by Jack Higgins
"So Rommel was believed?"
"Oh, I don't think Himmler was too happy, but the Führer seemed satisfied enough. They drew a veil over the whole thing. Hardly wanted it on the front page of national newspapers at that stage in the war. The same thing applied with our people, but for different reasons."
"No publicity?"
"That's right."
"In the circumstances," I said, "the accidental shot that killed Heini Baum was really rather convenient. He could have been a problem."
"Too convenient," Sarah said flatly. "As Harry once said to me, Dougal Munro hated loose ends. Not that it gave anyone any problems. With D Day coming, Eisenhower was only too delighted to have got Kelso back in one piece, and our own Intelligence people didn't want to make things difficult for Rommel and the other generals who were plotting against Hitler."
"And they almost succeeded," I said.
"Yes, the bomb plot in July, later that year. Hitler was injured but survived."
"And the conspirators?"
"Count von Stauffenberg and many others were executed, some of them in the most horrible of circumstances."
"And Rommel?"
"Three days before the attempt on Hitler's life, Rommel's car was machine-gunned by low-flying Allied planes. He was terribly wounded. Although he was involved with the plot it kept him out of things in any practical sense."
"But they caught up with him?"
"In time. Someone broke under Gestapo torture and implicated him. However, Hitler didn't want the scandal of having Germany's greatest war hero in the dock. He was given the chance of taking his own life on the promise that his family wouldn't be molested."
I nodded. "And what happened to Hofer?"
"He was killed in heavy fighting near Caen not long after D Day."
"And Hugh Kelso?"
"He wasn't supposed to return to active duty. That leg never fully recovered, but they needed his engineering expertise for the Rhine crossings in March forty-five. He was killed in an explosion while supervising work on the damaged bridge at Remagen. A booby trap."
I got up and walked to the window and stared out at the rain, thinking about it all. "Amazing," I said. "And the most extraordinary thing is that it never came out, the whole story."
"There was a special reason for that," she said. "The Jersey connection. This island was liberated on the ninth of May, nineteen forty-five. The fortieth anniversary in a couple of months' time. It's always been an important occasion here, Liberation Day."
"I can imagine."
"But after the war, it was a difficult time. Accusations and counter accusations about those who were supposed to have consorted with the enemy. The Gestapo had actually hunted down some of the people who had sent them anonymous letters denouncing friends and neighbors. Those names were on file. Anyway, there was a government committee appointed to investigate."
"And what did it find?"
"I don't know. It was put on hold with a special one-hundred-year security classification. You can't read that report until the year twenty forty-five."
I went back and sat down again. "What happened to Helen de Ville, Gallagher and Guido?"
"Nothing. They didn't come under any kind of suspicion. Guido was taken prisoner at the end of the war, but Dougal Munro secured his release almost at once. Helen's husband, Ralph, returned in bad shape. He'd been wounded in the desert campaign. He never really recovered and died three years after the war."
"Did she and Gallagher marry?"
"No. It sounds silly, but I think they'd known each other too long. She died of lung cancer ten years ago. He followed her within a matter of months. He was eighty-three and still one hell of a man. I was with him at the end."
"I was wondering," I said, "About de Ville Place and Septembertide. Would it be possible to take a look?"
"I'm not sure," she said. "Jersey has changed considerably since those war years. We're now one of the most important banking centers in the world. There's a great deal of money here and a considerable number of millionaires. One of them owns de Ville Place now, perhaps I could arrange something. I'm not certain."
I'd been putting off the most important question, she knew that, of course. Would be expecting it. "And you and Martineau? What happened there?"
"I was awarded the MBE, Military Division, the reason for the award unspecified, naturally. For some reason the Free French tossed in the Croix de Guerre."
"And the Americans? Didn't they come up with anything?"
"Good God, no!" She laughed. "From their point of view the whole episode had been far too uncomfortable. They preferred to forget it as quickly as possible. Dougal Munro gave me a job on the inside at Baker Street. I couldn't have said no even if I'd wanted to. He'd made me a serving officer in the WAAF, remember."
"And Martineau?"
"His health deteriorated. That chest wound from the Lyons affair was always trouble, but he worked on the inside at Baker Street also. There was a lot on after D Day. We lived together. We had a flat within walking distance of the office at Jacobs Well Mansions."
"Were you happy?"
"Oh, yes." She nodded. "The best few months of my life. I knew it couldn't last, mind you. He needed more, you see."
"Action?"
"That's right. He needed it in the way some people need a drink, and in the end, it did for him. In January nineteen forty-five, certain German generals made contact with British Intelligence with a view to bringing the war to a speedier end. Dougal Munro concocted a scheme in which an Arado operated by the Enemy Aircraft Flight was flown to Germany by a volunteer pilot with Harry as passenger. As you know, the aircraft had German markings and they both wore Luftwaffe uniforms."
"And they never got there?"
"Oh, but they did. Landed on the other side of the Rhine where he met the people concerned and flew back."
"And disappeared?"
"There was a directive to Fighter Command to expect them. Apparently the message hadn't been forwarded to the pilots of one particular squadron. A blunder on the part of some clerk or other."
"Dear God," I said. "How trivial the reasons for disaster can sometimes be."
"Exactly." She nodded. "Records showed that an Arado was attacked by a Spitfire near Margate. Visibility was very bad that day, and the pilot lost contact with it in low clouds. It was assumed to have gone down in the sea. Now we know better."
There was silence. She picked a couple of logs from the basket and put them on the fire. "And you?" I said. "How did you manage?"
"Well enough. I got a government grant to go to medical school. They were reasonably generous to ex-service personnel after the war. Once I was qualified I went to the old Cromwell for a year as a house physician. It seemed fitting somehow. For me, that's where it had all started."
"And you never married." It was a statement, not a question and her answer surprised me, although I should have known, by then, if I'd had my wits about me.
"Good heavens, whatever gave you that idea? Guido visited London regularly. One thing he'd omitted to tell me was just how wealthy the Orsini family was. Each year I was at medical school he asked me to marry him. I always said no."
"And he'd still come back and try again?"
"In between his other marriages. Three in all. I gave in at last on the strict understanding that I would still work as a doctor. The family estate was outside Florence. I was partner in a country practice there for years."
"So you really are a Contessa?"
"I'm afraid so. Contessa Sarah Orsini. Guldo died in a car crash three years ago. Can you imagine a man who still raced Ferraris at sixty-four years of age?"
"From what you've told me of him, I'd say it fits."
"This house was my parents'. I'd always hung onto it so I decided to come back. As a doctor on an island like this it's easier to use my maiden name. The locals would find the other rather intimidating."
"And you and Guido? Were you happy?"
"Why do you ask?"
"The fact that you came back here, I suppose, after so many years."
"But this Island is a strange place. It has that kind of effect. It pulls people back, sometimes after many years. I wasn't trying to find something I'd lost if that's what you mean. At least I don't think so." She shook her head. "I loved Guido dearly. I gave him a daughter and then a son, the present count, who rings me twice a week from Italy, begging me to return to Florence to live with him again."
"I see."
She stood up. "Guido understood what he called the ghost in my machine. The fact of Harry that would not go away. Aunt Helen told me there was a difference between being in love and loving someone."
"She also told you that Martineau wasn't for you."
"She was right enough there. Whatever had gone wrong in Harry's psyche was more than I could cure." She opened the desk drawer again, took out a yellowing piece of paper and unfolded it. "This is the poem he threw away that first day at the cottage at Lulworth. The one I recovered."
"May I see it?"
She passed it across and I read it quickly. The station is ominous at midnight. Hope is a dead letter. Time to change trains for something better. No local train now, long since departed. No way of getting back to where you started.
I felt inexpressibly saddened as I handed it back to her. "He called it a rotten poem," she said. "But it says it all. No way of getting back to where you started. Maybe he was right after all. Perhaps he should have died at seventeen in that trench in Flanders."
There didn't seem a great deal to say to that. I said, "I've taken enough of your time. I think I'd better be getting back to my hotel."
"You're staying at L'Horizon?"
"That's right."
"They do you very well there," she said. "I'll run you down."
"There's no need for that," I protested. "It isn't far."
"That's all right. I want to take some flowers down to the grave anyway."
It was raining heavily, darkness moving in from the horizon across the bay as we drove down the hill and parked outside the entrance to St. Brelade's Church. Sarah Drayton got out and put up her umbrella and I handed the flowers to her.
"I want to show you something," she said. "Over here." She led the way to the older section of the cemetery and finally stopped before a moss-covered granite headstone. "What do you think of that?"
It read: Here lie the mortal remains of Captain Henry Martineau, late of the 5th Bengal Infantry, died July 7, I859.
"I only discovered it last year quite by chance. When I did, I got one of those ancestor-tracing agencies to check up for me. Captain Martineau retired here from the army in India. Apparently he died at the age of forty from the effects of some old wound or other. His wife and children moved to Lancashire and then emigrated to America."
"How extraordinary."
"When we visited this place he told me he had this strange feeling of being at home."
As we walked back through the headstones I said, "What happened to all those Germans who were buried here?"
"They were all moved after the war," she said. "Back to Germany, as far as I know."
We reached the spot where he had been laid to rest earlier that afternoon. We stood there together, looking down at that fresh mound of earth She laid the flowers on it and straightened and what she said then astonished me.
"Damn you, Harry Martineau," she said softly. "You did for yourself, but you did for me as well."
There was no answer to that, could never be, and suddenly, I felt like an intruder I turned and walked away and left her there in the rain in that ancient churchyard, alone with the past.