The October Cabaret

by Nancy Buckingham

  “Okay, then,” I retorted, my patience at an end, “It’s high time I did some guesswork of my own.” I took a deep, thought-gathering breath. “Whatever it is that’s going on, you obviously think it’s big enough to involve murder, right? From what Luke Webster told Pearl, it was at Uncle Maynard’s instigation that he stole the October Cabaret. But Uncle Maynard met his death, was murdered, before Luke got around to burgling Malt House Cottage. So where does that get us? If somebody else - let’s call him Mr. X - had got wind of the cabaret’s existence, and that’s why he killed my uncle, it’s odd that he made no attempt to get the cabaret away from Luke. It would have made more sense to kill him. Instead, he left Luke free to smash the cabaret to pieces.”

  “Perhaps,” Peter suggested, “that served the murderer’s purpose just as well. It effectively removed the evidence.”

  “Evidence?”

  He ran his hands over his face in an exhausted gesture. “If pieces of the genuine Romanov Cabarets were to turn up after reproductions had been sold to someone as the real thing, there’d be hell to pay, wouldn’t there?”

  I stared at him, utterly lost. “But the fakes were here in Prague, not sold.”

  “There was a previous set, Tess... a complete set of all twelve cabarets. It took Kolder years to make, and the lot we saw was about the halfway mark of number two. I learned that today, but I’d already worked out it had to be something of the sort.”

  “You’re not making sense,” I objected. “If the famous Romanov Cabarets had turned up after all these years, how come such a fantastic news story never reached the media?”

  “It would have been a secret deal, Tess. Some wealthy crank, conned into believing he was buying stolen property. Such a man would get his kicks from the mere possession of something unique and priceless, even though he could never admit to it openly. There are such people, you know.”

  “Did Kolder tell you that’s how it was?”

  Peter shook his head. “He’d been conned himself. He thought he was making the stuff as an acknowledged copy for someone’s collection, and he was only too grateful for the chance of doing the sort of work he loves, and getting paid for it without attracting any publicity. Because publicity is just what that man is most scared of. Ludvik Kolder has been living in a state of terror since the troubles here in 1968 ... he’s got an exaggerated idea of what the Russians would do to him if ever his part in it came out. Somebody had deliberately played on that fear, persuading him to hole up like a hermit and spend his days recreating masterpieces. A sane man would never have fallen for that line, only a crazy genius like Kolder. And when he realised that he’d been used ... that there was a highly organised crime going on, and even murder, resulting from the work he’d been doing, the poor devil’s reason snapped and he wanted to destroy the whole lot.”

  It took several moments for me to digest all this. Then I asked, “Who is it who’s been using him, Peter? And you?”

  His tawny eyes met my glance, but he was giving nothing away. “Your Mr. X.”

  “But who is he? I’ve got to know now.”

  “No, not for a while yet.”

  In my thwarted fury, I flung down the challenge without giving it any thought. “Very well, then, if you won’t play straight with me, I’ll get the answers from Kolder himself. I’ll go back and see him right now and demand to know what it’s all about... who it is he’s been working for. You can’t prevent me, Peter.”

  He said wearily, without triumph, “How would you talk to Kolder, even if he’s in a fit state to talk to anyone? What language would you use?”

  “I... I could find someone to interpret for me.”

  “Oh Tess,” he sighed, “I’m only asking you to wait a little longer. There’s nothing more to be done here in Prague, so let’s get back to England right away.”

  “And what do we do there?”

  Peter shrugged. “I’ve got some sorting out to do ... things to verify, facts to check, before I make the next move.”

  “This isn’t one of you legal cases,” I retorted bitterly. “It’s not trespass or slander or something trivial like that. This is deadly serious.”

  “Do you think I don’t realise?” He caught hold of my shoulders. “Don’t you understand, that’s why ...”

  “Why what?”

  “The less you get involved in all this, the safer you’ll be. I had to bring you here, I had no choice, because I was afraid to leave you on your own in Brighton, and ...”

  “Afraid?” I interrupted. “Of whom? That’s the whole point, isn’t it? This mysterious Mr. X you refuse to put a name to. Tell me this, is it the same Mr. X. who bought Doris Lambert’s cabaret?”

  “I can’t be sure of that.”

  “But you think it must be?” When Peter didn’t answer, I said, “Well, anyhow, there’s one way of finding out who that was. Ben and I would have done it already if he’d not had to rush out to India. But I’ll do it myself as soon as we get back.”

  Peter’s eyes flared. “Tess, I don’t want you doing anything on your own. Tell me what you had in mind. Let me decide whether it’s a good idea ... whether it’s safe.”

  It suddenly seemed a poor and inadequate idea now, such a long shot that it was hardly worth making an issue of.

  “It might work,” I said defensively. “Ben and I figured that the most likely way the man found out that Ruth Willoughby’s twin sister also had a Sèvres cabaret was through that cleaning woman, Maggie Ayling, the same way Ben and I did. We were planning to go back and talk to Maggie again, to find out who else she’d let it slip to.”

  Peter bit so hard into his lower lip that it left a vivid mark. “Thank God he did have to go to India, before you tried any more sleuthing. Otherwise ...”

  “Otherwise ... what?”

  But once again, maddeningly, Peter wouldn’t answer. For most of this time my hands had been tightly clenched on the handkerchief he had given me. I became aware of a stickiness and, glancing down saw that the blood had soaked through and a few drops had dripped onto the carpet. Peter unwound the stained handkerchief and examined my injuries.

  “My God, those bruises, and some of the cuts are quite deep. You need medical attention.”

  I shrugged, shutting the pain out of my consciousness. “Some lint and elastoplast will fix it.”

  “No, Tess! If you get any infection, you might have bad trouble. I’ll ring and see if there’s a doctor.”

  He used the phone beside the bed, explaining in German what he wanted. Meanwhile I soaked a tissue at the basin and rubbed away at the spots of blood on the fawn and green carpet. Somehow this seemed important.

  Peter replaced the phone. “They’ve got some first-aid stuff downstairs. Leave that, and come on.”

  We went down in the elevator to a small office where a pleasant, rather serious young woman—the manager’s secretary, I believe—had unlocked a first-aid cabinet. She examined my hands—over-meticulously, it seemed to me—then said something in German.

  “She thinks you ought to have an anti-tetanus jab to be on the safe side,” Peter translated.

  “Is there any point?” I asked, weary of the whole business. “The cuts look quite clean to me.”

  The woman, it emerged, spoke a little English, too. “It is wise, for safety,” she said, carefully enunciating. “The doctor will soon arrive ... a few minutes only. I shall have him requested.”

  “But … ”

  “Yes,” she said, with a flatness of purpose that silenced me.

  She talked on the phone while Peter murmured, “I’ll go and fix up about our return flight while you’re having this done, Tess. I’ll be up in your room when you’re through, okay?”

  “D’you think we’ll be able to get back to England today.”

  “I hope so,” he said, with a tentative smile. “I’ll have a damned good try.”

  He left, and while we waited for the doctor the woman continued to work on my hands. She extracted a few more tiny flakes
of porcelain with a pair of tweezers, then dabbed on some stinging disinfectant. Using her best English she enquired how the accident had happened, and I fabricated a story about falling in the street with a porcelain bowl I’d bought to take home as a present. She tutted sympathetically but asked no more questions, obviously sensing that I didn’t want to talk about it.

  The doctor was a good twenty minutes arriving ... speedy, really, but it seemed an age of waiting. He was young, brisk, and fancied his chances. With the secretary, not me. I began to suspect her motives for calling him in. A case of love finding a way?

  When he was finished with me I was impatient to get back to Peter and see what news he had about our return flight. But my taped-up hands made the lattice elevator gates difficult to open, and with a curse of frustration I turned away and headed up the stairs.

  Breathless, I reached the fourth-floor corridor. It was deserted as usual, but from one of the rooms further along came the hum of a vacuum cleaner. My door stood slightly ajar and I pushed it wide open and went straight in. Then I stopped in my tracks, hands flying to my face in horror.

  Peter lay full stretch on the carpet with a knife driven into his chest, and blood was spreading across his pale-blue shirt. A man was crouched down beside him, leaning over him. But hearing me enter, he jerked round to see who it was. A man I recognised. Ben Wyland.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The scream was rising in my throat when, in a single swift movement, Ben sprang at me and clamped a hand over my mouth. With his left foot he kicked the door shut behind me.

  “For God’s sake, Tess, don’t make a scene,” he muttered urgently. “There’ll be hell to pay if you don’t pull yourself together.”

  Frantically I tried to twist away from him, but Ben held me so firmly locked that I could scarcely even breathe. I did the only thing I could, bit into the fingers that were pressed against my lips. With a startled exclamation he snatched his hand away, and I seized the chance to break loose.

  “What did you do that for?” he asked, stunned. “You surely don’t imagine that I was the one who killed him?”

  I was backing away in my unreasoning fear, but that word froze me. I dropped to my knees beside Peter, desperately trying to detect a sign of breathing, trying to find a heartbeat.

  “Is he really dead?” I whispered, tears welling in my eyes.

  “No question, I’m afraid.”

  “But... but why? I don’t understand why.”

  The hands on my shoulders were gentle as Ben drew me to my feet. But his voice was harsh. “You still think it was me, don’t you? How crazy can you get? What possible reason could I have had?”

  “But... you being here?” I stammered. “How ... India... all that way?”

  “I had one hell of a job,” he said. “But forget that for now. It’s what this is all about that matters.” Then he noticed my taped-up hands. “You’re hurt. What’s happened?”

  I waved the questions aside impatiently. “I must do something about Peter, tell the manager... the police.” But as I made a move towards the phone, Ben pulled me sharply back. He pressed me down on the bed.

  “Before we do anything like that,” he said, “we’ve got to put a story together.”

  “What’s wrong with the truth?” I flung at him bitterly.

  “Don’t be stupid, Tess. We’re in a foreign country, remember, and if we’re not damned careful we’ll find ourselves incarcerated.”

  “Not me. Nobody’s going to suspect me.”

  “No? This is your room, Tess, and Peter Kemp was staying in the hotel as a friend of yours. There’ll be lot of awkward questions asked, to say the least. So we’d better have some good answers ready.”

  I sighed and said weakly, “Tell me what happened, Ben.”

  “There’s not much to tell. In the first place I’m here because I called you yesterday morning at Pennicott’s, and your cleaning woman answered the phone. She told me a garbled story about Peter Kemp persuading you to go to Prague with him. It seems she overheard you talking, and ...”

  “Oh, I see.” It made sense, I had to admit. Vera had come upstairs while Peter and I were talking in the living room, and I could easily imagine that she’d had a good listen outside the door.

  “Anyway,” Ben continued, “she said she heard Peter Kemp saying that he was scared to leave you in Brighton on your own ... that you might be in danger. It was more than enough for me. I had to fly halfway round the world to get here fast... Delhi, Moscow, Warsaw. And I was more than an hour at Prague airport getting someone to phone round the hotels to track you down. When I finally arrived here, they checked that your key wasn’t on the hook, which meant that you must be somewhere in the hotel. So I came up to your room, and walked slap into this.”

  “You mean it had happened already?”

  “Of course it had. But only just. I was outside the door on the point of knocking when I heard a curious noise ... a sort of choking gasp. I tried the handle and the door wasn’t locked, so I charged straight in. A man was bent over Kemp’s body, but he leapt to his feet and streaked out through the window. My first instinct was to try and help Kemp, but it was pretty obvious he was already dead, and by the time I got out to the balcony there was no sign of the man, Either he’s shinned up to the roof, or jumped to the next balcony and out through that room. I don’t know.”

  “Who could it have been?” I faltered.

  Ben shook his head. “I didn’t get a proper look at him, just a figure silhouetted against the window. I hardly saw his face. I went back to Kemp, to make certain that he really was dead, and then you came in.”

  There was nothing in all this that a quick thinker couldn’t have invented on the spur of the moment, I reminded myself. And yet it carried the ring of truth. But was this just because I wanted to believe it, wanted to believe in Ben again?

  I said coldly, to test him as much as anything, “While we’re sitting here talking, Peter’s murderer is getting clean away. We ought to be doing something, we ought to inform the police so they can get alter him.”

  “No so fast, Tess. The man isn’t going to be waiting around for someone to arrest him, that’s for sure. He’ll have gone to ground by now, so what can the police do unless we give them something to go on? Who was the man likely to be, what enemies Peter Kemp might have had here in Prague.?” Ben shot me a keen, sharp look. “How far could you enlighten them about that, Tess?”

  I hesitated, and Ben saw my reluctance.

  “Come on, for pity’s sake,” he said coaxingly. “Then perhaps we’ll be able to see our way through this maze. For a start, why are you here? What the hell have you two been up to in Prague?”

  Still I hung back. But if Ben was my enemy, then what was the point of anything any more? And so I spilled it all out in a rush of words, everything that had happened, though even to me it seemed almost beyond belief. But the sight of Peter’s body lying there, brutally knifed, was a chilling reminder that it was all too horribly true ... Peter, who had let himself be dragged into deeper waters than he’d ever intended... Peter, who had brought me with him to Prague because he feared for my safety....

  I felt terribly sad, partly responsible for Peter’s death, and Ben held me against his shoulder for moment in sympathy, then he said gently, “Tess, get yourself together. There’s not much time. What I can’t understand is why you didn’t tell me, or my father, those things you’d discovered about Luke Webster and the October Cabaret... about the reason Gervaise Duvillard was burgled? I told you … don’t you remember? … that all you had to do was reach for the phone if anything was bothering you.”

  I couldn’t meet the searching look in his eyes and turned my face away. Ben demanded again, roughly, “Why didn’t you, Tess?”

  I wanted to fling it at him, to accuse him of deceiving me. But my courage failed, instead, I mumbled, “I had my reasons.”

  “Because you somehow thought that I was mixed up in it all?” Ben’s brows were creased in an un
comprehending frown.

  “No, not that. It never once crossed my mind.” At least, I corrected myself, not until a few minutes ago. In those first seconds while Ben had grabbed me, his hand pressed across my mouth, thoughts of his involvement flashed through my brain. And could I feel sure, even now, that every last wisp of suspicion was driven out?

  Ben said in a grim voice, “We’ll have to go and see this man Kolder. Force him to tell us everything he knows. Meantime, we’ll concoct our story for the Czech police.”

  “Concoct?”

  “I told you, we daren’t tell them the truth ... what little we know of the truth. We’d better give them a version something like this. Peter Kemp and you were weekending in Prague... he wanted to show you the city. I just happened to be passing through, and when I heard you were staying here, I phoned round to find which hotel and dropped in to see my old friends. You and I chanced to meet in the corridor, and came along together to your room, where Peter was waiting for you after your first-aid treatment. But we found him dead. We just saw a shadowy figure on the balcony, making a getaway, but when we rushed to the window the man had vanished. Just that, nothing more.” He gave me a careful look. “With luck, the language barrier will fudge things over.”

  I said nothing, and Ben demanded, “Is that agreed?”

  “I... I suppose so.”

  He picked up the phone. “We’d better waste no more time, then.”

  The Czech police were quick to arrive. They were courteous, properly regretful, but matter-of-fact in their approach. It was deplorable, they acknowledged, that the victim should be a foreign visitor ... that Ben and I, also foreign visitors, would necessarily be dragged into this unpleasant business. Though in the circumstances, how fortunate that I now had another friend here in Prague to help sustain me. Without doubt, this was the work of a sneak-thief, surprised into panic by Mr. Kemp’s entry into my room. There was just such a man they had been seeking for several weeks now.