The Countess of Prague

by Stephen Weeks

  “But, Madame,” cried Sabine, “my dresses have buttons.”

  “Yes, of course.” How out of touch I was. Common buttons, of course.

  “And the colours?”

  “Plain, dull — mustn’t stand out. Brown, grey, dark colours.”

  “Very well, Madame.”

  Sabine turned to leave, but I had another thought. I opened my bag and handed her the card for The Union of Servants. “Have you heard of this organisation?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe I can ask Müller?”

  “Is this another one of his days off?”

  Sabine nodded. “Then I will ask him myself when he returns,” I said.

  Once the table had been cleared I went into the library. Most of the books had been inherited and thus never opened. On those few occasions when I did look more closely at them, I found many of the volumes still had their pages uncut. But on the shelves near my husband’s desk were his books, the ones he actually used. Soon I found what I was looking for, a general encyclopedia and also a Prague Almanac for the current year.

  I made myself familiar with the general principles of trades unions and of course disturbed myself with the thought that my servants were, according to modern thought, treated appallingly. All except Müller, that is. I just hoped that The Union of Servants was indeed a fake. I couldn’t deal with strikes, lock-outs, and negotiations with Workers’ Committees — Heaven forbid! Certainly there was no reference to this Union in the Almanac, whereas every other body active in Czech or Austrian affairs seemed to be represented.

  Next, I decided to take practical steps to become a detective, for that — surely — was what I was to become, even if only for the duration of this peculiar affair. Downstairs, on the ground floor, was a room my husband used to receive tradesmen and conduct such business as would not be appropriate upstairs. This, I decided, would become my office. I had the footman and the kitchen boy rearrange the furniture, what there was of it, and I knew that all this would infuriate Müller — but then he shouldn’t have taken the day off, should he?

  Then, on the table I arranged some blank slips of paper. These I began to fill in with what few facts were available to date. When, as a newly married lady, I had first taken on the responsibility of running a household, I had found this method of putting tasks on slips of paper to be invaluable. It quickly became clear to me from the scanty information adorning the scraps of paper that there was an open gap — through which my theories could fly. Surely the ‘Alois’ at The Invalides should be watched? Maybe then I would be able to discover his true identity.

  St Jindřich’s churchyard was but a few steps away. Outside its low boundary wall was the place where the public fiacres loitered, waiting for passengers. There was a drinking trough for the horses and usually there were feed-bags too. In the winter there would be a stall selling hot klobásy — the common sausages of Prague. Behind the wall, in the old churchyard, were some large blocks of stone which had remained there after the architect Josef Mocker, having re-gothicised St. Jindřich’s Church, had then turned his hand to the tall belfry tower by adding a fanciful, spiked gothic roof. Over the past generation or so all Prague has been turned into a rendering from some fairy-tale picture-book.

  Amongst these odd stones was always a knot of urchins who would be available to run errands, fetch and carry, hold the cabbies’ horses, and generally do anything that would earn them a few kreutzers. If the shoe manufacturer had wished to sell shoes to the people, then this would have been a very good place for him to start.

  I summoned the footman, since Müller was not available, and told him I wanted him to go and select four of these urchins, ones that looked of better character at least, including one who must be about my size — and that I wanted to interview them. In an hour or two my new office was filled with the youngsters, causing me to open the window for somewhat fresher air. I managed to do all this as if I were born to the job. I had to keep going at this frantic pace, for if the music stopped, so to speak, perhaps I’d never recover my nerve.

  I had the urchins lined up and first asked them their names. Two were called Honza and two Jirka. So the two large Honzas and Jirkas I called Honza Major and Jirka Major, and the two smaller, Honza Minor and Jirka Minor. I told Sabine to get my purse, and I treated each of them to the price of a new pair of shoes. I really couldn’t have my new employees going about barefoot. Then I asked Honza Major, the boy who was about my size — and maybe he was fifteen or sixteen years of age — if he would go and buy a complete new outfit for himself, on condition that he return quickly with his old clothes and give them to the housekeeper here for washing.

  I could see my footman looking aghast as I paid out the money, but I assumed he had been a good judge of faces and of character and that these fresh-faced boys of the streets could, within certain limits, be trusted. I told them all to be back at my new office by seven o’clock in the evening, sharp — for we had work to do.

  At six-thirty I told Sabine to go down to the kitchens and retrieve the boy’s outfit, which should have been washed and dried by that time. A moment after she left my boudoir I decided to go after her. There was something I needed to insist upon, and anyway I was beginning to enjoy visiting the bowels of my palace. I confess that I had hardly ever seen the kitchens or the other service rooms. Beyond the green baize door was a whole world virtually unknown to me, and isn’t it the unknown which is always exciting?

  Down in the room next to the stone-floored kitchen I found the boy’s few clothes draped over one of the big ceramic stoves. A laundry maid was heating irons on the fire, ready to press them.

  “No, no — don’t do that,” I cried, making it clear I meant to take the garments away with me.

  “So it’s for fancy-dress, Madame?” asked Sabine. “You want the authentic look?” She smiled.

  Sabine was fast on the uptake. Then and there I began to try the things on.

  “Sabine, where is the shirt?”

  “Shirt, Madame? There is only this ragged coat and the trousers.”

  Poor boy, I thought. How little I knew or understood. How little he wore.

  “Also,” she added contemptuously, “these — socks.” These last objects seemed more holes than wool.

  “Sabine, go to my husband’s dressing room. Find that thick white flannel shirt of his — the one he wears for shooting. We might have to cut the sleeves. And some socks.”

  “Oui, Madame.”

  Very soon the Countess of Falklenburg was transformed into a regular urchin of Prague. This naturally caused much merriment amongst the servants and I realised I had to ask them to tell no-one outside the household. “Otherwise my little surprise will be spoiled” I thought to add. I wondered if they believed my little fib about fancy-dress, but what else were they to think?

  I went upstairs to my dressing cabinet, and stood in front of the cheval mirror.

  ‘Bold steps, Trixie — you must take bold steps…’ I said to myself, ‘You’ll get nowhere without bold steps…just stuck where you are.’

  It hadn’t occurred to me before that I was “stuck” — but that was indeed the case: not enough money to go further up in Society, and yet not having the ability to enjoy life without feeling guilty about the obligations of noblesse. How free I would be as an urchin! I winked at the disreputable creature looking back at me from my mirror.

  ***

  By seven-thirty my modest force of four urchins had arrived at The Invalides Hospital. There were thus five of us all told. One was conspicuous for the newness of his clothes, another by the cleanliness of hers…I mean his — and also by that person’s rather delicate ankles, had they been visible. Thick woollen socks, itchy and coarse to the touch, did supposedly cover them, except of course for my silk stockings underneath, which I would certainly not do without. I did not forgo my silk drawers either — there are limits! Four of the ban
d walked most uneasily in stiff, new shoes. For two of them they were the first shoes they had ever worn. To the observant my bespoke boots with their neat pointed toes would have been a ready giveaway.

  I felt curiously vulnerable, as if in one of those nightmares where one finds oneself naked in the street or at some grand social occasion. It was my gloves — or, rather, the lack of them. I couldn’t remember ever going out without gloves, winter or summer. I was abroad in the world, bare-handed.

  Müller had returned before we had set out. I had explained to him the new development. Naturally he was disappointed not to have been involved from the start, showing it by even turning up his nose at the odour of poverty still lingering in my husband’s Business Room.

  “How do we get them washed?” I had asked him.

  “Quite simple, Milady. We give them the money and they go to the Vltava bath-house on Na Struze Street. Once a week should be entirely sufficient.”

  By “we” he meant that he would dip into his pocket for the cash and that I would eventually reimburse him with his monthly wages. Despite his meagre servant’s earnings he always managed to have a wallet full of banknotes and pockets jingling with change. I, for my part, never seemed to be able to lay my hands on a single krone when I needed it.

  By seven-thirty-six we were all gathered beneath a window. It was now almost completely dark and the only light we could see was that spilling from the lamp inside the room which was nominally that of Alois Tager. For the moment I didn’t know my little urchins as individual personalities, but I did know that some necessary familiarity would occur sooner or later. I had briefed them well before setting out. Once we had identified our man, they were to watch him in shifts, follow him if he went out, and daily report his movements to me. The paltry salary I offered for this work seemed like fairy gold to them and it made them very anxious to please. Besides, I think they were rather intrigued by this Countess in mufti. But the lure of gold was also to buy their silence. And since I had trusted them, I believed they could be trusted as their way of repaying my confidence in them.

  In a few moments we could just see that the door of the room opened and the creaking wheeled chair was trundled in. The old man sat there in it, alone in the room, staring at the door for some while. Each of the urchins clambered up to the sill to take a look. They had marked their target. It was time for me to go and leave them to their nocturnal vigil.

  I’d had my brougham parked out of the way, down by the river. Shaking my hair loose from under the cap that had lately been Honza Major’s and pulling a dark cloak over me, I jumped in, startling the drowsing coachman, and soon we were heading up through Karlín and towards the Old Town along the old Königgrätz highway, or perhaps I had better refer to Königgrätz by its Czech name, Hradec Králové. Having a bit of Irish blood in me as part of my English roots, of course I sympathised with a culture that had been suppressed by a rude invader.

  The moon faintly illuminated a string of barges on the river and the carts of perhaps the last of this year’s ice-breakers, which were already lumbering along to await their dawn start by the riverbanks. The ice was for the beerhouses and butchers. Winter was about to give way to spring with only a modest frost and the ice-breakers’ transparent harvest was rapidly diminishing. But, you see, I was already beginning to realise there was another world out there, beyond the salons of the rich, the bored, and the jaded.

  In the city proper, as we were rattling down Hybernská Street, accordion music spilled out from the gaslit interior of a still-crowded hostinec by the old Staatsbahnhof, Prague’s first railway station. And I was happy.

  ***

  The next morning, following my breakfast tray, I was to be found seated as usual in front of the dressing mirror as Sabine brushed my hair. Although this normally took anything up to an hour-and-a-half, today I instructed her to be brief: twenty minutes at the most, despite more tangles than usual. I could not conceive how many hours I had wasted in front of this particular mirror — how I debated with myself whether to use “Beatrice” more or “Trixie” less. Today was certainly a Trixie day. Trixie, I felt, was more a name for an adventuress. Perhaps, as in the novel of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that I had finished reading only last week, I could be two people: Beatrice by day and Trixie by night!

  But this was a time for changed attitudes. As I had been getting into bed last night I had noticed a black speck on my ankle. I raised my leg to brush it off — and the speck had jumped away. A flea. That in itself did not shock me: I had often come across the things from my mother’s dogs, although never in my bedroom. It had made me think of my responsibility to the poor boys, whose orbit of existence was so totally different from mine. I would ensure Müller pressed the right money in their hands and sent them regularly to the Na Struze Street Baths.

  I stared hard at myself in that mirror wondering how this face — so familiar to me that I felt it couldn’t fool anyone — would handle this Inspector Schneider when he called. Maybe I should flirt with him, seduce him into not pursuing the old man in The Invalides. In any event, unless he was so very smart, he would never make the connection with The Union of Servants. Never. And this so-called Union must hold the key to the mystery, I felt sure. Yes, I literally reflected again on the matter, this face was capable of fooling at least Inspector Schneider! Bold steps…don’t forget!

  With my hair loose, my robe décolletée, I found I was also staring at the new Trixie — who had, even for just a few hours the night before — tasted emancipation. I had felt what it was like to be unconstrained: to be able, if I so chose, to run or to climb. I could do anything, go anywhere — just like a man. How wonderfully free it must feel to be, for example, Karel — who can simply send off a telegram to dear wifey, just like that, to state that he would be a few more days in Vienna or wherever. And what would he be doing in Vienna? It was not my place — or shall I say Beatrice’s place? — to deign to ask.

  On the other hand, it is a woman’s place — her duty — to seduce. Once my hair was reasonably brushed from its tangles of the night before, I stood up, which was Sabine’s signal to put me into my corsets. The Inspector would be distracted by such a dainty waist as mine, I felt sure.

  After she had finished lacing me, pulling me down into a wasp-like fifty-two centimetres with which — despite my little bid for emancipation — I was most satisfied, I completed dressing and sent for Müller.

  “Milady…?”

  “Tell me, Müller, what do you know of The Union of Servants?”

  His faced flushed red. “It is a social club, Milady. It meets on Saturday evenings.”

  “And does it offer other benefits to its members?”

  “How do you mean, Milady?”

  “If you were ill, for example — would they take you to hospital?”

  “Not that I know of, Milady. I can make enquiries, if that would be Your Ladyship’s wish.”

  “No. I was just curious.” I was certainly curious as to why he’d flushed so red at the mere mention of the Union, but I went on: “Now, about the cucumber sandwiches for the English tea this afternoon…”

  My mother had been very punctilious about teaching me how to instruct staff in the preparation of cucumber sandwiches. The bread must be that white, anaemic stuff of English nurseries; the crusts must be cut off each slice before making them into tiny triangles; the cucumber too must have its peel removed. A little sprinkling of pepper can be used, a pinch of salt, and lastly, the tiniest pinch of refined sugar. They should be made no more than fifteen minutes before serving.

  “Are they to be prepared as usual, Milady?”

  I had been hoping to spend at least a quarter of an hour at this chore, and now the wretched man had denied me of it. This was the way I realised I was used to passing my days, in the exaggerated pursuit of small things. At that moment the footman ran upstairs and whispered in Müller’s ear.

  “T
here are two young men to see you, Milady. Well, one of them is but a child. I understand it is Your Ladyship’s wish to interview them in His Lordship’s Business Room?”

  It was Jirka Major this time, accompanied by Honza Minor — half my force. Jirka Major recounted how, after the old man had stared at the door for some thirty minutes — seemingly waiting for someone to come — he had boldly stood up, climbed out of the window, nearly discovering the watchers, and had calmly walked down to the street, turned left, and walked to the end of the electric tramway line. There he had boarded the city tram, closely followed at this point by the two of them — Jirka Major and Honza Minor. As the tram passed down Na Poříčí Street it crossed with another, going in the opposite direction. One second he was there, and suddenly, the next second he wasn’t. The urchins did not know if he had managed to jump onto the other tram or whether he had simply jumped down into the street. In any event, he had vanished. The two lads got down and wandered about the streets for a while, but they did not catch sight of him again.

  “Do you mind, Missus, if we went in his room?” said Jirka Major rather sheepishly after he had finished his report.

  “Well, it’s not strictly legal, but what did you find?”

  “Nothing really. The man has no papers, unless they are in an old locked box. But we did find out something, didn’t we, Honza?”

  Honza Minor, tiny, swarthy with a mop of black hair and bright-eyed, piped up: “Yes, he likes onions. Has a whole cupboard full of them.”

  I thanked the two for their vigilance and got Müller to pay all of them in advance for a further twenty-four hours. Now at least it was clear to me that the man in Alois Tager’s room was indeed an impostor. However, if anything, that made matters worse. The Tontine would be lost to Uncle Berty if this were to be found out, and now it might be said that I — and perhaps Uncle Berty, if I told him — were deliberately holding back the truth. I spent a moment examining my morals. Bold steps won out. With Inspector Schneider I would have to be even more circumspect. That would be fun.