Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“In spite of his injuries, somehow the captain managed to stage enough of a recovery for him to make it into the military court some five weeks later. On March second, nineteen thirty-eight, he gave his evidence and directly contradicted the story given by his original blackmailer, Otto Schmidt. The proceedings were an absolute farce. I sat and watched the whole thing in the Preussenhaus and even Hermann Goring looked embarrassed. Everyone could see he’d been badly beaten and everyone knew by who but somehow this evidence was ignored. Thanks to the captain, General von Fritsch was acquitted. But the mischief was already done, and while he retained his military rank he was not reinstated as commander in chief. He subsequently returned to his regiment and was killed during the invasion of Poland in September nineteen thirty-nine. There are some who believe he put himself in the way of a hero’s death. And that would have been quite typical of a man of that background.

“After his dismally unconvincing performance in court, I heard Otto Schmidt was rearrested a couple of weeks later and taken to a concentration camp-probably Sachsenhausen-where I imagine he died wearing a pink triangle. Jews in the camps were forced to wear a yellow star. Homosexuals wore a pink triangle. It meant that the guards could devise punishments to fit the crime, as they saw it. Which must have been terrible. Because of the six million, it’s usually forgotten that lots of German homosexuals also met violent deaths in the camps. The Nazis never seemed to run short of minorities to persecute.”

“Dreadful,” said Maugham. “It’s tragic the number of queers who are blackmailed. You would think the very frequency of it would make it less tragic somehow, and that those of us with coarser frames could hardly bear much of it. And yet queers like me regard it almost as an occupational hazard. I often wonder what it is that other men seem to have against queers. I think it’s the importance we attach to things that most men find trivial and the cynicism with which we regard the subjects the common man holds essential to his spiritual welfare. That and an abnormal interest in other men’s c-cocks.”

I laughed. “Yes, probably.”

“And the poor old captain?” he asked. “What became of him?”

“His health was completely broken after the Gestapo’s treatment. I kept up with him for a month or two after that, but then he was obliged to leave his house in Lichterfelde for lack of money and I’m afraid I lost touch with him. His eventual fate is unknown to me but it’s quite possible he also ended up in a concentration camp for one reason or another. By then the captain’s posh army friends were hardly in a position to prevent something like that from happening. Hitler had achieved his aims of becoming commander in chief and minister of War within the space of a few weeks. A few days after the von Fritsch verdict, Germany invaded Austria and von Blomberg and the von Fritsch case were immediately forgotten as almost all of Germany and Austria now hailed Adolf Hitler as the new Messiah. In Berlin not quite so much as in Vienna. In defense of my own city, I feel obliged to mention that left-leaning Berliners never took to Hitler the way the Austrians did. But that’s another, longer story.

“Harold Hennig was demoted and later transferred to the security police in Konigsberg; we met again when I was transferred there from Berlin, in nineteen forty-four, but again, that’s another story, too. This man has been blackmailing men like you, sir, for more than twenty years. He’s a professional and he knows what he’s doing. We mustn’t expect him to make any mistakes of the kind that were typical of the way the Nazis handled the case against General von Fritsch. He won’t. In fact, it’s my guess he intends to put the squeeze on me, in a smaller way than with you, sir. After all, he knows my real identity and a great deal of my true history. I’d say that he’ll squeeze me not because he can make money out of me-I don’t have much-but just because he can. With him it’s a matter of inclination and habit. A way of demonstrating his power over another person.”

“I’m sorry.”

Maugham sipped his dry martini; I could smell the absinthe in his glass. It lent the cold vermouth and vodka a sort of corrupt edge, a bit like the inscrutable old man himself.

“Might I ask you a personal question?”

“You can ask but I may not answer.”

“Have you ever killed a man?”

“Killing’s legal in wartime. Or so we were often told.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. But do you think you could ever do it again?”

“It’s like having a drink. It’s hard to stop after just one. But it’s a lot more difficult to kill someone than it ever seems on the pages of a novel.”

“Ah, yes, where would art be without murder?”

“And yet it’s a lot easier, too. Anyone who can slice a loaf can cut a throat. But it’s been a long time since I pulled the trigger on a man. Believe it or not, I came down here to get away from all that.”

“What I’m asking is if perhaps you could arrange for Herr Hebel to have an accident. What I mean to say is that a car might easily knock him down. Or the brakes on his own car might be fixed to fail on some precipitous corner. There are plenty of those around here. I’d be quite prepared to pay you what I’m going to have to pay him, just to be sure that he’s not going to come back and ask for more. I mean it. Fifty thousand dollars if you bump him off. At my age one is inclined to consider anything for a quiet life. Even murder. And frankly that isn’t such a crime these days, is it? Not since the war. Look, all I’m asking is that you think about it.”

“I know what you’re asking, sir. And the answer is no. I’d much prefer to disappear again than have to kill our friend Harold Hebel. Fiat justitia, pereat mundus . Let justice reign even if the world should perish from it. That’s just my version of the starry skies above me and the moral law within me.”

“What’s that-Kant?”

I nodded. “It’s not because I care what happens to Hebel. I wish him as much ill as can befall any man. And there was certainly a time when I’d have cheerfully murdered him without a second thought. It’s that I care about what happens to me rather more than him. I have no wish to add an eleventh volume to that ten-volume apologia pro vita sua I was telling you about before. Besides, you have no way of knowing what elaborate precautions a man like that has already taken with his life. He almost expects to be murdered. I daresay he has already sent a local lawyer an envelope that is to be opened in the event of his sudden death while he’s down here in Cap Ferrat.”

“That’s a disturbing thought.”

“It’s certainly what I would do in his handmade English brogues.”

“Yes, Robin noticed them, too. It’s just too awful to be blackmailed by a chap who goes to the same shoemaker as oneself. At least Louis Legrand looked like what he was: a cheap little hustler. Apparently, this fellow looks like a successful businessman.”

Maugham lit a cigarette and his eyes turned melancholy.

“Pity,” he said with a touch of sardonic amusement. “That we can’t kill him, I mean. I should like to have helped commit one truly criminal act in my life. Especially now that I am so highly regarded. It would have amused me greatly if I’d been able to attend the royal wedding while planning a murder.”

“There’s nothing to stop you killing him,” I said.

“Even when I was in the service in Russia and I had to carry a revolver I was never much of a shot. And my eyesight is not up to much. So I’d be sure to miss. Unless it was a critic I was shooting at. I’m damned sure I could hit Harold Hobson, the theater critic, with no problem at all.”