Shadows of War (22 page)

‘Unlike Reggie?’ said Conrad.

‘Your brother is just ignorant,’ said Anneliese. ‘Millie wasn’t. She was fun.’

‘Yes, she was,’ said Conrad.

‘How do you feel?’ Anneliese asked.

Conrad was flummoxed by the simplicity of the question. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘This is war. People will die.’

‘Oh, Conrad, don’t be so bloody British! Of course people will die. And it will be horrible for their brothers and sisters.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Conrad said stiffly. He glanced at Anneliese. His chest was churning with a turmoil of emotions to do with Millie. He hadn’t sorted them out; he hadn’t expressed them. He hadn’t even wept yet. He
had
been angry with his father. With Theo.

Anneliese waited.

Conrad was tempted to change the subject. To make a joke. To avoid at all costs cracking the wall that he was erecting around those thoughts about Millie. To behave how an Englishman should. But Anneliese wasn’t like that; his relationship with Anneliese wasn’t like that. They had shared a lot in Germany, and she had sought him out then, when she thought he needed support and strength.

It had been so good to hear her voice on the phone. It was good to be with her now, surrounded by a cocoon of noise and uniforms standing around their table.

‘I’m sad,’ he said, slowly and carefully, concentrating on not allowing his voice to crack. He was speaking quietly and in German: in the hubbub of the pub none of the servicemen around them would be able to hear. ‘I’m very sad. Millie had such a zest for life, such honesty, such enthusiasm. It’s wrong that she has gone. And it makes me angry. Very angry. So angry I can hardly think straight.’

‘Why are you angry?’ Anneliese asked.

Conrad struggled for a moment to maintain his composure. ‘I’m angry because it is wrong that a young woman like her should die, even in a war. She’s not a soldier. And I’m really angry about how she died.’

‘Yes. I don’t understand that,’ said Anneliese. ‘Your mother said she had been killed while on holiday in the Netherlands. That sounded very strange. I remember you saying you were going away. Were you with her?’

‘No,’ Conrad shook his head. ‘I did go to Holland; I just didn’t know she was there as well.’

Conrad told Anneliese all about Millie’s meeting with Theo, arranged by their father and Sir Henry Alston. He recounted what Constance had told him about how she had found Millie’s body in the dunes.

Anneliese listened intently. ‘And you knew nothing about any of this?’

‘No. Despite the fact that I saw Theo in Leiden the day before he met Millie. And that I spent the night at Kensington Square with Father and Millie just before I left for Holland. She and Constance must have been on the next flight!’

‘No wonder you are angry,’ said Anneliese.

‘It’s not just that,’ said Conrad. He paused, took a sip of his beer. ‘I should have gone instead of her. Father asked me, but I refused, and so he asked Millie instead and she said yes. And that’s why she’s dead. So I’m angry with myself.’

‘You can’t blame yourself for that,’ Anneliese said. ‘You didn’t kill her. You didn’t send her.’

Conrad shrugged.

‘What was she talking to Theo about?’

‘I’d better not say,’ said Conrad. ‘But you can probably guess. My dealings with Theo didn’t turn out too well either, although I didn’t think then that was Theo’s fault. At least I assumed it wasn’t. Now I’m not sure what the hell Theo was up to.’

Conrad knew he shouldn’t tell Anneliese about Oakford’s peace talks, or the shooting at Venlo, which was still being inaccurately reported in the British newspapers. But perhaps he should reassess Theo’s profession of lack of knowledge of Major Schämmel’s identity. Could he trust his friend after all?

‘Damn Theo,’ Conrad said, his voice still low.

‘For not telling you?’

‘For not telling me. And for not protecting Millie for me. You know, this Constance woman says that Millie and Theo had some sort of romance going on? Since last spring when they met in Switzerland. He never told me about
that
either. And also...’

‘Also what?’

‘The secret service seem to think that he killed Millie.’

‘No! That can’t be right!’

‘Constance saw a man walking from the dunes to the tram stop. She thinks it was Theo.’

‘Thinks? So she isn’t certain?’

‘Not one hundred per cent. But close to certain. She seems to have convinced the secret service.’

‘And what do you think?’

‘I hope it wasn’t him.’ Conrad shrugged. ‘But he’s a spy, Anneliese. We can never be sure what he is really doing or why. I want to see him. I really must see him.’

‘Can you manage that somehow?’ Anneliese asked.

‘I don’t see how. I do have a way of getting touch with him, but I can’t just swan over to Holland again. I have to go back to the battalion on Tuesday.’

Anneliese sipped her gin, thinking. ‘What’s happened to Millie?’ she asked. ‘Her body, I mean. Is it still in Holland?’

‘The Dutch authorities are keeping hold of her,’ Conrad said. ‘They have done a post-mortem, of course, but her body is evidence in a murder inquiry. The embassy is supposed to be dealing with it, but they seem useless. It’s all rather ghoulish. Mother can’t stand it, and it makes it impossible to arrange the funeral.’

‘Shouldn’t someone go over there to sort it out?’ said Anneliese. ‘You, for instance?’

‘Maybe I should,’ said Conrad. He nodded as he thought it through. ‘Good idea. I’ll talk to Father about it.’

‘What about this woman Constance? Who is she?’

‘That’s a good question. She was Millie’s companion in Holland. She is some sort of friend of Sir Henry Alston, who is one of my father’s fellow directors at Gurney Kroheim and a Conservative MP. He’s definitely pro-German, but then my father is pro-German. Hell, I’m pro-German. But I think Alston might be pro-Nazi, which is a very different thing. You know that as well as anyone.’

‘I do,’ said Anneliese.

‘I have my doubts about Constance.’

‘Why?’

‘We met at this place called the Russian Tea Rooms. On the surface it looks very respectable, but they had copies of
Truth
there – it’s an obnoxious anti-Semitic magazine. A kind of British
Völkischer Beobachter
.’

‘I’ve never seen it,’ said Anneliese.

‘Good. Don’t. Also, I spotted Captain Maule Ramsay; he’s a right-wing pro-Nazi MP, much further to the right than Alston. Constance seemed at home there. Her story doesn’t stack up very well; for example, she said she got up early in the morning to follow Millie to her rendezvous with Theo, but she didn’t really explain
why
she had done that. Or at least not satisfactorily. I’d really like to do some more digging, but I can’t. I don’t have the time.’

Anneliese sipped her drink. Conrad felt a surge of warmth towards her. Talking to her had lifted some of enormous weight he felt bearing down on him. Only some of it, and only for a moment, but it had felt good to speak to her, and he was grateful that she had made him do it. Naturally he was bloody angry, who wouldn’t be?

She seemed different, a little less withdrawn, a little less wrapped up in her own misery, a little more like the old Anneliese.

‘Perhaps I could help,’ she said, putting her glass down and looking straight at him.

‘You? How? You can’t go to Holland to see Theo.’

‘No. But I could find out more about Constance. She was with Millie when she died. It sounds as if you think she might know what really happened. If I make friends with her, maybe I can discover what that was.’

‘But you are half-Jewish. And German. How are you going to do that?’

‘I’m half not-Jewish. And I know a lot about Nazis. If you are right about her, she might enjoy having a Nazi German friend.’

Conrad smiled. ‘Anneliese, I really appreciate you doing this for me, but don’t worry about it.’

‘Why not?’ said Anneliese. ‘I saw Wilfrid Israel last Saturday and asked him if I could do something for Captain Foley. Something secret to help the war. I haven’t heard back yet, but I really want to do something useful. And if I can’t do something useful for your country, perhaps I can do something useful for you.’

Conrad realized he
was
talking to the old Anneliese. And he liked it.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘It sounds crazy to me, but if you really want to do it, have a go.’

Kensington, London, 20 November

‘I hope you can persuade them to release her, Conrad,’ Lord Oakford said. ‘It will be a great comfort to your mother to know that Millie is safely buried in St Peter’s churchyard.’

‘It will be to all of us,’ said Conrad. Although he knew they would all be relieved if he succeeded in bringing Millie back to Somerset, he also knew that the hole she had left in their family would always be there, just as her elder brother’s absence had hovered over them for the last ten years. His mother had been near to hysteria, more upset even than she had been after Edward’s death. Lady Oakford was usually the calm centre of the family, the stable counterweight to her husband’s moods, the source of common sense and sanity. Her raw grief, although it should have been understandable, was a shock for her husband and her son. Any activity was better than nothing.

So Oakford had jumped at Conrad’s suggestion that he go and fetch Millie’s body, and that morning had spoken directly to the Ambassador in The Hague, whom of course he knew, to arrange it. Conrad had booked a flight to Schiphol in two days’ time. Colonel Rydal had reluctantly agreed to a few days’ extension of his leave.

They were sitting in Lord Oakford’s study in the house in Kensington Square. Although there was a copy of
The Times
by his father’s armchair, it was unread. When Conrad had entered the room, his father had been staring out of the window, and when he had turned towards his son, his eyes were glazed, vacant. Lord Oakford’s passivity was worrying in its own way; it seemed fragile, a thin shell that could at any moment be shattered by the rage that Conrad knew must be bubbling underneath. But at least it had allowed Conrad to be civil to him while he was forced to stay at Kensington Square. Conrad was doing his best to control his own temper, which was extremely difficult, given that he still blamed his father for Millie’s death. He hadn’t forgiven him; he didn’t see how he could ever forgive him.

‘Can you tell me a bit about the Duke of Windsor?’ Conrad asked. ‘I missed all the fuss over the abdication, I was in Spain.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Was he forced to abdicate? And if he was, were there reasons beyond his desire to marry Wallis Simpson? His pro-German attitude perhaps?’

‘There’s no doubt that Mrs Simpson was the main reason. The government, and the dominions, felt he couldn’t be king and be married to a divorced woman, which it was clear he had every intention of doing. Many people felt that putting his lover before his country was an appalling failure of duty as king. Winston supported him, but what would you expect from Winston?’

‘Was anyone concerned about his friendship with Germany?’

‘Yes, they were,’ Oakford admitted. ‘He had had a number of meetings with senior Nazis, in particular Hess and Ribbentrop. When he became king, he took a more active interest in government policy than his father had. He put pressure on Stanley Baldwin not to react to Hitler’s invasion of the Rhineland in 1936. There was a lot of concern about Mrs Simpson and her friendship with various unsavoury Germans in London. Ribbentrop saw her all the time while he was German Ambassador, sent her roses every day. The security service had a sordid file on her.’

‘Sordid?’

‘Oh, yes. She spent time in China, you know, and there is supposed to be a file somewhere about techniques she learned in brothels while she was there. Something called the “Singapore Grip”. Do you know what that is?’

‘No,’ said Conrad, although he could have a guess. But since he was talking to his father, he decided not to.

‘Probably just as well,’ said his father. ‘They also discovered that while Edward was king, Mrs Simpson was seeing a car salesman named Trundle whom she appeared to be paying.’ Oakford sighed. ‘It’s very painful to watch your sovereign abandon his kingdom for a woman who is sleeping with a car salesman.’

‘I can see that,’ said Conrad. ‘And you? What did you think about the abdication?’

‘As you probably remember, I fell out with him over his interference in the Abyssinian affair.’ Conrad did remember: in 1935 Mussolini had made a grab for Abyssinia and the British and French governments, with Samuel Hoare as Foreign Secretary had let him get away with it, strongly encouraged by the then Prince of Wales. Lord Oakford didn’t disagree with the government’s policy, but he had resigned from the Cabinet over what he considered the misleading statements from the government about their negotiations with the French and Italians. Lying, he had called it.

‘And I think he was a bloody fool to abdicate. He should have toughed it out. Henry VIII did – you could say that divorce is what kicked off the Church of England. He was also a bloody fool to hobnob with the Nazis, but I’m sure he doesn’t actually agree with them. And he has good instincts for peace. Did you read that broadcast he made from Verdun last spring?’

‘I read about it,’ said Conrad. ‘It caused quite a stir, didn’t it?’ A few months before the outbreak of war, the duke had used the occasion of a visit to the Verdun battlefield to make an impassioned speech for peace, which was broadcast by an American radio station.

‘It did,’ said Oakford. ‘But it made sense to me.’ He frowned. ‘Why all these questions?’

‘After Holland, I went to Paris,’ Conrad said. ‘And I heard some worrying rumours about the duke.’

‘There are always worrying rumours about the duke,’ said Lord Oakford. ‘People don’t like him after he chucked the throne. But he loves his country, I’m sure of that. And he is still a member of the royal family, a former king. It’s absurd to think that he would do anything to betray England.’

‘Absurd?’

‘Absurd,’ Oakford repeated. His frown deepened. ‘I know what it is! You think because he believes in peace he doesn’t love his country. Why can’t you understand that it’s exactly
because
we love our country that people like him, and me for that matter, believe that we shouldn’t be fighting? The war will ruin us. Once it gets going, hundreds of thousands of Englishmen will lose their lives. We might even lose the damn thing. Is that good for Britain? Answer me that!’