Funeral In Blue Part 21

Beck's character, not his medical skills. We have no doubt of them.

You have given them to us abundantly over the last few days." His impatience and lack of sympathy were only too apparent.

"Yes, my lord, of course," Pendreigh conceded. He turned to Thorpe.

"You have always selected your staff with the utmost care, not only for their medical skill but for their moral character as well, as is your charge. May the court a.s.sume that in keeping Dr. Beck you did not alter those high standards, or make any exception?" Thorpe was caught. He had been planning to d.a.m.n Kristian, to taste a very public revenge for past defeats, but he could not do so now without ruining himself. The anger of it, the momentary indecision even at this date as he saw his victory sliding away, was all so clear in his face Hester could have spoken his thoughts aloud for him.

"Mr. Thorpe?" Pendreigh frowned. "It is surely an easy question? Did you maintain the same high standards as you always have, in keeping Dr.

Beck in your employ and allowing him to operate on the sick and vulnerable men and women who came to your hospital for help... or did you for some personal reason, allow a man you did not trust to keep such a position?"

"No! Of course I didn't!" Thorpe snapped, then instantly realised he had been forced into committing himself. He flushed dark red.

"Thank you," Pendreigh accepted, moving backwards and indicating that Mills might now question the witness.

Mills stood up, dapper and confident. He opened his mouth to speak to Thorpe.

Hester froze. Thorpe was bursting to undo what he had said, his eyes pleading with Mills somehow to create the chance for him.

The entire room was silent. If only it mattered as much as it seemed to! Whatever Thorpe said would make little real difference. It was emotional; the facts were not touched.

"Mr. Thorpe," Mills began.

"Yes?" Thorpe leaned a little forward over the rail of the witness box, staring down at Mills below him.

"Thank you for sparing us your time," Mills said flatly. "I don't think I can ask you to add to what you have said. Your loyalty does you credit." It was sarcastic. It was also a tactical error.

"It is not loyalty!" Thorpe said furiously. "I loathe the man! But personal feelings did not alter my judgement that he is an excellent and dedicated surgeon, and a man of high moral character! Otherwise I would not have kept him in the hospital." He did not have to add that if he could have found an excuse to dismiss him he would have taken it, it was only too unpleasantly evident in his furious bright eyes and snarling mouth.

"Thank you," Pendreigh murmured, half rising in his seat. "I have no further questions, my lord."

Chapter Twelve.

"What did you learn from the father?" Ferdi asked him eagerly on the following morning as they sat over coffee in one of the numerous cafes.

Vienna served more kinds of coffee than Monk knew existed, with or without chocolate added, with or without cream, sometimes whipped cream, or hot milk, or laced with rum. This morning the wind scythed in from the Hungarian plains, touching his skin like a knife, and Monk felt an even deeper coldness inside him. He had ordered coffee with chocolate and thick cream for both of them.

Ferdi was waiting for an answer. Monk had wrestled long into the night, worrying how much to tell him of the truth he was now certain of, even though he had no proof, and no one who would testify. Did it really have anything to do with Elissa's death?

"Herr Monk?" Ferdi prompted, putting down his coffee and staring across the table.

Monk needed Ferdi's help. "He didn't exactly tell me," he answered slowly. "He knew many things about the time, the people, but some of them were told him under the seal of the confessional."

"So you learned nothing?" Ferdi said, his young face filling with disappointment. "I ... I was sure you had discovered something terrible. You seem... different, as if all kinds of things had changed... feelings .. He stopped, confused and a little embarra.s.sed that he had intruded on inner pain without thinking.

Monk smiled very slightly and stared at the cream slowly melting into his coffee. "You can guess this much from my face, and my manner?" Ferdi hesitated. "Well ... I thought I could."

"You can," Monk agreed. "And if I did not deny it, and you asked me questions, made good guesses as to what it was I know, would you say that I had told you anything?" He looked up and met Ferdi's eyes.

"Oh!" Ferdi's face filled with understanding. "You mean the father couldn't tell you, but you know from his manner, his feelings, that you were right! I see." His eyes clouded. "And what was it? It was hard, wasn't it? Something terrible about your friend Dr. Beck?"

"No, only slightly shabby, and he knew it and was ashamed. What was tragic and destructive..." he could not find a word powerful enough for the darkness he felt, '.. . was about Elissa von Leibnitz. We didn't live here in those days, we haven't stood in her place so we shouldn't judge easily and, G.o.d knows, I have done many things of which I am ashamed "What?" Ferdi sounded almost frightened. "What did she do?" Monk looked at him very steadily. "She was in love with Dr. Beck, and she knew that the Jewish girl Hanna Jakob was in love with him also, and she too was brave and generous... and perhaps she was funny or kind ... I don't know. Elissa betrayed her to the authorities, who tortured her to death." He saw the colour drain from Ferdi's skin leaving his face ashen and his eyes hollow. "She expected Hanna to break, to tell them where the others were, and she saw to it that they escaped long before they could have been caught," he went on. "She believed Hanna would crack, and only be hurt, not killed. I don't think she wanted anyone killed -just broken... shamed." Ferdi stared at him, tears suddenly br.i.m.m.i.n.g and sliding down his cheeks. He stumbled for words, and lost them.

"We all do bad things," Monk said slowly, pus.h.i.+ng his fingers through his hair. "She may have repented of it, or found it impossible to live, except with terrible pain. It seems that after that no risk was too great for her, no mission too dangerous. We can't say whether it was glory or redemption she was looking for ... or simply a way out."

"What are you going to do?" Ferdi asked, his voice a whisper.

"Finish my coffee," Monk replied. "Then I'm going to look for Hanna Jakob's family. Father Geissner said they lived somewhere in Leopoldstadt, he thinks, on Heinestra.s.se." Ferdi straightened himself up. "It shouldn't be too difficult. At least we know where to start." Monk had already considered whether to send a letter introducing himself, once they found the address, but he had already been in Vienna for ten days, and he had no idea what had been happening in London. He could not afford the delay. Also it would give Herr Jakob the opportunity to refuse to see him, and he could not afford that either.

He drank the last of his coffee and stood up. Ferdi left his and stood up also, facing towards the door and the wind outside.

It took them a surprisingly long time to trace the Jakob family.

They had moved, and it was afternoon the lamp lighters were out in the streets, the lights flickering on like a ribbon of jewels in the windy darkness when they finally arrived at the right house on the Malzga.s.se.

The house itself was inconspicuous in an area of very similar several-storey dwellings. A smartly uniformed maid answered the door and Monk gave her the speech already prepared in his mind. Through Ferdi he told her that he was a friend of someone who had fought with their daughter, Hanna, in the uprising thirteen years ago, and whose admiration for her had altered his life. Since Monk was in Vienna he wished to call by and carry greetings, and if possible take news of them back to London. Not speaking German, he had brought a young friend to interpret for him. He hoped it did not sound as stiff as he felt.

The maid looked a trifle startled, as if he had come at an inappropriate time, but she did not rebuff him. He had thought that half-past four on a weekday afternoon was quite suitable for visiting.

Certainly it would have been in London. It was an hour when women would be receiving, and he thought Hanna's mother might be the one to have observed more of Kristian, and certainly more of the relations.h.i.+ps between people than her father. She might well invite him to stay until Herr Jakob returned. It was far too early to disturb anyone at their evening meal.

Monk looked around the room where they had been asked to wait. It was warm and comfortable, decorated in excellent taste, a little old-fas.h.i.+oned, but the furniture was of fine quality and his policeman's eye estimated the value of the miniatures on the walls to be higher than one would find in most private houses, even of the well-to-do. The larger pictures over the fireplace he thought to be very pleasant, but of less worth, either artistically or intrinsically.

The maid returned and said that Herr and Frau Jakob would see them both, if they would follow her.

Going into the parlour Monk had a sudden and sharp awareness of being in a different culture. This was not Austria as he had seen it it was something intimate and far older. He glanced at Ferdi and saw the same look in his face, surprise and slight discomfort. It was a timeless room for family, not strangers. There were two beautiful, tall candles burning. Herr Jakob was a slender man with dark, s.h.i.+ning eyes, a black cap on the crown of his head.

With a jolt of embarra.s.sment, sc.r.a.ps of memory came back to Monk, and he realised why his visit had occasioned such surprise. This was Friday evening, near sundown, the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath.

He could hardly have chosen a worse time to interrupt a family meal, and a religious celebration. It was an act of the greatest courtesy that they had received him at all.

"I'm sorry..." he said awkwardly. "I have been travelling and I forgot what day it is. I am sorry, Frau Jakob. This is an intrusion.

I can return tomorrow ... or ... or is that even worse?" How could he explain to them his urgency without prejudicing anything they might tell him?

Herr Jakob looked at him very directly, his eyes unflinching, but his deep emotion was impossible to miss. "You said that you are here on behalf of a friend of my daughter, Hanna. If that is true, Herr Monk, then you are welcome at any time, even on Shabbat." He had replied in English, heavily accented but easily understandable. Monk need not have brought Ferdi after all Monk framed his answer carefully. "It is true, sir." Only afterwards did he even realise he had deferred to this man by using the word 'sir'. It had come naturally. "I am a friend of Kristian Beck, who is at present in serious difficulty, and I am in Vienna to see if I can be of some help to him. It is urgent, or I would more willingly delay disturbing you."

"I am sorry to hear he is in difficulties," Herr Jakob replied. "He is a brave man who was willing to risk all for his beliefs, which is the most any of us can do."

"But his beliefs were different from yours?" Monk said quickly, then wondered why he had.

"No," Herr Jakob replied with a faint smile. "Politically at least, they were the same." Monk did not need to ask about the other side of ethical values. He had met Josef and Magda Beck, and seen the depth and fervour of their Catholicism. He had also seen that, for whatever reason, they countenanced in their house friends who were profoundly anti-Jewish.

Whatever their beliefs, their words tipped over from discrimination into persecution. The first allowed the second, and therefore was party to it, even if only by silence. A sudden memory flashed into his mind, sharp as spring sunlight in the rectory front room, the vicar himself standing quoting John Milton to a twelve-year-old Monk, teaching him great English literature. "They also serve who only stand and wait." But now it came differently to his mind. "They also sin who only stand and watch." He came back to the present candlelit room in Vienna with the daylight fading rapidly beyond the windows, and this quiet couple waiting for him to say something to make sense of his visit here, and their courtesy in receiving both him and Ferdi, and welcoming them on this of all days. Anything but the truth would insult them all, he as much as they, and perhaps Kristian and Hanna as well.

"Did you know Elissa von Leibnitz?" he asked.

"Yes," Jakob answered. There was profound feeling in his face and in the timbre of his voice, but Monk was unable to read it. Had they resented her, known that their daughter had been picked for the errand that cost her her life, rather than Elissa, because Elissa, the Aryan Catholic, was valued more, her life held more important than Hanna, the Jewess? Immeasurably worse than that, did they know or guess that she had been betrayed to a pointless death? But he had left himself no way to retreat.

"Did you know that Kristian married her?"

"Yes, I knew that." Monk could feel the heat burning his face. He was ashamed for people he had not even known, far less shared acts or judgements with, and he felt tarred with the same brush. He was aware of Ferdi next to him and that perhaps he felt the same embarra.s.sment.

"Will you eat with us?" Frau Jakob asked softly, also in English. "The meal is nearly ready." Monk was touched, and oddly, he was also afraid. There was a sense of tradition, of belonging in this quiet room, which attracted him more than he was able to cope with, or to dismiss as irrelevant to him. He wanted to refuse, to make some excuse to come back at another time, but there was no other time. Kristian's trial would begin any day, or might already have begun, and he was no real step nearer to the truth of who had killed Elissa, or why. Certainly he had nothing to take back to Callandra.

He glanced at Ferdi, then back at Frau Jakob. "Thank you," he accepted.

She smiled and excused herself to attend to matters in the kitchen.

The meal was brought in, a slow-cooked stew in a deep, earthenware pot, and served with prayers and thanksgiving, which included the servants who seemed to join in as a matter of custom. Only after that was the conversation resumed. A peace had settled in the room, a sense of timelessness, a continuity of belief which spanned the millennia. Some of these same words must have been spoken over the breaking of bread centuries before the birth of Christ, with the same reverence for the creation of the earth, for the release of a nation from bondage, and above all the same certainty of the G.o.d who presided over all things.

These people knew who they were and understood their ident.i.ty. Monk envied them that, and it frightened him. He noticed that Ferdi also was moved by it and disturbed, because it reached something in him older than conscious thought or teaching.

"What is it that we can do for Kristian, or Elissa?" Herr Jakob asked.

Monk spoke the truth without even considering otherwise. "Elissa was killed... murdered..." He disregarded their shock. "Kristian has been charged, because he appears to have had motive, and he cannot prove that he was elsewhere. I don't believe he would have done such a thing, no matter what the provocation, but I have no evidence to put forward in his defence." Herr Jakob frowned. "You say "provocation", Herr Monk. What is it that you refer to?"

"She was gambling, and losing far more than he could afford," Monk answered.

Herr Jakob did not look surprised. "That is sad, and dangerous, but perhaps not impossible to understand in a woman who had known the pa.s.sion and danger of revolution, and exchanged it for the tranquillity of domestic life."

"Domestic life should be enough," Frau Jakob spoke for the first time.

"To give of yourself is sufficient for the deepest happiness. There are always those who need. There is the community... and, of course, no matter what age they are, your children always need you, even if they pretend otherwise." The sadness was only momentary in her face, the memory of her daughter who was beyond her help.

"Elissa had no children," Monk explained.

"And she was not one of us," Herr Jakob added gently. "Perhaps in England they do not have a community like ours." He turned to Monk.

"But I agree with you. I cannot imagine Kristian meaning to harm her." The nature of the killing sprang sharply to Monk's mind. Elissa's death, at least, could have been accidental, the act of a man who had not realised his own strength. But Sarah Mackeson's had been a deliberate murder. Quickly he explained it to them, seeing the revulsion and the grief in their faces. He heard Ferdi's sharply indrawn breath, but did not look at him.

Frau Jakob glanced at her husband.

He shook his head. "Even so," he said grimly, "I cannot believe it.

Not the second woman."

"What?" Monk demanded, fear biting inside him. "What is it?" Frau Jakob looked to her husband, and he to her.

"For G.o.d's sake, his life could depend on it!" Monk said with rising panic, knowing he was failing and seeing his last chance slip away.

"What do you know?" Was it the betrayal? Had it after all not been the secret Father Geissner had believed?

"I cannot see if it will help, and perhaps it will make things worse," Herr Jakob said at last, his eyes filled with a sorrow that seemed too harsh and too deep for what Monk had told him, even the murder of a woman he might have admired, and the possibility that a man he had most certainly regarded highly could have been responsible.

"I need to know it anyway," Monk said in the heavy silence. "Tell me." Beside him Ferdi gulped.

Herr Jakob sighed. "The history of our race is full of seeking, of homecoming, and of expulsion," he said, looking not at Monk but at some point in the white linen tablecloth, and some vast arena of the world in his vision. "Again and again we find ourselves strangers in a land that fears us, and in the end hates us. We are permanent exiles. In Egypt, in Babylon, and across the world." Monk held his patience with difficulty. It was the pa.s.sion of feeling that stilled his interruption rather than any regard for the words.

"We have been strangers in Europe for more than a thousand years," Jakob went on. "And still we are strangers today, hated by many, even behind their smiling faces and their courtesy. We have lost some of our people to the fear, the exclusion, the unspoken dislike." Frau Jakob leaned forward a little as if to interrupt.

"I know," he said, looking at her and shaking his head a little. "Herr Monk does not want a lesson in our history, but it is necessary to understand." He turned to Monk. "You see, many families have changed their names, their way of life, even abandoned the knowledge of our fathers and embraced the Catholic faith, sometimes in order to survive, at other times simply to be accepted, to give their children a better chance." In spite of himself, Monk understood that, even if he did not admire it.

Jakob saw that in his eyes, and nodded. "The Baruch family was one such."

"Baruch?" Monk repeated, not knowing what he meant.

"Almost three generations ago," Jakob said.

Suddenly Monk had a terrible premonition what Jakob was going to say.

Jakob saw it in his eyes. "Yes," he said softly. "They changed their name to Beck, and became Roman Catholic." Monk was stunned. It was almost too difficult to believe, and yet not for an instant could he doubt it. It was monstrous, farcical, and it all made a hideous sense. It was a denial of ident.i.ty, of birthright, of the faith that had endured for thousands of years, given up not for a change of conviction, but for survival, to accommodate their persecutors and become one of them.

And yet had he been in the same circ.u.mstances, with wife and children to protect, honesty told him he could not swear he would have acted differently. Not for oneself... perhaps, but for the parent who had grown old and frightened, desperately vulnerable, for the child who trusted you and for whom you had to make the decisions, with life or death as a result... that was different.

One question beat in his brain above all others. "Did Kristian know?" he demanded.

"No," Jakob said with a rueful smile. "Elissa knew. Hanna was the one who told her. She had a friend whose grandfather was a rabbi, and interested in all the old records. I think she wanted Elissa to know that it was she who was the one who did not belong, not Hanna. But no one told Kristian. Elissa protected him more than once. She was a remarkable woman. I am very sorry indeed to hear that she is dead...

still more that it was the result of murder, not accident. But I do not believe that Kristian would do such a thing." Monk took a deep breath. Hanna's family did not know of the betrayal.

His throat was suddenly tight with relief and his next words were hoa.r.s.e. "Not even if she told him this now, without warning, perhaps to heighten the obligation to her?" Jakob's face darkened. "I don't know," he said softly. "I think not.

But people do strange things when they are deeply distressed, out of the character we know, even that they know of themselves. I hope not." Monk stayed a little longer, enjoying the comfort and the strange, alien certainty of the room with its millennia-old ritual and memories of history which was to him only faint from old Bible stories. It was like a step outside the daily world into another reality. He envied Herr Jakob his belief, dearly as it had been bought.

At about nine o'clock Monk thanked them and he and Ferdi excused themselves. Tomorrow Monk must face Max Niemann.

Outside in the street it was freezing. The pavements glistened with films of ice in the pools of light from the streetlamps. Monk glanced sideways at Ferdi and saw the emotion raw in him. In a few hours he had been hurled through a torrent of pa.s.sion and loss beyond anything his life had prepared him for, and seen it in a race he had been taught to despise. It had been instilled in him that they were different, in some indescribable way less. And he had been touched by their dignity and their pain more deeply than he could control. Even if he could not have put it into such simple words, he was inwardly aware that their culture was the source of his own. It stirred a knowledge in him too fundamental to be ignored.

Monk wanted to comfort him, a.s.sure him. But more than that he wanted Ferdi to remember what he felt this moment as they walked, heads down in the darkened street, feeling the ice of the wind on their faces. He wanted him never to deny it within himself, or bend or turn to suit society. It would be yet another betrayal. He had not the excuse of ignorance any more.

He remained silent because he did not know what to say.

By the time Monk was face to face with Max Niemann at last, he had decided exactly what he was going to ask him. He already knew a great deal about Niemann, his heroism during the uprising, his love for Elissa, and how generously he had reacted when she married Kristian instead. From his outward behaviour it was not difficult to believe he had largely got over his own pa.s.sion for her and it had resolved into a genuine friends.h.i.+p for both Elissa and Kristian. He had never married, but that could have been due to a number of reasons. It was not so long ago that Monk himself had been quite sure that he would never marry, or if he did it would be someone quite unlike Hester. He had been certain he wanted a gentle, feminine woman who would comfort him, yield to him, admire his strength and be blind to his weaknesses. That gave him a wry laughter now! How little he had known himself! How desperately lonely that would have made him, like a man staring into a looking-gla.s.s, and seeing only his own reflection.

But then he did know himself little, for only five years, and what he knew were strands worked out by deduction and sharp, sometimes ugly flashes of disconnected memory.

He followed Max Niemann from his work as he strolled along the Canovaga.s.se towards the open stretch of the Karlsplatz. It was not an ideal place for the conversation he needed to have, but he could not afford to wait any longer. In London the trial might already have started. It was that urgency which impelled him to approach Max Niemann in the cafe where he sat listening to the chatter, and the clink of gla.s.ses.