The Poellenberg Inheritance (5 page)

‘I don't believe you.' Paula got up. ‘I think you're mentally unbalanced, coming here with a story like this. There's no such thing as a Poellenberg Salt, and all that nonsense about a riddle and my father being alive. If he was alive he would have come to find me himself!'

‘You don't know very much about him, do you, Mrs. Stanley? You can believe me or not, as you like. But I have told the truth. Think about it. You may change your mind. Good morning.'

His heels came together with a click and he bowed. Before Paula could move he had gone out of the office.

The reference room at the British Museum smelt of must. The attendant looked up at Paula and shook his head. ‘Never heard of it, miss. Look in the section on Cellini; you'll find a book listing all his known works, some of 'em are illustrated. Then there's the
European Treasures
, the
History of Gold and Silverwork, Art Treasures of the Renaissance
. Try Cellini first; if it's a major piece by him it ought to be in there.' Paula got out two volumes and sat down at one of the long reference tables. A scattered group of students and two elderly men were reading and making notes. It was her lunch-time, and she had been telling herself all the way from her office, what a fool she was being, wasting a lovely summer's day on a wild goose chase to prove a harmless lunatic in the wrong. Of course Black was an eccentric; perhaps he had known her father or been in the army with him. That part she was inclined to believe, probably, as she suspected afterwards, because she wanted to hear about her father, whereas she didn't in the least want to hear about a hidden treasure made by Benvenuto Cellini. It was obviously a figment of the old man's sick imagination. She was disappointed and angry, and she assured herself that she was setting out to prove the whole story was nonsense. There would be no Poellenberg Salt, made of gold and covered with jewels. It was just fantasy.

It was illustrated in the last third of the book on Cellini's work. It was photographed in colour, detailed as being thirty-six inches high, set with a hundred and eighteen diamonds, eighty-three rubies, a hundred and five sapphires and twenty-five Baroque pearls of large size. Brought to the Poellenberg family as part of Adela de Medici's dowry. Now in the possession of the Prince Von Hessel at Schloss Würtzen in the Rhineland. Paula sat looking at it.

All right. There was a Poellenberg Salt. That part was true. But it belonged to a prince, not to her father. Then she turned to the front of the book. It was dated from before the war. Black must have seen it somewhere, perhaps in a museum, or in a magazine illustration, and woven the whole crazy story round it. Just because one thing was true, it lent no credence to the rest. Of course the Salt was still in the possession of the Bavarian prince, Von Hessel. She had remembered the name. What she really needed was an up-to-date book on Cellini, not something written forty years ago. Something which could identify and place the Salt in its present ownership. She replaced the book and began to search among the shelves. Then she chided herself for being ridiculous. She was behaving as if there might be some truth in the old man's fairy story. She looked at her watch and told herself it was late and she should go.

But towards the end of the shelf there was a recent volume on Great Art Treasures of Europe. She took it down and turned to the index. Poellenberg, page 187. It was illustrated again, gleaming and glittering in colour. The figures of nymphs and centaurs intertwined round a rock basin hollowed out of solid gold to take the salt. A massive collection of gems glittered round the base and in the leaves of a spreading golden tree which surmounted the whole.

The figures were so beautifully moulded that they could have moved. There was a paragraph written under the photograph giving the same history as the book on Cellini but in less detail. The last sentence semed to enlarge as she started reading. ‘Tragically the Poellenberg Salt was among the art treasures looted by the Nazis during the war and its whereabouts have never been discovered.' Paula shut the book and put it back on the shelf. It was heavy and her arm ached. He must have read about that too. She walked out of the room; the attendant called softly after her, ‘Find anything, miss?'

‘Yes, thank you,' Paula said. Outside it was sunny and warm; she had left her car round the corner of Bedford Square. She walked towards it slowly. It was all lies. The man was mad, unbalanced. He had looked mad at times during that meeting. Then why had the name Poellenberg upset her mother? She had been hiding away from that question, because it somehow made sense of what Black had said. Her mother had heard of it and not just as a national possession.

Looted by the Nazis during the war. Given, the sinister little man had said, biting on the word. Given out of gratitude. If you want to find it go to Paris, ask for somebody called Tante Ambrosine and her nephew Jacquot. June 25th 1944.

What was the truth? Had her father really owned the Salt and hidden it? Was there any use asking her mother, trying to force the forbidden subject out into discussion – Paula started the car and swung into the traffic. Just supposing it were true – just suppose for a moment the strange visitor was telling the truth that morning. Her father was still alive and had hidden a priceless art treasure … At first it had all seemed to be nonsense; fantasy was the word which described it. But now there were enough facts to cast credibility upon the rest. She didn't even know where to find Black. And her mother wouldn't help. Why would it be better to leave the past alone? Paula had demanded that over the weekend and the answer came back to her. Because there was nothing to be gained from it. Now she saw that answer for what it was: not only a cliché but a lie. If there was nothing to be gained perhaps there was something to be lost. Lost to her mother and the Brigadier in their cosy life from which the General's daughter had been excluded. Just supposing the most important part of Black's story were a fact and not the delusion she had first believed it – supposing her father were not dead, supposing he were only missing and her mother had lied, contracting a bigamous marriage to rescue herself …

No wonder she wouldn't want the matter raised, no wonder she preferred to keep consistent silence about the past. Now some of it was beginning to make sense. What a fool she had been to dismiss Black. How hasty and arrogant, to call him a liar or a madman and let him go with nothing but a promise to contact her before he left. Back in her office Paula tried to work, but concentration was impossible. The facts she had read about the Poellenberg Salt chased round her brain. It had been looted by the Nazis. That part did not accord with Black, who insisted that it was a gift. And her father was an army general, not a Nazi. Perhaps this cast doubts on Black's story – perhaps she was building insane hopes upon something which was only a delusion after all. By five o'clock her head was aching, and she had wasted the afternoon; everything she had done would have to be thrown away. She had a date for dinner that evening; the prospect of making conversation with the man who had invited her was only one degree better than spending the evening alone waiting for the hours to pass until Black might telephone again. If he didn't she would be left with an insoluble mystery which could never be answered. Tante Ambrosine and her nephew Jacquot. It sounded like a nursery rhyme. And a rhyme which she would never try to solve in terms of any hidden treasure. Because from the confusion and doubt which assailed her, one fact had emerged, taking precedence over everything else. If any part of Black's story were true then all that concerned her was the possibility of coming face to face with her father at last.

‘I wish you wouldn't go to London.' Mrs. Ridgeway had never nagged or frustrated her husband when he wanted to do something. Only her intense concern for his health would have made her repeat herself so often during the morning. He still had the cough, and he looked pale and puffy under the eyes. He had made up his mind to go to London and see Paula and nothing she could say would stop him.

‘Your cold is so bad. That trip on Monday morning made it worse,' she said. ‘You know the doctor told you to stay in bed; going on a train journey could make you very ill! Why must you go up again?'

‘I'm much better,' the Brigadier said. ‘The pain's gone and those pills have done the trick. Don't fuss about me, darling, it's not necessary. What's much more important is to stop this damned nonsense with Paula. I know you haven't had a night's sleep since she came down.'

‘You won't be able to do anything,' his wife said. ‘I tried. I appealed to her to leave it alone, but she's determined. She wants to dig up the past. And she'll be more sorry than anyone else when it all comes to light!' Her husband came and put his arm around her. He kissed the pale brow and held her close to him.

‘Not as sorry as you and I,' he said gently. ‘We have everything to lose. Your peace of mind, your happiness; that's what matters to me. I know what this means to you. I couldn't give a tinker's curse for myself, but I can't bear to see you unhappy. I never could, you know that. We've made our lives, my darling, and nobody's going to come in and start ruining our last years on any pretext. I like Paula, she's a good girl. I think she's messed up her life, leaving James and going off on her own, but that's her business. The General and everything connected with him is
our
business – I'm going to see her and make her drop it. And don't you worry. Promise me, you won't worry.'

‘I'll try,' his wife said. ‘But it's like a nightmare. After all these years – why should anyone contact her, why should anyone even mention the Poellenberg Salt!'

‘That's what I'll find out,' the Brigadier said. His breath caught and he coughed. ‘I'll go and see Paula; I'll even frighten her if I have to. But I promise you, sweetheart, you won't have to worry. Now I must go, or I'll miss the train. I'll be back after tea.' He kissed her again and she went to the car to see him drive away. He was a gentle man; his gentleness had attracted her from the first, that odd mixture of diffidence and kindliness which she knew now was so typically English.

The General was not a gentle type; diffidence was not within his comprehension. Fanatical, disciplined, courageous, and completely without feeling as far as she could ascertain in the thirteen years they had been married. He had behaved towards her with scrupulous correctness and complete indifference. They had existed together rather than lived. In the beginning he had made love to her to satisfy his impulses and to beget children. He had not been cruel, or unduly inconsiderate, but only after she had been married for some months to Gerald Ridgeway had she realised what this relationship could mean between two people. The General had wanted sons; she had borne him one daughter. The only inconsistent thing she had ever known about him was his reaction to the child and its sex. She had expected disappointment and reproaches. Instead he had astounded her by his attachment to the little girl. He was a grim, forbidding man of whom she had always been afraid. She hadn't been sure whether the sight of him cradling the baby and crooning to it repelled her or increased her nervousness. But something jealous and primeval stirred in her nature, some buried instinct of resentment for the response called forth by another female from the male upon whom she had made no sentimental impression at all. She had hated the child, and suppressed the hatred, as she had done with her feeling for her husband. When they married he was young and splendid, with a glamour peculiar to the élite of the day. He was a handsome man who attracted women, all the more because of his cool, unapproachable attitude towards them. To the masochistic yearnings of her women friends he was a godlike challenge. To his wife he was a ruthless, cold-hearted stranger with whom she was forced to share her life. She had ended by hating him; she hated his child, because he loved it so extravagantly, and as it grew it was the carbon copy of him. She turned back into the house and sighed. Gerald's chest was still infected. He had gone to London to a club committee meeting on Monday. He should never have got out of bed and gone a second time to see Paula; she shouldn't have rushed upstairs that first night when Paula told her about Black and burdened him with everything. But the habit of dependence upon him was too strong. She relied upon him for everything and he had never disappointed her. She loved him with the intensity of an obsessional, introverted personality, to whom emotional security had finally been given. She would have done anything in the world for Gerald Ridgeway and he would have done anything for her.

The room in the cheap hotel where Black was staying was in darkness when he opened the door. He never left a light on; for twenty-five years he had lived on the pittance allotted him, scraping a casual living, doing menial jobs and moving on. He had lived like a nomad, always alone, collecting a monthly pension from the fund, which kept him at subsistence level. In return he acted as telephone liaison for others. Often in the early years he had debated whether life was worth living under these conditions. As he had told Paula, many of his comrades had chosen to die rather than suffer the consequences of defeat. But Black had an instinct for survival. Hope persisted in him, though he had long forgotten in what, or for what. Merely to wake and see the sun, to move about freely in the world. This was enough, and the years had dimmed and distorted his memories. Now he lived through them, withdrawing a little more each day from reality into that golden past when he and his kind had possessed the world. It was a world in which beautiful women moved, submissive and smiling, hanging on the arms of men in uniform; where champagne was drunk and music played. The houses were palaces, the beds were thrones, the cars were huge and sleek, with outriders. It was a soldier's paradise, and even the destruction of the enemy, with its attendant horrors, had a Wagnerian magnificence that made it poetry to watch so many dying, by the light of such a fire.