The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler (12 page)

The last letter written to the Revd Mr Beard again has no date but it must come from some time in March 1679. It is an angry document, in parts barely coherent, and would appear to indicate an irrevocable rift between the two friends. It seems that Dr Hodnet had been invited to the Revd Mr Beard’s parish at Grantchester to deliver a Lenten sermon, and that this sermon had not gone well. Mr Beard had evidently objected strongly to some of the matter in Dr Hodnet’s discourse and he in turn had taken exception to these objections. His letter concludes thus:

You tell me that I said of our Lord that for forty days and forty nights he feasted in the desert when I had meant fasted, I protest before God that I did not. I protest. How could such a thing have passed my lips? What calumny is this, sir? Do you seek to drive me mad? And when you say that I had told your congregation: ‘he that hath fears to fear, let him fear,’ I did not. Do not try me with your foolishness, sir, and let all communication between us be at an end.

The final document I would have you consider is a pamphlet of a kind produced in thousands throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but which are now accounted rarities. This one is particularly rare. Indeed, the only one extant that I know of is in the possession of the St James’s College library. It is dated 1679 and is entitled:
A True and Faithfull Relation of the Most Lamentable and Mysterious Death of the Rev’d Elias Hodnet D.D., sometime Provost of St James’s College in the City of Cambridge.
The front of it carries a woodcut in a black border, crudely drawn but not without a certain power. It depicts a man standing in a pulpit in church, dressed in the usual lawn-sleeved surplice and black stole of an Anglican divine of that period. As no portrait survives of Dr Hodnet we do not know how true a likeness it is, but the figure is tall and lean with long lugubrious features. He is in the act of preaching but on his right shoulder crouches a curious black, misshapen creature with little stumpy wings. This demon holds up his hand to his mouth and whispers privily into Dr Hodnet’s ear. To the right and pointing downwards is a huge hand emerging from a cloud, such as you will see often in this kind of print and depicting the hand of God. The scroll along the top of the woodcut bears a quotation from Genesis 11 verse 7. ‘Go to, let us go downe and there confounde their language.’ I will spare you the pious moralising with which this ‘Relation’ (like so many others of its kind) is larded and confine myself to the significant facts.

The pamphlet begins with a generally laudatory account of Dr Hodnet’s career, but then it states, rather vaguely, that ‘’twas thought that in his latter years he became known of the Devill and reaped many rewards and benefits by that hellish association.’ It tells how, having once been a noted preacher, his sermons began to decline in popularity because he ‘began to wander in his wits, and dwelt overmuch upon the tortures of the damned.’ Then came the fatal day in the April of 1679 when he preached his last sermon in the church of St Bene’t’s in Cambridge.

The pamphlet reports:

He was to preach on that text from the Revelation of John: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock.’ And yet, in the course of his sermon, he was heard to travesty the words of this most sacred text as: ‘Behold, I stand at the bridge and wait.’ And each time he in error spoke these words—by what devilish prompting we dare not say—he did pause and look aghast and the most deadly pallor overspread his cheeks. Yet he continued to speak until his final peroration which we now set down just as he wrote it without alteration. Thus:—

‘It is certain that the Kingdom of Hell is of a truth within us, but also upon this earth. Surius saith that there be certain mouths of hell, and places appointed for the punishment of men’s souls, as at Hecla in Iceland, where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen, and sometimes talk with the living, and where lamentable screeches and howlings are continually heard, which strike a terror to the auditors; moreover, fiery chariots are commonly seen to bring in the souls of men in the likeness of crows, and devils ordinarily go in and out. For God would have such visible places, that mortal men might be certainly informed that there be such punishments after death, and learn hence to fear God. Thus we may glimpse, but through a glass darkly, what torments the Lord of this World hath prepared for they who serve him. In the vaults of his darknesse, beyond the wall of Death, are many cries, but all unheard there, for every appeal to mercy, every supplication for pardon is swallowed up in the maw of Him whose mouth is that of a Raging Lion, whose stare, like the Basilisk’s, turns all to stone, whose breath, like the Dragon, consumes with a raging fire, and whose body, like the Serpent’s, returns upon itself and choketh all within it. Very truly hath Isaiah spoken: “There is no peace, saith the Lord unto the Wicked.” For hath not the Lord of Heaven put those wicked persons into the hands of the Lord of this World? And hath not the Devil, for it is He, confounded their sleep with a thousand creeping things that wander unceasingly through the mazings of their house and minde, with many curious whisperings and scrapings? And hath not his servant Death put up his raw and bony head against my head and shrieked aloud words which I dare not speak? And are not the very waters of Baptism turned into a foul and stinking puddle? For when the soul is corrupted, then all is corrupt and there is no joy any more, and all the world is become a painted show. And behold he stands not at the door to knock, for the door is barred and bolted everlastingly. Behold there is another, by which I mean Satan, Lord of Hell, and he stands at the Bridge and waits, but he will not wait for long, for he is ravening to take us unto himself eternally.’

As he spoke these words all the congregation did sit in great amazement, and many, beholding his grasping of the air and the rolling of his eyes as he spoke, thought his wits distracted; and some said he was bewitched and thought to lay hold of him. But he of a sudden did run from the pulpit and out of the church door, and though some followed him few saw what happened next for he did run with great speed like a wild horse affrighted.

But there was a certain undergraduate, a Mr Kimball, who in an idle hour was standing fishing by the Queens’ Bridge over the Cam and we have it of him what happened next. As he was fishing by the bridge he noticed all of a sudden a figure upon the bridge that was dressed all in black with a black hat on his head. His features Mr Kimball could not see for they were all in shadow which he said was a curious thing for it was a fine morning. And another thing he did observe of the man which struck him with much amazement and that was that the man in black who had a large and corpulent body seemed to glister all over with water and that an odour was wafted from him which smelled much of the corrupt mud at the bottom of an old mill pond or of graveyard mould. Then, as he looked, Mr Kimball did see another man come running towards the bridge from the city, and this man was in his middle years, he said, narrow-looking and thin as a rush-light, and he ran, said Mr Kimball, as if seven devils were after him. Then, when this running man, who was Dr Hodnet, came to the bridge he halted as he saw the man in black. Then the man in black did stretch his arms towards Dr Hodnet, whether in greeting or for some other reason, Mr Kimball cannot say. Then Dr Hodnet uttered a great cry and ran at the man in black as if to strike him down, but the man in black folded his arms around Dr Hodnet and held him fast. Anon began a struggle which, sayth Mr Kimball, was most terrible to see for the man in black did grip Dr Hodnet with big splayed hands which, Mr Kimball reports, must have been gloved for they were as black as the rest of him, and the fingers being long were like the talons of a great eagle around the mean and frail body of the Reverend Dr Hodnet. And all the while Dr Hodnet did utter the most piteous cries, such as ‘Christ have mercy!’ and ‘Lord defend me, though I am but a sinner!’ Mr Kimball says that he dared not bring aid to this distracted man for, he said, he was held fast by mortal terror for his life and soul. Then Mr Kimball saw that with one great heave, the man in black did heave Dr Hodnet over the bridge and that he went with him into the flood. And they were swept down beneath the waters and in a moment had vanished from sight.

Such was the most lamentable and tragicall fate of the Reverend Dr Hodnet. Some days later his corpse was discovered some two miles down the river from where last he was seen, at Horningsea. His features being much blackened by corruption and eaten away of vermin, it was only by the aid of the Revd Mr Beard, who knew him from the rings on his fingers, that the body was shown to be the mortall remaines of the Provost of St James’s College. Of the Man in Black no trace or sign was ever found.

The reader may imagine for himself the kind of vapid moralising with which the pamphleteer concludes his sensational account. As to Hodnet’s sermons, whose beauties were said to rival those of Taylor himself, they were never to be published, as the Doctor dearly wished them to be. Moreover, the manuscripts have been lost to posterity, though I yet live in hopes of unearthing an example among the archives of St James’s College.

MAGUS ZOROASTER

Only the day before it happened I had been telling my agent how much I resembled Clive MacIver. And now he is dead; MacIver, that is; not—alas—my agent.

I was always being mistaken for him. This led to some embarrassing moments, such as when I was asked my opinion of the latest novel by Martin Amis in a book shop, or when I was attacked in an art gallery for not approving of Balthus. (And
I
like Balthus.) Sometimes I told them I was not Clive MacIver, but I wasn’t believed; so I found it easier just to give some drivelling reply and clear off.

I should explain. I am Alec Soames, a mere actor; Clive MacIver is—sorry,
was
—a television personality, an arts presenter, a regular participant in those programmes which review the week’s cultural highlights. He projected a personality of amused contempt, knowledgeable, not to say knowing, but detached. This appealed greatly to the British public, an essentially Philistine lot, which prefers expertise to enthusiasm. His languid voice had a slight Scottish accent which prevented him from appearing too snobbishly superior. I learned to do the voice very well, and amused my friends with a pastiche of his style:

‘I don’t understand why the English can’t play Brecht. What is Mother Courage after all but a lower class Lady Bracknell?’ And so on.

Well, I can’t do all that now because he is dead. Murdered in fact.

It all happened on a slightly sultry June night in London. At the time I was appearing at Wyndhams Theatre in a revival of
The Clandestine Marriage
, the eighteenth century comedy by Garrick and Colman. I was playing the not very large part of Traverse, a lawyer who appears at the start of the third act and then again in the last scene. It was a pleasant enough job, but I was not as busy as I would have liked or deserved to be. The production had received lukewarm reviews and was coming to the end of its shortish run.

The known facts about MacIver’s death, as far as I could gather from the newspapers, were these. On the night in question he was heard and seen leaving his flat in Ebury Street a little after seven. His movements after that were uncertain until he turned up at Harpo’s, a fashionable club in Dean Street, Soho at 9.05. He had some conversation with the barman, but seemed restless, had one drink and left. He must have gone straight back to his flat because at 9.40 the police received a frantic call from him on his mobile that he was being attacked in his home. When the police arrived they broke in to find him in his bedroom, stabbed. There were obvious signs of a struggle, but the knife which killed him had disappeared, as had the mobile phone with which he warned the police.

The obituaries and tributes spoke fulsomely of MacIver’s intellectual and presentational gifts. He was ‘a true populist and yet a brilliant academic who maintained his scholarly integrity in bringing culture to the masses.’ At the same time I detected a certain lack of personal warmth in these eulogies. One colleague described him as ‘a lively and entertaining companion’, but that was as far as it went. I gathered that there was a wife and child from whom he had been living apart, but that there had been no-one in particular in his life when he died. A rather irregular sexual lifestyle was hinted at.

A week after MacIver’s murder the notice went up at the theatre: we were to close in a fortnight. I was not looking forward to being out of work. When I rang up my agent she told me that things were ‘very quiet just at the moment’. It is a phrase which her profession uses all too often. The life of a theatrical agent, it seems, compares favourably with that of a Trappist monk for quietness.

Then I had a bit of luck; and it was all thanks to Clive MacIver, I suppose. A day before the last night at Wyndhams, Betty, my agent, rang me up to say that she had something for me. There is a television programme called
Criminal Records
on the BBC which is about real life crimes and which claims to help the police by performing reconstructions of these events. They had been desperately searching for a MacIver look-alike to appear in a programme on his murder. Could I see Jean Box tomorrow morning? Jean Box was one of the most successful of the new independent television producers, and one of her shows was
Criminal Records
.

It was quite funny really. Jean Box could hardly contain her excitement that she had found someone who was not only a dead ringer for MacIver, but was also an established actor. At the same time, she had to be terribly solemn about it all. A respected colleague, a TV presenter no less, had been murdered. It was the most appalling tragedy. The programme, which was to be entirely devoted to MacIver, would, she hoped, not only help to catch his killer, but also be a tribute to him. I went along with this and said that anything I could do to help I would. I gave Jean Box a little taster of my impression of MacIver’s voice and she was in raptures. As soon as I was out of the building I rang Betty and told her that we had Jean Box by the short hairs and we were to ask for silly money. An offer came through, we rejected it and finally we settled for a very respectable sum indeed. Filming was to begin the following Monday evening.

The most interesting thing about the filming for me was meeting the police. Detective Inspector Bentley was in charge of the case, and on the Monday afternoon I met him for what he called a ‘briefing’ at the local police station. He showed me the murder room, introduced me to the other officers on the case, then ushered me into his office. I liked him immediately, and I think he liked me. He is one of what the newspapers are always calling ‘the new breed of policemen’, neat, efficient, thorough, with a nice line in dry humour. Like Jean Box, he was amazed by the resemblance.

‘This actually could be very useful,’ he said. I told him that I would like to know as much as possible about MacIver, so that I could get inside him, so to speak. He looked at me curiously for a moment, then nodded. It was a gesture of respect, the acknowledgement of one professional by another.

‘Our real problem is the missing two hours,’ he said. ‘Between his leaving Ebury Street at about 7.05 and his turning up at Harpo’s just after nine we have no record of where he was and what he was doing. He seems to have vanished into thin air. I gather that he made some loose arrangement to meet some friends in a restaurant at eight. Yet he misses them, but turns up at this club, has one drink and then goes straight back to his flat where he is attacked, apparently by someone he knows because there’s no sign of a break-in. If we can solve the mystery of those two hours, we’ve cracked it. That’s where you come in; you just might be able to jog someone’s memory.’ I said I’d be only too glad to help.

‘Those two hours are the main difficulty,’ said Bentley, ‘but it isn’t the only one. In a real murder case, as opposed to a fictional one, there are plenty of loose ends, but usually they don’t add up to anything; they’re just odd coincidences, but this one is different. I’m sure they all mean something but we can’t think what. You understand this is all background for you and goes no further?’ I nodded.

‘First thing: MacIver was seen leaving the flat wearing a light fawn overcoat, known to be his. Odd to be wearing it on a warm night. He has it on at Harpo’s too, then it disappears. We can’t find this overcoat anywhere in the flat. Has the attacker or attackers taken it? If so, why? Second: MacIver is found stabbed, lying across his bed. It was a warm night, as I said, but the bedroom central heating had been full on and so was the electric blanket on which he was lying. All that’s made it very difficult to establish the time of death.’

‘But surely you know the time of death? Some time between when he made the call on his mobile and when the police found him.’

‘Yes. But there’s this other odd thing, the mobile. There’s a telephone in the bedroom; why didn’t he use that?’

‘Easier to use if he had it in his hand and was trying to fend off his attacker.’

‘Possibly, but then his mobile was missing from the flat. We found it in the street not far from the flat the next morning. It had been thrown under a car, presumably by his attacker the night before.’

‘The attacker stole it, then realised it could incriminate him, so he got rid of it. Any fingerprints?’

‘None. Then there’s the oddest thing of all. MacIver lets in his assailant, so presumably he knows something about them. Then the attacker or attackers get nasty, so he flees the room and rings the police on the mobile from his bedroom. He gives his name, part of the address, says he is being attacked, but—crucially—he doesn’t reveal who’s assaulting him.’

‘Panic. Runs out of time. Just wants to warn his attacker off.’

‘Or attackers. Maybe. Anyway, food for thought. We’d better get to the location, as I believe you call it. I think they’re going to start with a shot of you leaving the flat.’

The rest of the evening was less interesting. I was dressed up in a replica of the famous fawn overcoat and filmed repeatedly from various angles leaving the Ebury Street flat and walking along the road.

The following morning was more interesting as we were shooting at Harpo’s and I had lines to say, and it was then that the full weirdness of my position hit me. It was particularly odd because the other people I was filming with were not actors but the actual people who were there on the night of MacIver’s death.

MacIver had entered the club, flashed his membership card nonchalantly at the receptionist and entered the bar. There he had ordered a large neat scotch and talked briefly to the barman. On seeing an acquaintance he had waved at him, drained his scotch, and left muttering to the barman that he ‘had to get back’, presumably to meet his killer.

It was while I was enacting all this that an event occurred which seems, especially in the light of what followed, rather uncanny. The barman and I had reconstructed what he considered to be a fairly accurate version of the conversation he had with MacIver the night he was killed. The first time we rehearsed the scene, I took the glass of scotch from the barman and happened, for some reason, to tap the rim of the glass twice with the fingernail of my left index finger. The barman looked at me in blank amazement.

‘My God!’ he said. ‘That’s a habit of his. He did that with his glass that night!’

Everyone was silent. Cold sweat ran down my back. For the first time, I am ashamed to say, I became fully aware of the horror of what had happened. Until that moment the job of impersonating MacIver had been nothing more to me than a bizarrely interesting assignment. Now I felt an obligation to the victim, and an inexplicable identification with him. After a pause the Director said: ‘Right, Alec. Keep it in.’ It was a pity they had not been recording that rehearsal. We did several fairly successful takes of my little scene with the barman, but none had the spontaneous electricity of our first run-through.

We broke at midday and I had nothing to do until that night when I was filmed going in and out of Harpo’s. Jean Box came up to me after we had wrapped to say that she was terribly pleased with what I had done that morning. She wanted to retain me to do various other scenes of me as MacIver which she and the director proposed to blend in cunningly with actual footage of the man, thus making the programme a uniquely seamless drama documentary. She was going to make this edition of
Criminal Records
a specially extended one. It could be remarkable, she said; it could win BAFTA awards. She didn’t say that it could catch MacIver’s killer, but I am sure she meant to.

The experiences of the day had disturbed me. My identification with the dead man had been more complete than I had wanted it to be, and though this had probably enhanced my performance, it left me emotionally battered. When I want to unwind I have found that walking soothes me as nothing else can. People are funny about walking about London late at night, but I like it and, if you avoid the pockets of poverty, you are safe. Those leafy streets of modest Victorian terraced houses are the ones I enjoy walking the most. Their inhabitants are neither very rich nor very poor, and, because they often fail to draw blinds or curtains at night, one can often catch a glimpse through their front windows of the lives they lead. They are all very different, all subtly imperfect, like me. They fill me with a sense of the richness of life, and the need to struggle and succeed in a way that neither the squalor of poverty nor the airless perfection of wealth can.

It was a long walk to Willesden Green where my flat is, but I was in the mood for it. The first part of my walk, from Soho, via Oxford Street and up the Edgware Road, I enjoyed. It was when I got into Kilburn and Queens Park, those areas I usually like best, that I began to feel uneasy. I suppose I could attribute it all to strain and exhaustion, but it was more than that. I have been exhausted before and not felt the same. At first it was no more than a vague sense of not being free. Usually these walks are liberating experiences which detach me from my own life and put me in touch with the lives of others. This time it was as if I was carrying myself with me, like a snail with its shell. I could not shake off my own environment as I usually could. However fast I walked something always kept pace with me.