Ash (37 page)

He began to choke on the cloudy billows of powdered dirt, his chest heaving, throat retching, and he pulled the muffler over his mouth and nose against the heavy dust. And all the while, the broken thickset man beneath him lay still and silent, chest unmoving, attesting to his brutal demise. Blood bubbled from the man’s parted lips and his left eye remained open in shock, blood dribbling from both corners while the gore oozed from the open red hole which had once held his right eye. He was hit with the shocking realization that he had literally plucked a man’s eye to save himself. Never before, even when fighting for his very existence, had he perpetrated such barbarity. He’d never thought himself capable of such savagery. And yet that was how he’d saved himself.

He began to understand.

There was some sort of pervasive evil in the castle that stalked the corridors, the passages and the hallways, infiltrated the rooms, the very ether itself corrupted and corruptive in some toxic way, the castle’s evil past intruding upon the present. And he sensed its ungodly influence was at its most potent here in the lowest regions of Comraich. He’d felt it earlier that day, but not as acutely as he did now.

His ears began to clear, and gradually sounds emerged from the gloom: moans, wailings, shrieks – a mob of voices.

It’s where we keep our lunatics . . .

Ash felt movement outside the smashed lift. Dirt still billowed, and as he peered into the blurring mists he caught sight of unsteady shadows. As the reverberations of the violent crash died away, the voices became more distinct.

And closer.

The safety door was bent and hanging loose, its iron framework unable to cope with the impact. If whatever was approaching had evil intent, Ash would be a sitting duck. He needed to get out of there, and fast. He hauled himself up into the dimly lit and cloudy corridor, lingering on one knee for a moment to take in his surroundings.

At first, and with the dust obscuring so much, the investigator could merely see spectral shapes in the long corridor, but as the air cleared he was able to make out moving figures.

He dragged himself to his feet. His legs felt quivery, ready to give way. He stretched out a hand towards the wall to steady himself.

Before him were the massed tenants of this subterranean floor, each wearing a white knee-length hospital gown. Despite the choking atmosphere Ash could smell their fetid, malodorous bodies as they advanced on him, the dust doing little to obscure the stench. He fought back his nausea as he took his hand from the supporting wall, standing almost erect to face them.

The pale figures crept towards him, their murmuring rising to a menacing pitch.

Kate McCarrick indicated that she and her dining companion were ready for their main courses. The waiter looked relieved; Kate knew that the timing for a three-course meal was important, and felt a little guilty as he quickly went through to the kitchen.

After they had eaten, the pair spent a while chatting over old times and absent friends, though Kate was anxious to get back to the night’s main topic.

‘Glo,’ she said in a quiet but determined voice, ‘tell me more about the castle. There’s something you’re holding back. What is it?’

‘There are so many hushed-up stories, Kate. But there’s one . . . Well, it’ll give you an idea of the Inner Court’s compelling persuasiveness.’

Kate leaned forward.

Gloria was silent for a time, studying her friend before she seemed to make a decision.

‘Okay,’ she said finally. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’

Then she began . . .

‘It’s a bit before our time, but I’m sure you’ll know something of it.’

Kate nodded encouragingly.

‘It was one of the Second World War’s greatest mysteries – a mystery never explained, not even to this day,’ Gloria continued. ‘You’ll have heard of Rudolf Hess, Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler?’

Kate nodded again.

‘And that, in 1941, at the height of the war, Hess flew alone in a Messerschmitt to Scotland and parachuted out, allowing the plane to crash?’

‘Wasn’t he on a mission for Hitler to make a peace agreement between Britain and Germany . . . to end the war between us?’ Kate asked.

‘Yes, in a way. But there was a secret motive, known only to Churchill and Hitler, plus a few others directly involved. The “motive” was never revealed and, to this day, remains a well-kept secret . . .’

Gloria hesitated again.

‘I trust you, Kate. What worries me is what would happen to David should he uncover the truth.’

‘But that was over seventy years ago: surely the truth of Hess’s mission can’t hurt anyone now?’

Gloria’s smile was tight-lipped. ‘You’d think not, wouldn’t you?’ Without waiting for a response, she went on. ‘I’ve already told you how the royal family works and the lengths to which it will go. At that time certain members of the aristocracy, and one very important royal, were more inclined to align the country with the Third Reich.’

‘Like Sir Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts?’

Gloria took another sip of her wine. ‘Oh, he was a minor figure in the scheme of things. There were other richer and more influential people behind the scenes who felt Nazism, with its ideology of the exceptional individual, outweighed all precepts for the masses. They believed in racial superiority and the dangers of communism. They rejected liberalism, democracy, the rule of law and human rights. That the strong must rule the weak was their passionate ideology. Now,’ she said, putting her glass down, ‘there was one vital member of the royal family broadly in favour of a German–British alliance.’

‘Edward, Duke of Windsor. Formerly Edward VIII. Abdicated in 1936 to marry an American commoner named Wallis Simpson,’ Kate reeled off.

‘I see you haven’t forgotten what you learned at school,’ said Gloria with a smile.

‘I’ve always found them an interesting pair. Enigmatic, even now.’

‘Quite. Anyway, fortunately for us, Edward’s politics didn’t matter. But if Hitler
had
ever conquered England, he might have put the duke back on the throne as a quisling king, with Wallis the new queen.’

Kate thought about that for a moment.

‘So,’ Gloria continued, ‘Edward and his new bride then spent some time in Spain, where our own intelligence services reported that they were feted by undercover German agents and wealthy, like-minded high society. Flattery, right-wing ideology and homage paid to the duke stroked his ego. It wasn’t long before he saw his abdication as premature and ill-judged. Why shouldn’t he be able to marry whoever he liked? What right did the Church have to refuse to marry them?

‘Churchill was worried by Edward’s growing fraternization with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador at that time and a close friend of Hitler. He knew drastic action had to be taken. Edward was giving away too much information to Germany and was encouraging the Nazi cause here in England. So Churchill arranged for Edward to be offered the post of Governor of the Bahamas during the Second World War, an invitation that really couldn’t be refused.’

Kate began to wonder where her friend was going with this. She didn’t have to wait long to find out.

‘Have you heard of the Mitford sisters?’ Gloria asked her friend, leaning even further forward across the table, the pitch of her voice dropping lower, so that it was almost a whisper.

‘Of course. They were everywhere in the society magazines and newspapers in the twenties through to the forties.’

‘Oh, longer than that.’

‘There were four of them, weren’t there?’

‘Six, actually, and one brother. Nancy, the one known for her wit and her novels, Pamela, the quieter one – though they were a little, shall we say, idiosyncratic? Then there was Diana, a fascist who married Sir Oswald Mosley and was imprisoned during the Second World War. Jessica, the complete opposite, a communist at one time and a fighter for social change, and Deborah, a socialite who eventually became Duchess of Devonshire. But the most interesting was the third youngest, Unity, who was besotted with Adolf Hitler.’

‘I smell more infamy.’

‘Oh’, Gloria said, ‘this is the real kicker.’

Her companion watched her intensely across the small round table which afforded them a quiet intimacy.

‘Nancy Mitford, the writer, gained most of the attention, but it was Unity who earned the most notoriety by being an unadulterated fascist and more than just a devotee of Adolf Hitler. Unity was a zealous member of the British Union of Fascists and spent most of the thirties in Germany, where she met her hero and became part of his clique. She fell obsessively in love with him, though Hitler probably looked upon her as a mere dalliance. It was a tragedy waiting to happen.

‘In 1939, when Britain and France declared war on Germany, the hopelessly lovelorn Unity took herself to the English Garden in the centre of Munich, put a tiny pistol to her head and tried to blow her brains out. The gun lacked the power to kill her outright, but the bullet lodged in her brain and caused irreversible damage. She was rushed to a hospital in the city, where she remained unconscious for several weeks. She didn’t die, though it might have been kinder if she had.

‘Hitler ordered a news blackout on the story and had Unity sent to a clinic in Switzerland. Some months later, her parents collected her and brought her home to England by ambulance. Unity was brain-damaged and virtually paralysed, with a mental age of twelve. Her fixation with Hitler was replaced by a religious mania . . . probably the reason she refused an abortion.’

Kate almost spluttered into her raised glass. ‘She was pregnant?’

‘
Sssh!
’ the policewoman hissed, quickly looking round the restaurant.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kate apologized, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin. ‘You caught me by surprise. Are you telling me . . . ?’

Gloria nodded. ‘They weren’t sure at the time – despite her sisters’ wild reputation, it seems Unity was quite an innocent. But it is suspected that Hitler was the child’s father.’

‘
Hitler?
But—’

‘
Keep it down, Katie, please!
’ Gloria whispered across the table, this time with more emphasis, her face close to her friend’s.

Kate raised a hand contritely and apologized again. ‘Sorry, Glo, but this is
extraordinary
.’

‘It is, and you’re one of the very few people who now know of it. I have to trust you.’

Kate gave a small nod of her head. ‘Of course,’ she said, quietly and sincerely. ‘So . . . so if there was no abortion, what happened to the child?’

Gloria sipped some more champagne before speaking. ‘As you might expect, Unity’s pregnancy was in its later stages, so everything was focused on the harm she’d done to herself and the cause of the illness that was inevitably to follow.’ She looked down for a moment.

‘This is where it gets particularly interesting, Kate.’

‘More?’ Kate thought nothing else could surprise her. But a suspicion had arisen in her, prodding her subconscious like a half-remembered dream. They had started this conversation with Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy.

Gloria’s quiet voice broke through Kate’s thoughts. ‘In those days, the press was not quite as intrusive as it is today, although suggestions that Unity might be pregnant were voiced by some. But she returned to England bundled in a huge blanket, so it was impossible to tell. She was taken to a very discreet Oxfordshire nursing home called Hill View Cottage. It was there that she gave birth.’

Kate took a sip of wine, fascinated yet increasingly bewildered.

‘When Hitler heard that Unity had borne a son he was naturally delighted. He—’

‘Glo, has all this got something to do with Hess and his flight to Scotland?’

‘Hold on, I’m coming to that,’ Gloria went on. ‘As I was saying, Hitler was jubilant that he’d managed to make a woman pregnant, even if she were an English woman. And he thought the child might actually unite the two countries. And what a boy it would be. The son of the Führer, no less. Adolf Hitler’s progeny. A true Aryan, a born Nazi. On top of that, the baby’s mother was a genuine blue-blooded member of the British aristocracy.’

Gloria’s account was so full of verve Kate could almost imagine the insane elation in the Führer’s eyes.

‘And so,’ Gloria said with a tight-lipped smile, ‘we return to his faithful deputy. Hitler decided it would be Hess who would fly to Scotland to uncover the truth and make the mad offer of an alliance if all was so. The Führer’s clandestine supporters among the English hierarchy had informed him that Unity Mitford had been secretly taken from the nursing home to a secret location in Scotland.

‘Many myths have arisen concerning Hess parachuting into Scotland and only one has any kind of credence. You see, it so happened that Lord Redesdale, Unity Mitford’s father, had left his wife and taken himself and his parlourmaid – make what you will of that – to a tiny island off the coast of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, where he stayed for the rest of his life. So some people mistakenly surmised that was the obvious reason for Hess flying to Scotland.

‘In fact, the truth was far more double-edged.’

Kate had already guessed. ‘Comraich?’

‘Comraich. The Inner Court had become involved. No – ’ she raised a hand to forestall Kate’s next question – ‘the IC was never on the side of the Nazis. The reverse, in fact. They were patriots, but only insofar as it validated them and enhanced their position.’

Kate took a large swig of wine as Gloria continued speaking.

‘Comraich Castle agreed to take in Unity and her child. And, in fact, it was through the Inner Court’s intrigues that word got back to Hitler that his and Unity’s baby was clandestinely being cared for at the castle.’

‘Intrigues? Why do you say that?’ Kate asked.

‘Because someone, probably Churchill himself, devised a simple yet cunning plan to end German hostility by telling Hitler his child was on British soil. However, it would never work if Hitler learned the full truth. Quite the opposite, in fact.’

Kate was confused. ‘What do you mean, “the full truth”?’ she said. ‘I don’t understand.’