CHAPTER FOUR

Paris in July was full of tourists; the heat was not as intense as it would be in August, when the Parisiennes fled their city, but there seemed a preponderance of English and American faces among the crowds sauntering along the elegant boulevards and parading up and down the Champs Elysées.

Paula noticed the numbers of Germans wandering about and going into the expensive shops. She felt no sense of identity with them; they were strangers, speaking the harsh language which she had never learnt. Fisher had booked them into a comfortable middle group hotel near the Madelon; their rooms were not adjoining but they were on the same floor. They had dinner together in the hotel restaurant the first evening, and Fisher came to the door of her bedroom with her. He pulled her close and kissed her. She put her arms round his neck, but she didn’t repeat that earlier invitation. She went inside and closed the door, leaving him in the corridor.

The next morning Fisher went to the offices of the Sûreté. He suggested that Paula amuse herself for an hour or so and that they would meet for lunch.

‘What are you going to the police for? How can they help us? …’

‘They can tell me the name and address of the woman who thought she identified your father. Let’s get her out of the way before we start trying to find out who Tante Ambrosine and Jacquot are. That’s going to be the real problem. You go and buy yourself a hat and meet me at the Tour d’Argent at one o’clock. I’ll buy you lunch and tell you what happened. And don’t get picked up, will you?’

‘Why not – it might be fun.’ She had smiled at him, her eyes with a gentle warmth in their depth. He hadn’t seen her look at him like that before.

‘Because I wouldn’t like it,’ Fisher said. He laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘From now on, Mrs. Stanley, you’re with me.’

He saw a detective inspector after half an hour of refusing to accept the blocking tactics of a junior officer, who was determined not to help a ‘flic amateur anglais’. The senior police-officer was a fat man of middle age, chewing on the stem of a very blackened pipe. He greeted Fisher without enthusiasm. Fisher showed his card, explained that he was working for private clients in Germany and asked for the name and address of the woman who thought she saw the former S.S. General Bronsart in the street.

‘Why don’t you look up the newspaper files instead of troubling us?’

‘Because it says a Madame Brevet, and gives no further information,’ Fisher answered. ‘How many hundred people of that name are there in Paris, monsieur?’

‘About five, maybe more. You could have placed an advertisement in the newspapers. Offer a reward and you’d have every Brevet in France running to give you information. We have other things to do, you know.’

‘So the officer outside explained,’ Fisher replied. ‘Less politely than you. I appreciate that this is a nuisance for you, but it only takes a moment to consult your files. And if you would be kind enough to tell me your conclusions in the business …’

The Detective Inspector shrugged. He looked as if he were bored by life, as much as by people like Fisher who made demands upon his time. ‘I will get the file. I can’t offer you a cigarette, I only smoke this.’ He waved the revolting pipe.

‘Thanks, I have my own.’ Fisher took out a packet. He knew the French and liked them; he had worked in Paris for nearly two years and grown to love the city and its citizens. They were usually described as the most insular, hard-headed people in the world, who would see you dead before they did you a favour. Taken in the right way, with allowances made for mood and suspicion, they were obliging, hospitable and kind. The Inspector proved this by settling down to a long discussion of the Bronsart case and showing Fisher everything in the Sûreté file upon him. Having complained of the waste of his time, he spent over an hour with Fisher, smoking and going over his memories of the war.

‘We followed the lead at once,’ he said. ‘Nothing would please us more than to find that bastard still alive and able to face justice. He was here in Paris for six months. I could show you the graves of men and women who were executed at Fresnes by his personal order. Humble citizens who had done nothing but be caught on the streets by his murder squads, looking for hostages.

‘But the woman didn’t make any sense, Monsieur Fisher. She babbled on, insisting she had seen him, but it was nothing. Just a face in a crowd. Just her imagination. He’s dead. I’m sure of it. But there is the address if you want to prove it for yourself.’

Fisher got up and the two shook hands. ‘I agree with you,’ he said. ‘But I have to earn my fee.’

‘Make it a fat one,’ the policeman advised him. ‘They are all the same. Boche. Make them pay.’

Fisher saw Paula walking along the street as he arrived in a cab outside the restaurant. The sun was shining and he felt happy. It was a strange sensation, powerfully connected with the presence of the girl who was coming up to him, waving, one hand holding a wide-brimmed felt hat on her head. Fisher was not a coward; he would have faced anything physical. But the implication of Paula Stanley and the way his heart kept jumping every time he saw her, required a different kind of courage and he didn’t have it yet. He took her arm and guided her to the table. The waiters recognised him and there was an animated exchange in French. Paula sat down and watched him. His hair was on end, where he had brushed his hand over it; it was a habit she had noticed when he was concentrating. He was not a good-looking man and nothing could be done to make him suave and Establishment. He had the kind of body that resented anything but the most casual clothes, and a face that was wary in expectation of trouble. But with her he was gentle; she felt his sexuality whenever they made contact. When he kissed he showed it, and when he handled her on trivial excuses like getting out of taxis or going into a lift.

He took a grip of her and she could feel the proprietary attitude which was so clearly male. ‘From now on you’re with me.’ James would never have said or thought such a thing. He had never been responsible for her in five years. Fisher had taken control of everything from the moment they left England. And it would need all her resolution to resist a final appropriation of herself.

‘What happened?’

He grinned at her over a glass of Cinzano.

‘I got the name and address of the woman. But it’s a dead end; they looked into it and found nothing. I’m half inclined to suggest we hire a car and drive through the Bois this afternoon and give the whole thing a miss for today. What do you say to that?’

‘I’d rather see the woman,’ Paula said. ‘I want to get it over, one way or another. And you won’t find the Salt for the Von Hessels by driving through the woods with me.’

‘A day never made any difference. Besides, I’m not all that enthusiastic for my employers. I’m inclined to agree with the Inspector this morning. They’re real Boches. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it.’

‘Oh yes, you did,’ Paula said. ‘But I don’t mind. I’m sure they’re awful. I remember reading an article in Time, I think it was, all about their money and how they’d come back after the war. Can you tell me about them? Don’t look like that, I know you didn’t mean anything by calling them Boches. I’m not that silly.’

‘I’m glad,’ he said. He reached out and took her hand. He was relieved to feel her fingers grip in return. ‘I’m a clumsy bastard. You know I wouldn’t say anything to upset you. All right, the Von Hessels. The mother is the interesting one; she’s just like a bird, something like a cross between an eagle and a peregrine falcon. About as feminine and inviting, I should say. Tough, arrogant, clever – runs the whole show. She didn’t exactly treat me like dirt, but she showed that’s what she thought of me. There are two sons, the old man died during the war. The elder must be in his fifties; he was very odd. There was something about him I couldn’t figure out at all. I had half an hour’s interview with her and he never said a word. He just stood there like a dummy.’

‘Probably frightened to speak with a mother like that,’ Paula said. ‘They sound ghastly.’

‘They are,’ he said. ‘But the younger son was less so. Quite pleasant in fact, very good looking if you like the blond superman type. Now, he spoke up and seemed quite sure of himself. She must have really taken the guts out of the elder son. It was a very funny set-up. The house was a nightmare; I thought I was in a church when I first went inside. Stained glass windows, potted palms. And everything the size of a cathedral. You could write a good play about a set-up like that, only nobody would believe it. They’d say it was too farfetched. Here come the crevettes. I hope you’re hungry.’

‘I am.’ Paula smiled at him. ‘Your description is marvellous; but I forgot you were a journalist. And you speak perfect French.’

‘I’m a talented man,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you take off that hat? I can’t see your face.’

‘Oh, don’t you like it? I took your advice and bought it this morning. I think it’s very smart!’

‘I think so too, but I like looking at you. You’re a very pretty sight, don’t you know that?’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do. Put it on the seat beside me and get on with your crevettes, they’re delicious. You sure you wouldn’t rather go driving with me this afternoon?’

‘I’m sure,’ Paula said. ‘Let’s go and see the woman; please.’

‘All right, we’ll go. But tonight we will have dinner somewhere special. And we’ll make a pact; we won’t talk about your father or the Poellenberg Salt.’

‘What will we talk about then?’

‘Ourselves,’ Fisher said. ‘I shall tell you the story of my life and I want to hear all about that nice husband of yours. Incidentally, he must have been a shit.’

‘He wasn’t too bad,’ she said. ‘I’m not very easy to live with either.’

‘So far,’ Fisher wiped his mouth with a napkin, ‘I haven’t found you difficult.’

He had hired a car that morning and they drove. There was a fleet of boats travelling down the Seine, carrying merchandise and tourists. A huge coal barge floated past them, a solitary dog standing sentinel in the bows. The streets they drove through became shabbier and dirtier; refuse and prowling cats cluttered the narrow pavements; washing hung festooned out of the windows. It took forty-five minutes of crawling though the traffic in the narrow roads to reach the place where Madame Brevet lived.

It was a crumbling apartment building, the walls scrofulous with peeling plaster, the front door hanging ajar. They went into the dark hall and were assailed by a smell of cooking and cats’ urine. Up one flight of wooden stairs, they knocked at another door.

It was a young woman who opened it and stood blocking their way; she carried a fat little two-year-old baby on her arm.

‘Madame Brevet?’ Fisher said.

‘I’m Madame Brevet.’ She was about twenty-five. ‘I think,’ he said politely, ‘that we want your mother-in-law. Could we speak with her for a minute? It will be worth her while to see us, madame.’

‘What do you want?’ The woman hadn’t moved. She had a tired, sullen face with small dark eyes that stared at them suspiciously. Her look at Paula was distinctly hostile.

‘Information,’ Fisher said. He held out a fifty-franc note. ‘Would you ask Madame Brevet to see us?’

The daughter-in-law took the money; she gave the baby a comforting jiggle as it began to whimper, fingers stuffed in its mouth. ‘You can see her,’ she said. ‘But you won’t get much sense out of her. She drives me crazy, monsieur. She had the police round here a while ago. Come in.’ She stepped back and they went into a room which was crowded with furniture and dominated by a large scrubbed wooden table. The smell of cooking was overpowering, so was the heat, for the windows were shut and a big kitchen stove was alight in the corner. An old woman, white haired and dressed in frowzy black, was sitting in an armchair by the stove.

‘There’s some people to see you. What’s your name, monsieur?’

Fisher came forward to the armchair; a lined white face looked up at him and a hand came out. ‘I am Monsieur Fisher and this lady is Madame Stanley. We are from England, madame, and we wanted to ask you a few questions. Would you be kind enough to answer them for us?’

The eyes were hooded in loose skin; they had a filmy look associated with age. ‘What questions do you want to ask? I’ll do my best, but my memory is not as it was. She tells me I forget everything.’ The old woman jerked her head towards the younger woman.

‘And you do,’ was the retort. ‘You drive me crazy the way you forget.’

‘Madame Brevet,’ Fisher began. ‘Not long ago you were walking down the Rue d’Auvergne and you thought you saw a man. A German officer who used to be in Paris during the war. Do you remember?’

For a moment there was absolute blankness. Paula moved a step nearer; it was useless, just as the police had said. The old woman was senile, she couldn’t be relied upon for anything. The white head turned from Fisher to her and back again.

‘What German officer?’ she said.

‘The one you said you saw!’ Her daughter-in-law couldn’t contain herself. ‘Jesus, you had the newspapers and the flics running all over us with that story! What do you mean, what German officer – stupid old cow!’

‘General Bronsart,’ Fisher said. ‘You thought you saw him in the Rue d’Auvergne. Can you tell us about it?’

‘Ah, my God,’ the old woman cried out. Suddenly her eyes were bright, her face alive with excitement. ‘That devil – I saw him, monsieur! I saw him as clear as I see you, walking down the same side of the street; it was him and I knew him, even though it must be twenty years …’

‘Thirty is more like it,’ the younger woman said acidly. ‘Get something right, can’t you. Old cow,’ she repeated.

‘And you’re certain it was him?’ Paula stepped forward; she felt stifled with heat and anxiety. Her father’s life hung by the thread of this old woman’s credibility.

‘Of course it was, I recognised him, I knew him!’

‘When did you last see the General?’ Fisher asked her.

‘Eh? I told you, a little while ago, I forget exactly when, but a little while …’

‘When you saw him again,’ Fisher prompted, ‘had he changed very much? Wasn’t he much older? How was he dressed, madame?’

She raised her head and looked at him. The expression was blurred.

‘In black, of course. They all wore black uniforms.’

‘I told you,’ her daughter-in-law said. ‘That’s all the police got out of it. But do you know, she went to the station round here and reported seeing this man! Can you imagine it? The crazy old cow.’ She shook her head and humped the baby from one shoulder to the other.

‘I don’t think this is any good,’ Fisher said to Paula. He took her by the arm. ‘I’m sorry, but I think it was just a fantasy, reliving the past. We’d better go.’

‘Yes,’ Paula said. The atmosphere in the little room was thick with heat and human odours. She felt sick. It had been a failure, and only now, faced with total disappointment, did she realise how much she had relied upon this interview.

The heat was suffocating. She took a deep breath and pulled off her hat.

There was a high, fierce little scream. The old woman was out of her chair and on her feet. One gnarled hand was in the air, balled into a fist.

‘The eyes!’ she shrieked. ‘That’s how I knew him! He was an old man and his hair was white, but I knew those eyes! And you have them – you have the same eyes as that swine who murdered my son!’

‘Yes,’ Paula said quietly. ‘I am afraid I have. I am General Bronsart’s daughter.’

With two quick steps the old Madame Brevet had reached her. With a forward jerk of her head, she spat into Paula’s face.

‘Heinrich, where do you think this will end? If you interfere in this you can only do harm. Harm to Mother and to all of us!’

‘I should like to do Mother harm,’ Prince Heinrich said. ‘It’s time somebody injured her for a change. You will be here to hold her hand, why shouldn’t I go to Paris? Are you suggesting that you’ll miss me?’

His brother made a gesture of impatience. ‘You’ll get into trouble,’ he said. ‘You force me to say these things. You’ll get drunk and it will be in the newspapers. Why can’t you stay here – or go up to the schloss, if you’re bored.’

‘A drunkard is never bored,’ Heinrich Von Hessel said. ‘Or lonely. He swallows consolation for all his ills. I hate the schloss. I spent three months shut up there with a male nurse who used to punch me black and blue when nobody was looking.

‘But then nobody would have cared – so long as the family name wasn’t damaged. And what a great name it is, eh? Making millions out of armaments, employing slave labour, financing the Nazis.’ He laughed out loud. ‘I’m going to Paris, and I shall stand with a placard round my neck saying who I am, and I shall piss in the street!’ His brother went out and the door banged. The Prince went over to the window; his mother’s car had just driven up in the courtyard. In a few moments she and Philip would have a family conclave and discuss what best to do about him.

Their trouble was, he thought, that provided he stayed within some bounds of sobriety, there wasn’t much they could do. His last severe bout was only two months away; the accident with the car had happened before that. He had recovered and was soaking at a steady rate. He staggered, so to speak, but didn’t fall. And unless he fell, there was no restriction his family could place upon him. He had a private fortune, inherited under a family trust which his father had been unable to break, and he couldn’t be certified insane and put away without the scandal coming out.

That had always been his safeguard and it still was. He could move about with freedom and thereby torment his mother with suspense and fear. And he had told his brother Philip that he meant to go to Paris, partly for the pleasure of alarming him and partly from a sense of irresponsible curiosity. He had a juvenile habit of listening in to telephone conversations and looking in other people’s drawers. He spied on his mother with a sharp degree of drunken cunning, as he had spied on her all his life, partly for self-protection and partly from malice because he knew himself to be excluded. He had discovered that Fisher was in Paris and that he had the General’s daughter with him. And during the night when he woke up to have a drink, the idea came to him of going there and making himself known. It would convulse his mother and cause his upright brother many anxious hours. They couldn’t stop him. He could take his valet with him, who had acted as a private nurse for twenty years, and book in at the Ritz Hotel. He need never leave his suite unless he felt inclined. Or he could amuse himself by meddling, by indulging one of his infrequent bouts of self-assertion, like ordering a Ferrari motor-car and driving it himself while drunk.

He had no recollection of killing the child. He remembered nothing till he woke up in his own bed and saw his mother standing near him, looking much older. They had bribed and cajoled him out of a charge of manslaughter and kept the newspaper coverage to the minimum. He had accepted what was done, at the same time resenting it because it placed him under obligation, and gratitude was not within his capability. He hadn’t been on a trip for months; when Philip suggested he was bored he had denied it, but he realised that it must be true. He was tired of his surroundings, inhibited by his family’s presence; required to be on parade, as on the occasion when the detective came and he had stood behind the sofa, trying not to sway about and then locked in his bedroom because they were afraid he might stumble downstairs; at other times banished out of sight with the discreet connivance of his valet. He liked his valet; there was an understanding between them. Prince Heinrich paid his salary and gave him extra money when he felt in a good mood. The valet took orders from the Princess in a crisis, but from day to day he set out to please the Prince. He had made up his mind. He was drunk as usual but by no means incapable. He was going to Paris. He rang for his valet, gave him the news and instructed him to pack.

Downstairs his mother and his brother Philip were in conference as he had imagined. ‘I won’t allow it,’ the Princess said. ‘God knows what he’ll do when he gets there; imagine the Ritz if he has one of those drunken rages and begins to smash things!’

‘He won’t do that,’ Philip tried to comfort her. ‘The clinic cured him of those impulses. He simply drinks now, Mother. I tried to persuade him not to go but you know how obstinate he becomes if you argue with him.’

‘You’re too soft,’ the Princess said angrily. ‘You always plead and make excuses for him! I’m going to have him put away – I’ve borne enough from him! I’ll get him certified and committed. Then we can have peace!’

‘You can’t do that,’ her son said quietly. ‘Heinrich’s not mad; you can’t do that to him. I won’t agree to it. And you know it would leak out. We’ve covered him all his life, and you said yourself he hasn’t long. You mustn’t think of that solution. It’s impossible.’

The fierce glare turned on him like a light beam. She looked old and cruel with anger. ‘Nothing is impossible to us,’ she said. ‘As we have proved once already. It came to the Von Hessels and the might of Adolf Hitler’s Gestapo and we survived. Never say to me that something can’t be done.’

‘At a price, Mother. But the days for paying it are over too. We have power and we have money. We no longer have the right to abuse either of them. The old world permitted it, the new one won’t, whatever you think. We hid the killing of that child because we set the parents up for life and moved them five hundred miles away to Frankfurt. But we can’t put Heinrich into a lunatic asylum and hope to get away with it. He has trustees, and he’s nominally head of the family. You don’t want the scandal over the Salt to destroy us; this would be almost as bad.’

‘You have the new conscience, don’t you, my son?’ She sneered at him, standing at her full height, with the force of her patrician contempt for ordinary moral standards beating against him. ‘You talk like a bourgeois. You forget who we are.’

‘I could never do that,’ Philip reminded her. ‘I have lived and breathed the importance of this family from the moment I was born. I’ve watched you ruling our empire, Mother, and I’ve accepted all my obligations. But the times have changed, and even we can’t put them back to what we were. We’re powerful, yes, but we’re no longer the feudal barons of before the war. We can’t dispose exactly as we like, even of our own blood. Society won’t tolerate us if we try, and I’m very anxious not to put it to the test.’

‘That’s not your reason for protecting that drunken maniac.’ The Princess turned on him. ‘It’s weakness!’ She was so angry with him for this determined thwarting of her will, that she was capable of saying anything to punish him. She loved him, as she had loved his father, but she loved her power of domination more than anything else. He was a Von Hessel, but he was of weaker stuff, with a silly conscience and a set of tepid morals that filled her with disgust. The temptation to tell him so came upon her, but she conquered it. Only a fool pulls down the house because a door squeaks.

‘He’s a danger and he’s bad,’ she said coldly. ‘I’ve always known he would bring some dreadful tragedy upon us. Let him go to Paris, then. Let him meddle, let him blunder drunkenly into this hornets’ nest, with Fisher and that woman. It is your responsibility if anything goes wrong.’ She turned her back on him and walked out of the room. Prince Philip watched her as she left. His mother’s anger lasted for days; she would ignore him until he came and abjectly apologised. She was a woman who, when she once established contact, never let go. He felt her influence even when they were separated, the force of her affection, the pull of her will-power.

And he admired her for the superhuman strength of character that had kept the Hessel factories in the face of government attempts to seize them, that had fought the accusations of Nazi sympathy and gathered the loyalty of thousands of workers to herself. She was like iron; the rock upon which he had leaned since his infancy; the old Prince died when he was still a little boy.

She hated his brother Heinrich, as only a woman of that determined cast can hate a weakling of whom she fails to rid herself. It would have surprised her to know that the feeling was returned; she thought the sodden, drink-distorted personality of her son incapable of a coherent emotion or of a sensibility that could be wounded. And if she had admitted it, Philip knew she wouldn’t have cared. Heinrich had disappointed her; he embodied everything she most despised. Lack of self-control, whether it was lying in a coma with his own vomit on the floor beside the bed, or flying into violent tantrums when he broke the furniture or drove a car at lethal speed on the wrong side of the road. He had a keeper, a valet who was trained to clean up after him, and nurse him, armed with a hypodermic when he fell into DTs. He lived with them and yet he had an entity and freedom which his mother had been powerless to take away from him. He seldom baulked her, but when he did, as on this occasion when he had decided to go to Paris, its effect upon her was alarming. Her solutions were the sweeping variety that suggest themselves to those with too much power. Put him away. Shut him up forever. But the terms of an old trust formed by her sons’ great-grandfather made this impossible to do without the maximum publicity. Philip wondered whether his brother understood the factors that had saved him, or whether he would capitalise still further to embarrass his family if he did realise. In any case it didn’t matter. What did matter was this intention to go to Paris and involve himself in Fisher’s activities. He would attract attention, because their name was like honey to a swarm of bees where the world press was concerned. Heinrich would be followed and photographed, and the old rumours of his illness resurrected, to be followed by veiled suggestions of what their exact cause might have been. Nervous breakdowns. Tuberculosis. That had covered a six-month stay in a Swiss clinic after a violent outburst which luckily took place in the Schloss Würtzen, far enough from the public eye to be disguised. Unmarried. The world’s most eligible bachelor. The wealthiest recluse who seldom left his hotel suite.

Philip had seen the press cuttings his mother kept of the reports over the years during the early days of the war when Heinrich had got loose in Europe, for the second time. The efforts of his valet had brought him home without a major breakdown, or the disclosure of his real malady. Alcoholic degeneracy. He had said Heinrich wasn’t mad. Clinically this could be argued. He was the result of centuries of overbreeding, an unhappy genetic accident which he, Philip, had escaped. Knowledge of his own good fortune made him guilty in relation to his brother. He insisted to his mother that it could have been his burden instead of Heinrich’s to carry through life the sins and intermarriages of his ancestors. He sighed, and pushed the blond hair back from his forehead. It too was a genetic gesture, from the father who had died in a blazing Stuka over the English Channel. If Heinrich was determined to go, then he had better follow him. That might placate his mother, and give them some safeguard against the future. Because the future could turn very dark if the detective’s latest report was right.

In his opinion, and he had been very emphatic on the telephone, the newspaper report of a month ago had been correct. The General was still alive.

‘Darling, why don’t you sit down and relax? I’ve brought the newspapers, it’s a lovely afternoon.’ The Brigadier looked up anxiously at his wife. She wore slacks and gardening gloves; her face was lined and tired. Overhead the sun was burning in an empty sky; the scent of roses was strong in the still air, birds perched in the beautiful old medlar tree beside their garden chairs and sang.

It was a dreamlike English summer afternoon, too hot to work, a time for peace and silence, for reading the Sunday papers and waking afterwards from a light doze to drink tea and eat home-made cake. This had been their idyll for many years; their lives had passed in uninterrupted calm and mutual compatibility. They gardened, they read, they talked and held hands like lovers, which, in spite of their ages, they still were. Their life together had been good. It was an almost biblical phrase which the Brigadier enjoyed using to describe something entirely satisfactory in the sight of God and man. He held out his hand to her and she obeyed him, sitting at his side. She leaned back and closed her eyes. In repose her face was beautiful; it had a purity of feature that delighted him as much as the day he first saw it, in a freezing attic in her own home, that enormous stuccoed house in Munich which his commanding officer had commandeered. She had been a young woman then, frightened and hostile, facing an enemy intruder who had come up the back stairs and been a witness to her humiliation and despair. She had been burning pieces of broken furniture in the grate to keep herself and Paula warm. The child was in bed and coughing miserably. Gerald Ridgeway would never forget that first meeting with his wife. He had fallen in love immediately, and for the first time in his life. There was a nice, conventional English girl at home whom he expected to marry one day; she disappeared from possibility as soon as he saw the German woman’s sculptured face, and flinched at the tragedy in her eyes. He had loved her from the first moment of their encounter, and his intensity of feeling had not diminished. She didn’t sleep well; she was restless and sad. The serenity which was their greatest achievement had disappeared.

‘Darling,’ he said. ‘Do stop worrying. It’s all over now.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Magda Ridgeway said. ‘I lie awake, thinking it will all come out, that the world will know and wherever we go, people will point us out. How do you think our friends would feel if they knew who I was – who my husband had been?’

‘It’s a long time ago,’ he said. ‘Nobody cares now.’

‘Our generation cares,’ she said. ‘They fought in that war, they were part of it all. The stain will never be washed away for them. It can never be washed away for me.’

‘You mustn’t say that.’ He turned to her quickly. ‘You had nothing to do with what happened!’

‘I was married to him for ten years.’ His wife spoke slowly as if it were an effort. ‘I entertained those creatures in my home, I lived with the spoils he took from families who were shipped away and murdered. I was part of it all, Gerald. I lived with death, I lay in its arms and I bore it a child. That was the most horrible part – that obsession with the child.’ She shivered. ‘Without pity, without one human feeling for anyone or anything, and yet when it came to the baby he was besotted! Do you know, he used to spend hours in the nursery, playing with her? Sitting by the cot, watching every movement, holding her hand in his fingers. When I went upstairs I’d hear him talking away to her, crooning and humming like a woman. If she cried, he would rush to the nursery and shout at the nurse – I was nauseated by it. I tell you, I found it so horrible that I couldn’t go near her myself. And he knew this. He was very angry with me because I didn’t love her. But I couldn’t; she was his. Whenever she looked at me they were his eyes. I felt as if I’d given birth to a monster; that was why he loved her, because she was the image of him. Poor Paula – I just couldn’t help it. And in my heart I’ve never really got over that early feeling. It makes me very guilty.’

‘You’ve been a wonderful mother,’ her husband retorted. ‘Don’t talk nonsense. I’m afraid she’s just been spoilt, that’s all. And losing James has made a difference. She’s soured. It’s nothing to do with you, my sweetheart. And you can stop thinking about Bronsart and the past. He’s dead, and so is that man Black. There’s nothing to connect you.’

‘I remember Black so well,’ she said. ‘Albrecht Schwarz, a little man, very dapper in his uniform. He adored the General; he followed him like a shadow. I remember him standing in the room when they first brought the Poellenberg Salt to the house, and my husband laughing. “How do you like your table centre?” That’s what he said to me. I knew where it came from; I’ll never forget the shame. My father and the Von Hessels’ grandfather were friends. I ran out of the room, and do you know what he did? He brought Paula down out of her cot and showed it to her! “It’s for her,” he said to me afterwards. “She touched it and she laughed. She liked it! So she shall have it – my gift to her!” Not long after that it was taken away and I never saw it again. I never asked what he had done with it, I didn’t want to know. He was like a madman, things were going so badly for us in the war. He was worse than I had ever known him. He talked of going to fight in Russia with his S.S. division and wiping every Russian off the earth. I used to pray he’d go and never come back And that prayer was granted. Do you know, that’s when I believed in God?’

‘I know,’ the Brigadier said. ‘You told me. And he is dead, and nobody can bring him back whatever Paula does.’

‘And the Salt? What did Black tell her – why has she gone to Paris?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, ‘but I am sure it will all come to nothing. You have no real reason to worry.’

His wife looked at him. He too looked tired and fresh lines had appeared round the eyes and mouth. She brought his hand up to her lips and kissed it.

‘This has put years on to you,’ she said sadly. ‘I have only one fear. One terrible fear and I can’t get rid of it. What if that devil is alive?’

‘He isn’t,’ Gerald Ridgeway said. ‘But if the impossible turned up and he had escaped – we’ll face it, as we’ve faced everything, my darling. Together. And don’t you worry. Whatever comes out of all this, I will protect you.’

‘By God,’ Fisher said ‘Look at this – Heinrich Von Hessel is here! He’s staying at the Ritz!’

He passed the newspaper to Paula; they were having breakfast in the dining room of their hotel. It was a morning ritual which had never appealed to Fisher. Sitting up and eating at an early hour had bored him and he eschewed the habit as a waste of time. Now he looked forward to going down and waiting for Paula to come in; after the first few mornings he went to her room and they came down together. He could see by the hotel management’s attitude that they were thought to be lovers. He only wished they had been right.

There was a bizarre horror about what had happened that clung to them when they left the old woman. Paula kept rubbing her cheek though the spittle had long disappeared. She shivered, in spite of Fisher’s arm around her. It was an unnerving experience, crude and physically disgusting. Hate had come up and spat in her face. Fisher blamed himself for having taken her there. But if he hadn’t he would have gone away like the men from the Sûréte, believing the old woman to be suffering from senile delusions.

Senile she was, and mentally confused. But for that moment the fog of age had cleared from her mind. There was no doubt about the reaction when she saw Paula, or that angry scream. ‘He was an old man with white hair – but I knew him by the eyes …’ The man was still alive. He was old and his hair was white, but he had the same distinctive eyes and she had known him. She had remembered with the clarity of her maternal grief, the face of the man who had sentenced her son to death.

Shrieking and fighting to get at Paula, the old woman had brought back the terror of the last phase of the war. Through her, Paula had been shown her father walking among a crowd of cowed and frightened men, dragged off the Paris streets as hostages, coldly selecting victims with a movement of his riding crop. In this way he had sentenced Madame Brevet’s son to death, watched by the distracted, weeping mother, who had gone to the prison in search of her son. There was no ban on relatives going to look for missing sons and husbands. It spread the news through the city when there were witnesses to the executions. Through her words the figure of the General rose like a devil in the squalid little room, dressed in his sinister black, pitiless and inhuman, sending the shrinking boy to the firing squad. She had looked into his face she yelled, and cursed him. And she had seen that face again in a crowded street twenty-five years later, and remembered it. If Fisher and her daughter-in-law hadn’t held her, she would have attacked Paula with her nails. On the drive back Paula said nothing. Alone in the hotel Fisher put his arms round her.

‘That was terrible for you,’ he said. ‘I wish to Christ I hadn’t taken you.’

‘It was so real,’ Paula said. ‘She made it so real; I could see it happening.’

‘I’m going to get you a drink,’ Fisher said. ‘You’re shaking. Go and sit down.’

‘I suppose,’ Paula said slowly, ‘that I suspected it. When I heard he was S.S. and on the wanted list, I knew he’d done this kind of thing. But it didn’t sink into me. I knew it, but I couldn’t believe it. Do you understand that?’

‘I think so. Here, drink this. Come and sit with me.’

‘She made me see it,’ Paula said. Fisher had his arm round her. She didn’t seem aware of it. She went on talking, looking ahead, holding the glass of brandy in both hands. ‘The more she screamed and struggled to get at me, the more I could see her in the prison yard, begging and pleading with them not to take her son. And my father standing there, pointing with his stick …’

‘All right,’ Fisher said. ‘Now that you know it, now that you’ve accepted it, do you still want to find him? Are you quite sure?’

‘Yes.’ Paula turned to him for the first time. ‘Yes, I have to find him. Nothing can alter that. He’s my father, he’s part of me. Whatever he’s like, whatever he did, I have to see him face to face. I have to hear his side.’

‘But then what?’ Fisher asked her. ‘Isn’t it better to keep the illusion? How will you feel if he turns out to be the kind of man that old woman talked about today – a soulless bastard, or half cracked like you said Schwarz was – you’ve got to think what may be at the end of this.’

‘If he’s sick,’ Paula said, ‘I shall take care of him. That would be the easiest of all. If he needs me, I’m his daughter. He’s been in hiding for all these years; he must have paid for what he did.’

‘And you could forgive him?’

‘I want to,’ she said. ‘I want to find him and have him put his arms around me. I know you think I’m crazy, but that’s what I want. When I was a child I used to watch my mother and Gerald going off together, and think if only my father could walk through the door or up the garden, and come and take me away with him. I created him, Eric, because I had nothing else. Now I know he’s real and everything in me is crying out to find him. To see him and touch him. To make the dream into a reality.’

‘And you’re prepared to find that it’s a nightmare?’ Fisher asked her.

‘I don’t think it will be,’ she said. ‘I don’t think anything he’s done will matter to me. I don’t think I’ll care.’

‘I see,’ Fisher said. He got up and poured himself a drink. ‘I love you, Paula.’ He spoke quietly, watching her. ‘I know I’m not much of a substitute but couldn’t you make do with me instead?’

Paula shook her head. He looked unhappy and strained. It occurred to her suddenly that she had hurt him.

‘No, darling. It’s not the same thing. I’d never be happy with you if I walked away from him now. Our turn will come when this is over.’

‘It may never be over,’ Fisher said. ‘He may take you away from me for ever.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ she said. ‘But till I see him, I can’t promise. You will go on helping me, won’t you?’

‘That was our bargain,’ Fisher said. ‘And I’ll keep to it, if that’s what you want. But don’t expect me to be happy about it. Don’t expect me to see you run into your father’s arms and give three bloody cheers.’

‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘But just remember this. I love you too.’ She had gone up to him and kissed him, and nothing more was said. When he came to bring her down to breakfast in the morning, she appeared relaxed, but he looked tired and tense, as if he hadn’t slept well. On the way to the lift she took his arm. Reading the Monde a little later over the breakfast table, Fisher had seen the news of Prince Heinrich’s arrival.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘why the hell has he come here? I cabled the mother about you coming to Paris. I suppose he wants to check up. There’s one thing I won’t have, and that’s the client breathing down my neck.’ He folded up the paper and threw it down. ‘I shall go and pay the gentleman a call and make that clear.’

Twenty minutes after he applied at the reception desk, Fisher was shown up to the Prince’s suite. The hotel had been uncooperative when he asked to have a message sent up. The Prince was not to be disturbed. Fisher suggested aggressively that they had better put it to the test. Reluctantly the reception spoke to the deputy manager, who referred it higher still. Fnially Fisher was taken up to the first floor by a page boy.

At the door of suite F/G the boy left him. He knocked and a minute later a man in the dark coat and trousers of a personal valet opened it and speaking in very bad French, invited him inside. Fisher spoke briskly in German. The valet bowed. His Highness was expecting him; if he would wait in the sitting room for a few moments.

It was a charming little room, the walls lined with beautiful eighteenth-century boiserie, its colour scheme and pictures were in the same period. It was delicate, restful, and unlike the usual decorated suites found even in a hotel of the Ritz renown. Fisher heard the door open behind him. Heinrich Von Hessel was in a silk dressing gown, with dark trousers underneath. He wore a white silk muffler round his throat and he reminded Fisher of a character in a Noel Coward comedy. He advanced stiffly into the room; his legs seemed difficult to bend, and held out his hand. Fisher took it.

‘Good morning,’ the Prince said. It was the first time he had spoken; it was a deep voice, with a guttural English accent.

‘Good morning, sir. I saw your arrival in the paper this morning and I thought I should have a word with you. Did you have a good flight?’

‘Excellent,’ the Prince said. ‘Very smooth.’ He lowered himself into one of the dainty little French armchairs. Fisher had noticed a tremor in his hand when he shook it. He moved with the uncertainty of someone who was either very old or very delicate. Yet his physique was above average. He was tall, powerfully built, bigger in proportion than Fisher. He didn’t look in the least like a man suffering from any infirmity. But there was a deliberation about the way he spoke and handled himself that struck Fisher as abnormal. As abnormal as the position taken behind his mother’s sofa on that first afternoon.

‘I find flying agreeable,’ he said. ‘Very relaxing.’ He seemed to be looking for something, his eyes glanced round the room and came back to Fisher with an expression of abstraction. Fisher produced his cigarettes.

‘May I offer you one?’ He was more conventional in his approach to the son than he had been to the mother. There was no attempt to overwhelm or impress; he looked what he was, an immensely rich, pampered man, with nice manners and no desire to impose himself upon anyone. He looked through Fisher rather than at him.

‘I would like a cigarette, thank you. Do you speak German, Mr. Fisher? Ach, Josef …’ At that moment the valet came into the room. He carried a large glass in a silver holder on a salver. There was a look on the Prince’s face that made Fisher pause before he answered. It was satisfied, secretive. He took the glass with both hands. On an impulse Fisher lied. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Ah.’ The Prince nodded. He looked round and spoke to his valet in their own language. ‘Bring me another brandy in fifteen minutes. And don’t keep me waiting again.’ He smiled at Fisher. ‘This is my little indulgence. Cold tea. Would you like some coffee?’

‘No thank you.’ For a second Fisher almost asked for the same as his host, then he decided that jokes were not in order, even private ones. He watched the Prince take a deep swallow. He cradled the glass in both hands as if he were afraid he might drop it; or it might be snatched away from him. Cold tea.

Christ, Fisher murmured inside, brandy at ten-thirty in the morning. And another one in fifteen minutes. So that was what it was all about – that was the wooden walk and the glazed aristocratic stare. The Prince was stiff drunk.

‘I enjoy aeroplanes,’ he remarked. ‘Flying is very pleasant.’ Fisher didn’t answer, he was so surprised he forgot to light his cigarette. Now the details began to make sense. He watched the man opposite to him and saw the big body sinking downward in the seat, the hands with their alcoholic tremor gripping the glass of brandy like an animal’s claws. For no reason that he could explain, Fisher suddenly felt sorry for him. The eyes were wretched.

‘How is the Princess?’ Fisher asked. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Talking seriously to someone in that state was out of the question.

‘My mother is well,’ the Prince said. He took another swallow. ‘She is a very active woman for her age. She dislikes flying. I like it. I find it relaxing.’

Fisher recognised the singlemindedness of the alcoholic. He was likely to repeat the remark about flying every few minutes. ‘And Prince Philip?’

‘He is on his way over here. He decided to come because I came. They are afraid I will interfere with you, Mr. Fisher. They want the Poellenberg Salt very badly.’

‘Your brother doesn’t,’ Fisher said. ‘He came out to the airport when I visited you and tried to persuade me not to take the case too seriously. Don’t you want it found either?’

‘Not very much.’ The Prince put down his precious glass, and with some difficulty negotiated a cigarette out of a box. Fisher got up and lit it for him. The stench of brandy was unmistakable; he must have been pumped full to ignite so quickly on one drink. He glanced down and looked at his watch. The time for another refill must be near.

‘Why don’t you want it back, sir?’ Fisher asked him.

‘Why should I?’ He gestured with the cigarette. ‘We have enough. My mother has one of the finest Raphaels in the world in her bedroom. Why do we need any more? We have enough treasures to worry about. But she is determined, Mr. Fisher. My mother always gets what she wants, you know. Sometimes she does what Philip asks but never what I ask. You know I am head of our family?’

‘Yes,’ Fisher said. The Prince was not just drunk; he was the product of a permanent alcoholic condition. That was the meaning behind the tag of ‘a recluse, subject to ill health’. He was pickled to the brain cells and must have been for years. Anything he said would be irresponsible. No wonder his brother was following him. To keep visitors away. And yet if he hadn’t overheard that exchange between the master and the servant, if he hadn’t seen for himself the valet come in with another glass and the same pantomime repeated, he might not have guessed. Which proved how deep seated the Prince’s sickness was. The genuine alcoholic is permanently drunk. It’s only on occasions that they fall about and give themselves away. And that was where the valet and the family influence would raise a shield to hide him from the world. Poor bastard, Fisher thought suddenly. Poor sick, lonely bastard, killing himself by inches. I bet that bloody mother would be glad to see him dead.

‘I am the head of the family,’ Prince Heinrich repeated. ‘But they don’t listen to me. How will my mother feel if Bronsart tells the truth? How will she like that?’

‘He can’t tell anything if he’s dead.’ Fisher was going slowly. The sad pouched eyes looked at him and there was a glint of something humorous in them. But it was gallows humour.

‘He isn’t dead, is he? I heard them talking. You don’t think so, Mr. Fisher. Men like him don’t die, they live for ever. To plague and torment. She’ll be sorry. He was the only one who beat my mother, do you know that? Most unusual. She always gets her way. But not with him.’ He fingered his empty glass. ‘I never liked him, Mr. Fisher, even before it happened. But he got the better of her. Would you be good enough to give me a light – I can’t find my lighter.’

Fisher held his lighter flame to the trembling cigarette end. The hand was steadier now, but the heavy head was bobbing on the neck.

‘What truth could he tell, if he is alive? What happened between him and your family, sir?’

‘I can’t tell you that,’ the Prince said. ‘No, that cannot be told. Besides, I have forgotten the details. In the end one forgets everything. But if you find him and you try to get the Salt back, it will all come out. My mother knows that. Has she asked you to kill him yet?’

Fisher went back to his seat. He took a cigarette and lit it himself. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t. And it won’t do her any good if she does.’

‘She will ask you.’ The watch was being consulted again. He seemed as calm as when they were discussing his flight in from Munich. ‘She will have to ask you, and you will say yes. Nobody says no to her for long.’ He smiled at Fisher; as a young man he must have been handsome in a ponderous way. ‘Josef, you are two minutes late. Ach, Mr. Fisher, perhaps you would like a drink? I only take tea.’

‘No thank you.’ Fisher got up. One detail was nagging at him. He refused to take that last suggestion seriously. The man was crazy with drink. He would have said anything. Why in hell had they let him appear at all?

‘If you and your brother didn’t want the Salt to be found, why didn’t your mother see me alone?’

‘Because I am the head of the family. People are always saying they don’t see me. She wanted you to know that there was nothing wrong. Once a newspaper said I was dead. I had to go to the opera with her that night. I hate opera. Philip was there because she relies on him. You see?’

‘I see,’ Fisher said. He didn’t see at all. With the erratic insight of his kind the Prince seemed to sense this.

‘She’s going to need you if the General is still alive,’ he said. ‘So you had to see me, Mr. Fisher. She won’t be pleased that I’ve talked to you.’

‘I don’t have to tell her,’ Fisher said. He held out his hand and the Prince released his glass of brandy and shook it.

‘I’d be obliged,’ he said. ‘Good morning, Mr. Fisher. Thank you for calling on me.’

As Fisher left the suite, he heard the voice raised from the romantic little sitting room. ‘Josef! Josef!’

‘Tante Ambrosine and nephew Jacquot,’ Fisher said. ‘Jacquot, Paris, 25th June, 1944. That’s all we have to go on. That and the fact that I’m certain your father is still alive and in this city. The point is, my darling, where do we start looking and for what?’

They were holding hands in the car, parked under the trees in an avenue of the Bois de Boulogne. He had given her lunch and then taken her for the drive out of Paris to the peace and beauty of the famous woods where the Kings of France had hunted game and the fashionable used to parade in their carriages until the outbreak of the first world war. Now it was a place for trippers, for coach parties eating sweets and throwing ice cream wrappers in the grass, with the echo of the centuries returning as a group of riders trotted by.

Fisher had told her about Prince Heinrich. Paula had surprised him by her attitude. ‘So he’s a drunk,’ she said. ‘That’s not such a terrible secret; surely they don’t have to go to all this trouble covering his tracks if that’s all it is. There must be something more.’ Fisher didn’t answer for some moments. The simplicity of what she said was obvious. There must be something more. And of course there was. There was the secret which concerned the Poellenberg Salt and General Bronsart of the S.S. for example. ‘Has she asked you to kill him yet?’ He hadn’t told Paula about that remark. He refused to take it seriously, and yet it had begun to worry him. Why hadn’t the Princess called in Interpol? With her influence she could have instigated a full enquiry into the report of Bronsart’s reappearance and got further through official channels than she could hope to do using a detective agency, however competent. Why make a secret of the Salt, why not publicise it, offer a huge reward for information? This was the normal course to take in her position, but she hadn’t taken it. She needed secrecy; there was always a shame attached to the wish for a private investigation. Whatever the circumstances which gave Bronsart his treasure, they didn’t reflect credit upon the Von Hessels and the Prince had let that much out during their conversation. And so little credit did the family derive from the affair, that both the sons were ready to forgo the priceless heirloom which was lost, rather than court discovery. It was intriguing and a little sinister.

But until he could begin to trace the Salt through the General’s message to Paula, Fisher hadn’t a hope of solving anything.

‘Jacquot,’ he repeated. ‘Who the hell is Jacquot?’

‘What about the date?’ Paula said. ‘That means something too. June 1944. What happened in Paris in June 1944?’

‘A hell of a lot,’ Fisher answered. ‘D Day for instance. There must be thousands of incidents which could be relevant, but which one and where to start?’

‘Why not start with my father?’ Paula suggested. ‘If he hid the Poellenberg Salt, it must have been then. Otherwise the message makes no sense at all. And I’m certain Black didn’t know any more. My father told him just enough but he didn’t trust even him with the whole secret. Why don’t we start with that date?’

‘You ought to join the firm,’ Fisher said. He slipped his arm round her and kissed her. ‘Get out and let’s walk,’ he said. ‘I’ve had an idea.’

They made their way through the wood on a bridle path; the sun dappled the ground at their feet and glimmered through the leaves overhead. It was cool and still. ‘What’s the idea?’ Paula asked him. He held her close against him as they walked.

‘I’m going to try and knock out two birds at the same time,’ he said. ‘I’m bothered to hell by those Von Hessels. The more I think of it, the less I like to feel I’m working in the dark. The Princess didn’t tell me half the truth and what I got out of that poor drunken sod this morning didn’t reassure me either.

‘He’s the black sheep, and as you say, it must be more than drink. So I’m going to do a little investigating of the Von Hessels for myself. I’m going to call an associate in Bonn and see what they can dig up. Especially in 1944, because I’m assuming that you’re right and your father hid the Salt that year. I’m also assuming that that’s when he got hold of it. So let’s find out what the Von Hessels were doing at the time. Especially Prince Heinrich; he must have been serving in the army about then.’

‘What about the other part, Tante Ambrosine and Jacquot?’

‘I had quite a chat with that chap from the Sûreté the other day.’ Fisher lit the usual two cigarettes and handed one to her. ‘I’ll take a chance and go to see him. He remembered your father pretty clearly. I’ve a feeling he was in Paris round that time too. It’s just a chance he might have heard those names. Or he could think of someone I could contact who might know. It’s all loose ends but it’s the best I can do at the moment. Why the frown – what are you thinking?’

‘You don’t suppose my father has been living here, in France, for all those years?’

‘Not a chance,’ Fisher said. ‘Far too well known; remember the old woman only saw him once and she remembered him. He was a famous man in his day; he couldn’t have lain low anywhere in occupied Europe. Most of them got to South or Central America through that underground organisation of theirs. Code name Odessa – did you know that? They had it all organised with the usual efficiency, when it became obvious the war was going to be lost. My guess is your father holed up in Switzerland or Spain, ditto our friend Black, and that’s why he’s been able to come here and Black could get to England. He’d been living in Switzerland under a phoney passport for a long time.’

‘So why has my father come back to Paris?’

‘Because he knew Black was going to deliver his message,’ Fisher said. ‘So your father comes to Paris. To wait for you. Isn’t that obvious? Didn’t you realise that was what it meant?’

‘No.’ Paula had stopped on the pathway. She pulled free of Fisher and stood alone. ‘No, I didn’t think of that. You mean he’s looking for me? We’re looking for each other?’

‘That’s what I think.’ She made no move to take his arm again; she just stood there with the sunshine catching her brown hair, alone in the middle of the wood. Fisher didn’t like the reaction.

‘He’ll be somewhere near the Salt, that’s my guess. So if we find one we’re almost certain to find the other. Or perhaps not; perhaps he just wants to make sure you get it.’

‘That’s a terrible risk to take,’ she said slowly. ‘Tell me something truthfully. Do you think he killed Black?’

‘I don’t know.’ Fisher didn’t lie to her. There was no intimacy between them now. She had completely withdrawn.

‘He might have done. Destroying the link when it had served its purpose. But I’m not sure. I can’t honestly answer you.’

‘He must be mad if he did. I don’t believe it.’

‘Not necessarily mad. Death didn’t mean much to people like him. It was often the logical solution to a problem. Personally I don’t think there’s a connection. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it wasn’t your father.’

‘If he is looking for me,’ Paula said, ‘he won’t come near me if I’m with you, will he? He wouldn’t dare.’

‘Well, I am with you,’ Fisher said, he was beginning to feel angry. ‘So that’s too bloody bad, isn’t it?’

‘It gives me the most extraordinary feeling to think he might be near me.’ She didn’t seem to notice his irritation. ‘It’s getting cool, let’s walk back to the car.’

‘All right,’ Fisher said. ‘We’ll take a drive through the Bois and then go back. I might invite the man at the Sûreté to have a drink with me. Then we’ll have dinner out somewhere. How about Maxims? Would you like that?’

‘Yes. That would be nice.’

The silence that developed between them lasted all the way back to the hotel. Fisher didn’t come into her room with her; Paula said she was tired and wanted a bath. He could meet his Sûreté contact and have drinks with him; she would be ready at eight or a little after. Fisher put both hands on her shoulders.

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing,’ Paula said simply. ‘I was just thinking of something else, that’s all.’

‘Do me a favour in the next couple of hours,’ Fisher said. He jabbed her playfully on the chin, but his smile was strained. ‘Think about me. I’ll come back around eight.’ He kissed her and went along to his room to telephone.

The first call was to Bonn; they had an arrangement with an agency there; they kept a small staff of half a dozen skilled operators, three of whom were former members of the West German police force, and a woman who had worked for three years with the German Intelligence Service. He wanted information on the Von Hessels. The answer was reserved; it was not easy to get anything except unfounded scandal about the Von Hessels. They were well protected. All right, Fisher had said sharply, let’s have the unfounded scandal as well as the society column crap. And where was Prince Heinrich during ’43 ’44? There must be a record of his war service; that would make nice reading for the beleaguered German population, knowing the big industrial giants were out there fighting for the survival of the Fatherland.

He ordered himself a drink before he looked up the number of the Sûreté office and called the Detective Inspector. The response was hesitant; it was almost four o’clock, and the Inspector had promised to be home early. Fisher offered to come down to the office, but suggested that a drink on the way home might be more pleasant. Finally there was a grudging acceptance. They arranged to meet at a small bistro round the corner from the Sûreté office.

It was a brightly painted place, with a record player in one corner and plastic-topped tables. Fisher looked round with distaste, regretting the garlic smells, checked cloths and comfortable fustiness of the usual French bistro. To his horror the machine was belting out a noisy pop music selection. The Inspector was already seated in a corner, his eyes closed, his pipe in his mouth with a thin plume of foul smoke issuing out of it.

Fisher went over, sat down and enquired what his guest would like to drink.

‘A Pression, thank you.’ The Inspector’s name was Foulet, and he shook hands with Fisher across the table. They exchanged remarks about the weather; Fisher said he had spent the afternoon in the Bois, and Foulet nodded, remarking that it was a beautiful spot. There had been a hideous sexual murder committed there only six weeks ago, and the criminal was still at liberty. Woods attracted madmen, he observed. Some psychiatrist had suggested that it was a return to primeval conditions, in which the retarded mentality felt at home. Personally he believed the assailant chose it because it was a place favoured by young girls out walking, or riding alone. The victim had been on a horse, dragged off it and horribly mutilated. Fisher decided to interrupt before he was given the anatomical details. The police, the law and the medical profession were all akin in the one vice; they found their own activities the only source of conversation. He headed Foulet off homicide by offering him another beer.

‘I went to see Madame Brevet,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ The Inspector’s pipe came out of his mouth for a moment.

‘She was gaga, just as you said. A waste of time. But thanks for the help you gave me.’

‘It was nothing. We’ve had a dozen reports about Bronsart since that one. They were all the same; cranks.’

‘Were you in Paris when he was here?’ Fisher asked. He had intended bringing the conversation round to the General without letting the police know that the old woman had not been mistaken. He had also decided to tell the Inspector part of the truth.

‘I was,’ the Frenchman said. He took the pipe out again and drank some of his beer. ‘He was here in ’42 on a tour of inspection; I was a youngster then, I’d come back from the army after 1940, been demobilised and gone into the police. I thought it was the safest place to be, and also that I might get a chance to work against the Boche. The Wehrmacht were in control of Paris at that time; those S.S. swine were longing to get a foot in and bring the Gestapo with them but the army held them off. There was great jealousy between the two branches, you know that – it wasn’t that those Prussians were humane, they shot as many hostages as the Gestapo when the trouble really started, but they looked on the S.S. as upstarts, not bred to be officers and gentlemen. Merde – how I hated them! But the worst of them was nothing compared to that bastard. When he came back he was not just picking faults with the army people. He had power, Monsieur Fisher, and he used it.’

‘And when did he come back?’

‘In May 1944. He spent three months here in Paris. The Gestapo and the S.S. were established in force. Why are you so interested in this man?’

‘I told you I was privately employed to try and find him.’ Fisher ordered a third beer and a Campari for himself. ‘If he’s dead that’s only part of it. He stole a valuable work of art from my client during the war and they are trying to get it back. The Nazis hid hoards of treasures all over Europe; this man Bronsart left some kind of clue with a relative, which my clients got hold of – I’m trying to figure out what it meant.’

‘And this is a very valuable art treasure?’

‘Pretty well priceless,’ Fisher said. ‘Tell me, Inspector Foulet, does the name Tante Ambrosine and her nephew Jacquot mean anything to you?’

He shook his head. ‘No, nothing. Tante Ambrosine, Jacquot. It could mean anything; everybody lived by pseudonyms in those days. I’m afraid I can’t help you. Is that all of your clue?’

‘June 25th Paris, 1944. That’s all there is.’

‘Hmm. Well, he was here at that time. I can vouch for that. From May till the end of July. I know because all the districts were alerted for security. He was one of the most hated men in France; by the end of June every Resistance leader had promised to kill him. But they couldn’t get near. He moved with an army of S.S. I saw him once or twice at Fresnes. He used to go down there to watch the execution of hostages. I’ve seen women weeping, going on their knees, begging him for the life of a husband, a son …’

Fisher was beginning to wish he would stop. He kept seeing the look on Paula’s face in the Bois, the light in her eyes, as if she were seeing something or someone far away.

‘He had no pity,’ the Inspector said.

‘I was told that.’

‘No pity,’ Foulet repeated. ‘Some of them were sadists; they got real pleasure from the things that were done. And there were Frenchmen among them, don’t let us forget that. The Vichy militia were worse than the Gestapo. But Bronsart was above that. He was just inhuman. Tante Ambrosine, Jacquot.’ Again he shook his head. ‘I can’t help you, Monsieur Fisher. It means nothing to me.’

‘Thank you anyway,’ Fisher said. ‘At least you’ve established one thing; Bronsart was here in June that year. That’s something.’

He decided to walk back to the hotel; it was a warm evening and Paris was preparing for the night and its activities. The streets were filled with slow-moving crowds. Fisher found himself staring at faces as he passed. Somewhere in the teeming mass, in some part of that city, the man he wanted was alive and waiting. Waiting for what? For his daughter to solve the riddle passed to her after a lapse of nearly thirty years. To see her recover the Poellenberg Salt as a silent watcher in the shadows, then to disappear for ever. Fisher didn’t think so. His instincts rejected this romantic supposition. Men like Bronsart didn’t efface themselves from selfless motives. This man was old by now; Madame Brevet, shrieking her hate and grievance, had talked of him as old with white hair. But the burning blue eyes were not dimmed by time, nor was the tenacity and toughness diminished which had kept him alive. The General was in the same city as Paula, and if they couldn’t understand the meaning of that message and find the Poellenberg Salt, then they would never find the General. Which, in the interests of his own happiness with the woman he loved, might be the best of all solutions.