Be Not Afraid

by Christopher Nicole

  “I’m afraid that will not be possible,” Horsfall said coldly, and followed his wife up the stairs.

  *

  Johnnie and Alicia came home from school for the funerals. The Horsfalls wanted Lucy to be buried in their family plot, and Berkeley saw no reason to increase the estrangement by objecting; he was too aware of his own guilt, if only by association. He and the children attended, of course; the Savoses remained at the house to look after Baby Howard; they had never actually met Lucy.

  “What’s our next step?” Johnnie asked.

  Coming up to eighteen, as tall and powerfully built as his father with the same lank black hair and strong features, he was in his last term at school; he was bound for Sandhurst in the autumn and a career in the army. He knew what his father had done during his career and dreamed of emulating him. Berkeley had confided in the boy three years previously, when the trauma of Anna’s disappearance had been weighing heavily on all of their minds; he had been desperate to share, and John Townsend had been desperate to be shared with.

  “There’s not a lot I can do,” Berkeley told him. “Until after the court cases.”

  “But that could take months.”

  Berkeley nodded. “It probably will. But there is not a lot I can do until I find out something about this man Himmler.”

  “How can you do that?”

  “I have some friends in Berlin who may be able to help us.”

  “Of course,” Martina exclaimed. “That woman who escaped with us: Julia somebody.”

  “Julia Hudson,” Berkeley said.

  “I remember her,” Anna said. “Not on the night of the escape, but . . .”

  “Before you ever went away,” Berkeley said. “She had her eye on me at the time. In fact, she’s had her eye on me several times but we always seem to marry someone else.”

  “You’re not going to marry her now, Papa?” Alicia asked anxiously. She was a little bewildered about everything; she did not know her father’s profession and she had never before met the Savoses, who seemed to be on such intimate relations with both Anna and Berkeley. At sixteen, Alicia was very nearly a carbon copy of Anna. Her features were softer, her hair titian rather than auburn, but they were very obviously sisters.

  “Fortunately, as I said, she is married to someone else. This fellow Hudson. But he is, or was a couple of years ago, an official in the British embassy in Berlin. He should be able to find out something for us.”

  “Do you suppose he will help us?” Martina asked. “After we involved his wife in that shoot-out at Grippenheimer’s?”

  “We did not involve her, if you remember,” Berkeley said. “She got herself involved. And I think her husband will help us for that very reason. Because, unless Julia has been very stupid and broadcast what happened, we are the only people who know she was involved. Then there are the Cohns.”

  “The catering manager and his wife!” Martina cried. “They showed us the way out.”

  “Because we are old friends. Harry Lockwood and I managed to rescue them from a very sticky situation back in 1921.”

  “They were Jewish,” Savos remarked.

  “Still are, I imagine. They were about to be beaten up by a gang of thugs when Harry and I happened upon the incident and saw the louts off. They will certainly help us find out about this fellow.”

  “However,” Savos said, “whether this British envoy and these caterers help you or not, with the court cases we are talking about several months, as you say, before we can take action. Is it not likely that this man Himmler will try again?”

  “I’m afraid that is extremely likely,” Harry said. “We shall have to take precautions.”

  “The only precaution you can take is to have adequate support. You had no problems when poor Lockwood was here. Now . . .”

  Savos looked at Martina.

  “I could not possibly ask you to give up your home and come to live here,” Berkeley protested.

  “It would be our pleasure,” Martina said, “if you would like us to.” She looked at each of the children in turn. “And if there is room.”

  “Well, there is room now,” Berkeley said. “My parents’ bedroom is vacant. But . . .”

  “It would only be until you have sorted out this Himmler fellow,” Savos said.

  “And I could help with Baby,” Martina suggested.

  Berkeley looked at Anna.

  “I think it would be ideal,” Anna said. “I really would like someone in the house all the time, and Johnnie and Ally will be going back to school in a couple of weeks.”

  “That’s true,” Berkeley agreed, and cocked an ear. “I hear Baby now. Why don’t all three of you take him for a walk in his pram.”

  The children knew their father well enough to understand that they had just been dismissed so that he could talk with the Savoses.

  “Of course, Papa,” Anna said, and got up. “Come along, you two.”

  Savos waited for the door to close. “Is that safe?” he asked.

  “At this moment, safer than at any other time,” Berkeley pointed out. “The Karlovys are either dead or in police custody, and their employers do not yet know what has happened. Now, I want you to know that I am most awfully grateful for your suggestion, Alexandros, Martina, and I don’t wish to sound like a Dutch uncle, but there is something I need to say.”

  “Of course,” Savos said.

  “There are two things, actually. The first is about guns. You may keep them handy inside the house, although there can be no shooting except in defence of yourselves or my children.”

  “That gives the opposition a great advantage,” Savos remarked.

  “Yes, it does, but that is the way we do things in England. Equally, there can be no carrying of weapons when you leave the house. That is illegal.”

  Savos shrugged. “As you wish. But you are emasculating us as bodyguards.”

  “You cannot possibly be a bodyguard if you’re in prison,” Berkeley pointed out. “The second point is that there must be no visible drugs. If you feel the absolute necessity, Martina, kindly do it in your bedroom and nowhere else, particularly nowhere my children can see you.”

  Martina pouted then gave her flashing smile. “But of course. I would not dream of upsetting you or your children, Berkeley. We only wish to help.”

  “I know that, and I appreciate it,” Berkeley said. “Well then, we’ll have to make arrangements for you to bring some more of your gear up.”

  *

  “Who are those people?” Alicia asked, as Anna pushed the pram along the lane behind the house.

  “They’re old friends of Papa’s,” Anna explained. “Colonel Savos was chief of police in Belgrade before the war, when we lived there.”

  “Do you remember Sabac?” Johnnie asked.

  “Well . . . not really. I can’t even remember Mama,” Alicia confessed. “Was she very beautiful?”

  “Very,” Anna said reverently.

  “Papa says you look like her.”

  “So do you.”

  Alicia considered this. Then she asked, “Were those people, the Savoses, the reason Lucy and Grandma were killed?”

  “No, no,” Johnnie said. “Those people were trying to kill Papa. Grandma and Lucy and Maria just got in the way.”

  “But . . . just to kill people for being there . . . and why should anyone wish to kill Papa?”

  Anna and Johnnie looked at each other across the pram.

  “Because Papa killed their father,” Anna said. “That’s why they kidnapped me, seven years ago.”

  Alicia was aghast. “Papa killed somebody?”

  “Papa has killed lots of people,” Johnnie asserted.

  Alicia looked at Anna in disbelief.

  “Well,” Anna said, “he fought in three wars. Both the Balkan wars and the Great War.”

  “Four,” Johnnie pointed out. “There was that war in the Sudan before any of the others. That’s where he got his first wound. But I meant he’s killed lots of people
outside of wars.”

  “But why?”

  “Because he was told to do so, by the government.”

  Alicia looked from one to the other. “The government? I don’t believe you.”

  “He also killed the people who kidnapped me. Well, most of them, anyway.”

  “You are saying that Papa is a murderer?”

  “No,” Anna said. “He is an executioner. He never killed anybody who did not deserve to die.”

  “And you approve of what he’s done.”

  “Yes,” Anna said. “I do.”

  Alicia swallowed, then quickened her pace and walked away from them, in front of the pram, hands thrust into the pockets of her coat.

  “You’ve upset her,” Johnnie remarked.

  “It had to happen some time.”

  “Suppose she tells her school friends.”

  “We must make her promise not to. But even if she does, they won’t believe her. They’ll think she’s making it up.”

  Johnnie glanced at her. “Sometimes I don’t believe it myself.”

  “Well, you can. I’ve seen Papa at work.”

  “I know.” Johnnie hesitated. In the more than two years since Anna had been back, they had never had an intimate conversation. This was partly because of what had happened; he had no idea how one could possibly ask a girl what it felt like to be raped, to be absolutely at the mercy of whichever man happened to have paid for her. But there was also the fact that he had always been vaguely afraid of her. This went back to when they had been children. Like Alicia, he could remember very little of Serbia. He had no clear idea of what his mother had looked like, although he did have a vague memory of the house in Sabac, tall and heavy-shuttered and forbidding. Memory really began after they had all reached England and security; he had never thought of himself as anything but English, and he knew that Alicia felt that even more so.

  Anna was different. Although she had only been five when their world had exploded with the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, she could remember what both her mother and grandmother had told her of the struggle between tiny Serbia and mighty Austria-Hungary. In those days, ambush, robbery and murder had been normal events, and Mama had taken her part in them just as much as Papa. Anna had always considered herself a Serb, or more accurately a Bosnian rather than English, and when they had been small she had endeavoured to make her siblings think the same way.

  Then she had disappeared. As Johnnie had still been very small, it had been some time before he had learned the truth of the matter. He remembered being just as horrified as Alicia now was but his reaction had been different. He had wanted to join in the search for her and to kill the wretches who had carried out such a crime. Papa had not permitted that, of course; he had gone off and done it all himself. And after five years, miraculously, he had brought Anna home, alive and apparently unharmed . . . but that was impossible, at least psychologically.

  This was a rare opportunity.

  “Those men,” he ventured. “Do you hate them?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Does that mean you hate all men?”

  “I don’t hate Papa,” she said. “But there were women, too.”

  Johnnie gulped; something else he had never quite believed.

  “So . . . I mean . . . well, will you ever marry?”

  “Papa would like me to marry.”

  “It’s what most girls do,” Johnnie pointed out, ingenuously. “And it would, well . . . enable you to . . .”

  “I don’t think that is possible,” she said.

  “Yes, but if you were to fall in love . . .”

  “I don’t think that is possible, either. Besides, any man, even if I found him . . . acceptable, would want to have sex.”

  “Well,” he said.

  “Have you ever had sex with anyone?”

  He flushed. “No.”

  “But you’ve wanted to. And I imagine you know what happens?”

  “Well . . . yes.”

  “Well, try to imagine being tied to a bed and having a woman of perhaps fifty or sixty, fat and greasy and stinking, pawing you all over, making you put your fingers into her . . . Making you suck them, feeling them inside you, being beaten just because they feel like beating you . . .” She paused, flushing herself now anger flashing from her eyes at the memories.

  “Oh, my dearest Anna.”

  Anna had stopped pushing the pram, and Johnnie took her into his arms to hug her close.

  “I had no idea. Or perhaps I did, but it never sort of became real.”

  “You won’t tell anyone what I said.”

  “Of course not. It will be our secret. Yours and mine.”

  “And Papa’s,” she said. “He knows.” She looked past him. “Someone’s watching us.”

  “Eh?” Johnnie turned, watched the car drive away. “Who was that?”

  “I have no idea. Some peeping Tom. Let’s go home.”

  *

  Berkeley stood at his bedroom window. The room was at the back of the house; he could look out over open country and see his children coming back along the lane. He felt a sense of momentary relief. For all his confident words to the Savoses he did not really wish them out of his sight.

  Then he heard another sound, and half turned his head. The clip-clop of hooves on the front drive could only mean one visitor. And he would actually be glad to see her, on this occasion.

  He went down the stairs, paused on the landing. Martina was just opening the door.

  The two women gazed at each other. “Who are you?” Julia Hudson demanded.

  Not to be put out, Martina replied, “Who are you?”

  “I remember you,” Julia said. “You are that woman who was with Berkeley when he created all that mayhem in Berlin.”

  “And I remember you,” Martina agreed. “You are that woman who was also with Berkeley when he created that mayhem in Berlin.”

  “I see,” Julia said. “So now you have moved in here.”

  “For a while,” Martina said.

  “Within twenty-four hours of his wife’s death.”

  “No, no,” Martina said. “I was here before his wife’s death. Well, nearly.”

  Berkeley continued down the stairs, before they actually got to scratching.

  “Why Julia,” he said, “I had no idea you were in England.”

  “I’ve been home for a week,” Julia said. “Daddy isn’t very well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. You must give him my regards.”

  Not that there was any love lost between himself and Julia’s parents; they considered that he had stood Julia up many years before. It had been a marriage hoped for by both halves of the family but it would never have worked – they were utterly incompatible. Julia, tall and increasingly gaunt as she grew older – she was the same age as himself, fifty-nine – had always regarded life as a very orderly business; her sole ambition had been to get him out of the army and into farming, something he would never have considered.

  “I will do so,” she said. “I actually rode over to offer you my sincere condolences, but this person—”

  “Martina is looking after me for the time being.”

  Julia gave Martina a glance that would have shrivelled most people, but Martina merely smiled.

  “Why don’t you come in,” Berkeley invited. “I’m actually very pleased to see you.”

  “Are you?” Julia asked suspiciously. But she entered the hall, drawing off her gloves and removing her hard hat.

  Berkeley escorted her into the drawing room, while Martina tactfully retreated into the kitchen.

  “I assume that woman is your housekeeper? If she isn’t . . . I mean, with poor Lucy hardly cold . . .”

  “It would be the height of bad taste for me already to have acquired a mistress. But then, in some people’s eyes, everything I do is in the height of bad taste, even taking you to bed. Do sit down.”

  Julia flushed but sat on the settee, boots pressed together. “Why
must we always quarrel?”

  “Simply because you insist on criticising other people’s arrangements. Martina happens to be my bodyguard.”

  “Your . . .”

  “With her husband. Who is also in the house somewhere. Now, would you like a cup of tea.”

  “Well, that would be very nice.”

  “Excellent.” He opened the door. “Martina, do you think you could make some tea?”

  “Of course,” Martina said. “I have studied this. I will bring it in.”

  “Thank you.” Berkeley closed the door and sat down. “She is actually domesticated. I think.”

  “I really did come over to say how sorry I am about the tragedy. There are all sorts of rumours flying about, of it being some foreign madman . . .” She paused, expectantly.

  “There are wheels within wheels,” Berkeley said.

  “Oh. You mean it’s something to do with, well . . .”

  “My murky past? I’m afraid it is.”

  “But your wife? And poor Mrs Townsend . . .”

  “And my maidservant. They were after me, but I wasn’t here.”

  “But who?”

  “Now here is where you can be helpful. Is your husband still stationed in Berlin?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Does he know anything of what happened on the night Grippenheimer was killed?”

  “No, he doesn’t. No more than anyone else. I mean, he knows the place was suddenly invaded by a bunch of thugs who shot it up, including Grippenheimer. But as they have never been identified . . .”

  “How did you explain your part in it?”

  “I told him I was trying to leave, like everyone else, and we became separated. He was very worried.”

  “But no doubt relieved to see you alive and well.”

  “Well, of course. You mean this has something to do with that? You killed Grippenheimer, didn’t you?”

  “He stopped a bullet, certainly. I would like to think it came from my gun. You know he had Anna in that harem of his.”

  “I sort of gathered that. How is she, by the way?”