Chapter Four
The Old Tobacco Factory
I still couldn’t quite believe that this “incident” had occurred in my compartment. But supposing it had, then it would perhaps have been my gun, or rather Karel’s that had been the deadly instrument. I would thus be the missing woman. But who could the dead man be? I pictured the two of them together, in the Dining Car. Only one of them had pressed by me, making an escape through the throng. Perhaps a murderer had brushed that close past me; it was too terrible to contemplate. But another thing was almost as terrible: I wouldn’t be able to retrieve my bag and my clothes. Luckily I had all the money on my person — I didn’t believe in leaving temptation before even an honest man like the conductor.
And there was something else. What had they been doing in my compartment? Was this murder a mistake — and I should have been the victim?
For the remaining few minutes of the journey I lurked in the corridors of Second Class, trying hard not to be noticed by anyone. Lurking, I might add, being something totally alien to my nature.
At Karlsbad I got out onto the platform and went in the direction of my compartment. There was still a slim chance I could slip in and retrieve my belongings, unless, of course…but it was. My erstwhile compartment was far from empty. My worst fears were confirmed. Already there were three policemen at the place in their grey uniforms, and two railway porters were manhandling a stretcher out the door and onto the platform. The face of the man was covered with a cloth handkerchief, but I recognised the worn cuffs of the jacket and the dangling eye-glass, now cracked and spattered with blood.
I turned and lost myself in the crowd again. Suitcases were being put on the shoulders of porters, heavier trunks and portmanteaus onto handcarts. Husbands were being greeted by wives, soldiers were returning home from far-flung Imperial duties, children were playing with hoops, dogs barking — and then I saw him. The round-shouldered, brutish one. Just one of them now. It was he.
He stepped out of the station with an eerie calmness and into a flurry of waiting cabs, porters loading private coaches, people coming and going — with the snow eddying around them all, and I lost him. I experienced a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. He was gone. Already the light was beginning to fail in that melancholy wintry way and some of the gaslamps were being lit.
Then suddenly I caught a glimpse of him inside a horse-drawn omnibus, which was just moving off.
I quickly asked the driver of one of the waiting cabs where the omnibus was going. He told me it was to the Lower Station, for the connection to Marienbad. Of course, it was the Spas Express — Karlsbad and Marienbad.
“Quick, I need to follow…”
“You got money, son?”
For a moment I couldn’t guess whom he was addressing. I had to be quicker. This was ridiculous. I tried a curt — and manly — rejoinder:
“Plenty.” (Such a statement was entirely relative, of course.)
At the Lower Station I had time to buy a Third Class ticket (which surprised me by its cheapness). However I still didn’t know what I was doing — other than what I had been doing since eleven in the morning, following two creatures, now one. But by the time I had found a relatively empty compartment, I had worked out my immediate plan of action. I leaned from the open window.
“Porter,” I shouted. The fellow didn’t seem to come immediately. “Over here! At once!” It was, by stupid accident, the voice of an impatient Countess.
The porter looked confused. He couldn’t see the owner of the voice anywhere. I realised my mistake. “’Ere, you,” I called. And he came running, although not as fast as he would have to a First Class tipper.
“I want you to take this telegram I’m writing and have it sent at once. Here’s five krone.”
Over-tipping is as much a crime against Society as under-tipping. I found myself guilty of the former.
My message read:
SEND SABINE WITH BAG PACKED CLOTHES TOILET ARTICLES AND PASSPORT STOP WILL EXPLAIN ALL LATER STOP HOTEL
Wait. I couldn’t remember the name of the best hotel — or any hotel — in Marienbad. The Grand Hotel Pupp, that’s it…no it’s in Karlsbad. I crossed out the word HOTEL and completed with
RAILWAY STATION MARIENBAD ON TOMORROWS SPAS EXPRESS STOP I AM SAFE AND WELL
There seemed no need for a signature — indeed it might be prudent not to add one. But I did add
AND ALSO MORE MONEY
I had another two minutes until the train was due to depart. The engine was standing steamed-up, impatient to leave — or so it seemed, which gave everyone in its vicinity a sense of urgency. However, I was starving and the smell of hot soup emanating from a sort of mobile contraption for a moment totally seduced me. I stepped back out onto the platform.
A coin or two of low value was all that was needed to be handed a cup of absolutely scalding hot liquid. I looked at its greenish tinge, but hunger and the scent of it drove me on. I discreetly wiped the chipped rim of the cup with my handkerchief, taking pains to hide its lace edge. The liquid, which must have been at boiling temperature, immediately burned my tongue before I could withdraw the cup from my lips. I realised that whatever I might do, the heat of the soup would not reduce to drinkable temperature in two minutes, and I remembered an article I had glanced by, on my way to the fashion page, in an illustrated magazine only a few weeks previously. A similar vendor, but only one of many — it had said, had been fined in Prague. His deliberate intention had been to sell drinks so hot that nobody could drink them in time for their train.
Like the vendor in Prague, the toothless old crone running the stall here in Karlsbad quite simply tipped my soup back into her steaming vat. However, the little anger that had suddenly risen in me had reduced by an equal proportion my immediate hunger. Pseudo-satisfied and nourished by my nerves, as well as relief that I hadn’t exposed my well-bred, delicate female constitution to the horrors of that witch’s brew, I stepped back on board.
The fact that assistance in the form of decent clothes might eventually be at hand allowed me to endure another hour and forty-five minutes of torture in a jolting, smoke-filled, pickled-fish-reeking compartment. Nearly opposite was a large man in middle age with a bushy, drooping moustache and otherwise unshaved. His eyes were watery, his clothing worn.
Either his threshold of boredom was so limited or his craving for attention so huge that he couldn’t keep still. He would screw up his face or suddenly mumble something; he would open one eye and shut the other; he would scratch himself near his fly or yawn with attendant noise. In truth, my eyes were drawn to this spectacle, if only for want of any other activity to look upon. He began vigorously to pick his left nostril, and as if feeling my critical gaze, switched to the further one. But I knew more than to allow my eyes to settle on him for more than a fraction of a second, for what he wanted was for our eyes to meet — thus giving him, no doubt, an excuse to start some drunken monologue aimed in my direction.
I had seen his sort at the railway station, when waiting occasionally for Karel. But in Prague his sort would not have dared to address me. As a low-class man I was in this instance highly vulnerable. A woman of Society, corsetted into the fashionable “S” shape and moving as stately as a galleon, somehow becomes impervious to the common world. Now I was part of it. Thus the train rattled on into the growing darkness of a very uncertain evening.
***
Before I finally turned off the gaslight, it had occurred to me that unless the man whom I had been following was going to be staying for at least two nights, I would have to continue watching his every move in case I lost him. For the moment he was safely lodged at Marienbad’s not-so-smart Continental Hotel at the wrong end of the Haupt-Strasse. At first I thought he had chosen this hotel because it was one of the few that were open all year.
I had followed him past the great looming stuccoed palaces of the Esplan
ade and Imperial hotels, all shuttered up for the winter. Almost alone on the ice-cold streets I had had great difficulty following him discreetly. But then I noticed that the Continental also had its own Variety Theatre — closed, of course, until the Marienbad Season would commence on May 1st, but I knew immediately he would be headed there. The Theatre seemed to be at the root of all these mysteries, but at this moment I was unable to tell why.
Some minutes after he had gone in, I had entered the reception hall and asked the porter if the gentleman had given instructions as to when I was to return with the cab. I was getting very proficient at these little charades. “And is he only staying the one night, then?” To which I had got the answer “At least two, by his own account.”
“So you’d better tell Mr….”
“Jenks.”
“…that I’ll be back with the cab tomorrow morning. Goodnight.”
I had then walked in the perishing cold, in shoes surely not really meant for ice and snow, down to the Bahnhofs-Hotel Central, opposite the railway station. They had cheap rooms for grooms and travelling servants round in a building at the back. For three krone I had the luxury of a crude bed with a straw-filled mattress and fortunately for my modesty, the other four beds in the room were unoccupied. After such a tiring day I was glad of the simple pleasure of any bed to lie on.
How uncomplicated was this world of men. Places that were occupied only by them seemed to have a different smell, not quite as distinct as the smell of stables, but discernible nevertheless. But maybe this wasn’t only the smell of men, but simply of the poorer classes. To serenade me to sleep on this hard but much-needed bedstead was the ghastly thought that I was alone here and following a man, this man Jenks, who was most undoubtedly a cold-blooded murderer.
I visualised the scene in my compartment. They must have known I was aboard the train. That could hardly have been coincidence. Perhaps they had intended to rifle my possessions or, worse still, perhaps they had intended to…to go after me — for how would they have known I was not in the compartment? I was still haunted by this thought — that the victim should have been me. Or, maybe they had had an argument, and one had shot the other. Maybe it had been the intention all along of this man Jenks to murder his colleague. But then why in a railway compartment, and the one occupied by me?
***
By the next morning my spirits were slightly revived. It was a Tuesday, and one should have an attitude for every day of the week. Monday, for example, is for tradesmen to call to collect their payments for the previous week. Tuesday is for discreetly seeking out what social engagements one might get invited to later in the week; Monday would seem far too pushy for this. Wednesdays I saved for correspondence, mainly with relatives; Thursdays, the day my husband was normally absent, for writing any flirtatious notes or anything that had best be done without his knowledge (any admirer was encouraged only to send flowers on a Thursday), and so on. But I was increasingly feeling that all this was an old way of life for me — one to which, perhaps, I might not return, or not easily so. Although the adventure had taken a murderous turn, it was still devilishly exciting.
This Tuesday morning, then, found me loitering outside the Continental Hotel. A weak sun had risen, melting the snow that had fallen the afternoon and evening before. It was the sun, of course, that had done most to lighten my mood.
At eight o’clock precisely, a neatly dressed gentleman — a senior clerk or a local man of business — entered the hotel. I could see from the still open and tied-back curtains that most of the bedrooms were unoccupied. In fact only one appeared, on this side of the building at least, to have its curtains drawn open casually, as if by the occupant having risen this morning. Even its casements were open a crack for some of the fresh morning air. I guessed that this fellow could be calling on Jenks, but for what purpose I could not surmise.
I stood doing my best to look like any another of the unoccupied classes, adopting what I thought was a convincing vacancy of expression, but with my eyes fixed firmly on the entrance doorway to the hotel. More than thirty minutes passed and I imagined that Jenks and this stranger were taking breakfast together. The more I thought about it, the more I could conjure up the smell of Viennese coffee, cut sausage and smoked cheese, freshly baked bread. The sheer agony of the poor, I thought, who have to trudge constantly through city streets which are full of these pleasant odours, but the full pleasure of them — their consumption — is denied them. I made a resolution that I would go to Karel’s encyclopaedia and look under “S” for Socialism when next I was in his library.
My reveries were terminated by the appearance at the hotel doorway of the caller, now with Jenks. They looked well fed, the caller even brushing crumbs from the corner of his mouth. They began walking together, back up the Haupt-Strasse, towards the centre of the spa. I let them go almost out of sight before I hurried up the street to observe their next movements, a manoeuvre I had read in a detective novel — a Czech one, a pale imitation of the great Sherlock Holmes.
The two men rounded a corner and by the time I arrived there I was just able to catch sight of them entering an estate agent’s premises on the opposite side of the street. It was incumbent upon me again to have to loiter until Jenks re-emerged.
I had passed, on the Haupt-Strasse, the Ladies’ Reading Room. I was thinking that I should look at the early editions of the daily newspapers, for maybe they would describe the incident on the train which I imagined had happened too late for the evening ones. Apart from the uncertainty of relying on the hope that once in the estate agent’s, the two would discuss business for at least a few minutes, I suddenly realised that I could not gain admittance to this reading room: I was not even dressed as a woman, yet alone a lady. This distressed me greatly.
Further down the street where I was keeping watch, several doors beyond the estate agent’s, was a tobacconist’s shop. The daily papers were already on pegs outside, and already there was the morning daily from Karlsbad. Trying to make the newspaper an afterthought, I went in and asked for some cigarettes. But how do you ask for them, I wondered? “I’ll have ten of those, if you please” or “One of those packets, if you please” or “Some cigarettes, any will do — if you please.” I just had no idea what the working man — or lad in this case — would say when ordering his “smokes.” Yes, “smokes” was a good word to use.
In the end I said something which seemed to sound convincing, and in a few moments I was able to lounge against a lamppost reading a newspaper and having a go at smoking. There was a fine art to loitering and I meant to discover its technique.
The front page of the Karlsbader Tagblatt was devoted to the usual advertisements, but the entire second page was devoted to the
SENSATIONAL MURDER
ON THE SPAS EXPRESS
Police Seek Mystery Woman.
My hands were trembling but my eyes quickly reached the important parts from the several columns of newsprint. The victim was…theatrical impresario and lessee of the popular Fenix Theatre in Prague, Monsieur Gerard Duvalier. Mr. Duvalier, who affected to be French, was, according to the Foreigners’ Police, born Herbert Higginson in Hackney, East London, England. He had for many years been resident in Continental Europe…
A description of the murder followed:
The police have ruled out the possibility that there were two men involved, although the mysterious lady in whose First Class compartment this outrage took place had earlier asked the Conductor, Mr. Pavel Kraválek, a thirty-four year-old father of twin girls and (my eyes jumped forward) if he knew of two men she thought might also be on the train. Both were described as English, one of stocky build and average height and the other plainly the deceased.
The worst, from my point of view, was left to the end:
The clothing worn by the lady occupying the compartment, a plain grey dress but of this year’s cut and in fine quality woollen material, was found in a
carpet bag abandoned on one of the seats. There were no signs of this mysterious lady. The police are working on two theories: either she was pushed from the train in a struggle — to which end railway search parties are walking the line this morning to see if there is any sign of the missing woman, or that she, having shot Mr. Duvalier, managed to haul herself up through the window onto the carriage roof but alighted when the train came to a halt at some point on the journey. Mr. Kraválek is adamant that he was at his post throughout the journey and that the lady cannot have left the compartment, which begs the question of how Mr. Duvalier managed to enter it.
The article ended with a fearful tone:
The police are now looking for this mystery lady and the public are warned that she might be dangerous, although the murder weapon itself was recovered at the scene of the incident.
It was reading this which then caused me to reach — almost as if by some second nature — for the packet of cigarettes. Apart from a Russian cigarette experienced at my last school in Switzerland, for which the girl donor — who is now Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia — was very nearly expelled, and the one or two puffs of my husband’s cigar in the early days, when love was still affected, I have never smoked. But this was, I thought, for a villain at large, an entirely appropriate moment to start in earnest.
Mr. Jenks and the estate agent, on leaving the latter’s premises, were distracted for a moment by looking down the street to notice a young lad apparently having a coughing fit and in the act of setting fire to a newspaper. A more conspicuous way of drawing attention to one’s self could hardly have been devised. I stamped on the singed newspaper and turned my back on them, blinking my eyes which had filled with tears — not just those from nearly choking on the acrid taste of the cheap tobacco.
Using more stealth than I had employed previously, I followed the pair to various buildings in the centre of this small but illustrious town. Each time the procedure was the same — they would stop, the estate agent would stand back and often use his arms to make sweeping gestures of praise for the particular edifice before them, then a door would be unlocked and in under five minutes they would emerge again and go on to the next. This was repeated precisely five times during the morning.
The Countess of Prague Page 7