The Poellenberg Inheritance (11 page)

He felt a vindictive impulse to go down to Essex that day and stir the pair of them up. Why should the girl be the only one to answer questions …?

‘I'm going down to pay your mother a visit,' he said. ‘I'll tell you about it tonight.'

‘She must have seen about Black in the papers,' Paula said. ‘I expect she's terrified she'll be connected.'

‘Why the hell should she be?' He said it irritably. ‘She's Mrs. Ridgeway, that is all anyone knows about her. She can go on hiding. Black's murder was on TV last night, on the news. So she can't frig about pretending she doesn't know anything to me.'

‘You'd be surprised,' Paula said. ‘You don't know my mother. She never even telephoned me.'

‘To hell,' he said. ‘What do you care? I phoned you, didn't I? Don't be greedy, wanting all the attention. You go and take something for that hangover and I'll be with you at seven-thirty. And don't work too hard today.'

‘I won't,' Paula promised. ‘I feel so awful I can't. I haven't thanked you for last night. It was very kind of you.'

‘We'll do it again,' he said. ‘I liked it too.'

She put down the telephone and got out of bed. Her headache was a dull pain that throbbed; aspirins would stop it. She made tea and took two tablets.

The night before seemed distant and unreal. She couldn't believe that she had invited him up. She must have been drunk. She had never asked a man up to her flat after two meetings in her life. Since parting from her husband she had not spent a night with any one, or thought of doing so.

But this rather ugly man had woken something in her. In spite of the feeling of malaise it was still there. It was like having something to hold on to when one was swimming in a limitless sea. There was a man and contact had been made between them. Only a transitory contact, a brief meeting, but for the moment it was enough. She went into the sitting room; the paper with Black's photograph was lying on the floor. She picked it up and read the inside story. Her father was an S.S. general. She had never been able to picture him in detail; she had no photograph, no memento to prove that he had ever existed But out of her imagination she had fashioned an image; it was a soldier, it wore the German general's uniform she had once found in a reference book of uniforms she had consulted as a girl, it had her bright blue eyes, because her mother had once remarked on them to Gerald Ridgeway, and Paula had been listening. ‘Of course she has his eyes. That makes her look like him.' And Paula had examined herself in the glass afterwards and tried to visualise him. The image was a shadow, but she borrowed for it, from books and things she heard over the years. The German army weren't responsible for the atrocities. They were gentlemen. The best fighting soldiers in the world. The old officer caste hated the Nazis. Her father had been a man like those men, who were spoken of with respect by their enemies. She could be proud of him. Even though her mother was so patently ashamed.

She bathed and dressed; she felt numbed. One part of her had spoken to Fisher with every appearance of normality; she had smiled and made a joke, responded to his cheerfulness; even looked forward to seeing him that night.

But apart from this there was a cold, suspended personality, almost a second entity, watching the other going through the motions as if it were a stranger. And now, with the paper in her hand, the two sides fused, and she thought with surprise that she was no longer Paula Ridgeway but Paula Bronsart.

She had an identity at last. Not the competent divorcee with a career of her own and an independent life, with a mother and stepfather safely in the background, but a German living in an alien country. The shadow had a substance; there was the smell of fire and death, the echo of a brazen trumpet in a vast arena where the people gathered to pay homage. Reality had come with knowledge. And now she had to live with it and with herself. She went to the outer hall, her bag and gloves in her hand and paused before the mirror on the wall. She looked like him. There was no likeness to her aristocratic mother, whose background really was the conservative old German army. She was Paul Bronsart's daughter; whatever he had been, she was part of it. A phrase returned to her. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. He had taken her photograph in his hands and shown it to Black, to others. He had established a bond between himself and the child who had never known him and it had stretched from the past, holding her to his memory. Whatever he had done and whatever he was as a human being, nothing could separate them. He had put something away for her, planning for long after his death. If he
were
dead, and not in hiding somewhere. He had hidden one of the greatest art treasures in the world so that she might have the evidence of his love. But she didn't want the Poellenberg Salt. Paula opened the front door and stepped out. She didn't want his treasure. If it were within human possibility, regardless of the past, she knew that all she wanted was to find him.

Paula's mother was crying. She sat on the chintz sofa in the pleasant sitting room, with her husband's arms around her, weeping. ‘Don't, darling.' He kept repeating it. ‘Don't upset yourself! After what I said to him he won't come back!'

It had been an ugly interview. Fisher's attitude was aggressive from the start. He hadn't made an appointment, he had just called, finding the Brigadier out and his wife in the garden. There was nothing Mrs. Ridgeway could do but ask him inside, and there the ruthless cross-examination had begun. She wasn't as tough a proposition as Fisher had imagined. But then, he reminded himself, she wasn't dealing with her own daughter. He had thrown the paper with Black's photograph in front of her and asked her to identify him.

She had been shocked and pale, but she kept her head. She had tried to lie, but at the first denial Fisher sprang. ‘In March 1938 you married Colonel Paul Heinrich Bronsart of the S.S. at the town hall in Potsdam, the wedding reception was at your father's home, Shrievenburg, you had four hundred guests and you spent your honeymoon in Denmark. Shall I go on, or would you be kind enough to answer my questions now?' She had given in then. Nothing about her reminded him of Paula and he was relieved. The photograph was Albrecht Schwarz, and he had served as A.D.C. to her husband.

‘You knew he was coming to see your daughter, didn't you?'

‘I would prefer not to say any more till my husband gets back.'

‘You knew an ex-Nazi war criminal was on the loose and prowling round your daughter and you never said a word about it? You never even warned her – didn't you think it might be dangerous?'

‘I begged her not to see him.' She had spoken with sudden passion and Fisher knew there wouldn't be any more stalling till the Brigadier's return.

‘She refused to listen to either of us. She's extremely obstinate; there was nothing I could do to stop her!'

‘Except tell her the truth.' Fisher sneered. ‘Instead of leaving her to find it out for herself. I was with her yesterday when she read that paper, Mrs. Ridgeway. I saw her face. It ought to haunt you.'

She had tried to turn him out, threatening to ring the police. Fisher invited her to do so; he also reminded her that they might like to ask a few questions when they knew of Black's connection with her family.

‘What I really came for,' Fisher said, ‘was to get two answers to two simple questions. Give me those, Mrs. Ridge-way, and I won't bother you. First, did your husband ever discuss escaping if Germany lost the war?'

She had looked at him with bitterness, almost with contempt.

‘If you had ever known my husband you wouldn't ask that,' she said. ‘No one would have dared to mention the word defeat. Or escape. Also we detested each other; he wouldn't have discussed anything with me.'

‘Okay.' Fisher lit a cigarette. ‘So you got the official notification of his death. You never doubted it?'

‘Never. And I don't now.'

‘What did he do with the Poellenberg Salt?'

She turned to him, astonishment distorting her face.

‘He had it, didn't he?'

‘Yes,' she admitted. ‘It vanished. I don't know where he put it; I wouldn't have asked.'

‘And you would swear to that, Mrs. Ridgeway?'

There was a movement behind Fisher.

‘Swear to what? What the hell's going on?' It was the Brigadier. The exchange between them was short; there was no doubt in Fisher's mind that the old man would bring the police to the house and have him ejected. He had no legal right to force himself upon them or to demand any answers and he had bluffed the woman. He didn't try to bluff her husband. Ridgeway was blazing with anger; as if to make it worse his wife suddenly dissolved into tears and Fisher thought he was going to lose his head and throw a punch at him. ‘Get out of here, you bloody snooper – you try and come here again and bother my wife and I'll take a horse-whip to you!' Fisher had left; his last sight was of the man cradling the woman in his arms. There was nothing he wouldn't do to protect her; Fisher filed that observation away. Paula hadn't exaggerated when she said they were devoted to each other. It must have been pretty solitary living alongside them. When he arrived at Paula's flat that evening he brought a bottle of Riesling. He thought she looked rather pale; her hair was brushed back and the blue eyes were very vivid in the artificial lights. ‘Hello,' Fisher said. He had an odd feeling when she smiled at him. ‘I'm sorry I'm a bit late. The traffic up was terrible.'

‘You're not late,' Paula said. ‘Come in.' He gave her the wine.

‘Something pretty good from your country,' he said gently. She looked at him.

‘Good things have come out of it, haven't they?' she said quietly. ‘I've been trying to think of as many of them as I can today. Beethoven, Mozart, Rhine wines, Goethe, Mann – I couldn't think of any scientist except Von Braun. Come and sit down, Eric. I'll get you a drink.'

‘Whisky, please,' he said. He watched her walking to the drinks laid out on a side table. She moved without any trace of self-consciousness, no hip swinging to call attention to a very good figure. And from the front she looked like a woman instead of a flat-chested boy. Fisher approved of that too. He brought his mind back to his business.

‘I went down to Essex,' he said. He gave her a cigarette; she sat beside him on the sofa. ‘I got nothing but an identification of Black as Schwarz. And one important admission, but I'll come to that in a minute.'

‘How was my mother?' The voice was cold. ‘She's still never contacted me. Oddly enough I'm not even hurt any more.'

‘I'm glad to hear it,' Fisher said. ‘She was extremely upset. Cried her eyes out, as the saying goes.'

‘I can't imagine her crying,' Paula said. ‘I don't think I've ever seen it. Go on.'

‘Your stepfather came bounding in looking like a furious St. Bernard, threatening to call the police and give me a good horse-whipping! It must have had its funny side, but I felt he meant every word. I left them in each other's arms. Incidentally, she said one thing. She said she and your real father hated the sight of each other.'

‘I see. That may account for the way she's avoided me,' Paula said. ‘It must be a nuisance being saddled with a child by someone you hated. I always suspected it. What was the other thing she told you?'

‘In a minute,' Fisher said. ‘I promised to tell you who my employer is, didn't I? I got the permission this morning, before I phoned you. It's the Princess Von Hessel. You know who I mean – the armament family.'

‘I know the name,' Paula said. ‘How very extraordinary this is. And they want you to find my father?'

‘That's the idea. You see he took something from them during the war and they want it back.' He had put personal considerations aside; he was a professional and he was watching her. She faced him without guile.

‘I know what it is,' she said. ‘That was why Black came to see me. He told me about it and I didn't believe him. I thought he was crazy. It's the Poellenberg Salt, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' Fisher said. ‘Yes, it is. And your father did have it. Your mother said so. Paula, what did Black tell you? This could solve the whole thing!'

She extended her hand, turning the cigarette between her fingers. ‘He said my father had hidden it. He said he had hidden it to give to me.' She raised her eyes to Fisher. ‘I suppose that makes a difference.'

He kept his surprise under control. ‘It could do, only you don't have any legal right to it,' he said. ‘It was stolen.'

‘Black said it was a gift. He emphasised that. He said he had promised my father to find me and give me the clue to where it was.'

‘Are you going to tell me that clue?'

‘I don't want the Salt,' she said. ‘I looked it up – it's belonged to that family for hundreds of years. I'd like to give it back to them. But it's only a clue. Black said my father didn't trust him with the whole secret. He was certain that my father was alive. The message he gave me doesn't make any sense at all.'

‘For Christ's sake,' Fisher said. ‘What was it?'

‘Paris, 25th June, 1944. Tante Ambrosine and her nephew Jacquot. That was all. It sounds gibberish to me.'

‘Your father was no fool,' Fisher said grimly. ‘He knew what he was doing. That message must make sense. Paris, 25th June, 1944. Tante Ambrosine and her nephew Jacquot. I'll just have to find out what it means.'

‘We'll both have to find out,' Paula said quietly. ‘By the way, what would happen if my father were found alive now?'

‘He'd be extradited to West Germany and put on trial. He was a big man in the Nazi party. They'd find something to charge him with.'

‘But if you find the Poellenberg Salt, that will be enough for you, won't it? You won't have to look for him?'