The Countess of Prague

by Stephen Weeks

  “Yet,” I added.

  “At my age, I am beginning to discover that all the best ones are married.”

  “Then that leaves you plenty of scope, surely?” Although I doubted whether he was at all adept at playing in bedroom farces. Yet. He might do well if I introduced him to some friends, the sort who had such stuffy husbands — a banker or two, the Commissioner of the Prague Drainage and Sewerage Enterprise, those on the boards of companies whose unappetising brass plates one hurries by when going to dressmakers or milliners. If only Karel would take a mistress, then I would feel entirely justified. I often surprised myself that I did have a moral code, although it assumed flirtatious conversations were permitted, of course. They really didn’t count. I could dream of being unfaithful; that was quite enough. I could not countenance all that tiresome undressing.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  It is impolite to refuse any such request, but I gave him my best “if you must” look, a weapon that Mamma had taught me so eloquently.

  Smoking occupied him. The flat fields, the lanes lined with poplar trees, the red-brick villages, and domeless spired churches sped by the partially opened window. I would stay here, I decided, until the next station, by which time my nerves would surely have calmed. Schneider had at least succeeded in banishing the bogeymen from my mind.

  As the de Luxe steamed in towards Strasbourg I decided at last to return to my compartment. During the stop I would take a stroll on the platform and visit the Powder Room there. Entering from the corridor, as I felt the train gradually reducing speed and the click of the wheels on the track becoming less frantic, I had the distinct feeling that someone had been inside. My bag…it didn’t seem quite so neatly put on the rack as I had placed it. And beside my bag, where was the parcel which contained the charred remains of the two books of formulas taken from Emile Brodsky’s laboratory? It was gone. The window was open slightly. I had left it closed. I had a sudden horror that perhaps the intruder was still here — although plainly he wasn’t, was he? My mind was spinning. I screamed.

  My scream merged with the whistle of the train as it entered the tunnel before Strasbourg main station. I think I would have fainted, but I managed to contain myself. I mustn’t succumb to these fits of fright. Mustn’t. In the sudden darkness, the rattling of the wheels accentuated by the partly open window and the walls of the tunnel, I saw a dim shape emerge from under a blanket on my berth. The form rose up in front on me — it would overwhelm me; I was helpless with terror. It pushed past me, however — hurrying past me and out into the corridor.

  I could feel the brakes gripping the wheels as the train slowed. Suddenly the compartment was flooded with light again. I noticed the dust on the windows. Everything was normal except a cast-aside blanket, my disturbed bag, and the missing parcel. As the train pulled to a halt with people on the platform blurring past me, I was thankful I was alive.

  ***

  I didn’t think I would ever be so glad to see someone I knew as I was now happy to see Schneider. He was hurrying along the corridor to my door. To hell with decorum! — I sobbed into his arms.

  We had forty-five minutes. In the Refreshment Room of the station he calmly analysed the situation. Whoever it had been had had ample chance to slip away in the crowd. He had timed it well. But it meant we had been watched in London. I told Schneider that I had seen Jenks in Piccadilly Circus. He couldn’t understand why I hadn’t said anything at the time. I couldn’t either, when I reflected on my silence. People’s motives and actions are not only often incomprehensible to others, they are sometimes incomprehensible to themselves. I did remember, though. It was immediately after that Inspector Grey had made Max and me seem about a centimetre tall, castigating us for not doing our research. I had been in a mood, sulking because someone else had been right.

  For the rest of the journey, again to hell with decorum, Schneider would have to share my compartment. It had the spare berth that all sleepers do if you book singly.

  As it got dark on the way through Germany, Schneider offered — naturally — to stand in the corridor whilst I got changed and performed my toilette. While he was standing there, the carriage bucking over some uneven junction, he found the door opening a crack and that crack filled with the back of an alpaca dress in a pretty shade of blue.

  “Inspector — if you please. You will find in front of you a vertical line of sixty rather irritating buttons. I would be grateful if you could undo the first forty from the top. The rest I can manage. I would call you an angel, but I don’t think that is appropriate nomenclature for the occasion.”

  ***

  At Nuremberg I had a telegram dispatched from the station:

  DEAREST HUSBAND PLEASE COME TO CAR 8 COMPARTMENT 5 ON ARRIVAL AT STATION TO PULL ME IN STOP TRIXIE

  I could hardly expect this Inspector to do my corset laces. That would be going too far.

  In the dark of the speeding compartment, the throbbing of the wheels as our constant companion, I could just make out Schneider’s shape on the opposite berth by the faint glimmer of the gaslamp’s pilot.

  “I don’t think your life was at stake,” he was saying. “I am sure he was just after the notebooks and that was all. In fact I don’t even think Duvalier’s death was murder either.”

  “Oh?”

  “Seems to me they were reaching up for your bag. You said the revolver was wrapped up in some clothes in the bag. Am I correct?”

  “Yes — that’s what I said.”

  “Now tell me, was the revolver’s safety on?”

  Oh dear. I remembered all too clearly. “Well, I can’t say precisely.”

  “And you said that your butler had been sent to get it from your husband’s drawer. In my experience there’s plenty of men who keep guns in their desks with the safety off. ‘What’s the use of needing the thing in an emergency if you’ve got to fiddle with the damned safety catch?’ — that’s what they think.”

  “Oh.”

  “Indeed, madam, Countess, Your Ladyship —”

  He’ll never understand the correct protocol, so to hell with that too: “Countess will do.”

  “Well, indeed, Countess…have you ever properly handled a gun? I mean, do you actually know where the safety catch is?”

  So saying he reached up and took a gun from a leather harness that was hanging with his jacket. Its dark steel glinted in the dim light. He turned it over in his hand as one experienced, explaining to me the various parts of the device. He broke it open at one point, spilling out bright bullets onto his palm. There was a thrill of excitement about this at night, under the blankets so to speak. I was looking at his strong fingers stroking the barrel, which he did with a certain sense of intimate familiarity.

  “So you don’t think Jenks meant to murder Duvalier?”

  “No,” he replied, “it was an accident. Albert Henry Jenks is a violent man, no doubt about it, but so far in his career he’s stopped short of murder. He can handle prison, it seems, but fears the gallows.”

  ***

  The de Luxe arrived in Prague FJ1 Station at five-thirty in the morning, but it was the custom for the blinds to stay down and the train to rest at the platform until six-thirty, when the passengers were roused and coffee and breakfast rolls served to the compartments. The passengers would then leave between seven and seven-thirty. However, a panic seized me as soon as the train arrived. Of course there were good reasons — for my personal safety, for one — but I did not particularly want Karel to find me sharing a sleeper, especially as now I knew that he was perhaps one of those men who probably kept the safety catch off. That notion had given him a new dimension.

  “Quick, quick, Inspector, time to leave.”

  He turned over in his semi-conscious state.

  “My husband —” I began.

  He shot up out of his cot and I turned away as he dressed at the speed
of light. I wondered if he hadn’t done this kind of thing before. Perhaps my little Inspector was a dark horse, after all.

  “If I may, Countess, I shall call you by telephone later.”

  And with that he was gone. I lifted the blind a little. Dawn was just streaking the azure sky beyond one of the great iron arches of the station’s roof. Pigeons that defied the netting were busily identifying their morning’s pickings, looking down with relish at the bakers’ delivery boys with their baskets of fresh rolls heading for the kitchen car of the de Luxe.

  Just after six I was ready for him. Sometimes, after a long journey or some enforced separation, a wife should try to please her husband. In the book kept without its spine showing on his favourite bookshelf I had long since discovered what my husband’s tastes were. Similar, I shouldn’t wonder, to those of a million other men. I put on the body linen that covered my bosom; my corsets were loose about me; I smoothed the stockings over my legs — a new pair. It wouldn’t do for him to have seen even the neatly darned toes of so many of them. But I did not put on my drawers or pantaloons. That sight, bare below the midriff, would be my gift for his patience — and for sending me more money than was strictly necessary in my hour of need.

  A short while after there was a soft tap at the door. I would have expected a harder knock from the Count, but maybe this was his notion of romance: the velvet touch. I flung open the door.

  “Madame!” Sabine cried, for it was she.

  As soon as she had recovered from the surprise of seeing her mistress in such a state of wanton undress, I could see her looking about the compartment — at the unmade bed so recently occupied by a tough man whom I had allowed only to soothe his pistol. I knew I would make a useless adulteress, or even as an amateur detective I should have pulled the covers over. But, I pleaded with myself, beds are things which just…which just get made somehow, don’t they? How was I to know?

  “But I thought you were in Paris?” (Ignoring her obvious observation of the bed was the most prudent course of action.)

  “Madame, two days — and nights — were enough. ’Ee was very — as you say — very vigorous.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it.” That’s just what I could be doing with at this moment, I thought, some good vigorous attention by a member of the male gender. I was feeling very crestfallen after being in such an adventure, often in a state of inner commotion. I needed strong relief, on a par with dangers I had faced, and not this.

  “Your husband gave me the telegram.”

  “Then you’d better pull me in, Sabine. I don’t suppose you brought any more drawers, did you?” How disappointing that Karel had sent Sabine — thoughtful but thoughtless at the same time. How absolutely typical of him.

  “Of course, Madame. Now that we are home in Prague, I thought silk.”

  “Cotton for travelling, silk for the city” — one of Mamma’s mantras. Sabine got to work.

  “And has Madame been eating properly? I can pull you in by almost another centimetre,” she said, straining hard.

  She pulled with strength, that I give her, but I was hoping for Karel’s more forceful method which involved placing his booted right foot in the small of my back. When he did this I felt I was being saddled like one of his old cavalry mounts. If only he’d wear spurs.

  ***

  Sabine had also thought to bring black. The black taffeta suited the occasion perfectly. Black silk drawers, that accompanied the dress, were a novelty from Paris. I had noticed in London that the press was full of articles denouncing black silk as something that would corrupt morals! Our palace on Jindřišská Street was in mourning. Müller was very deferential and he had the urchins lined up on the staircase like members of the household, their heads bowed in respect. No-one said more than was necessary to get me to my boudoir, where I encountered two envelopes and a card on the silver salver on the side table. I opened the one from Karel. The other was addressed to me in Uncle Berty’s hand. The card, edged in black, was the invitation to his funeral.

  My Dearest Trixie,

  (began Karel’s missive)

  Since Sabine returned and recounted some of your adventures, and I understand you are safe and well, I thought it best she should attend to your requirements. I have had to go to South Bohemia for a few days and I regret that I shall miss Uncle Berty’s funeral. Please convey my regrets and condolences. I will try to telephone you soon.

  Ever your loving husband with sincerest felicitations,

  Karel.

  “South Bohemia” was his euphemism for going to stay with old Count Paar. He would be hunting down in those huge forests of his around Bechyně Castle. There were worse vices.

  Next I opened Uncle Berty’s letter.

  Dear Trixie,

  I can tell you things I would tell none other, and I tell you these so that you may understand your old Uncle a bit better and perhaps forgive his errors, so that what is laid to rest is not such a damned enigma.

  For most of my life I have hidden my true self behind the whiskers, bluster and falseness of Austrian Society. In the Army one is never called to account as a person so long as one continues to obey orders from above, and when one is oneself in that superior position then the orders one gives must simply excite no passions and break no regulations.

  However, I have lived a lie. I have lived a secret life and you must do your best not to judge but to understand. You will be the only person who could even begin to. I have been guilty of those crimes — that is, crimes according to the rules of Society — that finished Oscar Wilde. It is difficult to think of a military man having anything in common with an aesthete, a namby-pamby — but it is God in his wisdom who selects those who will follow one path and those who are destined to follow another.

  A great scandal is brewing and many of us will be unmasked. I hope by my death my name will either not surface or be brushed over inconspicuously as dead and gone; that way I can minimise scandal for our families and for poor Ludmila. The tentacles of these scandals travel far and go deep into corners least suspected. There will be the usual telegraph lads, guardsmen and chorus-boys but when I tell you that there will be in this an internationally famous Russian ballet dancer, a Grand Duke of the highest esteem, an eminent scientist — also of world renown, at least one member of a criminal gang as well as a theatrical impresario whose recent death will allow him, at least, to escape the worst attentions of the press and quite possibly the courts.

  I could not have borne the scorn, the hypocrisy, the rejection of what we call Society and could not have stood up to the rigours of prison life at my age. So I leave you and wish you farewell.

  Ever your loving and devoted Uncle,

  Berty.

  P.S. With my will there is an envelope to be handed to you which also contains a letter to be given to the Tontine Financial Association. I am giving you all my proceeds from the Tontine, although you alone understand what these may or may not consist of. Your Aunt Ludmila is taken care of by my General’s widow’s pension and from her own family money. I hope, if played carefully, the Tontine might yet provide for you both. B.

  I stood there, still holding the letter but staring vacantly before me, unable to comprehend all that it meant. Uncle Berty — who could have thought? But at his club — there had been something. I had felt it. I had even seen the signs — but I hadn’t been able properly to interpret their full implications. These, these peculiar individuals, were totally outside my knowledge. After nearly a minute, I suppose, I went into the library and took down the appropriate volume of the encyclopaedia and looked up “Sodomite.”

  There, on its pages, was a graphic and unemotional account of the condition. As I was shutting the book, I heard Müller’s distinctive tap on the door, followed by his appearance holding out a selection of newspapers on a tray.

  “Forgive my intruding, Milady, but His Lordship was desirous
of giving you these. They are yesterday’s Vienna and Prague papers, and they each contain an obituary of your late uncle.”

  “Thank you Müller,” I said, taking them. He glided out without my noticing as I opened Uncle Berty’s own favourite, the Wiener Zeitung:

  General Albrecht Schönburg-Hartenstein acquitted himself bravely at the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866, holding his sector of the line with the regiments under his command despite the murderous slaughter inflicted by the Prussians. He witnessed the death of 10,000 fine Austrian men in under an hour on that day. He had always been an advocate of Army Reform and for re-armament with breech-loading rifles which had been rejected at the highest levels and had given the Prussians the advantage of being able to fire five times as quickly and from concealed positions. He never spoke out publicly but he is known to have been deeply affected to see his troops mown down whilst standing reloading their rifles. Since retirement he had been a patron of the popular theatre and had a wide circle of friends beyond his old regiment and his clubs. He leaves behind a wife, who was born Ludmila von Morštejn, and has no issue.

  I wondered if the “wide circle of friends” was already a veiled reference to what I already knew. However, the usually outspoken Neue Frei Presse of Vienna made no mention of what I now knew — veiled or otherwise.

  This matter, this problem, of Uncle’s deeply shocked me. It was a subject that was never mentioned during my childhood — or even now, for that matter — but it was, unsung and deeply covered over, the darkest sin imaginable. Yet I would honour his obligation on me not to judge but indeed to try to understand.

  The funeral was to be the following day. I had time to accomplish something I felt I needed to do before the ceremony. I would seek advice from a priest. Maybe that would settle my spirit, which was by now far from at ease.

  ***

  Father Svoboda was taking confession at three in the afternoon. St. Jakub’s was only a few minutes’ walk away and not worth the trouble of having the carriage taken out. The exuberant facade of the church depicted the life of St. James in a writhing mass of baroque sculpture stuck onto this ancient basilica, built as a Franciscan monastery. Inside, the same seething, restless orgy of baroque statuary continued. I rather enjoyed it, although the style was now very much out of fashion.