Peter Guttridge - The Thing Itself

I made my way cautiously to the door. I knew what I’d find even before I pushed it open. The soft candlelight. The black woollen dress discarded on the floor beside the man’s dark trousers and jacket. The contessa, coiled on the bed with Knowles, asleep in his arms.

As I turned away from the tableau, I saw Knowles smile. He opened his eyes and looked at me, still smiling. I pulled the door closed.

The next day I found Knowles in the library. He was examining some ancient book. He looked up.

‘I didn’t know you were such an academic,’ I said, sitting down opposite him.

‘Why would you?’

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

Knowles put the book down.

‘Should I?’

‘I briefly ran the north-west branch of the BUF in 1935.’

He narrowed his eyes.

‘That’s ringing a bell. A Blackburn lad?’

‘Born but not bred.’

‘A bobby in Brighton?’

‘I am that man.’

‘Well, well. Yes, I do vaguely remember. Last time I saw you was when we gave you the north-west job.’

‘Last time I saw you was in a members’ billiards club in Wardour Street. Meeting the manager — an Italian gangster who was later hanged for murdering a Jewish one.’

He looked sharply at me.

‘I vaguely recall that club. We were trying to get the kike gangsters out of London — the small Jews. It was a Sabini brothers club. Those gangsters and the BUF had the same goals in that instance.’

‘The manager had the same name as one of the Brighton Trunk Murderers. Tony Mancini.’

Knowles frowned.

‘And was it him?’

‘No — seemed Mancini the Brighton man had stolen his name. You know the cases?’

‘Doesn’t everyone of our generation?’

I sat down opposite him.

‘Tell me about you and the contessa.’

‘It means nothing.’

‘Does Alfonso know?

‘Are you mad? He would kill anyone he thought was her lover. He has always said that and I have no reason to doubt him.’

‘Why does she tolerate him?’

‘She is from a poor family. He has a position and money. He gave her a life of ease. Parlaying sex for a life of ease is not unknown. .’

‘So why does she jeopardize her position by taking a lover?’

Knowles laughed ruefully.

‘Alfonso’s mother encourages it. Alfonso is the last of the line but he is infertile. They cannot have a child. His mother advises her to take a lover from outside the family but to tell no one.’ Knowles shrugged. ‘She told me.’

‘Does he know he is infertile?’ I said.

Knowles looked up at the ceiling.

‘To the count, manliness — virility — is everything. It is the core of Italian fascism. That is why he despises me because I do not exhibit manly qualities.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I do not get drunk and belch in other men’s faces. I do not wrestle with them after dinner. I do not go into the hills to shoot boar and birds. I am thoughtful, so I must be homosexual.’

‘The perfect cover. And you are going to give the contessa a child?’

Knowles just looked at me.

That evening, after dinner, the count took me aside.

‘The German commander has been ordered to pull out tonight. Kesselring has finally persuaded the High Command that redeploying the weaponry from here after an orderly retreat makes more sense than leaving it exposed whilst this futile search for a tomb goes on. They will leave the town in your hands.’

‘He will disobey Hitler’s direct command?’

‘Hitler is already doubtless obsessed with some new nonsense his astrologers have brought to his attention, even as his thousand-year Reich crumbles around him.’

When the Germans left, Knowles left too. The count’s fascist friends melted away. The count and contessa packed in preparation for their move to Rome.

‘Under your escort, Major Tempest,’ the count said, an ingratiating smile on his face. ‘I think it advisable until feelings here have died down a little.’

I did not hide my distaste for the count. I had been in radio contact with the Allies as soon as the Germans had left. I had asked if my orders to protect the count still stood. The answer had been in the affirmative. On no account should I allow the count to be subjected to any unfavourable word or act. Investigation of his wartime activities was to be discouraged.

In the hospital I found Allied prisoners of war, captured during our failed attack on the town. They had been well looked after. I armed those who had recovered from their injuries and went to the cathedral square to announce that the Allies had formally liberated the town. Then I returned to the villa with them to await the arrival of the partisans.

Six came out of the hills the next day. Fabbio Cortone led them. When they came to the villa to arrest the count, I showed them the safe-conduct passes for the count and contessa. I insisted that they were under Allied protection. I stood firm when Cortone declared that the count had committed atrocities against the partisans during the war.

All the partisans were armed and angry. I showed no emotion even when Cortone showed me the injuries the fascists, at the count’s behest, had done to two of his men. As I closed the door on them, I saw the disgust in Cortone’s face. It scarcely compared with the disgust I felt for myself.

Victor Tempest’s final exercise book

I never saw Knowles again, but in 1945 I attended the Nuremberg trials. I was trying to make sense of what had happened in the war. Not the people I had killed, but the millions murdered. Nuremberg had been chosen as the venue for the trials for symbolic reasons. It was there Hitler had held his grandiose rallies; there he had passed a law stripping Jews of their German citizenship. For the same symbolic reason the RAF had pretty much demolished the medieval quarters in bombing raids. Nuremberg was war-wrecked, its citizens gaunt and exhausted.

Lord Birkett was the British black-capped judge pronouncing the death sentence on Nazi war criminals in the Palace of Justice. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been plain Norman Birkett, barrister, successfully defending Tony Mancini, aka Jack Notyre, at Lewes Crown Court against the charge of murdering his mistress, Violette Kay.

The man hanging the criminals Birkett sentenced to death was Albert Pierrepoint, the butcher from Clayton I’d met in 1935. It had taken him until 1941 to move from assistant to official executioner. He told me that when I bumped into him in a bierkeller . I reminded him of our last meeting, almost ten years earlier.

‘I remember,’ he said. ‘You still a Blackshirt?’

‘That was a mistake,’ I said. ‘We stood for order but we caused disorder.’

‘Some mistakes you can recover from. I deal with people whose mistakes have consequences they can’t evade.’

‘When were you first in charge of the whole thing?’ I asked. ‘The hangings.’

‘1941. Seventeenth of October. Pentonville Prison. Happy enough fellow. Last thing he said before he went through the hatch was “Cheerio”.’

Pierrepoint and I sipped our beer. It was rubbish but then we’d bombed the breweries to buggery.

‘I did tell him he should have had a word with my dad,’ he said.

I frowned.

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘Well, I was hanging him for knifing somebody in a brawl but he also told me that, years before, he’d chopped up some lass and he’d had a bugger of a time doing it. Didn’t know anything about jointing meat, you see. My dad, now, he could have jointed an elephant without breaking sweat.’

My mind reeled from more than the drink.

‘What was this man’s name?’

Pierrepoint thought for a moment.