The night was crisp and fresh and I breathed it in gratefully.
‘Hoping the stars will elevate your soul,’ a quiet voice said beside me, ‘or just walking off some of your mammal appetites?’
It was the old man. He looked more ghostly than ever, under the moon.
‘My soul and my appetites are just fine, thank you, and I don’t need advice on either. How’s your diplomacy?’
He smiled faintly. ‘The Foreign Office chaps are frantic. Their own mammal appetites are always for civility, whatever else may be going wrong. And the Germans seem very angry, and the French worse.’ Still the smile. ‘The Foreign Office would tolerate revolutionary outrages in Pall Mall and an outright ban on modern poetry as long as their cordial relations with the other foreign ministries were maintained.’
‘Doesn’t that prove the radicals’ point?’ Again his infuriating smile. I wondered what the old man was, if he wasn’t Foreign Office. ‘I take it you’re not frantic.’
He shrugged. ‘Us deciding to tolerate this radical conference won’t affect whether there will or won’t be war with Germany.’ Gods, that was one hell of a jump; for a moment I felt rather out of my depth. ‘But it might help preserve enough stability in our military and industrial manpower to be able to fight successfully if there is war.’
‘And if we’ve one Dreadnought fewer?’
He looked at me. ‘I’m sure you’ll look after us on that front, Sir Harry.’
‘Are you indeed?’ I glanced over my shoulder. We were still alone. ‘About that: the very elegant Swiss, Hertenstein – he’s the one who’s planning to kill me. One of my points of sympathy with Von Hahn.’
The old man seemed almost interested. ‘Is he now?’
‘I mention it so that if he’s successful, you’ll have a bit of a head-start in picking up the trail.’
He was gazing out into the darkness. ‘Most helpful…’ he said distantly.
At last I saw it. ‘I’m your decoy,’ I said, trying to sound careless. ‘Aren’t I? And perfect for the job. You’ve let me loose to run around in the undergrowth, and you aim that I flush them out. And it’s no particular concern of yours whether I get mauled in the process.’
He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘You seem a resilient sort of chap, Delamere. Reckon you’ll stand a bit of mauling.’
It was the sort of stuff that chaps were supposed to say to each other in 1910. I can’t say I felt all that inspired.
43.
I enjoyed a smoke in the darkness. I was glad of the solitude.
I’d been brought up to know that the enemy was the chap with the different flag and the funny hat. Nice and clear that had been. And the hats give you something to shoot at. Now I was in a Europe where Englishmen and Frenchmen and Germans and charming murderous Swiss could all think the same way and dangerously. And an old buffer of a German music expert, and a French diplomat and our own Foreign Office were united in worrying about it. I was starting to feel that getting throttled in bath-houses was the easy bit.
I was up in my room and starting to undress, when I heard footsteps, and then a knock at the door.
Quinn usually stops by at this stage in the proceedings to review the plan for the morning and check I’ve got something improving to read. I was about to speak, but the door opened anyway.
It was Annabella Bliss. She was in and had the door closed before I could say anything.
She was wearing one of her stylish dressing gowns, and looking rather bothered. ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘Someone’s been chasing you over the rooftops.’
To be honest, I wasn’t really in the mood. But a chap does his duty. I smiled. ‘Did you know this was my room, or were you less–?’
‘Don’t try to be funny. I didn’t come to–’
I never heard what she didn’t come to do, sadly. Footsteps outside again, and another knock. Bliss jumped at the noise, and then darted across the room and into the wardrobe.
Well, for goodness’ sake… That’s what you get from a stage career, I suppose. Wardrobes are the worst place to hide: obvious, and a dead-end. It’s a lesson I only had to learn once, in Rome in my younger days, but it almost killed me.
Once she had the door properly closed, I called a ‘come in’. I was bare-chested but at least still had trousers on, and after recent events I was feeling that dignity and decorum were luxuries I could probably forego.
It was only Quinn, of course. He closed the door behind him, and stepped forwards. ‘Evening, sir. Just came to–’ He was sniffing. He stopped, and took another, deeper sniff. Then his expression changed. Bliss is a damned stylish woman, and cool with it, but her perfume tends to the melodramatic. Quinn looked at me, just about holding his stone face, and gave a little nod. ‘You must excuse me, sir. Hadn’t realized.’ He started to turn.
‘Stand fast,’ I said. ‘I’ll get her out of the wardrobe.’
I did so. Bliss stepped into the room again looking a little pink, but contrived a demure ‘Good evening, Mr Quinn’, which he reciprocated suavely. Easy for him; he was the only one of us properly dressed. He started to make his apologies again.
‘Stay a bit, Quinn. Whatever she’s here for, apparently it’s not that. If this is the revolution I can’t say I like it.’ I looked at Bliss. ‘Please don’t worry. You’re quite the pleasantest thing Quinn’s ever found in my wardrobe. Happens all the time, don’t it Quinn?’ He smiled encouragingly at her.
We stood there in a little triangle, Quinn in his formals waiting for the next Boer attack, Bliss looking uncomfortable and charming in her dressing gown, and me between them trying to remember if I still had my fly done up.
‘Well, this is nice,’ I said.
‘No,’ Bliss said. ‘It’s not.’ I looked at her. I’d got to know her over the last few days as a steady, unflappable sort of girl. Now she was clearly unhappy. Her lovely face was frozen, as if she was holding herself together with difficulty. ‘The man who wants to kill you,’ she said; ‘he’s here.’
‘Yes, I know. The Swiss. He’s the brother I was telling you about. Elegant sort of–’
‘Not him!’ Her voice was low, urgent. ‘The man in the carriage that night near the theatre. The man I heard ordering your death. It’s that enormous German.’
44.
‘What?’
She nodded.
‘Surely that’s nonsense.’ She looked cross. ‘It can’t–’
‘When did you get so smart?’ She gazed at me, still pink. ‘I suppose as you’ve been so right about everything else…’
Somewhat harsh, but it slowed me down. ‘He’s the right shape,’ she said. ‘And I know voices. I notice what’s distinctive about them. As soon as he started talking at dinner I thought there was something… Like a memory I couldn’t catch. Then I realized he sounded like the man from the carriage.’ Her voice clear and strong now. ‘And then at the end, when he was saying all the nonsense about primitive men and art, he used the exact same two words he’d used in the carriage, about you.’ I didn’t need her to repeat them, but she was enjoying her certainty. ‘“Kill him.”’
She shrugged. ‘There. That’s it. Nighty-night.’ She blew me a kiss. ‘Sweet dreams.’
We watched her go.
Quinn waited to see if I’d say anything. I was still watching the closed door.
The whole damn’ business was upside down.
Eventually, he said ‘You fancy it, sir?’
I breathed out heavily. ‘It ought to be nonsense. It is nonsense.’ I looked at him. ‘But she knows what she’s talking about. Doesn’t spook easily, that one.’ I shook my head. ‘But Gods, if by some mad chance it’s true…’
He waited.
‘How on earth does Von Hahn tally with the murderous philosophers, anyway?’ Another breath. ‘All right. Standing orders:’ I said. ‘If in the next few days I get shot, stabbed, strangled, dynamited, or pitchforked to death by the peasants’ revolt, you are to seek out the old man who’s lurking aroun
d here. You seen him? Looks about ninety and so damned dusty he’s not there. Sort of deep fellow we used to see whispering in ears in Bloemfontein.’ Quinn nodded. ‘He’s canny, and he’s the only sensible one I’ve met in this business. If I take the low road to the Cape, you seek him out and you tell him everything, yes?’
‘Right ho, sir.’ His usual even growl. ‘Think we’ll try to avoid that contingency, though, eh?’ I nodded doubtfully. ‘Plan of attack for the morning, sir?’
‘In the morning, Quinn, I’m going to take out my frustrations on a lot of rabbits.’
‘Chancy business, sir. All those guns.’
‘I know guns, Quinn. I can do guns. It’s all this damned diplomacy and speechifying and running around in the shadows that’s getting on my nerves.’ He nodded. ‘Doubt they’ll try anything here. Too obvious. And even if Von Hahn is involved somehow, he’s not going to take a pop at me himself. They don’t like that sort of thing on the Covent Garden Board of Trustees.’ He nodded again, but he wasn’t convinced. Nor was I.
He glanced around the room. ‘Locked door tonight, sir.’ I nodded. ‘Chair under the handle.’
‘Alright Quinn. If I get rattled, you’ll find me in the wardrobe.’
45.
Stepping out the next morning I felt better than I had for several days.
My situation was still ropey. Even assuming Bliss’s staggering story was true, it didn’t mean that the Swiss – or some of them – weren’t trying to kill me. Or had I got that wrong, somehow? Was Hertenstein one hundred percent elegant charm, with just an unfortunately heavy-handed way of expressing familiarity?
He was irrelevant today, anyway: not part of the house party, he’d gone back to Birmingham after dinner and wouldn’t be murdering rabbits or anything else for the moment.
At the very least, Bliss’s story was a complication. Von Hahn didn’t seem a natural revolutionary; but perhaps he’d got caught up by some of that modern music. I thought again about the street outside Jolly’s Theatre, and I thought about Annabella Bliss. She wasn’t the hysterical sort. She’d been enjoying herself at Shulstoke, not spooking at shadows. I trusted her.
So a senior German diplomat wanted me dead.
Someone wanted me dead, anyway.
But the morning was clear and sharp, and two minutes out of the front door I stepped onto rough ground for the first time in weeks, and ahead the English landscape opened to welcome me.
I’d stuck Bliss with Victoria for the shoot. She’d no intention of staying indoors and sewing, or whatever it is that women do when men are out slaughtering things. I didn’t want her with me: partly for her safety, and partly for my flexibility. And there was no safer place for her than Victoria’s side. Aysgarth hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d bragged about his daughter’s skill as a shot. She generally rejected a shotgun as being unladylike, and instead favoured an imported Winchester rifle, the 1894 model – and if being able to kill a man at 200 yards isn’t as ladylike as all hell, I don’t know what is. They don’t make many ladies like the Honourable Victoria Carteret. For rough shooting and on Aysgarth’s land no-one was going to complain. I knew few eyes better, man or woman.
I’d watched them away, Victoria in her tailored outdoor elegance, Bliss in a similar tweed business she’d pulled together from the Jolly’s dressing-up box – too tight for her, but no-one was protesting – and a hat I suspected was left over from a production of Robin Hood. Golden and dark, willowy and voluptuous. If I hadn’t been trying to forestall European revolution and save my neck, I’d have enjoyed my luck more. Even with all the nonsense, I enjoyed it a bit.
That left me and Quinn. He was supposed to be loading for me, as I ambled through the undergrowth blasting away at the fauna. But I’d given him the Webley, in case he wanted to pot a rodent or two, and because – as I’d learned in southern Africa and repeatedly since – he’s a handy sort of chap in the melee. Besides, my host seemed to have given me a weapon that hadn’t seen effective use since the Crimea, so I doubted I’d risk it blowing up in my face too frequently.
The bracken and then the trees rose around us. The smell was rich and natural, tree bark and wet earth and plants. I felt as if I was re-entering my element. The restrictions were fewer out here. I was in steady and trusted company. And I was armed; albeit with something I’d be better using as a club.
The familiar sound of gunfire rose around us, first a few scattered shots as the more intrepid disturbed a rabbit at his breakfast; and then a steady popping as everyone settled to the mayhem.
Five minutes after we set off, at a junction in the path, we met Hertenstein.
46.
He doffed his hat and even managed a little bow. Mischievous bastard. ‘Why, Sir Harry!’ he said. ‘How very martial you look.’ He peered more closely. ‘An 1870 single-barrel Pace, surely. What a splendid museum piece.’
Quinn had stepped away to the side. Hertenstein probably assumed this was deference; I knew my valet was improving his field of fire.
‘Hardly suitable for the modern revolutionary, Hertenstein. You know your guns, it seems.’
‘Ah, the Swiss have always been weapon-makers of the highest expertise.’ He looked the perfect country gentleman, from his Jermyn Street boots to his soft hat. Lucrative business, radical philosophy.
‘Mm. And mercenaries.’
It hit him more than I’d expected, and I noted the point. The charming smile went out like a light. ‘This is why you are doomed, Delamere. Because you have no true loyalties, and no true values.’
‘Can’t afford them, old chap. What brings you here, anyway? Come to spread sedition among the local rabbits, or are you selling arms to the pigeons?’
‘Ah,’ he began, and then froze. He’d pulled his hands out of his pockets suddenly, and Quinn’s reaction had been immediate. The Webley was out and rock-steady.
Hertenstein licked his lips. And then he produced a big smile, and opened his empty hands. Slowly. ‘I was invited only to enjoy the walk. I believe in the great power of the multitude, but I am myself a creature of peace.’
‘That’s what all the rabbits say. Go carefully today, Hertenstein.’
‘Likewise, Sir Harry!’ And off he strode.
We watched him go, until he was a long way off. ‘Charming fellow, eh Quinn? Nice to do business with professionals.’
‘Right you are, sir.’ The Webley had disappeared as swiftly as it had appeared. ‘A killing gentleman.’ He sniffed. ‘A talker, though.’
‘Mm.’ I considered the paths, and pointed our way ahead. ‘Skirmish order now.’
We set off bush-style, constantly scanning the ground around us, anything from five to ten yards apart: close enough to cover each other; far enough that we couldn’t be caught by a single shot and had a dramatically greater field of vision between us.
Blending in with the landscape doesn’t have to mean wearing animal skins and sticking leaves in your hat. But it must mean adjusting your rhythm, and your movements, and your awareness, until the terrain around fills you completely and you become part of it. The present moment, the products of your senses, must become your whole existence. Any inclination to think – about anything, about what you had for breakfast or whether revolutionaries would consider it acceptable to murder a night-watchman – destroys your focus. No creeping, no tip-toes; but you find yourself slowing, and swaying, with the ground under your feet and the wind that gusts and the branches that wrap themselves around you like old friends. Ideally, you don’t notice you’re doing it; but it’s the grandest sensation.
We went on for ten minutes or so. The English woodland grew around me. My boots slipped into and emerged from its earth. My arms and legs swung among the tree limbs. My hands gripped bark. The leaves whispered to me. The rich smell of it all filled my body.
When I glanced round, I saw Quinn had stopped, his palm raised. Then he pointed.
Perhaps forty yards off through the leaves, I saw Hertenstein. He had stopped under a tree
and lit a cigarette. Bad form on a shoot of course, but that’s foreigners for you.
Quinn was beside me. ‘As you intended, I think sir,’ he murmured. ‘Tracked him nicely.’
‘Just lucky, Quinn, as always. Sort of chap it’s best to keep an eye on, eh?’ He nodded.
I wanted to watch Hertenstein. Partly to see whom he spoke to. Partly to stop him sneaking up on me too easily, to use one of the variety of concealed weapons no doubt available to such a determined creature of peace.
After a couple of minutes he finished the cigarette and whatever reflection had occupied his philosophical soul, and set off again through the woods.
We followed. Never on the same path; never closer than twenty or thirty yards. Distantly around us, I could hear the banging of the guns as they went to war on the local rabbits.
Had he been invited, as he said? Probably; easy to wangle the suggestion during the previous evening.
Was he really just walking? Surely not.
Once I saw him pause and chat to someone coming in the other direction, then pass on. It had been a momentary courtesy, surely. No time for a substantial exchange. No point in contriving such a rendezvous for a short one.
Once or twice I saw other figures near me. But I barely registered who they were. A nod of fraternity in our pursuits, and move on, and always the fringe of blond hair moving through the leaves ahead of me.
Time passed. I knew the movement of each twig, but I couldn’t have distinguished a minute from an hour.
And then, ahead of me on the faint track I was following in parallel to Hertenstein’s, I saw a figure.
At first it was no more than that: a tweedy shape amid the greenery. Then immediately it was clear. That massive form was unmistakeable.
Otto Immanuel Von Hahn. Last bastion of classical music, and the man Bliss thought wanted to kill me. My hand had come up fast, and I knew that Quinn had frozen behind me.
Death and the Dreadnought Page 18