Last Nocturne

by Marjorie Eccles

  It looked as though Miriam had only just arrived. She was still dressed for outdoors, wearing a fur hat and a long furtrimmed coat. There was a smile on her face, that complacent smile which Isobel found so infuriating. Her coat swung behind her as she walked towards the house with her light, rapid step, her thick felt boots leaving footprints no bigger than a child’s in the dirty snow. How could such a small creature cause so much disruption? The house would again be filled with commotion and noise, with arguments and tantrums and the wild laughter following reconciliation.

  Susan came in, bringing with her the smell of fresh bread and coffee. They normally breakfasted together but Susan had already eaten, since she wanted to get to the market early to buy new trimming for a dress to wear that night. She hadn’t said where she was going, or with whom, but a secret smile turned up the corners of her mouth.

  It was so dark in the room Isobel lit the lamps and after Susan had set down the tray, she sat drinking her coffee by the tiled stove with the doors open, reading dreams and hopes in its red heart.

  She saw and heard nothing more of Miriam as the miserable day dragged on. Sophie, too, was nowhere to be seen and she wondered if Miriam by any chance had taken her to see her grandparents, something she had occasionally remembered as a duty in the past.

  When a note arrived in the afternoon from Julian, saying that he had arrived unexpectedly in the city on some matters of business, and suggesting they went out to dine that evening before he left for London again the following day by the Orient Express, she needed little persuasion from Susan. She shook off her megrims, abandoned her self-pity and accepted his invitation with alacrity.

  Julian always chose his restaurants with exquisite care, and they had eaten well in the opulently red plush surroundings of the Hotel Sacher, the best restaurant in Vienna. While they were eating, the thick snow Isobel had longed for began. They came out into a bitter, freezing night and he summoned a fiacre, but the driver refused to go any further than Stephensplatz and they had to walk the rest of the way home, through the dark streets and the whirling snow. There was no moon and Julian took her by the elbow to prevent her from slipping on the treacherous ice which had formed over the cobbles beneath the snow.

  He had been in an abstracted mood all evening, though scrupulous and attentive as always, but stamping snow off his boots, he agreed to come upstairs with her to round the evening off with a nightcap. She made coffee, poured glasses of kümmel – heart-warming on a night like this, although perhaps too much of a reminder of the night she and Eliot had sat here and viewed all the complications attendant upon his divorce to have been a comfortable choice.

  She became aware that Julian was speaking about his newest acquisition, this house of his on the Thames.

  ‘It sounds like a large house for one man, living alone.’

  He said nothing for a while, raising his glass and sipping the amber liquid. ‘I hope I shall not be living in it alone for long.’

  Understanding broke upon her. ‘You’re going to be married!’

  ‘That will depend entirely upon the lady in question.’

  ‘And she is?’

  Diffidently, he reached out a hand and placed it on hers. He had rarely ever touched her before, except in a cool, formal handshake. Tonight his fingers burnt. He spoke awkwardly, stiffly, with a slight tremor in his voice. He was certainly not himself. Was he ill? ‘Do you not understand what I am saying, Isobel? I’m asking you to marry me.’

  Automatically, she raised the glass of kümmel to her lips. She took a too hasty sip, and the fiery, herb-flavoured spirit burnt her throat, making it impossible for her to answer.

  ‘I see this has been a shock. I should have made my intentions plain to you before. When I was still living here. But I thought you were not ready.’

  ‘No, no, I—’

  ‘I wouldn’t demand too much of you, as long as you were with me. I would not expect – love.’

  ‘But you know I have the greatest affection for you. You’ve always been my dear, kind friend.’

  Briefly, he closed his eyes.

  ‘So,’ he said tonelessly, ‘you won’t marry me. Well, perhaps I should not have expected it. But at least, let me love you.’

  The shock of it rendered her speechless. Scarlet with embarrassment, she sat up rigidly, gazing fixedly at the pearl pin in his tie. Realising what interpretation had been put on what he had said, a dull colour patched his own face. He said oddly, gratingly, ‘Good God, I did not mean that. How could you think it, Isobel? But it scarcely matters. I shall always love you, whether you let me or not, whether or not you return my – regard.’

  ‘Julian,’ she managed to say, ‘You mean a great deal to me—’

  He would not let her continue. ‘Then come to England. I could look after you there. I would ask nothing more. This is no place for you – here,’ he said gesturing round the apartment he had always regretted introducing her to. ‘At this time. And especially in this household, with these madmen.’

  She swallowed. The taste of aniseed and cumin was harsh in her throat. She sipped the last of her cold coffee. The dregs were bitter.

  He cleared his throat and said to his shoes, ‘If it’s Sophie, that need present no problem.’ He looked up and added quietly, ‘But it isn’t Sophie, is it? It’s Eliot.’

  She felt again the blood run up her neck and suffuse her face, as if she were a young girl accused of impropriety, and she wished she could tell him the truth; how it was, what their hopes and intentions were for the future, but that confidence wasn’t solely hers to give. She didn’t know how he could have learnt of it. It was unlikely to have been through Eliot himself, though they were friends and met frequently in London. But Julian still had other friends and acquaintances here in Vienna.

  She knew that she had hurt him, deeply, this man who had proved such a good friend to her, but even if there had been no Eliot, she could never have married him. In her marriage to Ralph, they had both given each other what they could, the bargain on both sides had been kept, with affection and respect. It was more than many couples achieved in a lifetime together, but she knew now that it wasn’t enough. Just now, she had glimpsed the flare of a hidden passion in Julian, hitherto totally unsuspected, and if she had accepted to marry him – had there been no Eliot – sooner or later, when he discovered she couldn’t reciprocate, would he not have begun to hate her with equal intensity?

  Suddenly he stood up. ‘I apologise.’ He might have been making apologies for his absence at a business meeting, but for his bleak look. ‘I can’t pretend I’m not deeply disappointed, but I promise I shall never mention the matter again.’

  She knew he would not. He was a man of intelligence and self-discipline and had as stiff a code of honour as any of the dashing young officers in the Imperial army, defending their reputations or settling their quarrels with pistols at dawn.

  ‘I hope,’ she said hesitantly, ‘we may still be friends.’

  His features relaxed suddenly. Why had she never before noticed how attractive his wry smile was? Perhaps that was because he used it so rarely. It briefly illuminated his face. ‘Indeed we shall be friends. For ever, I hope.’

  He made a last unexpected gesture and kissed her cheek, then left. How many other men she knew would have taken the rejection of their hopes with such dignity?

  She went to bed as soon as he’d left, but she had no inclination for sleep and took a book with her to read. She turned the pages but she could have told no one what she read; try as she might, she couldn’t stop her thoughts thumping around like butter in a churn, blaming herself bitterly for what had happened. She should have sensed that he was growing too fond of her and prevented it before it had gone so far. Every woman learns to read the signs when a man is becoming attracted to her. Except that she couldn’t remember Julian ever having shown the slightest indication of such.

  At last she fell into a heavy doze, from which she was wakened by a violent knocking on her door. Igo
r, chained up in his kennel in the courtyard, was baying frantically, enough to waken the dead. Pulling on a wrapper, she hurried down the stairs. On the doorstep was Theo, with Sophie in his arms, a macabre replay of the time when Eliot had brought her to Isobel the night they had met. She was horrified to see Sophie was dressed only in her nightdress, and barefoot. ‘She’s been sleepwalking again,’ he said. But she was fully awake now, teeth chattering so that she couldn’t speak except to mutter, eyes wide with terror.

  He carried her up the stairs and immediately Isobel fetched blankets and a hot brick wrapped in flannel to put at her feet. They were blue with cold, but showed no signs of frostbite. She couldn’t have been outside more than a minute or two. ‘What happened, Theo?’

  ‘I heard the front door banging and went down to see what was happening. It was wide open – and then I saw her, barefoot in the snow. It’s stopped snowing for the moment but I shouldn’t think it’s finished.’

  ‘Where’s her mother, where’s Bruno – Viktor?’

  ‘There was a light at your window. She’s better here, with you.’

  Berta, she knew, would be snoring, oblivious. She liked her little nip of schnapps before bed. And Susan, too, did not appear, either not yet returned or hard and fast asleep after her night out. Apart from the din Igor was still making, the house next door was quiet.

  ‘Why doesn’t somebody shut that dog up?’ she asked distractedly.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ He sounded distraught and she thought he needed as much as Sophie did the hot milk laced with a little brandy they had administered before getting her to sleep, but he shook his head, saying he should get back to bed.

  Igor stopped barking presently, but it was some time before Isobel heard the huge reverberating slam of the next house’s great front door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Early the next morning, we were wakened by the police. And that’s really all I know,’ Isobel finished, having omitted, of course, what had passed between her and Julian, and having given only the briefest possible facts to the English policemen. Once she had seen the truth she could not look away; she knew what she knew, what must be concealed at all costs, but at the same time, the case was closed now that Bruno was dead. It was better that things were left as they were.

  ‘What do you think frightened the little girl so much?’ asked Cogan

  ‘Isn’t that obvious? She was terrified, waking up and finding herself out in the snow.’

  ‘Maybe she saw her mother—’

  ‘No, Miriam died several streets away.’

  Lamb, who had relapsed into what appeared to be an abstracted silence was, in fact, listening carefully, attempting to piece together what she was saying with the police report from Vienna and also the facts he had committed to memory from those letters she had written to Eliot Martagon. He watched her, a small, slender woman of sophistication and charm, not by any means beautiful, but what the French called jolie-laide, a woman who radiated a vibrant attraction, though her dark hair was visibly threaded with grey and there was a sadness at the back of her eyes. She was pale but perfectly in control of herself, sitting very upright on the sofa while she gave her account of Miriam Koppel’s death. Spoken in perfect English but with a prettily broken accent, it tallied with the police report, but he was afraid she wasn’t telling the truth, if only by omission.

  She didn’t know, of course, that he had seen the letters she had written to her lover and he felt it would not only be an intrusion at this point to mention the fact, but would also jeopardise any chances he had of getting what he wanted from her. In fact, she did not need to know, at this point at any rate, of his interest in Eliot Martagon’s death.

  ‘Mrs Amberley, perhaps you could be a little more specific about that night. You say nothing unusual happened, but our information is that an old man living across the street reported being awakened around midnight by a small commotion outside.’

  ‘Herr Richter,’ said Susan. ‘Nothing much he misses.’

  ‘He looked out of his window and saw the little girl – Sophie, I believe – being carried into the house by the man he believed was the Englishman. I presume this was Theo Benton.’

  She was dressed in elegant black, which emphasised her pallor. ‘It was nothing to do with what happened to Miriam. Theo was wakened by the outside door banging in the wind. Sophie had been sleepwalking and left it open.’

  ‘Was sleepwalking something she was in the habit of doing?

  ‘Sometimes. She had rather a disturbed childhood and was easily frightened.’

  ‘But to go outside, on such a night?’

  ‘She may have had a bad dream and been trying to get to my house. She’d become used to staying the night with me, as often as not, but I had left word that I would be dining out that night and wouldn’t be back until late, nor was Susan at home.’

  ‘You’ve taken care of this little girl since her mother died, I believe. What of her father?’

  ‘She has none.’

  There was a finality about her answer that precluded further questioning.

  Someone in another part of the house had been playing the piano ever since they entered. A series of complicated scales and repetitions, again and again, of various phrases. He tried to ignore it. ‘How well did you know Theo?’ he asked both women. ‘What was your opinion of him?’

  Sudden tears filled Isobel Amberley’s eyes. ‘He had become a friend – a dear friend.’

  Susan added, ‘Lovely young man, he was – good-natured and likeable.’

  Lamb said, rather forcibly, ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘Did you know him?’ Mrs Amberley asked in surprise.

  ‘Not as much as I wish I had now.’

  ‘We all feel like that when someone we love dies.’

  ‘Perhaps especially when the person is still young and has everything to live for, like Theo – and also, Miriam Koppel?’

  ‘That was a tragic accident.’

  ‘Tragic, certainly. But accident? Just supposing, Mrs Amberley, the police suspicions were correct – and it wasn’t an accident?’

  ‘It must have been. Bruno would never have killed anyone – not intentionally. He had a quick temper on occasions but he wasn’t in any way a violent man. It was all so unnecessary, they were too hasty in arresting him. The Viennese police…well, let us just say he had always had an obsessive fear of falling into their hands, and when they charged him I suppose he thought the evidence they would bring against him would damn him. It wasn’t entirely paranoia. The experiences of certain of his friends did not persuade him to believe otherwise.’

  Lamb flipped through his notes. ‘Tell me about his brother.’

  ‘Viktor?’

  ‘We have reason to believe he may be in England, Mrs Amberley.’

  She caught her breath. After a while she said, ‘That’s correct. He is – or has been – over here. I myself saw him about ten days ago.’

  The attention of both men sharpened. Cogan paused with his pencil over his notebook. ‘Where can we find him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She told them of her glimpse of Viktor in Brook Street. ‘I only caught sight of him, quite by chance, in the street…he was on the other side of the road, so he didn’t see me.’

  ‘You didn’t speak to him?’

  ‘I had no wish to. I wanted to avoid him, in fact.’

  ‘Could you elaborate on that?’ Lamb asked.

  She twisted a ring on her finger, a cluster of diamonds that winked brilliantly whenever the light caught it. The subject was obviously a painful one. Susan Oram rested a disapproving stare on him. ‘We came to England to get away from all that. We don’t need reminders.’

  The scales began again. Cogan shifted in his seat.

  ‘Susan, will you ask Sophie if she’ll leave off her practising for a while?’ Susan hesitated, looking steadily at her, then she left and when she was out of the room, Mrs Amberley smiled. ‘Susan, I’m afraid, is inclined to be over-protective of me.
She’s been with me since I was very young. But she is right – we’ve made a quiet, comfortable life for ourselves here and the last thing we need is for it to be disrupted.’

  The relationship between the two women was evidently one of close friendship rather than that of mistress and maid; they appeared to live a harmonious and well-ordered existence. The small house was not ostentatiously furnished but lacked nothing in elegance and comfort, and the room where they now sat fitted her personality like a glove. He had noticed a small rosewood bureau in the corner which held a photograph in a handsome silver frame. From where he sat he was unable to distinguish it properly, but he could see it was of a man. Isobel Amberley’s eyes followed his and she flushed. It didn’t need much perception to know the photograph was of Eliot Martagon.

  ‘Mrs Amberley, why are you afraid of Viktor Franck?’

  Her hands were clasped tightly together on her lap and he could see the tremble of her knees beneath the silk skirt. She hesitated, and then seemed to come to a decision. ‘The fact is, he believes Sophie to be his child – though her mother, Miriam herself, totally denied it. I’m afraid he must want to take her to live with him and I think – I know he would be prepared to take her by force, if necessary. Sophie knows nothing about it – must never know. He is a cold, unfeeling man and she fears him.’

  ‘Was it not Bruno Franck who was her mother’s lover?’

  ‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean to say… Yes, I’m afraid it’s possible.’

  ‘I see.’

  He saw her glance at the little French carriage clock on the mantelpiece as it gave forth the quarter with a silvery chime. ‘It won’t be necessary to keep you much longer, Mrs Amberley. But it would be useful to our inquiries to know what the relations were between the Franck brothers and Theo Benton. I know he lodged with them, but how friendly were they?’

  ‘I doubt whether Viktor has any friends – in the real sense. But they weren’t enemies, if that is what you mean. Like Theo, he is an artist, but Theo was actually more intimate with his brother, Bruno. Bruno was an outgoing man, friendly towards everyone.’