The Quality of Mercy (17 page)

They spoke quickly in German knowing that they would soon be interrupted. ‘Mandl? He is with you?’

‘Of course! And he’s in a very evil temper. He had a meeting with an English admiral last night who he hoped would buy his guns but he refused.’

‘Ah, that is good! I am glad. The British should have no dealings with the Nazis. So now you go back to Vienna?’

‘On Monday.’

‘Why do you not stay here? I am lonely. You do not love that man.’

‘I cannot, Georg. You know I cannot. My child is still in Vienna. Unless I can find a way of bringing her with me . . . I would never see her again if I left her. I asked your friend, Lord Edward Corinth, to help me. He said he would try and think of something but,’ she added gloomily, ‘I know no one can outwit Helmut. He hates me now but he still needs me. Hitler has asked to see me again. It is said he watches
Last Night in Vienna
very often . . . too often. He scares me, Georg. If I do not please him then . . .’

‘
Schnell
! Don’t look round but I see Lord Louis coming towards us. Meet me later at the stables during the polo game, if you can. I have something to say to you . . . for old times’ sake.’

‘
Natürlich
,
Liebling
. . .’ Then in English – as Hedwig Kiesler became Joan Miller again – she introduced Georg to Mountbatten.

‘Herr Dreiser, Lord Edward has been telling me about you. We must talk later.’ Turning to Joan and effectively removing her from Georg, he murmured, ‘Your husband is disappointed, I am afraid.’

‘After his talk to your admiral?’

‘Yes, I did my best but . . . I have told him to be patient but he says there is no time and that you must return to Vienna. Tell me,’ he said, touching her hand, ‘is there anything I can do? I would so like to see you again.’

She gave him her film-star smile. ‘I am afraid there is nothing any of us can do, Lord Louis. I want to go to Hollywood and be a film star . . .’

‘And I can help you,’ Mountbatten said eagerly. ‘I have friends . . .’

She raised her hand to stop him. ‘Instead, I shall return to my child . . . to Vienna . . . to Berlin. We shall never meet again.’

Mountbatten looked put out. ‘Come and talk to Herr Braken. Between ourselves, I think he’s a little bored. You know him, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes, I know Putzi,’ she agreed wryly. ‘You want me to entertain him for you, Lord Louis?’

‘That would be very kind.’

Each team consisted of four players with the Broadlands Fencibles – Ayesha, Sunita and Frank under Mountbatten’s captaincy – taking on four sailors from the Bluejackets. There were to be six chukkas of seven minutes each and Mountbatten warned Frank that he would find it exhausting. ‘You start with a handicap of minus two goals as a beginner but you should come out with something better.’

‘What’s your handicap, sir?’ Frank inquired.

‘Seven,’ Mountbatten replied modestly.

‘Golly!’

‘I like to win, my boy,’ Mountbatten said, baring his teeth.

Edward – munching smoked-salmon sandwiches and sipping champagne – was talking to Putzi in the marquee. This was not proving as hard work as he had feared. Delighted at last to be hobnobbing with the aristocracy Putzi was in high good humour. He was telling Edward about Hitler.

‘He has a very sweet tooth, as so many Austrians do. He adores those Viennese cakes piled high with sugared cream. I recall once watching him pouring a heaped tablespoon of sugar into a glass of Prince Metternich’s best Gewürztraminer! Fortunately, I was alone with him.’

‘Hitler’s manners are bad?’

Putzi leant forward and Edward caught a whiff of sour breath. ‘Between the two of us, Hitler is the best of the pack. That man Alfred Rosenberg – the Jew-hater – he was with us before Hitler became what he is, you understand. Dear Alfred never washed his shirts. He wore them till they stank and then threw them away. He had the taste of a costermonger’s donkey. Boorman’s no better. I’ve seen him sniff his own . . .’

Edward, suddenly nauseous, changed the subject. ‘You speak such good English because you were in America before the war?’

‘I went to New York after I finished at the Gymnasium in 1905. In many ways, those were the happiest days of my life.’

‘And you went to Harvard?’ Edward prompted.

‘I did and I may say I was much teased for being German. The United States may be a mongrel nation but Harvard is Anglo-Saxon, Christian and moral – very like your Oxford and Cambridge, I imagine.’

Edward wasn’t sure how moral his Cambridge had been but perhaps it had been rather smugly Christian and Anglo-Saxon. When he came to think of it, there had been only a handful of Jews and . . . But Putzi was holding forth.

‘I think I was popular in my four years there. I became president of the
Deutsche Verein
. I am a
Kunstmensch
– I celebrate all that is good in German culture.’

‘Indeed,’ Edward said fervently, ‘and Hitler likes that . . . culture?’

‘No, but he liked me. I played the piano for him. He likes being with superior people.’

And you are superior, Edward thought drily. God help the Reich!

‘I introduced the Führer to the Wagners – he adores those interminable operas – and to the Bechsteins and the Bruckmanns . . .’ He sounded wistful.

‘But not any more, I gather?’

Putzi shrugged. ‘Now he thinks only of war. I do not like war. I did not serve in the war, you know. Hitler holds it against me, I feel.’

‘And the
Anschluss
– did that come as a surprise?’

‘Not at all! I remember – it must have been in 1930 – I was with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. He was standing on the veranda looking across towards Salzburg. He said, “Look, Putzi, I was born over there in Braunau on the Inn.” I said to him, “Why don’t we drive over and see it?” He replied, “We will one day. It’s a real shame it doesn’t belong to us but they’ll come home into the Reich some day.”’

Edward was impressed. However foolish and debauched this man was, he certainly knew Hitler intimately and his insights into the mind of the madman who was threatening to bring disaster on a peace-loving world might well be useful.

‘You were very successful looking after the foreign press,’ he said, hoping flattery would get him somewhere. ‘I remember Miss Browne telling me how you helped a friend of hers . . .’

His eyes narrowed and he wiped his hands on his trousers as though wishing to rid himself of something unpleasant. ‘I have heard of her. She is a Communist. I do not like Communists, except perhaps that nice Mr Rose.’

Edward was taken aback. ‘Stuart Rose?’

‘Yes, he has been talking to me about America. I like America – except for the Jews. The American press always ask about the Jews. I say there are not so many Jews in Germany. Why not ask about the ninety per cent who are not Jews – who were unemployed and starving until the Führer rescued them? Ask me about that. Soon there will be no Jews in Germany for the Americans to worry about.’

Joan Miller appeared beside them looking more melancholy than ever. Putzi brightened. ‘Ah,
Liebling
! You will excuse me please, Lord Edward? I must talk to this beautiful lady . . .’ He took her hand and kissed it. ‘Ach! Those days . . . those happy days . . .’

Edward made himself scarce.

7

‘Who’s that over there?’ Edward – relieved to have done his duty with Putzi – was in a corner of the marquee with Adrian.

‘That’s Peter Gray’s niece, Vera. You remember . . .’

‘Of course! I was being stupid. I suppose I didn’t expect to see her here.’

‘Nor did I but apparently Mountbatten invited her. I’ve just been talking to her as a matter of fact. She said she was amazed to get a telephone call from him asking her down for the night. She said he was really nice about her uncle . . . He wanted to talk to her about him.’

‘So he has got a heart!’ Edward exclaimed. ‘I would never have thought . . .’

‘Stuart Rose is a friend of Mountbatten’s – he’s here too somewhere and it may have been him who suggested it.’

‘Rose! He seems to be everywhere and know everyone.’

‘You don’t like him?’ Adrian queried.

‘Do
you
like him?’ Edward countered.

‘I hardly know him but he seems amiable enough. Of course, he wants to get on – become a famous art critic or something. I’m not a bit surprised Mountbatten encourages him. Rose and Peter Murphy are great chums.’

‘That man!’ Edward said. ‘I’ve heard about him. He’s a queer too, isn’t he? Is he here today?’

‘Murphy? No. He’s in Kenya, I believe, on some sort of jaunt. Here comes Vera. Now be kind to her. I know she wants to ask your advice about something.’

Edward raised his hat. ‘Miss Gray – how very nice to see you again.’

‘Do excuse me, I see a friend over there,’ Adrian said tactfully and walked away leaving Vera to talk to Edward alone.

‘I had no idea you were a friend of Stuart Rose.’

‘Stuart knows everybody in our little world, Lord Edward.’

‘The art world, you mean?’

‘Yes.’ She looked at him, amused. ‘Adrian says you don’t much care for artists?’

‘That’s not true. I certainly like
him
.’ She lowered her eyes as though she did not know how to continue. ‘What is it, Miss Gray?’

‘Well, I . . . But, he tells me, you don’t like his paintings.’

‘I have to be honest, I don’t. But it’s all in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so . . .’ She sounded distracted.

‘Did you want to say something to me about your uncle’s death?’ Edward asked gently.

‘Yes,’ she said, grateful to be brought to the point. ‘Two things really. First of all, the doctor at the inquest said he had taken more than three times his usual dose of ergot.’

‘Could he have taken too much by mistake – forgotten he had already dosed himself?’

‘That’s what the coroner thought. The beastly stuff can give you hallucinations and generally confuse and upset you. Maybe he
was
confused and took a second dose.’ She did not sound as if she believed it. ‘It’s horrible stuff. It can even cause dementia if taken for too long a period, the doctor said.’

‘You didn’t see any sign that he was . . .’

‘Losing his mind? No. He was as sharp as ever. Better than he had been, in fact. He hadn’t needed ergot for some time, or so I thought. I was very surprised to discover he had started taking it again.’

Edward looked at her in surprise. Reg Harman had said he was forgetful. ‘As sharp as ever’? That didn’t ring true. ‘Could something have upset him – made him anxious?’ he suggested.

‘It’s possible but he would never have told me if there was. His depressions, which for so many years had been unbearable – so bad that sometimes he talked of ending it all – were not nearly so frequent. For a full year he had not had an attack to my knowledge. His work was going well and his paintings were beginning to sell. He had an exhibition planned, as you know? It’s rather beastly but the gallery thinks the publicity about his dying . . . Oh, I can’t bear to think about it! People are such ghouls – but they say it will help sell the paintings.’

‘That is horrible, Miss Gray, but as long as they are appreciated . . . Was there any other reason why his depressions had eased?’

‘Just time passing, I think. It’s so long since the war, the memories were fading. That’s what he said. It even made him feel guilty that he was no longer so haunted – as though he was betraying his dead friends – but I told him he had paid enough.’

‘I see. What was the other thing you wanted to tell me?’

‘He didn’t keep a diary. He wasn’t organized in that sort of way but he had a habit of writing notes to himself on the canvas he was painting – in the top left-hand corner usually. Then, when the picture was almost finished, he would paint them out and transfer any notes he still wanted to his next canvas.’

‘And you found something?’

‘I was just tidying up his studio and getting things ready for the exhibition. I was looking at the picture he was working on when he died and I suddenly saw it.’

‘What?’

‘A scribble in the top left-hand corner: R – or it could have been M – Tarn Hill – Sat.’

‘Hmm! You’ve no clue, presumably, to whom he was referring.’

‘No, I . . . I was just curious – the two things together.’

‘Are you suggesting he might have been murdered?’ Edward said slowly.

‘No, of course not,’ she was panting a little, ‘but he might have had a terrible shock . . . Like you said – perhaps something
did
upset him. Something I did not know about.’

Edward wondered what had made Vera change her mind so suddenly. Did she guess what was signified by the scribble on the corner of the canvas?

‘It’s certainly worth taking a bit further,’ he said carefully. ‘There’s not enough to warrant talking to the police. Leave it with me for the moment and I’ll put on my thinking cap. If we could find out who he was going to meet – if indeed there was anybody . . . By the way, what was the picture he was painting?’

‘It was another view from Tarn Hill. He had painted it dozens of times but he never seemed to get tired of it.’

‘How near to finishing it was he when he died?’

‘About halfway. He had a very odd way of painting – from the top of the canvas downwards. I’ve never known anyone else paint that way.’

‘I’d like to see it.’

‘The picture’s still in his studio in Mornington Crescent. I haven’t got round to clearing it out.’

‘No, of course not. May I come and have a look next week when we are back in London?’

‘Please do.’

‘Whatever you do, don’t paint over the notes on the canvas.’ She gave him a look and he added hastily, ‘I know you wouldn’t but . . . Put the picture somewhere safe when you get back to town. You never know, it could be evidence of something.’

‘You don’t think I’m imagining things?’

‘No, I don’t take you for the type of woman who would imagine something was wrong when it wasn’t.’

Vera looked relieved.

‘Thank you, Lord Edward. You are very kind to help me. I didn’t know who else to ask. Adrian suggested I talk to you.’

‘Well, I will do what I can to put your mind at rest, Miss Gray.’