The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [114]
Yesterday, for the first time in months, I read a newspaper. It was in a dentist’s waiting room in Weymouth Street. It was a routine appointment and I had forgotten to bring along something to read. Punch has never been greatly to my taste and I have come to loathe the fashion magazines. So it was the day’s paper or it was nothing. And I came across an opinion piece, which focused on the situation in Germany. The members of the Führer’s inner circle were each described, in detailed and highly flattering terms. Göring was there, of course, resplendent in a uniform I imagine he designed himself. The author of the article was an English historian with a professorship at Oxford. Like many academics, he seemed fascinated by the notion of the man of action. He described Göring’s feats as a member of the Red Baron’s Flying Circus in the war. And, of course, the tone was eulogistic. He wrote of Göring’s prowess as a huntsman. And he refuted indignantly the persistent rumour that the Reichstag fire in ’33 was started not by the Communists, but by Hitler’s loyal acolyte Hermann Göring. All in all it seemed to me a shallow sycophantic piece.
I don’t care about the Reichstag fire, or the part Göring may or may not have played in setting it. An act of arson cannot be blamed or credited for what has happened in Germany. The Nazi Party would have come to power regardless. There was a relentless inevitability about their rise. They are like a whirlwind which certainly Germany, and perhaps the whole world, will reap.
But I looked at the picture of Göring, gloating and imperious. And I thought about Wheatley, with all that acclaim and wealth his books are now bringing. Fischer; the Hollywood mogul; all of them have prospered. And I allowed myself to think back to the terrible events of ten years ago. And the recollection brought in its aftermath a compelling need in me to find out finally something about the poor doomed boy they abducted. Alive, he would be coming to maturity now. But his adulthood was stolen from him. He is dead, because they killed him. What sort of character was he? What sort of man would he have become? I saw dignity and courage in the very little I was allowed to see of him. But I felt the need, now, overwhelmingly, to know more.
This wish to learn who Peter was seemed both respectful and appropriate. And it came upon me with the weight of obligation. Guilt is a powerful emotion, but I have lived with guilt, insidious and futile, for a decade. This was a vastly stronger and more positive urge.
A day has barely gone by that I have not thought about how close we came to escape. But after reading the newspaper yesterday, after seeing Göring strutting in his cape and boots and baubles of high office, I began to wonder finally, too, about the possibility of retribution. They should be punished for what they have prospered so obscenely from. One day, they will each be called to account for their crimes before God. But they should be punished now, in the secular court, exposed and condemned as the murderers of an innocent child.
Child abduction is not a common crime in England. It was not a common crime ten years ago. There is every likelihood that when Peter was taken, the police were alerted to his disappearance. An eight-year-old could not simply be allowed to vanish in this country in 1927, regardless of how impoverished his family circumstances might have been. A mother will not quietly relinquish her son. It goes against nature to do so. My wretched life has made me a reluctant authority on abomination. For a parent willingly to give up their infant to malevolent strangers would be exactly that.