Free The Poellenberg Inheritance by Evelyn Anthony

It was a Frenchwoman who had made the claim. And she insisted that she knew. She recognised the General; she knew him by the eyes …
    â€˜Somebody said they knew him during the occupation and saw him walking down a Paris street. They tried to catch up with him but he disappeared in the crowd. As for the second question, I can’t answer that. Not without the client’s permission.’ He couldn’t quite imagine the Princess giving it. He had promised to go back in a month and make a personal report on his progress. He was looking forward to seeing the younger son’s face when he heard this latest development.
    Why in hell had he been so anxious to have the affair dropped cold? And why hadn’t the elder, the heir and head of the family, said one bloody word during the interview, except shift from foot to foot and hold on to the back of the sofa as if he was frightened of falling over? Fisher had been too busy in Bonn to ask the questions. Now they came back to him, prompted by Paula’s question. He felt awkward at holding out on her, but as he had said to the smiling, persuasive Prince when he tried to doublecross his mother, in his business, integrity to the client was all important. It was the profession’s one claim to respectability.
    â€˜Mr. Fisher, you know some of the details about my father. Would you tell me about him – everything you know. I’d be very grateful.’
    Fisher signalled the waiter. ‘Nothing else?’
    Paula shook her head. ‘No thanks. Just coffee.’
    â€˜Two black coffees. When you say everything I know, you don’t want a history from start to finish, do you – I mean you know all that of course. You want to know where he was killed. If he was.’
    She wanted to hear it all, but shame prevented her from asking. Shame at not knowing. She felt like a foundling. More and more she judged her mother for that damnable reticence which had closed her out. James always said she was uptight and disorientated. He liked long, medical sounding words and the description irritated her. But if what he said was true, she knew who to blame for it.
    â€˜Just the end,’ she said. ‘Where it was, and how it was supposed to have happened.’
    â€˜In a village outside Cracow, during the final German retreat in ’44. Let me light that for you. You’re smoking like a chimney, Mrs. Stanley. Don’t you know it’s bad for you? Anyway, your father’s H.Q. was in this place; it was a hopeless name I couldn’t begin to pronounce, but he and his staff were there, including our friend Schwarz, or Black. He had taken up quarters in the police station, some kind of brick-built house. These Polish places were pretty small and primitive and most of them had been occupied and fought over during the original campaign. I imagine conditions were pretty rough at the time; the Russians were chasing hell out of the German army, and the fighting was not exactly Queensberry Rules.
    â€˜Anyway on November 23rd a massive Russian bombardment began over the area. The house where your father was living was hit and everyone in it was killed. Apparently a body was found wearing his decorations but otherwise unidentifiable. Half a dozen survivors of the battle swore that the General had been in the house in conference with his staff at the time. Nobody got out alive. The bodies were buried on the spot. Your mother must have been notified of his death in action. I can’t understand why she wouldn’t tell you this.’
    Paula ignored the question. ‘One thing puzzles me,’ she said.
    â€˜What’s that?’
    â€˜Why was anything reported in all the papers? Why should anyone bother about whether my father was alive or not after all these years? It seems very odd.’
    â€˜He was a very important man,’ Fisher said. ‘He had the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross, and every other decoration you can think of; he