by Gavin Lyall
“Would it?” she asked doubtfully.
“I don’t know – it doesn’t seem the best of reasons for a war.”
She turned away towards the car. “If there is a war, would you really become a soldier?”
“Yes.”
“But aren’t you too old?” she asked with that charmingly direct manner Corrinna had mentioned.
Ranklin winced. “Well, I was a soldier – once. They’d probably take me back.”
“An officer? I thought you had to be terribly grand to be an English officer.”
“In the Guards or Cavalry, yes, but we’ve got generals who’ve risen from the ranks. Not that I did. But I wasn’t a general, either.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Oh – for a change. Nothing much happens in an army in peacetime.”
They climbed into the back of the car, which started with a jerk towards the Vienna Gate.
“And how long have you known Corinna?” Lucy asked.
“Just a few months – since I started working for her father.”
“Has she told you anything about her husband – Mr Finn?”
“No – ” The word had trouble getting out of Ranklin’s throat. He coughed. “Why should she?”
“Oh, you just seemed very friendly. I wondered if she’d told you anything.”
“No.” Then the oddness of her question sank in. “Don’t you know him?”
“No. I heard – she didn’t tell me – I heard he’d died in the San Francisco fire of ’06. Either that or he keeps missing the train back, because I’ve known her nearly five years and never met him.”
Ranklin put his hands on the seat to brace himself, and not only against the swaying of the car as they wound down off the Hill. I’ll be damned, he thought dizzily: which of us is supposed to be leading a secret life?
“Mind,” Lucy prattled on, “I don’t blame her for not letting on his position’s vacant, if it is. She’d have every fortune-hunter in Europe lining up at her door.”
“Oh, yes, quite,” Ranklin said brightly.
“But I think it’s time she married again and settled down. It doesn’t seem real ladylike to be so involved in business matters. I sometimes feel quite ashamed with her when she starts talking stocks and bonds to men.”
Ranklin almost threw her out of the car. Shamed of Corinna? You damnable little brat. I’ve changed my mind about what husband you need: it’s one who wallops the daylight out of you for his morning exercise.
Evening, too, he added.
When his feelings had simmered down, he said: “Really? I don’t find it unattractive for a woman to know something of the world outside the drawing-room.”
“Oh, but real men don’t like it,” she said with hobnailed confidence. “They like a lady to be sweet and scatter-brained.”
I truly believe, Ranklin thought grimly, that you’ll wind up with the sort of husband I hope for you.
“And what will happen,” Lucy went on, “when Pop Sherring dies or gets too old? Can you see Corinna running the House of Sherring? I don’t think the law allows it. And quite right.”
“Doesn’t she have any brothers?”
“Oh, there’s Andrew, but he’s always doing things with machines. He’s got no head for business. A great disappointment. That’s why Corinna has to be both hostess and business partner for Pop.”
“And Mrs Sherring?”
“Why, she divorced him years ago, it was in all the newspapers, he had so many lady-friends and I don’t mean ladies and I don’t mean just friends. Why, you don’t know anything, do you?”
But I’m learning, Ranklin thought dazedly. I’m learning.
Corinna, O’Gilroy and the hotel’s best coffee pot were waiting as Lucy bounced in calling gaily: “Hello there, we’ve had a great evening, we went to the weirdest place and met the weirdest people; they write poems about politics – can you believe that? Is Daddy back?”
“He just got in,” Corinna said, smiling – perhaps a little relieved. “I think he’s in the lounge with the Baroness.”
“Oh, that old crow. I’ll soon get rid of her.” She turned back to Ranklin and became formal. “Thank you kindly for a most enjoyable evening, Mr Ranklin. No – Matt; I can call you Matt now, can’t I? Thank you. Good night, all.”
Corinna eyed Ranklin. “She can call you Matt now, hey?”
“She can call me anything she likes as long as she’s saying goodbye.”
She began to get stern, then relented. “Yes, you do look kind of ragged. Would you like some coffee?”
“No, I would like a real drink. I’ve had quite enough and I want some more.” He collapsed into a sun-bleached basket chair already full of cushions while O’Gilroy aimed some well-practised sign language at a waiter.
Corinna stood up; she wore a very simple evening dress in burgundy silk and hardly any jewellery – dressing so as not to outshine Lucy, perhaps. Or by only a carefully modest amount, anyway. “I’ll just tell the driver about tomorrow morning.”
“So,” Ranklin said to O’Gilroy, “how did the tariff figures look?”
“Not too good at all.” O’Gilroy seemed quietly amused. “With him taking his case along to the speech-making.”
Ranklin stared. “Oh hell’s Christmas – d’you mean I had that whole evening for nothing?”
“Now, Captain dear, I’m sure ye enjoyed yeself in yer own quiet way.” Corinna came back and O’Gilroy explained: “I was jest telling Matt what a peaceful evening we’d been having.”
Ranklin groaned: “All for nothing.”
“We couldn’t get at his case if he’d taken it with him,” she said truculently. “You didn’t think of that.”
“I didn’t think of burgling his room in the first place.”
“You approved.”
“I approved of the promised result. To that end, I played my part impeccably, not to say heroically, wearing my sanity to the bone … Thank you,” as the waiter delivered half a tumbler of brandy and a bottle of mineral water. “Not too much soda, just take the chill off … woah, stoppen sie, anhalten! Danke.”
Corinna watched him drink. “If that’s your reaction to a minor setback, you’re on the way to becoming a lush.”
O’Gilroy said: “When the women start talking about the men’s drinking habits, it’s time for bed. I’ll bid ye both good night.”
Corinna gave him a cheery wave and then sprawled herself – elegantly – on the sofa. “We can try again – when you’re sober. And I bet the evening wasn’t all that terrible.”
“It had its moments,” Ranklin said sombrely. “And Lucy talked about your family.”
“Oh? You’ve been prying, have you?”
“Do you need to stoke a volcano? If I’d been prying, I wouldn’t be telling you.”
“No, sorry. If Lucy has a fault, it’s a tendency to gossip. Well, what did you learn?”
“Nothing more than most people who know you know. Including that your husband died in the San Francisco fire.”
“Well, I didn’t say he hadn’t, did I?”
“No. I was just going to say I was very sorry. It must have been-”
“Oh, never mind. Long ago, forget it.” But why the devil haven’t you been prying into my life before? she thought indignantly. I suppose because gentlemen don’t pry. But no wonder you need so much help as spies. “And learning about my family cast you into total gloom, did it?”
“What? No,” Ranklin said hastily. “But … talking to some of Hazay’s – that’s the journalist – his friends, I suddenly got convinced we really are going to have a war.”
“I thought you were busy preparing for one anyway.”
Ranklin looked around, but the nearest waiter was at a safe distance in the shadows at the edge of the lobby. “That’s what armies are supposed to do. No, I just suddenly saw all the nations and peoples of Europe each demanding liberty, territory and whatever they think are their ‘rights’. And most of them justified, but all of it
irreconcilable. And all of them ready to fight. What else can happen next?”
Corinna was silent for a while. Then she sat forward, tasted a cup of cold coffee, grimaced and reached for Ranklin’s glass. “That isn’t just the evening’s wine talking?”
Ranklin shrugged. “In vino Veritas? You travel Europe, at a more exalted level. What do you hear?”
She considered. “I guess it’s ‘If only Germany would realise …’ and ‘If only England could understand …’ or if France would, or Russia or Austria. It’s always the other guys who should do something. Are you going to report this to Pop? – or anyone?”
“Report what? Isn’t it just a smell in the air? If it was a wicked plot … Perhaps I mean that life should be simpler.”
Corinna smiled, stood and stretched. “Yes, growing up, you miss Santa Claus and the Devil both.”
45
Ranklin was shaken from the very depths of sleep and came up mumbling and unfocused.
“Wake up, Matt, wake up, God damn it.” He realised it was Corinna, holding a shaded oil lamp and wearing a striped kimono with her hair loose to her shoulders.
That woke him. “What the devil are you doing in here?”
“Well, thank you. That isn’t the way I’m usually greeted in these circumstances. Get up, we’re going burgling.”
“Are we? What time is – ”
“It’s one o’clock. Just get up – all right, I’ll turn my back – and get Conall.”
He reached for his worn old woollen dressing-gown, and a few minutes later they were in Corinna’s sitting room, plotting in whispers.
“Is he not there now?” O’Gilroy asked. “What’s he doing?”
“A lady doesn’t speculate, but he’s doing it in the Baroness’s room, so …”
“How do ye know?”
“I was half expecting this, so I stayed awake, listening – and I spilt some face powder. Look.” She led them proudly back to the door and showed a faint dusting of powder – and the footprints in it – by both Hornbeam’s and the Baroness’s doors. “How’s about that for evidence?” She closed the door again.
Ranklin said: “Most ingenious, but it doesn’t tell us how long he’ll be there.”
“Being a lawyer I expect he’ll spin things out as long as possible, but that doesn’t mean we have to. Conall, you can …” but then she remembered their talk before dinner and turned it into a question: “Do you think it’s safe to hop over that railing thing between our balconies? He’s sure to have left a window open.”
Ranklin and O’Gilroy looked at each other, then O’Gilroy nodded. He was more shy about taking off his dressing-gown in front of Corinna than getting caught in the burglary. But in a couple of minutes he was back, laying the brief-case under the lamplight and grabbing for his gown. “’Twas easier to bring it right back, seeing it was setting by his bed.”
“Not even locked?” Corinna was surprised.
“Oh sure, but he hadn’t taken his keys a-courting.”
It was, Ranklin reflected, a new twist on the classic espionage ploy outlined by the Bureau: pinching the Secret Documents while the bearer is being seduced. Only here the seducer was their rival, not accomplice, and the documents they were lifting from the case probably belonged to her.
The top one was amateurishly typed in German, with many corrections, and laid out in numbered paragraphs and sub-paragraphs. Ranklin frowned, tasting the leaden legalisms: Gehinderungsfalle, it said; Vermächtnisnehmer. He turned back to the first page.
Corinna had picked up three pages of handwritten notes on the paper of the Hotel Imperial, Vienna. “This seems to be about some law case: ‘could be argued that’ … ‘query constructive duress’ … What have you got?”
Ranklin’s whisper had become reverent. “I rather think I’ve got a copy of the Habsburg Family Law. Which I shouldn’t have. And I’m damned sure Hornbeam shouldn’t have, either.” He put the document down as carefully as he would a suspect artillery cartridge. “May I see some of those notes?”
Corinna passed him a page and he read down it quickly, trying to find a train of thought. But couldn’t. There were, however, several references to “Art 1” He turned a page of the Family Law and tried to decipher Article 1. It seemed to be about the composition of the family itself, perhaps a definition of who belonged. It certainly included a long list of titled families. But beyond that …
“This is hopeless,” he said. “And we haven’t got the time. Let’s just copy out his notes. How many pencils have you got?”
“Let me just look at the Law.” She read for half a minute, then said: “I’ll round up some pencils.”
Doing one page each, it took them about five minutes which seemed much longer to Ranklin. Then they had to remember in what order the papers had been arranged in the case – the Bureau had been crisp on that very matter – and hustle a de-dressing-gowned O’Gilroy out of the window again. But Ranklin’s heart didn’t slow down until O’Gilroy was back.
“Now then,” Corinna said, “you seem to have something I don’t …”
“If we’re going to talk this over, may I invite you, this time, to my room? Assuming you don’t want yours smelling of tobacco smoke and whatever I hope and trust O’Gilroy’s got in his travelling flask.”
So there was another scene of silent tiptoeing across the dim corridor, which so much reminded Corinna of the Comédie Française that she nearly broke down in giggles halfway. But finally they were settled in Ranklin’s bedroom.
“When you take up a life of crime,” he mused, “I imagine it’s very important to know just what crimes you’ve taken up. We might get away with no more than a Hungarian version of trespass, but Hornbeam could be vulnerable for something like treason.”
“Just for having that Family Law?” Corinna asked.
O’Gilroy added: “And what is it, anyways?”
“Remember, I haven’t come across it until just now, but I’ve heard of it before. And it’s what it says: the law of the Habsburgs. A rich, powerful, big – seventy archdukes or so – family that needs laws to decide who ranks after who, inheritance and succession.”
Corinna made a face. “What’s wrong with the ordinary law?”
“The Habsburgs don’t see themselves as part of the Monarchy, the Empire: they see that as part of themselves. They’ve been one of the most important royal families in Europe for seven hundred years, far longer than most nations have lasted. They’d say they’re the trunk of history: nations, frontiers, common laws are just leaves that have their season. So they need their own private law.”
Corinna frowned into her well-watered brandy. Sure, she knew families, younger and brasher, and called Morgan and Rockefeller and Carnegie – and Sherring, come to that – who preferred their own codes to the laws of the common herd. And she had learnt plenty about the Habsburgs as characters in a play written by “history”. But Ranklin, with his European perspective, was seeing the Habsburgs more as they saw themselves; chosen and burdened to lead. Not stripping off the beards and greasepaint when the curtain fell, because the curtain never did. And the blood on the Habsburg stage was not stage blood.
She nodded. “And is the Family Law really that secret?”
“In practice, it just can’t be. All those archdukes and their lawyers. But it certainly isn’t something you can buy in a legal bookshop. A badly typewritten copy is probably the best you could lay hands on, so I don’t think Hornbeam went looking for it out of professional curiosity. I think it must have come to him, and for a purpose. It’s that purpose I don’t like thinking about.”
“The Baroness’s purpose, we assume, don’t we? And what d’you figure it is?”
“I don’t. Just the fact that he’s looking at the Law and making notes about it suggest he’s trying to interfere with it. And he shouldn’t even be looking.”
“Interfere how?”
“I don’t know.” He picked up the copied notes. “These don’t tell us. We really need a lawyer
.”
“Dr Klapka?”
“Ummm. If there were any hint of treason, he might go straight to the police – just to protect himself.”
“A lawyer doesn’t discuss his clients’ affairs. So, I shall hire him.”
There must, Ranklin thought, be some problems that couldn’t be solved by saying “I’ll hire a car, a couple of spies, a lawyer …” But he had to admit it simplified life a great deal.
“As long as we’re sure Klapka himself isn’t involved.”
“He doesn’t like the Baroness one bit. He was spitting blood about her getting between him and Hornbeam this afternoon, thinks she’s an interfering busybody. And now I can tell him just how busy her body’s been.”
O’Gilroy was sitting on the bed, elbows on knees with a tooth-mug of brandy in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and mostly just listening and nodding. Now he asked quietly: “And how will ye be explaining ye know he’s got a copy of the Law?”
“Oh – he left his case around, and I saw a paper nearby that I thought must’ve fallen out, so I – I found the case was unlocked – so I opened it to put the paper back …” She was clearly making it up as she went along, and Ranklin shuddered.
O’Gilroy said: “And it being a dull afternoon, like, ye jest happened to copy out three pages of his notes. Ye think he’ll believe it?”
“Lordie, no. But he’ll be used to clients telling lies.”
O’Gilroy took a thoughtful drag at his cigarette. “And are we thinking this is the whole reason of his being here – what ye was talking about on the train? To take a look at this Law?”
Ranklin looked at Corinna; neither of them had been thinking of the wider implications. Catching up with O’Gilroy, he said: “If it is, it goes far beyond the Baroness. Barons are just errand boys in court circles. So who recruited the Baroness?”
“Who’d know how to get hold of the Law?” O’Gilroy asked.
“And,” Corinna added, her face serious now, “what sort of people would want a legal opinion of it? It wouldn’t be the guy who sweeps the street crossings, that’s for damn sure.”
She shivered and glanced at the window curtains, but they hung still, there was no draught. Maybe she was just feeling suddenly far from home: it was a rare feeling for a Sherring.