The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown (29 page)

‘A cup of tea, Mr. Scheeper?’

Bernardo silently blasted the tea and accepted it. In any decent European country he would have been offered—if offered anything at all—a drink which might have inspired imagination.

‘How long do you think I’ll get?’

‘Well, I see you pleaded Not Guilty. No faith in the jury, Mr. Scheeper?’

The clerk returned with another slip of paper.

‘Miss Marie-Louise says she was at school in Belgium.’

‘Well, so she was.’

‘She also states that you both left Brussels this morning.’

There was nothing more to be said, and Bernardo did not say it. Henri Scheeper and niece were despatched to London by a later boat train. Bernardo retired behind a newspaper, trying ineffectively to read it and ignoring the pale green dance of spring all over the Kentish countryside. He commented that although it was May the rain had stopped and it was not freezing. Nadya on the other hand prattled away to the escorting constable. She soon had him in a fatherly and tender mood, telling her all about his daughter of the same age and wishing the pair could meet. It seemed most unlikely. Encouraged by this love-fest Bernardo began to consider whether anything could be gained by getting the constable to take her hand and lead her to the lavatory. But the train stopped nowhere and offered no chance of escape. He felt helplessly imprisoned by the compartment and the miles and miles of uniform London suburbs now streaming
past the window. Since the State would be supplying board and lodging for some time he told Nadya in Romanian to remove and keep Scheeper’s black wallet without the constable seeing.

They were delivered to Vine Street for further enquiries. Nadya was taken away for still another nice cup of tea. Bernardo was shown into the Superintendent’s office by a constable who had an unpleasant air of knowing all about him and finding it offensive.

‘Well, well, Scheeper, isn’t this an unexpected visit?’ the Superintendent began and then stopped short and stared. ‘And what have we here, may I ask? I knew he’d never show his face in this country again!’

Bernardo said weakly that it was a longish story and feverishly began to compose it. He explained that he was English and lived in Brussels. He gave a false name and address, though well aware of its futility. Still, there might be a chance of vanishing before the facts were checked.

‘I shall hold you on a charge of illegal entry. Anything you say may....’

‘No, you won’t,’ Bernardo answered boldly. ‘I’m British. I don’t need any passport.’

‘Then why did you see fit to use someone else’s?’

‘That’s the Belgians’ business, not yours. You can’t hold me on any charge at all.’

‘I can think of half a dozen, my lad. You may or may not be British, but your Scheeper’s niece isn’t.’

Bernardo saw a gleam of light. Wherever it led, it would do for the moment.

‘She’s a White Russian refugee and hasn’t got a passport. That is why I borrowed Scheeper’s. I wanted to get her into this country, you see.’

‘Your young lady?’

‘You could put it that way.’

‘Fourteen years old?’

‘That’s Scheeper’s niece. This lady is over the age of consent, if that is what you mean.’

‘I understand you to say you are not Henri Scheeper?’

‘You know I’m not.’

‘I know nothing of the sort, sir. You answer his description, and it is my duty to keep you in custody until you can be identified or otherwise by the police officers who carried out your arrest.’

A mean and ingenious fellow, the Superintendent! There was no arguing with that one.

‘Well, can Mr. Scheeper talk to his niece then?’

‘No. But you have no need to be worried. She seems to have mislaid that mother of hers in London, so we will see that she is put up at a respectable hotel for the time being. Now come on, Romeo, and take it easy!’ he added with a grin.

Bernardo was duly locked up. The experience was not so bad as he imagined it would be throughout the months he had daily awaited it. Supper was edible for a hungry man and the cell clean, as indeed one would expect if gilded youth was frequently locked up at Vine Street as that amusing young fellow Wodehouse seemed to think. He could not remember exactly what happened if a man was charged with a criminal offence and skipped bail, but certainly he would have to come before the magistrate next day. And what the hell to say there? The only hope was to expand the Romeo and Juliet romance which the Superintendent apparently had half believed.

Next morning appearance in court was delayed—if, that is, the beaks kept business hours. It was after eleven when the Superintendent himself opened the cell door.

‘Good morning, Mr. Scheeper.’

‘I am not Mr. Scheeper.’

‘In the same trade perhaps?’

Bernardo denied it with an indignation which must have been impressive, for the Superintendent smiled.

‘If this was a rescue operation, wouldn’t you be wise to make a full statement?’

‘Rescue?’

‘Her movements were very quickly traced and they were waiting for her at the Belgian frontier.’

‘You must have got the wrong girl.’

‘There will be no trouble in identifying her. Our information is that she has four hum—ha.’

So the game was up for Nadya. Bucarest police seemed to have attended to their in-trays a lot more rapidly than usual. But of course they need hardly have been brought into it at all. As soon as Scheeper discovered that Holgar was firmly in gaol and could never have telephoned him, he would have reported the theft of his passport to his consul. Then routine enquiries quickly established that Nadya had crossed the frontier on the Arlberg Express with a Scheeper who wasn’t Scheeper. It might still be some time before anyone guessed that the companion was David Mitrani.

‘For all I know she may have as many as Diana of the Ephesians,’ Bernardo replied with pretended impatience.

‘Disgusting what they will allow abroad! The Ephesians—yes, I’ve heard of it. One of those so-called theatre clubs, I believe.’

Bernardo saw another possible line of defence. It had the advantage, considering Scheeper’s reputation, of being plausible.

‘Would the police consider a rescue operation justifiable?’

‘It might assist us to overlook irregularities. Now, I advise you again to think it over and give me a full statement as soon as you are returned.’

‘Returned from where?’

‘Never mind that! Just an informal talk with a certain person, I understand.’

The Superintendent led him to a handsome limousine standing outside the station. There was a chauffeur in the front seat and a burly fellow in the back, quite big enough to frustrate
any attempt at vanishing into London. Bernardo was firmly shoved in alongside him. The car headed along Piccadilly and down the Haymarket.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘The Admiralty.’

That was a puzzler. Arson on the Danube? The port of Bilbao? That fictitious horse delivered at Galatz? Or had Mr. Scheeper a concession for providing naval conveniences in Malta?

He was escorted through a maze of passages and into a small office stacked with filing cabinets. His companion sat down at a desk with a typewriter on it, refusing conversation and leaving him standing; he could not be anything but a retired Chief Petty Officer with a full appreciation of his own importance. There was another door opposite that through which they had entered. A bell rang sharply in the room beyond it. The Petty Officer jerked his thumb in that direction and said the Admiral would see him now.

The room was carpeted and restful and resembled a bachelor’s study rather than a government office. Standing in front of a comfortable coal fire with his hands in his coat pockets was a genial, grey-haired, old cock who was presumably the Admiral and looked it.

‘Good morning, Mr. Mitrani.’

‘Good morning, sir.’

Bernardo found that he had very slightly peed himself—not enough to show, he thought. The naval bloke asked him to take a chair, which he did in a rush, and himself remained in his fatherly position in front of the fire. His constant smile varied and was nerve-racking. Sometimes it seemed to reflect inner amusement; sometimes it would do very well for raising morale in an Arctic gale.

‘You’ve given those fellows over on the continent a long run, haven’t you?’

‘In Belgium, sir?’

‘In romantic Romania, Mr. Mitrani. Now, what could have
made them think that you are really Bernardo Brown?’

‘Who’s Bernardo Brown?’

‘A quite remarkable crook. I could do with one or two of him. Arranges an accident for his accomplice, disreputable but after all a Grand Duke. Makes a get-away into Hungary—you will tell me how he managed it—and then appears in Bucarest where he calls at the Legation to explain that it was all clean fun at the seaside and does not improve his case by doing what I have always wanted to. While living off women from one end of Bucarest to the other he learns the language perfectly in one winter. And you still say he isn’t you?’

‘I admit I am David Mitrani. But I am not this Bernardo Brown.’

‘Mr. Brown, what a whopper! Your hair is very badly dyed. You must have done it in a hurry.’

It was futile to go on denying. If the truth had to come out, this was the man who should have it. Bernardo felt that it was better, roughly speaking, to be eaten by this tiger with the bared teeth of imperial security than to be worried to bits by the pack which was after him.

‘Their police exaggerate, sir. I have never lived on women in my life.’

‘I am glad to hear it. So that brings us to the subject of your real income. Who was paying you?’

‘Who is it supposed to be?’

‘Cards on the table, Mr. Brown? All right! My report from Romania states that you were working for Hungary.’

‘I had no need to spy for anyone if that’s what you’re getting at. The Alhambra paid me enough to live on. And the Romanians are inclined to see Hungarians under the bed.’

‘They are, are they? Well, they needn’t be. Hungarians always conduct their dirtier business in a jovial blaze of publicity. Then they get caught like you and have to lie their way out of it. What do you know about those forged francs they were circulating?’

‘Nothing beyond what I read in the papers. It sounds crazy.’

So there was the mysterious crime again! He expected better of the Admiral. Forgery of francs seemed a stock accusation against any suspected international criminal. It left him almost indifferent.

Old Bernardo chuckled at the memory, saying that it was the most incredible example of post-war intrigue in Central Europe but absolutely true. The State Cartographical Institute of Hungary had printed in their cellars thirty million French francs in thousand-franc notes. The main distribution was done by half-witted, young, idealistic Hungarian agents who were caught in possession of the forgeries in December 1925.

‘And that had a lot more to do with me than I knew,’ he went on. ‘In the first week of January, about the time Pozharski warned me, Prince Ludwig Windischgraetz—a very prominent figure, he was, at the old Hapsburg Court—was arrested in Budapest with, God help us, the Chief of Police! Both of them got ten years penal servitude. Windischgraetz swore that none of the proceeds had been used for personal gain and that he had done it for patriotic motives. Hungarian character being what it is, that was enough to make him into a national hero. But nobody to this day knows what the patriotic motives were: probably to finance a putsch, either nationalist or monarchist. The only defence their Prime Minister could put up—he was on the edge of it as well—was that thirty million francs, say £230,000 at the then rate, was not nearly enough to finance an internal plot, let alone an international one. And that was true, too. So you pays your penny and you takes your choice. But there were France and her allies of the Little Entente roaring bloody murder against the Hungarians, and everyone else’s Central Bank more than a little nervous about what might really be going on.’

The Admiral agreed that the plot was crazy, but added
that it must have been profitable or Bernardo and his accomplice would not have been such fools as to have anything to do with it.

‘Why did you bump him off?’

‘I did not. He fell. And I never knew who he was.’

‘The Hungarians did.’

‘I think Count Kalmody was trying to avoid any suspicion of that, sir. So he drugged me and had me flown out to his estate. If I wasn’t around to answer questions, the two dead men would not be connected with the Empress Zita at all.’

‘You killed them both?’

‘Count Kalmody shot one when he broke into the villa, and I tell you the other one they call Bobo fell.’

‘That’s for the Spaniards to decide when we hand you over to them. When did the Russians first contact you?’

‘I don’t know any except White Russians.’

‘Just as bad as the other lot! What about that groom of Kalmody’s?’

‘Have you run across many Spanish-Americans, sir?’

‘Of course I have! Excellent fellows when they aren’t building castles in the air!’

‘Well, that was Perico. He just wanted to live where there were no big landlords and lots of horses. And I couldn’t stop him.’

‘I see. This Russian girl you arrived with—did you pinch Scheeper’s passport for her or did she pinch it for you?’

‘I did. For her.’

‘Another lie, Mr. Brown. Who is she?’

‘A very unfortunate refugee, sir, earning an honest living. She made herself look young, but she is really seventeen. Her name is Nadya Andreyev.’

‘In love with you, I suppose?’

‘No. More like brother and sister. I was able to do her a favour once, and when she knew I had to clear out of Bucarest she helped me. That’s all.’

‘Remarkably generous for a sister. What was the favour?’

‘I will not answer that.’

His interrogator refreshed memory by a glance at the file on his desk.

‘Believed to be a certain Nadya Stepanov, drowned off Giurgiu. Well, there could not be two answering her physical description. A background of travelling fairs, Mr. Brown—is that where you usually recruit your agents?’

‘I suggest you question her yourself, sir.’