Hollow Crown (2 page)

‘I wasn’t asked,’ he said drily. ‘The King seemed to be enjoying himself.’

Weaver glanced at him. ‘You mean . . . ?’

‘With Mrs Simpson. I gather there were photographs in the French papers of them strolling around Corfu almost naked.’

‘Oh no, that’s nonsense, but the King enjoys being . . . casual.’

‘I thought you used to be a friend of Freda’s?’ Edward was referring to the King’s mistress when he had been Prince of Wales, Mrs Dudley Ward, whom he had dropped
overnight when he met Mrs Simpson.

‘I used to be,’ Weaver said uncomfortably. ‘In fact, it was Fredie who introduced me to Blanche.’

‘I remember. Well, she did you a good turn there, Joe. Blanche is the kind of 24-carat woman I would be looking for were I ever to marry, which at the time of going to press seems most
unlikely’

Weaver shifted uneasily in his chair. It happened that his wife, in most respects a sensible woman, had a grudge against Edward. Blanche held him to blame for the death of her daughter by her
first husband – a ne’er-do-well who, mercifully, had been killed in the war. Edward, as Weaver knew, had done everything he could to save his stepdaughter from the drugs which had in
the end killed her and Blanche had no reason to hold him responsible for her death.

Weaver said, ‘I thought the Prince would have remained faithful to Fredie until hell froze. In fact, she told me once, he had sworn never to marry anyone else, but I was wrong. He dropped
her just like that. I thought the less of him for it but that’s not to say I don’t like Wallis. Mrs Simpson may be a divorcee and not particularly careful about the men she chooses to
go to bed with but she’s done the Prince – the King, I should say – the world of good. She’s a levelheaded, clever woman and the King does exactly what she tells him.
She’s stopped his drinking for one thing. But of course, he can’t marry the woman, we all know that. The King likes to forget she’s still married to Mr Simpson.’

Edward sucked at his cigarette contemplatively. ‘I heard she was divorcing him.’

‘The King couldn’t marry an American divorcee. The country wouldn’t stand for it.’

‘Wouldn’t it? He’s very popular. He goes out and meets the poor. When he went to that mining village – what was it called? – he made a very good
impression.’

‘The colonies wouldn’t stand for it. I was talking to the Prime Minister about it. He says the Australians won’t have it. SB was quite crude – I confess to being
surprised. His precise words were: “If the King sleeps with a whore, that’s his business but the Empire is concerned that he doesn’t make her queen.” The Australian outlook
on life is distinctly middle-class and on morals distinctly Victorian. Mackenzie King says Canadian public opinion would be outraged if it leaked out the King wanted to make Wallis his queen and I
gather Herzog in South Africa is categoric.’

‘There’s been nothing in the papers here about Mrs Simpson.’

‘Nothing at all,’ Weaver agreed, sounding smug. ‘The Prime Minister asked me to see what I could do to keep it all hush-hush and, I flatter myself, I have been
successful.’

‘You mean, Baldwin asked you not to print anything about the affair?’

‘Not just me. SB wanted me to persuade the other owners, Northcliffe in particular, not to print any story which featured Mrs Simpson.’

‘Aren’t any of the American papers seen over here?’

‘The censors snip them.’

‘Good heavens! He must be worried then.’

‘The PM hopes the whole thing will go away. He thinks the King will get tired of her as he has of his other women but . . . ’

‘. . . But you don’t?’

‘No, I don’t. As I say, I’ve seen nothing like it.’ Weaver leaned over the desk and looked as if he feared being overheard. ‘I don’t know whether you have
ever met her–Wallis. She’s no great beauty but she has established an ascendancy over the King . . . ’

His voice trailed off as though for once he was at a loss to know how to proceed. ‘There’s no direct evidence she’s his mistress, you know.’

‘Does she want to be queen?’ Edward asked.

‘She says she doesn’t. I don’t know. She’s actually told me she would like to leave David – as the family calls him – and go back to the States but he begs
her not to desert him.’

‘You know her well?’

‘As well as anybody. She doesn’t invite intimacy but she finds me – perhaps because she and I are both North Americans – easier to talk to than some of the young idiots
with whom the King likes to surround himself. And she knows I’m genuinely concerned for the King’s welfare.’

‘So what’s going to happen?’

Weaver shrugged his massive shoulders; his turnip-like features wrenched into a mask of disquiet. ‘I don’t know what will happen. The King is as obstinate as a spoiled
child.’

‘But it’s all got to be sorted out before May 12
^th
.’

‘Long before that. The American papers are full of it already and they’ll have a feast day when it comes to the divorce proceedings. I’ve kept it quiet over here up to now by
good luck and arm twisting but it can’t last. Anyway, there are complications. In fact, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘What on earth do you mean? How has it got anything to do with me? It doesn’t matter to me whom he marries. The important thing is what’s happening in Germany. All this talk of
Mrs Simpson! We ought to be getting ourselves ready for war.’

‘There won’t be a war, Edward. Hitler’s all wind. In any case, the King’s fascination with Wallis
does
affect our relations with Germany. The King, as you know, is
bitterly anti-Communist – when he talks about the Bolshies he can’t help shuddering – and he admires the new Germany and Wallis is intimate with the German Ambassador.’

‘That mountebank, Ribbentrop? The champagne salesman . . . isn’t that what they call him?’

‘Yes, Ribbentrop. And SB has to let the King see all cabinet papers – fortunately he’s mostly too idle to read them. What he does read he discusses with Wallis, and in the
morning she trots round to the German Embassy and tells Ribbentrop all about it. I’m not joking. If it ever got out there would be the devil to pay. The Foreign Office is having kittens . . .
Vansittart has threatened to resign.’

‘I had no idea,’ Edward said, ‘but I still don’t see what this has to do with me.’

Lord Weaver got up from behind his massive desk and walked over to the window. He beckoned to Edward and together they stared silently into the darkness. Except of course that the city was not
dark. A thousand lights twinkled below them, evidence that the city was still awake. Only the slow-moving river, secretive, unstoppable, indifferent, made a broad ribbon of blackness in the
brilliance.

At last, Weaver said, ‘To think, that if I’m wrong and there is a war, all this may be reduced to rubble.’ He waved his hand and his cigar burned angrily. ‘It makes me
want to weep at the folly of mankind.’ He turned away and said, more calmly, ‘Vansittart spoke very well of your investigation in Spain.’ Sir Robert Vansittart was the Permanent
Head of the Foreign Office.

‘I didn’t know he knew anything about it,’ Edward said, moving away from the window. ‘In any case, I didn’t investigate, I just got involved.’

‘Oh yes, he knows exactly what happened there. He seems to think you handled yourself very well. Made some useful contacts too, I understand. I believe he’s thinking of offering you
some sort of a job but I told him to hold his horses as I needed you first.’

‘Whatever do you mean, Joe?’

‘I need something investigated . . . it’s most delicate . . . and I thought of you.’

‘I’m flattered but I’m not a private detective,’ Edward said rudely, hoping to bring the conversation to an end.

Weaver turned and looked at him shrewdly. ‘I know that and I wouldn’t ask for your help if it weren’t a matter of . . . ’

‘Life and death?’

‘A matter of state, if that doesn’t sound too portentous.’

‘It does but I confess I’m intrigued.’

‘The fact of the matter is that Wallis . . . Mrs Simpson . . . has lost some papers . . . letters. They were stolen from her and if they ever came into . . . into the wrong hands . . .
they would blast her reputation to the skies.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Edward said coolly, ‘but from what you say that might not be such a bad thing. If she is revealed as . . . as something she pretends not to be,
the King will have no alternative but to give her up.’

‘It’s not as simple as that. You don’t . . . you can’t fully realize what the King feels for her. Anyway, it’s much better you hear it from her own lips. I want you
to dine with me in Eaton Place on Saturday. It’ll be just two or three old friends and Wallis. I’ve told her all about you. She wants to meet you.’

Edward took a deep breath. Did he really want to get involved in the private affairs of an unscrupulous woman apparently determined to involve the monarchy in scandal?

Weaver must have seen his lip curl. ‘Before you make judgements, you should hear what she has to say. It’s not like you to condemn a person on the basis of rumour. In any case,
it’s your duty.’ He almost stood to attention and Edward repressed a desire to laugh. ‘Your king asks for your assistance. I don’t think you have any option but to
listen.’

‘Oh, don’t be absurd, Joe! If the King wants something investigated he can call on the whole of Scotland Yard.’

‘This is not a police matter but none the less important for that. Edward, I’m surprised at you. What do you English say?
Noblesse oblige
?’

‘The English don’t understand French . . . ’ he began but then, seeing his friend was serious, relented. Weaver had resisted the temptation to point out how much Edward owed
him – not least flying him around Europe in his private aeroplane. ‘I’ll come, of course, as you wish it, but I can promise nothing more. I don’t like the sound of this and
. . . ’

‘Say no more. Eight on Saturday then – dinner jackets, no need to dress up. This is more a council of war than a dinner party.’

Edward took this as a dismissal and, as he got up to go, asked casually, ‘Has anyone any idea who stole these papers?’

‘Yes indeed. They were stolen by Mrs Raymond Harkness . . . Molly Harkness. She was at one time the King’s intimate friend, and yours too, I gather.’

Blanche, Lady Weaver, raised her head for him to kiss her cheek but retreated before he had time to do more than lean towards her. She was cool to the point of
froideur
. Obviously, she had been instructed by her husband to greet him civilly and was obeying . . . just. Edward had been asked to arrive early so he could meet Weaver’s other
guests before he had to give his undivided attention to the
femme fatale
. His host was still changing, having been kept late at the paper, so it was left to Blanche to introduce him. He had
been rather surprised that there were to be other guests, given the need for secrecy, but Weaver had explained that Wallis had particularly asked that the evening should be as normal as possible
and he had agreed with her that it might cause comment if it became known that she had dined alone with Edward and himself.

‘You must know Leo,’ Blanche said, waving dismissively at a dapper little man with a pencil-thin moustache and a smile which revealed the yellow teeth of the chain smoker.

Edward had met Leo Scannon once or twice at Mersham and had not liked him. Scannon was a Conservative Member of Parliament, very much on the right of the party. Too idle to want a ministerial
post, he nevertheless exercised considerable influence on the back benches. He was all surface charm – one of the King’s intimates – an atrocious snob feared for his caustic wit
and his encyclopedic knowledge of aristocratic scandals. He ‘knew everybody’ and dined out at least three times a week. Edward, as the younger son of a duke, was not entirely to be
despised but, until now, had not been considered worthy of his serious attention. This did not prevent Scannon shaking him warmly by the hand, and greeting him as though he were an old friend.

‘Good to see you again, Corinth. How’s Gerald?’

Scannon had bad breath and Edward backed off like a skittish horse. He made a mental note to ask his brother whether he had ever encouraged Scannon to call him by his Christian name. The Duke
was very choosy about the men he permitted to be so familiar and he doubted whether Scannon was one of them. He wore too much hair oil, for one thing, which the Duke abhorred and, for another,
Scannon was an open admirer of the Nazi Party and its leader. A few weeks earlier he had been in Berlin for the Olympic Games and met the Reichsführer and had apparently been bowled over by
him. He had attended a Nazi Party rally and thrilled to the sound of marching jackboots. It mystified Edward what people saw in the man but he smiled bravely and muttered inanities.

Scannon was unmarried and, when Edward caught sight of a tall woman of exotic appearance standing by the fireplace smoking a cigarette from the longest cigarette holder he had ever seen, he
thought at first she must be attached in some way to him. Edward was impatient to be introduced to her but, whether to tease him or through an oversight, Blanche made no effort to do so. Instead,
he had to listen to Scannon going on and on about the Duke of Mersham and others of his relations until he felt he might have to wring his neck.

At last, Lord Weaver entered the drawing-room apologizing for not having been there when his guests arrived. ‘News just in from Spain, Edward,’ he said. ‘Government troops have
recaptured Maqueda, south of Madrid.’

‘Never mind that,’ Scannon said scornfully. ‘It’s only a matter of time before Madrid falls to General Franco.’

‘You hope so, Leo, do you?’

‘I do, Joe,’ Scannon said firmly. ‘It’s time this terrible civil war ended and order was restored – for the sake of the Spanish people as much as for the world at
large. I hear they have taken anarchists into the government. Anarchists! I ask you – how can one take seriously a government of anarchists! It’s a contradiction in terms.’

Edward bit back the retort which sprang to his lips and said urgently to Weaver, ‘Any news of Verity Browne?’