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The Baron responded to that with a nod, then went on.
“And while I was there, I made a genuine ass of myself,” the Baron said. “I became infatuated with a young woman.”
“That would be ‘Mary Elizabeth Chernick’?” von Heurten-Mitnitz asked.
“She had adopted the stage name ‘Monica Sinclair,’” the Baron said. “She wished to become an actress.”
“This is the same Monica Sinclair we used to see in American films? Forgive me, Baron, but wasn’t she a bit young for you?”
“My former wife is six months younger than I am,” the Baron said icily.
“I see. And may I ask why you married her?”
“I was a damned fool,” the Baron said. “We had… been together… and she was in the family way.”
“I see,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “And you did the gentlemanly thing.”
“I never had the intention of staying married to her,” the Baron said. “Obviously, it would have been impossible to bring her to Germany.”
“Obviously,” von Heurten-Mitnitz agreed.
“Under American law, a child born to a woman within ten months of her divorce is presumed to be the legal offspring of her former husband. When my former wife was six months pregnant—You follow the arithmetic?”
Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz nodded.
“—I obtained an initial decree of divorce. My father at the time advanced me a sum of money sufficient to satisfy her and to support the child until he was eighteen. I immediately returned to Germany, and was in Germany three months later when the divorce became final and the child was born. I never saw him in the United States, in other words, and for years—”
"When did you in fact see him?” von Heurten-Mitnitz interrupted.
“I saw him for the first time in 1934,” the Baron said,“when he was sent to Switzerland.”
“Tell me about that,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
“My former wife’s career, such as it is,” the Baron said, “has been based on the same role, which she plays over and over. She projects an image of unsullied innocence, incredibly enough, and that image is inconsistent with either divorce or progeny. She sells virginity the way whores sell the opposite. It was proposed to Miss Sinclair by Max Liebermann of Continental Studios—and she did not object—that the boy be sent to Iowa and raised by her mother.”
“She gave up her child that willingly?” von Heurten-Mitnitz asked.
“I daresay the grandmother could not have been a worse mother than my former wife,” the Baron said. “The reports from our legal counsel in America said she was a simple, decent woman.”
“I see,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
"And then she died, and other arrangements were necessary,” the Baron said.
“Other arrangements?”
“I was approached, not directly, you understand, but through our lawyers in America, by a representative of Continental Studios, who led me to believe that now that her mother was no longer around, my former wife was willing to give me uncontested custody of the child. I am more than a little ashamed to admit that I turned down the offer. I had recently remarried, my son Fritz had just been born. I did not want the intrusion in my home…”
“I understand,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said, his tone suggesting that he both understood and disapproved.
“Our legal counsel reported to me that it was my wife’s intention to place the boy in a private school, St. Paul’s, run by the Episcopal Church, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They paid the school high compliments, and I was able to convince myself that he would be better off there than he would have been either with his mother—which in any case was out of the question— or with me here.”
“I’m sure you were right, Herr Baron,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
Von Heurten-Mitnitz was more than a little bored with this recitation of von Fulmar’s. But the Bad Ems postcard had mentioned the Baron, and there was certainl
y a reason for that. He could only hope he’d be able to pull that from what von Fulmar was telling him.
“I was wrong, Herr von Heurten-Mitnitz,” the Baron said. “Quite wrong. I should have brought the boy to Germany, no matter the difficulty, and raised him and seen to his education. If I had done that, we would not be standing here having this embarrassing conversation.”
