The Serpent and the Scorpion (30 page)

 
Numbly Ursula unfolded the other sheet. It was Anna’s reply, which Peter had never bothered to open.

A police whistle suddenly sounded, and Ursula nearly jumped out of her skin. She quickly turned off the flashlight, plunging the study into darkness. The police whistles retreated down the street, followed by shouts and disgruntled voices. Winifred had completed her part of the scheme. Ursula waited a few minutes, her heart pounding so loudly that she was sure it must be echoing throughout the house. But there was only the sound of the wind in the branches of the oak tree outside, and the leaves brushing the windowpane.

Ursula turned the flashlight on and carefully tucked the letter into the pocket of her skirt. She had to make sure it reached the authorities. She was just about to resume her search for evidence when she heard the creak of a floorboard overhead. It sounded as if one of the servants had been woken by the police whistles and was coming down to investigate. Ursula quickly switched off the flashlight and crept out of the study onto the landing and down the stairs.

She reached the kitchen and was just picking up her khaki knapsack when she heard a low moan. Ursula froze. She thought quickly—the servants, one of whom appeared to now be awake, usually slept upstairs on the top floor or the attic. With Christopher Dobbs away and the house shut up, it was unlikely that any of the servants would be down in the kitchen, but she couldn’t be sure. There was another moan, and the rustle of something moving. It seemed to be coming from behind the door that led down to the wine cellar.

A terrible thought suddenly dawned on her. Was it possible that the person she had seen being dragged in here all those weeks ago was still here, being held captive in the cellar?

Ursula crept along to the foot of the kitchen stairs and listened intently. There was no further sound from above. Perhaps the servant who was disturbed from his sleep had retired once more to bed.

She made her way to the thick wooden door to the cellar and placed her ear against it. She could still hear the soft, low moans of a man in pain. Ursula reached out and turned the door handle. It was locked.

She turned on the flashlight and scanned the kitchen. Mrs. Stewart always kept all the keys to the Chester Square house on a hook by the scullery. Ursula followed the beam of light and scanned the kitchen, scullery, and pantry walls in search of a similar place. She found a set of keys hanging just below the wall-mounted bell rack used to summon the servants. As quietly as she could, she lifted the iron ring of keys off the hook and hastened back to the door. The rest of the house was still silent.

The third key Ursula tried turned the lock, and with a tiny push, she opened the cellar door.

“Hello?” she whispered loudly. “Is anyone down here?”

The moans ceased, and there was an expectant silence.

Ursula shone the flashlight down the stairs and caught sight of a shadow, nothing more than a heap of rags, shrinking away from the light into the corner of the room.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” she whispered again, taking two hesitant steps down the stairs. The shadow remained curled up in a fetal position and did not move.

Ursula’s breathing quickened as she descended the remaining steps into the cellar. She reached out to the shadow.

“I’m here to help you.” She spoke in her normal voice this time, and the man, as she could now tell the shadow was, turned his face toward her. His eyes widened as a hand reached out from the rags and grabbed her arm. He spoke to her in a torrent of words. The language sounded strange and alien, like no language she had heard before.

“I can’t understand you!” Ursula cried out. The man spoke again, and this time the language sounded vaguely familiar. It was that which she had heard many times, walking in London’s East End to her father’s factories. It was Yiddish.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t speak that either. Do you speak any English?”

The man looked at her with dark eyes.

“A little,” he croaked. “On the ship. I learned on the ship,”

“Which ship?” Ursula asked. “The one coming that brought you to England? The one Katya Vilensky arranged for you?”

The man’s eyes widened once more, and she saw a flash of suspicion cross his face.

“I was a friend of Katya’s,” Ursula urged. “A friend. I’m going to get you out of here. Do you understand?”

The man fell back against the wall, tears pooling in his eyes.

“It’s all right.” Ursula reached out and clasped his arm, which felt bony beneath the thin layer of cloth that surrounded it. “I know you’re ill. I know you are scared. But I have to help you, and I will.”

The man convulsed into sobs.

“Katya?” was all she could hear him say, and she knew, with a terrible sense of finality, that whatever had happened here had broken him. Ursula thought quickly. It was going to be almost impossible for her to carry him out of here on her own. She would need to find out what had happened to him, and then hope to enlist the help of Chief Inspector Harrison in the morning.

She took Katya’s letter out of her pocket and held it up in the light.

The man recoiled as if she had slapped him. Ursula hastily reassured him that she had taken the letter from Dobbs’s study and was not one of his associates. It was difficult, and the man still looked unconvinced when she spoke again.

“You were on the
Bregenz
? Are you Baruh?” Ursula pressed.

Baruh nodded wearily.

Ursula moved closer, her compassion stirred by his frailty and despair.

“Tell me,” she urged. “What happened?”

“We found out. The cargo. On the
Bregenz.
Machine guns and rifles. Bayonets and grenades. All bound for Smyrna and the Ottoman Turks,” he began in broken English.

“The
Bregenz
was carrying armaments?”

“Yes. To be used one day against us. Bulgarians like us.”

“So what did you do?”

“We tried to take the ship. Tell the British what we knew.”

The man stopped speaking as a racking cough took hold of his body and shook him. Ursula stared around anxiously. She needed to get him out quickly, but was afraid she might never learn the truth.

“And?” she prompted gently.

“We were too few.”

Ursula remembered Katya’s letter—
I have seen the grave
—and shivered.

Baruh fell back against the wall. “We spent three days in the ship’s hold. No sun. No food. No water. The heat . . .” His voice trailed off as Ursula looked on in horror. “Then they took us to shore. We were on a train. Then in the darkness they lined us up. Women, children, as well as men. I was shot in the leg. The body of another man, Avraam, fell on top of me. That is how I lived.”

Ursula thought she heard a sound from the top of the stairs, and she held up a warning hand. Baruh looked terrified. Ursula stood up and made her way to the bottom of the cellar stairs. With a final glance at Baruh, she placed her fingers to her lips and turned off the flashlight.

Slowly, feeling her way along the wall, she climbed the stairs and opened the door.

It took a while for her eyes to adjust to the darkness after being guided by the flashlight, but by the time she reached the kitchen, she could make out some of the familiar shapes and shadows. Ursula hesitated in the doorway. There was no further sound, and she began to wonder if she had been mistaken. She was turning to descend the stairway once more when she was grabbed from behind. A hand was quickly and firmly placed over her mouth.

“Quiet!” It was Chief Inspector Harrison’s harsh whisper in her ear. He held on to her tight as he dragged her away from the stairs. Ursula struggled. “Wait!” she tried to say. Harrison ignored her. “No!” She struggled against him. “He’s down there!” But the words could not escape.

Harrison forced Ursula out of the house and dragged her up the outside stairs to the street. He then threw her into the backseat of a motorcar without explanation. Harrison hopped into the car beside her and commanded the driver, “Go!”

Ursula struggled and tried to open the car door.

“He’s still in there!” she cried out.

“I know!” Harrison hissed.

The driver pulled out quickly, and with a squeal the wheels skimmed the pavement, headed down Abbotsbury Street.

“What on earth?” Ursula cried out. Harrison craned his neck to see if anyone was behind them. The car spun round the corner and onto Kensington High Street.

“Are you totally mad?” Harrison turned to her and exclaimed.

“Do you have any idea what you have just done?”

Ursula took the letter out of her pocket and threw it at him. “I’ve just uncovered the truth.”

“You’ve just ruined months of investigation—that’s what you’ve done.”

 
They drove out of London, continuing west through Ealing before turning south to cross the river Thames. Ursula’s throat was hoarse from insisting that Harrison stop the car. All her demands for explanation had been ignored; even as they passed through Richmond and Shepperton, Harrison refused to tell her anything more. He communicated with the driver in short, swift commands in between bouts of sullen rumination. Ursula became more and more uneasy—even at his most surly during the investigation into her father’s murder, Harrison had never before seemed this concerned.

She observed him as he read Katya’s and Arina’s letters and then told him, her voice choking with emotion, all that Baruh had said in the cellar.

Harrison handed her the letters back without comment.

“Promise me,” Ursula urged. “No matter what it is that you’ve been investigating. Promise me you’ll take care of that poor man.”

Harrison remained silent.

Everything started to blur and pitch in the night as the motorcar made its furious way along the rudimentary roads of Surrey, past tiny towns that comprised little more than a stone church and a couple of farms. Finally, after nearly two hours, the motorcar bumped along a small lane cut through the hedgerows and stopped at the entrance of a narrow driveway. The moon peeked out from behind the clouds, and she caught sight of a dilapidated two-story stone farmhouse nestled behind a copse of tall oak trees. Harrison got out of the car and opened the wooden gate, and the driver edged the car through the opening and up to the house.

Ursula got out and stretched her legs. She felt stiff from being huddled in the seat for so long. “Where are we?” she demanded.

“Somewhere remote enough, I hope, at least for the time being,” Harrison replied.

Ursula rubbed her hands together to try and keep warm. “Don’t you think we’ve had enough drama for one evening? I need to get back. I need to free that man. You can hardly expect Dobbs to come leaping out from behind any bushes. Do you really think all this is necessary?”

“I do,” Harrison responded tersely, silencing Ursula.

“Do you think we were followed?” Ursula asked hesitantly. Suddenly the situation didn’t seem absurd as much as terrifying.

“No, but I had two of my men trailing us, just to be sure. There should be here shortly . . . yes, here they are.” Harrison reached into the rear seat of the car and grabbed his flashlight, which he then used to signal, with three short bursts of light, the motorcar that came to a halt at the gates at the end of the lane. The car headlamps flashed on and off before the engine was turned off and the country-side was suddenly quiet. Two men got out of the car and walked over to join Harrison. They barely acknowledged Ursula except with a short nod and a mumbled “Miss” as they passed her.

Harrison drew out a key from his trouser pocket and opened the farmhouse door.

Ursula checked to see if Katya’s letter was still safely tucked in her skirt pocket before following Harrison into the farmhouse. She gingerly stepped over the threshold and into a large old stone kitchen. It was clear no one had been in the house for many months. It was cold and musty.

The two men spoke to Harrison in low tones before taking up position outside the front and back doors to the farmhouse.

“I’d rather not risk lighting a fire, so here—” Harrison threw her a thick, scratchy woolen blanket. “You’ll have to make do with this. In the morning I’ll make arrangements for some provisions to be dropped off.” He turned on the flashlight and hunted round in one of the kitchen cabinets. “Last time I was here, I believe there were some crackers and anchovy paste.” Harrison handed her a tin of stale crackers and a small earthenware jar. “Here, have this, potted shrimp, I think. I’m afraid mice got to the anchovy paste. I can’t risk lighting a fire to heat a kettle. So no tea . . . but here’s a glass, if you need some water.”

Ursula nodded, her eyes now accustomed to the darkness from the drive down. She took the glass, went over to the wide sink, and filled it with water, using the wooden-handled pump. It made a terrible grating sound, but after a few minutes of vigorous pumping a gush of ice-cold water cascaded out and into the ceramic sink. Ursula drank quickly and replaced the glass on the stone windowsill.

Harrison instructed her to sit down, and Ursula hugged the blanket around her as she perched on a rocking chair next to the empty fireplace. She shook her head when he again proffered the food. She had no appetite.

“Now,” Harrison commanded, “show me the letter again.”

Ursula handed it to him and, using the flashlight, Harrison crouched down on the stone floor and started to read. Ursula said nothing until he had finished.

Harrison stood up abruptly and began pacing the room.

“Now we know why Katya died,” Ursula said.

“I have to return to London and speak to my superiors,” Harrison replied.

“Did you know about the
Bregenz
?” Ursula demanded.

“We suspected about Dobbs trading in armaments aboard the
Bregenz
, but nothing about the passengers.”