Funeral in Blue (25 page)

“Absolutely!” Josef agreed instantly and with enthusiasm. “Well done, my dear. I don’t know why I didn’t think of him. I shall introduce you—tomorrow, if you wish?”

“Thank you.” Monk grasped the unlikely thought immediately. Perhaps the priest would give him a clearer picture of Niemann. He might have observed subtler emotions than the rather colorful stories that had grown up in the thirteen intervening years, mostly of the acts of courage and loyalty or betrayal, death and the closing in of the old oppressions again. The human jealousies or wounds were lost in the political needs.

“We must see him anyway, to have a mass said for Elissa’s soul,” Magda added, making the sign of the cross.

Josef hastily did the same, and bowed his head for a moment.

Monk was taken by surprise. He had not realized that Kristian was Catholic. It was another dimension he had not considered. For that matter, he did not know what his own religious background was. What had his parents believed? He had no memory whatever of having gone to church as a child. But then he had only the barest snatches of anything at all from that part of his life. It was all gone, as if dreamed long ago. Surely if faith was worth anything it should inform a person’s entire life. It should be the rock upon which everything was built, guide all moral decision, and in time of distress give the comfort to sustain, to heal, to give meaning to conflict and make tragedy bearable.

He looked again at Magda Beck’s round, serious face, and saw a flicker of some inner certainty in it, or at least the knowledge of where to reach for it.

When he got home he must make sure that Kristian had a priest to visit him as often as he wished and it was allowed.

“Thank you very much,” he said with more confidence. “I should like very much to speak with Father Geissner.”

“Of course.” Josef looked happier. He had been able to do something to help.

Monk was about to ask where and when they should meet, and then take his leave, when the footman came to announce the arrival of Herr and Frau von Arpels, and Josef told him to show them in.

Von Arpels was slender, with wispy fair hair and a lean, rather sharp face. His wife was plain, but when she spoke her voice was surprisingly attractive, very low and a little husky.

Introductions were made, and Josef immediately told them of Elissa’s death, although not the cause of it. Suitable distress was expressed, and both of them offered to pray for her soul and to attend mass for her.

Von Arpels turned to Monk. “Are you staying in Vienna long, Herr Monk? There are many sights for you to see. Have you been to the opera yet? Or the concert hall? There is an excellent season of Beethoven and Mozart. Or a cruise on the river, perhaps? Although it is a little late for that. Too cold by far. The wind comes from the east and can be rather biting at this time of year.”

Frau von Arpels smiled at him. “Perhaps you prefer something a little lighter? Café society? We can tell you all the best and most fashionable places to go . . . or even some of those which are less fashionable but rather more fun? Do you dance, Herr Monk?” Her voice lifted with enthusiasm. “You must waltz! You cannot be in Vienna and not waltz. Herr Johann Strauss has made us the capital of the world. Until you have heard him conduct . . . and danced till you drop, you have been only half alive!”

“Helga . . . please!” Von Arpels said quickly. “Herr Monk may find that too frivolous.”

Monk thought it sounded wonderful. His imagination raced far ahead of anything of which his feet were capable. But he remembered from Venice that, surprisingly, he could dance . . . rather well. “I should love to,” he said honestly. “But I know no one, and unfortunately I have to return to London as soon as my business here is completed.”

“Oh, I can introduce you to someone,” Helga von Arpels offered easily. “I am sure I can even get you an introduction to Herr Strauss himself, if you like?”

“Helga! For heaven’s sake!” Von Arpels was brisk to the point of rudeness. “Herr Monk will not wish to meet Strauss socially. The man’s an excellent musician, but he’s a Jew! I’ve warned you before about making unfortunate friendships. One must be civil, but one must also be careful not to be misunderstood as to one’s loyalties and one’s identity. Look what happened to Irma Brandt! She had only herself to blame.”

The air in the room seemed suddenly brighter and colder. A dozen questions poured into Monk’s mind, but these were not the people to ask. Helga von Arpels looked angry. She had been embarrassed in front of her friends and a stranger, but there was nothing she could do about it. She had strayed into forbidden territory, and apparently it was so by mutual agreement. Monk was sorry for her, and angry on her behalf, but also totally helpless.

“Thank you for your generosity, Frau von Arpels,” he said to her. “I shall endeavor to hear Herr Strauss conduct, even if I am alone and cannot dance. Then my imagination can store the memory.”

She made an effort to smile, and there was a flicker of light in her eyes, and recognition of his feeling.

He thanked Josef and Magda again, getting from them the address of the priest, Father Geissner, and Magda accompanied him to the door. Out in the hall, she dismissed the maid and went to the step with him herself.

“Mr. Monk, is there anything else we can do to help Kristian?”

Was that really what she wanted to say that she had followed him to speak privately? There would only be a few moments before Josef would miss her.

“Yes.” He decided without hesitation. “Tell me what you know of the feelings between Kristian and Elissa, and Max Niemann. He has visited London at least three times this year, and seen Elissa secretly, and not Kristian at all.”

She looked only slightly surprised. “He was always in love with her,” she answered very quietly. “But as far as I know, she never looked at anyone but Kristian.”

“She was really in love with Kristian?” Monk wanted it to be true, even if it did not help.

“Oh, yes,” she said vehemently. A tiny, sad smile linked her lips. “She was jealous of that Jewish girl, Hanna Jakob, because she was brave as well, and full of character. And Hanna was in love with Kristian, too. I saw it in her face . . . and her voice. Max was too easy for Elissa. She had to do no work to win his love.” She gave a tiny shrug. “Very often we don’t want what we are given without an effort. If you don’t pay, perhaps it isn’t worth a lot. At least, that is what we think.”

There was a noise of doors opening and closing.

“Thank you for coming to tell us personally, Mr. Monk,” she said quickly. “It was most courteous of you. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Frau Beck,” he answered, stepping outside into the wind and walking away, new thoughts filling his mind.

Ferdi was not the person to ask about the sudden ugliness he had seen in the Beck house, and it was almost entirely irrelevant to Kristian and Elissa, and to Max Niemann. However, Ferdi was burning with curiosity as to everything that Monk had learned and where it might fit in to form a clearer picture of the people who were already heroes to him. He asked question after question about Josef and Magda as he and Monk sat over hot chocolate and watched the lights come on as the streets grew darker and the cafés filled with chattering people. Without intending to, Monk let slip von Arpels’s comment about Strauss. He saw no discernible reaction in Ferdi’s young face.

“Do many people feel like that about Jews?” Monk asked.

“Yes, of course. Don’t they in England?” Ferdi looked puzzled. Monk had to think about it a moment. He had not moved in any area of society where he would have experienced such a thing. He realized with a jolt of surprise how few people he knew in a way of friendship rather than professionally. It was really only Rathbone, Callandra and, of course, Kristian. Those relationships were intense, built in extraordinary circumstances, the kind of trust most people are never called upon to exercise. But the lighter sides of friendship, the shared trivia, were missing.

“I haven’t come across it,” he said evasively. He did not want Ferdi to know that his life lacked such ordinary solidity. He did not really want him even to know that he had been a policeman. Ferdi might regard it as having a friend of excitement, but it would make Monk unquestionably socially inferior. One called the police when they were required; one did not invite them to dinner. One certainly did not allow one’s daughter to marry them.

Ferdi was puzzled. “Don’t you have Jews in England?”

“Yes, of course we do.” He struggled for an acceptable answer. “One of our leading politicians is a Jew—Benjamin Disraeli. I’m just not sure that I know any myself.”

“We don’t, either,” Ferdi agreed. “But I’ve seen them, of course.”

“How do you know?” Monk said quickly.

“What?”

“How do you know they were Jews?”

Ferdi was perplexed. “Well, people do know, don’t they?”

“I don’t.”

Ferdi blushed. “Don’t you? My parents do. I mean, you have to be polite, but there are certain things you don’t do.”

“For example?”

“Well . . .” Ferdi was a little unhappy, and he looked down at the remains of his coffee. “You’d do business, of course. Lots of bankers are Jews. But you wouldn’t have them in your house, or at your club, or anything like that.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Well . . . we’re Christians. They don’t believe in Christ. They crucified Him.”

“Eighteen hundred years ago,” Monk pointed out. “Nobody did it who’s alive today, Jew or otherwise.” He knew he was being unkind as he said it. Ferdi was only repeating what he had been taught. He was not equipped to find reasons for it, even to know where to look in the history of society, or the need for belief and justification to rationalize such a thing. The boy felt a stab of shame, and yet he kept on doing it. “Do a lot of people feel like that?” Monk asked.

“Everybody does that I know,” Ferdi replied, screwing up his face. “Or they say they do. I suppose it’s the same thing . . . isn’t it?”

Monk had no answer, and it probably had nothing to do with Elissa Beck’s death anyway. It was just another facet of Kristian he had not expected, and could not fit in with the man he had known, or thought he had. He ordered coffee for both of them, forgetting it was chocolate they had had before.

Ferdi smiled, but said nothing.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The upcoming trial of Kristian Beck caused a certain amount of public interest. It was not exactly a cause célèbre. He was not famous, and certainly far from the first man to have been accused of killing his wife. That was a charge with which everyone was familiar, and not a few felt a certain sympathy. At least they withheld their judgment until they should hear what she had done to prompt such an act. The charge of killing Sarah Mackeson as well was another matter. Opinion as to her style of life, her values or morality, varied from one person to another. There were those who considered she might have been little better than a prostitute, but even so, the brutality of her death filled them with revulsion.

The first picture of Elissa, taken from one of Allardyce’s best sketches, that was published in the newspapers changed almost everyone’s view, and any tolerance or compassion for Kristian vanished. The beauty of her face, with its ethereal sense of tragedy, moved men and women alike. Anyone who killed such a creature must be a monster.

Hester was with Charles when she saw the newspaper. She had heard Monk’s description of Elissa, but she was still unprepared for the reality.

They were standing in her front room, which was robbed of its life for her because Monk was in Vienna and not returning tonight, or tomorrow, or any date that had been set. She was disconcerted by how profoundly she missed him. There was no point to the small chores she had to perform daily, no one with whom to share her thoughts, good and bad.

Charles had come because he was still desperately worried about Imogen, but he was also concerned for Kristian, and for her, too.

“I was uncertain whether to bring the newspaper,” he said, glancing at it where it lay open on the table. “But I felt sure you would see it sometime . . . and I thought it might be easier if it were here. . . .” He still looked uncomfortable at his assumption. “And if you had someone with you.”

“Thank you,” she said sincerely. She found she was quite suddenly moved by his care. He was trying so hard to reach across the gulf they had allowed to grow between them. “Yes, I am glad you are here.” Her eyes moved to the picture of Elissa again. “William tried to describe her to me, but I was still unprepared for a face that would touch me so closely.” She looked across at him. “I never met her, and I suppose I imagined someone I would dislike, because in my mind she . . .” She stopped. She should not expose Callandra’s vulnerability to anyone at all. She ignored his look of confusion. “But when I see her, I feel as if I have lost someone I knew.” She went on as if no explanation were necessary. “I wonder if other people feel like that? It’s going to make it far worse for Kristian, isn’t it?”

His face pinched a little. “I think so. I’m sorry. I know you admire him a great deal. But . . .” He hesitated, obviously uncertain how to say what he was thinking, perhaps even if he should say it at all. And yet it was equally plainly something he believed to be true.

She helped him. “You are trying to tell me he might be guilty, and I must be prepared for that.”

“No, actually I was thinking that one can never know another person as well as one thinks one does,” he replied gently. “Perhaps one cannot even know oneself.”

“Are you being kind to me?” she asked. “Or are you equivocating the way you always do?”

He looked a little taken aback. “I was saying what I thought. Do you think I always equivocate?” There was a thread of hurt in the question.

“I’m sorry,” she answered quickly, ashamed of herself. “No, you are just careful not to overstate things.”

“You mean I am unemotional?” he pressed.

She could hear Imogen’s accusation in that, and unreasonably it angered her. She would not have been happy married to a man as careful and as guarded of his inner life as Charles was, but he was her brother, and to defend him was as instinctive as recoiling when you are struck. If she sensed capacity to be hurt, she tried to shield it. If she sensed failure, and she hardly admitted even the word, then she lashed out to deny it, and to cover it from anyone else’s sight.

“Being self-controlled is not the same thing as having no emotions,” she said with something approaching anger, as if she were speaking through him to Imogen.

“No . . . no.” He was watching her closely. “Hester . . . don’t . . .”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I wish I could help, but . . .”

She smiled at him. “I know. There is nothing. But thank you for coming.”

He leaned forward and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then suddenly put his arms around her and hugged her properly, holding her closely for a moment before letting her go, coughing to clear his throat, and muttering good-bye before he turned to leave.

Sitting alone at the breakfast table, Callandra also was deeply shaken by the picture of Elissa in the newspaper. Her first thought was not how it might affect the jury in the court, but her own amazement that Elissa should look so vulnerable. She had found it difficult enough when Hester had told her that she was beautiful, and then that her actions in Vienna had been passionate and brave. Callandra had created in her mind the picture of a hard and brittle loveliness, something dazzling, but a matter of perfect bones and skin, dramatic coloring, perhaps handsome eyes. She was not prepared for a face where the heart showed through, where the dreams were naked and the pain of disillusion clear for anyone to see. How could Kristian have stopped loving her?

Why do people stop loving? Could it be anything but a weakness within themselves, an incapacity to give and go on giving, somewhere a selfishness? Her mind raced back over all she could remember of Kristian, every time they had met in the hospital, and before that the long hours they had spent during the typhoid outbreak in Limehouse. Every picture, every conversation, seemed to her tirelessly generous. She could see, as if it were before her now, his face in the flickering lights of the makeshift ward, exhausted, lined with anxiety, his eyes dark and shadowed around the sockets. But he had never lost his temper or his hope. He had tried to ease the distress of the dying, not only their physical pain but their fear and grief.

Or was she recalling it as she wished it to have been? It was so easy to do. She thought she was clear-sighted, a realist, but then perhaps everyone thought he was.

And even if Kristian were all she believed in, his work with the sick, that did not mean he was capable of the kind of love that binds individuals. Sometimes it is easier to love a cause than a person. The demands are different. With a blinding clarity like the clean cut of a razor, so sharp at first you barely feel it, she saw the inner vanity of experiencing the uncritical dependence of someone profoundly ill who needs your help, whose very survival depends upon you. You have the power to ease immediate, terrible physical pain.

The needs of a wife are nothing like that. A close human bond demands a tolerance, an ability to adjust, to moderate one’s own actions and to accept criticism, even unreasonable behavior at times, to listen to all kinds of chatter and hear the real message behind the words. Above all, it needs the sharing of self, the dreams and the fears, the laughter and the pain. It means taking down the defenses, knowing that sooner or later you will be hurt. It means tempering ideals and acknowledging the vulnerable and flawed reality of human beings.

Perhaps, after all, Kristian was not capable of that, or simply not willing. She thought back to earlier in the year, to the men from America who had come to buy guns for the Civil War which was even now tearing that country apart. They had been idealists, and one at least had permitted the general passion to exclude the particular. Hester had told her of it in one of their many long hours together, of the slow realization, and the grief. It was a consuming thing, and allowed room for nothing and no one else. It sprang not from the justice of the cause but from the nature of the man. Was Kristian like that, too, a man who could love an idea but not a woman? It was possible.

And perhaps she herself had been guilty of falling in love with an ideal, not a real man, with his passions that were less bright, and his weaknesses?

Then it would not matter what Elissa was like, how brave and beautiful, how generous or how kind, or funny, or anything else. It could have been she who was trapped in the marriage, and sought her way out through the lunacy of gambling.

And all the thoughts filling her mind did not succeed in driving out the image of the other murdered woman, the artists’ model whose only sin had been seeing who had killed Elissa. No rationalization could excuse her death. The thought that Kristian might have killed her was intolerable, and she thrust it away, refusing even to allow the words into her mind.

There were things to be done. She closed the newspaper, ate the last of her toast and ignored the cold tea in her cup. Before the trial opened she had one visit to make which was going to require all her concentration and self-control. She had no status whatever in the matter. She was not a relative, employer or representative of anyone. To attend every day with no duty, no reason beyond friendship, and to be obliged to be nothing but a helpless onlooker would be excruciating. If she were there representing the hospital governors, who very naturally had a concern for Kristian as his employers, and for their own reputation because of that, then her presence was explained, even her intervention, if any opportunity presented itself.

To do this she must go and see Fermin Thorpe, and persuade him of the necessity. It was an interview she dreaded. She loathed the man, and now she had not her usual armor of assurance, or the indifference to what he thought which her social position normally provided. She needed something only he could grant her. How could she ask him for it while hiding her vulnerability so he did not sense it and take his chance to be revenged for years of imagined affront?

The longer she thought about it the more daunting it became. She had no time to waste, the trial would begin tomorrow. Better she go now, before too much imagination robbed her of what courage she had left.

She walked out of the dining room across the hall and went upstairs to prepare herself, collect her costume jacket and the right hat.

The journey out to Hampstead took her over an hour. Progress was sporadic because of the traffic and the drifting fog, and she had far too much time to think and play the scene in her mind a dozen times, none of them less than painful.

When she arrived at the hospital, she told her coachman to wait for her as she did not intend to remain, then was obliged to sit for nearly an hour while Fermin Thorpe interviewed a new young doctor with, apparently, a view to employing him. She kept her temper because she needed to. On another occasion, as a governor herself, she could simply have interrupted. Today she could not afford to antagonize him.

When Thorpe finally showed the young doctor out, smiling and sharing a joke, he turned to her with satisfaction shining in his face. He hated Kristian, because Kristian was a better doctor than he, and they both knew it. Kristian did not defer to him. If he thought differently—which he often did in moral and social matters—he said so, and Thorpe had lost the issue, for which, in his stiff, frightened mind, there was no forgiveness. Now he was on the brink of getting rid of Kristian forever, and the taste of victory was sweet on his lips. He was going to be proved right before the world in every bitter or critical thing he had ever said about Kristian, beyond even his most far-fetched dreams.

“Good morning, Lady Callandra,” he said cheerfully. He was almost friendly; he could afford to be. “A bit chilly this morning, but I hope you are well?”

She must playact as never before. “Very,” she said, forcing herself to smile. “The cold does not trouble me. I hope you are well also, Mr. Thorpe, in spite of the burden of responsibility upon you?”

“Oh, very well,” he said forcefully, opening his office door for her and standing aside for her to enter. “I believe we will rise above our temporary difficulties. Young Dr. Larkmont looks very promising. Good surgical experience, nice manner, keen.” He met her eyes boldly.

“Good,” she responded. “I am sure your judgment is excellent. It always has been. You have never allowed an incompetent man to practice here.”

“Ah . . . well . . .” He was not sure whether to mention Kristian or not, to argue with her and let himself down, or agree with her and box himself into a corner of approving Kristian, even implicitly. “Yes,” he finished. “My task . . . my . . .”

“Responsibility,” she finished for him. “The reputation of the Hampstead Hospital rests largely upon the excellence of our doctors.”

“Of course,” he agreed, moving around behind his desk and waiting until she had taken the seat opposite, then he sat down also. “And, of course, discipline and organization, and the highest moral standards.” He emphasized the word
moral
with a very slight smile.

She inclined her head, too angry for a moment to control her voice. She breathed in and out, telling herself that Kristian’s life might depend upon this. What was her pride worth? Nothing! Nothing at all. “Yes,” she agreed. “That is one of our highest assets. We must do everything we can to see that it is not taken from us. The damage that could do would be tragic, and perhaps irretrievable.” She saw the shadow in his eyes and felt a tiny lift of confidence. “It is our duty . . . well, yours. I do not wish to presume, but I would offer all the assistance I can.”

Now he was confused, uncertain what she meant. “Thank you, but I am not at all sure what you could do. We are about to suffer a very serious blow, if Dr. Beck is found guilty, and it looks as if that is now inevitable.” He ironed out the satisfaction from his face and composed it into lines of suitable gravity. “Of course, we must hope it is not so. But if it is, Lady Callandra, for the sake of the hospital, which is our principal responsibility, regardless of our personal distress or the loyalties we would wish to honor, we must act wisely.”

The words nearly choked her, but she said them steadily, as if she meant it. “That is exactly my point, Mr. Thorpe. We must do all we can to preserve the reputation of the hospital, which, as you say, is more important than any of our individual likes or affections.” She did not say “dislikes,” still less “jealousies.” “We must be aware hour by hour of exactly what the evidence is, and do all we can to make sure we respond the best way possible—for our reputation’s sake.”