The Hansa Protocol (13 page)

‘At last, something that we can agree upon! I know Lankester’s
reputation
stands high. But I still think you’re up to something, Kershaw!’

Colonel Kershaw laughed. He could see that Sir Charles Napier was pleased and relieved at the outcome of the meeting. He picked up his hat, hauled himself up off his chair, and quietly left the room.

When Kershaw had gone, Sir Charles Napier sat in thought. The wily fox! He was up to something, all right. Some subtle procedure was unfolding itself in Kershaw’s Byzantine mind, and he hadn’t told him one half of it. Still, sending Major Lankester as courier would mean that young Fenlake could be rested for a while, which was a good thing. It might be a sensible move to return him to his regiment. Well, there was other work to do.

Sir Charles Napier dismissed the business of the memorandum from his mind, and turned his attention to some papers touching upon the stability of Peru. Immersed in the details of a knotty problem, he lost track of the time. Towards five o’clock a telegraph machine in an office on the ground floor began its busy, menacing chatter. Outside, the sky darkened further, and the gas lamps glowed more brightly. It continued very cold.

Louise Whittaker walked along the lane leading to Lavender Walk, and recalled the last time that she had ventured as far out as Chelsea. It had been just after the Christmas of ’91, when the weather had been
unusually
warm. Louise had called on the old German scholar, examined his page of ancient manuscript, and satisfied her curiosity about the Belvedere. Now Dr Seligmann was dead. ‘It was a political
assassination
, Miss Whittaker,’ Arnold Box had declared.

And Ottilie …. She had liked her immediately when they were introduced at a dinner party in Jena. A petite, slender girl, she had spoken excellent English with a vivacious, animated air of someone eager for knowledge of the world and its ways. She had sensed that Ottilie Seligmann was not an intellectual girl, and that her interests lay almost entirely in the possibilities of making a good marriage. Even now she could recall her bright blue eyes, and her blonde hair arranged with seeming artlessness as a frame for her small face.

Louise emerged from the lane into Lavender Walk, and pulled the bell at the side of the front door of Dr Seligmann’s ancient Tudor house. She felt unaccountably nervous. Should she have written first? Somehow, it seemed better to call personally in this way to convey her condolences. Ottilie, she felt sure, would be pleased to see her again.

The door was opened to her by the same butler who had admitted her to the house on the occasion of her last visit. He smiled in
recognition
, and stood aside for her to enter the old, panelled front hall.

‘Miss Whittaker, is it not? I am Lodge, the butler. It’s nice to see you again, miss.’

‘Fancy you remembering me, Lodge! Since those days, I hear, Miss
Ottilie Seligmann has come to live here. I met her once, in Jena, but I had no idea that she was living in England.’

‘Yes, indeed, miss. She’s been with us for over six months, now. Let me show you into the morning-room.’

As the butler preceded her into a room on the left side of the hall Louise saw a fair-haired young woman descending the stairs. She held firmly to the banister rail, as she seemed intent on reading some entries in what looked like a household account book. Louise followed Lodge into a quiet little room with a single narrow window, from which she could just glimpse the blackened and ruined shell of the Belvedere.

‘As a matter of fact, Lodge,’ said Louise, ‘I’ve called to offer my condolences on the frightful death of poor Dr Seligmann. Is Miss Ottilie at home this morning?’ Lodge smiled.

‘Well, miss, I fancy you’ve just seen Miss Ottilie descending the stairs! Had she not been so absorbed in her book, she would have seen you. I will tell her that you are here.’

Louise Whittaker made a motion with her hand as though to restrain him. The blood was pounding in her ears. What did this mean? The woman on the stairs was blonde and petite, and her eyes were blue; but she was emphatically not Ottilie Seligmann.

Suddenly the old house seemed to exude a stifling menace.

‘On second thoughts, Lodge,’ she heard herself saying, ‘I will write formally. I see that I was wrong to come unannounced. I’d be obliged now if you would not mention my visit to … to Miss Ottilie.’

‘As you please, miss. Perhaps we’ll see you later in the week.’

So, Arnold Box, thought Louise, here’s something important that you didn’t know about! You were joking when you made me the sole member of your female posse, but the joke has rather turned against you ….

That woman was an impostor, and the police must be told. When Louise gained the main road, she hailed a passing cab, and told the driver to take her to King James’s Rents, Whitehall Place.

Lieutenant Fenlake and Vanessa Drake waited for a cab to make its rather leisurely way along Whitehall, and then crossed the carriageway. The soot-stained pile of the Admiralty rose behind its screening
colonnade
of stone. They stood for a moment at the gas lamp in front of the arched entrance, as though uncertain what to say or do next.

‘You’ll be all right by yourself?’ asked Fenlake. She could see that he was concealing his impatience, his wish to hurry through that arch and into the warren of offices constituting the old Admiralty buildings.

‘I’ll be fine, Arthur. I’ll walk back to Trafalgar Square, and get an omnibus home from there. The National Gallery’s a wonderful place, and it was a fascinating exhibition. It would have been nice to have stayed a bit longer.’

Her eyes strayed across the road, where she could see the dingy entrance to Great Scotland Yard. Somewhere in that warren of poky streets Louise Whittaker’s friend, Inspector Box, would be working away in his office. No dull routine for him! Mr Box had discovered that Arthur was not, after all, being led into dangerous paths at the
gaming-table
. She wondered for a moment how he had found that out. How fascinating it must be to work as a detective!

She would always feel kindly towards Arthur Fenlake, but it had become more and more obvious that this handsome, rather
unimaginative
young man was married to his work. A wife, at this stage in his career, would become a resented inconvenience. Well, she had begun to realize that herself. She would contrive ways of letting him know that she would always be there as a friend, and leave it at that.

‘I might have to go to the Continent,’ he said. ‘Any day, now’

She looked at him, as he stood near the lamp standard, so smart and unconsciously elegant, longing to get through that arch and into the fray. He had the appearance of a wealthy young man about town, but he was not that.

‘You’re not just a soldier, are you?’ she suddenly asked him. ‘Ordinary soldiers don’t have urgent business so often at the
headquarters
of the Navy.’

He shied away from her like a frightened colt.

‘What? Of course I’m a soldier, Vanessa. What an odd thing to say. I’m just …. I’m just a soldier. I
must
dash. I simply must! You’ll be all right?’

Vanessa Drake smiled, and laid a hand lightly on his.

‘Yes, Arthur,’ she said, ‘I’ll be all right.’

Louise stood uncertainly for a moment on the cobbles, and looked up at 2 King James’s Rents. The general impression was one of grimy windows in a soot-stained façade. A number of weathered iron Maltese
crosses showed where tie-beams ended. Arnold Box always referred to this place as ‘The Rents’, and she could see that there were other ancient, dilapidated buildings attached to it at various odd angles. She mounted the steps and found herself in a dim vestibule that smelt of stale gas and mildew. An elderly police sergeant in uniform stepped out from a narrow front office, and looked at her enquiringly over a pair of wire spectacles. He was a heavily bearded man, who walked with a limp.

‘Inspector Box, ma’am? He’s in the streets at the moment, but he should be back soon. You can wait on the bench there by the entrance, or you can step into the office here, if you like.’

Miss Whittaker accepted the hospitality of the office. It was a gloomy place, smelling of stale ink and wet serge. The ceiling was stained and cracked, and the room was lit by an unadorned fishtail burner. ‘In the streets’? Whatever could that mean? Whatever his errand, he’d forget all about it when he had heard what she had to tell him.

The sergeant busied himself at a tall desk, writing in a ledger. From time to time other men came in, some uniformed, some in civilian clothing, to address various cryptic remarks to the old sergeant. They all glanced briefly at the lady visitor, and then ignored her presence entirely.

Presently, Louise Whittaker heard the sound of raised voices
somewhere
on the floor above. Two men were evidently indulging in a noisy argument. To her alarm the violent altercation increased. A
high-pitched
but powerful tenor voice launched itself into some kind of vehement denunciation, only to be drowned out by a positively
frightening
stentorian bellow. There was silence for a while, and then the whole process was repeated. This time, there was the sound of a chair crashing over.

The elderly sergeant sighed, and produced a substantial set of
handcuffs
from the desk. He smiled at Miss Whittaker, and limped out of the room, swinging the handcuffs as he went.

In a few moments the frightful row upstairs abruptly ceased, and the stentorian voice relieved itself of some kind of admonitory speech.

Miss Whittaker glanced out into the hall, and saw the bearded sergeant walking with measured tread down the stairs. The handcuffs were now tucked in his belt. He was followed by a wiry little man in
merchant navy uniform. His ginger beard bristled with indignation, but there was a certain cowed look about him. His face was red, not with anger but with blushing. He looked neither to right nor left, and bustled indignantly out into the street.

‘In Heaven’s name, Sergeant, what was that dreadful altercation? I feared that violence was about to be done.’

The sergeant smiled and shook his head.

‘Oh, no, ma’am, there was no fear of that. It was just a gentleman connected with one of our cases having a difference of opinion with Superintendent Mackharness upstairs. In cases like that, I usually go up and wave the handcuffs about. It always does the trick. That was the gentleman, him what just went out now. Naval sort of man, he was.’

‘Is Superintendent Mackharness a pleasant man? He sounds quite stern through the ceiling.’

The sergeant seemed struck by Louise’s question. Evidently it was a matter he’d not considered before. He put his pen down on the desk, and stroked his beard thoughtfully.

‘Pleasant? No, miss, since you ask: he’s not pleasant. Not in the least. But he’s the senior officer here, and people must speak respectful when they go up to see him. Respectful.’

The sergeant returned to his labour of writing in the ledger. It had begun to rain, and it was getting quite dark in the little office. The sergeant turned up the gas, and threw a scuttleful of coal on to the fire. Somehow, the action only emphasized the chilliness of the gloomy place.

Louise Whittaker began to long for her neat and well-ordered house in Finchley. Was it really possible, she wondered, for a woman ever to be a detective in a place like this? Why did it have to be so wretchedly drab?

A jaunty young man in plain clothes popped his head through the door and said, ‘Digger Davies has just turned up, floating in the Regent’s Canal. Head stove in by a brick. Thought you’d like to know, Pat.’

The jaunty man caught sight of Louise Whittaker.

‘Beg pardon, miss,’ he said, ‘I didn’t see you there.’

‘So your name’s Pat, is it?’ Louise faltered. She was cold and
apprehensive
, and felt impelled to speak to her saturnine companion rather than just sit still, a useless piece of decoration in a rough and
threatening
world. She had imagined Inspector Box in a small, book-lined office, receiving her with his usual confused gallantry, and then listening with dawning appreciation to her revelations. It was not going to be like that.

‘Yes, miss. Sergeant Driscoll, known as “Pat”. Ah! I think this will be Mr Box, now.’ They both heard the sound of iron tyres grating to a stop on the cobbles of King James’s Rents. ‘Yes, here he is. He’ll be with you presently.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant Driscoll. I’ll just—’

A frightful crash of doors flying open drove her words from the air. From the safety of the office she saw a mass of struggling men fall into the entrance hall. One of them was Inspector Box, whose hat rolled away across the floor as a brawny arm circled his throat. There were three uniformed policemen in the grunting, struggling heap. One of them prised the arm from Box’s throat in time for him to shout, ‘Get the darbies on him, for God’s sake, Wilson! Stamp on his hand, Jack, or he’ll have your guts out with that blade!’

Without warning the whole seething heap rose a few feet into the air and a hideous soprano voice began to shriek out threats and
obscenities
. Louise Whittaker caught sight of a convulsed face, black with grime, a loose red mouth apparently filled with broken teeth, and rolling bloodshot eyes.

There was a clatter of boots from some unseen corridor and several more men appeared. In a few moments, the hideous prisoner was subdued and turned on to his stomach. One of the reinforcements forced his squirming wrists into a pair of handcuffs. The knot of detectives stood up. One big, heavy young man with a badly scarred face held a
handkerchief
to a knife slash below the jaw line. Inspector Box roughly turned the captive on to his back and stared into his contorted grimy face.

Louise felt sick. This was horrible. They were all brutes ….

‘You’re going downstairs, Baby-Boy,’ Box panted. His face was convulsed with anger. ‘You’re going in the bear-pit to cool off, and then I’ll be down to ask you a few questions.’

The loathsome soprano voice burst out again into a string of
obscenities
. Box’s voice rose to a dangerous shriek.

‘Shut it, do you hear! You’re done for, Baby, so keep a civil tongue in your head. If you start your cursing again, we’ll gag you. You wouldn’t like that.’

Inspector Box retrieved his hat and stood up, while the group of policemen dragged the now subdued prisoner away towards the
basement
steps. The whole violent episode had lasted no more than five minutes. To Louise Whittaker it seemed an age.

Box and the scarred man pushed open some glazed doors and were about to enter a room that she could not see when an elderly man in a frock coat appeared at the head of the stairs. He stooped a little, and sported fine, white, mutton-chop whiskers. The man seemed to have been totally unaware of the affray that had just taken place.

‘Box,’ the elderly man called down, ‘up here, if you please. Half an hour hence.’

Box made some reply that Louise Whittaker could not hear, and then disappeared through the glazed doors with his companion. The bearded Sergeant Driscoll got up from his desk.