The Quality of Mercy (7 page)

‘The saddest thing, Edward . . . the irony of it all is that I’m convinced the Jews in Vienna would quite happily have joined in the welcome if they had not, for reasons they could not understand, been proclaimed enemies of the new German Reich. I’ll never forget what I saw. Never!’

Edward saw tears in her eyes but knew better than to say anything.

‘I heard later that Hitler had briefly appeared on the balcony of the Imperial Hotel and General Krauss had thanked him for uniting the German nation. I suppose I ought to have been there but I was too frightened. On Tuesday, when things had quietened down a bit and Hitler had rushed back to Munich, I went to see what had changed. The city was eerily quiet. The Simpl. . .’

‘The Simpl?’

‘The Simplicissimus – Vienna’s most famous cabaret. It’s run by two Jews, Karl Farkas and Fritz Grünbaum. Grünbaum was a refugee from Hitler’s Berlin and one of Vienna’s favourite comedians. You know who I mean?’ she said, seeing he did not recognize the name. ‘He’s appeared in countless UFA films. Anyway, the cabaret is – or was – the gathering place for all the enemies of Fascism – not just Jews but Communists as well. I went several times. My German – or rather my Austrian – isn’t good enough for me to understand all the jokes but it was the one place in Vienna I felt at home. The Communists were the only people actively to oppose the Nazis but there weren’t enough of them.

‘I thought that if there were any friends left in Vienna they would meet at the Simpl but when I got there it was boarded up and deserted. At last, I found an old man – a caretaker or something – and I asked to speak to Herr Grünbaum. He told me that he had been taken away to prison. He did not know what had happened to Farkas.

‘I trailed round the bars and cafés – starting with the Reiss-Bar, a chic place off the Kärntnerstrasse, all chromium and glass. No one I knew was there so I went on to the Künstler, the Landtmann and the Arcaden near the University. The Künstler and the Landtmann were trying to pretend nothing had happened but at the Arcaden a group of Brownshirts were sitting where the students used to gather.

‘I stopped because they were singing. The Germans love to sing. “
Heute gehört uns Deutschland
,
Morgen schon die ganze Welt
” – “Today Germany belongs to us, tomorrow we’ll own the whole world”. Before I knew what was happening, one of the brutes seized me. I told him I was English and a journalist but they did not seem to care. I thought I was going to be raped. Instead, they took me to the Rossauerlaender police station – since the previous day the headquarters of the Vienna Gestapo.

‘I was questioned by the most frightening man I have ever seen. He said his name was Eichmann – Adolf Eichmann. He was quite polite to begin with but icy cold. He said I was a known Communist and Jew-lover. I said I was an accredited journalist and I demanded to talk to someone at the British Embassy. I mentioned the names of everyone I could think of who might protect me. In the end, I was so desperate I said that I was a friend of Adam von Trott. Eichmann said I was a notorious liar, an incompetent journalist and in the pay of Moscow and that I would be hanged.

‘They put me in a cell with half a dozen Jews waiting to be shipped off to God-knows-where – to their death probably.’

‘
In carcere et vinculis
!’ Edward exclaimed.

‘Just when I had given up all hope, I was called by one of the guards and saw . . . the face of an angel – a plump, middle-aged, balding angel but an angel for all that. He turned out to be Mr Barker from the Embassy. He was almost as nervous as I was. Anyway, he said I was to go with him. I was to be deported and he was charged with seeing that I left the country. You can only half-imagine what it felt like to be out in the street again. I had the awful feeling that, even if I could have saved the lives of all the Jews in my cell by staying behind, I would still have gone with Mr Barker. I was plain terrified.’

‘And that night you were in Switzerland?’

‘Yes, but I’m going back,’ Verity said fiercely. ‘They can’t get rid of me that easily. Joe Weaver says he can get me new accreditation papers. He’s spoken to Ribbentrop. The Germans are still keen to keep the British press sympathetic to their cause so they don’t want a noisy quarrel with the
New Gazette
. Oh, Edward, I can’t describe what it was like to be in that awful place. I knew it was a prison from which people never escape. But somehow I had. And yet part of me is still there in that ante-room of hell. Never tell me that the Nazis are people whom one can make treaties with or talk to as though they were human beings. They are evil incarnate.’

‘What do you mean, you’re going back? You can’t go back. I won’t allow it.’

‘I’ve got to. It’s what I need to do. I need to bear witness. Does that sound insufferably pompous?’

‘But they know you will report what you see. They’re never going to allow that.’

‘Joe told Ribbentrop that his newspaper would kick up a fuss if I wasn’t allowed back. He told him the
New Gazette
would do everything possible to rouse the British people to the threat Hitler poses if they treated his journalists like criminals.’

Edward grinned. ‘I can just imagine Joe blowing his top but, seriously, wouldn’t it do more good if the treatment you received in Vienna convinced him to do what he threatens and turn against appeasement?’

Verity shook her head. ‘He told me that, in reality, he could not do it while the Prime Minister still thinks he can negotiate a peace. Apparently, Chamberlain believes that Hitler is a sated beast and, now he has Austria, he will digest his new empire at leisure.’

‘But he won’t.’

‘No, of course he won’t. They say in Vienna that he’s already got plans to take over the Sudetenland.’

‘The German part of Czechoslovakia?’

‘Yes.’

‘I still don’t like the idea of you going back to Vienna,’ Edward said gravely.

‘I’ll be safe enough,’ Verity smiled wanly, ‘but it’ll take a few days – two weeks at the most – to sort my papers out so if you can put up with me . . .’

‘Of course! You must come to Mersham. Connie’s expecting you.’

‘That would be wonderful. I’m always able to
sleep
there and that’s what I need at the moment – sleep.’

‘I’ve heard from Dreiser,’ Edward said after a pause. ‘He sent a telegram from Geneva. He had to take a roundabout route. He’ll be in London on Saturday. I thought we might pick him up from Victoria though I’ve given him my address if we miss him.’

‘Thank God!’ Verity smiled for the first time. ‘That, at least, is one thing worth doing but it isn’t enough.’

‘You mean, we should do something to help the others . . .?’

‘I do. I used to think that, as a reporter, I ought to stand above events – not get involved, remain impartial . . .’ Edward, remembering her partiality to the Republican cause in Spain, had to hide a smile. ‘Now, I think I must
do
something. I must intervene.’

‘But do what, exactly?’ he asked, his heart sinking. ‘What can we do that matters, living under the shadow of war?’

‘The Nazis have decided to expel as many Jews as they can. They can’t fit them all in the camps. The trouble is that not many countries will take them – South America, Palestine of course. Joe says Chamberlain is talking about allowing at least the children into Britain. There are people organizing trains to bring out Jewish children from Berlin and Vienna – the Committee for the Care of Children. We must help.’

She looked up at Edward with bright eyes, wide with appeal. ‘We must,’ he agreed.

Verity was too tired to rest so Edward suggested they had dinner at Gennaro’s ‘for old times’ sake’. The restaurant was crowded but Freddy, the head waiter, found them a quiet table and they ordered champagne ‘to buck you up’, as Edward put it. Verity nibbled nervously on a bread roll but said she wasn’t hungry. She had the same look of inexpressible weariness and despair she had when she came back from Spain that last time. There were black stains under her eyes and she looked thin and slightly grubby, as though she needed to soak for an hour in a hot bath. It was a shame, Edward thought, that girls could not go to hammams. Of course, there was always a spa – perhaps Harrogate or Cheltenham.

He must have smiled at the idea of Verity at Harrogate because she said sharply, ‘Have I got a smudge on my nose?’

‘No. Why?’

‘You were smiling while I was talking of jackboots . . .’

‘Sorry. I was listening, I promise.’

‘Well, let’s change the subject. What have you been up to while I’ve been away? Seen anything of Maggie Cardew?’ This was a woman whom Edward had liked but whose brother he had helped prove a murderer.

‘No,’ he said, shortly. ‘She won’t see me. I bring more pain than pleasure to my relationships with women, I’ve decided.’

‘Poor didums!’ she said, patting his cheek patronizingly. ‘Feeling sorry for ourselves, are we?’ She sighed and played meditatively with her
Velouté de tomates
. ‘We don’t seem to be very successful with our love affairs, do we?’

‘No. Are you going to eat that?’

‘What? Oh, this. No, I don’t think I am. Do you think Freddy would mind if I ordered a plain omelette? My stomach’s so . . . so tight, somehow, I can’t seem to digest anything.’

Edward looked worried. ‘I’m going to make you see my doctor. You need a thorough check-up. You’re much too thin and . . .’

‘Stop it. I’ll be all right in a few days. I don’t know . . . I felt so alone in Vienna. I had no friends there and I missed Adam dreadfully.’

She looked so pathetic that Edward put out a hand and laid it over hers.

‘Have you got a cigarette?’ she asked. Reluctantly, because he thought she smoked instead of eating, he proffered his cigarette case and she took one. He leant forward and lit it for her and she took a long drag on it. ‘That’s better,’ she said appreciatively. ‘How’s Basil? I was hoping to see him in Albany.’

‘He’s at Mersham. They don’t allow dogs at my place. He lodges with the Hassels when in town. Do you want him back? I hope not. He loves Mersham. Gerald’s rather taken to him. They go on long walks together.’ He saw she wasn’t really listening. She was crumbling a bread roll to pieces with one hand while holding her cigarette in the other. He knew it was pointless but he could not prevent himself saying, ‘You live on your nerves. You smoke too much and eat too little. No wonder you can’t sleep.’

‘Distract me then,’ she said with an effort. ‘You still haven’t told me what you’ve been up to. Mixing with the nobs, I’ll be bound – toadying up to Mr Churchill, I expect.’

Verity had taken a strong dislike to Winston Churchill, whom she had never met, having decided that he was the enemy of the working class. Edward, to her fury, had fallen totally under his thrall and had undertaken a couple of investigations at his bidding.

‘As a matter of fact, I have been mingling with the nobs – as you put it – nothing to do with Mr Churchill though.’ He took a deep breath and began to tell her about meeting Sunny, his visit to Broadlands and the boys’ macabre discovery.

‘Mountbatten, eh?’ He was glad to see that he had her attention. ‘He’s just a playboy, isn’t he? These minor royals . . . well, they’ll be the first to go in the revolution.’

‘I think Mountbatten’s more than that. He’s not a drone. They say he’s a good officer. He’s very ambitious.’

‘Huh! So whose was the body Frank found?’

‘Well, that’s the odd thing. I telephoned the local chap – a man named Inspector Beeston – rather a dunderhead, I fear. I met him when we found the corpse. Anyway, the dead man turns out to have been an artist – a man called Peter Gray. Adrian Hassel knew him. They were at the Slade together though he was older than Adrian – late forties. He had a show at the Goupil Galleries in 1931 which was judged to have been a success.’

‘What was he doing at Broadlands?’

‘That’s what no one knows.’

‘And he died of a heart attack?’

‘That’s what the doctor thought at first but the post-mortem has thrown up a much more exotic cause of death.’

‘Which is . . .?’

‘Ergot poison.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Nor had I but I did a bit of research. Ergot’s a fungus that lives off rye and other grasses. Apparently it has been used as a country recipe since at least the Middle Ages to combat depression, hasten childbirth and, intriguingly, enhance sexual performance.’

Verity laughed and it did Edward good to see her. ‘So, what . . .? He went too far and his love life . . .’

‘V, please, keep your voice down if you’re going to be mucky. It’s more likely that he was prescribed it for depression. He had had a bad war – shell shock. Adrian said that after the war, he was in and out of hospital but gradually seemed to get over it.’

‘So, he was taking ergot and took too much?’

‘The problem with ergot is that it’s not very exact in its effects. It’s quite easy to poison yourself.’

‘What happens? What are the symptoms?’

‘Well, according to the books it can cause gangrene by constricting the blood flow to the extremities – fingers and toes. It’s sometimes called Holy Fire because it feels as if your feet or hands are on fire.’

‘How horrible! But does that necessarily kill you?’

‘It can do but in this chap’s case, according to the doctor who examined the body – they haven’t yet talked to the doctor who prescribed the ergot – Gray may have taken an overdose. Then he would have been ill – you get vomiting, diarrhoea and stomach cramps – but he might have thought he’d recovered. You start to feel better but later you can suffer kidney or liver failure and die. Oh, and too much ergot can give you hallucinations. ’

‘Before you die, presumably. Could it have been murder?’

‘Bloodthirsty little thing! It
could
have been but it’s much more likely to have been an accidental overdose.’

‘Has . . . what’s-his-name? . . . Gray, got any relatives?’

‘A niece, Adrian says. Apparently she was an orphan he took in when she was a baby.’ Edward saw Verity’s interest flag and hurried on. ‘And another thing – a beautiful film star asked me to save her from her husband.’