The Poellenberg Inheritance (26 page)

‘It is all arranged,' he said. ‘You will be very comfortable. And nobody can trouble you there.'

‘You're very kind,' Paula said. ‘I do appreciate it.'

‘It isn't necessary; I'm glad to help. Now let us enjoy our dinner and forget about unpleasant things. You have a charming smile, Mrs. Stanley; I want to see it from now on.'

‘You forget,' she said, ‘it's the Austrians who are supposed to be gay. I'm straight middle German.'

‘So am I,' he said. ‘Perhaps that's why we understand each other, I know our temperament; we are the only race in the world who have ever tried to live their legends.'

‘But only the sad, destructives ones, the
Götterdämmerung
,' Paula said. ‘The awful thing is I love Wagner, too.'

‘I hate him,' Philip said and laughed. ‘It is Mozart for me. You're fond of music?'

‘Very fond. Orchestral more than opera, always excepting Wagner.'

‘Then you must come to Germany,' Philip said gently. ‘There you will hear our music as it should be played. By Germans, for Germans.' He reached over and for a moment his hand rested upon hers. It was warm and the pressure lasted for some seconds. ‘You must remember the good things about our people,' he said. ‘The world will remind you often enough of what is wrong with us, of what we did in the past. But my answer to them is that it
is
the past; our duty now is to the future. And it's your duty too, Mrs. Stanley. You are a German, and you have a place among your own race. Understand that, and you won't need anyone like Eric Fisher.'

‘I was brought up to be ashamed of it,' Paula said. ‘It was never mentioned, my father was never mentioned. My name and nationality were changed. And yet I've never felt English.'

‘Our blood is strong,' Philip said. ‘It isn't easy to suppress. Why did your mother do this to you?'

‘Because of her own shame,' she answered. ‘Because she hated my father and everything he stood for. And I believe now that she hated me; in a quiet way of course, not admitting it for a moment, but she hated me just the same.'

‘Your life has not been happy,' he said. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘What about yours? What is it like to have so much money and so much power?'

‘It is a heavy responsibility which often becomes a frightful burden,' Philip replied. ‘But there are compensations, and I don't mean obvious advantages like being able to buy whatever you want, or go anywhere in the world. I mean the opportunities for doing things, for shaping events in the right way. I must sound very pompous to you, Mrs. Stanley – a dull man with a sense of mission …'

‘Not at all,' Paula said quietly. ‘I've never been more interested. Please go on.'

‘I too have been ashamed of what I am.' He lit a cigarette. ‘My family name has been blackened by our association with the Nazis. And we did associate. My mother tried to resist them, she's proud and she doesn't understand the meaning of fear. But my father wanted to survive. The price was collaboration with Hitler. We collaborated. We used forced labour in our factories; we gave funds to the Party. We protected our interests by participating in their crimes, and as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we were equally guilty. You know this; you know what the name Von Hessel means to non-Germans. Now that my brother is dead, I am the head of the family and responsible for the future. I want to prove that the image has changed. I want to do good with our money and our power. I want to redeem my family name. I want to serve my country.'

‘And you'll do it,' Paula said. ‘I really believe you'll do it. Do you know what someone once said to me – at a party – if you find a good German, kill him before he goes bad.'

‘I know.' Philip smiled briefly. ‘But you mustn't mind. We are a new generation, you and I. That is what matters. We're different to our parents; I love my mother and naturally she influences me, but I don't think the same way. I can't; I belong to a new world. And I am determined to help bring Germany into it. That is the only excuse for being as rich as we are, Mrs. Stanley, and having this kind of power. To use the money and the power for the right purposes. Otherwise as a family we are damned; and doomed. I am sure of that.'

‘I wish you luck,' Paula said. ‘You're going to need it. But I think you may succeed. And in a way I envy you, having something to work for.'

‘You could work for it too.' He leaned towards her; she thought irrelevantly that he was the handsomest man she had ever seen, and the least personally conceited. ‘You should go back to Germany and see what is happening for yourself. I told you before, don't be an exile.'

‘And I said I might,' Paula answered. ‘But who knows? Who knows where I'll be in three months' time.'

‘You could be with your father. Is that what you mean?'

‘I could; if it worked out that way. Or I may never see him, and just go back to England, to the same empty life. Anyway,' she shrugged and smiled at him, deprecating her own prophecy, ‘who knows? I may well go to Germany some day.'

‘And when you do,' the Prince said, ‘you will be my guest. I'll get the bill and take you back to the hotel. We can go to the Ritz together.'

‘You fool,' Margaret Von Hessel snapped. ‘You incompetent, bungling, fool! She's in the Ritz! My son moved her into the suite last night …'

Dunston held the receiver a little distance from his ear. He was in the foyer of the hotel, phoning through to the Princess. He had gone to make a report albeit prematurely, because he was feeling very confident. He had tried to call Paula the previous evening at about 7.30, judging that she wouldn't have left for any dinner date so early, and got no reply. He had hung up with a mental picture of her lying dead in the bath. He hadn't telephoned again; if she had been found electrocuted, he didn't wish to be remembered. And there would be an inquest, that was normal procedure.

He had assumed that all had gone as he intended. When he phoned through to the Von Hessel suite, he made the mistake of telling the Princess that everything had been taken care of. Her furious retort took him completely by surprise; he held the receiver and gasped. Then he swore obscenely, without caring whether she heard him or not.

‘What the hell's your son doing with her!'

‘Never mind that,' the Princess snapped at him. ‘You leave my son to me and get on with your part. She's here, on the floor above – so much for whatever you thought was happening somewhere else. You damned bungler,' she said again. ‘You've had plenty of time to arrange something. Now there's no time left – Fisher is arriving today and he's found the Salt! If you want our agreement to be honoured, you do something at once! Within the next few hours! And don't think you can keep that first payment – the bank will block it on my instructions.'

‘You mean this,' Dunston said. ‘It's coming to a head today?'

‘Tomorrow at the latest. That's what Fisher said.'

‘One thing.' Dunston was thinking at speed. ‘How much does your son know – about you and me?'

‘Nothing,' she said. ‘And never must know.
He
wouldn't pay you, he'd hand you over to the police! For God's sake, keep away from him!'

‘All right,' Dunston said. ‘I'll have to do it somehow. But don't be surprised if it's messy. And you can blame your son for taking her out of the hotel. If he hadn't, it would have all been over!'

‘Never mind that!' she snapped back at him. ‘Finish it now. Otherwise you won't get a penny!' She hung up. He stood there in the cubicle, looking at the telephone. He'd get nothing; not even the money paid in as a deposit. The old bitch had hemmed him in on every side. He'd tried the accident angle. But if he wanted that money, he couldn't afford to be nice. As he'd said, it would be messy. The floor above the Princess had said. He glanced up at the ceiling. Three floors High enough. Bloody messy. But in the time and the circumstances, there wasn't any other way.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘I'm sorry, sir,' the receptionist said. ‘The suite is occupied.' He remembered the German gentleman with the white hair and the tinted glasses who had come in a few days earlier with the same query. He appeared to be fixed on that particular suite in the hotel, and the reception clerk was becoming irritated. He had told him already it wasn't available; he appeared not to have heard because he repeated the question.

‘You are certain?' he persisted. ‘I thought it would be vacant now that Prince Heinrich Von Hessel has died.'

‘It is still at the disposal of the family,' the clerk said. ‘There is a lady staying in it now. She arrived last night.'

‘Oh,' the General said. ‘How disappointing. I had counted upon staying here.'

‘I have no suites available now, the one I offered you before has been booked. But there is a room on the third floor with private bathroom. That became vacant the day before yesterday because we had a cancellation.'

‘On the third floor?'

‘Yes. One moment and I will look up the number and I can tell you the position; I believe it faces to the front.'

The General waited; one hand buttoned the top button on his jacket and then unbuttoned it again. Otherwise he remained quite still and calm. A lady. Where exactly was the vacant room in relation to the suite? They were both on the same floor.

‘It is number 370, monsieur. And it looks out on to the Place.'

‘Thank you.' The General nodded. He buttoned his coat for the last time. ‘I will take that. For a week.'

‘You will register, please? And your passport.'

‘Certainly. Here it is. My name is Weiss.' The Swiss passport came out of his inside pocket and he filled in the details in the register. He gave his address in Spain and signed the name under which he had lived for ten years.

And that was when he saw the name Paula Stanley written on the line above. He paused, underlining his signature, and read the address in England which she had given. It was the same, the place to which he had sent Schwarz. A faint colour showed round his cheekbones and came in a patch on his forehead. He was very pale skinned, the colouring of a pure blond. The flush of excitement faded quickly. She had come. His hands were quite steady, his voice unchanged.

‘You have a friend of mine staying here I see,' he said. ‘Mrs. Paula Stanley.'

The reception clerk glanced down at the register. The Swiss passport had changed his attitude; he had a profound dislike of Germans. He actually smiled at the General. ‘Yes, Monsieur Weiss. In fact the lady is staying in your suite – she came last night.'

‘What a coincidence,' the General said. ‘I shall move out of my present hotel and return in about an hour, with my luggage.'

‘I hope you will be comfortable,' the clerk said.

‘I am sure I shall.' The General nodded. ‘I always used to stay here.' He walked out towards the street, very straight backed, one hand in his pocket. It was a mannerism only too familiar to his subordinates in the days to which he had referred with secret irony, the days when he walked through the foyer of the same hotel and everyone in sight made way for him and his entourage. He was back as he had said, within the hour, carrying a single light-weight suitcase and a heavy canvas duffle bag, which surprised the porter by its weight. He travelled up in the lift and followed the porter to the room on the third floor. His bags were put inside, and he gave a handsome tip. He was left alone.

He looked round the room; it was beautifully furnished, combining taste and comfort to an extent which he had not enjoyed for many years. Even the smell reminded him of the past; it was peculiar to the Ritz, with its fresh flower arrangements in every room, and the scented furniture polish used by the cleaners. He remembered it all. The suite was two doors down the passage. He lit a cigarette and went to the window; it was fastened, excluding the noise and dust of the Place. The air conditioning kept the room a pleasant temperature. There was a handsome bathroom, tiled in primrose yellow. He opened the window on an impulse and glanced down; the sound of the traffic was a steady rumble. He fastened back the catch, preferring the noise of activity to the silence. Then he removed his jacket, folding it over the back of a chair, and lay on the bed. It was the wrong time to go to her; the mornings were busy in any hotel; rooms were being cleaned, guests arriving and leaving. They would need a slack period, preferably during the heat of the afternoon, or the hours between eight and ten when everyone was dining.

Now that the moment had come, he found himself less prepared for it than he had imagined. He had a speech ready; it had been ready since that afternoon in Madrid when he opened the English newspaper and saw her photograph. He had read the cutting so many times and fingered it so much that it was frayed. His daughter. The only link with his past life, his only claim to a future beyond its own shrinking span. He was an old man, with nothing to aim for now but a peaceful death in bed. A sad and feeble ending to a career which had reached such heights of power and touched such depths of failure. He had a sense of the grandiose; it had added a singular glamour to his role; to speed in his black Mercedes on a mission of death like an infernal angel, something beyond an ordinary man. He had fled the débâcle because the prospect of a public trial and a sordid death by hanging offended his sense of what befitted him. Destiny had denied him for nearly thirty years; he had lived the mean, bourgeois existence of a business man expatriate in Madrid, and counted himself fortunate. Now, back in the surroundings of his past, the present day and its realities receded; distant as an echo the trumpets sounded in his brain, the haunted music of a danse macabre played out before a frightened world. He had lost; everything he had believed in had crumbled away and disappeared, leaving nothing but a memory and a huge genetic crime. Nothing was left to him now but obscurity; for his daughter it could still be different. For her there could be wealth and power in the possession of the Poellenberg Salt, and for him the final satisfaction of seeing his blood triumph. She would be immensely rich, sought after, famous – his thoughts ran on, rioting without discipline, breaking the bonds of common sense he had imposed upon himself. Emotion fought with him and won. The fatal German love of sentimental drama seized upon the relationship of father and daughter; it swept him forward, until he had forgotten the need for caution. He lay back with his eyes closed, waiting.