The Man Who Fell from the Sky

by

William Norris

CHAPTER ONE

It was hot enough to make the angels sweat.  Their marble faces glistened in the harsh sunlight, sorrowing blindly, as the small cortege made its slow way along the curving path between them to the north-east corner of the vast cemetery  of Evere, in Belgium.  There were no crowds.  The group of curious villagers who had gathered at the gate to see the wealthy and the great pass by was left in puzzled disappointment.   Tongues wagged.  Was this the way the rich buried their dead?

The flowers were some small recompense for their long wait in the baking heat: great mounds of wreaths and sprays that filled the motor hearse to overflowing, hiding from sight the expensive coffin.   Their embossed cards of condolence read like a page from The Financial Times.  Bankers and boards of directors from around the world had paid their floral tributes.  But they had not come to say goodbye.  Nor had the donor of the huge wreath of orchids, violets and pansies, which occupied the place of honour on the coffin lid.   And she had been his wife. 

Captain Alfred Loewenstein, Companion of the Bath, multi-millionaire, aviator and sportsman, friend of kings, maker and loser of fortunes, was going to his grave almost alone.  He was fifty-one years old.   

At least he would rest undisturbed.  In the cemetery outside Evere, which serves the city of Brussels, there are three classes of graves.  For those of lesser means, plots maybe purchased for fifteen or fifty years, at the end of which time the occupants are dug up and the plots resold.   It is a practical arrangement.  No such indignity awaited Alfred Loewenstein.  His tomb, covered with a plain black slab of polished marble and occupying the space of three graves, had been purchased in perpetuity.   The cost, and the occupancy, was shared with the Misonne family, into which he had married.   

The hearse had driven hard to take the empty coffin to Calais on the French coast, collect its occupant, and return.  Now it crunched to a gravelled halt beside the open tomb.   A motley collection of cars, from limousines to taxis, tagged on behind.  The mourners emerged from them like beetles, murmuring to each other with as much solemnity as they could muster.  There were just seventeen of them, all men, and they perspired freely in the black constriction of their formal grief.   They looked with sympathy at the pallbearers, staggering under their load: the massive oak coffin was lined with lead, which was a thoughtful gesture.   Alfred Loewenstein had died two weeks before, falling 4,000 feet from his private aircraft, allegedly unseen by any of the six other people on board.   His condition was less than fragrant.  

To the general relief, it was quickly over.   A few perfunctory prayers from the cemetery's resident priest, and the coffin was lowered into the vault.  The mourners departed, the slab was replaced, and Madeleine Loewenstein's wreath was laid carefully on top.    The remainder of the flowers were heaped haphazardly upon the graves on either side, to fade and rot in the sunshine of that spectacular July of 1928.

In the weeks that followed, no mason came to carve the name of the famous man on the marble slab.   Nor would they ever come.  Alfred Loewenstein had been consigned to the obscurity of an unmarked grave.

If there was little mourning, there was certainly wailing and gnashing of teeth.    The death of Loewenstein had brought financial disaster to stockbrokers and small investors across the length and breadth of Europe.   Little old ladies and country gentry alike, who had clung to his financial coattails in the hope of becoming rich,  were suddenly poor once more.   Dealers in London and Brussels, caught on the margins, wet to the wall as stock in his companies tumbled.   In Berlin and Zurich, Paris and Montreal - almost everywhere where men dealt in money - the story was the same.   For the best part of a decade, the man they called the Belgian Croesus had commanded the headlines and mesmerised they all with this flamboyance, his daring, and the sheer effrontery of his behaviour.

They had danced to his tune, dazzled by his wizardry, hopeful that his Midas touch would transmute their savings into gold.   And so it did - while he lived.   But the tune was ended, and the melody lingered not.   Alfred Loewenstein had wound up bobbing on the cold swell of the English Channel.  In a manner as bizarre and strange as the way in which he lived his life, the third richest man in the world had died and left them holding scraps of paper.  They were puzzled, angry and afraid.   And they were much, much poorer......

The Man Who Fell from the Sky is available in paperback or e-book format from: www.synergebooks.com 

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Bill Norris is always pleased to hear from readers.   You can reach him via e-mail at william.norris@nordnet.fr