Chapter Twenty-Four

Another Country

The King's Bedroom, Sandringham, Norfolk, England, 11pm, 20th January 1936.

The Prince of Wales had made it plain: he did not want his father's life to be prolonged, not if his condition was fatal. Not that the king himself had been consulted on the matter. That was not the prince's way. Besides, he hated his father. In fact, the feeling was mutual. However, despite the fact that the king had been at death's door several times in the recent past, and still recovered, it was with a clear conscience and a loaded syringe in hand, that His Majesty's physician, Lord Dawson of Penn, approached his patient's bedside. He knew that the king was very weak; His Majesty had been slipping in and out of consciousness for some time. Now, evidently hearing Dawson draw near, the old king rallied one final time. He opened an enquiring eye.

"God damn you!" he whispered softly.

A moment later Lord Dawson injected 3/4 gram of morphia and 1 gram of cocaine into the king's distended jugular vein. Less than an hour later, His Majesty, King George V, was dead.

The King is dead.

Long Live The King!


Downton, Yorkshire, England, May 1937.

The appalling disaster which had befallen The Hindenburg reverberated around the entire world.

In America, where the dreadful accident had occurred, the entire press seized upon the story, and it made front page news. From north to south, and east to west, across the entire length and breadth of the vast nation, the newspapers were full of accounts of what had come to pass, the headlines stark in their simplicity:

HINDENBURG BURNS IN LAKEHURST CRASH;

21 KNOWN DEAD,12 MISSING; 64 ESCAPE

The New York Times

HINDENBURG EXPLODES
30 DIE IN CRASH OF AIRSHIP

The Baltimore News-Post

34 DIE, 63 SAVED AS BLAST

DESTROYS ZEP HINDENBURG

The San Diego Union

HINDENBURG DEATH TOLL PLACED AT 30;

CHANCE OF SABOTAGE TO BE INVESTIGATED

The Houston Chronicle

Here in England, with the Hindenburg having been seen by many when she had passed high over the city of Gloucester the previous summer while on a return flight to Germany from the United States, the front pages of the newspapers, whether national or local, were also full of what had happened, initially reporting that there were no survivors; until, that was, people had been seen emerging from the burning wreckage of the giant airship, when the reports were swiftly changed to reflect this. However, some of the survivors were horribly burned and it was very likely that the initial death toll would mount still higher.

Even the as yet uncrowned king-emperor, His Majesty, George VI, sent messages of condolence to Herr Hitler.

Over in Ireland, Tom Branson penned a lengthy article on what had occurred for the front page of The Irish Independent, just as he had done a few years earlier, in October 1930 when the British built airship, the R101, had crashed into a hillside near Beauvais in Northern France while en route to Karachi in India. The loss of life then had been far worse than the number of those said to have been killed on board the Hindenburg.


While the world might well presently be preoccupied with the disaster which had befallen the Hindenburg, over in England minds were also very much turned to the forthcoming Coronation of His Majesty King George VI on 12th May. Throughout the country, with date fast approaching, preparations were now in full swing for all manner of celebrations. Here in Downton, the Coronation Fête being planned looked likely to surpass the junketing associated with the Annual Statute Fair. All the same, compared to the festivities which many here in the village could yet still recall, those associated with Coronations past, that of Edward VII in the summer of 1902 and those held for George V nine years later in the summer of 1911, there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm on the part of many for this year's Coronation Fête. The age of deference towards the monarchy was, if not dead, then undeniably passing away; understandably, when the fathers, brothers, and sons of so many had given their lives in the Great War, only for the last king, Edward VIII, to have been seen to shirk his own responsibilities and throw in the towel, this in order to marry a totally unsuitable woman, a now twice divorced American who, if reports in the newspapers were to be believed, had a thoroughly disreputable and highly salacious past. Yet, as elsewhere in the country, with not all the facts being common knowledge, Downton was divided on whether the Duke of Windsor, as he was now styled, should have been forced out, all because of whom it was he wanted to marry.

Just quite how long the Old Order would continue in being remained to be seen. Of course, in estate villages such as Downton, and there were many of them scattered throughout England where, for the most part, the villagers were employed by the estate and lived in tied cottages, the local populace still gave their respect to the local squire and his family; in Downton, this being to the earl of Grantham and his family. However, here, the regard accorded to Matthew Crawley was given to him for the man he was, rather than because of the title which he now held. Someone who was known to have ploughed a considerable amount of his own money into the Downton Abbey estate, was both affable and approachable, and by his own actions was known to truly care about those who worked for him, understood their problems, and when tragedy struck, as oft betimes it did, was there to lend whatever help he could.

No more so had this been the case than when a couple of years ago, in November 1934, incessant heavy rain falling high up on the moors to the east of the village had caused the already swollen Downton Beck to burst its banks, leading to extensive flooding of the fields and cottages belonging to the estate which bordered it. Not only had Matthew joined others in helping to rescue the occupants, their livestock, and possessions from the flooded dwellings, wading through fast flowing, freezing waist high water in order to do so, but Matthew had taken immediate steps to arrange for temporary accommodation to be made available to all those who had been displaced at no cost to the individuals concerned.

Equally, while the affected cottages were being refurbished, Matthew had remitted the payment of rents by those who had been flooded out and thereafter seen to it that the beck was cleared of debris - boulders, branches, and so forth - and properly dredged so as to mitigate the chance of a repeat occurrence of the flooding. It was because of actions such as this that when reports in certain national newspapers had hinted at past misdemeanours committed by none other than the countess of Grantham herself the villagers in Downton would have none of it. At the height of all of the furore, one morning, walking back from the Dower House and bound for the Abbey, Mary had found herself stopped in the village by a succession of well-wishers who told her to her face to pay no heed to the scurrilous stories then in circulation: they had known her all their lives, had watched her grow from a little girl to the woman she was now, and this being so, knew her true worth. That the villagers meant emphatically what they had told her, that their kind words came so obviously from the heart, had all but reduced the normally intensely private, reserved Mary to tears.


Château de Candé, Indre-et-Loire, France, May 1937.

Here in France, just south of the meandering River Loire, at the Château de Candé, the occupants of the beautiful château were concerned with something much more personal: namely the forthcoming wedding of the Duke of Windsor to Wallis Simpson.

Mindful of not wishing to be seen to upstage his brother, the date of the wedding had been set for after the Coronation; the date for the latter remained the same, namely 12th May, and, as David had remarked to his brother Bertie before he left England after the Abdication, everything would be exactly the same, save for the crowning of a different king. However, the date David and Wallis had decided upon for their nuptials was Thursday, 3rd June.

"Apparently, Mama's bloody furious!" David said. "She thinks we've chosen it deliberately... out of sheer spite... at least that's what I've been told".

Wallis said nothing, waited for him to explain, just as she knew he would. She could read him like a book and in this, he did not disappoint.

"The date, you see... it's Papa's birthday. Had he lived, the old boy would have been seventy-two. At the time, I told his doctor... Dawson... that I didn't want his life prolonged unnecessarily. Dawson understood what needed to be done". David fell silent.

"Really?" Wallis replied. She nodded, disinterestedly, and lit another cigarette. It had clearly escaped David's attention that if the old boy had still been alive, then this wedding, their wedding, wouldn't even be taking place. Given what she knew now, Wallis found herself wondering if, all things considered, at least for her, that it wouldn't have been for the best.

The king's life is moving peacefully to its close

For some strange reason it was now that Wallis found herself recalling the words of the medical bulletin, issued on 20th January 1936, in which Dawson had announced to one and all that, for the late king, the end was drawing nigh. Odd, how it had all turned out, almost as if it had been ordained, or at the very least pre-arranged, thus enabling The Times to announce in the most prosaic of tones:

A Peaceful Ending at Midnight

Wallis glanced across at David. He was still standing over by the window, seemingly lost in thought, his face impassive, his eyes opaque, as if sheathed in ice.

"I did it for you," he said softly.

Only now, with the full implication of all he had just said finally dawning upon her, Wallis gasped. No, surely not...


The Coronation in Westminster Abbey was to be attended by some 8,000 guests, including the whole British Royal Family; foreign royalty including Crown Princes and Princesses; also, royalty from the British Empire in the guise of Sultans and Amirs; all Peers of the Realm; Members of Parliament; other Heads of State and foreign representatives. In comparison, the guest list of those who would be attending the wedding to be held just over a fortnight later at the Château de Candé gave the latter the appearance of this ceremony being a shabby, tawdry affair.


That David wanted his two younger brothers, Harry, Duke of Gloucester, and George, Duke of Kent, to attend this wedding was understandable enough; especially George, of whom he was inordinately fond, in part, because it was David who, back in the '20s, had taken his errant youngest surviving brother in hand, and weaned George off his addiction to cocaine. Handsome, now married to a beautiful but minor Greek princess, George was reputed to be bi-sexual. Not that Wallis cared a fig about that, but quite why David wanted Henry here too, other than that he was his brother, remained something of a mystery. After all, as David himself had said, Henry had hardly been supportive of his eldest brother during the Abdication, and save for their shared interest in horses, they had little in common.

Like George, Henry was married and recently, was rumoured to be a drunk, and as far as Wallis was concerned, the best that could be said of Henry was that he too had had enjoyed a mésalliance with a married woman. In Henry's case, his affair, which was widely known about in London society, had shocked his darling Mama, and for this, if for no other reason, Wallis had found herself warming towards him. However, unlike David, when parental pressure had been brought to bear on Henry to end the affair, he had dutifully done so, and had then married the sister of one of his best friends. Not that he was in love with her of course, but as David had told Wallis, owing to his affair with Mrs. Beryl Markham, for once it had been Henry, his mother's very own blue-eyed boy who was in trouble, and not David himself.

As to whether either of David's brothers who, before the Abdication, along with their wives, had visited David and Wallis at the Fort, or for that matter his sister Mary, the Princess Royal - who with her husband the Earl of Harewood had visited David when he was staying with the Rothschilds in Austria - would actually attend their wedding, remained to be seen. Wallis thought it unlikely, particularly if pressure was brought to bear on them all by Queen Mary and the newly crowned king and queen not to do so. Wallis smiled inwardly. What a bloody family!


Quite who would be here from Wallis's own side, equally remained to be seen. Aunt Bessie, certainly. As to any other relatives... There would be a handful of friends, including of course, Charles and Fern Bedaux the owners of the château, as well as Eugène and Kitty Rothschild from Austria, and it was to Austria that David and Wallis intended to return after the wedding, to the Schloss Wasserleonburg, where they would spend their honeymoon.

There yet remained the seemingly intractable problem of just who would perform the religious side of the ceremony, given that Wallis was a divorcée, and the Church of England did not permit the remarriage of persons who were divorced when their erstwhile spouse, in this case spouses, was still alive.


Whitelocks Ale House, Leeds, Yorkshire, May 1937.

With it having been finally established that the Crawleys would indeed be going abroad for at least part of the summer, the date for the burglary - while the family was away - was now set; over the August Bank Holiday as the great house, with its much-reduced domestic staff, would then be shut up. Some time since, Billy Price had reconnoitered the point of access. this through the old grating in the brick vaulted of the passage. In this, Billy had been more than helpful because he had ensured that the old padlock had been removed and the hitherto rusty hinges well oiled - although left hidden beneath their thick covering of ivy so as to avoid arousing suspicion.

In fact, young Billy's liberal application of oil had almost given the game away as, one morning, on leaving the Butler's Pantry, Mr. Barrow had slipped and fallen on a patch of oil that had dripped down onto the floor of the passage from the grating above. Now, fortunately, for Billy and his two pals, along the passage from the Butler's Pantry was a succession of storerooms, for the most part now disused, including one where a collection of old oil lamps, no longer needed since the house was lit by the means of electricity, were kept. This has led, earlier in the year, to a wholesale clearing out of the old lamp room. So, Thomas had assumed, naturally, that what he had slipped on had been oil spilt from one of the lamps, all of which had been collected together and put outside the tradesmen's entrance for collection by the rag and bone man. Of course, had he bothered to check, he would have realised that what had pooled on the floor of the passage had not been lamp oil at all, but he didn't, and so the matter passed without any further investigation. Nonetheless, Billy took pains to ensure that in future he was less liberal with his application of both grease and oil to the hinges of the old grating.

So, with the means of access prepared, which was situated almost directly opposite the door to the Butler's Pantry, matters now moved on a pace. That the door to the Butler's Pantry where the silverware was stored was not in any way alarmed and was secured, if it could be so described, by no more than a simple lock, and with a faulty latch, would make gaining entrance into the room and the silver vault that much easier.

Still, while predictable in his habits, there remained the fact that Mr. Barrow could pay a visit to the Butler's Pantry at any time, day or night, so it would be of considerable help if his absence from the house could be somehow contrived; both Joe Arkwight and Edwin Sugden agreeing it would be for the best if this could somehow be arranged.

"As it happens," Billy said, "I think I know just how that can be done". From his pocket, he now drew out an envelope, postmarked from Berlin, and addressed to Herr T. Barrow at Downton Abbey. The sender had, as was perhaps only to be expected, when writing from abroad, conveniently written his address on the reverse. Oddly enough, that had been from a Post Restante, at Deauville, in Northern France.


Cabaret El Dorado, Motzstraße 15, Berlin, Germany, summer 1932.

"Then, why don't you?" Günther had asked in heavily accented English.

"I don't know really. Maybe I will".

"Yes, do! Come and live with me, here in Germany!" Günther spread his hands and grinned. "We will be very happy together, I think!"

Thomas nodded. Now, maybe it was nothing more than the lingering effects of the cocaine they had taken together last night, but he was feeling distinctly lightheaded. The prospect of spending the rest of his life here in Berlin with his newfound friend was positively intoxicating. At this precise moment, if he never saw England or Downton again, Thomas thought it would be too soon. Günther signalled to one of the waiters to bring them two more glasses of beer.


The waiter set down the two glasses, each one filled to the brim of with foaming beer.

Certainly, thought Thomas, a better measure than that served in The Grantham Arms, and, as for the surroundings, well, they were far more convivial but then, of course, the publican in Downton knew Thomas for what he was.

"Danke". Günther nodded.

The waiter inclined his head and when had gone, Thomas lit another couple of cigarettes; one for Günther and one for himself.

"Aren't you forgetting something? I'd have to work, and I don't speak any German. Well, perhaps the odd word or two!" He smiled at the younger man, recalling to mind the terms of endearment, and also the few choice obscenities, which Günther had imparted to him when they had been in bed. "At least not words I could use in the street!"

"I will teach you!" It was now Günther's turn to smile. The fair-haired young German soldier had the bluest eyes Thomas had ever seen. "Promise me, that you'll think about it?"
"I promise," Thomas said solemnly.

Günther laughed; said that if learning German proved too taxing, he had cousins living across the border in Alsace, in Northern France. They could go and live there in Colmar.

"I don't speak French either," Thomas had said with a wry smile and which was true enough; save that was for a smattering of words which he had picked up in the trenches when serving in the army as a stretcher bearer on the Western Front during the Great War. However, like the German words taught him by Günther, they were hardly the stuff of polite chitchat.


Idrone Terrace, Blackrock, Dublin, Irish Free State, early May 1937.

While here in Ireland, the newspapers were likewise full of the disaster which had befallen the Hindenburg, despite Tom having written a lengthy piece on it for the front page of The Indy, behind the smart front door of the Bransons' homely house on Idrone Terrace, another drama, which in the scheme of things was of minor import, was now being played out.

Sybil had known that this day would come. Something had happened out there in Spain. The letters from Danny, which, while not in any sense regular in their appearance, dropping as and when they did, singly or two or three at a time, through the rear of the polished brass letterbox of the black painted front door of the Bransons' house on Idrone Terrace, had ceased. Enquiries of George Steer had proved futile; the British journalist could provide no information as to what had happened. The only good news, if so it could be called, was that Steer had been able to confirm the absence of Danny's name from the latest list of casualties provided by the Republican government. However, in the fog of war, such lists were notoriously unreliable, often incomplete, and that Danny's name did not appear was no proof that the lad was still alive.

Understandably, Tom was beside himself with worry, Sybil utterly distraught, and both Saiorse and Bobby crept about the silent house quiet as the proverbial church mice. Only little Dermot, a happy little boy, now nearly four years old, but still far too young to understand what was taking place, was unaffected by what had come to pass and provided the one ray of sunshine amid the leaden gloom that, quite understandably, had descended upon the rest of the Branson household.


East Street, Downton, Yorkshire, England, May 1937.

Curious to relate, but for once, Thomas Barrow did not at all relish what it was that he was about to do. For, things being equal, Thomas was never one to experience the slightest pang of conscience, let alone remorse, when he was engaged in the delightfully satisfying business, at least for him, of causing trouble for his fellow man, especially where the individual in his sights was Matthew Crawley, earl of Grantham, whom Thomas detested with a vengeance. Nor for that matter, anybody else whom Thomas had come to dislike, or who had incurred his displeasure - an ever-lengthening list of individuals - provided, of course, that whatever unpleasantness came their way could in no way be traced back to the Machiavellian scheming ways of the saturnine butler of Downton Abbey.

Quite why Thomas hated Crawley so much, he had never really stopped to think but had he done so, Thomas would perhaps have conceded that his antipathy towards the man - for that is all it had been, at least initially - had turned to dislike shortly after Thomas had returned to England with his blighty wound. To Thomas, from something Lady Mary had said, it had appeared that Captain Crawley, as he then was, didn't quite believe Thomas's account of what he said had happened to him out there on the Western Front. That the injury which Thomas had sustained to his right hand was in fact a SIW which, if it was discovered to be so, would lead inexorably to Thomas being hauled before a military courts-martial, where if found guilty, he would be sentenced to death by firing squad. However, even if Crawley had his suspicions, he had held his peace, even when he had returned home to Downton on a stretcher, seemingly paralysed for life. Not that this made any difference as far as Thomas was concerned for, until the war ended there always remained the distinct possibility that Crawley would pursue the matter and by the time hostilities ceased - at least on the Western Front - as far as Crawley was concerned, for Thomas, the die was well and truly cast. That the object of his detestation was in line to inherit the earldom of Grantham and then, having recovered from his spinal injury, had married the present earl's eldest daughter only made matters worse. So much so that Thomas's loathing for Matthew Crawley had become almost visceral.

Given the foregoing, it will not be at all surprising to learn that on this bright May morning the matter presently exercising Thomas Barrow's febrile, furtive mind was the next stage in his long running vendetta against the earl of Grantham which was proving rather taxing, because, so as to avoid discovery in what he was presently about, Thomas was having to tread very carefully indeed.


When Maundy Gregory had made his request, in fact, demand would have described it rather better, Thomas could have refused to co-operate, but Gregory had made it perfectly clear that should Thomas not do exactly as he had been asked, then Gregory would see to it that the earl of Grantham was left in no doubt as to the source of the salacious tales published recently in the gutter press, concerning, at least by implication, the countess of Grantham. That Gregory would do just as he had intimated was made rather more certain by the fact that somehow, he had obtained a clutch of photographs which had been taken at the El Dorado club on the corner of the Motzstraße in Berlin, of Thomas and his friend Günther, the young soldier from Potsdam, who had, or used to have, an apartment on the Nollendorfstraße. Not that the photographs were in any way obscene, but, given where they had been taken, and there was no doubting the location, they were capable of only one interpretation. Moreover, Thomas was well aware that had it suited Gregory's purposes, he would not have had the slightest qualms about surreptitiously arranging for the photographs to fall into the hands of the British police with serious consequences for Thomas. For, unlike in France, and also in Germany, at least until the Nazis had seized power, here in England, the law against homosexuality was very clear. Sexual relations between men, whether in private or in public, were prohibited. Any male caught indulging in such proclivities could expect to find himself facing the full rigour of the law, being sent to prison, losing his employment, and being vilified by his own family.

What was worse, was that Gregory had hinted there were yet other photographs of the two men, these of a rather more intimate and salacious nature, taken in Günther's apartment. Quite how they had come into existence, or how they had come into Gregory's possession, remained a mystery and was like to remain so, suffice to say, someone like Gregory had all manner of disreputable contacts and underhand means at his disposal. This apart, with the Nazis now in power in Germany, Thomas could not write and ask Günther about the matter, and in any event, the young soldier seemed to have disappeared. Of course, Gregory could be bluffing but, given the fact that he had described in minute detail a painting hanging over the bed in Günther's bedroom, depicting a group of nude male bathers, meant that Thomas was not prepared to call Gregory's bluff. So, Thomas was left with no alternative but to do as Maundy Gregory had demanded.


That the earl and countess were presently out of the house assisted Thomas in his task as he knew he would not find himself being summoned to attend upon the wants of either. Her Ladyship had been driven into Ripon and as for His Lordship - Thomas curled his lip - well he was off somewhere about the estate, apparently discussing with one of the tenant farmers the necessity of re-roofing a barn. Quite why Crawley felt the need to do so when his late father-in-law had left all that sort of thing to his agent, Thomas couldn't begin to understand. Nonetheless, the absence of both the earl and the countess from the abbey was very fortuitous since Thomas could not do what he had in mind from within the abbey.

Unobserved, Thomas had left the abbey and ridden down at speed into the village on his bicycle. However, his route had taken him only as far as the beginning of the High Street where, it being Market Day, the village was thronged with people. Thomas had promptly dismounted from his bicycle before wheeling his machine quickly into a narrow alleyway - here in Yorkshire called a ginnel or a snicket - before leaving the bicycle hidden beneath a tarpaulin behind the shed which stood at the back of Garbutt's, the ironmonger's. Thereafter, Thomas had made his way, ducking and diving, through a succession of alleys and passages which brought him at last, and by a very circuitous route, unobserved, to the red telephone box which stood on the corner of East Street and Back Lane. Once inside, Thomas lifted the receiver, dialled the operator, and when she answered, asked that he be put through to a London number.


Rose Garden, Rosenberg, Lower Austria, late April 1937.

For the time of year, this afternoon had proven unseasonably warm. Here in her English rose garden, where the buds on the bushes were only just beginning to form, with dear little Fritz curled up on his old blanket beside her on the seat - these days his arthritis was much worse and he moved only with difficulty - and while Kurt played with his tinplate, clockwork, toy train on the sun warmed flagstones, Edith had been sitting reading the latest letter she had received from Friedrich. Written in his usual breezy, chatty style, very much akin to her own, making light of any difficulties - accentuating the positive as Mama had so often said - it had contained details as to when he and the boys would, at last, be returning home. This was now only a matter of days hence and, finally, all things being equal, dearest darling Max would, once again, be back here at Rosenberg safe and sound. Edith smiled inwardly. She would mark the occasion by wearing her violet Schiaparelli gown, Max's favourite shade of colour, and with it the seahorse clip brooch by Schlumberger, set with blue sapphires and diamonds, which had been a present to her from Friedrich, given to mark their wedding anniversary last year.

Edith laid aside the letter and looked up; took in, almost unseeing, the customary view of the snow-capped Alps and the dark green mantle of the sombre pines. So, for all of her initial misgivings, it would appear that the trip out to Palestine and now on to Egypt, had been a resounding success, with Max having duly repaid the trust placed in him by his parents. No doubt having Robert along had helped no end. Along with Friedrich and Max, Robert was returning here to Rosenberg before resuming his homeward journey to England, and Edith intended making sure that her English nephew was made well aware of just how grateful she was for having provided not only company for Max but also for surreptitiously keeping a weather eye on him.

Not that Edith had not trusted Max to behave himself but, all the same, he was growing up, was fast becoming a young man, good looking, confident, and self-assured, as the arrival here this morning of yet another letter from the young girl he had met on the outward sailing to Haifa attested. While Edith had dutifully forwarded the earlier letters and postcards which had arrived at Rosenberg addressed to Max from... Elena... yes, that was her name, there was no point in forwarding this one as, by the time it reached Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, Friedrich and the boys would have boarded the S.S Victoria in Alexandria for Trieste and be on their way home. Then, when finally they arrived home, Edith had questions to ask, not least as to why it was they had left Palestine by way of Egypt, instead of returning from Haifa as planned. To be perfectly frank, Max had been a shockingly poor correspondent, and while his letters to his mother had been very affectionate, Edith sensed that in them he had been guarded in what he had written; that there were things which she had not been told and not only because he was now a young man, confused and uncertain as they all were at the age Max was now. All this apart, Edith was left with the niggling feeling that, through what she could only term a conspiracy of silence, she had not been told the whole truth.


Matthew and Mary's bedroom, Downton Abbey, Yorkshire, England, late April 1937.

"What you just said... it makes sense of something Prince Louis told me. Something he had overheard mentioned, in a telephone call to the embassy. A code word - Arc de Triomphe. Not, of course, that he was supposed to have heard what he did. Anyway, until a moment ago, I couldn't make head nor tail of it, no more than he, what a monument in Paris could possibly have to do with Armitage and the plot to kill the king in London. But then you said Marble Arch and the penny dropped".

Mary looked nonplussed.

"I don't see what on earth Marble Arch has to do with the Arc de Triomphe in Paris," she said flatly.

"Don't you? Marble Arch, until it was moved..."
"Moved?"

Matthew nodded.

"Exactly so".

"Matthew, darling, for Heaven's sake, it's a building, just like any other. While buildings may be altered, even demolished, which, of course is what I would have preferred to have happened to Grantham House instead of it becoming a third rate hotel, they don't move".

"This one did. Marble Arch used to form the ceremonial entrance to Buckingham Palace, was until it was dismantled and rebuilt on its present site in 1850 at Cumberland Gate as a grand entrance to Hyde Park in time for the Great Exhibition".

Mary smiled. Just like darling Tom, dearest Matthew was ever the one to be possessed of all manner of unexpected knowledge. Had Mary herself known the word, she would have described much of it as arcane, and Matthew as a repository of the esoteric.

"Really?"

Matthew nodded his head.
"What's more, it stands directly on the route the king and queen will take on their way back to Buckingham Palace after the ceremony in Westminster Abbey".

"Is that somehow important?"

"Well, it commands a grandstand view of the procession. What better place from which to take a shot at the king - assuming that is what Armitage has in mind, although from what Prince Louis said, he understands it will be rather more than that".

"Heavens!"

"Some sort of explosive device but I don't see how... unless of course..." Matthew scrambled hurriedly out of bed and shoved his feet into his slippers.

"Where on earth are you going?"

"I have to telephone someone".

Mary glanced across the room at the ornate clock on the mantlepiece.

"At this hour? Matthew, in case it's escaped your attention it's two o'clock in the morning!" Having put on his dressing gown, over by the door, he paused, turned his head to her, and grinned.

"They keep odd hours at the Foreign Office!"


The Pyramids, Giza, Kingdom of Egypt, late April 1937.

Here at Giza, beside the Pyramids, not far from the Sphinx, Friedrich and the boys climbed out of the taxi. At that very moment a shaft of bright sunlight struck the largest of the three pyramids precisely where what little of its once pristine marble covering remained, causing the stone to glisten and sparkle. Standing looking up in awe at the three vast structures, it fell to Max to put into words what both Robert and he were feeling.

"Papa, they're enormous!"

"Uncle Friedrich, they're incredible!"

Friedrich smiled broadly at the two boys before placing an arm about the shoulders of both his son and his nephew.

"Yes. Everything here is always so monumental in size. Now, when I myself saw the Pyramids for the very first time, that was shortly after the Great War, just before I met Max's mother, I felt the same as you two. Back there in Cairo, I told you that what made Egypt was the Nile. However, while nothing lasts forever, what remains of the past is what links the here and now to the dawn of civilisation. It speaks to you, does it not, across the centuries?"

Robert nodded.

"Yes, it does," he said softly.

With the young Egyptian driver having assured them that he would await their return, he drove off on his own in the taxi a short distance and parked it in the shade of a grove of palm trees, here to await their return. Despite the heat, and it was, in a word, decidedly hot, scarcely had they clambered out of the taxi than the three found themselves besieged by a group of would-be guides, the majority of them barefoot, wearing flowing white robes, and fezzes, all of them vying noisily in a babble of tongues, a mixture of various Arab dialects, a smattering of French, and also broken English, to have the honour of showing Friedrich and the boys around the Pyramids and the Sphinx as well as fetching them both food and drink. There were several other tourists here, some being led around on camels, while a handful of others, those who were younger and rather more adventurous, were in the process of scaling the largest of the three pyramids. It was clearly not for the faint-hearted and demanded a fair degree of agility, climbing from one layer of massive stone blocks to the next, and so on all the way up to the dizzying height of the very top. Max turned to his father.

"Papa..."

Friedrich shook his head.

"No, Max. While Robert may climb up there if he wants, for you to do so, it would be tempting Providence. Why, if you slipped and fell..." Friedrich did not have to say any more. It was then that Robert noticed the motor car standing a short distance away. Surely, that was the same one which had been following their taxi.

"Uncle Friedrich..." However, his uncle seemed not to have heard him.

"Yes, yes, very well!" Friedrich motioned to a young, barefoot Arab to come forward. "Apparently, he wants to take a picture of the three of us with my camera". Friedrich spoke rapidly in a flood of Arabic to the lad before handing him the Leica IIIa which Friedrich took with him on his archaeological excavations. He had it with him the previous year when he had taken Max to the isle of Man for the TT, and to an impromptu and secretly arranged rendezvous with Danny and Robert and their fathers.


Drawing Room, Dower House, Downton, Yorkshire, England, Sunday 9th May 1937.

Those poor, poor people.

Shaking her head in disbelief, Cora laid aside her copy of The Times and, unseeing, sat staring wistfully out of the Drawing Room window. Here in England, just as they were over there in the States, the newspapers were full of the terrible disaster which had befallen the Hindenburg, including eyewitness accounts of the appalling tragedy. One photograph above all encapsulated the enormity of what had happened; that of the huge airship engulfed by fire and crashing to the ground in a fiery inferno of flames. Yet, even before the wreckage was cold, the rumours had begun to circulate, as to what had caused the accident. In America, in Jersey City, The Daily News had listed the possibilities: lightning, a motor which had backfired, negligence on the part of the groundcrew, a stray spark, and finally an Act of God. The following day the same newspaper had listed a sixth possibility:

Sabotage.

That the giant airship had been blown out of the sky by a bomb planted on board her by opponents of the Nazi regime in Germany, seemed a distinct possibility. Nonetheless, like all the other theories as to what had caused the disaster, this was so much speculation. However, what lent weight to this particular proposition was that it was reported the FBI were looking into the matter at the behest of President Roosevelt, even though the investigation fell within the jurisdiction of the Department of Commerce and the United States Navy both of which had been tasked jointly with finding out exactly what it was that had happened. For her part, Cora was of the opinion, one which she vouchsafed to Clarke, that since nobody knew what had occasioned the disaster, all this speculation served no useful purpose.

When the disaster had been discussed at dinner up at the Abbey, Matthew had said that he thought sabotage to be unlikely; pointing out that even the Germans themselves did not believe this to have been the cause of what had happened. Then, as far as Cora was concerned, Matthew proceeded to muddy the waters by adding that even if it had been sabotage, for the Nazi regime to have owned this to be so would have been to admit that Hitler and his thugs were not universally beloved in Germany and would have served to give hope to those Germans and others elsewhere who were opposed to the regime and everything for which it stood. This was all too much for Cora who would readily have admitted that she was not as clever as Matthew. Politics, and all the despicable, incomprehensible scheming which went hand in hand with them, were not things in which she had any interest. People were what mattered - over half of those on board the airship had died horribly - and in this she was at one with Mary.


It was Clarke who had first brought Cora the dreadful news of what had happened to the Hindenburg and offered to switch on the radio so that his mistress could listen to the news. Of young Jack Power and his fiancée, who Cora knew had both been at Lakehurst awaiting to board the return flight of the Hindenburg, there was no news; none whatsoever. Then, although it seemed an age, scarce several hours later, the old butler had returned bearing on a silver tray a telegram, dispatched post haste from Lakehurst, New Jersey, in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, by Cora's godson. This reported, such is the way of telegrams, in but a handful of words, succinct and to the point, that thankfully both Audrey and he were safe and unharmed. However, on account of what had happened, they would have to re-arrange their plans.

A further telegram, received here at the Dower House a couple of days afterwards, informed Cora that the honeymoon couple would now be travelling to England on board the Normandie, this being the first liner on board which Jack and Audrey could obtain passage across the Atlantic. Sailing from New York, all being well they would arrive in Le Havre a week later than scheduled, cross to England by steamer; then up to London and so onto Downton by train. Jack promised faithfully that he would keep his godmother informed as to the progress of their impending arrival.

"How very kind of him!" Cora drawled. All these years later, there was, at times, the faintest Baltimore twang to her speech. She smiled inwardly remembering the previous summer when the pavement outside the The Grantham Arms had been dug up to enable a new gas pipe to be laid. Commenting on this to Mary, Cora had spoken of "the payment" causing Mary to eye her mother curiously.

Then Cora became practical, a legacy no doubt of all those years she had spent running Downton and reminded Clarke to be sure to tell Mrs. Blenkinsop, the cook that her larder was well sufficiently well stocked to cater for their guests. The butler nodded gravely and informed his mistress that he had already put Mrs. Blenkinsop on notice to ensure that sufficient provisions were laid in so as to provide for Mr. Jack and his bride.

Cora laughed.

"Dear, Clarke, whatever would I do without you! Thank you".


Downton Abbey, Yorkshire, May 1937.

Scarce a stone's throw from the high brick walled kitchen garden in which most of Downton's vegetables were still grown, ranged round a moss-grown cobbled yard, there stood several long-abandoned, tumbledown outbuildings, among them an old apple store, as well as a smithy, a sawpit where felled timber once it had been seasoned had been cut into manageable lengths and widths with a two-man saw, and a carpenter's workshop. In the now derelict buildings, in times long since past, all manner of work for the estate had once been undertaken: the making of hinges, latches, as well as iron rims for wheels, the shoeing of horses, and the repair of farm tools; the manufacture of gates, hurdles, wooden wheels, the repair of carts and wagons, and much more besides. It was in the last of these, the old carpenter's workshop, its grimy windows festooned with cobwebs, the dimly lit interior cluttered with all manner of old, broken, rusting tools, the floor covered with the detritus of old wood shavings and damp, mouldering sawdust, that Thomas Barrow stored his bicycle.

Back from having made his telephone call, it was as Thomas rode into the old yard, that he had the feeling, often experienced by people who are themselves often alone, that he was being watched. Having dismounted, he wheeled his bicycle into the carpenter's workshop.

"I've been waiting," Billy said. Thomas now made out the form of the younger man sitting on an old bench.

"Eh?"

"Who you were calling?"

"What's that you say?"

"From the telephone box down there in the village. The German Embassy!" Billy whistled through his teeth.

"You're guessing".
"As it happens, I'm not. My Aunt Ethel, she works as an operator. Down in Worcester. Told me a few tricks of the trade".

"Such as?"
" Let's just say, enough for me to know how to find out the last number dialled from that or any other telephone box".

Thomas shook his head.

"If you'd been down down there in the village, you wouldn't have had time to be be back up here before me".

"Hitched a lift, didn't I. On the back of old Pugh's truck. Not that he noticed. Now, a favour done, deserves a favour in return. I scratch your back, you scratch mine".

"I've no intention of scratching your back or indeed anything else!"

"That's a pity. So, I suppose I'll just have to ask to see His Lordship and tell him what I know".

"You don't know anything," Thomas said softly. "What could you possibly know?" In the last few months, Thomas had come to dislike Billy intensely; thought him to be cockalorum - full of his own importance - but perhaps the real reason was that Thomas saw in Billy himself at a younger age.

"Is that a fact? I took you for being rather cleverer than you are". Billy gave a knowing smirk. It took the greatest restraint on the part of Thomas not to wipe that grin from off of Billy's impudent young face with a single well-aimed punch.

"Did you?"

"Let's put it this way. Play your cards right and everything you want could fall right into your lap".

"How so?"
"All in good time!"

Billy fumbled inside his jacket and pulled out a creased envelope, the ragged, torn edge of which proclaimed that it had been opened.

"What's that?"
"A letter".
"I can see that. What of it?"

"It makes for interesting reading". Billy gave Thomas a knowing, sly wink.

"Why should I care what it says?"
"Because it's addressed to you. That's why".

"To me?" Thomas could not conceal his surprise.
Billy nodded.

"Yeah. That's right. Addressed to you here at Downton. All the way from Germany". Thomas's heart skipped a beat. From Günther. It had to be and after all this time.

"Give it here, damn you!"

Billy held the letter aloft. Beside him on the bench was an old lantern. Billy turned up the wick and struck a match. The flame of the lamp waxed.

"Maybe I will. Maybe, I won't". Billy held one corner of the envelope a hair's breadth from the wavering flame.

"You little bastard! You fucking well will!"

The old brick floor of the outhouse was uneven, and it was now, as Thomas lunged forward in an attempt to grab hold of the letter, that the toe of his left boot caught against a protruding brick. He tripped headlong and went sprawling on the ground.

Billy laughed out loud; watched in silence as the butler picked himself up and dusted himself down.

"The letter, if you please".

"That's more like it. All right, you can have it, but first things first..."

Had it not been for the fact that above all he wanted Günther's letter, Thomas would never have agreed.

"So, what is it that you want?" Thomas asked, playing desperately for time. He had his hands behind him, out of Billy's line of sight.
"That's much better. See, Mr. Barrow, we'll get along just fine, if you co-operate. It makes everything that much easier. Now, there's two friends of mine I'd like you to meet..."

"Oh? And just who might they be?"

"All in good time".

In the all-pervading gloom, fumbling behind him along the rough surface of the old carpenter's bench, Thomas's fingers at last closed on what it was he had been seeking: the shaft of what he knew to be a heavy wooden mallet.

Author's Note:

After the Great War, King George V suffered increasingly poor health, caused principally by his smoking, while in 1928, he almost died from septicemia. However, he had always recovered. That in January 1936 the king was given a lethal injection by his physician, Lord Edward Bernard Dawson, Baron Dawson of Penn (1864-1945) has been known to be so ever since November 1986 when Dawson's diary entry, regarding what actually had happened that night, was made public. What was done, was in fact murder, as euthanasia was not, and is not, recognised in English law.

One has to ask who had the most to gain in the event of the king's death. Certainly not Queen Mary who was devoted to her husband and who had nursed him through his various bouts of ill health. There can only be one answer: Edward, Prince of Wales, a selfish, petulant, and wilful man, who detested his father. No-one will ever know exactly what the prince said to Lord Dawson but that he did not want his father's life prolonged is surely but half the tale. After all, with his father dead, Edward would then be free to do exactly as he pleased and, above all, marry the woman he loved.

Along with the R100, the R101 was one of a pair of hydrogen filled airships built by the British government as a way of linking Great Britain to the furthest reaches of the far-flung British Empire. The crash of the R101 (48 of the 54 people on board were killed) brought a swift end to the Imperial Airship Programme; the R100 being broken up for scrap just over a year later, in December 1931. At the time of the disaster, the city of Karachi (now in Pakistan) lay in British India.

George, Duke of Kent KG, KT GCMG, GCVO, GCSt,J, ADC (1902-1942) It is said that the then Prince of Wales did put a stop to his brother George's cocaine addiction but, like so many tales told of the late Duke of Windsor, it is impossible to substantiate. It is known that George was a drug user and at the time cocaine and morphine were the fashionable drugs to take. He was also rumoured to be a Nazi sympathiser, was bi-sexual and had a string of lovers, both male and female, including, so it is said, having a nineteen-year long affair with the late Noel Coward. The Duke of Kent's death, in a military air crash in Scotland, in 1942, during the Second World War, has been the source of a great deal of speculation and fuelled several conspiracy theories. He married Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark (1906-1968) in November 1934. The couple had three children.

The youngest son of George V and Queen Mary was Prince John (1905-1919) an epileptic and also probably autistic. As his health problems became more severe, the boy disappeared from public view and from 1916 was kept in seclusion at Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate. Aged only 13, he died from an epileptic seizure in January 1919.

Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1900-1974) KG, KT, KP, GCB, GCMG, GVCO, GCSt.J, PC, ADC. He had a military career, often interrupted by his royal duties. His affair with Beryl Markham (1902-1986) the aviator (the first person to fly non-stop across the Atlantic from Great Britain to North America in 1936) was the talk of London society. He married Lady Alice Christabel Montagu Douglas Scott (1901-2004) one of the daughters of the 7th Duke of Buccleuch. Her future husband's proposal, wrote Lady Alice many years later, was not at all romantic as "it was not his way". Instead, he just "mumbled it as we were on a walk one day". They were married in November 1935 and had two sons. At the time of her death, aged 102, she was the longest-lived member of the British Royal Family. That Henry was over fond of drink was well known. Queen Mary is said to have asked Henry's wife Alice that if they intended coming to stay with her, that Henry should bring his own whisky as it was so expensive, and she had little of it left.

The Fort - Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park, a nineteenth century country house. From 1929 it was the home of the Prince of Wales. During his tenure, the property was extensively renovated, at considerable expense, during the time of the Great Depression, with the Prince and Mrs. Simpson hosting many weekend parties here in the early 1930s, all of which rather gives the lie to the oft told stories of how as Prince of Wales and later as king, Edward cared deeply about the unemployed. The truth is that he didn't. It was at Fort Belvedere, in the presence of his three brothers, that Edward VIII signed the Declaration of Abdication on 10th December 1936.

Princess Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood (1897-1965) was the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary and was very close to her brother David. She had married Henry Lascelles, Viscount Lascelles and later 6th earl of Harewood in 1922. In the recent Downton Abbey film, Mary was portrayed as very unhappy in her marriage. However, this is completely untrue; when Harry died in 1947, Mary was left utterly bereft.

None of the Duke of Windsor's family would attend his wedding to Wallis Simpson.

Aunt Bessie - Mrs. Bessie (Montagu) Merryman (1864-1964) - Wallis Simpson's favourite aunt, who acted as her chaperone during the period of the Abdication. She was the only one of Wallis's relatives to attend the wedding.

In all, there were seventeen guests.

Schloss Wasserleonburg, in Carinthia, Austria, was the property of Count Paul von Munster. The Duke of Windsor had visited the count here in February 1937.

At the time of the story, the laws relating to homosexuality were different in both France and Germany and are somewhat complex. Put simply, after 1791 the practice became legal in France with the age of consent set at 13. In Germany while not legal (homosexuality having been criminalised in 1871 by Article 175 of the Reich Penal Code) the enforcement of the law was left to the individual states which made up the German Empire. In the aftermath of the Great War, with the collapse of the empire and the creation of the Weimar Republic, a flourishing "gay" scene developed in Berlin. This all came to a violent end in the aftermath of the Nazi seizure of power.

SIW - stands for "Self-Inflicted Wound". During the Great War, this was an offence dealt with by a court-martial and which carried the death penalty. However, while none of the 3,894 British soldiers who were convicted of giving themselves a SIW none were executed, each served a period of imprisonment. To deliberately wound oneself with a pistol or a rifle indicates the desperation to which such men had been driven and also, paradoxically, how brave they were.

Entering service in 1935, the SS. Normandie had been built for the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, known to those outside France as the French Line. Owing to her novel design and opulent interiors the Normandie is considered by many to have been the greatest of all the transatlantic liners.

What Matthew tells Mary about Marble Arch is perfectly true. The world-famous balconied front of Buckingham Palace did not assume the appearance it has until 1913 when the East Front was remodelled to form a backdrop to the Victoria Memorial.

Climbing the Pyramids has been banned since 1951, but not enforced until the early 1970s.