by Gavin Lyall
As they got out of the car they were saluted by two Palace Gardeoffiziere in uniforms so embroidered, even on the breeches, that they reminded Ranklin of the Cockney “Pearly Kings” in suits covered with shiny buttons.
“Nice of them to lend Hornbeam this little place,” Corinna observed. “But I wonder what they’re doing with the other eight hundred and fifty-nine rooms tonight?” Unlike the other women of the audience, whose clothes showed they expected an evening of the very best boredom, Corinna was dressed for death or glory. She wore a very simple off-the-shoulder gown of her favourite dark red silk with a gold-mounted ruby dangling above her breast, and a white fur stole that she treated like a dishrag. Whatever happened, she was ready to go down with flags flying, and Ranklin glowed with pride as a man and cringed from the limelight as a spy.
As they paused by the great doorway – nobody was rushing to claim a front seat – Dr Klapka scurried up.
“Do you talk with the Herr Professor?” he asked anxiously. “Is he to say …” But he choked on the dreaded words.
“We talked to him,” Ranklin said, “but …”
“Stupid old goat,” Corinna said.
Klapka interpreted this correctly and his already drooping moustache sagged further. “And so he will …” He shook his head. “And I have thought. I think now the Archduke cannot know of this. Perhaps it is someone who thinks to do a good thing for the Archduke who is so stupid … Or someone who wishes to do him harm, even …”
“Did you learn anything about the Baroness Schramm?” Corinna asked.
Klapka shook his head again. “I look in Almanac de Gotha, but … it is perhaps a French title, or even Belgian, or – ”
“Or the lady’s just dreamt it up,” Corinna said crisply. “She could get away with it – if barons come by the cartload, as you said.”
Ranklin, who hadn’t quite said that, looked embarrassed. But Klapka reverted to gloom. “It will be a most terrible thing.”
And they couldn’t even share their one hope with him. “Perhaps he’ll have second thoughts after all,” Ranklin offered feebly, but Klapka went away still shaking his head.
A car rolled up bringing the Baroness, Lucy and a clean-limbed young lawyer whom the Budapest Bar had deputed to squire her. The Baroness ignored Ranklin and Corinna, but Lucy clearly hadn’t heard of the disagreement with her father because she started chattering immediately. Ranklin’s gaze wandered until he picked up the jaunty figure of Major Stanzer striding across the courtyard. He was at first surprised Stanzer wasn’t in Cuirassiers’ mess kit, then realised he would probably want to ask his question anonymously, not implicating the Army.
But anyway, he didn’t look as if he’d just got a bad news telegram from Vienna. Yet.
Lucy was saying: “… going to be the most important lecture he’s ever given, but he won’t tell me why! Isn’t that exciting? Come on.” She dragged her squire inside.
Corinna looked at Ranklin. “Well, once more into the breach, dear boy … No, that isn’t quite apt. Something from Dante, maybe. Abandon hope all ye who enter here … No, I’m damned if I will. Shall we go in?”
“A Turul,” Ranklin said suddenly.
“What?”
“That bird on the plinth back there. It isn’t an eagle, it’s a Turul. Legendary or mythical.”
“And what’s it supposed to do?”
“Sit on plinths outside Royal Palaces, as far as I can tell.”
They walked in just behind Stanzer.
“The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 put an end to the destructive and, above all, undisciplined wars which had wracked Europe in the preceding century. It did this by acknowledging the existence of a number of relatively stable nation states, most obviously France, which shared common values and hence customs. Thereafter the Law of Custom was to …”
Hornbeam’s voice produced a slight but clattery echo, perhaps more so because he was speaking in German. Ranklin knew he must read the language in which so much philosophy and law (including the Habsburg Family version) was written, but hadn’t guessed he would dare lecture in it. But it made it easier to stop listening and gaze around.
Apart from the ponderous crystal chandeliers, the hall was pure Hansel and Gretel, all marzipan and cake icing. Even the Corinthian pillars along the walls had wreaths carved around their waists, and plaster scrolls writhed across the ceiling like tree snakes. Just what use the place had been intended for, he had no idea, but tonight it held a stage with Hornbeam and the city’s legal bigwigs aboard, and hard small chairs set in two blocks with a central gangway. Corinna and Ranklin sat well forward, just behind the Baroness and Lucy, but Stanzer had picked a seat right at the back on the gangway and close to a doorway. Perhaps he planned to vanish just after his question; meanwhile it made him awkward to keep an eye on.
“… what philosophers and jurists had hitherto cited as the Natural or God-given Law in seeking justification for any given war became largely irrelevant in the eighteenth century, which accepted war as a matter of policy, needing no specific justification …”
At that point Corinna nudged Ranklin. He first thought she was just making sure he was awake, but then looked past her and was appalled to see O’Gilroy, in proper dress clothes, sauntering along the side of the hall in full view of everyone, Stanzer included. O’Gilroy caught Ranklin’s look, smiled reassuringly, and found a seat at the end of the row just behind them. Ranklin turned back to the stage, heart and mind racing.
Could O’Gilroy somehow have misunderstood the whole situation? He tried reassuring himself that O’Gilroy was no fool, particularly where his own skin was concerned. So the situation itself must have changed – but since he had no idea how, that thought was hardly reassuring at all.
“… and since these wars were concerned mainly with frontier disputes they posed no threat to the values and customs which the warring states held in common. Moreover, they were fought by a separate class of disciplined mercenaries led by warrior aristocrats …”
“Just like dear old England right now,” Corinna murmured.
“… so society and state became separate entities in time of war, allowing society to become the forum of conscience in which the Kriegsmanier of the states, their customs of war, would be adjudged. This stable, if hardly ideal, system was disrupted initially by the actions of the British Navy – ”
Corinna was about to whisper flippant agreement when she realised that everybody else really did agree: a mutter, almost a growl, rippled through the hall. You could do no wrong, she saw, by denouncing the Royal Navy to a Continental audience.
While Hornbeam paused, Ranklin glanced back towards Stanzer and saw a young officer with a light blue jacket slung cavalry-fashion from his shoulder wandering slowly past the back rows. Stanzer beckoned him and after a whispered conversation, the officer handed over an envelope.
“What’s happening?” Corinna demanded.
“Stanzer’s got a message.”
She turned her full-power stare on the back of the hall, forcing an elderly gentlemen just behind her to lean hastily out of its way.
“He’s reading it,” she reported. “He doesn’t like it … he’s reading it again …”
“It’s bad manners to stare,” Ranklin muttered uncomfortably.
“Pigshit, as they say in this town.” But she stopped her reportage. Stanzer dismissed the officer with a nod, crumpled the paper and bowed his head over clasped hands, frowning with thought.
Corinna faced front again, wearing a shining grin, and squeezed Ranklin’s hand. “We’ve won,” her whisper gloated. “You clever man, we’ve won!”
“When Hornbeam’s closed down for the night, perhaps,” Ranklin’s natural pessimism warned.
“… when the use of blockade, inevitably an indiscriminate weapon, spread the effects of war to society and threatened its values, war lost its inherent justification as an act of policy, legal thinkers were forced to turn back to the Kriegsraison to seek a means of controlling wh
at had become so much more destructive …”
Get on with it! Ranklin’s inner voice screamed, while earlier it had been willing Hornbeam to drag it out all night. But that was before the message arrived (which could be to say they’d found his lost cuff-link … No, he’d looked too serious for that. But it could be that his horse or mother was ill …) Now he wanted a decision, war or peace, and a train ticket for Paris in either case …
No, if it were war, they’d have to stay to get the news out ahead of them. But make sure Corinna was on the first train …
A wave of applause woke him: Hornbeam had finished, and Ranklin had no idea of how much longer he’d taken. But now Corinna was muttering: “No questions, no questions, get off the stage you old fossil,” so perhaps Ranklin’s nervousness was catching.
But there had to be questions, the first asking whether the necessity of war could be held to exist in peace, that is, whether it is possible to anticipate necessity, in other words, whether necessity was dependent on conditions which … The second asked more simply whether Pufendorf’s concept of the state as imbued with the same conscience as the natural man could be equated with St Augustine’s view that …
“Forget Pufendorf and St Augustine,” Corinna raged quietly. “Their supper’s not getting cold but yours is. Think of that.”
Pretending to look at a questioner towards the back, Ranklin saw Stanzer with his arms folded, staring at the seat in front with a grim expression. So far, so good – but Stanzer would make sure his question was the last one anyway.
Then nobody was asking a question and a restless, perhaps hungry, murmur filled the hall. Hornbeam asked hopefully: “Are there any more questions?”
There was a pause, then the Baroness half rose in her seat to frown across the rows of faces at Stanzer. But he gave a slow shake of his head and went on sitting stolidly.
So it’s over, Ranklin thought. The legal ringmaster who had introduced Hornbeam began getting up to propose a vote of thanks.
But the Baroness was still on her feet, and now upright and looking more like a ship’s figurehead than ever. “Herr Professor, I have a question, although it is not strictly concerning international law.”
My God! Ranklin realised that Stanzer may have got the message but the Baroness knew nothing about it. She thought he was just suffering from cold feet and was going to ask the question herself.
“Please proceed, Baroness,” Hornbeam smiled down at her.
“Nein! – lass das!” a voice yelled from the back, and Ranklin saw Stanzer on his feet, arms waving. “Nichts – ”
The shots rattled together, too fast to count. Stanzer’s outflung arms stiffened, his mouth gaped in a last gasp, then he crashed onto the row in front.
A hundred women started screaming and overturning their chairs. A few men, who had been under fire before, threw themselves flat but quickly realised flat was no place to be in a stampede. Ranklin grabbed Corinna’s arm and dragged her forward into the lee of the stage.
O’Gilroy eased out of the swirling, shrieking crowd and stood protecting Corinna from the other side. “Ah, but that was a dreadful and calamitous thing.”
He said it with such calm satisfaction that Corinna and Ranklin both stared at him. But he hadn’t been sitting anywhere near Stanzer; the shots, Ranklin reckoned, had come from the doorway at the very back.
Gradually the crowd eddied to a stop in quaking groups spread round the walls; the women had stopped screaming – except for one having hysterics – but the male instinct for shouting orders at each other had taken over. A reluctant Gardeoffizier and a more purposeful man, possibly a doctor, picked their way through the chairs towards Stanzer’s body.
“Who was that? – the man who got shot?” Hornbeam was down off the stage and with his arm round Lucy, who was sobbing – but not so loudly that she couldn’t hear anything interesting.
“Wasn’t it Major Stanzer?” Ranklin said to the Baroness, now standing nearby. “Your cousin?”
She gave a tiny nod and went on looking grim.
“My God!” Hornbeam seemed stunned. “But … but why?”
“I don’t know if you saw,” Ranklin said, “but the Major got a message – brought by an officer – a little while ago.” He wanted the Baroness to get that message, too: the plot was over.
“I saw that,” Hornbeam exclaimed. “I saw the officer. But did that …? I mean … what was it about?”
“Foreign assassins,” the Baroness said and walked away.
By now, men in every sort of uniform were flooding into the hall or running back and forth beyond the doorways. A small group of rather shaken legal grandees had gathered and was about to descend on Hornbeam with apologies, reassurances …
While he still had Hornbeam’s attention, Ranklin said quickly: “It would hardly be assassins, for a mere major. But in this country, you can’t tell what’s political and what isn’t. I think it’s wiser not to get involved in their affairs – particularly not at high level.”
The police investigation was “helped” by the Gardeoffiziere (the Palace being their responsibility) and officers from the nearby barracks (since the victim had been one of their kind), and Ranklin didn’t envy them the job. Neither did the police once they realised that half the men in the audience were Budapest’s top lawyers and the rest just as distinguished in their own ways. And then it turned out that most of the journalists had already bribed their way through the guarded doors to spread the news …
During this, Corinna wisely kept them close to Hornbeam and his protective aura as Guest of Honour, where they listened to rumours: an arrest had been made (false) – fired cartridges had been found just outside the hall (true) – a man had been seen running through the corridors and then the gardens – young, from his speed, and “bear-like” … The police asked anybody who had seen anything to please tell them, and let the rest go.
They picked up one more rumour from Corinna’s chauffeur, who had been chatting to policemen while he waited. “They found a pistol,” Ranklin translated to O’Gilroy; “… dropped or thrown away … had been fired … an American type but made in Belgium.”
“Find them anywhere,” O’Gilroy said.
“Oh, good. So if somebody had one, and lost – or lent – it, he’d be able to pick up a replacement easily. That’s reassuring.”
53
They drove back to the hotel in silence, but as they got out, Corinna said: “Hornbeam and Lucy are heading back to Paris tomorrow. Is there any reason for us to stay on?”
Ranklin glanced at O’Gilroy, then shook his head. “I think it’s all over here. Tomorrow Berchtold goes to Bad Ischl to advise the Emperor … If you can get us invited to tea at the Imperial Villa there …”
O’Gilroy went inside, probably to make sure the brandy corks hadn’t jammed in the bottles, while Corinna gave the chauffeur instructions for the morning.
Then she turned to Ranklin, puffed out a long breath and let her shoulders sag theatrically. “Wasn’t it your Duke of Wellington who said it had been ‘a damned close-run thing’? But, apart from the bad guy getting shot in the last scene, I guess I’ll never know just all of what happened back there.”
Ranklin said thoughtfully: “I fancy Hazay had a lot of friends in Budapest. But some questions are better left unasked.”
“Thank you kindly, sir,” she said coolly.
“I was talking to myself.”
After a moment, she said: “Ah, it’s that way, is it?” and took his arm as they walked up the steps and into the lobby.
After Corinna had gone upstairs, they sat on with their second glasses. The lobby was deserted except for a politely distant waiter, Hornbeam, Lucy and the Baroness had gone straight to bed, Dr Klapka would be at home by now … Ranklin would probably see them all in the morning, but his mind had already let them go, they were fading, their lines spoken. The play was ended.
“A short run, but a busy one,” he muttered, and O’Gilroy glanced at him. Ranklin rouse
d himself. “Tomorrow I’ll have to start thinking about a report on all this.”
“What ye going to say in it?”
“God knows. If I tell a quarter of the truth, we’ll find ourselves selling matches down the Strand.”
“I doubt that, Captain.” O’Gilroy smiled comfortably. “With what ye know now, they’d never let ye go discontented. Least they’ll do is send ye back to yer big guns – mebbe as a major, too. And that’s what yer wanting, isn’t it?”
Ranklin leant back in his chair, hands thrust into his pockets and frowning down past his stomach. “I don’t know, now … But what sort of man likes being a spy?”
O’Gilroy looked contentedly at the pearl studs in the shirt over his own, flatter, stomach. “Depends where he starts, mebbe. Me, ’twas the bottom of Spy Hill … seems a long ways, now. And seems to me, if yer good at a job – and yer surviving, which must count good in this trade – mebbe ye got a duty to do it, rather’n let some feller not so good wreck the job and himself both.”
“Perhaps,” Ranklin agreed. Then he looked up suspiciously. “Where did you get that thought?”
“Ah, now, Captain, would I ever be remembering jest what …”
“And don’t try your round-the-houses Irishness on me. It was Corinna, wasn’t it?”
“She’s a gracious lady with her favours, I’m thinking, so mebbe she threw a small thought in the way of meself.”
Ranklin reached for his brandy. “Go to bed, you black-hearted chancer. I’ve got a report to worry about.”
“With not too much truth in it?”
“Hardly a word.”