The Wild Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  Fiona’s voice cracked, she covered her face with her hands and started to weep. Now that her mind had cleared a bit, she’d realized that there was someone else who must be told. Someone else who would be devastated by Maud’s death, even more so than she and Harriet were.

  “What is it, Fiona?” Harriet asked, putting an arm around her.

  “How am I going to tell her, Harriet? How?”

  “Tell who?”

  Fiona lowered her hands. “How am I going to tell India that her sister is dead?”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” Max asked the man seated across from him.

  “Not at all,” the man, Detective Inspector Arnold Barrett, said. “Nice place,” he added, looking around Max’s spacious receiving room, at the luxurious furnishings, the silver tea tray on the table, the blazing logs in the fireplace.

  “Yes, it’s very comfortable,” Max said, sitting back in his chair.

  They were in Max’s hotel suite. Barrett had arrived a few minutes before. Max had offered him tea, which he’d gratefully accepted, and then they’d sat down.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. von Brandt,” Barrett said, taking out a notebook and fountain pen. “I know this has been a very difficult day for you and I won’t take up any more of your time than I have to.”

  Max nodded.

  “Now, then, according to P.C. Gallagher, the man who interviewed you this morning, you believe you were the last person to see Miss Selwyn Jones alive,” Barrett said.

  “Yes, I believe so,” Max replied.

  “I would like to go over the events leading up to Miss Selwyn Jones’s death. To begin with, the doorman here at the hotel, one William Frazier, remembers seeing you helping Miss Selwyn Jones into a hackney cab. Mr. Frazier has said that Miss Selwyn Jones appeared to be inebriated.”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” Max said. “Maud was very drunk.”

  “Alfred Ludd, the cabdriver, has stated that he heard Miss Selwyn Jones crying at times during the cab ride to her flat, and saying, and I quote, ‘Please, Max. Please don’t do this.’ ”

  “That is also correct.”

  Barrett gave Max a long look. “You’re hardly helping yourself here, Mr. von Brandt.”

  “There is no help for me, Detective Inspector. As I told P.C. Gallagher, and will now tell you, it was all my fault.”

  Barrett paused, weighing Max’s words, then he resumed his questioning. “According to Ludd, when he arrived at Miss Selwyn Jones’s building, you paid him, then helped Miss Selwyn Jones out of the cab and into her house.”

  “Yes.”

  “You yourself told P.C. Gallagher that you then carried Miss Selwyn Jones to her bedroom and laid her down on her bed. You covered her, then left the premises via the front door, locking it behind you.”

  “Yes. Maud had given me a key. I gave it to P.C. Gallagher this morning.”

  “A note was found on the deceased’s bedside table, in what appears to be her handwriting. In it, she wrote that she was distraught over her breakup with ‘Max.’ That would be you.”

  Max nodded and took a deep drag of his cigarette.

  “The note was hard to read,” Barrett said. “It was scrawled more than it was written, but then again, Miss Selwyn Jones, as everyone seems to agree, was drunk. However, we could make it out well enough. It went on to say that she was sorry for doing what she was about to do, but she couldn’t live without you.”

  Max rubbed at his forehead with one hand. The other hand, still holding his cigarette, shook slightly.

  “Miss Selwyn Jones was found facedown in her bed, a tourniquet around her arm. An empty syringe and two empty morphine bottles were found nearby her,” Barrett said, watching Max closely.

  “I’m to blame,” Max said in a choked voice. “If it wasn’t for me, she would still be alive.”

  “What exactly happened last evening, Mr. von Brandt?” Barrett asked, his keen eyes on Max. “Why did Miss Selwyn Jones leave here so drunk she could barely stand? Why did she kill herself?”

  Max lowered his hand. He brushed at his eyes awkwardly. “We had a fight,” he began. “She had come here to give me a birthday present. A trip to India. With her.”

  “A very nice gift,” Barrett said.

  “Yes, it was. It was a very lovely gesture. But it was too much.”

  “The gift was?”

  “No, her expectations.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The relationship we had … our romance, if you will … well, for me it was only ever intended to be a short-lived thing. A fling between two grown, unattached people. I thought Maud understood that, but she didn’t. She wanted more from me and I couldn’t give it to her.”

  “Why not?” Barrett asked.

  “Because expectations have been placed upon me. Family obligations. Maud was older than I. She had been married before. …”

  “Not the kind of girl to bring home to Mama,” Barrett said.

  “No, not at all the kind of girl. I’d recently had a falling out with my uncle, you see. He now runs the company my grandfather started. I came to London to cool off, but I know that eventually I will have to return home, take my place in the family business, and marry a suitable girl—a respectable girl from a good family who will give me many children. My mother has several candidates picked out for me,” Max said, with a bitter smile. “Maud knew this. I never lied to her. I was honest from the beginning. She said it didn’t matter to her, and for while, it did not seem to. We had a very good time together, but lately she’d become unreasonable.”

  “How so?” Barrett asked.

  “She began to pressure me constantly. She wanted me to not return to Germany. To stay in London. She wanted to get married. She told me I didn’t need to go back, to join the family firm. She said she had plenty of money, more than enough to keep us both in a very high style. The gift was the last straw.”

  “Why?”

  “She suggested it could be our honeymoon trip. I refused to accept it. I told her it was over between us. She got very upset with me. She yelled and screamed and started drinking. Quite a lot, in fact.”

  “You’re an odd duck, Mr. von Brandt. Some men would have had no hesitation in marrying a very wealthy woman. A woman whose company, and whose bed, they happened to like.”

  “You are quite right, Detective Inspector. Some men would have no hesitation. They are called gigolos,” Max said coldly.

  Barrett held up a hand. “Now, now, Mr. von Brandt,” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Tell me what happened next.”

  “Maud became very drunk. I couldn’t listen to her anymore and I thought the best thing would be to take her home. So I did. And the rest you know.” Max paused for a few seconds, then he said, “She told me I’d be sorry. She was right. I am. Very sorry. I shouldn’t have broken it off with her. I wouldn’t have if I’d known how fragile she was.”

  “Do you have any idea where she got the morphine? It was a very strong concentration. Stronger than you can buy at a chemist’s.”

  “No. I know she used the drug, somewhat frequently, but I don’t know where she got it,” he said. He hesitated, then said, “Detective Inspector Barrett?”

  “Yes?”

  “I do know that she sometimes smoked cigarettes with opium in them. She told me once that she got them in a place called Lime-house. Does that help you?”

  Barrett laughed. “Mr. von Brandt, there are a hundred places in the place called Limehouse where Miss Selwyn Jones could’ve bought those cigarettes. And the morphine, too.” He capped his pen and closed his notebook. “Thank you for your time, Mr. von Brandt. We won’t be bothering you again.”

  Barrett stood up. Max stood, too. He walked Barrett to the door and opened it for him.

  “Now, if you’d married Miss Selwyn Jones, and then she ended up dead, her being such a rich woman, then we’d have more questions,” Barrett said, pausing in the doorway. “But as things are,
you’ve got no motive. None whatsoever. Miss Selwyn Jones’s death was suicide, plain and simple. The papers won’t be happy. They always like a good story—some sort of nefarious motive, some mystery novel nonsense—but sometimes death is just what it looks like—sad and sorry. Nothing else. My condolences on your loss, Mr. von Brandt. Good day.”

  “Thank you, Detective Inspector,” Max said. “Good day.”

  As he was about to close the door behind him, Barrett turned and said, “Mr. von Brandt?”

  “Yes?”

  “A piece of advice … if I may.”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. If breaking hearts was a crime, every jail in London would be full.”

  Max smiled sadly. Detective Inspector Arnold tipped his hat and then he was gone. Max closed the door, poured himself a glass of wine, and sat down heavily. Dusk was starting to fall, but he did not turn on a light. He sat staring into the fireplace, and as he did, a tear rolled down his cheek, and then another.

  This was no false emotion, put on for a police officer’s benefit. His sorrow was real. He had felt something for Maud. He had enjoyed her company and her humor and her bed, and he missed her. She did not deserve what had happened to her. And he was full of remorse for it.

  But he had had no choice. He’d known she was in his room the minute he opened the door. He’d smelled her perfume. He’d prayed then, that she had come to welcome him home, that she was merely waiting for him, naked in his bed. His heart had clenched in sadness and anger when, having quietly walked to the doorway of his bedroom, he saw the photographs and documents spread out over his desk. He watched as she put the papers into her purse, and he knew what she was going to do with them, knew she would go to the police, or to somebody she knew in the government. Joe Bristow, perhaps. Or Asquith himself. And in so doing, she would have brought his carefully constructed house of cards crashing down.

  He’d known, too, what he would have to do, and he’d done it unflinchingly. Indeed, he kept a small supply of the necessary drugs on hand for such occasions. And yet it had hurt him terribly, far more than he’d thought it would, to drug her, bring her to her home, stick a needle repeatedly into the soft skin inside her elbow, and empty two bottles of morphine into her veins.

  As he sat in his chair now, still staring into the fireplace, unmoving, he heard a small, soft, sliding noise. He raised his head and looked toward his door. An envelope had been pushed under it.

  “Further orders,” he said to himself, wondering if it would be written in German or in English. Regardless, the envelope would have no return address, no postmark. It never did.

  For a few seconds, a violent anger possessed him. He stood up, shaking with rage, grabbed a vase from a table, and hurled it against a wall. It shattered explosively, raining glass everywhere.

  Maud didn’t matter to them. She was expendable. Bauer, Hoffman—they were expendable, too. He himself was expendable; he knew that. No one mattered to them.

  “One life,” they would say. “What is one life against millions?”

  He had cared for this one life, though. He’d almost loved this one woman. But he realized now, as he mastered his emotion once more, that getting close to Maud, letting himself feel things for her, had been a stupid mistake—one he must be sure never to repeat. Had he not gotten so close to her, she might never have come to his room, and might never have found what she shouldn’t have.

  Max toed the larger shards of glass into a pile, then telephoned to the concierge to have a maid come clean the mess up. He crossed the room, picked up the envelope, and read the letter inside it. It was time to get to work again.

  Maud was gone. His heart was heavy with grief for her. And he knew it didn’t matter. No one’s cover had been blown. That was what mattered. That was all that mattered.

  Love is dangerous, he told himself now. Far too dangerous. You learned that lesson already, but you chose not to remember it.

  Max walked over to the fireplace. As he fed the letter, and its envelope, into the flames, he made himself a promise never to forget again.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Seamie stared out of the hotel room’s window. The sun was in the western sky. It was probably five o’clock already. He looked at the light coming in the window, slanting across the bed, across Willa’s naked body as she lay next to him, dozing. He knew this light well now. It was the sad, gray light of unfaithfulness. Married people—well, the happy ones, at least—did not know it. They made love in the darkness, or in the clear and hopeful light of morning.

  He pulled Willa close now and kissed the top of her head. She mumbled sleepily.

  “I’ve got to go soon, my love,” he said.

  Willa looked up at him. “Already?” she said.

  He nodded. There was a dinner at the RGS tonight. For donors. He was expected to attend, and Jennie, too. He had told her he would be talking with possible donors all day long, and that he would meet her there, at the RGS. He wanted to get there before she did. He wanted to not give her any reason to suspect he was lying. He and Willa worried all the time that she would find out. Or that Albie would.

  “Let me see your photos before I go,” he said to Willa now.

  “Oh, yes. The photos. Forgot about those,” she said. “I forget everything when I’m with you.”

  He did, too. He forgot so many things he shouldn’t have—that he was married, that his wife loved him, that she was carrying their child.

  It can’t last, this, he thought, as he watched Willa get up and shrug into her shirt. He knew it couldn’t. They both did. But he couldn’t bear to let it go. Not yet.

  She rummaged in a large satchel she’d brought with her, then got back into bed, carrying a pile of black-and-white photographs. They were of Everest. He hadn’t seen them because he hadn’t gone to her lecture at the RGS. But he wanted to. Very much. He wanted to see her work, to see Everest and Rongbuk, where she lived. He’d asked her to bring them with her today.

  “I’m going to use this lot in my book,” she said, depositing the stack in his lap. “The text is finished. The RGS has put an editor onto the project. It should be ready to be printed in three months or so.”

  “That’s wonderful, Willa. Congratulations,” Seamie said. “I’m sure it’ll be a smashing success. Let’s have a look.” He held up the first picture and immediately fell silent, stunned by the beauty and clarity of the photograph, by the unspeakable majesty of Everest.

  “That’s the north face,” Willa explained. “Taken from on top of the glacier. I’d been camping there for two weeks. Trying to get a clear shot. But I couldn’t. There were always clouds. On the last day, in the morning as I was making tea, the clouds suddenly broke. I knew it wouldn’t last. Knew I had about thirty seconds. The camera was set up, thank God. I fumbled a plate into it, and just before the clouds closed again, I got the picture.”

  “It’s incredible,” Seamie said.

  He looked at the next shot. And the next. Of the mountain and the glacier and the clouds and Rongbuk and its people. Of Lhasa. Of Everest’s south face, shot from Nepal. He saw the streets of Kathmandu. Peddlers and priests. Traders coming over a treacherous pass. Imperious nobles in their tribal dress. Shy and bright-eyed children, peering out at the camera from tent doorways.

  And all the while, Willa told him stories. Stories of how she got the shot. Or what the laughing priest in the photo was like. How beautiful the mayor’s wife was. And what an absolute bugger the Zar Gama Pass was.

  He asked about Everest, and she told him that she was convinced the south face—in Nepal—was the easier way up, but the Nepalese were not at all amenable to Westerners messing about on their mountain. The Tibetans were slightly more welcoming. Any serious European climber would have to come into Tibet from Darjeeling and attempt the north face, if a climber were to attempt the mountain at all.

  “Can you imagine it?” Seamie said. “To be the first up that mountain? The first up Everest? Everyo
ne at the RGS wants that mountain for England.”

  “England’s going to have to move fast, then,” Willa said. “Germany and France want Everest, too. Success is going to depend on preparation, not only on technical skill. Stamina, too. You’ve got to set up a good base camp, and then a string of camps after that. Half the party does the setting up and provisioning with the help of sherpas. Then they come down and rest, before the altitude kills them. Then the other half goes up—the best climbers. The best and the toughest. They have to get up incredibly fast, and get down just as fast. And the weather, the wind, and the temperature all have to be on their side.”

  She pointed out the places on the north face that she thought would be best for the camps. Seamie listened, nodded, asked her question after question. He felt excited as he had not since his expedition with Amundsen, carried away by the very idea of climbing the world’s tallest mountain. For a few brief and happy moments, they were once again as they had been in Africa, when they’d traveled together, camped together, planned their assault on Kili together. They were one.

  Seamie looked at her now, as she pointed out a dark spot below a col and said she couldn’t work out if it was a shadow from a passing cloud or a crevasse, and his heart ached with love for her. He craved her body, thought about making love to her all the time, but he craved this—this union of their souls—even more.

  He looked away, unable to bear the intensity of his longing for her, and picked up the first photograph again. “It’s so beautiful,” he said.

  Willa shook her head. “It’s beyond beautiful, Seamie. My pictures don’t do it justice. They don’t begin to capture the beauty of that mountain. Oh, if only you could see it. I wish I could show it to you. I wish I could see your face as you first glimpse it. I wish—”

  She stopped talking suddenly.