Last Nocturne

by Marjorie Eccles

  Undoubtedly, Eliot and his wife had grown very cool towards each other, but that made him all the more determined to treat her fairly. He had no wish to humiliate her, drag her through the divorce courts. And no intentions, either, of simply leaving her in order to be with Isobel, which would be equally unjust, leaving Edwina high and dry, not free to remarry if such an opportunity did arise. It was an unhappy, unresolved situation.

  ‘It won’t do,’ he said, one evening, after they’d returned from a Musikverein concert of the modern music he so enjoyed. He stood up and went to replenish his glass from the bottle of kümmel which stood on a small table.

  Isobel’s head was still full of the haunting plangent sounds of the music they’d been listening to, the last notes still seeming to vibrate on the very air. Music always moved her, but what she’d heard that night, unlike any sound she’d ever heard before, its depth, its strange atonal intervals, its resonances, stirred something sleeping within her. It reduced to little more than a catchy tune the lilting gay ‘Blue Danube’ that newsboys all over the city whistled, that shopkeepers hummed, young ladies tinkled out on the piano and all the world waltzed to. A pensive melancholy settled on her as they sat in front of her window with their coffee, gazing over the glittering spread below, the lighted Ferris wheel slowly circling in the dark. How many times had the great wheel turned since she came here? How many times had she sat watching its ceaseless revolutions, alone, while the world turned around her? Sometimes she had thought it was measuring out her life: turning, turning, turning.

  She watched Eliot as he put the bottle down on the table and saw him glance casually at some papers she’d tossed down there. His brows drew together. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Nothing much. I’ve been putting some of Bruno’s poems into English for him. He hopes to sell some of his work over there.’

  ‘You shouldn’t do this,’ he said, flipping through the pages. ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous? Bruno’s poems?’ She laughed. They were bad poems, she knew that now, full of bombast with not much to support it, but she’d agreed to translate them as well as she could. ‘They’re harmless, just something to keep me occupied.’

  ‘If they fell into the wrong hands they would be anything but harmless. They could do a great deal of harm. Give them back to that foolish man and promise you won’t do it again. I can’t stress too highly how dangerous this is for you.’

  ‘If you wish.’ Perhaps there was more to his poetry than she’d given Bruno credit for, or something in them she hadn’t wanted to see, she thought, recalling with a sudden coldness that night the police had come looking for Samuel Kohen, what she had thought of then as Bruno’s irrational fear of the police, but she was willing enough to promise what Eliot wanted, if it meant so much to him. ‘You said, a few minutes ago, ‘it won’t do’,’ she reminded him. ‘What is it that won’t do?’

  He stood for several minutes with his glass in his hand, looking out of the window, his back to the room. Turning to face her, he said abruptly, ‘I want you to leave Vienna, Isobel, and come to London.’

  She was too taken aback to say a word. London.

  It was easy enough to be discreet here, though discretion was not something they sought, or even cared about very much. But London, where his wife, his family, his business and his friends were? What sort of existence could they lead there – herself, presumably tucked away out of sight, hidden in some discreet, out of the way love-nest – and he, afraid of meeting anyone he knew, his friends, acquaintances, when they were together? How indeed could they ever go about together? Do you plan to acknowledge me openly as your mistress, then? I’ve never thought of myself as a mistress before. She thought she’d said this aloud but she hadn’t.

  ‘Isobel,’ he said, ‘Isobel. I know what you’re thinking. But there’s rather more to it – there’s going to be a war, you know. A European war we shall all be plunged into, and it won’t be safe for you here, alone.’

  This sort of talk was hardly new. She’d heard it all before, from more than Bruno. It was common knowledge that the Emperor’s cavalry generals were spoiling for a war, that their ally, the Kaiser, was making warlike noises and amassing a huge, modern, mechanised fighting force. ‘If it does come—’

  ‘When, my dearest, not if. Sooner or later it will, and my guess is sooner. And it won’t be just another Habsburg dispute with disgruntled nationals – this time it’ll be a serious war that will split Europe – Russia and France already have their entente with Britain and all of them have their own axes to grind, their determination to defend their rights against the Empire and Germany.’

  For the first time, it came home to her, the real possibility of such a conflict. She thought of herself, here in a war-torn Austria. Eliot in England. Separated, not just for weeks, or sometimes months at a time, but for the duration, for however long it might last. Maybe for ever. But join him in England?

  He looked as though she’d given him the answer he was expecting. He held her hands tight and said after a moment or two, ‘Then, if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed…’

  ‘What?’ She blinked, not understanding.

  ‘I mean if you won’t come to me, I will come to you. I’ve been thinking about it for some time and in the end, that’s the only solution. Yes,’ he finished, the thought seeming to take on solidity and certainty even as he spoke.

  ‘To live here?’

  ‘Here? My dear, have you not heard what I’ve been saying? War, Isobel, war. A conflagration, a bitter, bloody war – not in some distant part of the Empire, but here – and you in the midst of it. The idea is impossible.’ He tipped her chin and looked deep into her eyes. ‘There are whole new worlds out there – the colonies: Canada, Australia, New Zealand…

  But no, they wouldn’t do. I still have a living to make, a business that can’t be conducted in a cultural wilderness. America, then. I already have contacts there.’

  It took her breath away. America! The New World. A new life.

  ‘Well?’

  They could leave in a few months, he went on. First, he would have to make arrangements for selling the gallery, and so on. And so on. Meaning the setting up of a painful divorce, not to mention leaving his beloved daughter and the son whom he had soon hoped to see when he had tired of his exotic adventures in foreign lands. Divorce – at last the word had been spoken…

  ‘There is something else,’ Isobel said slowly. ‘What about Sophie? How can I leave her?’

  It wasn’t a token protest. There was nothing token in the plunge of dismay she felt at the very idea. What would Sophie do if Isobel, the only stable being in her life, abandoned her? For who knew when, if ever, her mother would come back?

  Unlike Julian, Eliot saw and sympathised with her dilemma, which he’d evidently been prepared for. ‘Why shouldn’t she come, too? If her mother ever does return,’ he added drily, ‘I imagine she wouldn’t be averse to allowing her to stay with you – for a consideration.’

  Isobel said slowly, ‘It’s not Sophie, or even Miriam I’m worried about. It’s Viktor.’

  It had happened a couple of months ago, before Miriam left.

  Susan had bought a hare in the market. She knew Berta had a tasty way of cooking it, with morels, but she didn’t think her limited understanding of Berta’s guttural German was up to sorting the instructions out. They would just have to have it jugged, in the good old English way, she said, preparing to skin it.

  She was busy. Isobel had time on her hands. So, armed with pencil and paper, she went to seek out Berta herself. The outside door of the Francks’ establishment was open wide to any one, as it usually was. She couldn’t find Berta and wandered from the kitchen into the passage which led into the great hall. The heavy door was closed and as she pushed it open, she walked into the middle of a stormy exchange between Miriam and – not Bruno, this time, but Viktor. They didn’t see her. They were oblivious to anyone. Viktor’s pale face was livid, Miriam was laughing scornfu
lly at something he had said. Isobel knew she ought to have left, but then she heard Sophie’s name, and stayed.

  The laugh had evidently enraged Viktor and he seized Miriam by the shoulders. She wrenched herself free and brought up her hand to deliver a ringing blow to the side of his head. Despite her size there was considerable force behind it and he reeled back. Regaining his balance, he grabbed her again by the shoulders and as they struggled, a bunch of violets she had tucked into her bodice fell off and was crushed under their feet. Their sweet scent, overlying the smoky, fungoid smell of the hall was sickening.

  And then his hands were round that slender white throat as if he would snap it in two and Isobel could no longer stand by. She ran forward and tried to drag Viktor away. He refused to slacken his grip, his expression murderous. Isobel kicked him, pulled at him, until suddenly, without warning, he let go and Miriam fell sideways. Isobel caught her arms and pulled her upright, then she recovered herself, threw Isobel off and staggered out of the door, retching, her hands to her throat.

  Isobel made to follow her, but Viktor seized her hand and pulled her back. Dazed, he then let go of her and collapsed into a seat, with his shoulders slumped, his hands between his knees, his skinny frame all angles. But when he looked up, he was in control of himself again. ‘Another minute and I really would have strangled the life out of her this time.’

  ‘You nearly killed her!’

  ‘Maybe it’s a pity I didn’t.’

  She was too shocked to speak. This was more than the momentary, immediately regretted outburst of temper which had made Bruno attempt to hit Miriam with the skillet – what was it about her that provoked such violence in men? – this was a deliberate, violent attack that had left no remorse.

  ‘I’m surprised nobody’s ever done it before,’ he went on, almost echoing his brother’s words. ‘She’s a devil, that woman, forever taunting me. I can’t eat, can’t sleep. I’m cursed by her. Tortured – torn between love and… Sometimes, it’s her I’d like to tear to pieces.’

  She didn’t want to witness this ugly metamorphosis of the cold, taciturn Viktor, or listen to such savagery. ‘Taunting you? Why should she do that?’

  He lifted his head and stared at her. Then he laughed harshly. ‘Is it possible you haven’t noticed? Didn’t you know the little waif is my child? Can’t you see it? The she-devil pretends that’s not so, but she knows she is.’

  Sophie. ‘But—’

  ‘She’s mine,’ he said flatly, as if that were all that mattered, as if she were just another possession, less important than a completed canvas or a clutch of familiar paintbrushes. She mattered only insofar as she was the last desperate hope that might persuade Miriam to him.

  His eye-glasses had become askew in the struggle and he was working the distorted frames with his fingers. And suddenly, Isobel saw there might be some truth in what he claimed, as she looked at his naked face, at his eyes – black, almond-shaped – doubtless inherited from his mother, who might have been a Hungarian gypsy.

  Sophie’s Magyar eyes.

  PART FIVE

  England 1909

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Sergeant Cogan, his long experience reinforcing a natural streak of pessimism, hadn’t expected any sightings of anyone named Franck to be reported at any of the points of exit he was likely to use, and wasn’t hopeful of success at likely hotels and boarding houses in the city, either, so he wasn’t disappointed on his arrival at the station the morning after they had been set in train to find none. However, Teutonic efficiency meant that a reply was already waiting from the Viennese police. He made a mug of strong tea and sent for Smithers, who came into the office just as Lamb arrived. With a little huffing and puffing, the constable soon produced a translation from the German. The results were gratifying – a full but succinct report on certain events which had occurred in the city some fifteen months ago.

  The body of a woman named Miriam Koppel had been discovered early one January morning, half covered in snow, in one of the narrow lanes in the old centre. It was estimated she had been dead for several hours, her death being due to a head wound which had bled copiously and must have caused almost instantaneous death. Neighbours in the lane where she lived, Silbergasse, reported constant quarrels between her and the man she had lived with, Bruno Franck, particularly one that had been witnessed the previous day. He had been seen following her up the lane, shouting. He was a big man and had towered over her and at one point he had grabbed her by the long hair escaping from under her hat and tried to pull her back, but afterwards they had been seen to go their separate ways.

  Nevertheless, the circumstances were suspicious enough for him to have been arrested and taken to the police cells for questioning after her body was found. Statements were taken from those living in the house where they had both lived: from Viktor Franck, brother of the accused, and an Englishman named Theodore Benton, who swore that Bruno had not left the house that night, and from Mrs Isobel Amberley, who had an apartment next door, and from Miss Susan Oram, the woman who worked for her. None of them had seen or heard anything untoward that night, although the same neighbour who had witnessed the quarrel earlier in the day reported some disturbance which had woken him.

  The post-mortem on Miriam Koppel was inconclusive. It revealed no injuries other than the one to her head. She might have been attacked. On the other hand, it seemed more likely she had slipped on the treacherous ice underneath the snow and fallen onto a nearby iron bollard, causing the wound to her head which had led to her death. In the absence of any proof to the contrary, the heavy snow which had fallen during the night having obliterated any traces, a verdict of accidental death had necessarily been brought in.

  But the verdict came too late for Bruno Franck. He had already hanged himself in his cell.

  What, Lamb asked himself, had the death of this woman, whether by the hand of her lover or not, to do with the deaths of two men here in England? Martagon had not been mentioned in the police report so presumably he hadn’t been in Vienna at the time, though Theo had.

  Miss Eugenia Dart lived on the top floor of a block of small flats in Pimlico.

  A bouncy, comfortably built young woman with a direct glance, a smudge of ink on her nose and a pencil stuck behind her ear, she was dressed in some kaftan-like garment, wearing quantities of barbaric jewellery and a wide smile that made you want to smile back. Cogan told her who they were and she said they had better come in.

  The room they stepped into, though clearly not overburdened with furniture, was suddenly reduced to rabbit hutch proportions with the advent of the two men. When Lamb and Miss Dart were seated facing each other with only the small table between them and Cogan was perched ridiculously on the small chair before the equally small desk, notebook open and pencil licked, Lamb began. ‘You worked for Mrs Martagon of Embury Square for some time, I believe?’

  ‘Ah. You’ve come about that wretched china, haven’t you?’

  Lamb assured her they hadn’t.

  ‘Oh. Well, no, I don’t suppose even Mrs Martagon would have set the police on me just for that…would she?’ She laughed and looked from Lamb to Cogan and back again and then sobered. ‘It’s Dulcie, then. There! I knew she shouldn’t have come here. What’s happened? She’s in trouble, isn’t she? Her mother’s found out she came to see me – but what’s that got to do with the police?’

  ‘Dulcie’s not in that kind of trouble, Miss Dart.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief.’

  ‘A young man has died and we’re looking further into the circumstances of Mr Eliot Martagon’s death also, hoping it may throw some light on our inquiries.’

  Her eyes were brown, intelligent and now very serious. ‘Who was he?’

  ‘His name was Theo Benton.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone of that name. Was he a friend of Mr Martagon’s, then?’

  ‘He was an artist. Mr Martagon evidently saw some promise in his work – before he died, he’d arranged for Benton
to exhibit at his spring exhibition.’

  ‘It’s that man in the papers you’re talking about, the one who jumped from a window, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, only I’m afraid his death was – rather more than that.’

  ‘More? What does that mean?’

  ‘It looks as though he might have been murdered.’

  Her vivid face lost some of its colour, and Lamb found himself wanting to reach out a reassuring hand to her. ‘I’m afraid I’ve shocked you, Miss Dart.’

  A glass of amber liquid in a silver holder stood, half empty, on the low white table in front of the sofa. She reached out for it, tasted it and grimaced as she found it cold, then asked if they would like some tea. ‘No, thank you, miss,’ Cogan refused politely, with a suspicious look at the glass, but Lamb said he would.

  ‘Right. Won’t be a tick.’

  She disappeared through a door into what must be a kitchenette, from whence issued the clatter of tea being made. The two policemen took stock of the room. It did not take long. The flat was what estate agents called a bijou residence, meaning that it could be encompassed in two strides and one glance. Cogan stood up, already needing to stretch his legs, took a closer, wondering look at the icon, high up in the corner of the room by the door, then turned his gaze out of the window, over the unedifying prospect of slate roofs, a church spire in the distance, and a cat delicately walking along the ridge of a neighbouring house.

  Lamb noted the absence of luxuries, the mass of papers on the desk. The room of a self-supporting, hard-working young woman, one of the new breed, he saw, observing a green, white and purple rosette pinned to the wall above the desk, the colours of the Women’s Society for Political Union – in common parlance, the suffragettes – and was neither surprised nor condemnatory. He admired independence, whether in a woman or a man. He had already rather liked what he’d heard of Miss Dart before he saw her, and meeting her in the flesh confirmed this.