The Poellenberg Inheritance Read Online Free Page B

front slid down; without turning his head the chauffeur spoke.
    â€˜Excuse me, Herr Fisher, but her Highness dislikes cigarette smoke in the car. Would you mind not smoking? I am very sorry but her orders are strict.’
    â€˜Anything you say.’ Fisher stubbed it out. Her Highness sounded as if she might be hell on wheels. But then money, rank and power seldom improved human nature. Especially when they were inherited along with an armament empire in a country where feudality was deeply ingrained in the people. The Germans had a passion for rank and authority. He could tell that the chauffeur despised him because he was casually dressed and his attitude was like his clothes.
    With a different breed of passenger he wouldn’t have mentioned the no smoking rule. He’d have cleaned and aired the car and never said a word. Fisher knew his Germans. They were the only race in the world he really disliked. He spoke the language fluently, as he did French and Italian. He liked to think of himself as completely unacademic, but he despised the English attitude which refused to learn any language on the assumption that if you shouted, foreigners understood. He had worked as correspondent for a major Midlands newspaper for five years, and then he had met Dunston, who was working for Interpol on a smuggling ring who were spiriting gold out of Western Europe into the East in return for a supply of pure opium. It had been a nasty case, with several murders and an abduction thrown in; Fisher joined the hunt on behalf of his newspaper, and by the time it was over and the ring dispersed, he and the man from Interpol had become good friends. It was Dunston who contacted him a year later and put a proposition to him over drinks in London. Dunston had left Interpol and set up on his own as a private detective. He had the skill and the police contacts, but he needed a partner. Fisher had impressed him. He was, Dunston said, a natural bloodhound. And one of the best sources of information in the world was the Press, to which he had the entrée. To start with the money wouldn’t amount to much, but if they were successful, the sky could be the limit.
    Fisher had no dependents; both his parents were dead and he had no intention of getting married. He could take the chance and see what happened. Within six years the Dunston Fisher Agency was the biggest private investigating service in Europe, with offices in every capital and a staff of a hundred operators. Now Dunston sat in the head office in London, and Fisher only undertook the biggest assignments, where the fees ran into thousands. The letter from the Princess Margaret Von Hessel had been addressed to Dunston, but Dunston was on holiday in Portugal. A cheque for a thousand pounds had been enclosed with the letter, as an inducement to take the case without delaying. Fisher had cabled back immediately, saying he was coming in his partner’s place, and before he left for Germany, he had investigated the family. The name was famous enough. Steel, coal, armaments, property; millions and millions before both wars and a new fortune made since the end of the last. Blood which could be traced to the Bavarian kings, and to several European royal families, now dispossessed or extinct. A title granted by Frederick the Great. Castles in Germany, a vast property in East Prussia which the Communists had overrun, a villa at Cap Ferrat which had not been used for twenty years. A passion for the vicious concentration camp dog, the dobermann pinscher. And at its head the princess, aged seventy-six, the mother of two sons. Widowed in the last war when her husband died of a heart attack. Even before he arrived at the house itself, Fisher was expecting something formidable.
    The car turned in through wrought-iron gates, surmounted by the heraldic boar of the Von Hessel crest. The house was enormous, a square stuccoed building, painted washed pink. Flowers were growing in ornamental tubs