The Hansa Protocol

by Norman Russell

  Knollys suddenly brought his legs up under his opponent’s body, and flung him against the wall of the stairwell. At the same time, he sent a massive fist crashing into the Scotsman’s temple. Vanessa saw the blood start from a gash above the man’s right eye.

  Colin McColl clutched his head, and blundered out into the narrow street. Knollys heaved himself to his feet and ran out after him. Vanessa stood halfway down the stairs, looking at the rectangle of dull light beyond the open door. It had been a terrifying episode, but it had left her with a feeling of exhilaration. In some strange way, she felt that she had become Arthur Fenlake’s heir.

  Sergeant Knollys sat gingerly on an upright chair while Vanessa Drake bathed the wound on his cheek. She had brought a small enamel bowl half full of cold water, to which she had added a generous amount of iodine. Louise Whittaker watched her young friend with a certain wry amusement, and wondered ….

  Vanessa had regularly fallen for a succession of quiet young men since she was sixteen, and had eventually tired of them all. There had been Dennis, a clerk in the Prudential Assurance Office, who had eventually married a young lady clerk in the same concern. Jonathan had been a pupil teacher, a devoted swain, who could talk about nothing but Froebel’s Principles. He had married another teacher as soon as he had reached the sober age of nineteen.

  Edwin, Stephen, Albert – all earnest, basically conformist young fellows, they had ultimately bored Vanessa, and she had sent them on their respective ways with her relieved blessing. Arthur Fenlake had been no different. True, he had brought with him the glamour of commissioned military rank, and they both knew, now, that he had worked as a secret courier for the Foreign Office. But Arthur Fenlake had really been no different from Dennis, and Jonathan, and Edwin, and the rest. He and they had been worthy fellows. All had been unsuitable for a girl who craved some kind of excitement.

  Vanessa continued to clean the blood away from Jack Knollys’ cheek. The great giant winced occasionally as the iodine bit into what was, in fact, a scrape rather than a cut.

  ‘“Staunching”, said Knollys, ‘that’s what they call it in novels. “She staunched the blood from his manly brow”. Have you done, yet? This is nothing, you know. I’ve had far worse scrapes than this in rugby matches.’

  Vanessa laughed, and stood back to look at her handiwork. What a mess he was! That huge scar, and those black stitches under his jaw! If she hadn’t known who he was, she’d be frightened to death. But he was a handsome fellow, for all that, when you looked beyond the scars.

  ‘You were coming down those stairs to rescue me, weren’t you, Cornflower?’ said Knollys. ‘Don’t you ever do that again, do you hear? That man – well, you know who he is, don’t you? Your guvnor’s told you all about him, I expect. Colonel Kershaw, I mean. He’s the man who murdered Dr Otto Seligmann.’

  ‘Why did you let him escape, Sergeant Knollys?’ asked Louise.

  ‘Well, Miss Whittaker, I didn’t actually “let him escape”. He was too quick for me, and I lost him at the turning into Broad Sanctuary. If I’d subdued him just now, then Kershaw or no Kershaw, I’d have hauled him off to the nearest police cells. He’s a killer, Miss Whittaker, and by rights he should be behind bars until he goes to the gallows.’

  Knollys caressed a large gold signet ring on the middle finger of his right hand, and added, ‘I’ve left my mark on him, Miss Whittaker. We’ll know him again when we see him.’

  ‘Where is Mr Box now?’ asked Louise. ‘And how was it that you arrived here so providentially today? I can scarcely believe that all this has happened!’

  ‘Mr Box is out in the sticks at present, miss, taking counsel with the great ones of this land. I expect he’ll be back in London soon enough. And I didn’t actually arrive here. I was here already! Colonel Kershaw borrowed me from Mr Box, and told me to guard Miss Drake here night and day. I’m holed up in a room at the end of that other corridor. When Miss Drake screamed, I charged through the door.’

  Vanessa remembered some words that Kershaw had spoken to her after Arthur’s funeral. ‘There may be danger, but you will never be more than a breath away from help.’ He had proved to be true to his word.

  Louise took her copy of Dr Seligmann’s letter from her pocket, and handed it to Sergeant Knollys.

  ‘The original of this letter, Mr Knollys, was brought to me at Gower Street by Mr Schneider, the late Dr Seligmann’s secretary. Evidently, that man followed him here, with the intention of taking the letter from me. He was successful, but he did not know that I’d already made a copy of it.’

  Knollys put the copy of the letter in his pocket without opening it. Evidently, his mind was elsewhere. He picked up Vanessa’s piece of embroidered damask, and examined it curiously.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked. ‘All this silver wire, and these little gemstones—’

  ‘It’s a morse. The fastening of a cope. It’s for one of the Abbey canons.’

  Knollys put the piece of embroidery down on the table, and stood up. Louise noted the subtle change in his manner as he did so. He had suddenly put aside his friendly intimacy.

  ‘Miss Whittaker, and you, Miss Drake, I don’t want you to be at further risk from that man McColl, or from any of his associates. I want you both to put some things together, and move into Bagot’s Hotel. You’ll be safe there, and it’s all expenses paid, according to Colonel Kershaw. Will you both do that?’

  Louise glanced briefly at her young friend, and saw the eager light in her eyes. It was an eagerness tinged with relief.

  ‘Of course we’ll go, Mr Knollys,’ said Louise. ‘It’s the sensible thing to do.’

  ‘Then I’ll go at once and summon a cab for you, Miss Whittaker. You’ll want to go out first to your house in Finchley. I’ll send a plain-clothes man to accompany you there.’

  ‘And the copy of Dr Seligmann’s letter?’

  ‘Rest assured, Miss Whittaker. I’ll place it in Mr Box’s hands as soon as I see him again.’

  Jack Knollys looked thoughtfully at the slim girl with the blonde hair and the lively blue eyes. Vanessa caught his glance, and blushed.

  ‘A morse, hey, Cornflower?’ said Jack Knollys. ‘Well, well, you learn something new every day.’ In a moment he had left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Vanessa Drake sat at the table, holding the basin of water, but making no attempt to get her things together. She gazed at the closed door with something approaching rapture.

  ‘Oh, Louise!’ she said, after a while. ‘Isn’t he just … just – oh, Louise!’

  Louise Whittaker laughed. Somehow, the fear that McColl had engendered had completely disappeared. Vanessa’s youthful spirits helped both of them to triumph over fear.

  ‘Never mind all that, Miss Drake,’ she said sternly. ‘Get your hold-all from the cupboard, and pack your things. “Oh, Louise” indeed! Come, girl. Duty calls!’

  13

  A Sip of Prussic Acid

  Fritz Schneider emerged from the premises of the Apollo Café in Frederick Street, near Gray’s Inn Road, his mind still full of intricate chess moves. It was good to escape from the forlorn atmosphere of the house in Chelsea, from the sense of desolation and lack of purpose, and pass an idle hour or so in the company of other European émigrés. The Apollo Cafe, run by a Belgian and his German wife, catered for such people.

  What could have been in that letter from Dr Seligmann that he’d delivered yesterday to Miss Whittaker? It was no business of his, of course, but it had been a peculiar affair. It had not been in the herr Doktor’s nature to be secretive. Still, Miss Ottilie had forgiven him his stubbornness over the matter. Very soon, now, she would return to Berlin, and he would settle quietly again with his spinster sister in his native city of Leipzig. The days of glory had passed away.

  Still musing over the cunning of his recent chess opponent, Herr Schneider hurried along the crowded street to where a crossing had been swept through the melting banks of snow, and stepped off the pavement.
/>   At that moment, what appeared to be a runaway horse and cart came careering straight at him. He had just time to notice the bareheaded driver, and to register some surprise that the man shouted no warning, before he was thrown violently beneath the threshing hoofs, and one of the iron-tyred wheels ran over his right leg. The cart and its driver thundered past, and they were soon lost to view in the press of horse-traffic.

  A crowd gathered, and a man threw his overcoat across the dazed and bleeding figure. Before he lost consciousness, Fritz Schneider listened to the drone of voices from the throng of men and women surrounding him.

  ‘I tell you, it was done deliberate!’

  ‘He didn’t stand a chance, poor thing!’

  ‘Here’s a bobby!’

  The realization came to him with a sense of shock. That voice had been right. It had been a deliberate attempt to run him down. His eyes closed. A doctor, accompanied by a stretcher party, arrived on the scene from the nearby Royal Free Hospital, and the crowd parted to let them through.

  At 2 King James’s Rents, the fire in Box’s office grate was still well banked-up, but the bitter cold of the earlier part of January had all but dissipated, and a rapid thaw was developing. The sky above Whitehall was very dark with rain-clouds, and the gutters were beginning to sound with the running of melted snow.

  Inspector Box had donned the little round spectacles that he wore for reading. Sergeant Knollys sat quietly opposite him, waiting for his chief to finish leafing through his report on Colin McColl’s invasion of Vanessa Drake’s rooms in Westminster. Presently, the inspector looked up, and smiled.

  ‘Tickled your fancy, did she?’ he asked, and had the satisfaction of seeing his hulking great sergeant blush. They were the very words that Knollys had used against Box when he had been initially smitten by Miss Ottilie Seligmann. Still, he’d soon got that young woman’s measure. She was an impostor, an accessory, almost certainly, to the murder of Dr Seligmann, and perhaps she was other things, too …. It was a bad, sad world.

  ‘I can tell by the style of this report,’ Box continued. ‘It’s hardly the sober prose of the average sergeant’s notebook. “The young lady showed great courage …. Miss Drake gave her account of the incident clearly and fearlessly” ….’

  Inspector Box removed his glasses, and threw them down on the table. He shook his head in mock disgust.

  ‘I can’t leave you alone for a few hours, Sergeant Knollys, without you involving yourself, first, in vulgar fisticuffs, and then in a romantic attachment. Had I known this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have let Colonel Kershaw poach you from me. So Miss Drake tickled your fancy, did she?’

  Sergeant Knollys suddenly laughed.

  ‘Yes, sir. Since you ask me, she did tickle my fancy. And I rather think that I tickled hers! So I’ll take it from there, if that’s all right with you. As for McColl – well, I don’t think he actually wanted a fight, because he had further business elsewhere. He wasn’t armed, either. McColl’s up to something, and as I see it, sir, we should go all out after him, whatever Colonel Kershaw thinks.’

  ‘I’m inclined to agree with you, Sergeant. And whatever it is he’s up to, it’s going to happen in Scotland. According to that letter from Seligmann to Miss Whittaker, it’ll be on the twenty-fifth of this month—’

  Arnold Box suddenly recalled his interview with Herr Schneider, the fussy, punctilious secretary at Chelsea. He had shown him the altered calendar – altered to show the date Wednesday, 25 January.

  ‘That calendar, Sergeant Knollys. The calendar at Chelsea. Dr Seligmann was trying to leave a warning. It was he who altered that wooden calendar! The twenty-fifth …. What’s so special about that?’

  Sergeant Knollys did not seem to hear what Box had said. He had risen from his chair, and was standing with one arm leaning on the mantelpiece. He seemed suddenly dejected, as though grappling with some kind of unwelcome thought. When he finally spoke, Box realized what had been on his mind.

  ‘Why did McColl murder Lieutenant Fenlake? I’ve been thinking about that ever since I met Miss Drake. Fenlake was her beau. Maybe I’m feeling guilty about taking his place—’

  ‘Pardon my interrupting, Sergeant,’ said Box, ‘but you’re talking nonsense. Piffle. You’d be entitled to feel guilty if you’d murdered poor Lieutenant Fenlake yourself, in order to pay court to Vanessa Drake. But you didn’t. Fenlake was murdered by Colin McColl for reasons of his own. He lured young Fenlake to that so-called secure house in Thomas Lane Mews by means of a genuine coded slip, and then shot him in the back.’

  ‘But why, sir? Why did he shoot Lieutenant Fenlake? What harm had he ever done him?’

  ‘He shot him, Sergeant, because … because he’d recognized him. Yes, that’s it. Fenlake had recognized this McColl when he pulled him away from the blaze in the Belvedere. That’s what I think, anyway. He probably didn’t know where he’d seen him at the time, but McColl knew that Fenlake would remember. So McColl lured him to the secure house, and shot him dead. It’s a bad, sad world, Sergeant.’

  A heavy chair scraped across the floorboards in the room above, and the ponderous stumping tread of Superintendent Mackharness began its progress towards the upstairs landing. As always, the gas mantle rocked in sympathy, its tin shades rattling. The trick was to get out into the lobby before he reached the door. Box was waiting obediently when the stooping figure in a frock coat appeared at the head of the stairs.

  ‘Box,’ said Superintendent Mackharness, ‘up here, if you please. I’ll not keep you more than a few minutes.’

  The smell of mildew in Mackharness’s gloomy office was overpowering, but the superintendent didn’t seem to notice it. Box could smell eucalyptus mingling with the resident aromas of gas and decay, and realized that Mr Mackharness had developed one of his colds.

  ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’

  ‘Well, yes, otherwise I would not have called down to you. Close the door tight shut, will you, Box? That catch tends to spring out of its socket, so give it a good push. That’s it. Now sit there in that chair, will you, and listen to what I have to say.’

  Mackharness produced a large brown handkerchief, and blew his nose violently. What was this new scent? Ah! Snuff. The superintendent rummaged around for a while among a pile of documents on his desk.

  ‘I know you’ve been out of town for a few days, Box,’ said Mackharness at length, ‘and I’ll not bother you for an account of your doings. Not yet, at least. But I’ve had a communication – here it is – from the commissioner, who informs me that you have been seconded for an indefinite period of time as an aide to one of Her Majesty’s Special Officers of State.’

  Mackharness cleared his throat, and looked very solemn.

  ‘I want you to understand, Box, that this kind of thing is an unusual honour. A signal honour. This special officer is a gentleman called Colonel Kershaw. You’re to meet him at a venue given in this sealed note.’

  The superintendent handed Box a small white envelope. It was slightly damp, and smelt of oil of peppermint. It was abundantly clear to Box that his superior officer had no idea that he had been working closely with Colonel Kershaw ever since their encounter in the foggy garden of Dr Seligmann’s house at Chelsea. Box decided not to enlighten him.

  ‘A great honour, then, sir.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. The commissioner says that I should release you from normal duties “as, and when, Colonel Kershaw requires”. I shall be happy to do so. A few little points, Box, and then I’ll let you go. This Colonel Kershaw will be a very clever man, I expect. Don’t try to outsmart him, as you try to outsmart me. Be civil, listen, and act on his commands.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Mackharness eyed his subordinate critically, and sniffed. Box concluded that the sniff was connected with the cold, and was not meant as an adverse criticism.

  ‘You’ve always been a smart man, Box, well turned out and dapper. Well done! So for your meeting with Colonel Kershaw, I’d suggest just a little bit
more – er – polish. Buff up your boots a bit. Give your coat a good brush down. And wear a dark tie. I think that’s all. Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning, sir. I’ll bear what you say in mind. Try a handful of menthol crystals in a basin of hot water, sir. Put a towel over your head, and inhale—’

  ‘Get out of here, Box! Do you hear? Go!’

  As Box closed the door of the superintendent’s room, he winced as his superior officer was racked by a bout of exuberant coughing.

  ‘Inspector, will you accept a suspicious death? It’s a request from “C”.’

  Arnold Box had stopped half way down the staircase to listen to a uniformed constable who was standing in the vestibule, rain dripping from his gleaming cape on to the wet floorboards. Box still held Kershaw’s sealed note in his hand. He pulled a wry face.

  ‘I’m not sure that I can, Constable,’ he said. ‘See if you can find Inspector Wilson. He’s in the building somewhere.’

  ‘Sir,’ said the constable, ‘it’s a suspicious death at the Royal Free Hospital—’

  Box steadied himself on the banister rail, and tried to banish the sudden pounding of blood that had come into his ears. The Royal Free – surely it wasn’t Pa?’

  ‘An accident case, sir, brought in from the street, yesterday. Died in the night, but they think it’s not a natural death.’

  Box’s world swung back into place.

  ‘All right, Constable. I’ll go right away. Who asked for me?’

  ‘Inspector Wright, sir, of “C”. And the dead man’s name was Schneider. A German, he was. Fritz Schneider. Knocked down yesterday in the street.’

  Arnold Box listened patiently while the impressive woman in the starched uniform of a matron told him her story. She had begun to speak as soon as Inspector Wright of ‘C’ Division had left the chilly visitors’ room on the ground floor of the Royal Free Hospital, to pursue his enquiries elsewhere. Matron was obviously very upset, but had so far succeeded in maintaining strict control of her emotions. She was a big woman, with a very healthy-looking pink and white face. Her bright grey eyes regarded Box with a frankness born of years of exercising authority.