel, or unduly inconsiderate, but only after she had been married for some months to Gerald Ridgeway had she realised what this relationship could mean between two people. The General had wanted sons; she had borne him one daughter. The only inconsistent thing she had ever known about him was his reaction to the child and its sex. She had expected disappointment and reproaches. Instead he had astounded her by his attachment to the little girl. He was a grim, forbidding man of whom she had always been afraid. She hadn’t been sure whether the sight of him cradling the baby and crooning to it repelled her or increased her nervousness. But something jealous and primeval stirred in her nature, some buried instinct of resentment for the response called forth by another female from the male upon whom she had made no sentimental impression at all. She had hated the child, and suppressed the hatred, as she had done with her feeling for her husband. When they married he was young and splendid, with a glamour peculiar to the élite of the day. He was a handsome man who attracted women, all the more because of his cool, unapproachable attitude towards them. To the masochistic yearnings of her women friends he was a godlike challenge. To his wife he was a ruthless, cold-hearted stranger with whom she was forced to share her life. She had ended by hating him; she hated his child, because he loved it so extravagantly, and as it grew it was the carbon copy of him. She turned back into the house and sighed. Gerald’s chest was still infected. He had gone to London to a club committee meeting on Monday. He should never have got out of bed and gone a second time to see Paula; she shouldn’t have rushed upstairs that first night when Paula told her about Black and burdened him with everything. But the habit of dependence upon him was too strong. She relied upon him for everything and he had never disappointed her. She loved him with the intensity of an obsessional, introverted personality, to whom emotional security had finally been given. She would have done anything in the world for Gerald Ridgeway and he would have done anything for her.

The room in the cheap hotel where Black was staying was in darkness when he opened the door. He never left a light on; for twenty-five years he had lived on the pittance allotted him, scraping a casual living, doing menial jobs and moving on. He had lived like a nomad, always alone, collecting a monthly pension from the fund, which kept him at subsistence level. In return he acted as telephone liaison for others. Often in the early years he had debated whether life was worth living under these conditions. As he had told Paula, many of his comrades had chosen to die rather than suffer the consequences of defeat. But Black had an instinct for survival. Hope persisted in him, though he had long forgotten in what, or for what. Merely to wake and see the sun, to move about freely in the world. This was enough, and the years had dimmed and distorted his memories. Now he lived through them, withdrawing a little more each day from reality into that golden past when he and his kind had possessed the world. It was a world in which beautiful women moved, submissive and smiling, hanging on the arms of men in uniform; where champagne was drunk and music played. The houses were palaces, the beds were thrones, the cars were huge and sleek, with outriders. It was a soldier’s paradise, and even the destruction of the enemy, with its attendant horrors, had a Wagnerian magnificence that made it poetry to watch so many dying, by the light of such a fire.

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.’

The Prince stood up. ‘It was my pleasure. Goodbye, have a good journey.’

Fisher went through to the departure lounge to board his plane. The Von Hessels thought he was returning to England. In fact he was on his way to the Interpol headquarters at Bonn. That was the place to make enquiries about General Paul Heinrich Bronsart. They would have the complete dossier on him there.

Three days later Fisher walked into Paula Stanley’s office.

He had a preference for blondes; redheads he avoided, he disliked the freckles and the temperament that went with the hair; brunettes he could take or leave.

He was unprepared for the combination of her colouring and her astonishing eyes. It gave him a shock, because his photographic mind registered instantly that they were listed among the General’s distinguishing marks. She got up and came to shake hands with him. He caught a drift of expensive scent; she had a firm grip, which he liked. Limp handshakes from either sex always repelled him. Pretty. Very pretty indeed, smartly dressed, upper class, didn’t look German, but on closer inspection wasn’t typically English either. He sat down in the chair once taken by Black, and produced his cigarette case. He had given the name of a French manufacturing company when he made the appointment. People were none too pleased to give interviews to private detectives. He was prepared to be thrown out when he revealed himself.

‘What can I do for you, Mr. Fisher?’ A pleasant voice, an attractive smile. It would very soon be wiped away when he produced his identification card. There was no point in wasting time. He walked over and put the Agency wallet on her desk. His photograph was on it.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Stanley. I’m here under false pretensions. I’m from the Dunston Fisher Investigating Agency. I’m making enquiries for a client and I hoped you might be able to help.’

Paula looked up at him. ‘You said you were from Levée Frères,’ she said. ‘If this is the normal way of getting in to see people, Mr. Fisher, I don’t think much of it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised. ‘But you wouldn’t have given me an appointment otherwise. People are very cagey with investigators. It makes our life that much more difficult.’

‘I feel very sorry for you,’ she said coldly. ‘Now either you can tell me very quickly what you want, or you can leave. I have exactly five minutes to spare.’

‘Make it ten.’ Fisher grinned at her. ‘And stop looking so angry. It won’t take very long and it might even interest you. You’re General Paul Bronsart’s daughter, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ By God, he said to himself, that had hit her where it hurt.

‘I plan to talk to your mother, but as you’re in London I thought I’d come and see you first.’

‘Why?’ Paula kept her voice calm: she put her hands below the level of the desk. The man had sharp eyes, they ranged over everything, noting detail, storing it away. She didn’t know why she was nervous or why he mustn’t see it. ‘I never knew my father. He was killed in the war. What is the enquiry about?’

Fisher made a snap decision. His friend at Interpol Bonn had emphasised this point. ‘If the bastard is alive, and coming out of cover, he’ll go to the daughter, if he goes to anyone. The mother’s remarried, he won’t contact her. The daughter could be the key. If there’s anything in it at all …’

‘The enquiry,’ Fisher said, ‘is on behalf of German clients, and I’m not allowed to give their name. They want to trace your father.’

‘But I told you,’ Paula said. ‘He’s dead. He was killed in Russia in 1944.’

‘Mrs. Stanley.’ Fisher got up. ‘I don’t want to raise any hopes on your part, but it’s just possible that he’s alive. Would you let me give you lunch and I can tell you about it? It’s a long story, and you only have five minutes.’

An hour later they were sitting side by side at the Caprice. It was Fisher’s favourite restaurant; he was well known there and was given a banquette table, close to a large party where a famous theatrical knight was holding court. It gave Paula something to look at; the first few moments when they met in the bar had been difficult. Fisher had tried talking, but she found herself unable to make conversation.

‘Marvellous looking man, isn’t he?’ Fisher said. ‘I saw him play Othello, and it was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen on the stage. Did you see it?’

‘Yes,’ Paula said. She and James had gone. She remembered that they had enjoyed the evening. She hadn’t thought of James for a long time. She wished desperately that he were with her now. There was something about this man sitting beside her which made her uncomfortable. He was tough. That was it; she recognised the elusive quality for what it was. He had nice manners, he was attractive in a rough-hewn way, he had authority and a sense of humour, but he was fundamentaly a rough, tough man from a completely different world. Nothing in existence would have persuaded her to lunch with him except that one phrase. ‘It’s just possible he’s still alive.’

She had got over the initial shock; her hands were quite steady, she lit cigarettes and the lighter flame didn’t tremble; she ordered a Tom Collins before lunch and watched the famous actor giving a performance for the benefit of the restaurant. Fisher sat beside her, drinking Scotch and soda, letting her take time to relax. She looked strained and he felt rather sorry for her. He wondered exactly how much she knew about her father, and felt instinctively that from the way she talked it was the minimum. Killed in Russia in 1944. Full stop. He had spent two hours reading through the file at Bonn, making notes, reaching back into the past, looking at old photographs.

Many of them showed the father of the girl, whose elbow was touching his at that moment. A good-looking, impressive man, splendidly uniformed. Was it possible she knew anything beyond the fact of a soldier father killed in battle? He didn’t think so. He gave her the menu and suggested the restaurant’s speciality.

‘Would you like to eat first,’ he said, ‘and then we can get down to business? There’s no reason not to enjoy a good lunch.’

‘I’m not very hungry,’ Paula said. ‘I’d rather talk now. Please tell me, Mr. Fisher, what is this all about?’

‘Can I ask you a couple of questions first? I’m not being difficult, but it will help me to explain if I know how much you’re in the picture. Your mother has remarried, hasn’t she?’

‘Yes; soon after the war ended. She married an Englishman called Ridgeway, he was billeted in our house. I was about three and a half at the time. I never knew my father, he was away fighting.’

‘Did your mother talk about him to you – what did she tell you about him?’

‘Practically nothing,’ Paula said. ‘She’s not a confiding type of person. You’ll see that when you try asking her questions yourself.’

‘If you can help me enough I may not have to bother her,’ Fisher said.

‘I hope you won’t,’ she answered. ‘It’ll upset her very much. She never wants to discuss my father. I think she’d rather pretend he never existed at all. Anyway that’s the attitude she’s always taken with me.’

‘So she told you nothing; he was a general in the German army and he was killed. On the retreat from Stalingrad, I believe.’

‘If you say so.’ Paula lit another cigarette; she had chain smoked since they sat down.

‘You don’t like your mother much, do you?’ Fisher said suddenly.

‘That’s a very personal remark.’

‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t relevant; just an observation. So that’s all you know? Nothing about his war record, who his friends were, any family left living?’

‘No, nothing.’ She hesitated. It was humiliating to admit such total ignorance. He wanted information from her, she wanted to get it back. She had never wanted anything so much in her life. ‘Wait a minute, I do know of somebody. There was an officer who served under him in the German Army. He called himself Black.’

‘Black?’ Fisher said. ‘That’s funny. He had an aide de camp whose name was Albrecht Schwarz. How do you know this?’

‘Because this man Black came to see me last week,’ Paula said.

Fisher didn’t twitch a muscle. He even sipped at his drink before he said anything.

‘Black came to see you? Here in England?’

Albrecht Schwarz, anglicised to Black. There was a companion file on him, twice as thick as the General’s. He was marked disappeared, presumed killed in Berlin during the Russian bombardment of the city. Schwarz, Jesus Christ. He changed his mind and finished the Scotch. He looked into her face. It was pale but innocent. There was nothing in those beautiful blue eyes.

‘Yes, he came to the office. Actually I thought he was a bit eccentric.’

Eccentric. Oh, just possibly, Fisher said to himself. Just possibly he had bad dreams at night. ‘Why did he come and see you?’

‘Just to introduce himself.’

That was a lie and Fisher knew it because she glanced away and wouldn’t look at him. He wished for a moment that he was still a journalist. What a trail this could turn out to be. Albrecht Schwarz turning up in England. If he had come through alive …’

The first course came. Paula began to eat it; she felt taut and unhungry. He had ordered a good wine and she drank some of it.

‘Did he talk about your father?’

‘Yes. He said what a wonderful person he was.’ Paula spoke quietly. ‘He said he carried a photograph of me in his wallet. You may think this silly, Mr. Fisher, but I was rather touched by the idea.’

‘I don’t think it’s silly at all. Was that all? There wasn’t any hint that his death wasn’t certain – that he might have got away?’

‘Yes, there was, as a matter of fact. But Black was eccentric, as I said. I didn’t really believe him.’

‘I see. Where is this Mr. Black, or Schwarz? I ought to go and see him.’

‘I don’t know,’ Paula said. ‘He just came into my office, and then walked out again. He didn’t leave any address and I forgot to ask him. I told you, he was a little – odd, I can’t explain it. He said he would ring me again but I’ve heard nothing from him since. To be honest, I rather doubted that he knew my father at all, he seemed so strange. Rather a frightening little man.’

‘Little?’ Fisher prompted. There was a photograph of the General reviewing an armoured corps, with Schwarz walking behind him.

‘Yes, quite short. About five foot six, I should think.’

‘That tallies,’ Fisher said. ‘If I got a photograph for you you’d recognise him, wouldn’t you – even though it was taken years ago?’

‘Oh, I should think so. He had a rather distinctive face. You could advertise for him.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Yes, I suppose I could.’ The idea made him smile in irony. He had already been advertised for, but the man had no sense of propriety. He had just kept quiet and never answered. He was really feeling sorry for Paula Stanley now. The trouble was that his excitement kept getting in the way. ‘Here, have some more wine. Is there anything else you can think of? Anything to help me? You’ve been marvellous so far.’

‘Nothing,’ Paula said. ‘Do you mind if I don’t finish this – I’m not really hungry. It was delicious, but I just can’t manage any more. Now it’s your turn, Mr. Fisher. I want to know everything. I want to know exactly why you said my father might just be alive.’

He faced the anxious look, and thought how pretty she was when she was worried. ‘Two months ago there was a newspaper report in Germany that he’d been seen in Paris. It appeared in the Allgemeine Zeitung, and was reprinted in all the major European newspapers through A.P. My client saw it, and wanted an investigation.’

‘Seen in Paris? But that’s impossible! That could mean Black was right!’

‘It certainly could,’ Fisher agreed. ‘It seemed pretty definite. It has to be looked into; anyway, that’s what I’m being paid for.’

‘Who said they saw him in Paris? And who is employing you?’

He had the photostat copy of the original cutting in his briefcase. It was a Frenchwoman who had made the claim. And she insisted that she knew. She recognised the General; she knew him by the eyes …

‘Somebody said they knew him during the occupation and saw him walking down a Paris street. They tried to catch up with him but he disappeared in the crowd. As for the second question, I can’t answer that. Not without the client’s permission.’ He couldn’t quite imagine the Princess giving it. He had promised to go back in a month and make a personal report on his progress. He was looking forward to seeing the younger son’s face when he heard this latest development.

Why in hell had he been so anxious to have the affair dropped cold? And why hadn’t the elder, the heir and head of the family, said one bloody word during the interview, except shift from foot to foot and hold on to the back of the sofa as if he was frightened of falling over? Fisher had been too busy in Bonn to ask the questions. Now they came back to him, prompted by Paula’s question. He felt awkward at holding out on her, but as he had said to the smiling, persuasive Prince when he tried to doublecross his mother, in his business, integrity to the client was all important. It was the profession’s one claim to respectability.

‘Mr. Fisher, you know some of the details about my father. Would you tell me about him – everything you know. I’d be very grateful.’

Fisher signalled the waiter. ‘Nothing else?’

Paula shook her head. ‘No thanks. Just coffee.’

‘Two black coffees. When you say everything I know, you don’t want a history from start to finish, do you – I mean you know all that of course. You want to know where he was killed. If he was.’

She wanted to hear it all, but shame prevented her from asking. Shame at not knowing. She felt like a foundling. More and more she judged her mother for that damnable reticence which had closed her out. James always said she was uptight and disorientated. He liked long, medical sounding words and the description irritated her. But if what he said was true, she knew who to blame for it.

‘Just the end,’ she said. ‘Where it was, and how it was supposed to have happened.’

‘In a village outside Cracow, during the final German retreat in ’44. Let me light that for you. You’re smoking like a chimney, Mrs. Stanley. Don’t you know it’s bad for you? Anyway, your father’s H.Q. was in this place; it was a hopeless name I couldn’t begin to pronounce, but he and his staff were there, including our friend Schwarz, or Black. He had taken up quarters in the police station, some kind of brick-built house. These Polish places were pretty small and primitive and most of them had been occupied and fought over during the original campaign. I imagine conditions were pretty rough at the time; the Russians were chasing hell out of the German army, and the fighting was not exactly Queensberry Rules.

‘Anyway on November 23rd a massive Russian bombardment began over the area. The house where your father was living was hit and everyone in it was killed. Apparently a body was found wearing his decorations but otherwise unidentifiable. Half a dozen survivors of the battle swore that the General had been in the house in conference with his staff at the time. Nobody got out alive. The bodies were buried on the spot. Your mother must have been notified of his death in action. I can’t understand why she wouldn’t tell you this.’

Paula ignored the question. ‘One thing puzzles me,’ she said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Why was anything reported in all the papers? Why should anyone bother about whether my father was alive or not after all these years? It seems very odd.’

‘He was a very important man,’ Fisher said. ‘He had the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross, and every other decoration you can think of; he was one of Germany’s glamour soldiers.’ He had a mental picture of the faded photograph in the Bonn file. The hard, clean-cut face under the distinctive peaked cap, the pattern of gold braid and the unmistakable lightning flashes on the collar. He must have looked pretty good in his prime, a perfect specimen of the Wagnerian superman. He smiled at Paula.

‘There’s nothing more intriguing than the dead coming back to life,’ he said kindly. ‘Naturally it aroused interest.’

‘Do you believe it, Mr. Fisher?’ she asked him. ‘Do you think it’s possible?’

‘You’d like it to be, wouldn’t you?’

‘Wouldn’t you? If you had never known one of your parents?’

‘I don’t know,’ Fisher said. ‘I didn’t know either of mine very well. They died when I was a kid. But I made out. I wouldn’t let it worry you. If I find anything out, I’ll let you know; just privately, between friends.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Paula said. In spite of her first reaction she was beginning to like him. He looked different when he smiled; she felt that he was not normally as nice as he was being to her. ‘Will you promise?’

‘If you’ll have dinner with me this week,’ Fisher said. ‘I’ll give you a full report. Just in case you want me before, here’s my address and you can get a message to me at this number. It’s a calling service. How about Thursday for dinner. I thought I might motor down and see your mother and stepfather on Wednesday. Can I come and pick you up at about eight?’

‘I haven’t said I’d go,’ Paula said. ‘This isn’t more investigating, is it? I’ve nothing more to tell you.’

‘No, this is strictly pleasure from my point of view.’ Fisher paid the bill. ‘And as I said, I’ll give you a progress report – free. I usually charge blood money for this sort of thing. You will have dinner, won’t you?’

‘All right. I live at 28 Charlton Square. Flat 2. I warn you, you won’t get anything out of my mother and stepfather. I tried to bring it up myself and I got absolutely nowhere.’

‘Perhaps I’m a little tougher to deal with,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Anyway, we’ll see. Come on, I’ll put you in a taxi. Are you going back to your office?’

They stood outside on the warm pavement; the sky was clouding over with the advent of a summer shower.

‘Yes, of course. I have to do some work.’ She held out her hand. ‘Goodbye; thank you for lunch.’

‘I have to do some work too,’ Fisher replied. He liked the way she did her hair; it curled round her head, not too short, but soft and casual, taking its own shape. He had never liked brown hair before. But with those eyes, she couldn’t fail. ‘See you Thursday,’ he said. He helped her into a cab and turning, walked back down the street to find his car.

He wondered what the mother would be like. He had seen her in one of the photographs too; a tall, a very good-looking woman with blonde hair plaited round her head, fox furs trailing from her shoulders, shaking hands with her husband’s boss.

He wondered about the English husband. What kind of man had he been to pick her up and marry her, knowing what he must have known? Perhaps there was a beautiful love story being lived out in the serenity of the Essex countryside. Perhaps the attractive girl he had just left was the changeling, cursed with her heredity, even though she didn’t know it. Fisher doubted that. Blood wasn’t thicker than water; heredity without environment didn’t make sense to him. What did make sense was the appearance of a man who was obviously the General’s A.D.C., a man accounted dead for twenty odd years, and his contacting of Paula Stanley with hints that the General was still alive. He would wire Bonn for a photocopy of Schwarz’s picture just to confirm it, but the coincidence was already too close. Schwarz had been anglicised to Black; he had claimed to have served under the General.

Why had he contacted Paula Stanley? Why, after all these years, had the little bastard risked disclosing himself? Just to effect a reunion – to drop hints and test her reaction? It sounded unlikely. She had described him as eccentric. Maybe this would account for the lack of caution. But nothing would persuade Fisher that he had found her and introduced himself without a purpose. And whatever the purpose was, she hadn’t told Fisher about it. His invitation to dinner was not entirely motivated by her attractiveness. There was something he had to know, and somehow he had to make her tell him. Seeing the parents was a formality he couldn’t neglect; but if there was a lead anywhere, and he had begun to feel a strange conviction that there was, then it would be found through Paula Stanley.