Pauline Rowson - In for the Kill

‘Then my grandfather went out on his boat and never returned.’ Or rather he didn’t. I guessed that my grandfather was lying in the folly he had built, killed and dumped there by Max Weber.

Max had taken my father’s boat to rendezvous with the German submarine, if it existed. Or he had used the boat to escape to the Channel Islands or France.

Scarlett said, ‘Surely this can’t be why you were framed, Alex?’

‘I think it was. And I think that whoever did it is now framing Steven for Deeta’s murder.’

‘But who can it be?’ she asked.

I turned to Percy. ‘Was Hugo married? Did he have any children?’

Percy’s breathing was becoming more laboured. Scarlett looked worried. The old man was clutching his chest.

‘Call an ambulance, Scarlett,’ I commanded, loosening Percy’s shirt. ‘It’s OK, Percy. Take it easy. Everything will be all right.’

‘Hugo ….was …. married,’ he panted.

Ruby turned her attention from the television and said, ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Percy, it’s OK,’ I insisted, growing more concerned as he clearly was in a great deal of pain.

‘Amelia,’ Percy whispered. ‘Ask Amelia.’

‘Who’s Amelia?’

Percy gave a strangled cry and clutched his chest. His body twisted forward and slid to the floor before I could prevent it. He cried out again, writhing in pain. I was no doctor but I knew a heart attack when I saw one.

‘The ambulance will be here in a moment.

Steven will be fine. Take it easy,’ I tried to reassure him.

I could hear Scarlett’s muffled tones in the background. Percy gripped my hand and stared up at me with wild frightened eyes. He was mouthing something. I bent my head closer to his lips, feeling the gentle breath on my face as he struggled to talk, but there was no sound.

Then Ruby said quite lucidly, ‘Amelia was Hugo’s wife.’

Which meant that Hugo could have a grandson or grandaughter hell bent on revenge. And I had to find out who that was and quick.

Scarlett and Ruby followed the ambulance to the hospital. I hurried along to the Windmill Hotel praying that Deeta’s father hadn’t returned to Germany. He hadn’t. I located him from Scarlett’s description: a tall, rather distinguished-looking man with fair hair swept off an aquiline face, which was etched with sorrow. He looked very much like the older version of Max in the photograph that Ruby had taken.

I joined him in a quiet corner of the bar where he was staring into a glass of red wine. My heart went out to him. He had lost a daughter. I knew how I would feel if I lost one of my sons. Now, I was more determined than ever to get Andover and seek revenge not only for my lost years but for Deeta’s too. It shouldn’t have ended for her like that.

‘Mr Weber?’

His head came up. I could hardly bear to see the pain in his eyes.

I told him I had been a friend of Deeta’s and passed on my inadequate condolences. He could shed little light on his daughter’s death but he confirmed what Percy had told me, that she had been strangled. As far as he knew there had been no diary, or photograph in her personal effects.

I said that Deeta and I had been brought together because of the friendship between Max and my grandfather.

‘I know that Max was in England until August 1940. There doesn’t seem to be any trace of him here after that date.’

‘No. He went to Switzerland. He only returned to Germany after the war.’

I wondered if that was the truth.

‘Max was Swiss German,’ Deeta’s father added.

‘He spoke excellent English and he was educated at Cambridge.’

Which explained how he came to know Hugo and my grandfather.

‘He wasn’t a Nazi. He had no sympathy with Hitler. I’ve never been exactly sure what he did in the war, and he would never talk about it, but I believe he worked for the British Government.’

Had Max in fact been working for both sides?

I didn’t mention this, or the matter of Max creaming off money bringing Jews out of Germany. I thought Deeta’s father had enough to cope with. It did however explain the fact that Max must have known his way around getting a Swiss bank account, which I guessed was where the three men had put the money from their exploits. My grandfather had taken his secret to his dusty grave in the folly, but what about Max’s grandaughter and Hugo’s descendants?

‘Did Max leave any diaries or accounts of his past?’

Deeta’s father shook his head. ‘No. He might have spoken to Deeta about it before his death. I don’t know. He worshipped her. I’m only glad he isn’t alive now. This would have destroyed him.’

He looked sad and exhausted. My heart went out to him. I left a silence. I could hear the cars outside and some laughter from the adjoining restaurant. After a moment I asked, ‘When did he die?’

‘Three years ago.’

That surprised me. Why had Deeta waited until now to come in search of her grandfather’s past?

Had Max told her anything on his deathbed about his escapades with my grandfather and Hugo? Did she know about the Jews?

‘Is your mother still alive?’

‘No. She died ten years after they were married when I was nine. My father brought me up. Mr Albury, what has this got to do with my daughter’s death?’

‘I don’t know.’ And I didn’t, but there must be a connection.

Out of politeness I chatted with him a little longer about his daughter and his home in Bad Nauheim, then I left him to his sorrow and walked home mulling over what he had told me.

If Max had told Deeta about his money gained from smuggling Jews out of Germany then why hadn’t she claimed it? There were several answers to that question: Max had already spent it; Deeta was ignorant of it, or where the money was; or she didn’t have all the information she needed to access it, which would explain her trip to the Isle of Wight, her questioning of Percy, her search of my houseboat and her eagerness to climb into bed with me, in case my grandfather had passed the secret on to me. Perhaps she had thought it was stashed away in the folly. Maybe it was. Scarlett and I had hardly searched it thoroughly. I thought it unlikely though.

But why did Deeta wait three years before coming here? The answer, of course, was quite simple. Me. Perhaps she had come here shortly after her grandfather had died only to find me in prison and my mother frail and forgetful. Perhaps Deeta had called on my mother before she had died. Of course, Deeta wasn’t the only one interested in the missing money from the Jews.

What of Hugo’s grandson? It had to be a man because Ruby had seen a man push my mother down the stairs. She had thought it was Hugo, so the likeness must be significant. Hugo’s grandson unable to find the information he was looking for in Bembridge House had perhaps threatened my mother, or had been surprised by her one day when he was in the house and had killed her. I’d make him pay for that. Had Deeta been working with him or alone?

Hastily I shut out the picture of my mother terrified. I needed a photograph of Hugo. Only Percy or Ruby would have one and I couldn’t ask either of them. I had to risk returning to my houseboat. Besides I had to pack. I threw some things into a bag. There was no sign of the police.

Once again I delved into my mother’s belongings, skimming quickly through the photographs trying to control my sorrow and feelings of guilt. Nothing. There were only a few and certainly no one I didn’t recognise. I couldn’t hang around waiting for Ruby and Scarlett to return in the vain hope that Ruby would have a photograph of Hugo. Time was running out. The police could show up at any minute.

A powerful sense of hopelessness clung to me during the forty-minute crossing of the Solent on the car ferry, and it was still there as I let myself into Miles’s apartment. If Andover was a descendant of Hugo, and had wanted revenge for my mother betraying Hugo, did he know about the money from the Jews? Was that why he had used me as a scapegoat to swindle Westnam, Couldner and Brookes out of three million pounds: a sum he thought he was entitled to? But how had Hugo’s descendant discovered that it was my mother and Percy who had betrayed his grandfather? Percy hadn’t told him and neither had my mother.