Hollow Crown Read Free Page A

whether he had ever encouraged Scannon to call him by his Christian name. The Duke
was very choosy about the men he permitted to be so familiar and he doubted whether Scannon was one of them. He wore too much hair oil, for one thing, which the Duke abhorred and, for another,
Scannon was an open admirer of the Nazi Party and its leader. A few weeks earlier he had been in Berlin for the Olympic Games and met the Reichsführer and had apparently been bowled over by
him. He had attended a Nazi Party rally and thrilled to the sound of marching jackboots. It mystified Edward what people saw in the man but he smiled bravely and muttered inanities.
    Scannon was unmarried and, when Edward caught sight of a tall woman of exotic appearance standing by the fireplace smoking a cigarette from the longest cigarette holder he had ever seen, he
thought at first she must be attached in some way to him. Edward was impatient to be introduced to her but, whether to tease him or through an oversight, Blanche made no effort to do so. Instead,
he had to listen to Scannon going on and on about the Duke of Mersham and others of his relations until he felt he might have to wring his neck.
    At last, Lord Weaver entered the drawing-room apologizing for not having been there when his guests arrived. ‘News just in from Spain, Edward,’ he said. ‘Government troops have
recaptured Maqueda, south of Madrid.’
    ‘Never mind that,’ Scannon said scornfully. ‘It’s only a matter of time before Madrid falls to General Franco.’
    ‘You hope so, Leo, do you?’
    ‘I do, Joe,’ Scannon said firmly. ‘It’s time this terrible civil war ended and order was restored – for the sake of the Spanish people as much as for the world at
large. I hear they have taken anarchists into the government. Anarchists! I ask you – how can one take seriously a government of anarchists! It’s a contradiction in terms.’
    Edward bit back the retort which sprang to his lips and said urgently to Weaver, ‘Any news of Verity Browne?’
    Verity Browne, the New Gazette ’s correspondent in Spain, was an avowed Communist and, if Edward knew anything about it, she would be in the thick of the fighting. Edward had an odd
relationship with Verity. He had met her quite by chance when she had given him a lift to Mersham Castle after he had driven his car into a ditch. This was a year ago and their acquaintance had
ripened into a friendship that occasionally threatened to become something more than that. But Verity’s political beliefs made it almost impossible for her to ‘love a lord’ as she
had once put it. However, her principles did not prevent her from calling on Edward for help in an emergency and a few months back, just before the outbreak of the war in Spain, he had helped
obtain the release from a Spanish gaol of her lover – in Edward’s eyes an odious communist ideologue – by the name of David Griffiths-Jones.
    Edward was not a Communist. In fact he hated everything about Communism but he hated Fascism more. He held the unfashionable belief that it was possible to oppose the Nazis without becoming a
member of the Communist Party. It was certainly a stand which infuriated Verity.
    ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Weaver was saying in amazement. ‘She was in Toledo.’
    ‘Good heavens!’ said Edward in alarm. ‘Is she all right?’
    ‘Just about. She’s back in England now, recuperating. I’m surprised she hasn’t been in touch.’
    ‘What happened?’ Blanche asked.
    ‘At Toledo? About a thousand army cadets seized the Alcázar and held it against besieging government troops for weeks. Just when it looked as though the fortress must fall, and the
government had invited foreign correspondents to watch the surrender, it was relieved. On 27 th September the militia were routed by Franco’s Moorish troops. It was a disaster which
ought not to have happened. Someone had blundered. There was savage hand-to-hand fighting . . . ’
    ‘And I