And he was absolutely right on both counts.
“Well, now, Captain Townsend, here’s a rum do.” Inspector Watt was rotund and red-faced, and breathed heavily.
“I’m afraid it is,” Berkeley agreed.
“I mean to say, shooting at people on the high road. We don’t have that kind of thing up here.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?”
“I was going to ask you that, sir.”
“Isn’t there any evidence at the scene?”
“Well, sir, we hunted around. There was a horse there, for sure. And we found a spent cartridge.”
“Well, that’s something, isn’t it?”
“A rifle cartridge, sir. Three-o-three. It was a powerful weapon.”
“I’m aware of that, Inspector.”
“Indeed, sir. Well, that is a military weapon.”
“Yes.”
Watt waited. Then he asked, “Does that give you any idea who it might have been, sir?”
“English soldiers do not usually go around shooting at their officers, Inspector. You say you found horse’s tracks. Couldn’t they be followed?”
“Not on the road, sir. It’s been pretty dry. What we found was sufficient manure to make it seem likely a horse had stood in those trees for some time. But we have found the horse, sir.”
“Oh, good man. Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Well, sir, it ain’t going to do us all that much good. The horse was found at the railway station at Weedon Beck, just this side of the canal. That’s just about four miles away from the Gracey Farm. It had just been tethered and abandoned. The assassin caught the train there.”
“How do you know? How do you know it was his horse?”
“Well, it seems likely, sir. It had been hired at a livery stable in Northampton that very morning by a foreign-looking gentleman. And it was a foreign-looking gentleman boarded the train at Weedon Beck, for London.”
“Did you have the train met?”
“I sent a telegram, sir. But by the time I did that the train had reached London. The horse wasn’t reported to us until yesterday evening, you see, sir, when the stationmaster realised the animal was still there, untended. Then he felt he should get in touch with the stable first, seeing as how it was one of theirs, and, well . . . it took time.”
“So our foreign-looking gentleman had already disappeared,” Berkeley said.
“I’m afraid so, sir. I’ve been in touch with Scotland Yard, and they say they will keep an eye out for him. The Channel ports are being watched. But, well . . . foreign gentlemen come and go.”
“Indeed they do,” Berkeley agreed.
“And we’ve no proper description to go on. Unless you can help.” He paused hopefully.
“Well, I can’t,” Berkeley said.
“I suppose there is no chance it wasn’t the foreign-looking gentlemen, sir?”
Berkeley knew what the policeman was after; an outraged husband, perhaps? Berkeley was a handsome young man.
“The theory is yours, Inspector.”
“Oh, yes. Quite. Well, we’ll keep looking. Good day to you, sir.”
The family came to see him.
“I wonder if I could have a moment alone with Caterina,” Berkeley requested.
His parents dutifully filed out, followed by Lockwood.
“Your friend Gregory appears to bear grudges,” Berkeley said.
Caterina sat beside him. “I have thought this too. We should go back.”
“If and when I go back to Serbia, the first thing I am going to do is put as much lead into him as he has had put into me.”
Her face seemed to close.
“However, as that is unlikely to happen for some time,” Berkeley went on, “we have to decide what to do next. When he discovers I am not dead, do you think he will try again?”
“I will write him a letter, and tell him not to,” Caterina volunteered.
“Do you honestly suppose a letter from you will have any effect?”
“Well, he obviously supposes you kidnapped me. You did kidnap me. If I write him and tell him that we are reconciled, and that I am perfectly happy . . .”
“Darling,” Berkeley said, “you have got hold of entirely the wrong end of the stick. I do not think Gregory has the slightest interest in your marital affairs, whether you are happy or not, I suspect even whether you are alive or not. What is on his mind is that I know too much about the Black Hand, about how it works, about who many of its members are. I know who he is, for God’s sake.”
“Then what are we to do? Now you must give me back my gun.”
“It’s not you he’s after. But I might just do that.”
“England,” she said. “Ha! Where there are no anarchists.”
“I was thinking of the home-grown variety. Still, maybe they’ll catch this one.”
“Oh,” she said. “I hope—” She bit her lip.
“You hope they don’t, because he’s likely to be a friend of yours. Maybe one of Karlovy’s people. Maybe Karlovy himself.”
“He did not kill you,” she said sulkily.
“He certainly tried,” Berkeley said, and squeezed her hand. “Just stay happy, my dearest girl.”
She kissed him, but there was no warmth in it.
Berkeley could understand that it was a moment of supreme crisis for her. The people she had left behind in Serbia were her friends and even relations; she had grown up among them, shared their heritage, their ideals and their determination never to be ruled by Austria. Additionally, she had the deaths of her parents to avenge.
He had taken her away from all that, and although he had a hopeful suspicion that she was actually relieved to be out of the Balkan maelstrom, she undoubtedly felt guilty at having abandoned her roots and had not yet become reconciled to the possible permanency of that. And now those roots had risen up to remind her, most forcibly, where she belonged.
At the cost of her husband? There was a battle going on in her mind, a battle he was sure he could win, given the opportunity. But he was stuck here in this bed. He began to fret, so much so that Cheam became a little anxious.
“You’re running a temperature,” he said. “There’s no reason for it. I’m sure the police will catch the blighter. Now, I feel you shouldn’t have any visitors apart from family at this moment, but there’s an officer from the War Office demanding to see you. Shall I send him away?”
“One doesn’t send away officers from the War Office, doctor. If one is a soldier.”
*
“Major Toby Smailes.” The man was short and slim, but wore a large moustache.
“Sir.”
“What exactly happened here?”
“I was shot.”
“Here?”
“Not in this hospital, no, sir. On the road.”
“I meant here in Northamptonshire. People don’t get shot in Northamptonshire.”
“It’s rare,” Berkeley agreed.
“Have you been fooling around?”
“Obviously you haven’t met my wife, sir.”
“Then it’s to do with this Serbian business, eh?”
Berkeley gazed at him.
“Oh, I’m in General Gorman’s confidence,” Smailes said.
“Then I would say it’s to do with this Serbian business.”
“An Austrian agent, eh?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir. He is described as a foreign-looking gentleman. Around here that could mean a Scotsman.”
“Very amusing,” Smailes observed. “But it is not amusing at all. We cannot have our officers being shot at. And hit!”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long do you have to remain in hospital?”
“I’m afraid a couple of weeks, sir. So the doctor says.”
“Damnation. The general will not be pleased about that.”
Berkeley gained the impression that the general not being pleased would have less to do with his being shot than with his being out of actio
n.
“Has something come up?”
Smailes got up to walk about the room. “Yesterday the Austrians moved into Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
Berkeley frowned at him. “That’s not possible.”
“I’m afraid it’s happened. We received a telegram from our man in Sarajevo. He had just watched a regiment of Hungarian cavalry ride past his apartment.”
“But . . . the Russians?”
“There seems to have been some sort of agreement between them. Presumably, in return for giving the Austrians a free hand in Bosnia, the Austrians are giving the Russians a free hand somewhere else. It’s a damned disturbing business. Could lead to a whole lot of trouble.”
Berkeley’s brain was whirring. “You say you received the news . . .”
“At dawn today. It’ll be in the evening editions in London, and in all the papers tomorrow.”
“Shit!” Berkeley muttered.
“The general thought you should know, in view of your connections.”
“He’s not assuming that Madame Slovitza’s death had anything to do with it?”
“Not her death, her raid. That was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back. If it gets out that an Englishman was involved, there may well be questions asked. The general feels it would be a good idea for you to take an extended leave of absence from duty, and spend it out of the country.”
“I can hear him gnashing his teeth,” Berkeley said. “There is also the matter of my wife.”
“Your wife?”
“She happens to be Madame Slovitza’s daughter. It took me a great deal of time and effort to persuade her to leave Serbia in any event. When she learns that there is to be a shooting war back home . . .”
“Hopefully there won’t be.”
“The Serbs are going to accept a fait accompli?”
“There are a few sabres being rattled, both in the Serbian army and the Serbian parliament, but the Russians, supported by the French and I may say ourselves, are making every effort to persuade them not to declare war. I think we will be successful. Serbia cannot possibly fight Austria-Hungary on her own and hope to win, or even to escape defeat. We have the idea that if they can be persuaded to accept the situation, and Russia guarantees them against any further encroachment of territory by the Austrians, well . . .”
“You’d be sewing the seeds of a future war.”
“Possibly. But the situation should hold for a while. I’m sorry about your wife. But you’d do best to keep her out of it as well.” He picked up his cap. “I’ll report on the situation to the general. Two weeks, you say. We’ll try to keep things quiet, as regards you at least, for that time. Then we’ll have to see about transferring you to the West Indies, or West Africa, or some place. Good luck, old man.”
Good luck, Berkeley thought. But of course it had nothing to do with luck. It was a natural progression of events, given the continued activities of the Black Hand and the refusal of the Serbian government to harness it.
But where did that leave Caterina, and thus himself?
She would have to be told, before she could read it in the papers. He frowned at the ceiling. Of course, she did not read English very well, and she had never shown any interest in the newspapers. But he couldn’t chance anyone inadvertently mentioning it to her. No, she would have to be told, by him, today.
She had already paid her daily visit to him. He called the nurse. “I need to see my wife,” he said. “Urgently. Can you have a message sent to my parents’ house?”
“Well,” she said, “I’m not sure. Aren’t they on the telephone?”
“No.”
“I’ll have a word with the doctor, and see what we can do.”
She disappeared, and Berkeley was left to continue staring at the ceiling and chafing.
Dr Cheam came in. “Fretting again? That soldier upset you. I should never have let him in.”
“He did have to see me,” Berkeley said. “Are you sure I have to stay here another two weeks?”
“Absolutely. You have to give time for those bones to knit. And then it’s going to be another fortnight at least, convalescing.”
“That is absurd,” Berkeley said.
“That is, if you ever intend to sit a horse again,” Cheam said severely.
Berkeley made a face.
“Now you just have to relax a little,” Cheam said, “or I am going to have to give you a sedative. And you are putting back your release from hospital.”
By which time, Berkeley thought, Serbia and Austria could be at war. He had no great faith in diplomacy when the issue was an annexation of territory which would leave the Serbs virtually surrounded. He wondered if Anna had really intended to provoke the Austrians into such a reaction. But whether she had or not, all the time she had been carrying out her little pinpricks the Austrian and Russian Governments had been negotiating a diplomatic arrangement of which she had known nothing.
He wondered if Savos had known what was going on.
And where the devil was Caterina?
“Did you send that message?” he asked the nurse.
“Yes I did, Captain Townsend,” she said, irked.
“Then why hasn’t my wife come to see me?”
“You will have to ask her that, Captain Townsend. When she comes to see you.”
He was left to fret. Lunch came and went – he could hardly eat a thing – and it was after six when Lockwood appeared.
“Thank God,” Berkeley said. “Harry, I need to have a word with my wife. Urgently.”
Lockwood looked thoroughly unhappy.
“Don’t tell me; she’s heard the news about Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
“That is possible, sir.”
“And how has she reacted?”
“Well, sir . . .” Lockwood looked even more beset. “She’s gone.”
Berkeley stared at him, uncomprehending. “Gone? What do you mean?”
“Just that, sir. She’s disappeared.”
The Offer
“Gone?” Berkeley asked, incredulously. “Disappeared? What the devil are you talking about, Harry? How can she have disappeared?”
“Well, sir, after Mrs Townsend came to visit you this morning, she returned to the house and said that she wished to go into Northampton. I drove her in myself. I was to return to collect her at four o’clock, sir, under the clock tower. Well, I did that, sir, but she wasn’t there.”
“Let me get this straight,” Berkeley said. “You took my wife into Northampton, and left her there? Why didn’t you stay with her?”
“Well, sir, she didn’t want me to. That was the third time.”
“The third time?”
“Yes, sir. Mrs Townsend has been into town twice before, since you were hit. I suggested I stay with her, knowing her English isn’t that good, but she sent me home. The arrangement was always the same: the clock-tower at four o’clock. And both the previous times she’d been there. Today she wasn’t. And no one had seen her. So I returned home, in case she had caught a lift with someone else, but she hadn’t been home either. Mrs Townsend – I mean your mother, sir – went up to your room, and could find nothing. I mean, all Mrs Townsend junior’s clothes were there, but she wasn’t. Quite agitated your ma and pa were, sir. So they told me to come over here and ask you if you wished them to inform the police.”
Berkeley tried to think. “She must be found.”
“Well, sir, if she planned to leave, it could have been when I first dropped her in Northampton, at eleven this morning. That’s seven hours ago. She could have reached the south coast by now.”
Planned to leave, Berkeley thought grimly. Obviously she had been meeting someone almost every day. Someone – his would-be assassin? “She must be traced. It can’t be that difficult. She is exceptionally good-looking, and she speaks broken English. Get hold of Inspector Watt and ask him to come and see me.”
“Yes, sir,” Lockwood said doubtfully.
He went off, leaving Berkeley to some very distu
rbing reflections.
His father came to see him that night. “This is a terribly upsetting business,” John Townsend said.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Berkeley said.
“Do you suppose Caterina is all right?”
“I would say she is.”
“But she’s left you. Just like that. Without a word to a soul. I wonder if there are certain things you haven’t told me, Berkeley.”
Berkeley sighed. “Yes, Dad. There are some things I haven’t told you. And I can’t tell you now.”
“Because they are military secrets?”
“Partly. And partly because it would be safer for you not to know.”
“Then you will have to allow me to draw my own conclusions. I don’t believe in coincidences. You have just returned from the Balkans, with a most attractive but you’ll have to admit somewhat unusual young lady as your wife. On the day you got home you were shot by an unknown man of foreign extraction. A couple of days ago the Austrians occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina. And on the day that news is made public your wife disappears. I’m afraid there can be no doubt in my mind that those four events are linked.” He paused, waiting, but when Berkeley did not reply, sighed himself. “What do you intend to do?”
“Get her back.”
“In your condition? And she has probably left the country by now.”
“I know where she’s gone,” Berkeley said.
*
Inspector Watt came to see him the next morning. “Not good news, Captain Townsend,” he said. “The young lady boarded the train to London at Northampton Station at noon yesterday; the ticket clerk distinctly remembers her. Well, she’s not the sort of young lady one forgets, is she? She would have been in town by about two o’clock. Where she went after that is difficult to say. The Metropolitan Police are cooperating, and we should get a sighting soon.”
“Tell them to concentrate on the boat train for Calais or Boulogne,” Berkeley said.
But she was gone, gone, gone.
Watt cleared his throat. “There is something else, sir.”
“Cheer me up, Inspector.”
Watt looked doubtful about that. “Well, sir, when Mrs Townsend bought her ticket, she had a gentleman with her. As a matter of fact it was the gentleman bought the ticket. And one for himself. They boarded the train together.”
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