by Gavin Lyall
“You just don’t see,” Ranklin said wearily. “Not either of you. It isn’t as easy as sacrificing ourselves. It needs just a hint, just one, that the British Secret Service is opposing them, and the war party’s won hands down.”
After a time, Corinna said in a voice that was subdued but somehow relieved: “Conall, next time let’s remember there’s a good reason why they put this guy in charge.”
“You won’t,” Ranklin growled.
49
They found Hornbeam in his room. In his shirtsleeves and with a wad of papers in his hand, he had obviously been pacing about practising his lecture which, since he had given versions of it four times already on this trip, was truly conscientious of him.
“We aren’t interrupting, are we, Professor?” Corinna asked demurely.
“No, no, I’ve just been pitting my puny voice against that of the gods.” He waved at the open window, beyond which the rain still streamed down and the thunder muttered. “A useful rehearsal for the coughs and snores of my audience. Sit yourselves down.”
He was in a jovial mood – and why not? This would be the last night of a tour that was a personal triumph, a phrase that might stretch to include the Baroness. And he would top it all with a surprise high C of judicial revelation; it was cream enough for the fattest of cats.
“Professor,” Corinna began diffidently, “we’ve picked up a rumour, I don’t know if it’s true, that you’ve been asked to give a legal opinion on the Habsburg Family Law – ”
“Where did you learn this?” Hornbeam’s manner had changed abruptly.
“It is true, then,” she sighed.
“This is a gossipy part of the world, sir,” Ranklin put in. “And I imagine quite a lot of people must have been involved in getting the Law to you.”
“This is – was supposed to be – a highly confidential matter between myself and a … a certain distinguished party,” Hornbeam said heatedly. “I must insist that you mention this to nobody, absolutely nobody. Happily it’s only for a few hours now, but in the meantime …”
Corinna said: “Professor, we came here to ask you to keep it to yourself, not to give any opinion on the Law in public. Nor in private, if it can be attributed to you.”
Having blown hot, Hornbeam drew himself up and turned icy. “Mrs Finn, you are intruding into a matter between a client and his legal adviser, sacred ground to a professional man. I beg you to trespass no further.”
“But have you considered the political aspect, sir?” Ranklin asked.
“Political aspect? There is no political aspect. This is a matter of a … certain lady being entitled to share her husband’s rank when … in a certain circumstance. A private matter.”
Ranklin stared, puzzled. “But this concerns the ruling branch of the Habsburg family, and if that isn’t political – ”
“Would you say, sir, that such people are denied a private life? Excluded from the basic rights of ordinary citizens?”
It suddenly dawned on Ranklin that, in Hornbeam’s academic, cloistered but essentially democratic view, the Habsburgs simply didn’t matter. They must be a quaint old ritual, kept alive to amuse and distract the populace on feast days; real power, obviously, had to lie with the witty and urbane ministers and administrators who had clustered round him in Vienna and now Budapest. The idea that an aged Emperor pottering about the streets of Bad Ischl in the thin guise of a commoner should actually hold the reins of peace and war was patently absurd.
As indeed it is, Ranklin agreed. But, God help us, it’s also true. Yet how, in a few moments, can I persuade him that here in the Dual Monarchy dinosaurs still survive, still red in tooth and claw?
He didn’t even get the chance to try. There was a distant rapping on another door and a voice called: “Herr Ranklin, Herr Ranklin. Telefon …”
“Blast, that’ll be Hazay. I have to talk to him, but I’ll try and get back-”
“Please don’t trouble yourself on my account.” Hornbeam was freezingly dismissive. “I regard this conversation as ended.”
It wasn’t Hazay, it was Tibor again. And sounding more agitated than mere inexperience with the telephone should make him. “Come to the Petöfi statue,” he bawled. “I meet you there soon. Now.” And he hung up.
Ranklin glared exasperatedly at the ceiling, then ran to find O’Gilroy.
The storm had left Pest with the look of fresh paint: the colours more vivid, the shadows more intense, the streets and pavements shining and steaming. Even the trams threw festive showers of sparks from damp overhead cables.
Ranklin picked his way primly among the puddles and flooding gutters, with O’Gilroy ambling along a hundred yards back – or so he assumed; by now he knew not to look. Tibor was waiting by the Petöfi statue, not sitting, just shifting from one wet foot to the other and sucking impatiently on a long cigarette.
He threw the cigarette away and headed straight off into the town as Ranklin came up, directly away from the river. He still moved like a bear, but now a bristly damp one; he had been caught in at least part of the storm without any topcoat.
“May I ask where we are going?” Ranklin said, striding out to keep up.
“See Stefan,” Tibor growled.
Ranklin looked at him sharply. “What’s happened to him?”
Tibor glanced at him with at least equal suspicion. “What have you been making him to do?”
“Do? Nothing. Just asking him for information. Damnation!” He had dropped his furled umbrella in a puddle. He picked it up gingerly, shook it and flicked scraps of rubbish off it while Tibor stomped about and O’Gilroy, on the other side of the street, had time to close up. Ranklin was sure he was being led into something, and wanted his reserves right at hand.
They passed through the university and museum district, uncrowded now with most students on vacation and tourists still waiting for the streets to dry. Tibor turned into a narrower street, then through a carriage arch into the courtyard of an apartment building. Continental cities were full of identical buildings – it was a way of life, not a style of architecture – only here the stucco was painted the inevitable Habsburg yellow.
Ranklin stopped. “What about the concierge? – gatekeeper?”
“Not in afternoon.” Tibor headed for a stone staircase in one corner; Ranklin peered cautiously into the concierge’s room, but it was quiet and dark.
At the top of one flight of stairs, Tibor pushed open a heavy door, took a few paces down a hallway and opened another door.
“Now see what you have made to happen.”
By now, Ranklin was well braced, but it’s never enough. A close-up gunshot to the head is particularly nasty, since it empties much of the skull and swells the eyeballs nearly out of their sockets. The surroundings get messy, too.
Ranklin stood, swallowing hard and looking not too hard; luckily the room overlooked the courtyard and was rather dark. The outer door creaked, and Ranklin called softly: “Come on in – and be ready for a shock.”
“Jayzus,” O’Gilroy breathed over his shoulder.
“Who is this?” Tibor demanded, looking ready to start throwing punches.
“A colleague, a friend.”
“You did not trust me!”
“Have you been acting trustworthily? Why didn’t you just tell me what had happened?”
Probably the answer was that Tibor didn’t know. Something terrible had happened and he was ready to blame the nearest bystander.
O’Gilroy moved forward, peering at the body sprawled across the table from a wooden elbow chair. Hazay’s right hand clutched a small semi-automatic pistol. Next to it was a notepad with writing on it; the blood and brains had mostly blown the other way, over the papers on the far end of the table.
O’Gilroy passed the notepad to Ranklin and asked Tibor: “Would this be his pistol?”
“He had a gun, for travelling in the south …”
O’Gilroy began moving quickly but carefully, opening drawers and cupboards. Ranklin rea
d the scrawl on the notepad. In German, it said:
I have been deceived into betraying the Monarchy by the secret planning of a Great Prince who is unworthy of his destiny. Forgive me, my friends.
“Is this Hazay’s writing?” he asked Tibor.
“Yes, I believe …” But there was plenty of Hazay’s writing scattered around the table: it looked genuine. Only most of the rest was in Magyar.
Ranklin sat down in another chair, tapping the notepad against his knee and thinking desperately. O’Gilroy came back from the hallway holding a grease-soaked little cardboard box of cartridges.
“In with his shoes.”
“Do they match?”
O’Gilroy squinted at the weapon on the table. “Looks like the same bore.”
“Right.” Ranklin took a deep breath and said to Tibor: “Now do you believe he shot himself?”
Tibor let his mouth hang open. What he had seen – could see – was so horrible and vivid that mere thoughts could make no impact on it. The scene just was, he couldn’t see it as composed of details yet, let alone ones that might be false.
Ranklin tried to supply them. “This morning, so you told me, he was all fired up about telegraphing an article to Munich, but expected trouble with the censors. A few hours later you find him dead, leaving a suicide letter in German. A letter for friends, like you; would you have expected it to be in Magyar?”
Tibor nodded slowly.
“So somebody, several somebodies, could have forced him to produce the pistol, write the letter in German because they couldn’t read Magyar – then shot him. Do you agree this could have happened?”
“Yes,” Tibor said huskily.
“Right. Then let’s get the devil out of here.”
O’Gilroy let out a long breath of relief. But Tibor, catching on to the implications of murder, was searching the desktop with his eyes. “I find his notes, then I prove the story he sends is true …”
“They’ll have thought of that. As for proof – ” he jerked his head at Hazay; “ – that’s convinced me.”
“But while I’m sure you’ve found a loophole, a weakness in the Family Law,” Corinna was saying, “how can you stop them re-amending it to plug the hole before the Archduke succeeds to the throne?”
Hornbeam smiled paternally. “The very fact of my making the announcement so publicly, my dear. Their tame lawyers would never dare do anything so cynical in the broad daylight of the public gaze, and particularly since the legal opinion comes from a source – myself – representing, one might say, the gaze of the international public. Of course, we are still talking hypothetically.” He still hadn’t admitted he believed he had been hired by the Archduke.
“Of course,” Corinna said automatically. So that’s the argument they’ve fed him. Never mind that if the Habsburgs cared a bugger for anybody else’s opinion they wouldn’t now be wondering whether or not to start a war.
She tried another approach. “Then could you accept, hypothetically, that if there is the slightest chance that our theory is correct – and after all, you haven’t actually met the Archduke, only people claiming to represent him – you might wait a few days before making a public statement?”
“My dear Mrs Finn, tonight’s lecture is by far the most public … Come in,” he called to a knock on the door.
The Baroness came in, saw Corinna, and said: “Ah, I am most sorry you are …”
“No, no,” Hornbeam assured her. “Be seated, my dear. This concerns you as much as anybody. I fear our little secret has leaked out – ” the Baroness gave Corinna a sharp but apprehensive look; “ – and Mrs Finn, misguided I fear by her father’s business adviser, seems to believe it is all a plot to bring the Archduke into disrepute. I seem quite unable to disabuse her of this fancy.”
Say what you would about the Baroness – and Corinna was ready to say a great deal – she had poise. “My dear child, you cannot know our Monarchy so well after just a few days. It is not a place of mysterious plots and, how do you say it, blood and thunder. That businessman who follows you everywhere is just telling you romantic …”
“Shut your face,” Corinna said. “You, Professor, are as hidebound as a horse’s ass and have about as much vision …” Listening to her own voice, she knew it wouldn’t do her any good. But for the moment, it didn’t feel that way.
Ranklin let O’Gilroy saunter out into the street first, then they followed a couple of minutes later, heading in the opposite direction. It was a sensible move to perplex any watchers but, naturally, it did nothing to calm Tibor’s suspicions about them.
Making left turns while O’Gilroy made rights, they met up again a street away. O’Gilroy shook his head and Ranklin agreed: Hazay’s street had been deserted, and being lined with similar apartment houses, left no place for snoopers to loiter.
“We need some inconspicuous place for a talk,” Ranklin said, and whether or not he understood “inconspicuous”, Tibor led them quickly through a zigzag of back streets, out in Deák Place, and down a short flight of steps to Budapest’s single underground train line. It might be amateurish of him, Ranklin reflected, but he did indeed feel safe and unobserved in a burrow, even an electrified one.
“What do we do about Stefan?” Tibor demanded.
“We just have to leave him. Somebody’ll find him.” Ranklin didn’t envy the somebody.
“But you do not want to tell the police?”
O’Gilroy snorted. “Ye can say I’m old-fashioned, but I’ve no wish to commit suicide meself.”
Tibor eyed him cautiously, he didn’t know what to make of O’Gilroy – and because of that, was newly suspicious of Ranklin as well. Just then a little square-ended carriage rattled in and they got aboard, heading out towards the Town Park.
“I think,” Tibor said, “I must tell them myself.”
“I hope that before that,” Ranklin said, as quietly serious as he could be in the rumble and creak of the carriage, “you’ll remember saying this morning that Hazay couldn’t be shot for trying to bypass the censors – but a few hours later, he was. So who did the censors tell? Who decided he should be killed? Who actually did it? I don’t know, but obviously some authority must be involved. So who can you trust?”
He had hoped that Tibor’s young-rebel-writer attitude had made him anti-authority. And probably he was – but when things get sudden and nasty you want an authority to turn to. Ranklin wanted that authority to be the Secret Service Bureau, but saying so would hardly help.
Tibor considered. “But … what do we do?”
“You know what we want: to know if it’s to be war or peace. And peace is better for international trade, I’m sure you’ll agree. But we think there’s a plot to besmirch the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And that Stefan was killed because his article would have shown that the Archduke would oppose a war – and that would reveal the motive for the plot. So if we can prevent this plot succeeding then we carry on Stefan’s work and perhaps unmask his assassins.” Or perhaps not, of course, but he had to hammer the idea of avenging Hazay.
“So perhaps you know who kills Stefan?”
That was too big a leap of logic for Ranklin, but O’Gilroy asked: “What time was it ye first found him dead?”
Tibor tried to remember, he even took out a big gun-metal watch and stared at it. “Soon before I telephone you …”
“You telephoned at about a quarter to three,” Ranklin said. “A quarter of an hour before? Half an hour?” Finding and using a telephone wouldn’t be an everyday event for Tibor.
O’Gilroy said: “Anyway, plenty of time for a feller leaving the hotel jest after one o’clock in a motor-car with a coupla other fellers to get down there and – bang.”
“Woah, hold on now,” Ranklin warned – but the timing and Stanzer’s behaviour made him a very likely suspect. And if so, he had very good lines-of-communication behind him: from the censors picking up Hazay’s telegram to the gunshot must have been no more than two hours. Well, he’d already point
ed that out – and now it gave him an idea. But it meant scurrying back to the hotel and he didn’t want to leave Tibor alone, angry and bewildered and likely to start an elephant stampede on his own. Or a few more “suicides”.
“Look,” he said, “I want to try something, but it means me nipping back to the hotel. Can you two amuse yourselves for … No, I tell you what you can do: find out the home address of the British Consul, Dr I. Brull, for me. Can you do that?”
“But now,” Tibor said, “he is at his office, no? He must be there until …”
“It’s still his home address I want. I’ll meet you at the Petöfi statue.”
50
“It wasn’t locked against you,” Ranklin assured Corinna, relocking his bedroom door behind her. “I’m working on something … How did it go with Hornbeam? Not very well?” Her expression had already told him.
“God damn it!” she exploded. “Why are we landed with the one eminent American who’s never run for elective office? He knows no more of politicking than … than a Harvard law professor. He’s cold certain he’s doing the right, the noble, the American thing, championing the Duchess Sophie’s democratic right to be Empress – so that’s what George Washington was fighting you bastards for – then riding into the sunset to the cheers of the mob.”
“Is there any point in me tackling him again?”
“No,” she said too quickly.
“You wouldn’t happen to have said, just in passing, something a little bit unforgivable?”
“He didn’t seem to mind what I said about him personally,” she reflected, “but when I called Harvard Law School a rest home for punctured windbags … I insulted the Baroness quite thoroughly, too.”
“She was there? Hmm. You seem to have put every shot in the bull.”
“So how did you get on?”
Ranklin took a breath. “You’d better sit down.”
“I … what?”