THE HOURS BEFORE: A Story of Mystery and Suspense from the Belle Époque (4 page)

‘Wake up!’ cries the voice - her daughter’s voice again. And at once Deborah opens her eyes, her heart pounding with even more distress than yesterday.

Unable to relinquish her grief even in sleep, she finds herself sitting upright - the perspiration pouring from her. She knows she should not have retired to bed so early in the afternoon, but all her natural rhythms and routines have been devastated of late. Too many glasses of wine to steady her nerves upon her arrival here in Munich had also not blended well with a lack of proper nourishment - her poor churning stomach refusing to accept any food as soon as she had become exposed to all the details of the tragedy. The worst of it was to learn, even before she could consider whether she wished to see it for herself, that her daughter’s body had already been set aboard a train bound for London. It was beyond her comprehension that the authorities could have been so indifferent to her feelings. Not that she would have really wished to see it. No. Too horrible even to imagine, let alone witness for herself the destruction of her beautiful Poppy: the fair skin and rich chestnut hair, the lustrous brown eyes - all gone, all spoilt and destroyed in the terrible cruel flames that had taken her.

And yet it is still there - unmistakably the voice of Poppy, inside her head. Part of her daughter is alive within her - she who once gave her life, continuing even now to retain a vestige of it. How strange.

A glance at the clock in her hotel room tells her that she has not awoken a moment too soon, however, because her dear friend, Rachael, having taken the earliest possible train from London, is due to arrive here this very evening and might, for all Deborah knows, be down there in the foyer already. With hardly a moment to prepare, therefore, Deborah pulls on a loose gown and shawl and hurries downstairs - and sure enough there she is, the lovely Rachael, already seated in the lobby, a hat of impossibly large dimensions upon her head and an almost equally capacious portmanteau at her feet. Deborah lets out an involuntary cry at the sight of her. Thank Heaven! And a moment later they are embracing and tending to each other’s tears.

‘Dearest, why on earth was there such a delay in contacting you after the tragedy?’ Rachael demands as gently as possible, her exotic features lengthened by an expression of incredulity and sympathy as they stroll, arm-in-arm into the ground-floor restaurant and order coffee.

‘You may well ask!’ Deborah responds with exasperation, whilst dabbing with her napkin a stray tear at the corner of her eye - so relieved to be able to unburden her heart in such a liberal fashion in the company of this, one of her most closest and most enduring of friends. There is never any need to stand on ceremony with Rachael, no formalities needed. ‘I was sent a telegram, but it was mislaid,’ Deborah continues. ‘And it wasn’t even from Hugh I found out, but via his lackey - you know, Beezley. I just don’t understand why he has to continue to be so cruel. He would have been informed at least forty-eight hours ago, I’m sure, and yet ... well, somehow he managed to dissuade the police from contacting me. I just cannot believe this is all happening - I just can’t.’

‘Poor Sweetie. So sad, so sorry!’ Rachael declares and inclines her head fetchingly to one side in a gesture of commiseration - not least, it seems, in respect of Deborah’s appearance, which, due to her hurrying down, is untidy, uncorseted and without makeup of any kind.

By contrast, ‘sleek’ is the only way one could describe Rachael, with her lithe,
feline
body and glorious brunette hair - invariably pinned and wound all about her head in a tidy chignon as befits her years, for she is not young - not much different in age to Deborah herself, in fact. Dressed as extravagantly as ever, she has on this occasion at least chosen a mantle of sombre black. ‘But you must feel relieved, dearest,’ she continues, ‘I mean, about Hugh making the identification himself?’

‘Oh, yes ... yes,’ Deborah admits. ‘I shudder to think how I would have reacted. I’m sure it would have melted even his heart of stone for a moment.’

‘So perhaps he had your best interests at heart, after all?’ says Rachael, confident she might continue to touch so intimately upon all the grim details. ‘And I suppose, everyone complied simply because Hugh would be perceived as, well …’

‘The more responsible?’ Deborah suggests with some bitterness, feeling her teeth might almost be clenching as she speaks - an expression she instantly modifies as the waiter with their coffee arrives and lays everything out meticulously upon their dark mahogany tabletop. Spoons, and cream, and sugar. It seems to take an age.

‘No, no, of course not, Sweetie. I didn’t mean that,’ Rachael is quick to respond once the man has gone, and with a look of some contrition as she leans across from the other side of the table and, placing a gloved hand on her friend’s sleeve, whispers, ‘It’s just because of the way the divorce was presented. You know what it’s like, the way your reputation follows you if you’re a woman. It’s not your fault.’

Deborah nods her agreement, her face showing a certain resignation mingled with gratitude. Rachael is right. Everyone understands it had been no ordinary divorce - what with everything being conducted in the public eye; the incompatibility of the two combatants, the legal wrangling that had become something of a running saga in the papers and representing the eternal conflict between two very different creeds - between the hard-nosed businessman and the tender-hearted mystic; the pillar of society versus the queen of gossip. The public loved it. And as for the authorities - well, it was easy to anticipate whose side they would come down on.

‘Um … yes. That was certainly a battle I could never win,’ Deborah concedes. ‘I was not an adulteress, however - I do hope everyone realises that,’ she adds, sniffing back the tears and endeavouring to replace her sorrow with anger, for the recollection of it still affects her deeply. ‘But then how else is one to get the business done? Until the law changes, inevitably something sordid must be proclaimed on one side or the other. Oh, I certainly discovered then how important it was to get yourself a good lawyer - only too late, of course, far too late to save Poppy from his clutches. And it’s the same now. It’s happening all over again. I just don’t understand how Hugh can take charge of everything like this, and so quickly. He’s taken her ... taken my Poppy away from me again,
this time forever.
’

Hot, desperate tears engulf her once more, her distress fortunately unseen in the sparingly lit room. It is all so dreadful, and it is some time before the other woman is able to console her friend and to stem the flow.

The following morning, having eaten well at last, and with the worst of the grief and desolation having become for Deborah a fraction less compelling, she and Rachael resolved to go together to speak with officers at the local police department - though it is only now, upon the completion of that particularly odious mission, as the two women journey towards the railway station in the peace and seclusion of their carriage, the gentle cantor of the horses taking them on their way, that she is finally able to piece together the whole interview and to make some sense of it. How glad she was that Rachael had been there, because without her friend’s support and companionship, she would scarcely have been able to comprehend the half of what was being said - the chief police officer insisting on speaking through an interpreter much of the time, and his voice having to compete with the constant tap-tapping of the telegraph in an adjoining room.

Apparently, the awful fire had taken place over three days ago, but it had not become news until much later - and probably wouldn’t have made the papers at all had it not been revealed by Reuters in London that one of the victims had parents prominent in public life. As for the local police, they had been keeping an eye on proceedings at this particular location for some time - concerned over an increasing number of strangers coming and going around the village where the tragedy had occurred. Local inhabitants reported small groups of young men and women, student types, who would attend a so-called recreational centre for a few days at a time - but all uncommonly quiet and unobtrusive young people, hardly visiting local shops, never to be seen in the taverns.

The group itself, Deborah was told, call themselves the Society for the Teachings of Redemptive Mercies, an eccentric, pseudo-philosophical organisation who believe the world is about to come to an end with a major cataclysmic event, and that only a certain number of perfected beings initiated into the Society will have any hope of survival. The precise location of the organisation itself remains a mystery, however. There have been some communications detected via telegraph to recipients in Switzerland or sometimes France, but as yet there seemed little likelihood of anyone being traced, let alone apprehended.

‘He obviously thought the poor kids were completely deranged, anyway, and deserved everything that was coming to them,’ Deborah observes bitterly. Clothed, as she must be, in unseasonable black, and with a dark lace veil beneath her hat shielding the upper part of her face, her appearance elicits glances of sympathy and puzzlement as they alight from their carriage at the station and together, in the company of a sturdy porter carrying their cases, climb aboard their train.

They are booked on the overnight sleeper to London later this evening, but first they must visit, if only briefly, the apartment Poppy had rented close to the university in Heidelberg - not a huge distance from Munich, and so they elect to spend the greater part of their journey in the restaurant car, that special place of repose and excellence populated by those who, with their impeccable deportment and manners have succeeded over the years in transforming the once tedious and hazardous business of travel into something akin to an art form. Despite being almost full, it proves a hushed and comparatively restful environment following the noise of the city. And yet with every mile nearer to that frightful and uncertain destination, there remains, for Deborah, and despite her companion’s best efforts to make it otherwise, only one real topic of conversation.

‘You know what I just cannot understand,’ says Deborah in a complaining voice, as if thinking aloud, ‘is how Hugh always manages to stay one step ahead of me. He always seems to know where I am, and what I am doing. It’s almost as if he has a spy in the camp somewhere.’

‘Well, maybe he has,’ Rachael suggests rather shockingly. ‘After all, you have me, don’t you - planted in
his
camp?’

‘Yes, but that’s different - you happen to work in his office. You weren’t deliberately put there to spy. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything so underhanded. But I am quite sure that Hugh has.’

But to this Rachael merely smiles, as if to disarm the situation. Her look is as kindly as ever but also perhaps touched just a little with exasperation, that her friend should continue to be so preoccupied with conspiracies - and noticing this, Deborah prudently says no more.

Once arrived at Heidelberg, a most picturesque town perched on the banks of the river Neckar, and a place Deborah herself had come to know fondly during the days when she had been searching for accommodation here for her daughter, they know they must resist any temptation to explore the sights, and instead take a carriage from the station directly to Poppy’s apartment. Situated on the third floor of a drab, undistinguished building on the southern side of the river, it is a destination that has until this afternoon been merely an entry in Deborah’s address book. And seeing it now for the first time, it is with a profound sadness that she thinks of her daughter returning here each evening to make her home in such a dull and undistinguished place, so different to the fine-looking building with its charming housekeeper Deborah had found for her at the start of her studies. No doubt it would all be a bit more lively during term time, she reflects as they reach the dark and shabby landing at the top of the stairs and where, perhaps sensing her friend’s disquiet as they open the apartment door with the key Poppy had always insisted her mother keep, Rachael gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze by way of encouragement. This is not going to be easy, they know. But nothing could have prepared them for what they discover next.

A tall, scruffy young fellow, of indeterminate age, in a shabby suit with a dirty wing collar and frayed tie is standing right there inside the narrow, dingy hallway - a blend of surprise and annoyance on his gaunt, stubbly face, which is distinguished only by being the receptacle of a gold ring inserted into the lobe of the right ear, like a gypsy.