Fire Below (20 page)

‘Can’t he let us go over?’ I said. ‘I mean, this is not to be borne.’

‘He dare not, sir. Someone was killed in Vardar? Why must she choose this night to hold back the Salzburg train?’

The gazing crowd was silent, but the press had swollen until it had reached the gates, and men were climbing on these to see over their fellows’ heads.

The doctor sat back on his heel.

‘Where is her home?’ he said.

‘At Merring,’ said I.

‘Then you must leave her here. I am the Coroner of the district and I must hold an inquest upon her death.’

‘Sir,’ said the sergeant, ‘I beseech you–’

The other spoke over his shoulder to cut him short.

‘As one of the police, you should be ashamed of yourself. This man here is a stranger, and how should he know the law?’

As he spoke, I heard the shriek of a whistle and then the swift approach of the train which was overdue.

‘May I take her to some inn?’ said I. ‘I will pay any charges there are.’

The doctor raised his hand, as though to bid me say nothing until the express was by.

The next moment this passed, with a flicker of lighted windows and the shattering roar of a train that will lose no time.

As the racket faded—

‘Were you driving the car?’ said the doctor. ‘I don’t suggest it was your fault. That remains to be seen. But were you driving the car?’

Again the sergeant intervened.

‘Sir,’ said he, ‘this is a political case. The matter will–’

‘“Political case”?’ snapped the other. ‘You speak as a fool. I’m not concerned with your business, but this is mine.’ He returned to me. ‘Were you driving the car?’ he repeated.

God knows how many ears were hanging on my reply. The cross-gates were still shut, and the thirsty crowd was standing twelve deep about the car.

‘She was not run over,’ I said.

The doctor stiffened. I saw his chin go up.

‘What then?’ he said sharply.

‘She was murdered,’ said I steadily. ‘The sergeant will bear me out. We saw it done.’

For a long moment nobody seemed to breathe. Then the press seemed to rustle and quiver, and I heard the dread word ‘murder’ flitting from tongue to tongue.

The doctor moistened his lips.

‘And the – murderer?’

‘He is dead,’ said I. ‘I killed him. Summon me as a witness before your court, and I will tell you the truth from beginning to end. And summon also Leonie, Grand Duchess of Riechtenburg. Last night she passed through Elsa, and
if she is alive and well
, she will be glad to come.’

There was an electric silence.

Then—

‘“Alive and well”?’ cried the doctor. ‘The Grand Duchess? What do you mean?’

I looked down at Lelia’s face.

‘She was not unlike the Grand Duchess,’ I said. ‘And it was dark. The man that killed her mistook her for Leonie.’

Again that curious rustle seemed to run through the crowd, but this time a definite murmur made itself heard.

The doctor frowned.

‘Who are you?’ he said sharply.

‘I am under arrest,’ I said. ‘When I have seen to – to my friend, these officers will take me to jail. I think those that have ordered my arrest will do their utmost to prevent me from attending your court.’

The Coroner looked at me shrewdly.

‘I will see to that,’ he said. ‘What is your name?’

‘My name is Richard Chandos,’ I said. ‘The Grand Duchess is my wife.’

Ten minutes later I carried Lelia into the principal inn.

There, on a great four-poster, I laid her down, with the mistress weeping beside me, to see such beauty cut off, and the sergeant keeping the door against the whispering maids.

I turned to the doctor, who was standing at the foot of the bed, with his chin in his hand.

‘I am helpless,’ I said. ‘If I could, I would watch by her side; but I can do no more because I am under arrest. And the sergeant has been very civil and I cannot abuse the lenience which he has shown. Will you see that her relatives are summoned? She lived with her uncle at Merring, and I know that she was called “Lelia”, but her surname I never heard. And – and I would not like her disturbed if that may be. I will pay all the charges.’

‘I will see to it,’ said the other.

‘And the dog,’ I said, pointing to the wolf-hound, stretched dull-eyed upon the floor. ‘He was hers. The poor brute cannot understand.’

‘I will take him,’ said the doctor kindly, ‘and do what I can.’

‘And you’ll summon my wife?’ I hesitated. ‘It is right that she should be there. And I am very anxious that she should see this – this great-heart, who lost her life for her sake. She will certainly be at Vigil; I think she may be in Lessing Strasse, at the house of Madame Dresden of Salm. I’m afraid she is in great danger, but, as I have said, I am helpless. If she has been taken, they will say she is not in the country; but that is not true. She passed through Elsa last night about ten o’clock.’

The doctor said nothing, but stood staring straight before him, frowning and biting his lip.

I turned again to the bed, to look upon Lelia in her beauty for the last time.

She was very pale now and might have been made of marble instead of flesh and blood. All her loveliness was there, but death had so changed it that now she seemed to belong to some other and rarer school. And this, I suppose, was as it should be; but the veiled eyes and the grave droop of the lips that I had known so eager were like a knife in my heart, and I turned away blindly and stood to an open casement with the tears running down my face.

The window looked out upon the country which I had come to know, and though I could not see them, I knew it was commanding the meadows which George and Bell and I had traversed at this hour six days before. To the east the sky was paling, and the tops of the mountains rose up in a long, black screen, jagged and sinister, standing against the dawn. Very soon this would lighten their darkness, and the sun would clothe them with colour and make honest hills of them again. But not for me. I knew them for what they were. They and the clouds… Instinctively I lifted my eyes.
The heaven was clear
. Look where I would, the sky showed nothing but stars. The pall of cloud was clean gone.

After a little I turned again to the room, to see the Coroner stooping to Lelia’s wolf-hound and trying to coax the poor dog to lift up his head.

I passed to his side.

‘When will you hold the inquest?’

‘At three o’clock tomorrow,’ he said.

‘I shall hope to be there,’ said I.

‘Never fear, sir,’ said he.

I thanked him and bade him goodbye.

A moment later the detective-sergeant and I were descending the stairs.

There must have been three hundred people without the inn. As I emerged, I saw a general movement, and every man took off his hat.

Instinctively I put up my hand, to find that I was bare-headed. I think I had been so for hours.

As I entered the car, the crowd surged forward.

‘Who touches her man, touches Leonie,’ roared a deep voice.

An angry murmur answered, and the sergeant went something white.

I stood up in the car at once.

I could not let the man down. If he had not let me take Lelia, long before this he would have lodged me in jail.

‘Sirs,’ I shouted. ‘I thank you. But we must be in order whatever we do. These men are doing their duty. They have treated me very well. And I am content to go with them. But listen. I have said that Leonie is in danger, and so she is. We will come to the court here tomorrow – she and I.’

‘At what hour, my lord?’ cried someone.

‘At three o’clock. But if we do not come – if Leonie does not come, you will know there is something wrong and that the danger I speak of has lifted its head.’

A long mutter answered me. Then the car moved, and they parted and let it go, crying out and waving and shouting ‘Leonie’.

Fifty minutes later the car passed under an archway and into a court. The buildings rose very high upon every side, but there was light enough to show me two closed cars standing side by side in the shadows and their drivers, sick of waiting, asprawl on their seats.

From a doorway to the left of the court came a flood of electric light.

A moment later I was treading a long, stone passage, with a jailer going before me and another behind.

Then the door of some cell was opened, and I passed in.

They had taken away my wristwatch, but there was some clock hard by that chimed the hours, and I know that it was soon after ten that three or four persons came stepping down the passage and up to the door of my cell.

Till then I had seen no one but the jailers and a dreadful-looking barber who certainly shaved me well and would have ordered my hair, but I did not like the look of his brushes and thanked him to let that go. But now I was sure that somebody not of the prison was standing without the door, for there seemed to be some hesitation and I could hear whispers exchanged, and that was not the way of the jailers, who were downright in all they did.

Then the shutter of the grill was drawn, and behind the lattice of iron I could see some face.

Because, I suppose, I was so much troubled about her, the thought that it might be Leonie flung itself into my mind.

I started up eagerly.

‘Leonie! Is that you?’

A snigger answered me, and I turned on my heel.

Only two beings I knew would have laughed in my face. And of these one was dead.

‘“Handsome is as handsome does”,’ I said lightly. ‘Can you really blame the Grand Duchess for turning you down?’

I know it was unpardonable, but the tongue is an unruly member, and the words were out of my mouth before I could think.

There was a dreadful silence. Then Paul, Prince of Riechtenburg, let himself go.

If the blow I had struck him was foul, be sure I paid for it.

His oaths and threats were nothing; the filth he spouted only dishonoured himself; but what he said of Leonie froze my blood. I have never heard a man so speak of any woman in all my life, and at last I stopped my ears, because I could bear it no more.

And when at last I put down my hands, I heard the footfalls retreating and found that I was alone.

The incident shook me badly, as well it might.

When Lelia told me that Leonie had passed through Elsa, my feeling was one of relief. Anything was better than that she should come up by the water and find the smuggler waiting on the Austrian side of the fall. This sense of relief was short-lived, and, as I have shown, I had already determined to take Grieg’s car and drive to Vigil to find her, when our failure to make for Gola and the shocking events which followed took a startling and dreadful precedence of other cares.

All the time I was carrying Lelia – first to the car, and then to Vardar and then up the stairs of the inn, Leonie’s peril made a distracting background to all my thoughts; and my feeble attempts to arouse suspicion in Vardar were made in the desperation of a man who sees his world slipping in the moment when he himself is beaten down to his knees.

Indeed, not until I had slept, was I able to focus the matter as it deserved.

At once three things became clear.

The first was that Leonie had entered Riechtenburg as the direct result of what she had learned from Bell. Of this there could be no doubt. Bell had arrived in the morning, and she had left for Elsa the same afternoon. She held no cards; she had simply come because of the danger in which she saw that I stood.

The second was that whatever were Grieg’s instructions concerning my wife, the Prince would have held him guiltless if she had been killed. I put it no higher than that. Grieg certainly fired upon me, but my arm was about the maid he mistook for my wife, and Leonie might have done as Lelia did.

The third was that, if Leonie had been taken, no kind of pressure from Vardar would bring her to the Coroner’s court. It was conceivable that, if the Coroner insisted, they might have to let me go. The man was strict and knew that I was in Vigil and under arrest. But when he demanded Leonie, they would laugh in his face. ‘Go and fetch her from Littai,’ they would say. And if they swore that she had not been seen in Vigil, the man must go empty away.

Following these conclusions, the beastly explosion of spite which I had touched off quickened my apprehension into a fever of fear, for though, so long as I listened, the Prince had said nothing to show me that Leonie lay in his power, I did not like the sound of his laughter and found an ominous confidence in his tone.

Still, there was nothing to be done. I was as cut off and helpless as any caged beast; and all my hope was in Vardar and the Coroner’s shrewd, grey eyes and the hearts of the husbandmen.

Except that some food was brought me soon after midday, I was not visited again until three o’clock. At that hour three jailers came and took me along the passage and up a winding stair.

The room we presently entered might have been called a court.

It was divided in two by a plain oak screen, between four and five feet high. Beyond the screen, the floor was considerably higher, so that such as sat on that side could command the rest of the room. Of this my side was bare, except for a bench in the midst and two stools against the wall, but the other was furnished with a table and four or five massive chairs of leather and oak. All around the chamber were curtains of dark green cloth, so that, if there were doors or alcoves, they could not be seen, and, high above the curtains, a row of windows was casting a sombre light. At either end of the table, which stood lengthwise to the screen, was seated a stooping clerk, ready, no doubt, to record whatever took place; and behind the table were sitting two keen-faced men whom I took at once for examining magistrates. The one was older than the other and sat very stiff; his face was bloodless and might have been a wax mask. His fellow was almost lolling, with his elbow on an arm of his chair and his chin in his hand. For all his faint smile, I liked him the least of the two. They wore no robes, but were soberly dressed in black, and the only insignia of office that I could see were the bands of lawn which were fastened about their necks.

At a sign from the sergeant-jailer I took my seat upon the bench, when he and the other fell back and stood by the wall. The third jailer had not entered, but was, I think, remaining without the door.

The elder of the lawyers leaned forward.

‘By our advice, one charge only has been preferred against you. I think you will allow that it is sufficiently grave. It is that of maltreating the person of his Royal Highness Prince Paul of Riechtenburg. This you are said to have done in the garden of a house in the Lessing Strasse six days ago.’

He paused there, as though expecting a reply, but if I said nothing, I was busy with my thoughts.

‘By our advice…’

The advice was precisely that which a wise man-of-law would give. My stealthy entry into Riechtenburg, my theft of the Prince’s car, my conspiracy with George and the Countess – all these had been rejected in favour of that offence which no motive could palliate, the penalty for which was most dire. If I denied it, the Prince would be called against me, and what Court on earth could be blamed for preferring his word to mine? Unless I betrayed my friends I could call no witnesses; and if I sought to refer to anything other than what had occurred in that garden, I should be instantly
and rightly
stopped. My trial was to be in order. The proceedings would bear investigation by the most captious of eyes. Yet my conviction was as certain as the midwinter snow upon the hills.

‘Do you plead “Guilty”, or no?’

‘By what authority,’ said I, ‘do you question me?’

The man flushed under my tongue, and his fellow looked up.

‘You are a stranger,’ he said, ‘and you do not know the law. An offence against the person of the Sovereign is dealt with in camera by a specially constituted Court. Be sure that you will have justice.’

‘I see,’ said I. ‘I am before this – this specially constituted Court?’

‘Yes,’ said the other. ‘You are.’

‘I see,’ said I. ‘Very well. I plead “Not guilty”.’

The words were scarce out of my mouth, when the curtains on the left were parted, and the Prince, who had been standing in a doorway, stepped to the table and flung himself into a chair.

His appearance was so abrupt as to give my judges no time to get to their feet, and they were plainly put out – as much, I imagine, by the blunt disclosure of the truth that the Prince had been eavesdropping as by his disregard of the Court and its dignity. But that was their master’s way. The youth was a law unto himself and strained to breaking-point that fine tradition that ‘the King can do no wrong’. But for his high estate, I can think of no company from which he would not have met with the shortest of shrifts; but, as things were, his insolence had to be suffered, and few beside Sully – the Lord President of the Council and a man of exceptional address – would dare to correct his behaviour and save the appearances which he was throwing away.

As the two were making their bows—

‘Get on,’ said his Royal Highness.

With what dignity they could summon, the Prince was sworn. Then the elder requested his monarch to give his account of what happened ‘in the Countess of Dresden’s garden six days ago.’

The Prince unfolded a paper and read aloud.

‘My dog disappeared in the bushes, and I followed the animal in. Chandos stepped from behind a tree and told me to call the dog to heel. He had a pistol in his hand which he was pointing at me. I heard a noise behind me. When I turned I saw the man called “Hanbury”, pistol in hand. He was the nearest, and so I knocked him down. Before I could call for assistance Chandos put his pistol to my throat. He spoke to Hanbury. “We must get out,” he said. “I’m afraid.” Then he spoke to me. “Will you tell your chauffeurs to drive me to Elsa?” he said. I told him to go to hell. At that, he said to Hanbury, “We must get rid of his chauffeurs and take his car.” After some discussion the two of them seized me and started to drag me away. I broke free and swung myself into a tree. I expected them to fire, but I think they were afraid of the noise. I found another man in the tree and forced him down. Then I started to shout, and my chauffeurs appeared upon the scene.’

He folded the paper and stuffed it into his coat. Then he sat back in his chair and fell to biting his nails.

The elder judge lifted his head.

‘Do you wish to question his Royal Highness?’

My spirits rose. I had never expected such licence.

‘Yes,’ I said, and rose to my feet.

The two clerks picked up their pens.

I folded my arms and looked the Prince in the face.

‘Can you describe my pistol?’

The red-rimmed, watery eyes raked me from head to knee. Then their owner shrugged his shoulders.

‘It was like any other pistol,’ he said.

‘Which was it – nickelled or blued?’

The Prince hesitated. Then—

‘It was nickelled,’ he said.

I could have thrown up my hat. I had scarcely dared hope he would make such a childish mistake.

I addressed the Court.

‘I call for that pistol,’ I said.

The younger of the judges leaned forward.

‘What pistol?’ he said, smiling.

‘The pistol which I handed to the police.’

‘But what will that prove?’ he purred.

‘You will see that it is blued.’

‘No doubt,’ said the other, ‘no doubt. But the pistol of which we are speaking is the one which you pointed at the Prince.’

My spirits sank lower than before. That I was no match for these men was perfectly clear.

‘I never had but one,’ I said wearily.

With a gesture of infinite regret, the fellow leaned back in his seat. To this day I can see his raised hand and his pitying smile. The mockery stung me, and I felt as never before that I had my back to the wall.

‘Have you any other questions?’ he said.

I reflected dismally. Then—

‘Was the Countess Dresden present?’ I said.

The Prince’s eyes narrowed.

‘Yes,’ he said roughly. ‘She was.’

‘Do you think her account of what happened would tally with yours?’

His Royal Highness reddened.

‘D’you suggest I’m lying?’ he blurted.

As his lawyers turned to soothe him—

‘From beginning to end,’ I said coolly. ‘You know it as well as I. Everyone present knows it – because they know you. And now kindly answer my question. Do you think Madame Dresden’s account–’

I left the sentence there, because for the moment I had not the ear of the Court. The lawyers’ hands were full. Beneath their lively entreaties the Prince was chafing and cursing and raving of ‘exposure to insult’ and ‘royal blood’.

As the storm was subsiding, the younger of the judges looked round.

‘Do you call the Countess?’ – sharply.

‘No,’ said I.

‘Then what she would say has nothing to do with the case.’

I swallowed desperately. No doubt the fellow was right.

I returned to the Prince, whose face was working with rage.

‘You say you knocked Hanbury down?’

‘So I — well did,’ cried the Prince, ‘you insolent swine.’

‘Was he the only one you knocked down?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why did you tell Weber that you had “laid two of them out”? Yesterday morning…when you were at Baron Sabre’s…waiting for Grieg?’

His Royal Highness started forward.

‘Where were you?’ he said.

‘Close enough to hear every word –
every single word
.’

Before the man could reply, the elder of the judges was making some fresh remonstrance with all his might. I think he was imploring his monarch to play the part of a witness and ask no questions himself. That the latter heard him with a scowl was, I am sure, because he had nothing to say.

A knock fell upon the door by which the two jailers stood.

Immediately one of them opened, to parley with someone without.

‘What is it?’ barked the judge who was not engaged with the Prince.

The jailer turned a scared face. Then he drew the curtains and let an inspector come in.

‘What does this mean?’

The inspector stepped to the screen and opened his mouth.

‘Speak up. I cannot hear,’ said the elder judge.

‘A Coroner’s Officer, sir, is standing below. He has a witness-summons made out in the prisoner’s name.’

With a gesture of the utmost impatience, the other sat back in his chair.