The light was everywhere, shining from the massive chandeliers in the ceiling and the low lamps set around the great lounge area. Yet more brightness flooded through the glass doors and windows of the riverside restaurant at the end of the lounge, as well as from the direction of the foyer and main entrance.
For a moment I thought I must be dreaming, that the grand old hotel had returned to its former glory only in my unconscious mind; and then I took in the rotted corpses, many of them still seated or slumped in elegant but dusty chairs, while others lay on the carpeted floor, pushed aside with the furniture so that there was a clear space near the vast room's centre. Blackshirts were still busy creating more space, pushing back low tables and easy chairs, upsetting chinaware and cake-stands, throwing more corpses into heaps near the mirrored walls, shifting those already on the floor with their boots, not caring if skulls crumbled and skeletal hands broke loose.
I looked up at the person who'd struck me and groaned when I saw his death's eyes, the dried blood around their darkened lids, caked like biscuit crumbs in the lashes, the ulcerations and cyanotic discoloration of the man's cheeks and jaw. He grinned down at me, exposing bleeding gums, and when I tried to strike out at him I found my wrists were tied to the cushioned arms of a high-backed seat, the kind of formally comfortable armchair in which patrons of the Savoy had once taken afternoon tea or pre-dinner drinks.
My senses started to come together more rapidly and when I saw that my shirt had been ripped away to expose my left arm and shoulder, I began to suspect what I was in for. Panic hit me and I struggled to break free, the goon just leering over me, tickled by my efforts. I stopped when I noticed Stern, Cissie and Potter on their knees not far away, a bunch of Blackshirts covering them with an array of dissuaders
- clubs and knives, as well as guns. And there came Hubble, just arriving, being helped down the carpeted stairway from the foyer by McGruder and another man, his decrepit body about ready to fail him. His smile when he saw me was no more than a tight grimace.
'Aren't the lights wonderful?' he remarked as he approached, his red-flecked eyes gazing up at the ceiling. 'It's been so long since we've witnessed such splendour, so very long.' He paused briefly to regard the kneeling prisoners, and he nodded as if counting their heads one by one before continuing his shambling journey towards me. Behind him, descending the stairs, was Muriel and there was a phoney kind of proudness to her, as though it took some effort to hold her head high and avoid the accusing eyes of her friend, Cissie. She passed by the kneeling prisoners without giving them a glance, even though Cissie called out to her.
Hubble came to a stop before me, both hands resting on his cane, fingers like blackened claws wrapped around its grip, the two aides standing close by in case he should falter. He had an old man's tremble -
and an old cadaver's stench.
Still he peered around him, his bent torso twisting with each turn of his head, admiring the chandeliers before gazing across the huge lounge itself, his eyes half-closed as if to shut out the more gruesome elements.
'If one didn't look too closely it would seem the grand old days had returned to the Savoy,' he mused.
His speech had a high-pitched sibilance to it that was as thin and frail as his bones, and standing there in his loose black uniform, bent over his stick, flesh hanging from his scrawny neck like an empty sack, and with 'carrion' strewn all around him, he reminded me of an ancient buzzard. He went on, delighting himself rather than me: 'The hotel's own oil-fuelled generator was so easy to get running again - it took my men, the ones who know about these things, less than twenty minutes, even after all these years of disuse. I'm surprised you didn't attempt to start it yourself, Mr Hoke; but then, I suppose the last thing you wanted to do was draw attention to yourself.'
Some of his words were hard to catch; it was almost as if he were speaking from another room. He deserved a reply and I gave him one.
'You crazy bastard -'
He raised a shaky hand to shush me and, I have to admit, it did. What the hell could I tell him that deep down he didn't already know?
Now he turned to me, his head leaning close, the odour making me want to gag. 'It's odd, isn't it?' he said between laboured breaths. 'All this time chasing you and never once a moment for conversation between us.'
'I didn't think we had much to talk about,' I replied, trying to avoid the foul air he was exhaling.
Muriel had joined us by now.
'You happy, Muriel?' I enquired, looking past Hubble.
'Betraying your friends to these third-rate Nazis give you some kind of thrill? like father, like daughter, I guess.'
'My father would have gladly sacrificed his life for his country,' she snapped back, her remoteness giving over to anger. 'But he recognized the poison that was slowly crippling our land.'
'Ah yeah, the Jewish poison, right?' My head was beginning to clear, but that only made me more conscious of the throbbing pain in various parts of my body, results of the beating I'd received. Shit, I'd hardly got over the lumps and bruises from my last run-in with these people.
Hubble hadn't liked my sneering tone. 'Even England's abdicated king was aware of the Jewish threat, as were many others of influence. If our own government had not been in the pocket of Jew creditors and extortionists, and so fearful of the proletariat itself, which was forever whining, forever demanding, malcontents who despised the natural social order, then perhaps the world would have had a very different and glorious future.'
'Oh Christ.. .' I began to say.
"The Jews murdered Christ, Mr Hoke.'
Some life had returned to those dead eyes of Hubbe's: they shone with a zealot's passion.
'The Duke of Windsor and others of nobility would gladly have aligned themselves with Adolf Hitler's wondrous vision for mankind,' he went on, warming to the sermon, his voice even notching up half a gear.
'And they would not have been alone. Many leaders and eminent people - academics, industrialists, militarists, too -would have joined the crusade to purge our civilization of its insidious corruption and degenerative breeding, and indeed, discreet negotiations between ourselves and Hitler's emissaries that would have benefited both Germany and the United Kingdom were well underway before that fool Chamberlain was tricked into declaring war on a nation that should have been our greatest ally.'
Something had occurred to me while he was ranting and once more I stared past him at Muriel.
'Didn't you tell us your own brothers fought against Fascism, one in the navy, the other in the airforce?' I said to her.
'It was their duty to defend their country.' Some colour had returned to her pallid skin, brought there by her own anger. 'It didn't mean they agreed with our government's misguided hostility towards Germany.'
There was probably some kind of screwed-up logic to her argument, but I wasn't in the mood to figure it out 'Just tell me why you turned us in to this bunch of madmen? I thought they, at least' -I nodded towards the kneeling group - 'were your friends.'
'Isn't it obvious?' she replied, her rage controlled again, her coolness back. 'Sir Max has to be saved.
The irony is that I recognized him on the steps of the National Gallery when we helped you three days ago, but there was nothing I could do, everything was happening so fast'
Out of the corner of my eye I saw an emaciated-looking man approaching, one of his cronies helping him remove his black shirt. His eyes were huge and kind of haunted-looking, as if the dark-smudged lids had shrunk around them.