Funeral in Blue (26 page)

It was clear in his face that he did not know what she meant, and the possibility that he might make a wrong judgment made him distinctly uneasy. “Yes . . . yes, of course we must be . . . right,” he said awkwardly. “We would not wish to be misunderstood.”

She smiled at his puzzled expression as if he had been totally lucid. “I know how extremely busy you must be in these appalling circumstances, with decisions to make, more doctors to interview. Would you like me to attend the court on behalf of the Hospital Governors, and keep you informed?” She could feel her heart beating as the seconds passed while he weighed the repercussions of his answer. What did he want? What was safe? Could he trust her? The hospital’s reputation was inextricably bound with his own.

She dared not prompt him.

“Well . . .” He breathed out slowly, staring at her, trying to gauge what she wanted and why.

“I would not speak on the hospital’s behalf, of course,” she said, hoping it was not too subservient. Would he suspect her meekness? “Except as you directed me. I think extreme discretion is the best role at the moment.” It was a promise she had no intention of keeping if Kristian’s freedom or his life hung in the balance. She gave the lie no thought now.

“Yes, I . . . I think it would be wise for me to be as fully informed as possible,” he agreed cautiously. “If you would report to me, that would save me a great deal of time. Forewarned is forearmed. Thank you, Lady Callandra. Most dutiful of you.” He made as if to rise, in order to signify to her that the interview was over.

She stood up, taking the cue so that he did not appear to have hurried her, and she saw the flash of satisfaction in his face. In every other circumstance she would have sat down again simply to annoy him. Now she was eager to escape while she still had what she wanted. “Then I shall not take up more of your time, Mr. Thorpe,” she said. “Good day.” She went out without looking back. If she were too civil it would cause him to think the matter over, and perhaps change his mind.

She was not certain whether she wished to go to the trial with Hester or alone. She did not consider her emotions to be transparent generally, but she did not delude herself that Hester would be unaware of the turmoil inside her. Still, it might be too hard to find an excuse not to go together. And whether she wished it or not, they might need each other deeply before it was over.

She and Hester were in court side by side when the trial opened and the two protagonists faced each other. Pendreigh was magnificent merely in his presence, even before he needed to speak. He was a most striking figure with his height and his elegance of movement. His mane of shining hair was largely concealed by his wig, but the light still caught the golden edges of it. To those who knew he was the victim’s father, and thus the father-in-law of the accused, his presence was like the charge of electricity in the air before a storm.

Up in the dock, which was set at a height and quite separate from the body of the court, Kristian was white-faced, his eyes hollow, looking dark and very un-English. Would that tell against him? She looked again at the jury. To a man they were concentrating on the counsel for the prosecution, a diminutive man with a quite ordinary face of intense sincerity. When he spoke briefly his voice was gentle, well-modulated, the kind that almost immediately sounds familiar, as if you must know him but simply have forgotten where and how.

The indictment was read. Callandra had been to trials before, but there was a reality about this one that was almost physical in its impact. When she heard the word
murder
, not once but twice, she could feel the sweat break out on her body, and the packed room seemed to swim in her vision as if she were going to faint. Dimly, she felt Hester’s fingers grasp her arm and the strength of it steadied her.

The witnesses were brought on one by one, starting with the police constable who had first found the bodies. The shock and sense of tragedy were still clear in him, and Callandra could feel the response to it in the room.

There was nothing Pendreigh or anyone else could have done to alter either the facts or the compassion. At least he was wise enough not to try.

The constable was followed by Runcorn, looking unhappy but perfectly certain of himself, and suitably respectful both of the court and of the subjects of passion and death. Callandra was startled at the anger in him when he spoke of Sarah Mackeson, as if in some way he did not understand himself and it outraged him. There was a gulf of every kind of difference between her and this relatively uneducated, certainly unpolished, policeman with his prejudices and ambitions. He had been an enemy to Monk all the time she had known him, and long before that, and she thought him pompous, self-absorbed and thoroughly tiresome.

And yet looking at him now, she could see that his anger was honest, and cleaner than any of the ritual words of the legal procedure being played out. He would have hated anyone to know it, but he cared.

The jury heard it, and Callandra saw with cold fear how an answering anger was born in them. Because Sarah was real to Runcorn, with a life that mattered, she became more real to them also, and their determination to punish someone for her death the greater.

She knew it would go on like this, day after day. For all his sharpness of intellect, the legion of words at his command, and his understanding of the law, there was nothing Fuller Pendreigh could do against the facts which would be displayed one by one. Where was Monk? What had he learned in Vienna? There must be some other explanation, and please heaven he would find it. Please heaven it would be soon enough.

She sat sick and shivering as the trial went on around her as relentlessly as if it were a play being acted from a script already written and there was no avoiding the climax at the end, or the tragedy.

Monk went to see Father Geissner in his home as Magda Beck had suggested. The first time, the housekeeper told him that the Father was occupied, but he made an appointment for the following day. Fretting at the time lost, he spent the remaining hours of daylight wandering around the city looking at the areas which had featured most heavily in the uprising, trying to picture it in his mind, event by event, as he had been told it.

Nothing in the calm, prosperous streets told him that the cafés and shops, the comfortable houses, had witnessed desperation and violence, nor was there anything reflected in the faces of people hurrying about their business, buying and selling, gossiping, calling out greetings in the sharp, cold air.

In the evening, Monk did as everyone had been so keen to suggest to him, and went to hear the young Johann Strauss conduct his orchestra. The gay, lyrical music had caught Europe by storm, delighting even the rather staid and unimaginative Queen Victoria, and set all London dancing the waltz.

Here in its own city it had a magic, a laughter and a speed that forgot politics, the cold wind across Hungary from the east beyond, or the losses and mistakes of the past. For three hours Monk saw the heart of Vienna, and past and future were of no importance, swallowed in the delight of the moment. He would never again hear three-quarter time without a lurch of memory and a sweetness.

He returned to his hotel long after midnight, and at ten o’clock the next morning, after an excellent cup of coffee, he set out to keep his appointment with Father Geissner.

This time he was shown in immediately, and the housekeeper left them alone.

Father Geissner was a quiet, elderly man with an ascetic face, which was almost beautiful in its inner peace.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Monk?” he asked in excellent English, inviting him with a wave of his hand to be seated.

Monk had already considered any possible advantage it might give him to approach the subject obliquely, and had discarded it as more likely to lose him the priest’s trust if he were discovered. This man spent his professional life listening to people’s secrets. Like Monk, he must have learned to tell truth from lies and to understand the reasons why people concealed their acts and often their motives. “You were recommended to me by Frau Magda Beck,” Monk answered, barely glancing around the comfortable, book-lined office where he had been received. “She told me that you knew her brother-in-law, Kristian Beck, when he lived here, especially during the uprising in ’48.”

“I did,” Geissner agreed, but his expression was guarded, even though he looked directly at Monk and his blue eyes were candid. “Why is that of interest to you?”

“Because Elissa Beck has been murdered in London, where they lived, and Kristian has been charged with the crime.” He ignored the startled look in Geissner’s face. “He is a friend of my wife, who is a nurse.” Then he added quickly, “She was in the Crimea with Miss Nightingale,” in case Geissner’s opinion of nurses was founded upon the general perception of them as domestic servants whose moral character precluded their obtaining an ordinary domestic position. “And he is also a friend of Lady Callandra Daviot, whom I have known for many years. We all feel that there is another explanation for what happened, and I have come to Vienna to see if it may lie in the past.”

A brief flash of pity crossed Geissner’s face, but there was no way to tell whether it was for Elissa because she was dead, Kristian for his present situation, or even for Monk because he had set out on a task in which he could not succeed.

“I used to be in the police force,” Monk explained, then realized instantly that that also might be little recommendation. “Now I investigate matters privately, for people who have problems beyond the police’s interest or on which they have given up.”

Geissner raised white eyebrows. “Or have an answer which they find unacceptable?”

“They might be forced to accept it,” Monk said carefully, watching Geissner’s face and seeing no reaction. “But not easily, not as long as there is any possibility at all of a different one. Those who know Dr. Beck now cannot believe he would do such a thing. He is a man of remarkable self-discipline, dedication and compassion.”

“That sounds like the man I knew,” Geissner agreed with a faint smile which looked to be more sorrow than any reluctance to feel admiration.

Monk struggled to read his emotions, and knew he failed. There was a world of knowledge behind his words, far more subtle than merely the passage of events.

“Did you know Max Niemann also?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“And Elissa von Leibnitz?”

“Naturally.” Was that a shadow in his voice or not? The priest was too used to hiding his feelings, keeping the perfect mask over his response to all manner of human passions and failings.

“And Hanna Jakob?” Monk persisted.

At last there was a change in Geissner’s eyes, in his mouth. It was slight, but an unmistakable sadness that also held regret, even guilt. Was it because she was dead, or more than that?

“How did she die?” Monk asked, expecting Geissner to tell him it could not have any connection with Elissa’s murder. But there was the slightest tightening in the muscles of his neck, a hesitation.

“It was during the uprising,” he answered. “But I imagine you know that already. Both she and Elissa were remarkably brave. I suppose Elissa was the more obvious heroine. She was the one who risked her life over and over again, first exhorting people to have the courage to fight for what they believed in, then going to the authorities quite openly, pleading for reform, for any yielding of the restrictions. Finally, when real violence erupted, she stood at the barricades like any of the men. In fact, she was frequently at the front, as if she felt no fear. She was far from being a stupid woman; she must have been aware of the dangers as well as anyone.”

He smiled, and there was a terrible sadness in him. When he spoke his voice was rough-edged, as if the pain still tore at him. “I remember once when a young man fell before the rifle fire, far out in front of the piled-up wagons, chairs and boxes that had been set across the street. It was Elissa who called out for them to climb to the top and hold the soldiers at bay while she ran out to try to save him, pull him back to where they could treat his wounds. The army were advancing towards them, about twenty hussars with rifles at the ready, even though they were reluctant to slaughter their own people.” He shrugged very slightly. “Of course, the army lived in barracks, and didn’t even know their neighbors. But it is still different from attacking foreigners who speak another language and are soldiers like yourself.”

Monk wondered for an instant, a flash there and then gone again, how many times Geissner had heard the confessions of soldiers, perhaps trying to justify to themselves the unarmed civilians they had shot, trying to live with the nightmares, make sense of duty and guilt. But he had no time to spare for that now. He needed to understand Kristian, and to know if he could have killed Elissa—or if Max Niemann could have. “Yes?” he said sharply.

Geissner smiled. “Kristian went to the top of the barricade and fired at the advancing soldiers,” he answered.

Monk was surprised, and perhaps saddened. “He didn’t try to stop Elissa from going?”

Geissner was watching him closely. “You don’t understand, Mr. Monk. It was a great cause. Austria labored under a highly repressive regime. For thirteen years before we had been effectively ruled by the aging Prince Metternich. He was conservative, reactionary, and used the vast civil service to stifle all reform. Intellectual life was suffocated by the secret police and their informers. Censorship stifled art and ideas. There was much to fight for.”

He sighed. “But as you know, the uprising was crushed, and most of our burden was left still upon us. But then we had hope. Kristian was the leader of his group. Personal feelings of love or tenderness had no place. Where is an army’s discipline if each man will make special allowances for a friend or a lover? It is dishonorable, but above all it is ineffective. How could anyone trust you, or believe that you, too, set the cause above life or safety? Kristian did as he should have done. So far as I know, he never failed to, even afterwards.” There was a catch in his voice, and again the moment of darkness in his eyes.