Something Wicked (15 page)

‘
Blicken Sie
!’

Edward followed his gaze and saw Jack Amery with a girl wearing too much make-up and not enough clothes who, on closer inspection, proved to be Una. He really did not want to have to socialize with them again but it appeared he had no alternative. It wasn’t entirely Amery’s fault. He was doing his best to pretend he had not seen them but Kleist was not so easily put off. He rose from the table, upsetting his wine as he did so, his napkin still tucked in his shirt. He touched Amery on the arm and, as he turned, embraced him in a bear hug which almost brought them both to the floor.

Speaking in German too fast for Edward to follow, he dragged Amery over to the table. ‘Lord Edward Corinth, Herr Amery – my friend Jack. Do you know each other?’ Kleist reverted to English for Edward’s benefit.

Edward had risen. ‘We do,’ Edward admitted, shaking Amery’s hand and smiling at Una. ‘How do you come to know . . .?’

‘Ewald? We got to know each other in Berlin. He’s a good chap,’ Amery said vaguely, ‘but he ought not to be here. I won’t tell a soul, Scout’s honour, but they’ll know about it at the Embassy and they won’t be happy. Not at all happy.’

‘I tried to persuade Jack not to back Hitler,’ Kleist said boisterously. ‘I told him he was after the wrong horse. Is my English correct?’

‘Quite correct,’ Amery assured him. ‘We disagreed on that point but Ewald took me to his estate in Pomerania and we shot bear or peasants or something.’

Kleist snorted with laughter. ‘He is such a joker – is he not, Lord Edward?’

‘A joker,’ Edward agreed drily. ‘You had a meeting with Hitler, Mr Amery?’

‘I was so fortunate, yes.’ He spoke defiantly. ‘He is a great man. Do not believe the lies you hear about him.’

Kleist turned away to talk to Una and the two of them went on to the dance floor. Amery frowned and seemed about to object. Instead he suddenly asked, ‘What are you doing in Ciro’s with my friend Ewald?’

Edward, who by this time had given up any hope that Kleist’s visit could be kept a secret, said, ‘He wants to put his views across to the British Government – as a private citizen, you understand.’ He wondered if he had been indiscreet. Two dinners and rather too much wine had loosened his tongue. ‘Keep it to yourself, will you, Amery?’ he added, guiltily. ‘We don’t want to get him into trouble. From what he has told me I get the feeling that he has already put a noose around his neck just by coming here.’

Kleist was clutching Una to him like a lifebelt but Amery, who was now halfway through a bottle of Barsac, appeared not to notice.

It was very late before Edward was able to prise Kleist off the obliging girl. Amery had disappeared but Una professed not to be worried. She said she frequently had to find her own way home. After having had too much to drink, she said, her husband would often spend the night walking the streets ‘to avoid his enemies’.

‘What enemies?’ Edward asked.

Una shrugged her shoulders. ‘Real or imagined, he has plenty of enemies,’ she joked. Edward asked if she had enough money – they were apparently staying with her father-in-law. She took ten shillings off him without compunction and Edward, when he got his bill, found that he was also paying a substantial sum for Jack’s gallant attempt to empty Ciro’s wine cellar. He paid up and contemplated putting the cost of the evening on an expenses form and giving it to Ferguson. It would be worth it just to see his face.

Edward was exhausted, as he bundled Kleist into a taxi, and he wondered at the man’s stamina. He had travelled for two days and could still drink and dance half the night. As he said goodnight in the hotel lobby, he asked, ‘When did you say you got to know Mr Amery?’

‘When he was in Berlin seeing Hitler. He had to wait many days until our beloved Chancellor had time to meet him.’

‘What did he want with Hitler? Do you know?’

‘There was no secret why he was in Berlin. Jack could not keep a secret if he wanted – not when he has had a few drinks, you understand.’ Kleist mimed gulping down a drink. ‘Anyway, he was proud to have been given such an important job.’

‘Which was?’

‘Sir Oswald Mosley had sent him to beg for money.’

‘And did Hitler gave him any?’

‘So he claims. That’s why he’s celebrating tonight. He takes – what do you say? – the cream for himself.’

‘He steals from Mosley?’ Edward wasn’t sure what shocked him most – that Hitler was financing the British Union of Fascists or that Amery was creaming some of it off for himself.

‘It’s commission. It is the way things are done. There is much corruption at the court of King Hitler,’ Kleist said bitterly. ‘That is why he must go. He is not an officer . . . not a gentleman.’

Edward turned up at Claridge’s prompt on nine the following morning expecting to have to dig Kleist out of bed but he was waiting in the lobby, bright-eyed and sober. They shook hands but avoided mentioning the previous night’s festivities. They reached the Foreign Office ten minutes early and had to kick their heels until Sir Robert Vansittart was ready to see them.

Vansittart had been the administrative head of the Foreign Office but had resigned when Anthony Eden resigned as Foreign Secretary. The Prime Minister had ‘kicked him upstairs’ and given him a rather vague job as chief adviser on foreign affairs to the government. Edward had had dealings with him before and admired him. He had assumed he would wait outside while Vansittart and Kleist talked but Vansittart insisted that he join them.

As soon as they were seated, Edward was made aware that Vansittart had only grudgingly agreed to meet Kleist. He looked at his watch on two occasions as Kleist spoke – eloquently, Edward thought – of the growing opposition to Hitler among army officers and the aristocracy. He admitted they had made a mistake in thinking they could control Hitler. They had tried to use him but he had used them. Now, he was out of control and had to be stopped.

‘But what do you want us to do about it?’ Vansittart asked testily.

‘Money to help us organize and a message of sup-port . . .’

‘That’s quite out of the question,’ Vansittart responded, almost angry. ‘The British Government can only be seen to deal with the government of another country. We cannot stoop to conspiracy.’

Now it was Kleist’s turn to get angry. He told Vansittart that he and his friends were the only opposition to Hitler and, if they were not supported on some legalistic pretext, there would be war by the end of the year.

‘Hitler is a mad dog,’ he said, leaning forward and jabbing the air with his finger. ‘There is only one way of dealing with a mad dog. You must put it down.’

Vansittart raised his eyebrows. ‘You are asking us to support political assassination? That is not possible. It is not . . . it is not English.’

Edward thought Vansittart was being rather absurd. To play by rules your opponent does not recognize is a sure way to defeat. However, it was not his place to say anything.

‘What about Julius Caesar?’ Kleist appealed to the classicist in Vansittart. ‘Brutus was an honourable man but he detested tyrants and tyranny.’

‘And that led to a savage civil war,’ was all Vansittart would say.

The meeting was over in half an hour and Kleist came away dejected. There would after all, Vansittart had told him, be no meeting with Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary. They were not due to see Churchill until the afternoon as Kleist had naively imagined that he might spend the whole morning with Vansittart.

On an impulse, Edward invited him to lunch at his club. They sat in the morning-room talking quietly of Hitler and the situation in Berlin, Edward growing ever more gloomy. Kleist spoke movingly of his estate in Pomerania, north-east of Berlin. He had opposed Hitler long before he came to power and had steadfastly refused to fly the Nazi flag over his schloss. He had been arrested twice but never held for long yet Edward sensed that, in the end, the Nazis would kill him. He had a son in the army, who was also an outspoken critic of Hitler, and was more fearful for his son than for himself. He was convinced that, once the German generals had decided on peace, Hitler would be over-thrown within forty-eight hours and a monarchist government restored.

When it was a reasonable hour to move to the bar, Kleist asked for bourbon – a taste he explained he had acquired on a visit to the United States – but had to settle for Scotch. Edward ordered champagne which he thought might lift his spirits. He was mistaken.

Over lunch, Edward tried to discover more about Jack Amery’s visit to Berlin but Kleist could add little to their conversation the previous evening. One odd fact he did discover – quite by chance – was that James Herold had been an early enthusiast for the Fascist cause and had met Hitler in 1932, before he had come to power.

‘Hitler has always been obsessed by mountains,’ Kleist explained. ‘He says he only feels free in the mountains where he can breathe fresh air.’ When Hitler heard that the celebrated mountaineer was in Berlin, after climbing in the Alps, he had insisted on meeting him. Kleist said the two men had got on well and Herold had met Hitler on two further visits to Germany.

Edward mused on the attraction Hitler held for other-wise decent men. They could not see beyond the image he presented to the world – the idealized image of the blond Aryan, the emphasis on healthy exercise. A British public schoolboy, educated to believe in the Roman ideal of
mens sana in corpore sano
, could – Edward supposed – by closing his eyes to the racial hatred that condemned thousands of Germany’s citizens to a squalid death in what were now being called concentration camps, mistake Hitler for a heroic figure who had risen above the corruption and com-promise of democratic politics. Jack Amery – like Churchill – had been educated at Harrow but with very different results.

In the afternoon, rather the worse for drink, Edward decanted Kleist at Morpeth Mansions, Churchill having declined to meet him at the House of Commons. This time, Edward refused to be there while Kleist again begged for public support for the conservative opposition. He thought he knew what Churchill’s answer would be. He would listen with sympathy and tell him that, if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia – which seemed increasingly likely – England ‘would not stand idly by’.

In fact, Churchill went further and gave Kleist a letter laying out his views which he could show to the army officers if it would persuade them openly to oppose Hitler’s mad gamble. He ended by saying that, once Britain went to war, it would fight until the bitter end. Victory or death were the only options. Churchill also promised to pass Kleist’s views on to the Foreign Secretary.

Kleist came out of the meeting much happier but Edward, who by now knew Churchill quite well, hoped that his ‘bullishness’ had not misled Kleist. Edward was convinced that Britain would never go to war to defend Czechoslovakia but, of course, it was not up to him to say so.

It was with some relief that he delivered Kleist to his train that evening. There had been no assassination attempt, no journalistic debacle, nothing in short to which Ferguson could object. However, when he left Victoria, he again saw Major Stille who eyed him with such cold hatred that a shiver ran down his spine. When he looked back the man had gone, but he was aware that he now faced two deadly enemies – the murderer of his friend, Eric Silver, and at least three others as well as an agent of the German Government who must now know that he was working for Special Branch or MI5. Edward did not make the mistake of underestimating his enemy. He knew Stille of old as a ruthless man who would not hesitate to kill if he thought it necessary.

When he got back to Albany he felt drained and even Fenton’s offer of lamb cutlets did not make him feel much better. He opened a bottle of his favourite claret and when Fenton came into the drawing-room to tell him that his supper was ready, he found him fast asleep in an armchair.

7

On his return to Henley, the first thing he did was visit Verity. He found her very much better and she said she was feeling stronger.

‘The last time they examined my sputum, Dr Bladon said I was much improved.’

‘Good, I’m glad,’ Edward responded weakly.

‘You know, if I don’t improve, they’ll have to collapse my lung.’

‘Collapse your lung?’ he echoed, feeling ill himself. ‘That sounds unpleasant.’

‘You can say that again! They take away your ribs . . . well, not
your
ribs,
my
ribs, and press the lung down. You see, the bacilli can’t live if the lung doesn’t work. Oh, I’m sorry. You’ve gone quite pale.’

‘I . . . Please don’t tell me any more, V. It makes me feel . . .’

‘I don’t see why you should feel ill just because I tell you what I’m in for,’ she said with something of her old combativeness. ‘Oh well, let’s change the subject. You remember Kay Stammers?’

‘Of course!’

‘Well, she’s invited me to see her plane. There’s an airfield not far from here. Or rather it’s just a field at the moment but they are beginning to convert it into an aerodrome in case – if there’s a war – the RAF need it. Kay flies all over the place. That’s what I’m going to do when I’m better.’

‘I thought you were going to be a tennis player.’

‘I can do both, can’t I? Look at Kay. She cheered me up no end by telling me about Alice Marble.’

‘Remind me who she is. I know her name.’

‘She’s a tennis player – one of the best. She collapsed on court during the French championships in 1934 and the doctors diagnosed TB. They said she would never play again. She refused to believe it and returned in 1936, fitter and faster, and beat Kay in the Wimbledon finals 6–1, 6–1.’

‘That’s right! I remember now.’ Edward knitted his brow. ‘I say, Kay’s not going to take you up in her paper bag, is she? I know you are much better but . . .’

‘Don’t worry! I won’t take any risks. I want to get better so I know I must be good and not do too much.’ The idea of Verity being good made Edward raise his eyebrows but he said nothing. ‘Kay’s been wonderful. She’s going to introduce me to her friend Phyllis King. She won the Queen’s Club ladies’ singles in ’33 and ’34 and was in the finals last year. Kay thinks she’ll win again this year.’