The Black Baroness (33 page)

The Inspector nodded. ‘You’re right there. I wish now that I’d refused to send for the Chief Inspector. Still, as I did, the fact that he died from your blow means you’ll have to stand your trial for murder.’

‘I know,’ Gregory smiled suddenly, ‘but in the meantime I’d like to know how you propose to treat me. Am I to be regarded as a sailor who has killed a man in a drunken brawl or as a political prisoner who may have acted rashly but was working in the interests of your country as well as his own?’

Inspector Fockink hesitated a second, then he said: ‘Quite unofficially, of course, I don’t mind confessing that I understand your motive and that you have my sympathy. In any case, I’m prepared to give instructions that you shall receive such amenities as the station affords. If you’ve got money, so that you can pay for them, you can send out for any food you want, cigarettes, drink, etc. You may smoke as much as you like and have paper and pencils to write letters or prepare your defence—in fact any reasonable request you care to make will be granted.’

That’s decent of you,’ Gregory replied. ‘How about news? I’m naturally pretty anxious to know what’s going on.’

‘You can have any papers that you like to send for.’

‘I’m afraid that’s not much good; I can’t read Dutch, and at a
time like this I imagine it’s extremely doubtful as to whether the English and French papers will come in as usual.’

‘All right, then. Most of the warders can speak quite good German. I’ll lift the regulation which forbids warders to carry on conversations with prisoners and each time they come into your cell they can give you the latest news.’

“Thanks,’ said Gregory. I’m very grateful.’

When the Inspector had left him, Gregory glanced at his watch and saw that it was five to four. Guns were still firing, machine-guns were still beating their horrid tattoo; occasionally there drifted through the barred window of the cell a distant shout or the sound of hurrying feet; but there was nothing more that he could do to aid himself and, locked up as he was, there was nothing that he could do to help the Dutch defend their city, either, so he decided to go to bed and try to get some sleep.

In spite of the distant thudding and the rattling of the windows he managed to drop off about four-thirty but the warder woke him two hours later. He gave the man money to send out and buy him meals, drink, cigarettes, a war map to pin up on the wall of his cell and some English novels; and asked that his bag should be collected from the hotel; then he dozed again until the things arrived and, shortly afterwards, lunch was brought to him.

The warder gloomily gave him the news. It seemed that most of the German commercial travellers who had descended on Rotterdam in recent weeks were really soldiers in disguise. Each of them had known exactly what to do and where to go when the moment came, so they had rapidly consolidated into definite units several hundred strong, and as they had seized certain buildings which readily lent themselves to defence it was proving a very difficult matter to turn them out.

Since dawn the sky had been black with planes, and parachutists having captured the Schipol airport troop-carriers were now landing much greater numbers of Germans on it. An hour after the Germans had invaded Holland and Belgium they had gone into Luxemburg and launched a great offensive in the Moselle sector, where the Franco-German frontier and the Maginot Line proper ended. Both Holland and Belgium had appealed to the Allies for aid and at eleven o’clock it had been announced that the British and French would give them every possible assistance. It was reported that a Franco-British Army
had already crossed the frontier and was wheeling through southern Belgium to meet the Germans.

Gregory received these tidings with very mixed feelings. It was good that the two countries had decided to fight. Their Air Forces were, unfortunately, negligible but Holland could put 600,000 men in the field and Belgium the best part of 1,000,000. True, the Dutch equipment was not very up to date but they were a stout-hearted race who had proved their courage many times and took a place second to none in the annals of those nations which had fought and endured to secure their independence. As a nation the Belgians were a much younger people and they were a mixed race of Flemings and Walloons, so Gregory doubted if they had the solidarity of the Dutch; on the other hand, their Army was not only larger but was said to have been greatly improved in recent years. Taking even the most cynical view, he felt that this 1,600,000 new enemies which Hitler had acquired overnight would at least inflict considerable damage on him before they could be put out of action—which was something definitely to the good.

As against that, he well remembered the manner in which Sir Pellinore had laid down the law to him less than a week ago on the subject of strategy in the Low Countries. He had made it very clear that as long as the British stood upon the Franco-Belgian frontier it would be extremely difficult for the Germans to inflict a major defeat upon them; but that once they moved out of their fortified zone they would have to meet the Germans tank for tank, gun for gun and man for man.

In the evening he learnt that in addition to innumerable Dutch and Belgian cities the Germans had also bombed Nancy, Lille, Colmar, Lyons, Pontoise, Béthune, Lens, Hazebrouck, Abbeville and Calais, but that the Dutch had blown up the bridges on the Yssel and Maas so that the first onslaught of the northernmost German Army had definitely been checked.

The Germans were reinforcing their troops in Rotterdam harbour by landing men from seaplanes and they had captured the great bridge over the river, but the situation in the centre of the city remained obscure. Gregory did not think the fighting was very near, but salvoes of bombs were being launched from time to time near enough for him to hear them whistling through the air. At ten-past ten a big fellow falling about a hundred yards away shattered the window of his cell. It was not pleasant to remain locked up during almost continuous air-raids,
but the Police Headquarters was a massive building and Gregory felt that he was infinitely safer there than he had been at Andalsnes and managed to get some sleep between raids.

On the Saturday morning news came which put him into a more cheerful frame of mind. At nine o’clock the previous evening Chamberlain had announced his resignation and Churchill was the new Premier. It was good to think that Chamberlain had proved equal to the emergency and that Britain at last had a war leader worthy of her.

The local news was also good. The Germans had not succeeded in making any deep penetration into Holland and were being held at Delfzyl, the key position at the extreme northern end of the new greatly extended Allied line. In the previous day’s fighting the small Dutch Air Force had behaved with great gallantry and more than a hundred German planes had been brought down over Holland, while a further forty-four had crashed on French territory. Hitler was certainly not getting it all his own way.

After Gregory had lunched, Inspector Fockink, now begrimed and unshaven but still resolute, entered the cell. He told Gregory that in the normal course of events he would have been taken before a magistrate the previous morning, but that with enemy troops holding various key positions in the city all normal judicial procedure had had to be temporarily suspended.

Gregory asked, jokingly, if there was such a thing as a writ for
habeas corpus
in Holland, and, on the Inspector’s inquiring what he meant, he explained that it was an ancient law, considered by Englishmen to be the keystone of their liberties, by which a man could not be held in prison for more than twenty-four hours unless he was brought into court on a definite charge laid against him.

The Inspector said that in Holland the liberty of the subject was protected by somewhat similar measures, but in the present instance he was quite certain that they would not be operative.

No replies had yet been received to either of the telegrams and the telephone lines to The Hague had been cut by saboteurs so it was impossible to ring up the British Legation; but Fockink seemed quite friendly and having accepted a drink from Gregory’s small private bar gave him the latest details of the fighting. The Fortress of Maastricht, in the extreme south of Holland, had fallen with the loss of 3,000 men and the Germans
had overrun Belgian Limburg; they had also captured Malmédy and Vitry and reached the Albert Canal. This seemed amazingly good going after a bare day-and-a-half and Gregory could only pray that the Belgians would be able to hold the line of the Canal, which was their main defence, until the British came up.

The Dutch had been forced back towards Arnhem and it had now become apparent that the maximum German pressure was being exerted in this area with the objective of driving a wedge right through to the coast, and thereby cutting the whole of north Holland off from south Holland and Belgium. In the meantime, desperate fighting was taking place out at the Schipol air-port as the Dutch had now brought up strong reinforcements of their Regular troops in an attempt to recapture it.

In the evening Gregory heard that the Dutch had succeeded in retaking the aerodrome after a most bloody action in which they had lost a thousand killed and three times that number wounded. His warder was very cock-a-hoop about this victory and also about the fine exploit of the Dutch warship,
Jan van Galen,
which had made its way through a minefield laid by the Germans and shelled several of their troop-carriers which were landing reinforcements on the shore, causing them great loss. At nine o’clock Gregory went to bed to spend another uneasy night constantly broken by violent explosions.

On the Sunday his routine did not differ from the preceding days. The police were much too occupied even to give him an hour’s exercise in the courtyard so he spent the day trying to shut out the now monotonous din while he attempted to read or follow on his war map the progress of the great battle that was raging.

The Germans had pierced the Albert Canal in two places and were making a rapid advance through the Ardennes. They had also launched another attack on the French front, between the Forest of Warndt and the Saar, while in Holland they had driven their central wedge past Arnhem and south of that town were reported to be within fifty miles of the coast.

During the day all sorts of stories came through about the Germans’ Fifth Column activities. Apparently the Gestapo had established secret arms-depots in practically every town in Holland and organised the Dutch Fascists and other political groups to sabotage their country’s own war effort when the day came. Many of these groups had also had secret stores of Dutch
military and police uniforms, the use of which enabled them to issue false orders and spread defeatist rumours from what appeared to be authoritative sources.

The Fifth Columnists were being strongly supported by German parachutists dressed in civilian clothes and even as clergymen or women. These enemies within had cut communications, seized bridges to prevent their being blown up and held off the local police while German troop-carriers had landed regular troops on golf courses, arterial roads, long stretches of sandy beach and other makeshift air-grounds.

In consequence an incredible state of confusion had resulted throughout the length and breadth of the country. Nobody now knew if a policeman or an officer was a genuine executive of the State or if he was a German sympathiser employed in diverting traffic or turning back troops in order to facilitate the advance of the enemy. There were several hundred small wars going on all over the place and large bodies of troops which should have been holding the main defence system had had to be recalled into the interior of the country to try to mop up these innumerable groups of Fifth Columnists and German airborne troops.

In the evening the new British Inner Cabinet was announced. Churchill—Premier; Chamberlain—Lord President of the Council; Attlee—Lord Privy Seal; Halifax—Foreign Affairs; Alexander—Admiralty; Eden—War Office; Sinclair—Air Minister; and Greenwood—Minister without Portfolio. Later another batch of appointments came through. Simon—Lord Chancellor; Kingsley Wood—Exchequer; Lord Lloyd—Colonies; Herbert Morrison—Supply; Anderson—Home Office; and Duff Cooper—Information.

Many of the newcomers were excellent men, but it was clear that even Churchill had been unable to break down the old business of Party claims which has to be considered in any Coalition Government; whereby professional politicians who have achieved leadership by years of uninspired hack work must be given key positions, however much they may lack the necessary qualifications to fill them, instead of the Premier having a free hand to choose younger men of outstanding ability. By and large the new Government was a great improvement on the old one, but the thing which utterly dumbfounded Gregory was that Sir John Anderson had been allowed to remain at the Home Office, when for eight solid months he had flatly refused to curb the activities of the Fascists or to take even
the most rudimentary precautions to prevent the same sort of thing happening in Britain as was going on at that moment in Holland.

Whit Monday, the fourth day of the battle for the Low Countries, showed no sign of a break in the weather. Ever since May the 5th the skies had been almost cloudless and it was nearly as hot as midsummer. The German thrust into mid-Holland had deepened while further south the enemy had broken right through the eastern end of the Albert Line, hurled 2,000 tanks at Tongres and now threatened the main Belgian bastion of Liège on three sides.

Over the week-end Gregory’s fears for the outcome of his killing had considerably lessened, as with every hour that passed there was less likelihood of his being taken before a military court and summarily condemned to death. The Dutch authorities were learning to their cost of the incredible havoc which was being wrought upon their war effort by Nazi sympathisers among their own countrymen and there was abundant evidence from the police who had been present as to
why
Gregory had struck down Chief Inspector Van der Woerden. He therefore no longer thought that there was any danger of his being charged with murder. It was even possible that the British authorities might be able to secure his release on a Royal pardon from the Queen of Holland; but other anxieties were now beginning to agitate him.