‘Hugh - darling - I must speak with you,’ Rachael requests with uncharacteristic self-assertion, marching unannounced into the office on the top floor of Peters Associated Publishing in London’s Fleet Street. ‘Look at this. Have you not seen the papers this morning?’
The proprietor, with a look of annoyance raises his head from the work upon his desk, that vast mahogany surface flanked by a dozen speaking tubes extending like so many monstrous limbs and linking him, octopus-like, to every part of the building.
This is becoming a nuisance, he tells himself, continuing thus through force of habit to have his new wife still employed as secretary and typist. The arrangement no longer works at all well. And if it was once true, prior to their marriage, that she would have behaved respectfully, entering only with caution to beg for a precious few moments of his time, these days it is equally apparent that she has long since abandoned all such sense of moderation and will simply waltz in unannounced whenever the mood takes her: so annoying, with all her jangling bracelets, and always reeking of those ghastly perfumes she is forever bringing home from the shops in Bond Street - brash, overpriced and vulgar. Not unlike Rachael herself, in fact. She really must be replaced in this professional capacity, he now realises. And the sooner the better.
‘What is it? Can’t you see I’m busy?’ he snaps.
‘Look at this photograph on the front page,’ Rachael insists, her voice trembling with emotion. ‘It’s Deborah. Look - you must have seen it.’
She thrusts the newspaper under his nose - it is the News Chronicle - the featured article dealing with the latest episode in the fall from grace of the ‘Queen of Cards,’ as the popular press have chosen to call Deborah lately, echoing with more than a touch of mockery the appellation she once enjoyed amongst the beau monde - and all set in boldest Clarendon, moreover, that typeface that always reminds one of some Wild-West ‘Wanted’ poster. So ridiculously melodramatic. The photograph accompanying the article is certainly the worst of it, however, showing an almost unrecognisable and shabby Deborah hunched up with an old shopping bag in hand, emerging from a doss house somewhere in the backstreets of an unspecified German town, the haggard visage of the failed and broken woman looking more like that of a tramp than the feted society lady she had once been in happier times. There is a particularly tasteless sub-heading also: ‘The Wailing Woman - Still Searching.’
‘Well, so what?’ Peters demands with a brusque impatience, not at all moved by the sight. He has, in any case, already seen it. Approved it himself overnight.
‘It says here she has taken to drink,’ Rachael continues still in obvious distress, ‘that she has squandered all her money and is sleeping rough on the steps of Cologne Cathedral. Is this Bob Small at work again? The woman needs help, Hugh - not this kind of vindictiveness. She needs medical treatment. We just can’t stand by and allow this to continue.’
With a look of vexation to his darkening features, Peters puts down his pen before looking up to meet her eyes. ‘Oh, really - and why not?’ he inquires, adjusting the stem of the purple orchid in his buttonhole, his tone even more curt and laconic than ever.
‘Why - because this is the woman who was once your wife - your wife, Hugh - and, betray her as I did to my shame, once my friend as well. This is our Deborah, Hugh - our Deborah. How can you let this happen to her?’
But her husband’s mouth merely twists itself into a narrow grin, more resembling a sneer as he reaches for another, fresh and unsullied copy of his own paper to examine the details for himself. Obviously, Rachael has not seen the revised version of the story. ‘Save your breath, sweetheart, until I have shown you our special editorial for the late edition,’ he tells her. ‘Yes, let me read it for you, because we are about to launch a particularly interesting crusade here at Peters Associated to accompany the saga of Deborah’s decline:
‘A new blow to the reputation of the once feted Queen of Cards has come this week, along with the medieval superstitions of palmistry and tarot reading for which she was once so renowned. The News Chronicle has always led the way in refusing to pander to unsubstantiated pseudoscience. But today, all of us can unite to rid the world of this and every other irrational and dangerous aberration of reason. Lend your voice now! Take up the challenge with the News Chronicle today! Join the crusade and denounce them on every front. Shout them down. Light a million fires nationwide with their books and get your free UPWARDS WITH REASON! lapel badge and poster - free at every news stand from tomorrow wherever you buy your copy of the News Chronicle or Sunday Chronicle.’
At which Peters voices an almost animalistic grunt of self-satisfaction and, by the use of one long and knotted finger, slides the evening edition slowly across the desk to where Rachael has for some time been standing in stony silence, an expression of revulsion and incredulity on her face as she listens to this hysterical denouncement of the woman who once enjoyed the very title she herself now bears - so that for her, today, being Mrs Hubert Peters no longer seems quite the secure and enviable station in life it had once promised to be.
‘I’ve been waiting for a chance like this for years,’ he states, almost exultantly, ‘waiting to strike out against all those charlatans who want to shackle us to the past - all those spiritualists and psychics and self-styled mystics and quack doctors that corrupt the minds of our young - yes, and all the vicars and priests, as well. They’re all the same, using faith and ignorance as some kind of excuse for irrationality. We’re going to shake things up with this. What do you think, my treasure? I hope you are impressed?’
But his tirade is met only with silence, at least at first.
‘She will die, Hugh,’ Rachael finally murmurs in a voice of distraction, almost as if thinking aloud, not caring to respond to anything he has said but still referring only to Deborah. ‘You know that, don’t you? Unless we intervene, she will die,’ she emphasises, fixing her eyes upon him with unaccustomed intensity as, weakening, she sinks onto the couch by the door, realising as she does so that she is occupying the exact same spot where Deborah herself had sat some months ago - on that terrible afternoon when she had stormed in here and learned of their treachery towards her. How strange. Now she is sitting in her place, and just as helpless.
Peters, meanwhile, without remorse, is still peering back at her with his familiar scrutinising gaze, that steady, chilling gaze she has come to know all too well of late, as if dissecting in his mind, bit by bit, all those human frailties governing the person in his presence. It is a look of unquestionable mastery by which he has, she fears, total dominion over her.
‘Would you be good enough to leave now,’ he requests, making as if to turn his attentions to some other work upon his desk and waving the matter contemptuously aside - to which Rachael, her heart still pounding and her limbs trembling with the shock of his cruel, inhumane reaction to her pleas, promptly does as she is told, leaving him, and wishing in her heart it might be forever.
Chapter 21
Deborah Peters, having managed yesterday to bluff her way out of having ‘mislaid’ her third-class train ticket to the north of the country, and having spent a particularly unpleasant night in a filthy hotel, has gone again this afternoon to the international paper stand at Köln railway station and discovered there, to her amusement, the newspaper article and photo of herself on display on the front page of the English News Chronicle. She has just taken it up without paying and is standing there studying it in detail, when the arresting but gentle hand of Herman touches her arm.
‘Deborah, thank heaven I’ve found you!’ he exclaims, rejoicing over his own good judgement on deciding to come here at just this particular hour. ‘Why on earth have you not been responding to my telegrams?’ he asks, paying for the paper, and encouraging her to take his arm as they walk. She seems glad of his support, of physically having him there to lean on.
‘What telegrams?’ she responds with a dismal smile. ‘Such a privileged service has ceased for me long ago, my dear. I have no money
to pay anyone to forward them.’
He nods his understanding. Clearly even the stationer’s shop in Heidelberg, the address she had given him last, has lost patience with her.
Dressed in a long black topcoat and with a muddy hem to her skirts, she has, he notices, availed herself of an even more capacious travelling bag in which to keep her belongings - its shoulder strap of thick leather, a manly thing.
‘Well, you could always have kept in touch with me, written to me somehow?’ he complains. ‘After all I have been at your home in London most of the time, and you have my address at Richmond, as well.’
‘Any letter would take an eternity to reach you from here,’ she reminds him in a strangely slow and drawling kind of voice. ‘Anyway, aren’t you supposed to be psychic. Don’t you know everything already?’
‘Very funny. Now, listen Deborah, if we are to work together, we simply must stay in touch whenever we are apart. We must arrange some advance payment with a stationers here in the city or settle up with the former one - anything - but a common destination for our messages is essential. What on earth is happening, anyway? I have been reading the most appalling things about you in the newspapers.’
‘Yes, I have just had an eyeful of some of that myself,’ she chuckles, a degree more lively as they continue to walk, still arm in arm amid the busy concourse of the station and its throng of hurrying passengers, burly porters and uniformed officials coming and going in all directions. ‘Don’t worry, Herman. Things aren’t quite as desperate as the papers would like everyone to believe,’ she adds. ‘At least all those stories must have helped you in finding me here?’
‘Oh … yes, partly,’ he answers, thinking of Mrs H. and her timely intervention the other day. ‘It’s just that I realised there could be some vital clues to be found concerning the cathedral here in Köln. I’m sure it’s the building in the background of the painting we were looking at the other day, remember?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Deborah responds, albeit accompanied by that same familiar undertone of sadness returning to her voice, which seems to render every syllable into a weeping breathless sound whenever her daughter’s name is mentioned. ‘I came to the same conclusion a while ago. Something is waiting to be unearthed here, Manny. We both know that, don’t we?’
They carry on their walk through the chilly streets around the station as he briefs her on all he has managed to achieve in London, and that she now has a certain amount of credit she can draw upon - though the sum is, he cautions her, not perhaps quite as generous as she might have expected. Financially, she is far from comfortable because there are still numerous debts outstanding - none of which seems to concern her at all.
‘At least I had enough cash while you were away to avail myself of one essential item,’ she announces with a smile.
Herman looks back at her with unguarded concern. Despite having known her but a short time, he has never liked that kind of smile on Deborah’s face: a half-mischievous, half-deranged smile, and always slightly disturbing. And when he asks her what she means, she draws him to one side with a tug of the sleeve into an alcove beside a doorway and there opens her voluminous coat pocket so he can peek down inside. The unmistakable bulk of a small handgun can be seen, a revolver of some kind with a short snub-nosed barrel. It is for protection against any further reckless horsemen she might encounter, she states, or any similar attempt on her life that might be forthcoming. She is taking no chances. And it sends a chill down his spine - having it confirmed like this - that the dangers he had suspected for her had been real all along. She has confessed as much now, and it makes her insistence on sending him off to London the other day all the more puzzling.
‘Anyway, my dear, even though it is early in the day, I am not ashamed to inform you that I am quite ravenous,’ she states, ‘and I really would appreciate a hot meal somewhere if you can oblige me with your generosity once again.’
‘I say! Are you trying to ask me out on a date?’ he jests.
‘No,’ she argues sharply. ‘I am ruddy well asking you to feed me, Manny. Otherwise I shall simply pass out on this spot and die. And it will be your responsibility.’
And realising for one terrible moment of clarity that she is probably not joking, he swiftly agrees.
‘Tell me, Manny, what does all this Upwards With Reason! business in the papers mean?’ Deborah asks him, once they have located a restaurant and where they set to upon a substantial luncheon together.
She is referring to the vicious campaign currently gaining momentum back home, largely inspired by the News Chronicle and its Sunday equivalent. ‘Oh, just some silly crusade,’ he answers, feeling embarrassed for her and attempting to laugh it off. But her questioning gaze compels him to elaborate. ‘They want to preach some kind of message, I suppose - quotes from various celebrities and politicians - anyone willing to venture the odd cliché about the perils of searching for some sort of meaning in life. They hand out badges at the newsstands for the punters to pin to their coats. The billstickers are at work in the streets, and some of the public are lending support with posters in their own windows, too - all supplied courtesy of your ex-husband’s paper. The nonsense seems to have hit a raw nerve. The threat of the ‘new woman’ with her demands for votes have somehow become fused together with a horror of medieval witchcraft. Jolly good excuse for us menfolk to behave badly, I’d say.’
Deborah is glad of the explanation and the way he has endeavoured to reassure her. Above all, she feels it is really most agreeable that this handsome young man in his perfectly tailored clothes and impeccable manners should be so steadfast in his wish to assist her. Meanwhile, the hot soup and the meal of savoury lammrücken that follows is simply glorious, and she realises that this is probably the first time she has felt settled and at peace in days.
‘Oh, Manny, you do offer hope, I must say. You are always so unruffled, even when we are compelled to speak of such horrible things. How do you manage it - and to make it rub off onto others? Is that the famous Manny Magic again?’
‘That’s it - for hire at seven guineas a show,’ he replies with roguish twinkle to his eye. ‘Though for you, madam, for one week only, I can offer a special discount!’
Against all the odds in such a dire situation, they find themselves smiling, and then laughing - laughing in spite of everything. And Herman, surely has something up his sleeve and is just about to perform some new trick, she thinks, when - most strange - they both stop and, catching the look in each other’s eyes, conclude that they need to leave at once, to quit their hour of normality and self-indulgence and, with a sense of urgency that neither can explain, to make their way instead to the Cathedral. And within moments Herman has settled the bill and they are away.
Just a brisk stroll brings them to the spot, and where, as if upon a layer of mist rolling in from the river, the massive, richly embellished and ornamented edifice rises before them, slightly sinister in character - supported either side by an impressive array of flying buttresses, and so very tall compared to all the other buildings clustered around it. The two great spires with their distinctive stepped, skeletal appearance are exactly like those in the painting made by Deborah’s daughter. It really is the same place. There can be no doubt about it any longer.
‘Look at this, Herman,’ Deborah declares, as they ascend some shallow steps and, drawing to a halt, hardly able to contain her scorn over comments made in her ex-husband’s newspaper. ‘This really would be the most unlikely place for anybody to sleep, wouldn’t you say? Below zero even shortly after sunset, if you’re thinking of trying it sometime - though there are, I can assure you, a good number of pitiful wretches who do try, and not too far from here. You would be appalled to learn of it, Manny, but I should tell you that just lately I have met a lot of people of that kind on my travels, unfortunate souls, young and old, down on their luck. These days I am far more familiar with the spectacle of old discarded blankets and the wretched smells of unwashed clothing than I am wit
h the homes of those who sleep in soft sheets and with perfumed hair.’
And turning up his coat collar to the chill that the fog continues to bring to the Cathedral Square, he looks at her with renewed anguish, to the proud and resolute face of the woman at his side, wondering just how close she might already be to descending permanently to those levels herself.
Taking the open doorway, they enter the Cathedral, and it is here, amid a forest of tall columns and towering stained glass windows, that the vast interior of the building opens up before them in all its cold and gloomy splendour. One of the largest Gothic vaults anywhere in the world, they say. It is also slightly misty inside, as if the fog has managed to penetrate even here and to mingle with all the pungent vapours of incense and candle smoke. Instinctively knowing where they must go, they walk towards the high altar - for it is there, installed in a prominent elevated position for all to see and wonder at, that the spectacular gilded shrine of the three Magi awaits the eager tourist and pilgrim. Brought from Milan in the twelfth century, and purported to be a reliquary of the very bones of the three wise men, it is quite an appropriate destination they both conclude.
‘Do you think if we stand in this spot long enough, some of the wise men’s wisdom might rub off onto us?’ Herman observes sotto voce as befits their hallowed surroundings, trying not to shiver in the cold - while also half-hoping he might receive another ethereal message of some kind: a voice, a whisper - anything now they have finally reached their destination. But the voices are silent.
THE HOURS BEFORE: A Story of Mystery and Suspense from the Belle Époque Page 20
