Writ in blood : a novel of Saint-Germain

by Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn, 1942-

  “It is what I have been trying to tell you—” Rupert interjected.

  “—and that because of it, I might be attacked at will. So it is due to my work that I was allowing, even encouraging von Wolgast’s men to carry me off to be held for ransom.” She opened her eyes very wide in fallacious naivete. “I should be grateful that I was not sold into white slavery in Turkey, shouldn’t I? Or perhaps taken by sinister Orientals to be part of a potentate’s harem?”

  “Rowena, please,” Rupert said sternly. “This is difficult enough for me without your sarcasm.”

  “Difficult for you?” she challenged, getting to her feet so hastily that she overset her coffee cup; the liquid spread across the glossy wood as if aimed at Rupert. “For you?”

  “Of course for me,” he said. “And look what you have done.”

  She made a sound in her throat like a growl. “Yes. It is all my fault. And you are the one who has sustained the worst—” She stopped, her anger cooling immediately. “Not to say that you did not endure a great deal for me, and not that I am ungrateful for all you did to help me.” Her features were conscience stricken, and she took a moment to recover herself. “I fully understand why you are upset, Rupert: I do not think you comprehend why lam.”

  “There you are wrong,” said Rupert with all the dignity he could summon up. “I think your high spirits and overly independent ways have led you to take chances that are not appropriate for you. I am sorry you have had to endure so much hardship, but I cannot hold you entirely blameless, either. Nor will anyone who knows you. And unlike me,” he went on with an expression bordering on piety, “they will not be willing to extend you the benefit of the doubt. TThis is not some errant schoolgirl prank you were involved in, after all.”

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  Her hands closed into fists at her sides. “I did not seek it for myself,” she insisted, then looked at the spilled coffee, and belatedly reached for her serviette to clean it up. As she wiped, she went on, “You keep speaking about this as if the whole of it was designed to be inconvenient to you. You had nothing to do with what happened. I could almost be sorry you were involved in any way, but that your quick actions saved me from—”

  “Not about me?” He burst out. “When I was going to marry you?”

  Rowena went still. “What did you say?”

  He glanced in her direction without actually looking at her. “Surely you realized that I could not continue our engagement after this. There is no way to salvage your name, and I cannot now mend it by giving you the protection of mine.” He rubbed his chin. “I had not meant to tell you so . . . so—”

  “Shabbily?” she suggested. “Callously?”

  “Well, but, Rowena, you have been saying all along that you had no intention of marrying me,” he reminded her, petulance tingeing the nobility of his statement. “You cannot claim to be offended.”

  “And so I have said, but not for your reason,” she said, astonished at how calm she was. “You have decided that I am an unacceptable bride for you because I may be the subject of gossip. You have not believed me when I have told you, for years on end, that I do not intend to marry anyone. Of course I am offended. You are behaving as if you have been sullied by me.” She paced to the window^ and back to the table. “How dare you?” she demanded.

  “How dare I?” His repetition was incredulous. “Have you lost all sense of propriety, that you cannot perceive what your situation has done to me?”

  She folded her arms, her fingers digging into the fabric of her sleeves. “No, Rupert: I cannot. And nothing you say will persuade me.” She went back to the window again. “From the first you have not cared a fig for me. You made up your mind what I was to be, and followed that assumption without regard to anything I did or said. You are doing the same thing now. I wish to God—”

  “Rowena!” he admonished her. “Intemperate language will not—”

  “—that I had no reason to be grateful to you, for it would make it easier to hate you.” Her restless steps took her the length of the room, to the sideboard, and back to the windows. “So. I thank you for coming to Schloss Saint-Germain. I would probably be dead by now if you had not done so. And undoubtedly you would mourn me with the certainty that I had doomed myself to such an end. No.” She rounded

  Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  on him. “It is my turn to speak. You will say nothing.”

  “But Rowena, you will regret—” he protested.

  “I regret only that I would be unjust if I did not acknowledge the debt I owe you. But I will not be bullied by you ever again.” She resumed her pacing. “That wrong-headed rectitude of yours! It is as unbearable as the fantasy you have constructed about me. When you marry—and you will marry—I pity your wife, for she will be a stranger to you from first to last.”

  “You’re overwrought,” said Rupert, starting to get to his feet. “I should not have spoken so hastily.”

  “I am not overwrought,” she declared. “I am precisely what I have been all along; that is what makes this so demeaning.” She motioned to him to remain seated. “I can’t talk to you any longer.” With that, she left the dining room.

  Rupert went slowly on with his meal, consoling himself with the thought that a man with his arm in a sling could not be expected to restrain a woman on the verge of hysterics. When he finished, he decided to return to his room; all the upheaval of the last hour had exhausted him.

  An hour later Inspector Blau returned with more telegrams in hand. He asked Roger to have Miss Saxon and Ragoczy meet him in the study. “I think they will be interested in what I have learned this afternoon,” he said, his eyes alight with the first good news in this case.

  “What of Mister Bowen?” Roger inquired.

  “I leave that up to you,” said Blau. “I can always speak with him later.” He paused, in order to choose his words carefully. “I had the notion at luncheon that all was not well between him and Miss Saxon.”

  “I take your point. In that case it would probably be wisest to inform Mister Bowen separately. Will ten minutes be satisfactory?” Roger saw the Inspector nod. “The study it will be.” He went off to extend Blau’s invitation.

  Ragoczy had changed his hacking jacket for a heavy black cotton tunic for work in his laboratory and he had a pen clipped to his breast pocket. He sank down in his Turkish chair and crossed one leg over the other. “You look heartened, Inspector.”

  “I am,” said Blau as Rowena came into the study; Ragoczy got to his feet, watching her more closely than she realized. “We have a report from Amsterdam, and one from Italy.” If he had not been holding telegrams, he would have nibbed his hands together.

  “Promising, are they?” Rowena asked. In the last twenty minutes she had at last restored her composure, although somewhat precariously.

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  If she had to endure more discouragement, she was certain she would behave in a most unseemly manner, and she had done enough of that for one day, she reminded herself inwardly.

  “I think so,” said Blau, and held up the longest one. “This is from the police in Amsterdam,” he announced, then shifted his eyes to Rowena. “You did tell me, did you not, that you struck one of your assailants on the head with a heavy vase?”

  “Actually, it was a porcelain umbrella stand,” said Rowena, feeling her pulse jump at the question.

  Blau nodded twice. “Yes. Yes. It would seem that your efforts were rewarded, Miss Saxon, for this report informs me that the man in question was found two days ago in a wrecked Humber automobile, with the body of your housekeeper I am sad to inform you—in the boot.” He saw Rowenas hands go to her face, and hurried on. “It appears that the reason the automobile crashed into the end of a bridge was that the man, known as Bernard, was suffering from a fairly severe concussion.”

  “My Lord!” Rowena whispered. “How awful.”

  “It is the opinion of the examining physician that your hous
ekeeper had been dead for several hours, possibly as many as five hours, when she was put in the boot of the Humber,” Blau went on. “I am sorry for her death.”

  Rowena nodded, “So am I.” She took a deep breath, relieved that it was almost steady. “Is that the whole account?”

  “From Amsterdam, yes, except for a few technical matters.” He decided she did not need to know the precise state of the bodies when they were recovered.

  Ragoczy spoke directly to Rowena. “You could not have saved her.”

  “I know, but I cannot help but think if she had not been working for me, she might still be alive.” Rowena felt tears in her eyes, and wished she had a handkerchief.

  “Here,” Ragoczy said, offering her a square of soft black linen.

  She took it wordlessly and daubed at her eyes. “What of the other telegrams?”

  “Oh,” said Blau, smoothing one of them. “We have word from Udine that von Wolgast stayed at an inn near the city night before last. The identification has been confirmed by the Italian authorities. He said he was bound for Venice, which has led me to suppose we must look for him in Croatia. Why would he tell the innkeeper anything but to be misleading.”

  Ragoczy agreed. “Yes. And with the unrest in Croatia and Serbia, he will have more opportunities to hide.”

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  “We will be concentrating our efforts in that region, as long as the Emperor permits us access,” Blau said, and leaned toward Rowena. “It will not be much longer, Miss Saxon, and you may see von Wolgast answer for all he has done.”

  Rowena tried to speak but no sound came past the tightness in her throat; to her dismay, she began silently to weep, but whether in satisfaction or despair, even she did not know.

  Text of a letter from Egmont von Rosenwiese to his wife, Wendelin.

  April 20,1911

  My dearest Wendelin;

  I cannot apologize sufficiently for the shame I have brought upon you in these last several days, and you cannot excoriate my name more than I do myself It was never my intention to subject you to any of this; in many ways, it was my efforts to prevent discovery that made me the tool of von Wolgast, as you now know. I pray that with the healing touch of time, you will come to forgive me for what I have done and what I am about to do.

  It is with profound guilt that I tell you all you have heard regarding Bishop Kalthaus and me is true, and I cannot excuse it beyond stating that the actual deeds were done before you and I married. That is not to absolve the wrong I did then, and those I have done since, but I do not want you to think that I have no affection for you. I have always been most sincerely attached to you. I have admired and respected you, and it is out of these genuine sensibilities that I have found the courage to put an end to a life that can only now be an exercise in humiliation for you as well as for me.

  I have prepared a complete account of all I have done at von Wol-gasfs instigation, as well as recounting everything he has confided to me regarding his plans and activities, legal and illegal, in the hope that this will aid in bringing him to justice. It may not seem a courageous act, but it is the best I can do for now. Let me urge you, if you have any wish to preserve the honor of our family, to present the information to the police, so that they may undertake to verify all I have said.

  It is never an easy thing to make amends, yet I hope my death will prove to be of some worth in your eyes. I have decided to do the deed in the bathroom, for I am sure it will need cleaning, and the tiles will scrub better than the walls of my bedroom. You may instruct the servants to tend to it as soon as the police will allow.

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  I cannot explain why God or the Devil chose to align my lusts to my own sex, but whatever the reason for it may be, I pray the taint will not remain on you once I am forgotten. And I can hope for nothing more now than oblivion, my own and the worlds. I plead with you to remember me with kindness, if you can. My acts have been done with the intention of sparing you pain, and have succeeded only in making it much worse. There is no way for me to repent now; it has all gone too far for that. You cannot guess to what depths I have sunk, all in the name of respectability and duty. For this, and for so many other trespasses, I beg you to find it in your heart to pardon me, if you cannot forgive. I cannot express how contrite I am in any way but through ridding the world of my presence.

  Farewell, my wife, Egmont

  9

  Five weeks of eluding the police in three countries had taken their toll on von Wolgast; he had lost flesh, and now his brown wool suit with the long coat, bright buttons, and velvet collar was stained, the sleeves frayed, and it hung on him as if it belonged to someone else, someone more robust and well-fed. Without Schmidt and Malpass to tend to his needs, he had found himself harried and pursued, unable to keep his clothes neat or his buttons sewed on—he had lost two off his shirt in the last ten days. He could not think of the sums he had spent purchasing a modicum of safety without cringing. Since his arrival in Trieste three days ago, he had paid outrageous amounts for a room no larger than his clothes closet in Berlin.

  “I cannot allow you to stay here longer than tonight,” the landlord had warned him when he had brought his dinner in the early afternoon. “Tomorrow morning you leave.” His tone was final.

  “Yes, you told me,” said von Wolgast brusquely; he had cut himself shaving that morning and a little thread of blood still marked his cheek.

  “If your friends cannot help you, do not suppose that I will; I do not run my inn for your sort,” the landlord had persisted; he was a squint-eyed widower of fifty-three, with gnarled fingers and the temperament

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  of a badger. He stood in the door, one hand on his hip, his expression as uninviting as any von Wolgast had ever seen. “Tomorrow. Mind.” Smells of sour beer, rotten vegetables, and urine wafted on the air he let into the room; if he noticed them they did not seem to bother him.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said von Wolgast as he plunged his spoon into the thick soup; he knew better than to examine its contents too closely. He noticed the bread was dry and the cheese had a suggestion of mold at one corner; he did not complain.

  “The police were around again this morning, you know.” The landlord seemed to take delight in making his well-paying guest wretched. “They will be back again tomorrow, and the next day and the next.”

  “I’m sorry it has come to this,” said von Wolgast. “If you need more money, I will arrange for it tonight.”

  “When your friend arrives,” said the landlord, his tone implying that this event was a fiction.

  “Yes. He will be here in good time,” said von Wolgast, devoutly hoping it was so. He was still reeling inwardly from the shock of Vaclav Persuic s refusal to assist him in any way, claiming that as an officer of Emperor Franz Josef he had to avoid any hint of political intrigue. Von Wolgast had read the telegram several times, convinced that the words would change if he stared at them long enough. Colonel Persuic, Herzog Persuic, who had accepted hospitality and favors from him now refused to lift a finger on his behalf: von Wolgast had been outraged, and frightened.

  “I will make no exceptions for you. Mein Herr,” the landlord persisted, his German good enough in spite of his accent. “I am not one of those cringing peasants, who despise their neighbors and bow to the man with the biggest whip. I will not hesitate to summon the authorities if you refuse to leave.”

  At the mention of the authorities, von Wolgast flinched in spite of his determination not to; he straightened up. “I do not want to remain here one moment longer than necessary.”

  “Bravo.” The landlord cast von Wolgast a look of scorn, then left him to his meal.

  “Ingrate!” Von Wolgast shouted after him, then concentrated on his meager supper. He had intended to eat slowly, but hunger soon got the better of him and he wolfed down the thick soup, mopping up the last drops with bread and finishing off with the cheese. He would have liked something to dr
ink, but after one taste of the wine the landlord served, he had thought it best to keep to the occasional cup of inky coffee and well-water. Sounds from the street echoed eerily in the little courtyard,

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  blending into a wash of noise like the sea. He sat and stared at the empty bowl, his mind roaming restlessly: he had discovered from the newspapers that Reighert was in captivity and had given a full report of all he had done for von Wolgast over the years. The press had gobbled up these scandalous accounts and publicized them with the kind of relish that infuriated von Wolgast. He had disliked reading that there was now some question of von Wolgast being linked to the murders of Renfred Meyer and his mother: would the police try to implicate him in every unsolved crime in Rerlin? His participation in those murders had been so tangential that they could hardly be thought of as his. There had been other news that held his attention as well: orders for his guns had gone up, but he could not reach the money; his one hope lay with the Kaiser, who had stated that he did not trust a defrocked priest to give honest testimony, and charged the police to verify every accusation. Von Wolgast had read the account of von Rosenwiese s suicide with disgust. The man had been a coward to the end, unable to face the truth.

  For the next hour, von Wolgast fought off an uneasy mix of impatience and boredom. He had not seen a paper for two days, which made him nervous; being abreast of the news was his one link to his former life, and he did not want to break it. He did not like to admit it, but he took a perverse pleasure in seeing the various revelations about him, and thought there was so much more they had not yet discovered. The most recent story was on the confirmation of the police investigation regarding Nadeznas death. How that had come back to haunt him! Between that and Reighert s confession regarding the murder of Antonia, von Wolgast knew that it would take ingenuity to continue to maintain his business. Undoubtedly he would have to sacrifice a portion of his profits, but in time he should be quite comfortable again. He would have a good house, would entertain, would hunt, would attend the theatre and the ballet, would keep desirable mistresses, might even marry again, once he was established.