The Hansa Protocol (10 page)

‘You’re drawing me into something, aren’t you, Colonel Kershaw? You’re poaching on the Commissioner’s preserves.’

Colonel Kershaw suddenly looked grave. When he spoke, he made no attempt to respond in kind to Box’s reserved banter.

‘So far, Mr Box, I’ve simply told you things. I’ve told you the name of a double murderer, and all your policeman’s instincts will impel you to go after him. I’ve told you about the memorandum, and the approach of a dangerous European crisis. There’s a conflict of duties for you there, Mr Box, and if you throw in your lot with me over this business, it’s a conflict that you’ll have to resolve without my help. So what do you say? You’ve got a mind that works differently from mine, and it’s your special qualities of mind that I want near me during this business. Will you consent to work with me?’

‘I will, sir.’

Colonel Kershaw smiled, retrieved his silk hat, and stood up. He dropped the butt of his cigar into the stove.

‘It’s a pity that you are so well known, Mr Box,’ he said. ‘If you were
reasonably obscure, I’d try to recruit you permanently into my crowd. But to be one of my nobodies, you’ve got to be rather in the shade. Like Joe Peabody. You were an excellent help to me last time, when we unmasked the murderous Dorset subalterns, and I’d like to feel you were around me when this business blows up. I’ll go now.’

Colonel Kershaw opened the door of the shed and walked quietly out into the thickening mist.

Sergeant Knollys surveyed himself critically in the big, fly-blown mirror rising above the office fireplace. At one time, he thought ruefully, he’d been considered a handsome kind of man, but since the Philpotts Gang had rearranged his features with a sharpened length of iron railing, he felt that any little child who saw him in the street would run away screaming with fright.

Inspector Box, in his chirpy fashion, had assured him that he was too sensitive.

‘We can’t all be beautiful in this life, Sergeant Knollys,’ he’d said, ‘and from some angles you look quite presentable. Just keep away from strong gaslight.’

Knollys smiled, and let his image go out of focus. He read some of the cards and scraps of paper pasted round the edges of the mirror, many of them stained and faded. ‘Mr Shale did not call on Wednesday’, ‘Tell Mr Box that there’s nobody of that name in Harpenden’. What name? One of these days he’d clear away all these remains of long-dead cases, and give the mirror a polish. If he didn’t do it, nobody else would.

The swing doors of the office flew open, and Inspector Box bustled in. Knollys’ reverie faded. Whenever the guvnor burst in like that, eager for the fray, the present began to move back firmly to centre stage.

‘Sergeant Knollys! I’m back at last. How did you get on at Victoria? I just made it to the Clarence Vaults. They were all there, in the cellar bar, the gentlemen of the Press – but never mind them. How did you get on?’

Inspector Box pulled off his leather gloves, and struggled out of his overcoat. He sat down at the cluttered table, and looked gratefully at the blazing fire.

‘I went down to Chaplin’s office at Victoria, sir,’ Knollys replied, ‘and spoke to a Mr Lloyd. Sure enough, he remembered the crate and had the original manifests. It came ostensibly from Bonn, and was despatched to England through Hamburg. It didn’t come into the Port of London—’

‘Which is decidedly odd, Sergeant, when you consider that its
destination
was Chelsea.’

‘Yes, sir. It was sent on a German cargo steamer to Dover. It was opened by the customs there, and found to contain books. They
resealed
it, marked it “Contents without value”, and let it go on by rail to Victoria.’

‘“Contents without value” – evidently they’re not great readers in the Customs, Sergeant. But you can see what must have happened. Someone engineered a substitution between Dover and here. It could be done. Or they switched labels on two different consignments. They packed their dynamite into the crate, and sent it on the final leg of its journey. Very interesting, Sergeant. And very sinister.’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve also been to Quaritch’s bookshop, in Piccadilly. They knew all about this Colin McColl. He’d carried out a number of tasks for them – things to do with old books and the like. They’d no doubt that he was a genuine scholar. They said it would be quite impossible to pose as such a man. But they’d never commissioned him to show
manuscripts
to Dr Seligmann. They don’t deal in manuscripts.’

Box said nothing. Knollys watched him as he lit a thin cigar, and sat smoking in silence, gazing at the office fire.

‘Sir,’ said Knollys, ‘While I remember it, I must tell you something I noticed about Miss Ottilie. I’ve already mentioned that I think she’s older than she lets on. But I also noticed a pale indentation around the finger where you’d expect to see a German woman’s wedding ring. I think she’s married, sir.’

Box stirred in his chair, looked at Knollys, and smiled.

‘Yes, Sergeant,’ he said, ‘I saw that little pale band of skin on the ring finger myself, and came to the same conclusion. As for Miss Ottilie’s true age – well, she can’t be much more than thirty-five, if that. So she’s not trying to look younger out of vanity, Sergeant. I think she’s doing it for disguise. She’s passing herself off as a certain young woman of twenty-two.’

‘Strewth! Do you mean she’s not Dr Seligmann’s niece?’

‘It’s just a thought, Sergeant Knollys. Something to ponder in a quiet moment. And I wish you’d try to acquire a choicer range of
exclamations
. “Strewth” is all very well for a Billingsgate porter, but hardly suitable for a detective sergeant.’

‘An imposter, sir? That could explain why she wasn’t entirely
overcome
with grief. It could explain—’

‘Save it for a quiet moment, Sergeant. And don’t even hint it to anybody outside this room. Now, I’m going to tell you something else that you’re to keep under your hat. I can’t see how I can possibly continue with this investigation without telling you the whole story.

‘After you left the house in Chelsea this morning, I found a phantom lurking in the fog, waiting to confront me. This phantom, Sergeant Knollys, is the man who controls Joe Peabody, and a hundred others like him, and his name’s Colonel Kershaw. We sat by the stove in that brick garden shed, and he told me all about Colin McColl.’

As Box recounted his meeting with Kershaw, he contrived to convey the sense of menace and danger that seemed to be attached to the person of Colin McColl.

‘And then, Sergeant,’ he concluded, ‘Colonel Kershaw made a
reference
to one of Shakespeare’s plays. Something about “the sweet milk of concord”. I’m a perky sort of fellow, as you know, but I felt intimidated by his words.’

Sergeant Knollys closed his eyes for a moment, as though recalling something. Then he quoted the chilling lines from
Macbeth
to which Kershaw had referred.

‘We learnt that at school, sir. They’re the words of an anarchist with a lust for power—’

The sound of voices came from the drill hall beyond the office. Box held up his hand in a warning gesture.

‘What’s all that commotion back there? It’s PC Kenwright. He’ll be bringing some of his “siftings” back from Chelsea. Better not say anything more now, Sergeant. We’ll talk about this business later. An
anarchist with a lust for power …. Not a pleasant thought. But then, this Colin McColl’s not a pleasant man.’

Sergeant Knollys produced a notebook, and turned over a few pages. It was time, he knew, to change the subject.

‘I talked to Mr Lodge, the butler, sir. We snatched half an hour together in his pantry. There wasn’t much that he could tell me that we didn’t know already. Miss Seligmann’s a bit of a handful, but very well regarded below-stairs. Mrs Poniatowski is a morose sort of woman, with her own ideas of service, which, needless to say, are not Mr Lodge’s. There’s a bit of a mystery, there, sir. Mrs P. says she’s a Pole, but one of the Seligmann’s neighbours has a Polish maid, who claims that Mrs Poniatowski can’t speak Polish, only German, and some other language – Czech, she called it.’

‘Well, well, Sergeant,’ said Box, ‘fancy that! Czech. That’s the language spoken in Bohemia—’

‘How do you know that, sir?’

‘I don’t know how I know, Sergeant. I just know it, that’s all. Like you know
Macbeth
,
and I don’t. The important point is, that Mr Mack said that the dynamite used to blow up Dr Seligmann in the Belvedere came from Bohemia. An interesting point. Anything else?’

‘Count Czerny and Miss Ottilie had another blazing row after we’d gone out into the garden. Apparently, it was a continuation of the unpleasantness that Czerny told us about. Mr Lodge didn’t approve. “You’d think they could have behaved with a bit more respect, Sergeant”, he said to me, “with the house being in mourning, and all. There should be crepe on the door, and a myrtle garland, but they’ve no time for the decencies”.’

‘A blazing row …. I wonder what that was about?’

‘Mr Lodge doesn’t know, because it was all in German. But
apparently
there was an awful lot of shrieking from Miss Ottilie, and Count Czerny was like a raging lion. It only lasted a few minutes, but what it lacked in time, it made up for in ferocity. Your friend Mr Schneider has promised to tell Mr Lodge what it was all about. Lodge could hear the two of them going at it hammer and tongs all round the house while it lasted.’

‘Not very nice for Mr Lodge. He seemed a first-rate servant to me. Properly trained from boyhood, as like as not. He’s too good for that madhouse, Sergeant Knollys.’

‘I think he’d agree with you about that, sir. He’d already arranged terms of notice with Miss Ottilie, and had been offered a very
attractive
post with Sir Marcus Braintree at Henley. The household at Chelsea’s breaking up. I think it was only poor Dr Seligmann who held it together.’

Box got to his feet. He peered into the mirror, and unconsciously smoothed his moustache with his right forefinger.

‘There’s something peculiar about that house in Chelsea, Sergeant Knollys. There’s more to Miss Ottilie than meets the eye, and now you tell me this Mrs Poniatowski’s a Czech – what we usually call a Bohemian. And these rows …. People don’t behave like that, Sergeant, after outrage and violent death on their premises. We’ll have them all watched, and see what they do.’

‘Sir, about Lieutenant Fenlake—’

‘Yes, I know what you’re going to say, Sergeant. We need to talk to him, if we can run him to ground. He was the last man to see Dr Seligmann alive. I’d very much like to hear what he said to Seligmann in that Belvedere, and what Seligmann said to him. I’ll do my best to track Mr Fenlake down – tomorrow, if possible. Unless, of course, the Foreign Office try to hide him away. Meanwhile, there’s something else I want to do.’

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘Mr Schneider, who evidently thinks I’m an ignoramus, told us that the library in the house was the political library, and that the one in the Belvedere was the academic library. Now, I don’t think Schneider would tell any fibs, and I don’t think others in that house would trust him to do so. But I think he’s had it drilled in to him to make that point about the two libraries. It may mean nothing – or it may mean
everything
. So I’m going off now, to consult my own personal expert in philology.’

Louise Whittaker sat down in her chair at the fireside, and looked at her visitor. How would he want her to behave? He had come on business, to think aloud about a case, and invite her to exercise her judgement. She remembered the keen pleasure that she had felt in the previous autumn, when he had come to discuss with her the awful fate of Amelia Garbutt, cruelly murdered and thrown into a canal. Mr Box regarded her home as a sanctuary, a place where he could be quiet, and indulge
in speculation. She must be careful not to spoil that ordered tranquillity that so obviously attracted him.

‘What do you want to know, Mr Box?’ she asked.

‘I want to know about the late Dr Otto Seligmann, miss. More than one person has told me that he was an eminent philologist. He appears to have produced an edition of old English poems – Anglo-Saxon verse, I think they call it. And then he propounded a rule or notion about syllables. I don’t think anyone’s trying to confuse me deliberately, but all this kind of thing is beyond me. Now you, miss, are a philologist, so I was wondering if you knew anything about this Dr Seligmann from that point of view.’

Louise joined her fingertips together, and looked thoughtfully at Box. She saw beyond his question to what he was actually thinking.

‘Well, Mr Box, you’ve really answered your own question, haven’t you? Dr Seligmann’s
Specimens
of
Anglo-Saxon
Verse
appeared in 1878. There has not been a second edition. If you want to embark upon the study of Anglo-Saxon, you would turn to other primers. And Seligmann’s Law, you know, is just a grand name for a very simple observation, something rather obvious to anyone who has made a study of the vowels in unaccented syllables. Do you know what I am talking about?’

‘No, miss.’

‘No; in one way, I suppose, you don’t, but in another way you do. What I am saying is that Dr Seligmann was a gifted and enthusiastic amateur. He turned his mind to editing texts and to the laws of phonology with equal enthusiasm, but I suspect that his true vocation lay in politics. Part of him, I’m sure, thought it more satisfying to be known as Dr Seligmann the distinguished scholar than Dr Seligmann the mere politician!’

‘Dr Seligmann had a very unusual library called the Belvedere—’

‘Yes, I know it. Just over a year ago Dr Seligmann invited me to see a very rare page of an old medieval chronicle that he had acquired.’ She added softly, ‘You see what I mean? Phonology, manuscripts …. Dr Seligmann was a good, sound, dabbler.’

Miss Whittaker frowned, and gave a little shiver of disgust.

‘Oh, dear! I sound so mean and ungenerous – that last comment of mine had all the pettiness of a jealous rival! The poor man has just died by violent means – I suppose it was murder?’

‘It was a political assassination, Miss Whittaker.’

‘Frightful! But what I’ve told you about poor Dr Seligmann is true. He liked to play the role of the scholar forced by circumstances to be a politician. But in his heart he knew that what scholarly work he had done in the past had long been superseded.’

‘There were two libraries in that house at Chelsea,’ said Box. ‘The Belvedere library was the doctor’s academic library, and the one in the house was his political library. That’s what they told me at the house.’

Louise Whittaker was quick to detect the doubting tone behind Box’s words. ‘And you have your doubts, I take it? I suppose nothing remains of the Belvedere library?’

‘No, miss. It’s just rubble and ashes. The library that I saw was the one in the house. There was plenty of political stuff there, but all around the fireplace was a collection of well-thumbed books which I could see were all about language, and poetry, and suchlike. I had an image in my mind, Miss Whittaker, of a man sitting beside that
fireplace
, reading those books as though they were old friends. They weren’t novels, and there were no pictures in them, but that’s what I think they were – old friends.’