The Poellenberg Inheritance (30 page)

‘General Bronsart.' Philip Von Hessel's voice was calm. ‘If you intend to shoot anyone, I suggest it is me. Please don't point your gun at my mother.'

The General glanced at him. ‘Your courage is misplaced,' he said. ‘Your mother would take a risk on your life; you won't do the same with hers. So long as she is in danger you won't move. None of you will. Paula, the two large documents are your proof of ownership of the Poellenberg Salt. The small piece of writing paper is the reason why no Von Hessel will ever dare dispute it. Open it and read it aloud.'

She did as he told her, slowly, because her fingers were stiff and clumsy with a growing sense of fear. Dunston had been standing immobile beside the Princess. His right arm was crooked slightly against his side; so long as that gun was directed at her, he couldn't move his hand towards his pocket. He was watching the General.

‘It's in German,' Paula said. ‘I can't read it.'

‘Destroy it!' There was a jerky movement from the Princess. She took a step forward, one hand thrust out. The little black eye of the gun muzzle followed her. ‘Destroy it!' she cried out. ‘I'll give you anything, anything – one million pounds, for that letter!'

‘No.' The General smiled, mirthless and implacable. ‘No, you can't buy my silence a second time. You bought it all those years ago, and then you tried to cheat me. To cheat my daughter. The Salt belongs to her. Tell me, Prince Philip, when you offered yourself instead of your mother, did you know about that little note she wrote me? I think not.' He shook his head. ‘I think she kept that secret to herself. Shall I tell you what is in it, Paula? It's a letter from the Princess addressed to me. Delivered one night in May 1944.'

‘It was the only way,' the Princess shrieked at them. ‘You found out about Heinrich's marriage, you threatened to denounce him – you threatened to destroy us all!' She turned to her son, standing white and immobile near to Paula. ‘I told you,' she went on, ‘I told you we had no alternative; Hitler was raving, he would have sent us all to concentration camps, seized our factories, we would have been destroyed!'

‘I know this, Mother,' Philip Von Hessel said. ‘You told me.'

‘Ah yes,' the General said. ‘But that's all she told you, isn't it? That she gave me the Poellenberg Salt as the price of my silence. You knew that, didn't you, and you knew the lie told to the world that it was looted? But that's not what she is offering a million pounds to suppress. That's not what is in that letter which my daughter has. I'll tell you what it says.'

‘No,' Margaret Von Hessel cried out once again. ‘It's a lie, a forgery …' She stopped suddenly, as if defeated.

‘It gives the name of a village on the Franco-German border, near Alsace, and the address of a small pension. That, it says in the letter, is where you will find them. They suspect nothing and are waiting to be brought to us. I remember the words. I remember the bargain we made, Princess Von Hessel, you and I, when you signed away the Salt to me in exchange for my silence about your Jewish daughter-in-law, and for a further favour you requested. I granted it to you, didn't I? I kept my bargain. I had your daughter-in-law arrested and your baby grandson. I sent them to Mauthausen to the gas chambers as we'd agreed. How old was the child – eighteen months?'

There was a moment of complete silence, as if the people in the room had stopped breathing. Time seemed suspended. Paula heard his voice and that last question, asked in a mocking tone, and thought suddenly that the ground was sliding away and she was going to faint. With a tremendous effort of will she focused on his face and saw the burning blue eyes, blazing in triumph at the stricken woman, saw the smile on his mouth and the horrifying, unbelievable lack of remorse at what he had just confessed. Now the floor was swaying. She felt a hand come out and steady her. It wasn't the Prince, who was only a few feet away. In defiance of the General and his levelled gun, it was Fisher who had come beside her.

‘Mother,' Philip Von Hessel said. ‘Mother, you
betrayed
them? You
asked
him to kill them?'

‘I had no choice,' she answered slowly, gathering strength, straightening herself from the moment of collapse. ‘So long as they lived we were vulnerable. He had discovered it. So might someone else. She was a Jewess, an adventuress.'

‘And the child,' Philip asked her. ‘Heinrich's son – you had him murdered too?'

There was no answer. She gestured with one hand as if to defend herself, and then decided to say nothing.

‘Now, Paula.' The General spoke with exultation, with vindication. ‘Now you know the truth. Do you still want to return the Salt to her? Look at it! Look at the beauty of it!'

‘May God forgive you.' Paula trembled. ‘I can't bear to look at the filthy bloodstained thing! The mother and the child – you murdered them, Father!'

‘A Jewess and a half Jew,' the General said. ‘They were nothing to me. They were dying in millions. Inferior people, polluting the world. What were they compared to that?' In the middle of the floor the great golden Salt glittered and flashed its jewelled eyes at them.

‘I wouldn't touch it,' Paula cried out. ‘Or you.'

‘I see,' the General said. ‘I was afraid of this. But I have come prepared. Paula, go to the passage and bring me the bag that's by the door.'

‘No,' she said. ‘No, I won't do anything for you.'

He looked away from her to Fisher, who had his arm around her. ‘You go,' he said. ‘Take your hands off my daughter and get the bag. Bring it to me. If you don't, I will shoot the Princess.'

‘Steady, darling,' Fisher whispered. He let go of Paula and went to the doorway. A duffle bag was just outside it. He carried it inside and brought it to the General. The thought passed through his mind of diving on him and hoping that the stray bullet wouldn't hit anyone. If it had struck the Princess he wouldn't have cared. But Paula was there, white and stricken, swaying on her feet. He couldn't take the risk. ‘Open it,' the General ordered. ‘Now give it to me.' There was a small cylinder and a muzzle on a cable. He put the muzzle into the General's outstretched hand. ‘Now light it!'

His lighter flicked, there was a loud hiss and a plume of brilliant blue-white flame shot from the mouth. Immediately the room filled with a dazzling light.

‘No,' Margaret Von Hessel screamed. ‘No, no … Oh my God!' The fierce flame of the oxyacetylene licked at the top of the golden tree; in his right hand the General held the gun, with his left he directed the searing fire at the Salt. Already the upper branches were sliced off and lay misshapen and dripping on the floor; the metal began liquefying: as they watched, shielding their eyes against the blinding light, the shape began to blur, the figures of nymphs so nubile in their grace, were mutilated and running rivulets of gold on to the carpet; jewels fell in a glittering cascade.

Margaret Von Hessel was sobbing. There was no noise beyond her choking grief and the fierce hiss of the scorching flame as it devoured and mangled the great golden mass, now so misshapen that it had no longer any recognisable form.

‘There is your Salt,' the General shouted. ‘Look at it! Now you can have it back!'

For a few seconds he faced Margaret Von Hessel and the hand holding the gun lowered. With a single movement Dunston got his hand to his pocket. He fired through the cloth, and then brought the pistol out and fired again. The General lurched and gave a cry; his gun fell. Dunston moved round and took a deliberate aim at Paula. The oxyacetylene flame swung in a brilliant arc, a single agonised scream came from Dunston as the fire hit him. The bullet meant for Paula cracked into the wall feet away from her. For a second it seemed that the General stared at her and tried to speak. Then the dazzling light went out and he fell, hitting the ground at dead weight. Paula screamed. But louder still came the anguished cry of the Princess, directed at the maimed and groaning Dunston. ‘You fool! Too late – you fool!'

Fisher turned the General over. The eyes were still open, the mouth ajar for the words he had never spoken. Within reach of his outstretched hand, the mutilated mass of the Poellenberg Salt wept golden tears.

‘I'm leaving this afternoon.' The Prince looked older; there were lines under his eyes and a crease running across the fine forehead which Paula had never seen before. He stood in the suite, very upright and dignified; she thought that outwardly, except for the look of bitter strain, he seemed completely unmoved by what had happened. Whatever their enemies said, no one could deny the Von Hessels' self-control.

‘I was going to come and see you,' she said. ‘I'm going back to England. How is your mother?' The last she had seen of the Princess was when she had been supported out of the suite, suddenly a collapsed old woman in the throes of shock.

‘I think she has recovered,' Philip said quietly. ‘I haven't been to see her, I'm afraid.'

‘I understand how you feel,' Paula said. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘I hope you will never understand. I knew my brother's wife was murdered. I didn't know about the child. As for my mother – what she did can never be forgiven,' he said. ‘I shall have nothing to do with her now.'

‘You may change your mind,' Paula said.

‘Would you, if your father had not been killed?'

‘No,' she agreed. ‘I don't think I would. I want to give you something. I won't be a moment. Please sit down, you look terribly tired.'

‘Thank you,' he said. He made an effort and smiled. It only emphasised the misery in his eyes. ‘I was worried about you, Mrs. Stanley. I hoped you weren't too upset.'

Paula came back; she held an envelope. ‘I was,' she said. ‘But I wasn't alone, thank God. That made it easier. I'm going to be able to forget the past. You must try and forget it too.'

‘It will be very difficult,' he answered. ‘I am a German as well as a Von Hessel. I shall have to live with it all my life. I have to live with the knowledge of what my mother did; that will be the hardest thing I have to do.'

‘I want you to have these,' Paula said. She gave him the envelope. ‘The legal documents and that – letter to my father. You can destroy them and nobody will ever know. Please take them.'

He looked at her. ‘I won't thank you. I won't say anything, but you know – I'm sure you know …'

‘I have to leave soon,' she said. ‘I want to go home.'

‘To England? Home?'

‘Yes,' she said. She held out her hand. He took it and instead of the formal kiss, he held it.

‘We're going different ways,' he said quietly. ‘But I meant what I said. Will you come to Germany?'

‘No,' Paula said. ‘No, Prince Philip. Not now. Looking for roots in Germany was like looking for my father. I'm finished with fantasy. I'm not running away any more. I said home, and I meant it. Goodbye, and good luck.'

He bowed, and raised her hand to kiss it.

‘Goodbye, Mrs. Stanley. I wish it were
auf wiedersehen.'

The door closed and he was gone. Paula crossed to the telephone.

‘This is Mrs. Stanley,' she said. ‘Please send up for my bags.'

The rasping sound of death was in the room. It rose and fell to the rhythm of the Brigadier's laboured breath. A bright beam of afternoon sunshine poured from the window and fell over the foot of his bed. Uncountable millions of dust motes flickered in it. It was a very hot day, and the windows were open. Sounds of life interrupted the drowning rattle coming from the Brigadier's flooded lungs. He had caught his last cold and suffered his last chest infection. There was nothing his wife could do now but sit beside his bed and wait for him to die. She had refused to leave him, even to let the nurse attend to him.

He was still conscious, although he lapsed into a doze which would be prolonged into death. His hand was held tightly in his wife's and sometimes he exerted a little strength and squeezed, trying to comfort her. People had been very kind over his illness. Paula's mother had never appreciated the sterling qualities of English character until the nightmare of the General broke over their heads, and the façade they had erected round themselves was torn away by Press and television and a brief world interest which flared and then subsided after a few days. Their friends had not deserted them. They had expected to be isolated; instead they were surrounded, comforted and sympathised with in their dilemma with the hungry newspapers, supported upon every issue by the people they had known over the years. There was not a word of reproach or a look which could be construed as criticism. The village stood fast beside the Brigadier and his wife. And then, within a month of it all, he caught pneumonia and she was going to lose him. He was propped high up in the bed, and he turned his head towards her and smiled with blue lips.

‘I'm so sorry, darling,' he whispered. ‘I can't fight any more.'

‘Don't try,' she begged him. ‘Don't use your strength – just close your eyes and sleep.'

‘I'll sleep in a minute,' he said. ‘In a minute, darling.' His eyes had closed and he was drifting. The semi-sleep was restless; he shifted, his head rolling from side to side, and he made litle anxious sounds. The rattle of phlegm in his chest was getting louder. Paula's mother lowered her head and wept. She had stayed calm for his sake, reserving the agonies of crying for the hours spent alone in the spare bedroom. Her daughter and the man she was going to marry had come down as soon as they heard from her; they were downstairs in the drawing room. The doctor had told them it was only a matter of a few hours. Certainly not overnight. They had offered to take her away with them, but she had refused.

She appreciated her daughter's sympathy; not that it mattered, because when her husband died, her own life would come to an effective end. She recognised this with the dignified fatalism of her background. It had made no real difference that her daughter had come. But it was kindly meant. The hand which she was holding tightened suddenly and then wrenched away. The Brigadier's eyes were open, staring at her. There was a slight grey film over them which she had not seen before.