The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown (4 page)

He apologised humbly and meant it, ignorance seeming a greater crime to the young than to the old. He thanked Count Kalmody for believing his story and asked—no doubt clumsily—if there were any way in which he could show his gratitude. He was also eager to know what had caused all that excitement on the previous night.

The Count replied that it seemed to be simply an unsuccessful attempt to steal Her Majesty’s property. She had something worth stealing for the first time in six years, and the burglar must have known it.’

‘He was taking an awful risk with you around, wasn’t he?’

‘Crowned heads in exile like routine, Mr. Brown. From half past nine to half past ten Her Majesty reads an improving
book aloud to her faithful servants. Obviously the man knew that. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had spent an earlier evening having a good look round. What he didn’t reckon on was that I should be spending a few days at the villa to see how Zita was getting on and—failing a direct command—I refuse to be read aloud at. I caught him just when he was sneaking out to the terrace with a suitcase. Nothing is missing, so I was in time to stop him filling it.’

‘It was not empty,’ Bernardo said.

‘Well, now you mention it, he did seem to me to be running a bit lopsided. What was in it?’

‘Just clothes, I thought.’

‘You didn’t look? No curiosity?’

‘Not enough to fiddle with locks. I wanted to get home.’

‘Where do you think he was going in the dinghy?’

‘Not far. One of the beaches to the east and then over the frontier by land.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Well, he didn’t look as if he belonged here.’

‘You’re very observant, Mr. Brown. We had a moment’s conversation before I realised he had no business to be in the villa. I addressed him in French since I speak no Spanish. His replies were so idiomatic that they left no doubt of his nationality. Can you make any guess where the other, your fellow alpinist, belonged?’

‘Not Spanish or French. Might have been a German but I don’t think so.’

‘Describe him to me!’

‘Sunburnt. Built like a light heavyweight. Not much over thirty but already bald. Deep lines running down to the corners of his mouth. Mad blue eyes.’

‘My God, Bobo!’

‘Bobo?’

‘Heir to a Russian Grand Duke, but don’t let that bother you! The Romanoffs will all be thankful to be rid of him. Dubiously claims to have sabred dozens of communists in
the Civil War. Lived on stolen diamonds. When they ran out, sold himself to the Czechs and Romanians to do their dirtiest jobs—with their French friends looking the other way. He’s above high tide mark, you think?’

Bernardo, feeling slightly dizzy with this shot of memory in his brandy, said he was sure of it.

‘Then we’re in trouble, Mr. Brown. How about reconstructing his movements? He’d have waited all night at the rendezvous arranged with his fellow agent. Then at dawn—do you agree?—a look at the open sea and any likely beaches. Only when he had drawn a blank would he have tried the headlands west of Lequeitio. How do you suppose he moved around so fast?’

‘Must have had a car.’

‘And where is that car now?’

‘Oh, lord!’

‘Exactly. Deserted and standing by the side of a road somewhere very near the cliffs.’

‘But the police couldn’t guess where to look for him.’

‘Well, I know where I should try first—at the edge of the precipice. And perhaps find some footprints where you say he thought there was a path?’

‘No footprints, I think. At least not where anyone could get.’

‘And then, if the sea is calm tomorrow or the next day, I should take a boat along the foot of the cliffs and I should find both bodies with your wallet and identity card in Bobo’s pocket. It’s going to look as if you killed both of them.’

‘But, damn it, you shot one and the other fell!’

‘Assuming you didn’t give him a push. But possibly you didn’t. It’s only in war that you English are at your best. That goes for the Spanish half, too. Why the devil did you pull Number One up on the beach?’

‘We had shared the boat for so long. And for all I knew he might only have been caught with his pants down by somebody’s husband.’

‘That remark is not in the best of taste, Mr. Brown. Where’s the suitcase?’

‘It went down with the boat.’

‘Think again!’

‘Look here, my lord! You can’t climb a cliff carrying a suitcase. And what’s funny about that?’

‘I am laughing because I have to like you. Nobody in England ever calls a foreign nobleman “my lord”. They just say “count” or “baron”.’

‘Do we? I didn’t know.’

‘Damn it! If only there were just the original body, Alfonso would be able to fix it.’

‘Alfonso?’

‘The King of Spain. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of him!’

‘Couldn’t Bobo sort of join the party?’

‘Mr. Brown, this is going to be difficult for you to understand. In these days whatever my country does is wrong. We are guilty of starting the war though we voted against it. Because we governed minorities speaking other languages, it’s now considered right that they should have independence and govern Hungarian minorities. We are guilty because we won’t take that lying down. And, worst of all, we are guilty of being the only civilised nation in Eastern Europe.’

‘I think we all feel rather sorry for you in England,’ Bernardo said.

‘Oh, in England! You don’t even know where Hungary is without looking at a map. But the French do and their allies do. If they can pin a crime on us, they will. Who assassinated two harmless tourists in Spain? The Hungarians of course! The gangsters of Europe!’

Bernardo protested that he was surely exaggerating. The Count, ignoring this squeak from the tennis club, asked—more to himself than his guest—why and for what Bobo had been employed.

‘We can rule out bombs and common burglary,’ he said.
‘What’s left? Compromise her and us in some way so that the bloody newspapers have a stinking, international scandal to play with? I don’t see how, but I’ll bet that is what they were after. And they have got it, though not in the way they intended. Perhaps you can be of great help to us.’

‘If I can, I will,’ said Bernardo stoutly.

He had a pleasant vision of being received by Her Majesty and invested—if that was the right word—with some ancient and magnificent order, third class.

‘Well, Corpse No. 1 gives us no trouble. A thief tried to break into Her Majesty’s villa, perhaps mistaking it for a richer establishment. He was challenged by the Civil Guard and shot, but managed to escape. Finish! That’s all anybody knows.’

Bernardo pointed out that the bullet in his body would probably be different from those fired by the carbines of the Civil Guard.

‘A most intelligent remark,’ the Count said. ‘But I am sure instructions will be given that the Civil Guard bagged him whether they did or not. Now have some more brandy and shut up while I consider that tourist who fell down the cliff. Suicide? Bolshevik assassins? An interest in gulls, if gulls nest there?’

‘Ravens do.’

‘Ravens then. In any case this tragedy which happens yearly on all savage coasts has nothing to do with burglars, Hapsburgs or Hungary. Obviously there must be a connection between the two bodies but no one knows what and their employers won’t talk.’

‘But my identity card is in Bobo’s pocket,’ Bernardo objected.

‘I was coming to that. And Mr. Brown will be recognised by his description as the chap who had been in the sea and was walking to Bilbao. I cleared him—casually and convincingly, I hope—of the attempt on the villa. I shall never mention that I saw his face in the water. But Mr. Brown, if
he is available, will be arrested and perhaps tried. The law is the law. And, worse still, Bobo was about fifth in succession to the throne of Russia.

‘To-morrow or the next day that intolerable major will call here and ask me what I did with you. I shall reply that I offered you a bath, fed you and turned you loose with apologies. Inevitably you are going to be suspected of murder, but that has nothing to do with the Empress Zita.’

The more Bernardo considered his story, the more unlikely it appeared. He could not even decide whether it was better for him to have been seen in the water or whether Count Kalmody should keep quiet about it.

‘I think I could clear myself, you know,’ he said nervously. ‘Spanish justice is slow and I might spend a long time in gaol and lose my job. But the British consul would help and I’d be all right in the end.’

‘We should not be so lucky and found guilty of God knows what barbarities. And so, Mr. Brown, I cannot allow you to be interrogated. You must cease to exist.’

‘But you can’t! I mean ...’

‘My dear chap, that sort of thing starts east of Hungary! What I propose is to save you from all this absurd embarrassment and let the Arabian Nights carry on instead. You’re a young man. You’ll have the time of your life as my guest.’

‘Wouldn’t you be taking a big risk if you hid me here?’

‘I should indeed! However, I possess a remote and beautiful estate. The Romanians have stolen half of it, but a lot remains. What do you enjoy? Horses? Shooting? Girls?’

‘I don’t know much about horses and shooting.’

‘You shall learn. Just girls wouldn’t be good for you.’

‘One seldom heard of kidnappings in those days,’ said Mr. Brown. ‘It was a very rare crime. And look at it now! Political extremists hard at it, and any poor sod they collar is damn lucky if he doesn’t get his throat cut! They all take themselves too seriously. Vulgar impatience—that’s the trouble with them. One should always find time for manners. Myself, I had nothing to complain of, nothing at all except a bit of a headache.’

Count Kalmody had shown him his bedroom, locked the door and gone off to dine with Her Majesty whose peaceful retirement Bernardo had embarrassed. He was certain that there would be no mention to her of his plebeian presence under her roof, and that amused him. Inevitably a shade of exhilaration was mixed up in his general alarm. Kalmody, he suspected, did not wholly believe him and would believe him even less if he ever had an opportunity to examine that cliff, but for the moment relations were cordial. The window offered a way of escape on to a lower balcony. He was not tempted, for escape was only going to land him in Bilbao police station. His future was so plainly unpredictable that there was no point in fussing about it. Being still hungry, he sat down to the refreshments which were laid out on a delicate mahogany table at the foot of his bed.

Bernardo woke up to find himself in a small but comfortable basket chair enclosed on three sides by a windscreen.
Beyond the windscreen was the back of the driver. It puzzled him that there was no passing scenery. He sat up and looked over the side of the car to see the road. There wasn’t any. Some five thousand feet beneath him was the sea.

‘Hell! Must be an aeroplane!’ he said aloud.

A voice behind him asked if he was feeling all right. He turned round. In another basket chair behind him was a man in his fifties or so with a shock of white hair and a grin on his face.

‘You’ve woken up too soon, young fellow. Istvan reckoned you wouldn’t start eating again till midnight. What an appetite!’

‘Where are we?’

‘Coming down to refuel. That’s Italy over there.’

Even allowing for ex-empresses, Bernardo could not make out how his Arabian Nights magnate had materialised a flying carpet in the course of half a night. He asked where they had started from, expecting that he would not be told. Far from it. His talkative companion shouted a flood of information into his ear.

‘Pasajes. It’s Istvan Kalmody’s plane. Very handy if he wants to call on Zita, or Alfonso asks him to stay at San Sebastian.’

‘But why a seaplane?’

‘Because he can take off from Lake Balaton and come down wherever the pilot can spot a bit of water. He says you never know whether a field is flat enough till you’re standing on your nose.’

‘What happens if there isn’t a bit of water?’

‘There always has been so far. Istvan came down on the Seine once and bloody nearly took the top off Notre Dame. Got away with it, too! The French just said it was one of those Hungarian magnates again and fined him enough to make sure he’d take the Simplon Orient Express next time. That’s Mussolini’s naval base of Spezia below us. God, what a clown!’

‘Who?’

‘Mussolini. Wants Hungarian friendship and thinks Kalmody is important. So he lets him refuel here. I have to ask you not to leave your seat, but is there anything I can get you?’

‘Whatever you think best. Coffee, or can I have a drink?’

‘We’ll chance it. Zita’s tame doctor told me you should have another pill when you came round. I shouldn’t think it would do any harm to take half a bottle of white Tuscan with it, well cooled. It’s going to be hot on the runway.’

The plane bounced twice, splintering the oil-streaked mirror of the Mediterranean, and came to rest on a submerged pontoon which was then winched clear of the water. Escort and pilot strolled over to the command block shimmering in the heat and left Bernardo alone except for two armed guards who remained at a discreet distance. There was no object in appealing to them. He had no passport, papers or money and could not even prove who he was without reference to Bilbao. His clothes had gone and the dressing gown had been exchanged for a furred flying-coat. It never occurred to him that he had become a non-person. His sense of identity was strong for a young man in his early twenties.

The pilot returned with the fuel truck and ten minutes later his companion appeared with two glasses and a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. Bernardo observed that Hungarians—to judge by the two he had met—were given to lavish hospitality.

‘It was all I could find that was cool. Let’s have it in the shade of the wings.’

Bernardo climbed down to the ground. The pilot protested loudly.

‘It’s only that he wants me to put this cigar out. Nothing to do with you. Cheers!’

‘Cheers! How well you speak English!’