Free Hollow Crown by David Roberts Page A

had been shameful but there was no way
back. He must try and make her see that.
    ‘But there is something I can do about it. I know I can’t get him back. I wouldn’t want him back – not if he came crawling . . . ’ Edward did not believe that for
an instant. He had seen her face when she had imagined he had come with a message from him. ‘. . . but, I can stop him having Wallis Simpson. I can do that . . . for the good of the
country,’ she added piously.
    ‘You mean you can blackmail her . . . ?’
    Molly looked at him suspiciously. ‘They’ve told you about my letter, then?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘That wasn’t blackmail. I didn’t ask for money. I didn’t ask for anything for myself. I just asked that she should go away.’ She spat out the words. ‘And, if
it came to a court of law, no one could say . . . ’
    Edward shuddered. He had a vision of Mrs Simpson standing at the witness box discussing her private affairs in front of the gawping crowd. That at least could not be allowed to happen.
‘But Molly, your bitterness I can understand. You have been treated shabbily.’
    ‘Shabbily! I have been treated shabbily, as you so quaintly put it, but you don’t seem to understand. That woman is a monster.’
    Edward thought about the woman with whom he had sat at dinner: calm, reasonable, intelligent. She might be – what did they say? – ‘on the make’. She might be a little too
avid for precious stones; she might have an unhealthy influence over the King. But to call her a monster – that was patently ridiculous.
    ‘Surely not,’ he said gently.
    Molly made as if she were going to embrace him. He could smell the wine on her breath and see the crow’s-feet under her eyes. She was still a beautiful woman but in a few more years she
would – if she did not find a good man – descend into that circle of hell reserved for ‘women with a past’, women who had been dealt a good hand but had been destroyed by
kings and knaves.
    ‘Did they say I had taken anything else from Mrs Simpson?’ She demanded. ‘I’m not a thief.’
    ‘No, they just said you’d taken letters.’
    ‘Letters, yes. Letters from the King revealing the power that woman has over him. He tells her everything, Edward, not just love talk. He says in one letter how the Prime Minister feels
about the possibility of Germany uniting itself with Austria. He quotes Lord Halifax . . . and so on,’ she ended, seeing that Edward’s eyes had opened wide.
    ‘He oughtn’t to have discussed government policy with her . . . ’
    ‘And he says “ask Ribbentrop what I should do”.’
    ‘I don’t believe it,’ Edward said after a moment to take in the folly of the man who was his king. ‘But you cannot possibly think of giving these letters to the
newspapers. They wouldn’t print them, of course, but if any of it leaked out . . . ’
    ‘I know and of course I wouldn’t. Did you know, they’ve already tried to take them back?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘I don’t know – the police, I suppose,’ she said vaguely.
    ‘You think it wasn’t burglars?’
    ‘What burglars don’t steal jewellery lying on a dressing table, or money in a wallet?’
    ‘I see. Presumably they didn’t find what they were looking for?’
    ‘No,’ she said, smiling like a naughty child. ‘They did not. You see, I never leave them anywhere I am not. Even when I go down to dinner I carry them on me.’
    ‘You’ve got them on you now?’
    ‘I might have. Are you going to find out?’ she said archly.
    Edward withdrew his hand which was resting on her arm. ‘No, of course not. But don’t you realize you are in danger? Aren’t you afraid that if it gets around you have these . .
. these documents, someone – maybe someone you know nothing about, an enemy agent, a newspaperman – might try and take them from you? You’re in deep water, Molly. Hand them over
to me and then you will be able to sleep in peace.’
    ‘No!’ she said defiantly. ‘Why