Gently Continental (15 page)

MRS BRESKE

Frieda, Liebling – he was your father!

FRIEDA

And a drunken sponger – you know it! Living like a guest, stuffing, boozing – even his pocket-money came from you.

MRS BRESKE

He is my husband, once, once.

FRIEDA

Yes – half-a-hundred women ago.

MRS BRESKE

Ach, do not speak so. Poor Martin! Perhaps I wronged him after all.

And as she weeps a few fat tears, gross, suety Mrs Breske, dragging across her eyes thick fingers, on one of which the gold still glimmers, mourning, it maybe, not (X) Clooney, not Albrecht Stenke, nor Martin Breske, but a memory of that Vienna when the world was young and gay, when Strauss, lilting from a young man's fiddle, lifted her heart among the nightingales, and the Danube, blue, forever blue, flashed, flowed along with the voice of spring. What will fetch such tears from Frieda, when she sits as her mother now?

GENTLY

Why did he come to you, Mrs Breske?

MRS BRESKE

(Shrugging.)

Who can say? He is in trouble, that is certain, and Martin never had any money.

GENTLY

Did he speak of this trouble?

MRS BRESKE

He says he wishes to lie low where he cannot be found. He is afraid that someone will come. We change his room so he can watch the gates.

GENTLY

Was it the police he feared?

MRS BRESKE

Ach no. I ask him this at the first.

GENTLY

Did he name, describe anyone?

MRS BRESKE

No. He says he does not know who will come.

GENTLY

But he must have hinted at the nature, the source of his fear?

MRS BRESKE

(Shaking her head.)

Nothings. I think it is maybe up here. (Points to her forehead.)

FRIEDA

And that's where it was, if you ask me. He wasn't on the run from anyone. It's just the sort of tale he would have invented to get his feet under our table.

TRUDI

That isn't true.

FRIEDA

What would you know about it?

TRUDI

He talked to us, Stephen and me. He was scared about something, something in America. He told us he had to leave there in a hurry.

FRIEDA

Which of course you believed.

TRUDI

Yes, I did. You could see he was scared when he talked about it. And I believe it the more now, when it turns out he was here with a forged passport.

GENTLY

So his trouble originated in America . . . wasn't police-trouble . . . was likely to follow him, even here.

FRIEDA

And I say it's all nonsense: and I think I talked to him as much as anyone.

GENTLY

So?

FRIEDA

What do you mean?

GENTLY

You have an alternative explanation – of why your father came here in these circumstances, and was first tortured, then killed?

FRIEDA

What makes you think—

GENTLY

Go on, Miss Frieda.

FRIEDA

No. You can do your own thinking.

GENTLY

I certainly will. Weren't you going to say, What makes me think your father was
murdered
?

FRIEDA

(Paling again.)

If you say so. But—

GENTLY

It's a perfectly good theory. The person who tortured Martin Breske had no good reason to want him dead. Also, the circumstances of the death appear to rule out deliberate homicide. My investigations tell me this. What I'm wondering is, who told you?

FRIEDA

Nobody told me!

GENTLY

A good guess?

FRIEDA

I – yes, I was guessing!

GENTLY

Why guess about that?

FRIEDA

Naturally—

GENTLY

Have we suggested we weren't certain?

FRIEDA

I only thought—

GENTLY

You only thought what I needed investigation to decide. Perhaps you are psychic, Miss Frieda. Or perhaps
you
are not being entirely frank.

FRIEDA

Yes, I tell you—!

GENTLY

Tell me this. Did you trust your father not to talk?

FRIEDA

He swore he wouldn't!

GENTLY

But did you trust him – a weak-willed character like that? Or, in your natural determination to keep the hotel at all costs, didn't you decide on certain steps to make sure this wastrel wouldn't talk?

FRIEDA

(Paler still.)

Never.

GENTLY

This sponger, this parasite.

FRIEDA

No!

GENTLY

This rat in your stores – who deserved no better than poison?

FRIEDA

(Rocking.)

I won't answer you – I won't be talked to like this.

GENTLY

Then let us go back to the previous question. Who told you your father's death was an accident?

FRIEDA

No – nobody – it was a guess—

GENTLY

And what information was that man after?

Frieda makes some swerving movements, but still holds on for a few seconds. Her eyes are glazed, her bloodless lips pluck and gibber over her teeth. Then her eyes roll, she lists, she snores, her teeth snap shut with an audible click, and Frieda, Miss Breske, the cloud of thunder, goes lumping down in a dead faint. See to her, Gently says to Sally Dicks, but Trudi is already beside her cousin. Between them they hoist Miss Breske on the sofa and pack two cushions beneath her feet. Mrs Breske makes no movement, no gesture, sits gooseberry-eyed and oscillating. Trudi fetches brandy from chunky decanter, but knows not exactly how to administer it. Miss Breske moans, moves her head from side to side. Drink this, drink this, Frieda, Trudi says. She tips the glass to her cousin's lips and her cousin moves her head and spills it. Then her eyes flicker open, fall on Trudi, the brandy. She makes a weak-strong movement, like a newly born calf: pushes the brandy, Trudi, from her, shudders, turns her face into the sofa.

GENTLY

Miss Breske . . . can you hear what I'm saying?

MRS BRESKE

Ach, leave her alone, leave her alone!

GENTLY

I have no more questions at present. But I must repeat a warning I gave your daughter.

MRS BRESKE

Poor Frieda, poor Frieda. Ach, is the way of all Polizei. In every place, in every country, so it is with these Menschen.

GENTLY

Miss Breske, listen carefully. It is plain your father had a valuable secret. I don't think the torturer got it from him, but your father may well have passed it on to you. If you know, then you may be in danger, because the people who want it are powerful and ruthless; also, you are running that risk unnecessarily, since we shall certainly learn the secret in the end. You have nothing to gain by keeping quiet.

FRIEDA

Go away from me. Go away.

GENTLY

Do you understand? You cannot profit by it.

FRIEDA

(Whispers.)

Go away.

G
ENTLY IS JOVIAL
. He walks out of the parlour, where nothing and nobody is faintly jocund, smiling, or rather issuing smiles, and with the step of a man closing shop for the day. His smiles are peculiar. They seem to bubble up like the freshets of a stream in his humoursome eyes, and to play about his mouth, which pipe-free is wicked, with a thousand sunny, comic slants. You cannot nail him down to one smile. His smiling is Protean, first and last. From the merest glimmer and shadow of smile it proceeds, ever-changing, to silent laughter, a magnificent sunburst of unsuppressible delight. So that's that, he smiles at Shelton, towing the local man down the hall. Nothing yet, he smiles at the newshawks, who leap up attentively from their gambling. But that smile lies, as Shelton knows, for Gently is stuffed with news-able matter, and a shame it will be if the nation's breakfast-table is deprived of this rare intelligence. But nothing yet, the smile goes, one of that tremendous armoury, and the newshawks sink back to their cards and little piles and heaps of money. Could Shelton have smiled them off? Not he: they'd have been at his throat in a trice. But Shelton is not a smiling man: can grin a little, has no smile.

So that's that, Gently repeats, in the garden, still towing Shelton. Now all that remains is to watch and wait for that information from America. We cannot quite yet pull in our suspect because this link in the chain remains open and while it is open our suspect is suspect because one other suspect is also available. But the way is cleared, we are over the hill, another day, at most, should see us home. I could have put more pressure on Frieda Breske, but to save a few hours, it was not necessary. And he flicks skywards, a twirling saucer, the white-bladed head of a marguerite, which he has plucked in pure wantonness and now as wantonly casts away. But, frowning Shelton says, at what point did you guess Clooney's identity? From the first, Gently says, who was more likely than the lady's husband to be domiciled here? So when his accent changed – His accent? At first, it was native Bronx, Gently explains, then it became tinctured with European and at last settled towards Germany – this, together with his otherwise inexplicable choice of retreats, and the various attitudes towards him of the Breskes, strongly suggested who he was. Then finally Klapper, who you ably interrogated. His contribution was critical. For who would attract to himself such a nickname as Heifetz, unless, like Martin Breske, he was a fiddler? Heifetz applies to no other distinction, no racial, physical characteristic. Our intelligence from America gave confirmation. It was child's-play then to pump the Breskes. Yes, child's-play, Shelton agrees, and really believes it at that moment, with a picture of the obdurate Frieda beaten to the ground still fresh, still wondrous, in his eye.

Gently casts another marguerite, giving this one a downward-skimming flight. Also from the first, he says, one thing bearing on another, I was looking for some family skeleton which Clooney could rattle. If indeed he were a stranger it were very strange that he could establish himself as an unpaying guest, yet if he were Breske was it less strange, unless he, Breske, had dangerous knowledge? How dangerous? What affecting? Immediately one thought of that inheritance. Then of Trudi, so unlike her sister, and of the photograph, so like Trudi. An interplay of genes? Yes, arguable; but how much simpler if Trudi were a Lindemann! And Mitzi Lindemann died, I was informed, at just that time when the Breskes fled. If all this were so, if Breske knew it, his wife and daughter were under his thumb; by opening his mouth he could bring tumbling hotel, prosperity, about their ears. Which Miss Frieda wouldn't take lying down, Shelton says. But which, in its way, helps our understanding not much, Gently says. But Miss Frieda – Tush, Gently says (and he is a man who can say it with authority), however you set it up he was her father and for her to kill him would be parricide. There are parricides, but they are rare, and extremely rare when premeditated. I have never at any time been disposed to regard Miss Frieda as the killer. She, Shelton gasps, had opportunity! She couldn't prove where she was all the time. Oh, Gently says, and oh! Can you imagine her overpowering her father? Shelton swallows and stares at a rosebed. Perhaps he can imagine such a feat of Miss Frieda. Gently downed her, but Gently aside, Shelton has a high respect for Frieda, Miss Breske.

No, Gently says, the situation was unfortunate, but it could scarcely have led to what followed, unless you suppose that somebody tortured Breske to learn what hold he had on his family. But such a supposition is unproductive. It takes no notice of why Breske came to England. We have to understand why he vanished in New York and reappeared here with a false passport. He needed no desperate measures of this kind to come on a sponging trip to his family, and if he told his wife the truth, he was not in trouble with the police. Then with whom? Gently plucks a marguerite and, Buddha-like, raises it for Shelton's enlightenment; but Shelton remains this side of beyond and greets the act with no comprehending smile. Yet the answer is simple. We don't know, Gently says. We are hoping the New York police can tell us. Though, and this is purely a hunch, I shall not be surprised to learn it has to do with Pat, Toni and Abdul. With a criminal organization! Shelton flashes. Certainly that, Gently says. Perhaps, Shelton says, staring at the marguerite – which may yet put his feet in the way – an organization connected with the Nazis, with some big Nazi, as big as Eichmann. Perhaps, Gently says, also regarding the flower, though the names do not sound persuasively Aryan. But in their present state of adversity the ex-Nazi Party leaders may not be too rigorously doctrinaire. It could be Bormann, Shelton breathes, I read a book about him, nobody knows for sure he's dead. He could be hiding in New York as well as anywhere else. Don't they have a Nazi Party there? So I understand, Gently says. And what a spot it would be for him, Shelton enlarges, right at the centre, where he can play his games, make a new bid for world power. And it makes sense. Look what's been happening. A liberal president popped off. Race riots tearing the country apart, the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Moslems. And General Motors alienated, Gently says, but that's taking us rather far afield. I don't know, Shelton says, about General Motors, but the rest of it reads like Nazi strategy. And if Breske knew, knew about Bormann – I'd say Bormann was the most likely – that would account for him skipping, all right, and the false passport and everything. Which would give us a pointer, Gently says. Shelton nods eagerly. Israeli patriots! Have we many of them around? Gently inquires. Shelton glares at the flower. But his mind is buzzing.