Dark Dawn Over Steep House

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  ‘Are you in England for long, Prince Ulrich?’ I asked as he settled me on a sofa.

  ‘Three or four months,’ he replied.

  ‘Have you visited before?’

  ‘Many times.’ The prince carefully arranged his coat to avoid creasing it as he sat in an upright armchair. ‘It is almost a second home for me.’

  ‘I hear you have come from the Berlin conference,’ I remarked.

  Mr G leaned back in his chair, but Prince Ulrich’s back was straight and I could not imagine him ever slouching.

  ‘You might say I am an informal delegate.’

  ‘The scramble for Africa,’ I murmured, and the prince turned to me quizzically.

  ‘You are not approving?’

  ‘Miss Middleton has unusual views and never knows when to keep them occult,’ Mr G broke in.

  The prince laughed. ‘I like a voman viv her own mind.’

  ‘She certainly has that, Your Highness,’ my guardian assured him.

  ‘Please call me Ulrich, and that applies alzo to you, Miss Middleton.’

  ‘Then you must call me March.’

  ‘I cannot fully reciprocate,’ Mr G informed him, ‘for though I am immensely pleased with my Christian name, I dislike hearing it spoken almost as much as the squawking of Jenny Lind or the braying of donkeys.’

  ‘I am not sure Mr Grice can tell the difference,’ I said, as our host straightened his back again.

  ‘Of course I can,’ my guardian retorted indignantly. ‘Donkeys have longer ears and rarely wear dresses. Why are you both laughing?’

  ‘Forgive me.’ The prince snapped to attention. ‘I voz thinking you are making the joke.’

  ‘But why?’ Mr G looked uncharacteristically baffled.

  The prince and I coughed.

  ‘May I call you Grice in that case?’

  ‘You may,’ Sidney Grice conceded. ‘And I shall throw formality to the winds and address you as Sir.’

  ‘Very vell.’ The prince showed us each to our own sofas and settled in a third – his cane propped against the side – and, at a click of his fingers, a waiter appeared from the adjacent room, bearing a tray with two deep saucer glasses and one tall tumbler.

  ‘I hope you like vine,’ Prince Ulrich said.

  I would have preferred a Bombay but I took a sip. ‘This is very good.’

  ‘Sekt made with the Riesling grape,’ he told me. ‘It is similar as champagne but better because it is from the Rhine.’

  ‘Take mine away and evacuate the contents,’ Mr G instructed the waiter.

  ‘My apologies,’ the prince said. ‘I understoot that you always drink vater.’

  ‘Clearly I cannot always drink water,’ my godfather told him, in much the same tone as he adopted to lecture me, ‘or I should not have time to do anything else. But this water has ice in it and I do not trust ice.’

  ‘It is perfectly clean, sir,’ the waiter assured him. He was an elderly man, with a stooped back and a few strands of hair swept sideways on his pate.

  The prince sought to reassure his guest. ‘I have had ice here vit no problems.’

  ‘I do not trust ice not to clink against the side of the glass,’ Mr G explained. ‘It unsettles me and I do not like to be unsettled.’

  ‘I shall fetch a fresh glass immediately, sir.’ The waiter went away.

  ‘I am interested in how you think vee should solve the African problem, Miss Middleton.’ Our host was holding his wine untasted whilst I was halfway through mine.

  ‘But why is it a problem?’ I asked, and Mr G shot me a warning glance.

  ‘Vee must to divide the dark continent fairly,’ Prince Ulrich explained and raised his glass.

  The waiter reappeared with a more satisfactory drink for my guardian.

  ‘Shall we prepare the first course, Your Highness?’

  ‘Do so.’ The prince flipped a hand and the waiter drifted away.

  ‘But what right have we to take any of Africa in the first place?’ I saw no reason to leave him with the closing remark.

  ‘I should think the same right as the British have in India,’ Prince Ulrich replied, unperturbed by my question.

  ‘Having lived in India for three years, I am not sure that we have any right to be there either.’ I finished my glass of wine.

  Sidney Grice clipped on his pince-nez and inspected his fingerplates.

  ‘Then you have seen how the lot of the ignorant natives is improved by civilization,’ Schlangezahn told me.

  ‘They are not ignorant.’ I rounded on him with ill-concealed fury. The Indians have a culture of literature, art, architecture and music stretching back to when our nations were living in mud huts.’

  ‘The Gascony Le Grices still are,’ my godfather contributed.

  ‘There you haff it.’ Prince Ulrich clapped his hands together. The Indians are half-civilized already and some of them are having quite light skins, but the Africans are a different breed altogether. They cannot read, they eat each other and they haff not even heard of Gott. Most of them are hardly human. Vee cannot leave a whole continent in the hand of vild savages.’

  The prince explained that so reasonably that I was tempted to grab his stick and crown him with it, but Mr G was already reaching over.

  ‘Did you ascertain from whence that button came, sir?’ He picked the cane up and our host watched uneasily.

  ‘Indeed.’ The prince clicked his fingers and called, ‘Hans.’ And a dignified man in a black frock coat appeared with a bow and carrying a grey silk waistcoat over his arm. ‘Hans is my valet,’ Schlangezahn introduced him.

  ‘May I see?’ I asked.

  ‘Die fraulein wünscht es zu prüfen,’ Sidney Grice translated and the valet brought it to me.

  The lowest button was missing and the threads still hanging, but other than that I could see nothing unusual.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Sidney Grice gave it a cursory look. ‘Das ist alles.’

  The prince said something else; Hans bowed again and left.

  ‘How long do you expect the conference to last?’ I enquired, unwilling to let his remarks on the subject go.

  ‘True craftsmanship,’ Mr G commented and banged the cane on the floor like the staff of a town crier.

  ‘Take a care, Grice,’ Prince Ulrich warned. ‘It is loaded and at full pressure.’

  Sidney Grice rested the cane across his knees. ‘Is this the safety catch?’ He twisted a projection.

  ‘Yes.’ The prince put out a hand. ‘And you haff just released it.’

  ‘And this the trigger?’

  ‘Ja and very—’ He searched for the word.

  ‘Sensitive,’ I supplied, and saw an index finger poise over a silver button set into the underside of the handle.

  ‘Watch out,’ I cried. ‘It is pointing straight at me.’

  ‘A straight cane cannot point any way other than straight,’

  my guardian informed me, and his finger crooked.

  There was a sharp snap – I had heard that sound before – and a whacking noise close by. I leaped back and saw that my handbag, on the sofa beside me, had jumped at the same time and that the sage green material, chosen with such care to match my dress, was torn open and trickling clear liquid on to the cushion. You have shot my father’s hip flask.’ I ripped open the clasp. ‘And his cigarette case.’

  ‘Good gracious,’ Sidney Grice breathed. ‘I had better return your weapon within one hundred and nineteen seconds.’

  The waiter reappeared.

  ‘Dinner is served, Your Highness, sir and miss,’ he announced, with a wary glance at my guardian peering down the muzzle of the gun.

  ‘Good.’ Sidney Grice passed the cane back to our bemused but unruffled host. ‘I dislike dining with anybody who has the means to shoot me.’

  ‘And I viv anybody who is careless with firearms.’ Prince Ulrich smiled as he offered me his arm.

  ‘Have no fear on that score.’ Sidney Grice limped ahead of both of us. ‘I shall not per
mit Miss Middleton to lay an anthrop-oidal dactyl upon it.’

  I had always thought that my fingers were no worse than anyone else’s. They are moderately, though not overly, long and fairly slim, and George Pound had kissed every one of them. I only hoped that my knuckles did not drag too noisily along the carpet.

  53

  The Black Forest

  WE SAT AT a circular table covered with a white tablecloth and set with crystalware that glittered in the light of a gas chandelier suspended over it. Three waiters stood to attention, their backs to the walls, facing the centre, and each came forward to pull out a chair.

  ‘Did you bring your own cutlery?’ I picked up a heavy rattail pudding spoon and looked at the intertwined MR design stamped on the spoon. ‘Obviously not, but I have never seen anything this good in a railway hotel before.’

  ‘You would not expect a member of the Hohenzollern dynasty to eat off the same quality of implement as a travelling salesman.’ Sidney Grice rotated a salt cellar a quarter of a revolution counterclockwise and a few degrees back again.

  ‘I am not so interested in such luxuries as you might think.’ The prince signalled for a waiter to pour more champagne, though I noticed he had not touched his own drink. ‘I have eaten vild boars off a hunting knife in the Scwarzwald.’

  ‘The—’ my godfather began.

  ‘Black Forest,’ I butted in before he could belittle me with a translation.

  ‘Penultimate train from Burton-on-Trent is eight minutes late,’ he continued over me.

  ‘But how do you know that?’ Prince Ulrich raised his glass in a toast and put it down untasted.

  I took a good swig of mine and a bottle instantly came over my right shoulder to top me up. I could get used to Sekt, I decided, and being waited upon so attentively.

  ‘Because I heard it pull in at platform six almost nine minutes ago and it is the only service still using that particular combination of locomotive and rolling stock on this line.’ Mr G sampled his water and closed his eyes in appreciation of it on his palate. ‘I shall meditate upon the advisability of lending you a copy of Radleigh Raddisons’s Railways of the Landlocked Counties’

  The prince shook his head. ‘I can hardly hear the trains at all, let alone distinguish between them.’

  I waited for Sidney Grice to explain that the German’s senses were in every way inferior to his own but he only said, ‘When I was five my father trained my auditory faculties by blindfolding me and tying me to a post. If I could not guess which wood a switch was made from by listening to him tap his way along the stable floor, he would slash me with all his might across the face.’

  ‘How brutal,’ I cried, as a waiter ladled soup into my bowl – tomato, not my favourite.

  ‘Not really.’ Mr G replaced his glass in precisely the same spot. ‘For I never got it wrong.’

  ‘But if you had?’ our host asked, in the closest thing to concern I had seen from him yet.

  ‘If I have one cognitive blind spot – and I admit to three – the first is my inability to see the point of getting things wrong.’ My guardian sampled his soup. ‘Oh, what a shame. It has its own flavour.’

  I tried mine and he was right. It was not the usual watery gruel that Cook served up and sometimes poured over our boiled cabbage, under the impression that it was also a sauce.

  Schlangezahn dipped in his spoon. ‘I believe you haff some experience of military life, Miss Middleton.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  I haff read your excellent book about your father, Colonel Geoffrey Middleton, His Life and Times.’

  ‘That places you in a very select group,’ Sidney Grice commented drily.

  Prince Ulrich dabbed his mouth. ‘I voz sorry to learn of his accident, especially as you vere an only child viv no mother.’

  I did not tell him that my father had been murdered but said, ‘I hope you found it interesting.’

  The prince swallowed his soup. ‘The descriptions of the battle were excellent. One can almost be imagining that you ver there.’

  ‘My father was a good raconteur and my fiancé had been in a few skirmishes so he was able to give me some idea of what it was like.’

  The soup was the colour and consistency of blood. Mr G had unscrewed the cap of a cellar and was trickling salt into his.

  ‘But you are not married?’

  ‘He was killed in an ambush in India.’

  I had another secret so dark that I hardly dared tell it even to myself. I had left Edward to die and his life had sprayed into my face as he gasped my name with his last breath. I pushed the soup away, slopping it on to, but not quite over, the rim.

  ‘I am sorry.’ Prince Ulrich put his spoon down. ‘How long haff you been knowing Mr Grice?’

  ‘Since the nineteenth of May eighty-two, the day I moved in,’ I told him.

  ‘Nineteen thousand, seven hundred and fifty-eight hours ago.’ Mr G groaned, as if he had suffered torment every minute of every one of them.

  ‘Might I ask if you married?’ For some reason I did not feel comfortable using the prince’s first name.

  He wiped his mouth. ‘I am thinking I am married to the Imperial Army.’

  ‘Do you have any siblings?’ I picked at a soft white roll.

  The prince tore his bread in half. ‘I haff four brothers, all younger, and we vere haffing one sister.’ For the first time I saw real emotion in the Prussian’s face, the mask pierced with pain, but almost immediately he had repaired it.

  ‘Gerda,’ he said reverently. ‘She died in London four years ago of – I am not knowing what you call it in English. In Germany we call it cholera.’

  ‘We call it that here too.’ I had seen countless victims of the disease in an epidemic in Bombay – the profuse rice-water diarrhoea, the clear vomiting, the dehydration, the sunken eyes and the laboured breathing. So few sufferers survived it. ‘Can I ask how old she was?’

  ‘Seventeen,’ he said, not quite believing his own words.

  ‘So young.’

  Prince Ulrich clicked his fingers. ‘Take this soup away,’ he commanded. ‘Miss Middleton does not like it.’

  *

  The rest of the meal passed quietly. There was turbot and lobster and saddle of mutton and pheasant and ices and cheeses, though Sidney Grice ate next to nothing, explaining politely that he had anticipated the food being muck and eaten before he came. But I did more than justice to whatever was put before me.

  Sidney Grice and Prince Ulrich found a mutual interest in philately; the prince sent for his album and the two men spent the rest of the evening poring over it.

  There were many excellent wines, though neither man touched them, but I felt I had a duty to try and was so successful in my efforts that I fell asleep and, the next thing I knew, the prince was laughing and assuring me he had lost count of the number of meetings, plays and concerts in which he had dozed off.

  ‘I generally try to pack her off to bed by about ten o’clock,’ my guardian declared.

  ‘But he has never yet succeeded,’ I vowed, as the prince kissed my hand in farewell.

  54

  The Lion’s Share

  A COMMISSIONAIRE PACKED US into a hansom, looking at my shilling as if it were a dog dropping.

  ‘I cannot imagine why Prince Ulrich would need to force himself on women.’ I wondered if it was just the motion of our cab making me feel a bit queasy.

  ‘Ours is to reason why.’ My guardian sounded uncharacteristically philosophical. ‘Explain the grounds for your incomprehension.’

  The streets of our capital city were never quiet, but the amount of traffic at night was a fraction of that in the daytime.

  ‘He is rich, titled, handsome and charming,’ I reeled off. ‘All very desirable attributes.’

  Mr G pondered my remarks. ‘You might be wise not to set your sights on him as a husband,’ he advised, as we swerved round an oyster stall set up illegally on the road.

  This was my chance and, embold
ened by alcohol and his mellow mood, I decided to take it. ‘Speaking of—’

  ‘Motives.’ He completed my phrase by substituting his own word. ‘Some men do not want women to acquiesce but get a distorted pleasure from the distress that they cause.’

  ‘And you think Prince Ulrich may be one of those men?’

  ‘I have not said so.’

  I had almost forgotten my grievance until I reached out to stop my handbag sliding off the seat and felt it still damp. ‘You fired that air gun deliberately,’ I accused.

  ‘I have never activated a firearm accidentally,’ he admitted, elbowing me into giving him his usual lion’s share of space.

  ‘To stop me starting another argument with the prince about Africa,’ I surmised.

  ‘If that had been my purpose I could have aimed at you,’ he reasoned, uncorking his flask, which the concierge had arranged to have replenished for our long journey along two streets. ‘But it was a collateral bonus.’ Mr G waited until we had passed the new pet shop, where he knew the road would be less potholed, before he poured half a cup of hot tea. ‘And how else was I to obtain and retain the missile?’

  I opened the clasp and rooted through. Apart from my father’s cigarette case and flask and, of course, the bag itself, I could find no other damage as we whisked along through the intermittent pools of gaslight. A misshapen ball of lead had come to a halt after bruising but not piercing my travelling journal.

  I reached in.

  ‘Do not scratch it,’ my guardian urged anxiously and I was sorely tempted to throw the useless lump out into the gutter.

  ‘There.’ I tipped it into his gloved hand and he regarded it fondly. ‘Now all I have to do is find a way of restoring it and its fellow to their original shapes.’

  ‘That should be easy,’ I remarked, and he glanced at me.

  ‘Was that—’

  ‘Sarcasm,’ I said, before he had the chance to ask.

  Sidney Grice leaned hard against me. With any other man I might have thought he was making advances, but we were swinging left into Gower Street and he was more interested in preserving his beverage than in my comfort.

  ‘One twenny-fize,’ our driver announced.