The Quality of Mercy

Book 7: Lord Edward Corinth & Verity Browne

by David Roberts

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

A murder mystery featuring Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne When the Nazis seize Austria in March 1938, Verity Browne is one of the first to be deported from Vienna as a well-known anti-Fascist. Before she leaves, she is able to arrange for a young Jew, George Dreiser, to escape to England. But where he expects to find safety, he finds danger and sudden death instead. Lord Edward Corinth also finds death where he least expects it: in the grounds of Lord Mountbatten's country house. There his nephew Frank stumbles on a corpse. Although the police are satisfied that the man died of natural causes, Edward's niece persuades Edward that all is not as it seems... In this classic investigation, Verity and Edward find that death comes more often than not to the innocent, and that many lives are left to the mercy of strangers. Praise for David Roberts: 'A gripping, richly satisfying whodunit with finely observed characters, sparkling with insouciance and stinging menace' Peter James 'A really well-crafted and charming mystery story' Daily Mail 'A perfect example of golden-age mystery traditions with the cobwebs swept away' Guardian

Release date: September 1, 2011

Publisher: C & R Crime

Print pages: 260

Sample

1

Lord Edward Corinth swung the Lagonda Rapier on to the Romsey road and pressed down the accelerator. The six-cylinder four-and-a-half-litre engine responded magnificently. A similar model had won Le Mans three years earlier in 1935 and, since then, refinements had vastly improved its ability to hold the road at speed, even in the rain. He glanced at the dog in the passenger seat beside him. Basil, Verity Browne’s curly-coated retriever, seemed to be enjoying himself. The wind smoothed the hair on his head to felt. Teeth bared, he appeared to be grinning although, Edward had to admit, it might be fear. Reluctantly, he slowed down. He did not relish the idea of having to tell Verity that her beloved dog – with which he had been entrusted while she was abroad – had been catapulted out of the car by his rash pursuit of some notional speed record.

It was fortunate that he reduced his speed. As he negotiated a sharp bend, he came across a stationary yellow Rolls-Royce straddling the road, steam rising in wisps from its magnificent-looking radiator. He gritted his teeth and pounded the brakes. The Lagonda came to a halt inches from the Rolls. A uniformed chauffeur was standing at the side of the road, cap in hand, red in the face, soundlessly opening and closing his mouth like a gaffed fish. Edward raised his goggles, prepared to berate him for endangering his life and the dog’s. Basil had slid off the seat into the footwell, a bundle of umber fur, too bewildered to bark a protest. Edward breathed again as Basil scrambled out of the car and shook himself vigorously, seemingly none the worse for his brush with death.

‘For goodness sake, man,’ Edward said testily, ‘what the hell’s going on? Get this car off the road before someone gets killed.’

Before the chauffeur could answer a tubby, dark-skinned little man with a baby face decorated with a neat moustache bounded out from behind the Rolls, perspiring though the wind was cold.

‘Don’t blame Perkins. The damn thing suddenly stalled – overheated or something. You’re not hurt, are you? I’m most frightfully sorry.’

The owner of the Rolls, dressed in tweeds – heather mixture, Edward thought – Burberry raincoat and soft felt hat, looked as overheated as his car. He spoke Eton-and-Harrow English with a charming Indian lilt. The expression on his face – at the moment anxious – was, Edward knew, normally good-natured to the point of imbecility.

‘Sunny! It is you, is it not?’

‘M’dear fellow, I . . . Good Lord! Edward? Can it really be you? What an extraordinary thing!’

Sirpendra Behar, Maharaja of Batiala, known to his friends as Sunny, had been in Edward’s House at Eton. He was a year older than Edward and they had become great friends – a friendship cemented by a mutual love of cricket. Even at Eton Sunny had been plump but that had not prevented him being a first-class bat. Edward and he had been in the Eleven and, in Sunny’s last year, they had scored a century apiece in a memorable third-wicket stand that secured Eton the match in their annual tilt with Harrow. It was an innings still talked of – his nephew Frank had informed him – a generation later. Sunny had gone on to help establish the Ranji Trophy in 1935, playing for Baroda. His moment of triumph, however, was scoring a century on the Nawab of Pataudi’s tour of England in 1936 after which he had more or less retired from first-class cricket.

Edward had not seen much of him after they left school – Edward going up to Cambridge and Sunny returning to rule Batiala, his father having died unexpectedly. They shook hands warmly and Edward had an idea that Sunny would have embraced him but restrained himself knowing it to be ‘unEnglish’.

‘I say, Sunny, there’s going to be the most awful pile-up unless we can move your car pretty speedily. I was deuced close to killing myself and, more importantly, killing the dog. I’ll reverse the Lagonda back round the corner to warn any car that comes along that something’s not right. I’ll leave you beside it to wave people down. If I can’t get the Rolls started, your chauffeur and I can at least push it out of the way.’

Edward was no mechanic but he did know a bit about cars. However, his engineering expertise was not required. When he got into the driving seat and pressed the self-starter the engine roared into life. He drove the Rolls a few yards and parked it safely off the road. Sunny’s chauffeur explained that though it was only three months old, it had been plagued with mechanical problems – as were other Phantom IIIs. In fact, instead of having made the best car in the world as they had promised, Rolls was in danger of losing its reputation for engineering excellence. The chauffeur said it was going back to the workshop as soon as they returned to town but the Maharaja had insisted on taking it to Broadlands for the weekend to show Lord Louis Mountbatten who had particularly asked to see it. He loved fast cars and owned a Rolls himself – a Phantom II – a wedding present from his wife. It famously bore on its bonnet a silver signalman in honour of Mountbatten’s connection with the navy.

‘There we are!’ Edward said, relieved. ‘I’ve read somewhere that they have had problems with the Phantom overheating, particularly on those new German Autobahnen where one can drive at high speed for long distances. You haven’t been driving the Maharaja on autobahns, have you, Perkins?’

‘We have just returned from the Continent, sir . . .’

At that moment Sunny reappeared looking flustered and slightly ridiculous with his tie askew. It came back to Edward that if his friend had a fault it was that he wanted to be more English than the English.

‘Well done, old boy. I heard the damn thing start. What did you do?’

‘Nothing. Just my magic touch.’

‘Look, old chap,’ Sunny panted, ‘it’s most awfully good to see you again and I’m terribly grateful but I daren’t stop to chat. I promised Dickie I would be there for lunch and it’s after twelve now. Do you know the Mountbattens?’

‘You’re staying at Broadlands?’

‘Yes. Ayesha’s there already. She refuses to come in the Rolls until I get it fixed. She went down by train yesterday. But you’ve not met her, have you?’

‘No, but I would very much like to.’ Edward had been invited to the wedding but he had been in South Africa at the time. He heard it had been a tremendous affair and regretted missing it. The Maharani was said to be very beautiful and when, on her wedding day, she had paraded through Batiala on a milk-white elephant her poorest subjects had taken her for a goddess. She, like Sunny, had been educated in England, at Benenden, an exclusive boarding school for girls in Kent. Sunny’s father had understood how important it was for a state like Batiala that the Maharaja and Maharani should be able to deal with the British on their own terms. ‘I’m spending a few days with my brother at Mersham – you remember the castle, don’t you? You came down for the annual cricket match once, I seem to remember.’

‘And I was out first ball,’ Sunny said ruefully. ‘I was so humiliated but your mother was very kind and comforted me.’

‘She was a good woman,’ Edward said with feeling. ‘I miss her very much.’

‘I don’t mind admitting – I was scared of the Duke.’

‘My father scared me on occasion,’ Edward laughed, ‘but my brother is a very different man. I know he and my sister-in-law would be delighted to invite you over – both of you.’

‘That’s very good of you, Edward, and we should be very pleased to come, but there are four of us. My son, Harry, is with us. He’s at Eton, you know.’ Sunny could not hide his pride in his son. ‘That’s really why we are here in England – for the Easter holidays. And my daughter, Sunita.’

‘Well, we would be delighted to see them as well. How long did you say you would be at Broadlands?’

‘Four or five days – perhaps longer. Dickie seems very taken with Ayesha,’ Sunny giggled nervously. ‘Should I be jealous, do you think? He has a reputation as a ladies’ man.’

‘I am sure Lady Louis keeps him in order,’ Edward said, unwilling to speculate. What he could not say to Sunny was that his brother regarded Mountbatten and the ‘fast set’ in which he moved as beyond the pale. The Mountbattens were always in the newspapers, usually pictured with an expensive new car or some American film star. The Duke thought no gentleman should see his name in print unless The Times or the Morning Post carried a brief formal announcement of the birth of a son, a marriage or a death. Lady Louis – Edwina – was rumoured, no doubt unjustifiably, to have ‘affairs’. Paul Robeson, the black American singer and actor, had been mentioned as one of her admirers.

‘But Edwina’s not there – not yet anyway. She is supposed to be arriving tomorrow.’

‘But there are other guests?’

‘Yes indeed.’ It was Sunny’s turn to sound shocked. ‘I wasn’t suggesting . . .’

Edward suddenly felt the conversation had become prurient, if not vulgar, and hurried to end it. ‘I must be off, too. I will telephone. Goodbye.’

‘Thank you so much, Edward,’ Sunny said, sounding almost pathetic.

‘Glad to have been of assistance, old chap, but for God’s sake get that car checked over. It ought not to be seizing up like that. We all might have been killed. Here, Basil, it’s no good you looking at me like that. You’ll be quite safe.’ He pushed the reluctant animal into the car and patted him. ‘I’ll not drive above forty, I promise you.’

Basil gazed at him reproachfully and sank down on the seat and hid his head in his paws.

Verity was lonely and miserable. She had often been scared when reporting the civil war in Spain, notably at the siege of Toledo and then again at Guernica when she was wounded and her friend, Gerda Meyer, was killed but she had seldom been lonely. She had been surrounded by comrades-in-arms whose cause was her cause and that made it easier. Here in Vienna she was alone. Her lover, the young German aristocrat, Adam von Trott, had been kidnapped by Himmler’s thugs in front of her eyes. She had imagined Adam in some terrible prison camp but in fact it appeared that he had been bundled off to the Far East where he could cause no trouble.

She was holding in her hand a letter – the first news she had had of him for over a month and it ought to have made her happy. He was in Japan, he told her. He was well and sent his love but it was not a love letter. She did not know what to make of his breezy descriptions of the beauties of the Orient. He described climbing Mount Aso, the largest volcano in the world, but he didn’t say he thought of her when he reached the summit. Instead, lamely, she thought, he wrote that ‘it might seem strange that I should idle in this wilderness while the face of Europe is being changed’. He wanted ‘to cut loose from all attachments that are not essential’. She could only read that as referring to herself and it hurt. She dropped the letter on the table. Of course, she told herself, she wanted him to be happy but what had happened to make him forget what they had meant to each other just a few weeks earlier? She tried to be reasonable. She guessed he must believe that his mail would be read by Himmler’s agents and he probably wanted to protect her by distancing himself from her, but still . . . She picked up the letter again. He spoke of having started work on political philosophy which might take ‘longer than anticipated’ and that he might go to India and Turkey.

He was studying political philosophy in the East! Surely he should be here in Vienna where he could study the brutal reality of German political philosophy at first hand. It was rumoured that any day now the Germans would march into Austria and it would become part of Hitler’s new German Reich. It occurred to her that Adam had no reason to lament the Anschluss any more than the vast majority of Austrians who waited eagerly to greet their Führer. Adam hated the Nazis but he was a patriot.

Tears pricked her eyes. She wanted to talk to someone about Adam but who was there apart from Edward – and he was far away in England. In any case, why should he be sympathetic, she upbraided herself. She had hardly been fair to him when she threw him up for a good-looking German. It was right that she should pay for her cavalier treatment of the one person who loved her unreservedly. He would understand her feelings of betrayal and rejection because she had made him suffer as she was suffering now.

To cap it all, she was finding it difficult to make any headway with the job she had wanted so much. She did not yet speak good German and she had trouble with the soft, almost slurred Viennese vowels, so different from Adam’s. The Viennese who spoke English seemed to treat her with amused contempt which made her angry with herself as much as with them. She had had to stifle the criticisms she longed to make of their comfortable acceptance of their country’s absorption by Nazi Germany because she knew that, if she paraded her Communist beliefs, she would be deported as a troublemaker, or worse. Every day enemies of the Nazi Party ‘disappeared’. The corpses of some were washed up on the banks of the Danube. Others simply vanished.

Of the other foreign correspondents in the city, she found most to be unfriendly and unwilling to introduce her to people who could help her discover what was going on. It was understandable. Over months and even years journalists based in Vienna had painstakingly developed their own lines of communication with the powers-that-be and saw no reason why they should share them with the newcomers now flooding into the city. These established correspondents seemed, for the most part, to share the prejudices of the people among whom they worked and lived. That was another reason why it would have been so wonderful to have had Adam with her. He could have opened doors for her to sources of information every journalist would have envied – but it was not to be.

She had hoped that at least among the Jews she would have found friends. They, she thought, must see the reality of what would happen when German tanks paraded through the city centre, along the Kärntnerstrasse and stood in the Stephans-Platz outside the cathedral. And yet so many did not. They seemed to believe that Austrian Jews would be granted privileged status – that they would be spared the Nazis’ venom.

There were exceptions, she reminded herself. She had a date that evening to accompany a young Jew to a ball and she had gone to some trouble to ensure he would not be disappointed in her. They had met – rather absurdly – a week before at a thé dansant. It was fashionable in Vienna to go to the park at five o’clock to take tea and listen to the military band. This was the charming face of Vienna foreigners always fell for – Gemütlichkeit, they called it. When the music began, the young men would rise from their tables and invite ladies to dance. Verity had been surprised but not displeased when Georg had stood before her, bowed solemnly, almost clicked his heels, and invited her – in excellent English – to foxtrot.

Thinking back, she realized that he knew who she was and had decided she might be able to help him reach England but, at the time, she thought he had merely liked the look of her and she was flattered. By the end of the afternoon she had promised to help him obtain a visa and, that evening, had wired Edward for the necessary letter of welcome. She had seen enough of refugees in Spain prepared to promise anything – to do anything – to get to England to be almost inured to hard-luck stories, but this young man had not asked for her pity and she admired that. She could do very little to ameliorate the situation in which so many Jews now found themselves but what little she could do she would. Georg Dreiser was still in his twenties. He had done well at the Piaristen-Gymnasium and was now studying law at the University of Vienna and at the Konsularakademie, a diplomatic college with an international reputation.

Verity gathered that he had a foot in both political camps. He was a member of a Jewish student fraternity, politically active for the Zionist cause. He told her that he had found he had a talent for public speaking and soon had a reputation as something of a rabble-rouser. Each member of the fraternity took a so-called ‘drinking name’. Georg’s was D’Abere, a French version of the Hebrew word for ‘talker’. On the other hand, he had many friends among the Catholic nationalists. He would walk in the Vienna Woods with a group of non-Jewish friends and discuss Wagner, Karl Kraus and Nietzsche. He was highly intelligent and spoke English, French and some Italian in addition to his native Yiddish and German.

He was not conventionally good-looking. His limbs seemed all over the place and, though he was tall, he was not strong. His face was as soft and puffy as one of the Viennese cream pastries he loved so much. His nose was squashed, like a boxer’s, and his eyes set too close together but they were very bright and somehow knowing. He had what Verity could only describe as ‘grown-up eyes’. He had seen much unpleasantness in his short life and understood that there was worse to come. He was quick to tell her about himself and his family. His father was a director of an insurance company and it was a paradox that, as anti-Semitism became more pronounced, he was protected by colleagues who were supporters of Hitler and Anschluss. However, the previous year his father’s luck had run out and he was now in prison waiting to be tried on trumped-up fraud charges.

‘It has some advantages,’ Georg said drily as they attempted an Argentinian tango. ‘As a prisoner of the civil court, he is protected from being sent to a concentration camp.’

‘And you?’ Verity had inquired. ‘Are you safe?’

‘Only until Hitler walks into Austria, which could be any day now.’

‘But why didn’t you leave before?’

‘Why should I? I am an Austrian. Who has the right to tell me to give up my home, my family, my education and go into exile?’ he demanded. ‘Would you leave England if someone suddenly decides they do not like the look of your face?’

‘No, of course not, but . . .’

‘But now, yes, I must leave, but to leave I need a visa. I wondered . . . is there anyone you know in England who could write and say there is work and a little money to support me for the first few months? We are not allowed to take money out of the country and the British Embassy requires that refugees prove they will not be a burden on the state.’

It made Verity boil with anger as she imagined some starched-shirt bureaucrat deciding on a whim whether or not to allow Georg to avoid death in a concentration camp.

‘Of course!’ she said abruptly. ‘I’ll do what I can. Meet me this time next week and I will try and have something for you.’

‘You are most kind,’ Georg said, bowing over her hand. ‘You may say I shall not come quite empty-handed.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can’t say any more. I am being watched but I have information which might be useful to your government.’

Verity looked at him with disbelief. ‘Why should they watch you? Because you are a Jew?’

‘I told you, I have a somewhat – wie sagt man? – unsavoury reputation as a political activist and I have friends who interest the authorities . . .’

Verity hesitated. She wondered if Georg was a fantasist. What could this young man know which would make him dangerous to the Nazis? He saw her look and changed the subject. ‘Miss Browne, let me show you Vienna as it used to be,’ he said eagerly. ‘Let us have one last night of “Old Vienna” before it vanishes for ever.’

She looked doubtful. ‘I’ve been to the Spanish Riding School if that’s what you mean.’

‘No, no! Not that – I hate horses anyway and they hate me – nor the Hofburg – not even Schönbrunn, though I would like to take you there sometime. No, I mean an old-fashioned Vienna Ball where we can waltz to music by Strauss. There are balls and dances every night until Lent. This year,’ he added wryly, ‘it will indeed be a time for penitence. Next week is the Konsularakademie ball which the diplomatic corps and members of the government attend. It is what I think you call a “glittering occasion”.’

‘And you can go?’

‘That is part of the paradox! As a Jew I may not be welcome in certain bars and clubs but at the ball I shall be treated like any other gentleman. Nothing unpleasant – Da gibs koa Sünd! as we say here. Everyone knows my father and they know why he is in prison. I have no doubt they will do what they can to protect him.’

‘It’s a mad world!’ Verity exclaimed.

‘It is indeed. Until I am thrown into a camp I am quite acceptable in society, at least until our government surrenders to the Nazis.’

‘You think they will?’

‘There can be no doubt of it. Chancellor Schuschnigg is a good man but he cannot go against the vast majority of Austrians who wish to be part of the new German Reich. “Und ist kein Betrug in seinem Munde gefunden worden.”’

Verity furrowed her brow so he translated: ‘“And out of his mouth there came forth neither deceit nor falsehood.”’

She had not liked to snub the young man by refusing his invitation and it certainly promised to be an interesting occasion. She might glean information from people of influence, people whom, up to now, she had singularly failed to meet. But there was a problem: what was she to wear? Georg would, he said, borrow his father’s white tie and tails. There was nothing for it, she told herself, but to buy something especially for the ball. On the face of it, it was absurd to spend money on a dress she would probably only wear once but she owed it to Georg not to look out of place. And it wasn’t only a dress. She would need gloves, shoes and an evening bag and she would have to have her hair done. She suddenly felt more cheerful. She would give this young Jew something to be proud of.

She went to Spitzer for her dress. Fortunately, the manager spoke good English and, when she had explained her predicament, he was most helpful. An hour later she came out with a gown of shimmering moiré, the colour of ‘lake water’ as the manager put it, and a black evening cloak. She wished Edward was there to reassure her but the dress looked all right, she thought. Gloves she bought from Zacharias – long white kid gloves so sensuous she wanted to stroke her face with them. She found shoes at Otto Grünbaum and an evening bag – so small it would hardly take a handkerchief – exquisitely decorated with hundreds of tiny pearls. Flushed with success, she also bought a fan made from peacock feathers, which she practised opening and closing with a twist of her wrist.

Georg had. . .