The Countess of Prague

by Stephen Weeks

  “Yes, I’ve heard that before tonight.”

  “So what do people want me to do? Turn guns into saucepans or explosives into fertiliser? Well, I suppose I did start to listen in the end. I was having second thoughts about the gas, in particular. Then the blackmail emerged.”

  “How did it start?”

  “Firstly, by my own foolishness. Cleveland Street should have warned me off for good. But in sex there is desire, lust — and also an exciting element of danger, risk. You probably won’t understand, as a woman.”

  “Risk doesn’t appeal to me, but I do understand this is something men crave for — to take it to the very edge of the cliff — right to the abyss —”

  “— and sometimes to fall. I was an idiot to get involved in Prague. I had first gone there sightseeing from Marienbad. But there were other clients, respectable people.”

  “A bishop? A Grand Duke? A reputable general?”

  “I see you know. I got involved. There was this theatre — attractive and available young actors. Hammond, he was behind it all. He had a friend, Duvalier — ran the theatre, but got killed in an accident. It could have gone on. Hammond paid the police.”

  “And then the Pilipenkos came along?”

  “They did.” Here he buried his head in his hands once more. After a few moments he raised his sorrowful face: “Then came the blackmail.”

  “Money?”

  “No, more than that. This Pilipenko decided to sell my gas to both sides by fraud — and to take most of the money for his silence.”

  “Jenks?”

  “A legman. Merely an errand boy — first for Hammond, then Pilipenko took him over too. He was none too fussy about what he was asked to do.”

  I moved across the room and sat on the edge of the bed. I was tired.

  “So how do we come to be here?” I asked.

  “I was already having second thoughts about the gas, as I said. It was brought home to me that if something like that were to fall into the hands of even minor villains like Pilipenko, then all would be lost. I decided simply to destroy the formula and all my working papers, all stocks of chemicals — even the equipment in the laboratory. There would be nothing left to reconstruct it. I kept just three phials of the chemical. I suppose my pride wouldn’t allow me to destroy it all, as if it had never existed — not after all that work.”

  “That didn’t deter them?”

  “No. It gave them the idea to sell nothing but lies to both sides — and for an even higher price. They produced this elaborate charade which I suppose they have acted out tonight. That you are here means it didn’t work out, yes?”

  “Shall we say, not quite?”

  “I took the train to the Continent. I had given that Jenks the slip. But in a few days they found me and I was their prisoner this time. They forced me to help two actors to copy my mannerisms and to emulate my speech.”

  Now I was finally getting to the bit which really intrigued me:

  “So what did you do in those missing days? You didn’t go to Biarritz — but to where?”

  Brodsky didn’t answer, but I could see he was struggling with the question. He knew that I knew those days must hold some dark secret. I had guessed correctly.

  “To Prague? One last visit there?”

  “I know you know — so what’s the use in denying it? It was that Olga Pilipenko. I went to confront her. She was the brains behind all the blackmail, all the extortion. She would have been quite content to ruin people utterly. She was quite indifferent to anyone else’s life.”

  Yes, she had ruined Uncle Berty’s life. I had been so shocked that night that I had forgotten to spit on her corpse.

  “And so you ended hers?”

  “We had a row. No, more than that — it was much more. I was blind with rage. I wanted her to hand over the book she kept — the names of all the clients. She got a knife from the kitchen. There was a struggle. She managed to get upstairs — tried to hold the door against me. I was wild and had a strength I never knew I possessed. I got into that room. She was shrinking away from me on the bed. I grabbed the knife and pushed it into her — again and again. A cut for every life she wanted to ruin — that’s how it felt. Then I was overcome with fear, remorse, sheer terror. I tried to find her records, the book. In my confused state it was impossible to do anything. I was shaking. I just took the letters she was writing at the time and left. No doubt the book has been found by the police.”

  “No. I had it and I burnt it. I don’t understand homosexuals, but I don’t think they should be persecuted. In the same way I don’t understand Baptists — or for that matter, people who grow giant marrows.”

  “I had become a murderer.”

  He was sobbing now. I could have told him that he could say it was self-defence after such a row, or that he was mentally disturbed, on the other hand, there were so many stab wounds: the work of a maniac. He was right, he was a murderer in the eyes of the law. Maybe under God there would be forgiveness, but there was still something cold about the man, something lacking in his passion.

  “There’s one last thing. The dog collars.”

  “How else was I to experiment with the gas?”

  “You can buy laboratory monkeys — or even dogs, for that matter. These were people’s pets, their friends —”

  “But it was for a far greater good, don’t you understand?”

  Ever the excuse for any kind of mass slaughter, Acts of Barbarity, as I think they are properly called — even though this must rank as the smallest episode under such a term. I told him the situation without mincing my words:

  “The British public may be able to forgive you for killing a blackmailer during a struggle. I wonder if they might be coaxed into forgiving an inoffensive homosexual. But kidnapping and killing people’s pet dogs has made you — without doubt — permanently beyond the pale.”

  “My life is already ruined. This whole affair — tonight, everything. I am finished. Don’t you understand? I’ve told you everything so that at least one person can know the truth. Now I have to end it all.”

  I could sense he might well be serious. I was alarmed. I stood up. “Well, I didn’t mean it about the dogs, it was an image only — to make a point. Once your story is properly told, then the public will understand.”

  Brodsky opened the drawer of his writing table — and took from it a small glass sphere. I advanced towards him.

  “Stand back,” he barked, “This is the gas. The only phial I have now. I crush it in my hand and you and I are both dead. You have been my confessor. I feel better now. Now is the time.”

  I did stand back. I began moving back, step by step.

  The man was mad. I didn’t want to shout for Müller and Schneider. He could simply squeeze his fingers and that would be it — if the gas worked as well as he claimed then they would be dead too. Behind me was the door to the balcony. I glanced round quickly. It had a key in the lock. In a second I had withdrawn the key, got to the other side of the door and locked it. My heart was thumping and I could see back through its glass panels into the room.

  There was a small cloud issuing from his hand. The features of his face suddenly contorted and he fell to the floor. It was all over so quickly, just as he had said. I knew immediately that Sir Emile Brodsky was dead.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Chance Encounter

  I was now left in a peculiarly perilous position. I was on a high balcony and my only means of escape, short of climbing (or wasn’t it that word “shimmying” which Northcott had used?) a vertical drainpipe — if only I could find one, for life is never as convenient as fiction — was through the door to a room filled with a deadly poison gas. Likewise, if I shouted for help, then Müller and Schneider would come rushing into the room from the corridor and suffer, perhaps, the same fate as Brodsky.

  The longer
I delayed finding a solution to this problem increased the likelihood of Müller and Schneider simply opening the fatal door to find out what was going on. I had to act fast, but I had no ideas of any use whatsoever. No magic solution. This was not a fairy tale, but real life — and with that decided lack of favouritism of a lottery, that cold impartiality of Fate. Perhaps I should take the risk of the gas — opening the balcony door might disperse it into the atmosphere and at least save my companions. All these thoughts were wasting crucial time. It could only be a matter of time. I had my hand on the door handle, my other hand on the key.

  Tight-fitting evening gowns did not afford room for a handkerchief, which I would have liked to put over my mouth and nose at least. I was prepared for the worst. Then I heard a sound.

  I looked down. The sound was coming from some way below me. A solitary figure was staggering along one of the winding paths of what must have been, in broad and sunlit daylight, a delightful garden of intrigue and romance to match the modern medieval battlements. The figure seemed misshapen, stumbling — a fearful figure like that of the hunchback of Notre Dame. Or was there a far simpler explanation: a man dead drunk?

  “Reverend,” I called, “Reverend Swinnerton?”

  This fearful figure looked up. The white of his body linen was still showing through his unbuttoned trouser fly. The portly figure of the spitting image of King Emperor Edward VII, Monarch of Great Britain — and France (claim lost c. 1450) and Emperor of India and everywhere else, it seemed, looked up. His collar was undone; cravat lost. Bottle held onto.

  “And who are you up there?”

  “Now look, Reverend — I want you to understand what I am going to ask you to do. Concentrate. Don’t argue. Turn to your right, find the main entrance to the castle — big doors. Step inside — make lots of noise. Shout. Two gentlemen will then join you. Bring them here. I need to speak to them urgently.”

  If this worked, then I would have to thank the real King. How wonderful to be monarch, I was thinking: “Press no charges,” he had said — and Hey! Presto — there are no charges, and the hapless Reverend Gerald Swinnerton is a free, drunk man cast abroad in the midnight garden of a castle in Bohemia! That’s power, I was thinking.

  However, these thoughts did not occupy all the time it took for something to happen. I did have time to imagine all the alternatives — such as Müller and Schneider opening that door merely to see that I was all right before investigating the drunken commotion in the hall.

  “Milady — are you locked out of the room?” It was Müller’s reassuring voice. At last! There he was, down there with Schneider. The reverend had also managed to stagger round behind them.

  “I will need a ladder — again. Brodsky has released a poisonous gas. He is dead. I don’t want to be.”

  “As Milady wishes,” Müller replied, unruffled as ever.

  ***

  Colonel Northcott was sitting slumped in one of the comfortable chairs of the lounge of the Hotel Weimar. The electric lights had been switched off, and the room was lit indirectly from the bright glow — through an archway — of the reception hall beyond and by the first grey glimmering of dawn through the windows. I shook his shoulder.

  “James,” I said, “James. It’s me.” As the King had so rightly observed, such situations do breed intimacy.

  He awoke, gradually focusing his eyes on me. He looked at me as if I had come back from the dead. “Beatrice?” he mumbled. I could see he noticed my hair, but then had the gentlemanly decency to ignore it.

  “Would you like something more, sir?” Müller asked in his usual deadpan way.

  He would still be asking this on a sinking iceberg. On the low table in front of Northcott was an assortment of finished drinks. Cocoa might have been the thing at this hour. Or maybe another stiff brandy. It was already past four in the morning.

  “No, no thank you,” he said. “I’ve tried whisky — and matchsticks — already.”

  “So tell me what happened. We left when the fun was just starting, I think.” I asked.

  He was fully awake now. He had been waiting up for us, dear thing.

  “HRH wasn’t to be put off by some equerry or hotel manager, the Emperor of India etc being told by some functionary he cannot speak to his nephew — especially as one of my men checked that a light was still on in his suite, of course not. HRH then brushes aside the hotel people and stalks into the bowels of the Klinger. We all follow. He tries every door, closet and cupboard until he finds the room with the hotel switchboard. A startled old man wearing makeup — you get the strange ones on night shift, so I was told — is half asleep there. The fellow is wearing pearl earrings! ‘I’m the King of England’, HRH shouts. Without looking up the operator says ‘I know, Ducky, and I’m the Queen of Sheba…’ but his words die in his throat as he turns and looks up — to see the real thing. His manner changes rather suddenly! ‘Connect us to our nephew the Kaiser of Germany,’ HRH roars. ‘Willy,’ he says, ‘you’ve been had! It’s all been an audacious swindle. You are lucky to be alive at the hands of these villains.’ We can almost feel the silence at the other end. Then the Kaiser says something we don’t hear properly and HRH concludes by saying, ‘Then we’ll talk about it in the morning’ — and that’s it. Home to bed. However, I was so worried about you all, I naturally waited up for your report.”

  “Nothing else happened?” I asked.

  “Well, only that one of the Kaiser’s equerries, von Alberdyll, admitted to us that they’d paid a million marks in cash — with a banker’s draft for a second million. Oh, and another thing, someone from the railway station was looking for Inspector Schneider. No one knew where he was staying.”

  “He’s out at the Grand Duke’s. He’s dealing with the corpse of Sir Emile Brodsky — the real one, that is…or was. That’s another story, perhaps for tomorrow morning.”

  “Brodsky’s dead?” Northcott looked shocked.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. But the people from the station? It might be very important.”

  “They left a note for him.” Northcott continued, “They felt sure he would be bound to turn up here.”

  “And where is this note?” This could be news of Pilipenko — and of the two million marks.

  “With the Hall Porter.”

  I hurried to the desk. After some persuasion, and with Northcott showing some official-looking paper, I was handed an envelope. Inside was a handwritten note. I have improved the punctuation and spelling, and even typed it out:

  00.23 hrs: Special train departed Marienbad on the line to Karlsbad. Destination Karlsbad Lower.

  01.15 hrs: Signal Box at Krásny Jez Junction reports no sighting of Special. Signalman Nevrklo sets out to investigate and finds points switched onto The Elbogen branch. Makes report of this irregularity.

  02.05 hrs: Special stops at Loket Station and reports that passengers pulled alarm cord at 01.46 hrs and must have alighted in forests somewhere on down gradient between Horni Slavkov and Loket.

  02.20 hrs: Special continues journey to Karlsbad, arriving 02.43 hrs.

  03.00 hrs: Reports filed.

  So Pilipenko and Jenks had made their getaway into the forests that cloak the hills above the town of Loket. If they had prepared a carriage in advance — or even a motor somewhere — then by dawn they would be over the border into Germany with a million marks in cash.

  “Clean away!” sighed Northcott as he read it after me. “The buggers!”

  I had been asked to solve a mystery, not to save money — and at least no one had been hurt last night. The only person shot at had been me! As for Sir Emile, then he had simply joined the list of what one might term the collateral casualties of this affair, which included my Uncle Berty — and the unfortunate Duvalier. Olga Pilipenko, I did not treat as a mere casualty but as an execution, possibly deservedly so. Her brother now had her blood money to spend.

 
***

  The hotel maid was parting the curtains, drawing the net drapes, opening the shutters and finally rolling up the blind to let the innocent daylight in. I looked out over the vista of the counterpane. My bedroom seemed alive with activity. Sabine was laying out a new dress with the rest of my day’s outfit. I watched her carefully arranging it all: shoes, stockings, intimate garments, corsets, hat, gloves — then she was busying herself at the dressing table, arranging the boxes of hairpins, the powders, rouge — all so that she could put her hand on just what she wanted, just when she wanted it. I was continuously envious of her neatness.

  In the meantime, a breakfast tray was being set up on a butler’s folding table, and the hotel’s maid was plumping up cushions to prop me up in bed. Two hotel waiters in livery were clanging about with big silver chafing-dishes and lighting a spirit lamp under the coffee pot. And what time was all this?

  “Seven-thirty!” I shrieked, “I’ve only had three and a half hours sleep.”

  “I know, Madame, but His Majesty the Duke has requested you to come to the New Baths at nine. He has requested you meet the Kaiser. Then there’s church at eleven.”

  So I had better get to it, I thought. In my mind I still thought I had met the Kaiser, but of course I hadn’t. Being with the King’s party meant that they were serving me an English breakfast. The coffee did smell good, but I wasn’t sure I was up to hot devilled kidneys at this hour.

  Sabine was looking under the bed, behind the wardrobe, even under the tragic, crumpled remains of my tulle dress. Whatever she was seeking wasn’t in the bathroom, either.

  “For Heavens’ sake, Sabine, what are you looking for?”

  “She’s not here. I have been looking high and low for her — and she’s vanished.”

  “Who? Who should be hiding in here, behind the wardrobe?”

  This game was intolerable. It had taken all the powers of concentration I possessed at this hour to lift the lid of the scrambled egg dish. I couldn’t deal with brainteasers.

  “Madame, she — you know — her…”