Death and the Dreadnought

by Robert Wilton

  Leaving was easier said than done. For every step we made towards the street, another over-dressed and over-earnest foreign chappie would throw himself at Bliss and offer undying devotion, a visiting card and the chance to write a monthly column in his newspaper. In the end I more or less man-handled her into a horse-cab, kicking away the last scented Belgian pamphleteers as I went.

  ‘See anyone you recognized?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Do you think I could actually write this book, on the impact of labour relations on the family? I had some rather interesting conv–’

  ‘No. I did see someone I recognized. Well, sort of. Brother of the chap who took the toss into your piano. I’m not onto them so much, but they’re certainly onto me.’

  We rattled back to Shulstoke Hall, Bliss chattering about the plight of the worker and I musing on the plight of the fugitive baronet.

  During the lengthy journey across the front hall at Shulstoke, I passed the vast bald foreigner going the other way. He’d covered the three-piece with a cape now, and looked like one of those marquees they put up in St James’s Park for the band. We nodded to each other as we passed. Then he stopped, and said: ‘You have been out for some sport?’

  ‘Depends on your definition. I observed the big Trades Unions meeting in Birmingham.’

  His face darkened, and he shook the big head. Quite an achievement, for he didn’t seem to have any neck to support the movement. ‘I do not understand why your Government tolerates these people.’ There was probably something patriotic and liberal I was supposed to say at this point, but my sympathies were entirely with him. ‘Perhaps because these lands have not seen violence for many generations.’ Again the big head shook. His voice was a deep boom, every word hit equally; it emphasized the accent, the treacherous w’s and v’s and th’s. ‘In Germany, we know what is civil violence. We know what is war on our frontiers.’ Largely because they were invading France on a more or less routine basis, of course, but it wasn’t the moment to say so. The big face stared at me – strange pale eyes he had – ‘The present society works. We have peace. We have economic success. We have art – music – all that is civilized. Why must you indulge these mischiefs?’

  ‘I said as much to their grand assembly this afternoon.’ The most unlikely smile opened across his face. Until then he’d looked bewildered by the world; now he looked utterly in control. Again he shook his head, as if to emphasize how naive I was; I wasn’t about to disagree. ‘Your pardon, sir,’ he said with gravity. ‘I am Von Hahn.’ I vaguely remembered the name from somewhere. I introduced myself, and we shook hands, and I went up to dress for dinner.

  When I was coming down into the hall again, Victoria had just stopped Bliss at the bottom of the staircase.

  ‘You must excuse what might seem an inhospitable question,’ she was saying. ‘But I’d be obliged if you’d tell me who you really are.’

  40.

  I stopped dead on the staircase. I wasn’t sure Victoria had seen me.

  Come on, woman, I was thinking. Bliss and I had rehearsed this in the train. She was the actress, after all.

  Victoria was looking pretty formidable. Glorious, of course, but I’d been on the wrong end of that look myself a few times. ‘I know Walter Hutchinson, you see. I wasn’t quite sure about you, and so I telegraphed him, and he confirms that the company has no book contract with you, and has never heard of you.’ Bliss was looking rather startled, and rather defiant. ‘The thing is, you see, that while I have no objection to Harry Delamere doing whatever he must to sort out the present predicament, I won’t have my father’s hospitality abused. Daddy’s a funny old stick, but I won’t have him made fun of.’

  The whole world had stopped. Come along, woman! The great Sarah bloody Bernhardt moment. Come on…

  ‘You’re quite right,’ Bliss said. ‘It was a silly charade, and I should have told you immediately. My name is Annabella Bliss. I’m a burlesque dancer. Sir Henry dropped through my skylight a few nights ago and I’ve been helping him.’

  I think I covered my face with my hands. When I opened my eyes, Victoria was gazing up at me with disapproval. She turned back to Bliss. ‘That’s rather sporting of you. And it’s a pleasure properly to meet you and welcome you.’ Now they were shaking hands again, for God’s sake. ‘Dropped through your skylight?’

  ‘Yes. Naked.’

  ‘Oh dear. He first appeared to me out of the Thames at Oxford, clambering into my brother’s boat like some creature of the deep and claiming he was being chased by the police. I think he was wearing trousers then, but not much else. Bliss, you said?’

  ‘Bliss. We’re not famous or anything. My father’s a vicar in Suffolk.’

  ‘And you’ve struck out on your own in London. How splendid. Harry!’ This, suddenly, to me as I was trying to slip backwards up the stairs. ‘They’re expecting you in the study. Big pow-wow. Men only. Behave yourself.’ Then she was leading Bliss away across the hall, still holding her hand. ‘Is that the Reverend Joshua Bliss? Wrote the pamphlet on The Pulpit as Schoolroom and Stage?’

  ‘You must be the only person in England who’s even…’ – and away they drifted.

  There were half a dozen men in the study when I slipped in. Aysgarth’s scowl on seeing me would have kept me quiet on its own. The obvious seriousness of the others reinforced the effect. I helped myself to a glass of water – everything was starting to feel like gambling now – and propped myself discreetly in the corner.

  ‘The French Government has sent a formal note of concern. We’ve had the German Ambassador himself in to see the Foreign Secretary today.’ This from a chap perhaps a little older than me, sleek and smart and dignified. ‘They’re furious – genuinely, it seems – that their radicals are allowed to wander round Britain preaching the class war. Think we’ve gone soft.’

  ‘Don’t they realize that a bit of subtlety is why we’re the only ones who don’t suffer revolutions on an annual basis?’

  ‘Precisely their point I think, old chap. Russian Ambassador has named two or three participants on this junket – Latvians, apparently – who’ll be strung up as soon as they set a foot in Russia again, but are free here to link up and plot revolutions to their hearts’ content.’

  ‘Von Hahn himself is here for dinner tonight.’

  There were murmurs of concern. Someone else said ‘Von Hahn?’

  ‘The lion of German diplomacy. Otto Immanuel Von Hahn. Actually, a very civilized chap, for a hun. We’re talking about getting him onto the Board at Covent Garden, and he’s always good for a subscription for an exhibition. Notionally he’s the counsellor or the cultural something-or-other at the German Embassy, but everyone knows he’s the real power. Been here for ever. The Kaiser’s man, they say, and he’s a standing invitation to Windsor.’

  ‘What can he do here that’s so terrible?’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll pinch the spoons or pass the port the wrong way, but this shows how seriously the Germans are taking this. For him to be dirtying his hands with commercial affairs…’

  ‘If Berlin decides to think that we are somehow encouraging their workers to make trouble…’

  ‘I thought we were worried about our battleship.’ Murmurs of agreement. ‘Having these appalling people strutting around freely and prosing about how unfree they are is bad enough. What are they up to in our shipyards? – that’s what I want to know.’

  ‘That, I think, is young Delamere’s department.’ It was the old man again, from Admiralty Arch. Half of them hadn’t realized I was there, but the old man had turned to me automatically. ‘I think you were sniffing around today, Sir Harry. Any more sign of a connection to the sabotage and the murder?’

  ‘It’s there,’ I said. ‘I thought it before, and I know it now. One of them threatened to finish the job on me. But nothing I can prove.’ I shook my head. ‘It’s not all of them, though. They’re not one coherent outfit. Some of them, certainly; perhaps a more extreme element.’


  ‘You’ll pardon me, Sir Harry,’ – the old man again, sounding like he didn’t care whether or not I pardoned him – ‘but is there any chance their attitude to you is unrelated to the trouble at the yard? Might there be any other reason for someone to take against you so strongly?’

  Magnus Lord Aysgarth made a noise inappropriate in a host.

  ‘What,’ I said, ‘the workers of Europe have suddenly taken it into their heads to avenge my bookmaker for a couple of unpaid bills? I’m no-one’s best friend, sir, but if these philosophers want to strike a blow against the oppressor there are surely a couple of other addresses they’d try first. I’d probably join them.’

  That comment went down as well as you’d expect. But they didn’t argue. Someone asked: ‘where are they off to next after Birmingham, on this damned national tour of theirs?’

  ‘Glasgow.’

  ‘Glasgow?’ There was alarm in the question, and everyone turned sharply to the speaker. It was Stackhouse again, my chum from the Thames Ironworks. He’d been silent before this, better than me at knowing his place and keeping his mouth shut in grand company. ‘It’s just…’ He looked at the expectant faces. ‘That’s where the H.M.S. Colossus is being laid down, in Scotts’ yard – at Greenock, a couple of miles down the Clyde.’

  That got them worried. I confess I’ve not been following our battleship programme closely, but I assumed the Colossus was another Dreadnought. Eventually, someone said: ‘I still can’t see what they’re up to. Some act of mass sabotage?’

  ‘I’ll have a regiment around the docks! Like to see them try to get past a couple of Maxim guns.’ The speaker looked like a man who would like to see it, too.

  ‘Pardon me,’ I said, remembering my exploits in the burning drawings office, and the conversation at Admiralty Arch. ‘But I’d gathered there was some particular bit of kit that we’re sensitive about.’

  ‘That’s rather a good point,’ the old man said. ‘Mr Stackhouse–’

  Stackhouse got the point immediately. ‘The fire-control tables are assembled at the Dreyer works, then transported by train to the dockyard – ours, or Scotts’, or whoever else is building the particular ship – for installation as part of the fitting-out.’

  ‘Perhaps you could confirm with your opposite number in Scotts the timetable for the Colossus’s fire-control table. We want it to get there in one piece.’ Stackhouse nodded.

  That was that, as far as the great men’s fretting went. We decamped towards the dining room, where the rest of the houseguests were gathering. It was the usual elegant scrum: a dozen and a half men sharp in our regulation penguin suits, mingling with the diverse colours of the women’s dresses, rustling and gleaming and touched with jewels. After what I’d seen and heard during the day, tonight it seemed even more fragile and foolish than usual.

  As promised, a few of the more respectable of the foreign visitors to Birmingham had been invited to dinner: a French philosopher, a senior newspaper man from somewhere, and one or two heads of national associations for something not-too-likely to frighten the horses.

  ‘Ah, Delamere;’ the Foreign Office chappie touched my arm as I was making for the double doors and wondering who I’d be stuck next to. ‘Let me introduce one of our foreign guests: from the confederated trade association of Switzerland; Mr Hertenstein.’

  Again the eyes; again the sleek blond hair. Again the ice smile.

  Our handshake was held a moment too long, our hold on each other’s eyes broken with difficulty. And then I walked into dinner beside my would-be assassin.

  41.

  I’ve been inclined, and sometimes obliged, to spend a lot of my time in the dustier parts of the world, and often to travel on a budget. One gets used to eccentricity, discomfort, and even threat. I’ve dined in everything from a palace to an upturned rowing boat, eaten most parts of most mammals, and done so in some damned odd company. But I can remember few meals quite as odd as that night at Shulstoke.

  I’ve dined with dangerous men. I’ve dined with men who might easily have decided to do me mischief. I don’t think I’ve ever dined with a man who had clearly stated his intention to murder me.

  (With the exception of Magnus, Lord Aysgarth, now I come to think of it; but on that occasion I’d been fairly hopeful that Victoria would get him to moderate the sentence.)

  Tonight I could look down the table and see death. And occasionally death would look back down the table and see me, and catch my eye.

  Hertenstein was perfectly turned out, well-mannered, and charming. His careful witticisms were going down a storm with the ladies either side of him. I even saw Aysgarth smiling at one of his remarks. The Swiss was the only one of the relative radicals placed near his host – the table plan must have been quite a challenge, given Aysgarth’s feelings about newspapermen, intelligent women, the French, and me – and once or twice I saw him speaking earnestly and Aysgarth nodding thoughtfully.

  My assassin wasn’t even the odd part. One knows the score with killers, and rubs along civilly until the crisis. Killers I’m used to. Diplomats, not so much. The whole atmosphere was damned eerie: so much tension, and no-one saying a word about it. It’s just not the done thing to discuss European revolution, you see; not with the ladies present. The British officials were uncomfortable in the presence of the foreign diplomats, having tolerated the radical visit to the country. And both were uncomfortable in the presence of the token radicals. Everyone talked about anything, except what they were thinking.

  The constipated politics of the men left the ladies to dominate the discussion, for once. That was easy enough, because Victoria had more brain and wit than all the men put together and was able to lead discussions on everything from Nietzsche, Matisse and the Curies to a recent epidemic of croup among the local poultry, all while maintaining a hostess’s vigilance about the performance of the servants. Aysgarth’s legendary capacity to talk about hunting – apparently a full hour uninterrupted and without drawing breath – was a social asset at last. His suggestion that the house party should partake of a mass slaughter of rabbits the next day – pheasants still being out of season – met with great approval, largely because it was something to talk about. He topped it by bragging of Victoria’s skill as a shot, which actually rather annoys him but gets deployed when he knows it’ll play well.

  Only once did the thunderclouds break.

  I’d happened to see one of the introductions, when my man Hertenstein had been presented to Von Hahn, the Kaiser’s favourite opera-lover. The Swiss had made some witticism, and offered his hand. The big German took it like Hertenstein had just wiped his backside with it, and dropped it immediately. Hertenstein had merely smiled. During the dinner conversation Von Hahn gave the impression of being much more comfortable with the cultural stuff, and as everyone was avoiding politics he was one of the better contributors. He didn’t agree with Victoria on Ravel or Mallarmé, but his disagreement was interesting and well-informed. He spent a few minutes prosing about Debussy, and even if most of us couldn’t have told Debussy from a chicken sandwich we were happy enough with the distraction.

  And then the French philosopher chappie said something along the lines of ‘surely the arts are the field that are seeing the most fundamental revolution, because we are re-evaluating not only how men interact, but how they feel’. He mentioned some Russian name which I didn’t catch. Von Hahn had stiffened immediately, and was looking rather stuffed and hot. One of the visiting diplomats, I assume French, jumped in and said something obviously critical to his compatriot in rapid French, and the compatriot said something rude back at him and added in English that the arts were also the field where the ruling class had been allowed to become most complacent and decadent. Von Hahn wasn’t having this, and said something pompous and rather naive to the effect that the arts should be what elevated men above the chaos of their animal politics.

  Hertenstein piped up. ‘Perhaps they are grown sceptical, when they are encouraged to look upwards, and then t
hey find that their pocket it has been picked.’ It was said pleasantly, but everyone could see he was needling Von Hahn.

  ‘I speak of absolute beauties,’ Von Hahn said stiffly. ‘Not these mammal appetites and political games.’

  ‘No one here will deny the power of music. But some of us may question if a man who cannot vote or feed his family has so much time for Brahms.’

  Von Hahn glared at him, massive and still missing the point. ‘There are some foods too rich for a simple stomach. They cannot be digested, and the organism rejects it. Perhaps it is better that this man stays loyally at his work, and does not try to taste cultural beauty.’ The big head came forwards, the eyes glaring, and the words heavy. ‘Because – it – may – kill – him.’

  I happened to be glancing at Bliss at that moment – you can’t blame me – and I saw her look rather shocked. It had been a clumsy line from the German, with its tone of threat. It didn’t even make sense in the context. Accordingly, no-one could offer a reply, and we all looked at our plates for a bit. At last Aysgarth – who probably feels the same way about Brahms as he does about revolution and hadn’t been following any of it – said something hopeful about the autumn weather for the next day’s shooting. Von Hahn was silent for a time, a great wounded elephant. Hertenstein was immediately chatting with his neighbours, and looking pretty pleased with himself. At one point he caught my eye again, and smiled, and raised his glass to me.

  That’s the stuff, I thought. I do like an arrogant opponent.

  42.

  As I trekked across the hall towards the front door and the possibility of fresh air, I saw that Von Hahn had cornered one of the Foreign Office men. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but it looked pretty one-sided. The Englishman was just looking uncomfortable and a bit scared, as Von Hahn stood close and spoke at him in an emphatic growl. His glare alone would have killed.