The Legacy (14 page)

They turned down towards the herbaceous border; it ran for a hundred yards to the edge of a water garden, backed by a tall red-brick wall of the same great age as the house. It was full of rich summer colour, but neither of them saw it. Christina felt dazed and shocked; shocked by the loss of the manuscript, dazed by the dreadful moment of surrender to sexual need. They came to the end of the walk; ahead of them the water garden was cool and shaded, filled with moisture-loving plants, the giant gunnera reaching huge flat leaves to the overhanging willow trees.

Slowly Christina turned and faced him. ‘What are you going to do? How are you going to get it back?'

‘I shall go to New York,' he answered. ‘I shall see James Farrington and tell him he'll be arrested for theft if he doesn't return your property.'

Christina remembered then. ‘But it isn't my property. I can't sell anything till the will is proved and probate granted. Why did you tell me I could?'

He had the answer ready. It had always been ready. ‘Because nobody knows it exists. I have contacts; I could sell it for you privately.'

‘And break the law?' she countered.

‘I want to help you; I want to win this case. I wouldn't have hesitated; I won't hesitate. Christina you can't afford scruples. How many does Alan have? You'll lose the house and Belinda's inheritance. What would Richard tell you to do? What would he have done?'

Christina answered without hesitating. ‘He'd give me the same advice as you. He had a ruthless side to him; I never experienced it, but I knew it was there. He once said to me, after a row with Alan, “I'd burn this place down before I'd let him have it.” But he's dead and I have to make the decision. I'm not him; I have to do what seems right to me.'

Rolf knew he would lose if he argued. She had strength and that clear moral certainty he found so disconcerting. ‘You're right,' he said, ‘but, at least, let me get back what belongs to you and to Belinda. What you do with it afterwards is your decision, just as you say. Then if you want my help, I'll give it.'

She had started walking again. ‘You're not telling me the truth. How did you know about all this? You knew Richard had this manuscript long before I ever mentioned anything. You knew where he bought it and when.'

‘I haven't lied to you,' he said. ‘Stop walking away and look at me. Face someone when you accuse them of lying. Don't you know you can tell by their eyes?'

‘No,' she said, but she did stand still. ‘I've never believed that. If you haven't lied, you've kept things back. You haven't been honest with me from the beginning.'

‘No I haven't,' Rolf Wallberg answered. ‘Is there anywhere we can sit down? If you want the truth it will take time.' A few spots of rain began to fall.

‘We'd better get back to the house, then,' she said.

Harry Spannier put his head round the kitchen door. His mother was peeling vegetables.

‘Ma, has Christa rung?'

‘Not yet, I expect the lawyer's still with her. That library could take days to search through; if there's anything to find. Let's hope so, for her sake. The more I think of that wretched Alan, the more furious I feel.'

He said, ‘I don't like the sound of it at all. The Swede sounds a very dodgy bet to me.'

Jane started slicing cabbage. ‘You've taken quite a fancy to her, haven't you?'

‘She's attractive and she's a rich widow. Why shouldn't I?' He was teasing and she knew it.

‘That's not the reason,' his mother retorted. ‘I know you, darling. Just don't get in too deep. There's a bag of new potatoes in the pantry, get them for me, will you? Thanks. Where's your father?'

‘Watching cricket on the telly. Not very happy—the West Indies are two hundred and fifty-eight for four! You don't want any help, do you?'

‘Since when did you peel anything except an apple?' she laughed. ‘No thanks, darling. Go and keep Pa company. I'll join you as soon as I've finished this. We'll have a drink and then we can ring Christa.'

‘I'll give it till eight,' Harry said. ‘If she hasn't called, I'll ring her.'

But the time went by and the Spanniers settled down to drinks before dinner and there was no telephone call from Christina.

‘How old are you, Christa?' He knew, of course, but he wanted to set the scene.

‘Thirty-three. Why?'

‘Because what I'm going to tell you happened twenty years before you were born; before I was born, too. But for me, it doesn't make it any less real. You were right when you said I knew your husband had a priceless manuscript; I knew where he bought it and when, but only recently. It's not the first work of art we've tracked down, but it's certainly the rarest and one of the most valuable.'

Christina said, ‘Who's we?'

‘My firm,' the answer came easily. ‘We've been working on the legal aspects of recovering property for a number of clients for almost five years. We've employed investigators, sent enquiries out all over Europe, and we've been successful in a number of cases. It's taken a lot of patience because there were so few sources to work on. The original owners were all dead, you understand. The claimants were distant relatives, some living in America. Considering how few families were involved in the beginning, it's surprising how many claimants there are …'

She frowned. ‘You're not being very clear,' she remarked. ‘Are you saying that this manuscript was stolen? But Richard bought it in good faith.'

‘Of course he did,' Rolf agreed. ‘So did other people who were offered Impressionist paintings and Old Masters and some very fine jewellery; they all bought in good faith. We traced a Renoir and two Matisses to private owners in places as far apart as Helsinki and Greece. Having found them, it was my specific job to pursue the question of ownership; in many cases the threat of legal proceedings was enough. We recovered the property; the items were always sold and the money distributed to the claimants. I remember there was one exception: a man wanted his great-aunt's jewellery to give to his wife. You're looking confused, I'm sorry, I know it all so well I forget to explain it properly.' He seemed very detached from what he was describing. ‘You know about the Holocaust, of course. Nobody could avoid it; the Jews make sure of that!'

Christina's reaction was angry. ‘And so they should! People must never forget a horror like that!'

He allowed himself a thin smile. ‘Not everyone agrees with you.' She didn't like his tone. She hated that last comment.

‘Don't you?'

‘I'm neutral, Christina, like Sweden. We stood aside while Europe tore itself to pieces, and we were right; because of that neutrality, we were able to help the Allies more than if we had been occupied. It's a point of view and I think it makes sense, but we are both too young to have any idea of the choices involved, or the consequences if they were the wrong ones. I am sure you will have guessed that the owners of the works of art were Jews; wealthy German Jews who had, so far, succeeded in buying immunity from the extermination camps.' He actually leaned back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, the foot idly swinging. ‘Germans are human beings too. Even the SS had corrupt officers who could be tempted by a bribe. The poor went on the trains and into the gas chambers.'

She challenged him, as he had expected. ‘You're saying the rich didn't? There were no Jews left in Germany.'

‘At the end, no,' he agreed. ‘I'm saying that the rich Jews, some of them, lasted longer than the poor ones. A very few of them managed to get out of Germany, into Sweden for example, but not many. Towards the end, when the war was going against Hitler, they were all taken. You think I'm anti-Jewish, don't you?' He shot the question at her.

‘You're sounding like it,' she said. ‘I know there are people at home who have those views, but don't try and express them in this house.'

‘I won't,' he said smoothly, ‘because I'm not one of those people. I'm working to recover Jewish property. Richard's manuscript was on my list. Does that answer your questions?'

‘No,' Christina answered. ‘No, it doesn't. You haven't really explained anything. How was it stolen? And if it was, you should be claiming it back from the estate instead of telling me to sell it!'

‘The clients want it sold,' he countered. ‘They want the money. I've arranged deals like this in other cases; they take half, you take half. There's no legal wrangling and everyone is happy. I felt I could satisfy all the criteria if I did it that way, and help you fight Alan and win.' He leaned towards her. ‘I want that, Christina. I've done deals before, but this is important to me. I admire your courage and your honesty, just as much as I want to make love to you. But we won't talk about that.'

She said quickly, ‘No, we won't. What happened to the people who owned all these things? What happened to the ones who owned the document?'

He didn't answer at once. He sat there with the dying summer light behind his white-blond head, giving it a silver halo. His face was in shadow. ‘They were all murdered,' he said, ‘all but two: a girl and a five-month-old baby. Those Jews thought they had a friend, someone they knew from the good days before the Nazis, someone they trusted.'

Christina shivered. ‘And he betrayed them? How horrible …'

He sounded quite unmoved. ‘It happened many times. Money or goods in exchange for exemption from deportation. Often they were arrested as soon as they got home. But this was different; this was based on friendship, and trust, as I said. Shall I tell you about it? It may help you to get rid of Richard's “Jewel” when you know its history.'

Christina didn't hesitate. ‘Yes, tell me. I want to know.'

He heaved himself out of the chair; his body uncoiling like that of a powerful animal. She had felt the power of his physical strength when he held her in the library. He said slowly, ‘I'll find it easier to tell you what happened if I tell it as a story. It's a story I've pieced together from other people's memories, recollections, bits of conversations. But first I'll get you a drink. I think you're going to need it.'

5

‘Klaus Himmelsbach was such a charming man, and handsome too. His women clients liked him, appreciated his good manners and subtle flattery, and the men found him amusing and amenable to bargaining. The firm had been established in Hamburg for over eighty years. The name, Himmelsbach Galleries, was a guarantee of authentic antiques and works of art in northern Germany. They sold everything from furniture to Fabergé trinkets. Klaus Himmelsbach specialized in gold boxes and miniatures; his father, Frederik, dealt in the best eighteenth-century German furniture, with a few flamboyant Italian pieces for those who liked to make a show. Klaus had expanded the range to include Fabergé's exquisite toys and artefacts which came from post-Imperial Russia via the refugees. Many had escaped with only what they could cram into their pockets. He bought cheaply from those desperate to sell, and sold expensively to rich Germans with an eye for beauty. He had his own clientele; he cultivated women because they introduced their husbands. He was a social figure in Hamburg after the Great War. It was a period of ruin and inflation that left the ordinary Germans destitute, but fortunes were made by men with vision and business acumen, who invested in assets rather than bonds and paper money that became worthless in a matter of days. He had a group of Jewish customers who bought and sold through him and whose families had dealt with his father and grandfather; he and his wife were even invited into their homes. They would all sit and moan about the terrible state of the country, with the crazy inflation, the unrest among the working classes and, above all, the rise of the Communists. There were riots, street fighting between rival political gangs, virtual anarchy. The old Chancellor Hindenburg, visibly senile, was unable to stabilize the country.

‘Nobody wanted the Communists. Tales of horror spread from the tsarist refugees: murder, property and possessions seized, wholesale arrests of the wealthy classes, executions. Communism was the worst of the options open to Germany at the time, and nobody inveighed against them more stridently than the rich professional classes. Klaus Himmelsbach donated money to the National Socialists; they seemed the only alternative to the Bolshevik terror threatening them from Russia. When the racial attacks and the vicious anti-Jewish propaganda became official policy, after Hitler assumed power, Himmelsbach reassured his Jewish clients. He no longer described them as ‘friends' in public. He advised them who would help; useful contacts with business undertakings—discreetly, of course; he emphasized discretion. Later, when the war began and Jews were being moved out of German cities into so-called work and rehabilitation centres in the east, Klaus advised them who to bribe. Klaus was the intermediary. He took nothing for himself; he refused presents, even from the dwindling few who had anything left to give. There were at least a dozen local Jewish families who had been regular clients in the early Thirties. By 1944, there were only four families left. The Steinbergs, whose clothing factories had long been taken over without compensation, all of them now lived in a tiny flat on the outskirts of Hamburg. The Brauners, rich shipping magnates, now reduced to poverty, moving from one hiding place to another to escape the mass arrests of local Jews. Frau Rabinowitz and her three surviving grandchildren, sheltering with Aryan German friends; the rest of her family had been seized and deported. And, lastly, the Rubensteins, a family of respected doctors and lawyers with inherited money, who had all been driven out of practice, and kept their lives by heavy bribes of cash and valuables. But the end was coming; Himmelsbach could see it. The end for the last of the Jews of Hamburg and their families, and the end for Germany, for the war was lost. Millions of German soldiers had been killed in Russia; Germany's chance of victory in Europe died with them. Klaus was a student of history; it was part of his training in art.