by Philip Kerr
“What happened to him?” asked Robin.
“I’ve forgotten,” said Maugham, and then laughed uproariously. “Dear old Max. He was one of the lucky ones. Jews, I mean. Got out in thirty-eight, and went to America, where he died, much too soon, in nineteen forty-three. Nearly all of my friends are gone now. Including the wonderful Adlon. My, that was a good hotel. Whatever happened to the couple who owned the place? Louis Adlon and his sweet wife, Hedda.”
“Louis was murdered by the Russians in nineteen forty-five. With his riding boots and waxed mustaches he was mistaken for a German general.” I shrugged dismissively. “Most of the Red Army were just peasants. Hedda? Well, I hate to think what happened to her. The same as the rest of the women in Berlin, I imagine. Raped. And raped again.”
Maugham nodded sadly. “Tell me, Walter, how was it that you became the house detective at the Adlon?”
“Until nineteen thirty-two, I’d been a cop with the Berlin police. My politics meant that I had to leave. I was a Social Democrat. Which for the Nazis was tantamount to being a Communist.”
“Yes, of course. And how long were you a policeman?”
“Ten years.”
“Christ. That’s a lifetime.”
“It certainly seemed that way at the time.”
—
After dinner and a couple of rubbers, Maugham said, “I want to talk to you in private.”
“All right.”
He took me up a wooden stair to his writing space, which was inside a freestanding structure on top of a flat roof. There was a big refectory table, a fireplace, and no windows with a view that could distract a man from the simple business of writing a novel. A bookshelf held some favorite titles and, on a coffee table, a few copies of Life magazine. Another of Jersey Joe’s Tahitian sparring partners was up on the wall, but what with the beam from the lighthouse at the southwestern end of the Cap, it was a little like being on the deck of a ship of which Maugham was the Ahab-like captain. We sat down at opposite ends of a big sofa and then he came to the point.
“You strike me as an honest man, Walter.”
“As far as it goes.”
“One imagines that you wouldn’t be working as a concierge at the Grand if you weren’t.”
“Perhaps. But good fortune rarely walks you out the door to your car. Not these days.” I shrugged. “What I mean to say is, we’re all trying to make a living, Mr. Maugham. And if we can pull off the pretense that we’re doing it honestly, then so much the better.”
“You’re an even bigger cynic than I am, Walter. I like you more and more.”
“I’m German, Mr. Maugham. I’ve had a lot more practice with cynicism. We all have. It’s the thousand-ton weight of German cynicism that caused the collapse of the Weimar Republic and gave us the thousand-year Reich.”
“I suppose so.”
“What can I do for you, sir? You didn’t bring me up here to help me confess my sins.”
“No, you’re right. I came to tell you about a few of mine. The fact is, Walter, I’m being blackmailed again.”
“Again?”
“I’m a rich old queer. I have more skeletons in my closets than the Roman catacombs. Being blackmailed is not so much an occupational hazard for a man like me as an existential condition. I fuck, therefore I am subject to demands for money, demands with menaces attached.”
“Pay him, whoever it is. You’re rich enough.”
“This one is a professional.”
“So go to the police.”
Maugham smiled thinly. “We both know that isn’t possible. Blackmailers work on the same principle as the Mafia. They prey upon a vulnerable minority of people who can’t go to the police. Their power is our silence.”
“What I meant was, why tell me?”
“Because you used to be a policeman, and because I want your help.”
“I don’t see how I can be of assistance, Mr. Maugham. I’m a concierge. My detective days are long gone. I have a hard job seeing off the merry widows at the hotel, let alone a professional blackmailer. Besides, I’m a little slow on the uptake these days. I’m still trying to work out how you know I used to be a detective.”
“You were ten years with the Berlin police. You told us yourself.”
“Yes, but it was someone else who told you I’d been the house bull at the Adlon Hotel.” I nodded. “But who? Wait, it was Hennig, wasn’t it? Harold Heinz Hennig. I saw him arguing with your nephew in front of La Voile d’Or a couple of weeks ago. So that’s his racket.”
“Never heard of him.”
“I forgot. He’s not calling himself that anymore, is he? He’s checked into the Grand under the name Harold Heinz Hebel. It was he who told you about me, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right. Hebel. He told my nephew about you. It was his idea that I should try to employ you, Walter.”
“His idea?”
“He said he knew you from the war and that you were reliable. And honest. As far as it goes.”
“That was nice of him. Not that he would know how to spell ‘reliable’ and ‘honest.’ The man is a criminal.”
“I know.”
“Well then, why take his recommendation? Why not hire a local man? A Frenchman.”
“It’s simple. You see, Walter, it’s Harold Heinz Hebel who’s blackmailing me.”
“Now I really am confused.”
“The fact is, Hebel’s asking rather a lot of money for a compromising photograph of me and some other people. He wants me to feel that I can make a deal with him in complete confidence. He said you’d be the kind of man to make sure he kept his side of the bargain. And that you’re not the type of man who would get nervous handling a large sum of money.”
“Now I’ve heard everything. Blackmailers recommending detectives. Or ex-detectives. It sounds an awful lot like a salmon recommending a good poacher.”
“It makes perfect sense when you think about it. A good deal isn’t a good deal if either party feels he’s been cheated. Hebel wants me to feel confident that I’m getting value for my money.”
“I can’t help you, Mr. Maugham. I like you. I liked my dinner. I feel sorry for you. But I’m just not able to help you.”
“He said you’d say that. Hebel.”
“He did, huh?”
“He said that I should let him know if you didn’t want to help and then he could probably persuade you himself.”
“Did he say how?”
Maugham smiled. “Oh my, yes. You’re an interesting man, Walter. Or should I say Herr Gunther? Yes, you’ve had an interesting life. A career in the SS and the SD. Working for Dr. Goebbels, among others. You must tell me all about that sometime. It sounds quite fascinating. He said to tell you that if the French Sûreté were to find out that you’re living down here under a false identity, you’d lose your job and you’d be deported back to Berlin, immediately, where the Americans would almost certainly hang you. For what reason, he didn’t say. But I must admit it does sound serious.”
“Fuck you,” I said, and stood up. “Fuck you and your queer friend and your queer nephew.”
“Actually I think we’ll all be f-fucked unless we can work something out, Herr Gunther. Sit down. And let’s talk about this s-s-sensibly.” He nodded. “You know I’m right. So just calm down and think about what you’re saying.”
“Like I said before, Hebel is a false name, too. He could be deported.” I sat down and lit a cigarette. I smoked it, too, but mostly I wanted to jam it in the old man’s bloodshot eyeball.
“Perhaps. But he’s willing to take the risk. The question is, are you willing to take the same risk, Herr Gunther? You’ve got a good job. With the prospect of making a little extra money from me. Shall we say a five percent handling fee? Why screw that just to bring him down?”
“Believe me, if you knew the man l
ike I do, you’d know the answer to that question.”
“Oh, I can believe it. The man is a snake. But, please, it doesn’t have to be like this, Herr Gunther. All you have to do is agree to be my agent in this matter and all of this unpleasantness will go away. We can be friends. Don’t you agree?”
“Is this him who’s blackmailing me now, or you, Mr. Maugham?”
“Come now. I’m merely repeating what Hebel told me.”
“Really? It strikes me that you’ve been on the end of blackmail often enough to know exactly how to apply a bit of pressure yourself.”
“Maybe I do. For which you have my apologies, sir. But I’m a desperate man. You can take that to the casino and buy chips with it.”
“Maybe you are desperate. But you can’t trust this guy. Just because I’m the middleman doesn’t change anything. Jesus, for all you know I’m part of the same scam. You don’t know the first thing about me. How can you be sure that I’m not going to buy the photograph and then blackmail you myself? You can’t. That’s the thing about blackmail. It’s a dirty business. Everyone’s your friend right up until the moment they turn around and screw you.”
“You make a good point. But I have no choice but to take the risk.”
“Can I be blunt?”
“Be my guest.”
“Everyone in the world knows you’re queer. What of it? Does it affect anything? You’ve got your invitation to the royal wedding in Monaco. Has it crossed your mind that what you do in your bedroom really doesn’t matter to people anymore?”
“That’s true in France, perhaps. And Italy, certainly. But it matters a lot back in England. Homosexuality is a crime in my country and I should hate to be prevented from ever going back. Besides, there’s rather more to the photograph than just my being queer.”
I sat there smoking sullenly for several seconds.
“Ten percent. If I’m going to play agent I want a proper agent’s commission. Ten percent.”
“All right. Ten percent it is.”
“So tell me about the photograph.”
SEVEN
Before the war I worked for the British secret service,” said Somerset Maugham. “Mostly I was based in Geneva. But some of the time I was stationed in what was then Petrograd. I shan’t bore you with the details of my mission but I had a largish team of British agents under my control. Frankly, it’s always been a business that attracted homosexuals, because queers are used to living their lives in secret—at least in England, where to be homosexual can still draw a sentence of up to two years in prison. Being silent about who and what you are is second nature to English queers. Things haven’t improved a lot since the days of Oscar Wilde. That’s why so many queers like Isherwood and Auden went to Berlin in the twenties. Because it was a poof’s paradise. And a good reason why I live here. Anyway, that’s all by the by. I still have a lot of friends in SIS. Many of them, including Sir John Sinclair, the current head of MI6, were my agents. Besides, it’s not the kind of business you ever really retire from.”
I nodded grimly. “Don’t I know it? I’ve been trying to retire from the detective business for years now, but it keeps dogging me.”
“Yes. I am sorry about that.”
“I doubt it.”
Maugham stared into space for a moment and then adjusted his monocle. “Over the years since, I’ve done small jobs here and there for SIS,” he said, continuing. “And I’ve welcomed friends and acquaintances at the Villa Mauresque. In nineteen thirty-seven, not long after I first bought this place, I had a number of friends to stay, including two boys just down from Cambridge University, who came down here in Victor Rothschild’s Bugatti: Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess. Subsequently they went to work for MI5: MI5 is the UK’s domestic and counterintelligence agency. Blunt is rather less well known, at least to anyone outside of the world of fine art. But Guy Burgess is now infamous as a result of a press conference in Moscow just a few months ago when he and another man, Donald Maclean, were revealed to have been long-term spies for the Soviet Union—where they’re both now living. You may have read about it in the newspapers. Anyway, Guy is, and always was, notoriously homosexual. For that matter so is Anthony. And there’s a photograph of us and several others lying naked beside my swimming pool. This is the photograph that your friend Harold Hebel is in possession of and which he is threatening to send to the press in England. I can’t tell you the embarrassment it would cause me if it was revealed in the British newspapers that Guy and I were intimate. It’s not just a question of our homosexuality, as I’m sure you can appreciate, Herr Gunther; it’s also a matter of my loyalty to my country. I’m not a Soviet spy. Never have been. But given my service in Petrograd and my friendship with Guy, who knows the trouble the newspapers might cause for me? Certainly I had contact with people who worked for the Petrograd VRK and the Cheka—the forerunner of the KGB—when I was there. So you can see how vulnerable I am. Especially in America. Senator McCarthy hasn’t just been going after Communists but homosexuals, too. The so-called Lavender Scare, for example. So. Visas to the United States might be withdrawn. Lucrative film contracts cancelled. MGM are making a film of one of my books as we speak. And United Artists plan to film a short story of mine next year. I may be the most successful writer in the world but I am not immune to public opinion. To say nothing of the embarrassment it might cause for my poor brother, Frederic, in England, who just happens to be the former Lord Chancellor. We’ve never been close, he and I, but I would like to spare him that, if I can. He’s very old. Even older than I.”
“Where did Hebel get this photograph?”
“There are a number of possible explanations. There were several other men at that particular pool party who might have taken photographs: Dadie Rylands, Raymond Mortimer, Godfrey Winn, Paul Hyslop. But most likely it was my former friend and companion Gerald Haxton. I met Gerald during the Great War and we were together for the rest of his life. He died in nineteen forty-four. Gerald was a wonderful man and I loved him very dearly, but in spite of my generosity Gerald spent too much and was always in debt—mostly to the local casinos. In order to raise some extra cash he may have sold the photograph to a male whore called Louis Legrand with whom he was infatuated. Loulou was here a lot during the thirties, and many of the guests here at the Villa Mauresque—myself included—were his appreciative customers. He’s in the photograph, too. He went to live in Australia after that, doing what I’m not entirely sure. But he turned up here a couple of years ago demanding money for some letters written to him by me and some of my more illustrious friends.”
“And what happened then?”
“I paid him off. With a check.”
“Who handled that business for you?”
“A lawyer in Nice. A Monsieur Gris.”
“To your satisfaction?”
“Entirely. But before you ask I can’t use him again. Unfortunately he died, quite recently.”
“If Louis Legrand had been in possession of the photograph then surely he’d have used it at the time, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, that’s true. But I now suspect he might not have used it because he appears in it. Anyway, he was disappointed with his check, it has to be said, and threatened to come back with something ‘more damaging.’ My lawyer wrote him a letter informing Loulou that if he ever returned with more menacing demands for money we would certainly place the matter in the hands of the police. And since Loulou did have a conviction in France, for pimping, which is illegal in this country, he could easily have been deported.”
“So, would you say it’s possible that he decided to use the photograph at one remove and sold it to Harold Hebel?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Do you have a print you can show me?”
Maugham went to his refectory desk and pulled open a drawer. He took out a largish black-and-white photograph and handed it to me, without hesitation or e
mbarrassment, which, for anyone but him, would probably have taken some nerve. But at eighty-two I guess he was through apologizing or feeling ashamed of what he was.
It was a nice swimming pool; at each corner there was an ornamental lead pinecone, with a diving board at one end and, at the other, a marble mask of Neptune as big as an archery target. There was water in the pool, too. Gallons of it. I tried to keep my eyes on the water, but it was difficult. Any self-respecting satrap would have been quite satisfied with the swimming pool’s obvious luxury and, quite probably, the many naked men and boys in various stages of arousal, who were grouped around the mask of Neptune and paying particular priapic attention to the god’s open mouth. As obscene photographs go, it was up there with anything drawn by Aretino at his most provocative. I’d seen worse but not since the days of the Weimar Republic, when Berlin was the world capital of pornography.
“Who’s who?” I asked. “It’s a little difficult to tell anyone apart.”
“That’s Guy there,” said Maugham. “That’s Anthony. And that’s Loulou.”
“Boys will be boys, I suppose.”
“Quite.”
“Is he offering you the negative?”
“Yes.”
“How much does he want for this?”
“Fifty thousand American dollars. In cash. For the negative and the prints.”
“That’s a lot of money for a holiday snap.”
“Which is precisely why I want someone trustworthy to handle the matter for me. Someone who knows what the fuck they’re doing. And who’s not going to get too nervous or overexcited. Someone like you. At least that’s what Hebel says. He tells me you have experience of dealing with blackmailers. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“In Berlin?”
“Yes.”
“Would you care to tell me about that, perhaps? Just out of interest, I mean. If I’m going to give you five thousand dollars’ commission I think I have a right to know what kind of service I’m buying, don’t you?”
