Return to Vienna

by Nancy Buckingham

“Get through . . . ?”

  “I’ve just been trying to phone a message to you at the embassy.”

  “What happened?” he asked quickly.

  “The phone seemed to be dead. I couldn’t even get the dial tone.”

  “I see. I was coming anyway, Jessica. I had an idea you might be needing me,”

  “I do, oh how I do! So much has happened here, Richard.”

  “Then you’d better tell me all about it. And keep calm.”

  I tried to be coherent, to start right at the beginning and progress fact by fact. But I got a bit confused, and Richard said patiently, “I know a lot of this already, of course. I’m more interested in what was said, rather than what you did.”

  “It all seems so odd—they talk as if it’s they who expect to get something from me, as if we are bargaining about the amount I’m to be paid for it.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, Leopold said something about discussing terms, and went on about wanting evidence of my ability to deliver. I just couldn’t make it out. And another thing, he seemed to be saying that they regretted ever having trusted Max.”

  Richard made no comment. I wished I could see his face, because in the darkness I felt lost, unable to gauge what he was thinking.

  He was silent for so long that I felt I couldn’t bear it, and burst out, “What does it all mean? I wish I could understand!”

  Richard said slowly, uncertainly, “So do I.”

  All the spirit dropped out of me. For hours now my thoughts had been turned forward to the moment when I could talk things over with Richard. My plan to contact him had failed, and that had seemed the last straw. Then, miraculously, as if he was in some mysterious way answering my cry for help, Richard had appeared from out of the night.

  And now, here he was saying that he couldn’t understand the situation any more than I did.

  I was trembling, and my voice shook. “You’ve just got to tell me something, Richard. What am I to say in the morning when the Hellwegs ask me for this evidence—whatever it is they mean by that?”

  Silence. If I had not heard his breathing, I’d have wondered if he was still there. Suddenly I had a desperate need for light—I felt I couldn’t get to grips with Richard in the dark.

  Reaching for the bedside lamp, my outstretched hand knocked against the shade, and for a second I thought the whole thing, heavy cut-glass base and all, was going to topple to the floor. But luckily it rocked back into place.

  “What the devil are you doing?” asked Richard.

  My fingers, careful now, had found the switch. With a pleated silk shade, the light was soft and subtle, but after the darkness it seemed blindingly harsh.

  “Put that out,” he said swiftly, and leaned across to do it himself.

  “No.”

  He glanced at me, surprised, and I added, “Nobody will see. And anyway, if they did, they’d only think I couldn’t sleep or something.”

  “I suppose so.” But Richard got up and went over to the window, carefully closing the gap between the curtains. As he came back across the room, I was able to see his face. Pale as always, he looked anxious and uncertain. He sat down again, on the end of the bed this time, with his back half-turned. A hand went up, and finger and thumb rubbed at his eyebrows in the typical way when he was thoughtful.

  In a low voice I asked, “What are we going to do now?”

  He looked at me over his shoulder. “You must just carry on and see what develops.”

  “But how can I?”

  “You’ll have to play it by ear, that’s all. Appear to be going along with them, and report everything you hear back to me. I’ll keep in touch.”

  “But . . . but they want answers to questions I don’t even begin to understand. How do I play it by ear unless I have some idea what it’s all about?”

  The faintest glimmer of a smile hovered around his lips. “You’ll have to improvise a bit. Make it look as if you understand them, even though you don’t. It’s not so difficult when you get into the way of it.”

  “That’s all very well! But if the Hellwegs were friends of Max’s, why do they talk about not trusting him? You’d almost think they were on the other side.”

  Richard said, slowly and soberly, “You trust nobody at all in this game, Jessica. The Hellwegs didn’t entirely trust Max. We don’t entirely trust the Hellwegs. Keep that firmly in your mind, or you’re likely to come unglued.”

  Trust nobody. That could never become my philosophy. I liked people, and I liked to be able to trust them. I had trusted my husband implicitly, and I still believed in him. This undercover work of his wasn’t really a case of him deceiving me. Max was already committed to it when we first met, so he was committed to secrecy. And what about Richard himself—I trusted him, didn’t I? And Steve. . . .

  I wished that Steve was here now, to tell me what I should do. But that was crazy. Steve was on the outside of this whole wretched business. I couldn’t possibly discuss it with him.

  I looked at Richard doubtfully. “Suppose I try to play along with the Hellwegs, and fail. Won’t it wreck all your plans?”

  “That’s a chance we’ll have to take.”

  I sighed. “Well, at least you know who they are now.”

  He jerked around to look at me. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Only that it was the Hellwegs who were Max’s contacts. That’s something gained, isn’t it?”

  He nodded uncertainly. “How did they react when you first told them that Max’s death was no accident?”

  “They were shocked—naturally. They could hardly believe it at first.”

  Richard nodded again. Then he stood up. “I’ll have to get going.”

  The thought of him leaving hit me like a rock. He couldn’t stay here, of course, I knew that. But I dreaded the prospect of being on my own to face the Hellwegs.

  I made an effort to keep calm. “When shall I see you again?”

  “Soon. I don’t know exactly when. But I’ve got somebody outside keeping an eye on you all the time, Jessica. You’ll be all right.”

  And then he put the light out and left—by the window, noiselessly.

  You’ll be all right! I forced myself to believe Richard’s easy reassurance, but I was scared.

  Having come so far along this path, I couldn’t give up now. And I was doing it for Max, I reminded myself—to square the account for Max’s murder. Yet I knew what I really wanted to do. I wanted to escape, to run away from here and hide myself from the Hellwegs, from Vienna. I wanted to go back to my burrow in London and forget.

  But that wasn’t true, either. The real truth was that I longed to go running to Steve, to be with him, to feel safe.

  Was this a new discovery, or had I known before? Had I known for longer than I dared admit?

  Chapter 13

  In the morning I was bleary-eyed with tiredness. Maybe I’d slept for an hour or two—I don’t know. It didn’t seem like it.

  I was so thoroughly jumpy that I couldn’t touch my breakfast rolls. For the sake of appearance I hid one in my case and messed up the butter with the knife. But I swallowed three cups of hot milky coffee, greedy for the lift it gave me.

  The Hellwegs would already be downstairs waiting for me to appear, I knew. There was a feeling of expectancy in the air. I forced myself to get dressed, taking a lot of care over the way I looked. I spent ages on my face, and particularly on my gritty eyes, highlighting them with blue shadow, a little more than I normally used. I didn’t want Leopold and Ilse to see how nervous I was feeling.

  Then, at last I could think of nothing else that needed doing. It was time to go down and face them. Time, in Richard’s phrase, to play it by ear.

  The villa had a deserted look about it, but I was getting used to that. The way the servants managed to keep out of sight was uncanny, giving me a feeling of being secretly watched.

  It was another lovely sunny morning, and first I tried the terraces, but nobody was
around. I went back into the house and hovered in the pine-paneled hall. A door opened, and there was Leopold.

  His smile was mechanical and fleeting. “Guten Morgen, Frau Varley. Perhaps you will come in here.”

  They were in one of the small rooms, a morning room, warm and filled with sunshine. Ilse was sitting at a table by the window, writing—a studied pose, I felt, for my benefit. Could she too be nervous? The thought gave me back a little bit of courage.

  She called over her shoulder, “Morgen, Jessica,” then turned back and resumed writing. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  I wasn’t offered a seat, but I sat down all the same, choosing an upright chair with firm wooden arms. I’d have felt at a disadvantage on the low, soft-sprung sofa.

  I glanced around unhurriedly. “This really is a charming room. So ... intimate. And the view. . . .”

  “The view is very fine.” But there was no enthusiasm in Leopold’s voice. Small talk was out, apparently. He took two quick steps toward his wife. “Have you finished yet?”

  “A moment.” Her tone had an edge to it, and I got the feeling they were out of harmony this morning. I wondered if in some way I’d been the cause of a disagreement.

  Ilse made a flourish of signing her name, then swung around. “Well, now,” she said briskly, and her close-to-perfect features seemed to carry no expression at all.

  Leopold, still standing, was rubbing his hands together. “Frau Varley, have you thought over what we were saying last night?”

  “Why, yes, I’ve thought about it a great deal.”

  “And what,” demanded Ilse flatly, “are your conclusions?”

  “It . . . it’s all rather difficult….”

  “So you said last night.” She rose to her feet and moved toward me. “We wish to know when you intend producing something rather more concrete than words. I warn you that we are in no mood to let you play with us. . . .”

  “Ilse, please.” But Leopold’s protest had no effect whatever. It was funny I hadn’t seen the obvious before—that Ilse was the stronger of these two. The thought didn’t please me at all. She was standing only three feet away, looking down at me with hard eyes.

  “Well?”

  Casting for a lead, I said weakly, “Perhaps you could let me know what you think.”

  Her breath exploded with exasperation. “You have something to sell us—nicht? Something that in justice we should not have to buy. But we play along with you. We say name your price, Jessica, and prove to us that you can deliver. That is fair, is it not? More than fair. It is leaning over backward to be fair.”

  And in all that spate of words there was no real clue to tell me what it was all about.

  I said carefully, “What would satisfy you as sufficient proof?”

  “Surely that is obvious. You must produce a specimen. An example.”

  “I see.” I nodded as if I did see. And I added, because it seemed the logical next step, “And what about the price?”

  “It is no use you demanding the earth,” she said fiercely. “We will not be held to ransom.”

  Her husband dared to interrupt. “You have what we very much want, Frau Varley,” he said in a mild voice. “Within reason, we are prepared to pay. What else can we do?”

  “There are other ways of making her cooperate!”

  “Ilse, it is better not to threaten, I think.”

  “Ach, I am tired of your policy of soft words. She is laughing at us, can you not see it?” She swung around on me. “For this job we paid Max half in advance. The rest, of course, he would have got upon delivery—if he had delivered! We are willing to pay you the same, plus an extra fifty thousand schillings. And not one groschen more. Is this clear?”

  My mind seemed to jam with shock. There was a taut silence; then Ilse laughed, a coarse unpleasant chuckle.

  “Perhaps he did not tell you we had already paid him? He was a tricky one, that husband of yours!”

  There was such a lot Max had not told me! But this new revelation hurt me more than any discovery about him that had come before. I put together Ilse’s statement and its implications—and the mixture had a vile flavor.

  But I refused to let anyone drive a wedge between me and Max’s memory. With all the conviction I could adopt I said, “Yes, of course Max told me. He told me everything.” I felt a sudden furious urge to hurt Ilse because she had hurt me, and hurtled on, “If you and your husband loved one another the way Max and I did, then you’d be able to understand that we had no secrets from each other. None.”

  This failed to crush her as I’d hoped. The long pause that followed was due to sheer surprise. Then Ilse started to laugh, a lazy chuckle that developed into drunken delight. There was no acting about it; I was positive of that. It made me feel intensely afraid of her, though what it was I feared, I didn’t know.

  Gasping for breath, she said at last, “He loved her so much, Leopold! You heard . . . ?” She was poised above me like an expectant bird of prey, and I shrank back against the hard rail of the chair. “So Max was utterly devoted to you, was he? O Gott! How it would shock you to learn why he ever married you at all.”

  Leopold came suddenly to life. “No, Ilse—you must not tell her that.”

  “And why must I not?” Her chin tilted arrogantly. “Wasn’t it your own idea that Max should pick himself a wife?”

  My throat was tight, and I could not speak. I waited with my face turned away, knowing I was about to hear something dreadful. There was no escape—Ilse was resolved to tell me. She spoke with spiteful deliberation.

  “You poor blind fool. Max got married purely as a camouflage. On our instructions! You see, my dear little Jessica, marriage gives a man a veneer of respectability. It makes him much less suspect than when he’s single. So it was important for our work that Max should be married.”

  “I don’t believe you. Max met me in London, and

  . . . and we fell in love at once. . . .” It came out

  thinly, in a strange voice like the metallic quacking

  from a telephone. “It’s horrible, what you’re suggesting….”

  Ilse’s eyebrows arched up, bridging her maliciously smiling eyes.

  “Do you imagine that Max could not make love to you as he did unless he was in love with you? You’re living in a stupid dream world, Jessica. It happens constantly—a million times a day. Ten million times. For a man, sex is mere self-gratification, nothing more.”

  “But Max wasn’t like that,” I whispered. Or did I only imagine I said it? The protest was spinning in my brain—she is lying, she is lying. Hadn’t Max told me in his letter that he’d loved me deeply? No man would write such a thing, to be read after his death, if it were not the truth.

  I had made Ilse laugh again.

  “I see I had better tell you more about him, Jessica. I shall explain just how it was that Max came to be working for us.”

  Leopold jerked forward and tugged his wife’s arm. “I beg you not to, Ilse. It is not fair to the poor girl.”

  She pulled away from him contemptuously. “It was extremely easy for me, of course. I deliberately set out to make Max want me. I tantalized him until his one thought, his one overwhelming desire, was to become my lover.” She shrugged her shoulders carelessly. “And then I let him.”

  Somehow I found my voice and fought back. “What difference does it make? Why should I care what he did before he married me?”

  “Huh!”

  In that short explosive sound Ilse expressed everything. Everything! She didn’t need to go on, but she went on all the same. I felt sick and ill.

  “Before he married you,” she drawled, “and after! Right up to the end. He had a keen appetite for sex, did he not?”

  She must be lying! Wildly, I searched around for proof that Ilse was lying. My glance rested on Leopold, standing just behind her, and I felt a flicker of hope.

  “You wouldn’t say such a thing in your husband’s hearing if it were true,” I shouted, leaping t
o my feet.

  Her eyes answered me. They gleamed, sated with triumph. And Leopold—his black eyes were heavy with a sort of pain. Pain not for himself, but for me.

  “You should not have said those things to her, Ilse. It was unkind, and it was not necessary.”

  She ignored him. Taking the chair I had just left, she crossed her legs elegantly and leaned back.

  “Well, now, Frau Jessica Varley, we have had enough playing around. You will produce the Kutani Scrolls immediately, and we will pay you the agreed sum. Then you will be free to go.”

  In the silence, Ilse sat watching me confidently, certain she had won. Leopold’s brief revolt was over, a mere flash in the pan. He said nothing more.

  I felt shattered. My whole world had crumbled, and even my reason for being here was gone now. If I’d had in my possession these Kutani Scrolls the Hellwegs seemed to want so badly, I’d have passed them over gladly. I didn’t care anymore what it was all about. I just wanted to get away from here. But could I possibly expect the Hellwegs to believe, after all my pretense, that I had known absolutely nothing of what Max was up to?

  It was an immense effort to speak at all. I said very, very faintly, “What if I don’t produce them?”

  “But you will,” remarked Ilse almost chattily. “You certainly will before we have done with you.”

  Leopold urged me, “Please be sensible, my dear. You must see there is a limit to what you can extort from us, and we certainly couldn’t allow you to go free now. You might easily find a buyer elsewhere.”

  “But I wouldn’t do that.”

  Ilse cut in impatiently, “What other reason could you have for all this procrastination?”

  What did I answer to that?

  My tight control snapped, and I sobbed, “Why did you have to involve Max in all this? He wasn’t really a ... a criminal. I suppose he was weak in some ways—I can see that now. . . .”

  “He was stupid,” said Ilse in a hard, clipped voice. “So easy to manipulate—and then daring to think he could cheat us.”

  I hated her so much that I was getting irrational.

  “Why shouldn’t he? Your motives were no better than his. Why shouldn’t Max cheat you if he could?”