The Black Baroness (52 page)

Gregory’s Italian was by no means as perfect as his German or French but he knew quite enough to read the paper with reasonable ease and its contents were extremely perturbing. The matter of issuing special exit permits might be only one more measure designed to scare the Allies and there was no suggestion that foreigners who did not take advantage of it would be interned; but the whole tone of the paper was openly threatening and it looked as though Mussolini was now very near the brink.

On the Friday morning, the third day of the battle, the news looked somewhat better. The French were reported to have destroyed at least four hundred German tanks and although at some points they had made withdrawals they had succeeded in throwing back the enemy forces which had reached the south bank of the Aisne.

Gregory rang up Collimard but the Frenchman had as yet no news and urged him to wait another day, as by that time either the Baroness would be on her way back to Rome or else he would have definite information of her whereabouts. He also tried to get through to London, but, owing to the crisis, the Exchange refused to take his call.

A small item in one of the afternoon papers caught Gregory’s
eye and he saw that Captain B. A. W. Warburton-Lee, of H.M. destroyer
Hardy
, had posthumously been awarded the first Victoria Cross of the war for his gallant attack on Narvik. The action had taken place barely eight weeks before, but Gregory thought sadly how far away Narvik seemed now and how utterly unimportant compared with the vast struggle which was at that moment taking place in Northern France.

The headline of the paper was to the effect that all Italian ships had been ordered to the nearest home or neutral port, which seemed to Gregory really sinister. Mussolini had been filling his money-bags by working his merchant fleet for all it was worth during the past nine months while his peace-time competitors were compelled to use theirs for war purposes. For him to have cancelled all future sailings was therefore showing the red light in earnest. That evening bands of excited young Fascists marched through the streets of Rome calling for war and hurling abuse at France and Britain.

On the Saturday morning Gregory telephoned Collimard again and learnt that both Mussolini and the Baroness were in Genoa, so he decided to go north at once. Having paid his bill he went to Collimard’s, where he spent an hour having his disguise touched-up. At first its strangeness had irritated him exceedingly, particularly the moustache, which was the very devil while eating, but he was getting accustomed to it now and Collimard expressed his satisfaction at the way in which it had stood up to two days’ wear and tear. Gregory then drove to the station and before catching his train bought all the papers—Italian, British, French and German—that he could lay his hands on to read during his journey.

The Germans had launched a new attack on a sixty-mile front, from Aumale to Noyon. To the forty divisions already engaged they had hurled in seven fresh armoured divisions and twenty new infantry divisions. The Nazis were now using 4,000 tanks, 2,500 planes and 1,000,000 men.

The British Admiralty had announced that after nine months of war the balance of naval strength in our favour was greater than ever before and that nearly a million tons of warships were building in British shipyards. That little paragraph made cheering reading, but the trouble was that it was of very little help to the French at the moment.

He arrived at Genoa at 6.30 in the evening and immediately bought fresh papers. The stop-press told him that the new
enemy attack had sent the French reeling back from the Aumale-Noyon line and that the Germans had secured a small bridgehead over the Aisne but had not succeeded in actually breaking through; there was a rumour that Mussolini would speak on the following day.

He drove up the hill to the Hotel Miramar and, having secured a room, set about making tactful inquiries as to the whereabouts of Mussolini, representing himself as an American parson, since feeling was now running very high against the English. No one seemed to know anything for certain although the Italians—polite as ever—were willing enough to gratify the goggle-eyed foreigner’s obvious desire to catch a glimpse of the great man.
Il Duce
had certainly been in Genoa that morning but he was living on his special train, which had moved out of its siding at half-past two in the afternoon; the probability was that he had gone up again to inspect other units on the potential battle-front. A little after midnight Gregory went to bed depressed and miserable. The awful uncertainty about Erika was preying on his mind, and he knew that it was hopeless to look for the Baroness until he bad managed to locate
Il Duce
.

On the Sunday morning Gregory was up and out early. He found that the whole great city was alive with troops and pulsing with activity. Sailors, soldiers, airmen, Blackshirts, singly and in groups, crowded the hot pavements; aeroplanes hummed overhead, tanks, guns and lorries clattered through the streets or bounced along on their big balloon tyres. Genoa was the nearest Italian port of any size to the French Riviera so it was naturally a base of the first importance and it already had the appearance of a war-time city.

From the morning papers
it
seemed that the German war machine was at last losing its impetus and between Montdidier and No yon the attack was certainly less incisive. It was not until after midday that he learnt definitely that Mussolini was now in Turin, so he took the afternoon train there and sat sweltering in his shirt-sleeves while the train wound its way up through the mountains and across the plain of Piedmont.

On arriving, he learned to his delight that
II Duce’s
train was actually on a siding just outside the town but he soon found that he could not get within half a mile of it; every approach was guarded by both Fascists in their black-and-silver and the picturesque Carabinieri with their comic-opera hats and fierce-looking black mostaccios. However, he thought it unlikely that
the Baroness was on the train and spent the evening combing every hotel in the city to try to get news of her.

Turin was also packed with troops and, if possible, even more of an armed camp than Genoa, Mussolini had not yet spoken, but it was thought that at any hour he might do so.

It was the fifth day of the battle for France, and for the Allies it might well have been termed Black Sunday. As Gregory listened to the last radio broadcast in his hotel that night he realised that for the French things were very black indeed. Near the coast a force of three hundred enemy tanks had penetrated the Bresle defences the day before. They had now reached the outskirts of Rouen and Pont de Larche, on the Seine. The Germans were within fifty miles of Paris and the French radio announced that all schools in the capital were to be closed and the children sent out of the city.

That morning at dawn a new attack had been launched on a wide front, from Château-Porcien to the Argonne. The French had stemmed it, but 2,000,000 men and 3,500 tanks were now storming their line along the entire front from the sea to Montmédy, and General Weygand, the hope of France, had spoken, saying: ‘We have reached the last quarter of the vital hour.’

Italy’s entry into the battle was unquestionably imminent, but Gregory felt that if only he could find and kill the Black Baroness there was just a chance that, with her
evil
influence removed from Mussolini’s immediate followers, wiser counsels might yet prevail.

That night, therefore, he went back to the station for another endeavour to get near enough to
Il Duce’s
train to question some of the people on it. He felt that, as the Italians are very open to bribery, if only he could get hold of one of the cooks or attendants they might be induced to tell him whether the Baroness had visited the train, or give him some fresh line to work on; but when he got to the station the train was no longer there.
Il Duce
was on his way back to Rome.

Weary, angry and despondent, Gregory inquired about the first train south by which he could follow and found that the next did not leave until 5.40 in the morning. For a moment he considered ringing up Desaix to ask him to fly north and take him back to Rome in his plane, but he abandoned the project almost as soon as it entered his head. Desaix was a Frenchman and he, as the Reverend Eustace, was travelling on an English
passport. Turin was now a military area and it was certain that the Italian authorities would not allow aircraft belonging to their potential enemies to come and go freely from it any longer. The two of them might even be arrested on suspicion and detained. If that happened it might be days before they could get free again, or if Italy entered the war they might find themselves in a concentration-camp for good. He went back to the hotel, slept naked on account of the torrid heat, and caught the train south just as dawn was breaking.

He had come to loathe the sight of his thick, black clergyman’s clothes and during the seemingly endless morning they proved almost unendurable. By mid-day the steel train was like a furnace and his clerical dog-collar had been reduced to a limp rag.

The papers that he bought in stations where the train stopped informed him that the French Army was still intact and that for the last few days fresh British forces which had been landed in France had been holding a sector on the French left flank. Churchill had sent a message to Reynaud promising that every available man should be rushed across from those units which still had arms and equipment, and calling upon the French to hold fast.

The Italian Press was now openly screaming for war. ‘Nice, Corsica, Tunis!’ they cried in union, aching to get their dirty fingers on the loot, like a sneak thief who sees a householder at night already being bludgeoned by a powerful burglar. To add to the overflowing cup, the British aircraft-carrier
Glorious
and the destroyers
Asarta
and
Ardente
had been sunk while pulling the Army’s chestnuts out of the fire in another ‘skilfully conducted’ evacuation. After all the shouting we had abandoned Narvik and left to their fate all that remained of the wretched Norwegians, who apparently had covered our withdrawal by a gallant action.

Arrived in Rome, Gregory drove straight to the Excelsior, and from there rang up the Villa Godolfo. A manservant answered him and he asked if
Madame la Baronne
was at home. To his immense relief he learned that she was, so he gave his name as the Reverend Eustace Arberson and asked the man to find out if the
Baronne
had received a letter of introduction which he had sent her some days before.

The man left the line and after being away some minutes returned to say that
Madame la Baronne
regretted her apparent
discourtesy in not having acknowledged
Pére
Arberson’s letter, but that she had been away for several days and had got back only early that morning. Unfortunately she was leaving the Villa Godolfo again that evening so she could not ask him to lunch or dine, but if he cared to come out that afternoon she would be most happy to see him.

Gregory thanked the man, said that he would certainly come out that afternoon and hung up. He telephoned Collimard that he would be round in half an hour, had a quick bath to freshen himself up after his journey, and took a taxi to the
Via Veneto
, After having had the very minor ravages which had occurred in his numerous patches of false hair during his two days absence from Rome made good he rang up Desaix to warn him to go to the air-port, get ready to take off at once and stand by there until further orders. Collimard, whose part it was to take him to the Villa and get him away again swiftly, then led him round to a garage where a car was in readiness. Gregory got in the back and the Frenchman took the wheel as though he was the driver of a car that had been hired for the afternoon. Shortly before three they set off for the Villa Godolfo.

The sun was still grilling down and Gregory dared not mop his face except with the greatest care, for fear of deranging Collimard’s excellent work; but in other respects the journey was a pleasant one, as it lay along the famous ‘
Via Appia
’ for thirteen miles towards Alban, then round the shore of the Albano Lake to the little town of Marino. Half a mile past the town Collimard pointed out the Villa.

It was a lovely house set on the hill among terraced gardens and cypresses, looking right out over the lake. A short, private road led round to its entrance on the other side of the building. Gregory was hating with all his heart the thought of the task that lay before him; nevertheless he was determined to go through with it. As they pulled up he leant forward to Collimard and said in a low voice:

‘I don’t think I shall be long, as I mean to do the job immediately we’re alone together. Be ready to start the second you see me coming out of the front door, and drive like blazes for the air-port.’

Collimard nodded. ‘
Bien, mon ami
. We may both be executed for this, but,
by God
, it will be worth it.
Bonne chance!
’

A black-clad servant had already appeared in the doorway,
and immediately Gregory gave the name of the Reverend Eustace Arberson he was led inside, through a wide hail to a fine room, the tall windows of which had a lovely view across the lake. The little Black Baroness was sitting there curled up on a sofa and she extended her hand to him with a charming smile.

As he took it his whole instinct was to get the terrible thing that he had to do over, whip away his hand and pull out his gun; but he knew that the servant was still standing in the doorway behind him. He must at least play the part of the Reverend Eustace long enough for the man to close the door and get away to his own quarters.

Half Gregory’s mind was now obsessed with the murder he was about to commit. Was his gun loose enough in its shoulder-holster for a quick draw? Would the silencer on it work properly? Would he be able to make a quick, clean job of it and shoot her through the heart before she realised his purpose? Or would she leap up the second she saw him produce his gun and endeavour to escape so that he had to shoot her in the back, perhaps several times, before she died? If that happened, her screams might rouse the household and his escape would be seriously jeopardised. That must not occur if it could possibly be avoided. The only thing to do, then, to make quite certain that she did not scream before she died was to wait until her back was turned and shoot her through the heart from behind.