10
‘I made one useful friend in Vienna – an attaché at the British Embassy called Ruthven-Stuart,’ Edward told Verity. They were in St James’s Park exercising Basil who was relishing the new and exotic scents. Verity continually had to tell him not to pull on his lead but he took absolutely no notice.
‘A thoroughly nice man, I thought. We went for a long walk in Grinzing to admire the view. We stopped at a heuriger overlooking the city – an inn where the Viennese go on fine Sundays to drink wine from local vineyards. We shared a jug of rather sour white wine and devoured a plate of smoked meats because the exercise had made us ravenous. He told me about Vienna in happier times – how he loved the opera. For a schilling one could get a seat in the gods, he said, and hear Bruno Walter or Knappertsbusch conduct Der Freischutz or Wagner. I wish I had spent time there when I was younger.’
Verity was amused by Edward’s nostalgia for a place he had never known. She had rarely seen him give way to anything like sentimentality.
‘But you saw the swastikas hanging from every public building?’ she said brutally. ‘The Communists were the only party to put up a fight and they’re now all in camps or dead. Better dead, I expect.’
‘I did see the swastikas, yes, and the Jewish shops with their broken glass and hateful slogans daubed on the doors. That’s what made me sad. Can Vienna survive the war? Does it deserve to? The bombing . . .’
‘I should worry about London first,’ Verity said grimly. Trying to change his mood, she went on, ‘This Ruthven-Stuart from the Embassy. . . why were you talking to him?’
‘I was talking about what we could do to help get the Jewish children out of the city. There’s a train planned for two weeks on Tuesday. Of course, the authorities may cancel or postpone it but I said Mersham Castle would take as many as could be fitted on the train, at least until they could be found English families to take them in.’
Verity felt she had been wrong-footed but was glad of it. She had suspected him of taking on a spying job for Churchill or some secret government agency but decided she had done him an injustice. She could not know that her suspicions were justified and that Edward had also been talking to Ruthven-Stuart about spiriting out of Vienna a scientist working on the German atomic bomb.
‘You haven’t told me if you have decided to marry me or not,’ he said attempting to sound casual.
‘Well, you haven’t offered me a ring on bended knee,’ she riposted. Then, seeing he might reasonably interpret this as a ‘yes’, she added, ‘I’ve already told you – I can’t think about us until we have got to the bottom of why Georg died. I feel his ghost urging me on. I’m sure you have an apt quotation from Shakespeare to annoy me with.’
‘“Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold. Hence, horrible shadow!”’
‘Hamlet?’
‘Macbeth.’
‘I’ve told you before, you’re over-educated. Basil! You’re pulling my arm off. You take him for a minute, will you, Edward? So, what happened when you went back to say goodbye to the Dreisers?’
‘Nothing. They had nothing to add. It was almost as if . . . how can I put it? . . . that Georg had died when he left Vienna. They knew then that they would never see him again, on this earth at least. To hear from me that he had died before them was a shock, of course. I told you I heard Frau Dreiser’s cry of pain, and I won’t ever forget it, but it was as if they had ceased to expect death to do them any favours. They asked me to see that he was buried as a Jew and of course I said I would. I believe he ought to have been buried within twenty-four hours but until the police release the body . . . And they were unhappy when I said there would have to be an autopsy. Apparently, that can be seen as defiling the body.’
‘Oh, Edward! It’s too sad. I think we must live in the worst age of man. The Dark Ages.’
Edward took her arm and thought, This must be what it’s like to be married, walking in the park arm in arm, talking over problems.
‘I say,’ he said, pulling himself together with an effort, ‘let’s make some notes. Suspects, motives . . . that sort of thing. I feel we know quite a lot but nothing seems to fit together.’ He sat down on a bench and Verity, surprised but not unwilling, sat down beside him. Basil resignedly lay down at their feet, panting. Edward took out a note pad and his fountain pen. ‘Let’s take Gray’s death first. “What, is’t murder?” – sorry!’ he said hurriedly, seeing her face. ‘I promise not to quote from the bard. You think he was killed in his studio and taken up to Tarn Hill with his painting kit to make it look as though he had died there – and of natural causes?’
‘I do but I admit the evidence is very slight – just the mystery of the palette knife and the unusual amount of ergot in his blood.’
‘Your hypothesis would be more convincing if Gray hadn’t dosed himself with ergot. That alone might have made him forget his own name, let alone his knife. In any case, I would be readier to accept that he had been killed in his studio and his body transported to Tarn Hill if it had been found beside his easel. Why take his body down the hill – leaving the painting behind – and drop it on Mountbatten’s front door? Too difficult and too complicated.’
‘You believe he walked to where he died?’
‘I do but it would be useful to talk to the doctor who did the post-mortem. He might have views on it.’
‘So, he left his knife behind but set up his easel on Tarn Hill at his usual spot. Then he walked down to Broadlands and died?’
‘That’s about the size of it, V.’
‘Do you think he was meeting someone who was staying in the house?’
‘Seems likely.’
‘Stuart Rose was the only guest of Mountbatten’s with artistic leanings and if I’m right in deciphering the squiggle on the canvas as a rose . . .’
‘We need to talk to him but let’s keep an open mind. Gray might have wanted to talk to someone else about something else . . . something from his past. He might even have wanted to talk to Mountbatten himself. Or the squiggle might just be a squiggle and mean nothing at all.’
‘Where do we begin, then? Can we be sure his murder – if it is murder – is linked to Georg’s?’
‘No, but we’ll know more once we’ve interviewed our chief suspects – Mandl and Joan . . .’
‘We don’t really suspect her, do we?’
‘She may have unwittingly caused his death,’ Edward said slowly.
‘And the other suspects?’
‘Putzi, Rose. . .’
‘I suppose you’ll end up doing most of the interviewing,’ Verity said sulkily.
Edward took out his gold case, offered her a cigarette and took one for himself. As he leant towards her to light her cigarette, she thought – not for the first time – how good-looking he was. She liked his long nose and strong chin. There were wrinkles around his eyes which she was almost sure had not been there three years earlier and it made her wonder if she too was visibly ageing. The thought made her nervous.
‘Not at all!’ he said, expelling a lungful of smoke. ‘You talk to Rose. He’s one of your lot – a Party member, I mean. I think he’d open up to you more than he would to me. He is the only suspect who could have a connection with both Georg and Gray.’
‘Art, you mean? He might have stolen Georg’s Dürer and as a Communist . . .’ She stopped. ‘But why might he have killed Gray?’
‘I have no idea,’ Edward said, shrugging his shoulders, ‘but he was an artist. As for Georg, perhaps Rose cheated him over some deal to sell the Dürer but I agree it’s not convincing. Anyway, you question Rose and I’ll take on the egregious Putzi.’
‘Good idea. I know I’d lose my temper and get nowhere with that man. He probably wouldn’t even speak to me.’
‘Right! Let’s think about Georg for a moment. If we assume it was murder . . .’
‘Of course it was!’
‘V! Didn’t I say we need to keep an open mind? The police don’t think it was murder.’ Verity sco
wled but said nothing so he went on, ‘However, if we take his death as murder, we can probably narrow our suspects down to someone who knew Georg in Vienna or Germany before he came to England. I gather he had travelled in Germany but not elsewhere in Europe, or at least not recently. No one who met him for the first time in England would have had a motive to kill him except Rose – to steal his Dürer. And that’s one fact we can’t ignore – the Dürer has vanished.’
‘It’s not in his suitcase or anywhere else obvious,’ Verity agreed.
‘Correct. So why might Mandl have killed Georg? He and Joan were lovers before, and maybe even after, she married Mandl.’ Edward was becoming excited. ‘Probably Mandl knew about it – he doesn’t look the kind of fellow who would not have researched his future wife’s love life. We know he was very jealous when she became infamous for appearing naked in that film of hers.’
‘Last Night in Vienna.’
‘So, when he saw Georg at the polo, he lost his temper . . . No, that can’t be right. He would have been mad to kill him because of some past romance. All that was history.’
‘He might have seen them together and decided it wasn’t history. In any case, on top of any personal motive Mandl might have for wanting Georg dead, we know that – as a Nazi – he would not have hesitated to remove a Jew who got in his way,’ Verity suggested. She had another idea. ‘Perhaps Georg threatened him with something which might have scuppered his business dealings with the navy?’
‘Scuppered indeed – a suitably naval metaphor! But I confess I am dubious. I think Mandl’s hopes of selling guns to the Royal Navy must already have been dashed by the time of the polo match. I must ask Mountbatten if that was the case . . .’ He rubbed his forehead as he often did when he was thinking hard. ‘But this is just wild guesswork. One thing we can assume – since you heard Putzi quarrel with Georg and stalk off in the opposite direction – he could hardly have been the person Georg was expecting to meet at the stables.’
‘No, that must have been Rose. I think Georg asked Rose to sell his precious drawing for him . . .’
‘And Rose decided to kill him for it. Then he could have sold the Dürer as its owner. After all, as far as Rose was aware, no one – except Georg’s parents – knew he had the painting so Rose would have nothing to fear.’
Verity considered. ‘I don’t think he would have dared. Rose must have guessed he would show it to me. After all, Georg was staying with me. It would have been natural . . . Or – what about this? – Putzi might have followed Georg to the stables and killed him as he waited for Rose to turn up.’
Edward nodded. ‘Remember, V, in his letter to his parents Georg talked about an enemy he had seen in London whom he would not name for fear of his parents getting into trouble. Since he had mentioned Mandl in the letter, he could not have meant him.’
‘But he could have meant Putzi,’ Verity said excitedly.
‘Yes. As far as Georg knew, Putzi was an intimate friend of Hitler and therefore a dangerous enemy.’
‘One thing is certain,’ Verity said with decision, ‘neither Putzi nor Mandl would contemplate sharing a woman with a Jew.’ She grimaced. ‘These people disgust me! Maybe, as you are always implying, Communists are less than perfect but the war against Fascism has to be fought and for so long we were the only . . .’
‘Get off the soapbox, V.’
‘Sorry.’ They stopped talking for a moment, trying to get to grips with what might have happened to Georg.
Verity broke the silence. ‘You said from the beginning that Mandl was fooling himself if he really thought the Royal Navy would buy guns from a Nazi when the political situation is so critical. He can’t really have believed the British Government, or even the Admiralty, would have bought arms from a man like him. Now, if he had been Swiss . . . ’
‘I agree, but he may indeed have been fooling himself. These sort of people are cunning but not necessarily intelligent.’
‘And Joan Miller?’
‘Can’t think of a motive unless she mistook Georg for her husband. She certainly wants him dead. The trouble is, I can’t believe she would know enough, or be cool enough, to inject something unpleasant into a horse.’
‘Frankly,’ Verity admitted, ‘I can’t see Mandl injecting a pony with some noxious substance either. I can imagine him shooting Georg or hitting him on the head with a polo stick but this was such an odd way to kill a man – so complicated.’
‘We ought to talk to the grooms,’ Edward agreed. ‘Maybe one of them was paid to do it. I wonder if the police are following that up? I’ll telephone Inspector Beeston. Perhaps he already knows who murdered Georg. I wish he was more cooperative.’
‘What about the vet who examined Button?’
‘Yes, I must try to talk to him as well. He gave me the brush-off when I tried to ask him a few questions while he examined Button just after we found Georg’s body.’
Verity, not wanting to be side-tracked continued, ‘You told me that Putzi is thinking of seeking asylum here.’
‘V, I told you that in complete confidence.’
‘Well, suppose Georg knew something about him which would have made the authorities think twice about offering him asylum? The last thing Putzi would do is get involved in something like murder. That wouldn’t endear him to them.’
Edward knew from Liddell that, whatever the man’s crimes, if the British Government had a use for him, they would take him. They wouldn’t let a little thing like murder stand in the way of offering him asylum. However, he thought it best not to mention this.
‘There’s a lot of work to be done,’ Verity said doubtfully.
‘And you may not be around much longer?’
‘I just don’t know. I’m in limbo at the moment. If I can’t go back to Vienna, I want to go to Prague as quickly as possible. Things are moving so fast.’
‘I feel somehow, V, that if this is ever to be solved, it has to be solved in the next few days. The Mandls will soon be back in Vienna and out of our reach. Goodness knows where Rose and Putzi will be but they probably won’t be accessible to us . . .’
‘And I need to know Georg’s murderer has been caught before I leave. I failed him when he was alive. I can’t fail him now he’s dead.’
‘I know, V, and I feel the same way.’ Edward hesitated for a moment. ‘At least we don’t have to suspect Sunny or Ayesha.’
‘I can’t see them murdering anyone,’ Verity said decisively. ‘And in any case, Sunny was watching Ayesha and Sunita play polo. Putting aside Putzi for the moment, my chief suspect is Rose. I don’t like him. I find his charm quite creepy. And I wish Frank wasn’t so taken with him.’
‘I don’t like him either,’ Edward agreed. ‘The moment I heard he was a friend of Bernard Hunt, I was suspicious of him. But you can’t accuse someone of murder just because he’s a bit too charming. Not even if he turns out to be an art thief.’
‘He knows too many people. There’s a Jewish saying Georg taught me which seems to apply to Rose – “He dances at two weddings.” He’s a Communist but seems to be at ease with out-and-out Nazis like Mandl and Unity Mitford. I told you Rose and Unity Mitford were both at that dinner I went to?’
Edward thought wryly that Verity was the pot calling the kettle black when it came to dancing at weddings but kept the thought to himself. Instead, he said teasingly, ‘You mean Joe’s party when Churchill turned out not to be the bogeyman you had imagined?’
‘That one, yes,’ she replied, refusing to be drawn.
‘And,’ Edward said meditatively, ‘ he was also at that awful club I went to with Putzi and the Mandls later that same night. I agree with you, he does know too many people. Still, I think Mandl’s our chief suspect. At least we know he was there when Gray’s body was found, if we take it the two deaths are linked.’ His face clouded. ‘The fact is that we don’t have a shadow of a case against anyone yet. Perhaps we are getting too suspicious in our old age . . . in my old age,’ he corrected himself, cat
ching her scowl. ‘Perhaps Gray died a natural death. We may never know. It’s a nuisance that Inspector Beeston is such a dead loss. Only the police can make people answer questions they don’t want to. Still, I’ll see if I can persuade him to tell us what he has found out. I’ll also talk to Mandl, Putzi and Joan. You corner Rose and I think you should pursue your friendship with Vera Gray. Oh, and talk to Reg Harman – Gray’s friend from the old days. See what you can dig up. I have a hunch there’s something in Gray’s past we don’t know about which has a bearing on his death.’
‘I thought we women were supposed to have the hunches?’
‘And, V, why don’t you go and see your old friend Richard Leist at the Redfern? Show him the Dürer picture in the book we found and tell him about Georg’s drawing. He’s a senior figure in the art world and he’ll know how to alert his colleagues that they may be offered a stolen masterpiece. The trouble is it’s so small it will be easy to smuggle out of the country.’
He looked at her thin, eager face and felt his stomach turn over. ‘Darling V,’ he said impulsively, ‘I do love you. I know . . . I know, I’ve promised not to badger you to marry me until we’ve cleared up this mess so let’s get going.’
Verity looked at Edward intently. ‘Yes, wait until we’ve nailed Georg’s murderer. I like investigating with you but I wish it didn’t have to be Georg who died.’
Edward looked at her sharply. It wasn’t quite the put-off he had been expecting. He was about to say something more when Basil leapt out from under the bench in hot pursuit of a poodle which had just walked past in what he must have considered an insolent manner.
Reg Harman had no telephone but Vera had written to ask whether he would talk to Verity about her uncle. A day or two later, Verity had received a battered postcard bearing a photograph of the Grand Hotel, Broadstairs. In a spidery hand the old man had written that he was normally at the Slade on Thursdays and Fridays between eleven in the morning and three in the afternoon. Taking this as consent, Verity had made her way to Bloomsbury and found him without difficulty. He was perched on a wobbly stool looking critically at a portrait, the work of a young man notable for his shock of bright red hair. Harman greeted her distractedly and it was some time before he remembered who she was and why she had come.
The Quality of Mercy Page 18