The Poellenberg Inheritance (8 page)

‘Just the end,' she said. ‘Where it was, and how it was supposed to have happened.'

‘In a village outside Cracow, during the final German retreat in '44. Let me light that for you. You're smoking like a chimney, Mrs. Stanley. Don't you know it's bad for you? Anyway, your father's H.Q. was in this place; it was a hopeless name I couldn't begin to pronounce, but he and his staff were there, including our friend Schwarz, or Black. He had taken up quarters in the police station, some kind of brick-built house. These Polish places were pretty small and primitive and most of them had been occupied and fought over during the original campaign. I imagine conditions were pretty rough at the time; the Russians were chasing hell out of the German army, and the fighting was not exactly Queensberry Rules.

‘Anyway on November 23rd a massive Russian bombardment began over the area. The house where your father was living was hit and everyone in it was killed. Apparently a body was found wearing his decorations but otherwise unidentifiable. Half a dozen survivors of the battle swore that the General had been in the house in conference with his staff at the time. Nobody got out alive. The bodies were buried on the spot. Your mother must have been notified of his death in action. I can't understand why she wouldn't tell you this.'

Paula ignored the question. ‘One thing puzzles me,' she said.

‘What's that?'

‘Why was anything reported in all the papers? Why should anyone bother about whether my father was alive or not after all these years? It seems very odd.'

‘He was a very important man,' Fisher said. ‘He had the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross, and every other decoration you can think of; he was one of Germany's glamour soldiers.' He had a mental picture of the faded photograph in the Bonn file. The hard, clean-cut face under the distinctive peaked cap, the pattern of gold braid and the unmistakable lightning flashes on the collar. He must have looked pretty good in his prime, a perfect specimen of the Wagnerian superman. He smiled at Paula.

‘There's nothing more intriguing than the dead coming back to life,' he said kindly. ‘Naturally it aroused interest.'

‘Do you believe it, Mr. Fisher?' she asked him. ‘Do you think it's possible?'

‘You'd like it to be, wouldn't you?'

‘Wouldn't you? If you had never known one of your parents?'

‘I don't know,' Fisher said. ‘I didn't know either of mine very well. They died when I was a kid. But I made out. I wouldn't let it worry you. If I find anything out, I'll let you know; just privately, between friends.'

‘That's very kind of you,' Paula said. In spite of her first reaction she was beginning to like him. He looked different when he smiled; she felt that he was not normally as nice as he was being to her. ‘Will you promise?'

‘If you'll have dinner with me this week,' Fisher said. ‘I'll give you a full report. Just in case you want me before, here's my address and you can get a message to me at this number. It's a calling service. How about Thursday for dinner. I thought I might motor down and see your mother and stepfather on Wednesday. Can I come and pick you up at about eight?'

‘I haven't said I'd go,' Paula said. ‘This isn't more investigating, is it? I've nothing more to tell you.'

‘No, this is strictly pleasure from my point of view.' Fisher paid the bill. ‘And as I said, I'll give you a progress report – free. I usually charge blood money for this sort of thing. You will have dinner, won't you?'

‘All right. I live at 28 Charlton Square. Flat 2. I warn you, you won't get anything out of my mother and stepfather. I tried to bring it up myself and I got absolutely nowhere.'

‘Perhaps I'm a little tougher to deal with,' he said pleasantly. ‘Anyway, we'll see. Come on, I'll put you in a taxi. Are you going back to your office?'

They stood outside on the warm pavement; the sky was clouding over with the advent of a summer shower.

‘Yes, of course. I have to do some work.' She held out her hand. ‘Goodbye; thank you for lunch.'

‘I have to do some work too,' Fisher replied. He liked the way she did her hair; it curled round her head, not too short, but soft and casual, taking its own shape. He had never liked brown hair before. But with those eyes, she couldn't fail. ‘See you Thursday,' he said. He helped her into a cab and turning, walked back down the street to find his car.

He wondered what the mother would be like. He had seen her in one of the photographs too; a tall, a very good-looking woman with blonde hair plaited round her head, fox furs trailing from her shoulders, shaking hands with her husband's boss.

He wondered about the English husband. What kind of man had he been to pick her up and marry her, knowing what he must have known? Perhaps there was a beautiful love story being lived out in the serenity of the Essex countryside. Perhaps the attractive girl he had just left was the changeling, cursed with her heredity, even though she didn't know it. Fisher doubted that. Blood wasn't thicker than water; heredity without environment didn't make sense to him. What did make sense was the appearance of a man who was obviously the General's A.D.C., a man accounted dead for twenty odd years, and his contacting of Paula Stanley with hints that the General was still alive. He would wire Bonn for a photocopy of Schwarz's picture just to confirm it, but the coincidence was already too close. Schwarz had been anglicised to Black; he had claimed to have served under the General.

Why had he contacted Paula Stanley? Why, after all these years, had the little bastard risked disclosing himself? Just to effect a reunion – to drop hints and test her reaction? It sounded unlikely. She had described him as eccentric. Maybe this would account for the lack of caution. But nothing would persuade Fisher that he had found her and introduced himself without a purpose. And whatever the purpose was, she hadn't told Fisher about it. His invitation to dinner was not entirely motivated by her attractiveness. There was something he had to know, and somehow he had to make her tell him. Seeing the parents was a formality he couldn't neglect; but if there was a lead anywhere, and he had begun to feel a strange conviction that there was, then it would be found through Paula Stanley.

CHAPTER THREE

‘I tried to telephone your office, my dear, but you hadn't come back from lunch. So I thought I'd just pop round.'

Paula had opened the flat door and found her stepfather standing there. He looked embarrassed, and then cheerful. He had a permanent air of bonhomie which Paula found extremely depressing. ‘What a nice surprise, Gerald. Come in and have a drink.' He had sat in the little drawing room, made the same soothing remarks about the decorations as he had done on his last visit, and fidgeted until she could have screamed at him to get to the point and stop going round in circles of small talk. When it came out, it was unusually simple, as if the effort to approach her with tact had exhausted him.

‘I had to come and see you, Paula. Your mother's very worried.'

‘Oh? I'm sorry to hear that. What about?' She knew before he said it. She knew exactly what was worrying her mother and why the Brigadier had left his comfortable nest in Essex and made the trip to London.

‘She's not been sleeping,' he explained. ‘I made her go to the doctor yesterday. You told her something that upset her. Something to do with your father.'

‘That's right, I did. I said a friend of his had asked to see me. She didn't want me to; we had a row about it last weekend. I know she told you about it, Gerald. She's never kept anything secret from you. And you want to know what I did, isn't that it?'

‘Yes, put like that, I suppose it is.' The false cheerfulness had been sloughed off; he looked a worried old man, deep creases between his brows, a resentful expression on his face. ‘What did you do, Paula? Did you take your mother's advice? Or did you see this man?'

‘I saw him,' Paula said. ‘Last Monday, in my office. We talked about my father and he told me quite a lot about him.'

‘Oh, Christ.' The Brigadier put his head in his hands. ‘Why couldn't you have left it alone? If you knew what an agony your mother's gone through …'

‘I don't know anything about my mother,' she said coldly. ‘She's never confided in me. She's never talked to me or told me anything. She's kept me at a distance all my life. And why do you say Christ like that? Why shouldn't I hear about my father!'

His face had reddened; he straightened up in his chair and glared at her.

‘Because of what it means to her! She deserves to be left in peace now. Don't you realise how old she is?'

‘What's that got to do with it? It's not as if she loved my father! She's never cared for anyone but you. Don't tell me she can't stand the painful memories – it's over twenty-five years ago. I'm sorry, Gerald, but I have a right to know about the other side of my family.'

‘Even at her expense?'

‘But why should it be at her expense?' Paula demanded. ‘What is there to hide?' He didn't answer. He heaved himself out of the chair and faced her.

‘Paula, if I asked you to drop this and not ask questions, would you do it?'

‘No, Gerald, I wouldn't. I'm sorry. Give me a reason, one reason why and I might listen. But I'm not making an arbitrary promise to anyone.'

‘I can't understand you,' the Brigadier said. ‘We did our best for you. Your mother …'

‘I don't want to talk about Mother,' Paula said. ‘You did your best for me, Gerald, and I appreciate it. I wasn't your child. You haven't had a visitor by any chance?'

‘What do you mean, what kind of visitor?'

‘A private detective. If you and Mother don't like the past being dug up then I'm afraid you're not going to like this. There's been a report that my father was seen in Paris. He may be alive after all.' To her surprise there was no reaction of astonishment or alarm. He looked at her and nodded.

‘We saw it,' he said. ‘But thank God it wasn't true.'

‘My God!' Paula said. ‘It didn't occur to either of you to mention this to me? It was only my father who might have come back, that's all! I can excuse you, Gerald, but I'll never forgive her. How could she have hidden it from me? How could she have been so cruel!'

‘How much did this man Black tell you about him?' It was an unexpected question.

‘He said he was a wonderful person, that he loved me very much. Oh,' she said bitterly, ‘I know what the trouble is – I've always known. Father was a Nazi general, he fought for Hitler, and you and she don't want it mentioned. You're smug and English and it wouldn't look good at the Women's Institute if it got round she was the widow of one of those Nazi beasts we heard so much about. I've been stuffed full of atrocities and concentration camps! I knew what a Bloody Hun was before I was old enough to realise I was one myself – Mother's a coward, she doesn't want to own up to her country or to me! That's why she's never liked me; I tied her to Father and to Germany. Without me she could have been just Mrs. bloody Gerald Ridgeway.'

‘You don't know what you're talking about.' Her stepfather had drawn himself up; she had never seen him look so angry. ‘And don't you dare speak about your mother like that! I hope you'll never have to know what she went through, but you're too stupid and prejudiced against her to appreciate it if you did. I'm going home now.

‘Any detective who comes near my house will be told to clear off pretty quickly. If he's chasing that story about your father being seen in Paris, he's wasting his time. He's dead, Paula, and all I can tell you is to be thankful for it!'

He walked out of the room and she heard her front door bang. She sat down and lit a cigarette. It was the first quarrel she had ever had with her stepfather. He wasn't a cruel man, or remotely unfair, but he was incapable of seeing her point of view, of appreciating anything but the feelings of his wife. Paula had said the unspoken grievances of years. She had brought the sense of shame endured through her adolescence into the open. She had grown up to realise that she was a member of a race whose crimes against humanity were an outrage to civilised societies everywhere. The marauding hordes of twelfth-century Mongolia were likened to her people. Genocide. Ten million Jews. Two million gypsies. Men and women and children being mowed down in France, Italy, Poland, the Low Countries. Horror piled upon horror. Names associated with unspeakable infamy. Dachau. Belsen. Buchenwald. Her name had been changed to Ridgeway when she was a child. So nobody would know what she was, a German and the child of a German general.

The only person who could have assuaged that awful loneliness and calmed the sense of guilt was her mother. And she had brought down a curtain of silence that nothing Paula did had been able to tear open. She went and poured herself a drink, which was unusual. She was naturally abstemious and she never drank alone. She brushed her hair and powdered her face; it was pale and her eyes looked tired. All her life she had been looking at that face reflected in mirrors without being able to identify it to herself. James had accused her of being a stranger; he was probably right. She had never come out of the inner shell into the cold winds of the world. It must have made her uncomfortable to live with. For the first time she understood why he had been unfaithful. Her best friend was a warm, affectionate woman, not particularly pretty but with an attractive laugh. James had liked her, and the inevitable happened. She didn't know about the younger girl and she didn't care. She brushed her hair again, and thought suddenly that she had forgiven James. She was quite calm about it; she poured another drink and went to the telephone to ring and tell him so, when the front door bell rang. Paula looked at her watch. It was nine o'clock. She had forgotten about dinner; she had forgotten about everything in her immersion in the past. When she opened the door she found Fisher outside.