‘Does Alfonso know?
‘Are you mad? He would kill anyone he thought was her lover. He has always said that and I have no reason to doubt him.’
‘Why does she tolerate him?’
‘She is from a poor family. He has a position and money. He gave her a life of ease. Parlaying sex for a life of ease is not unknown. .’
‘So why does she jeopardize her position by taking a lover?’
Knowles laughed ruefully.
‘Alfonso’s mother encourages it. Alfonso is the last of the line but he is infertile. They cannot have a child. His mother advises her to take a lover from outside the family but to tell no one.’ Knowles shrugged. ‘She told me.’
‘Does he know he is infertile?’ I said.
Knowles looked up at the ceiling.
‘To the count, manliness — virility — is everything. It is the core of Italian fascism. That is why he despises me because I do not exhibit manly qualities.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I do not get drunk and belch in other men’s faces. I do not wrestle with them after dinner. I do not go into the hills to shoot boar and birds. I am thoughtful, so I must be homosexual.’
‘The perfect cover. And you are going to give the contessa a child?’
Knowles just looked at me.
That evening, after dinner, the count took me aside.
‘The German commander has been ordered to pull out tonight. Kesselring has finally persuaded the High Command that redeploying the weaponry from here after an orderly retreat makes more sense than leaving it exposed whilst this futile search for a tomb goes on. They will leave the town in your hands.’
‘He will disobey Hitler’s direct command?’
‘Hitler is already doubtless obsessed with some new nonsense his astrologers have brought to his attention, even as his thousand-year Reich crumbles around him.’
When the Germans left, Knowles left too. The count’s fascist friends melted away. The count and contessa packed in preparation for their move to Rome.
‘Under your escort, Major Tempest,’ the count said, an ingratiating smile on his face. ‘I think it advisable until feelings here have died down a little.’
I did not hide my distaste for the count. I had been in radio contact with the Allies as soon as the Germans had left. I had asked if my orders to protect the count still stood. The answer had been in the affirmative. On no account should I allow the count to be subjected to any unfavourable word or act. Investigation of his wartime activities was to be discouraged.
In the hospital I found Allied prisoners of war, captured during our failed attack on the town. They had been well looked after. I armed those who had recovered from their injuries and went to the cathedral square to announce that the Allies had formally liberated the town. Then I returned to the villa with them to await the arrival of the partisans.
Six came out of the hills the next day. Fabbio Cortone led them. When they came to the villa to arrest the count, I showed them the safe-conduct passes for the count and contessa. I insisted that they were under Allied protection. I stood firm when Cortone declared that the count had committed atrocities against the partisans during the war.
All the partisans were armed and angry. I showed no emotion even when Cortone showed me the injuries the fascists, at the count’s behest, had done to two of his men. As I closed the door on them, I saw the disgust in Cortone’s face. It scarcely compared with the disgust I felt for myself.
FORTY-TWO
I never saw Knowles again, but in 1945 I attended the Nuremberg trials. I was trying to make sense of what had happened in the war. Not the people I had killed, but the millions murdered. Nuremberg had been chosen as the venue for the trials for symbolic reasons. It was there Hitler had held his grandiose rallies; there he had passed a law stripping Jews of their German citizenship. For the same symbolic reason the RAF had pretty much demolished the medieval quarters in bombing raids. Nuremberg was war-wrecked, its citizens gaunt and exhausted.
Lord Birkett was the British black-capped judge pronouncing the death sentence on Nazi war criminals in the Palace of Justice. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been plain Norman Birkett, barrister, successfully defending Tony Mancini, aka Jack Notyre, at Lewes Crown Court against the charge of murdering his mistress, Violette Kay.
The man hanging the criminals Birkett sentenced to death was Albert Pierrepoint, the butcher from Clayton I’d met in 1935. It had taken him until 1941 to move from assistant to official executioner. He told me that when I bumped into him in a
‘I remember,’ he said. ‘You still a Blackshirt?’
‘That was a mistake,’ I said. ‘We stood for order but we caused disorder.’
‘Some mistakes you can recover from. I deal with people whose mistakes have consequences they can’t evade.’
‘When were you first in charge of the whole thing?’ I asked. ‘The hangings.’
‘1941. Seventeenth of October. Pentonville Prison. Happy enough fellow. Last thing he said before he went through the hatch was “Cheerio”.’
Pierrepoint and I sipped our beer. It was rubbish but then we’d bombed the breweries to buggery.
‘I did tell him he should have had a word with my dad,’ he said.
I frowned.
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Well, I was hanging him for knifing somebody in a brawl but he also told me that, years before, he’d chopped up some lass and he’d had a bugger of a time doing it. Didn’t know anything about jointing meat, you see. My dad, now, he could have jointed an elephant without breaking sweat.’
My mind reeled from more than the drink.
‘What was this man’s name?’
Pierrepoint thought for a moment.
‘Antonio Mancini. “Baby” to his friends. Soho gangster. Knifed a thug from a rival gang. A Jewish gang. It could have gone either way — who lived, who died, I mean. It would have made no difference to me — one of them would have dangled from the end of my rope.’
‘Baby Mancini.’
‘Daft name for a grown man, I know.’
I nodded slowly.
‘I met him once,’ I said. ‘Just for five minutes.’
Pierrepoint was an unnervingly placid man. He remained still, watching me, waiting for more.
‘This lass,’ I said. ‘He killed her?’
He shook his head.
‘I don’t think so. Helping out his brother-in-law after the fact, apparently.’ He shrugged, though he seemed to make heavy work of the gesture. ‘Strange favours some folk do.’
‘Who was his brother-in-law?’ I said. ‘It wasn’t a bloke called Martin Charteris, was it?’
Pierrepoint frowned.
‘No idea.’
And that should have been it with regard to the Brighton Trunk Murders and the hangings of Albert Pierrepoint and the two Tony Mancinis. But, of course, nothing ever finishes. No story is ever really done.
A year later I was back in London working for military intelligence. I bumped into Pierrepoint again. I was on my way to meet Ian Fleming — he had some girls lined up. But this bloke and his feelings for his chilly occupation fascinated me. Since I’d last seen him, he’d executed at least two hundred Nazi war criminals. Now he was back at
