The Tin Princess Read online

  Then the Austrians raised a difficulty. Their chief negotiator insisted on raising the amount of nickel Razkavia sold to them from two hundred to three hundred and fifty tons per year. Becky saw the Germans bristle, but at that point they broke for luncheon. Adelaide gave a quiet order to Count Thalgau, who spoke to a footman, and when they went into the Banqueting Hall, who should be sitting next to Her Majesty but the Austrian Minister of Finance. He was very different from the impressionable German, and at first Adelaide seemed to find it hard to play him; in any case, the head of the table in full view of all the guests wasn't the place for outright flirting.

  Eventually, with the Charlotte a la Parisienne, there came an opening. Adelaide had turned the conversation to the Minister's life outside his profession. Was he fond of music, for example? Vienna was a great musical centre... Rather stiffly he mentioned hunting. Becky saw Adelaide sit forward just a little, intently. Hunting? She longed to know about the hunt. What should she hunt first? How should she begin? Within a minute the Minister had forgotten his luncheon and was speaking so lyrically about the joys of the chase that Becky felt she ought to set her translation to music and score it for horns. Adelaide listened, prompting with a question here, a comment there, and Becky knew she had him; and sure enough, during the afternoon session it emerged that the forests surrounding the nickel mines were exceptionally well supplied with game of all kinds, and that to increase the production of ore would involve driving a new road through the mountains and ruining the hunting for ever.

  That cast a new light on the prospects for expansion. There was plenty of ore left, but new methods of extracting it would need to be developed - perhaps with the advice of the Imperial Institute of Mining in Vienna... The Austrian Minister was eager to help.

  Becky marvelled at the change that had come over the sullen, bored, overdressed, illiterate girl she'd met only a few months before. That Adelaide would have sneered and pouted and sulked; this one was patient, and gracious, and witty, and implacable. Becky, a genuinely modest person, did not think for one moment that any of the credit for that change was due to herself. By the end of the day, she sensed that a vast alteration had come about, not only in her view of Adelaide, but also in the history of Razkavia, for the Great Powers were discussing amicably something over which they might have gone to war; and there was not the slightest hint that Razkavia's future was anything but secure.

  However, there remained the need to get that security guaranteed, and that was to be the subject of the next day's talks. Becky was nearly dead on her feet; she went straight to bed, her throat sore, her head drumming with exhaustion, and slept as she'd never slept before. She was doing a job, a complex and important job; she was needed; she was utterly happy.

  Streets with no names, alleys with no ends, little squares that invited you in and then concealed the way out... The students of the Richterbund could trace a subtle argument through the dense pages of Hegelian philosophy, but live detection demanded a different kind of cunning. The search went on through the first day of the talks, fruitlessly. The command post in the Cafe Florestan was relieved three times, and a map of the city was spreading further and further over the table, one bit of paper pasted to the next as it was filled in and searched and found wanting. They turned up every conceivable variation on Paradise, Paris, Parallel, Paraguay, Parasol, Paralysis; on Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and anyone else vaguely connected with alchemy; on gold, and names with gold in them; on Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, that being the full name of the great Paracelsus himself; and got nowhere.

  As darkness fell, Jim and Karl wandered out on to the old bridge and leaned on the stone balustrade overlooking the river.

  "Parapet," said Karl.

  "Parakeet."

  "Parabolic sections. What are we going to do when we find her, Jim? Arrest her?"

  "No. The police would bungle it, and I'm not sure of Count Thalgau any more. What I thought was that we might offer to help her."

  "What?"

  "Or pretend to. We go to her and say, 'Look, you want Leopold out, we'll help you rescue him.' He's as good as helpless; he needs someone to look after him, and Frau Busch has had a stroke, and can't move or speak, so it'll have to be Carmen Ruiz. She knows what sort of state he's in, after all. And she knows where he is and how well he's guarded. She couldn't spring him on her own. She might have one accomplice - that fellow Herr Egger thought was the photographer - but for a job like this she needs a proper troop. She needs us."

  "We use him as bait to catch her, you mean?"

  "Exactly. And once we've got both of them, we can fix that bastard Godel; we can put her under lock and key; we can find some proper care for Leopold; we can tie the whole thing up. So that's what we'll do. Have you got a better plan?"

  "No, I haven't. Did you sleep last night, by the way?"

  "No, come to think of it." Jim yawned widely.

  "Hadn't you better go and get some rest? You won't be fit for anything, least of all fighting in a tunnel. We'll keep on looking. If we find her before the morning, I'll send a message."

  Jim clapped him on the shoulder.

  "Good lad," he said. "I'll give Fraulein Winter your regards, shall I? She took quite a shine to you the other day. I'll be back at the cafe first thing in the morning."

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE LITTLE GLASS GLOBE

  The weather was beginning to change. A depression over central Europe had brought cold winds in from Russia, with the first snow-flurries of the winter. There was no pale sunlight shafting down through the Council Chamber windows on the second day of the tripartite talks.

  Becky had woken after a deep and confusing sleep, in which she was being held prisoner by three identical Spanish women. Jim burst in like D'Artagnan with sword and plumed hat and a ridiculous false beard which he claimed he wore to keep off the mosquitoes. She began to tell him crossly that he was confusing mousquetaire with moustique, but he wouldn't listen, so she shook him, and woke to find herself struggling with the maid. It felt as if only a minute had passed since she'd gone to bed.

  Bath, breakfast, gargle, and back to the Council Chamber. Despite the grey sky outside, the good mood of the previous day was still intact; it was as if some enchantment had been laid over the participants, to make them jovial and forgiving, keen to accommodate one another's needs and search actively for ways to overcome their objections. Becky, at the centre of everything, saw more closely than anyone how much of the enchantment was Adelaide's, hers the good humour diffused through the room, the mood of chivalry evoked and rewarded by her subtle grace. During luncheon Becky wondered whether a man could have done this, and answered her own question: No. But did that mean that Adelaide's achievement was due entirely to her charm? Could any beautiful women bring about a treaty of this importance by simpering and flirting? Of course not. It wasn't her charm that was doing the work: it was her game-player's intelligence, her native stubbornness and wit. Her beauty was a card in her hand; it was right to use it. Becky, not beautiful herself, felt no envy, only admiration.

  Late in the afternoon, a student entered the Cafe Florestan and came up to the three tables where the map was growing. Battered and crumpled and crinkled and blotched, it spread out in front of Anton and the two dispirited students with him like the dirtiest tablecloth in the world.

  "I'm not sure..." began the student diffidently. "There's a little square with a fountain full of fallen leaves, and a marble statue, and I think the statue might be Paracelsus. It's like that picture of him in the Museum, anyway. It doesn't say."

  "Where is it?" said Anton, reaching wearily for his pen.

  "Well, it's ... kind of..." said the student, bending to try and make sense of the map. "There. Sort of. Down a little alley. It's called Hohenheim-Platz. I could take you there..."

  "Hohenheim-Platz?"

  "That was ..." began one of the others.

  "That was him!" said a second.

  "I reckon you've got it!
Have a rum! Have two rums! Karl and Jim will be back in five minutes. You can drink two rums in five minutes, can't you?"

  And thirty minutes after that, the student, only slightly fuddled, showed Jim and Karl the little square. It was so small it was almost a courtyard; the great plane tree arched over everything in it, including the little fountain, now choked with leaves, and the marble statue of a brooding, choleric-looking man wrapped in a robe and glowering at an open book.

  There was only one house in the square, the other sides being formed by the wall of a cemetery, the side of a church, and the back of a law-stationer's warehouse. Jim tapped his teeth with a thumbnail, thinking.

  "Better make sure there's not a back way out," he said. "Don't stare at the house; sit on the edge of the fountain and sketch the statue or something. I'll be back in five minutes."

  And he was, with a large bunch of roses. Karl raised his eyebrows.

  "She's an actress," said Jim, "and I know actresses. They need attention and flattery. So do actors. I mean really need it, just as you and I need air to breathe. These flowers will get us inside, you'll see."

  He scribbled a note, pinned it to the roses, and pulled the doorbell of the dark, narrow house. After a minute a dingy housemaid opened the door.

  Jim handed her the flowers, and said, "For the Spanish lady who's living here. Just take them up to her; there's a message, too."

  She opened her mouth to say something, changed her mind, shrugged.

  "We'll wait," said Jim.

  She nodded, and shut the-door. Ten minutes went by, during which time Jim flicked pebbles into the fountain, fished them out again, made a little pyramid of them on the edge, and practised golf strokes with his stick over the cobbles.

  Finally the door opened again. The maid said, "Please come in. Fraulein Gonzalez will see you now."

  "Gonzalez, now," muttered Jim to Karl, and leaving the other student to keep guard outside, they followed maidservant up the dark, cabbage-scented staircase to a door on the second-floor landing. Jim had his hand on the pistol in his pocket.

  The maid knocked, opened, and said, "Your visitors, Fraulein," before standing aside to let them enter.

  Carmen Ruiz was standing beside the only armchair, holding the roses in her arms.

  Even if he hadn't known she was an actress, Jim would have suspected it from the way she held herself, from the tilt of her head and the power of her dark, expressive eyes. Her black hair was pulled back tightly from her forehead and elaborately arranged behind; her eyes were rimmed with kohl, her lips meticulously rouged. On a stage the effect would have been dramatic, but in this narrow little room in the grey light of late afternoon, with the fireplace empty and one dirty teacup beside a little purse on the table next to the chair, the impression was desolate. She was wearing a frayed and crumpled gown, and her shoes were dusty.

  She was shivering. For a moment he thought it was from cold.

  "Who are you?" she said in German considerably more approximate than Jim's. "Your name means nothing to me. What do you want?"

  "We want to help you get Prince Leopold out of the grotto," said Jim.

  A moment's shocked silence; and then she flung the flowers aside, and sprang at him like a tigress. Her teeth were bared, her nails reaching for his eyes; she was all attack, all hatred, unreflecting and instinctual. If he hadn't moved she would have torn him to pieces and drunk the blood, or so it seemed; but he was an instinctive fighter too, and he sidestepped easily enough, tripping her and sending her crashing to the floor.

  She sprang and turned at once, but he was ready: before she could leap again, he had the pistol in his hand. Even her passion didn't stop her registering that. She crouched, blazing-eyed, trembling at a pitch of tension, while Karl watched open-mouthed.

  "Sit down," said Jim. "Let's pretend we're civilized. I want to know more about you, Senora Ruiz. Or Menendez. Or Gonzalez. But at the moment I've got all the power, and you've got none. Do as I say and sit down."

  "English," she said. "You are English."

  "That's right." She still hadn't moved. Jim indicated the chair, and reluctantly, proudly, she got up and walked to it, turning magnificently before sitting down. She was breathing deeply, her bosom heaving under the red silk dress, her mouth pursed in scarlet scorn.

  "She is English," she went on, her voice filled with poison. "That little nobody, that bit of London scum, that pretty nothing. That should be me in her place! A child! A little kitten with its eyes still blind and its face dabbled with milk! What does she know? And her husband the clown! The eternal baby who never grew up! You look at her and you look at me, and where is the comparison? She is a penny candle beside me! Shabby, common, vulgar, coarse, ignorant, stupid - stupid, stupid, vacant!"

  "When did you find out that your husband was alive?" Jim said.

  She blinked and seemed to make an effort to bring her mind round to it. "A year ago. His old nurse wrote to me. She thought she was dying, and felt guilty. She had kept cuttings! From every performance I had done, all over Europe! Imagine! She looked after him in the asylum, and kept them for him. But then she felt guilty, she wanted to make her peace. So she wrote to me. I was astounded... But I knew. I had always known he was not dead. My heart was in prison, but not in a grave. I could feel. And I knew he was alive."

  She dashed angry tears from her eyes. Her emotions might have been theatrical, but they were potent.

  "The cruelty!" she cried. "To keep him locked away for so long, so secret! Better to have killed him at once! Kinder to cut his throat and let him bleed to death! The villains. The -"

  She had been reaching down the side of the chair. Karl saw what Jim couldn't, the glint of a steel blade, and this time it was he who sprang and grappled with her when she leapt up. Snarling, she fell and twisted lithely, and Karl rolled over and kicked the little table down between them, shattering the teacup. Jim stepped down hard on her wrist and bent to pull the knife out of her hand.

  "Stop this," he said. "Karl, pour the lady a glass of brandy - I think there's some on the sideboard. Now listen," he went on, bending down to seize her hair roughly and twisting her face up to look at his. "I'm no gentleman. I don't mind hitting you in the very least. As far as I can see you're nothing more than a common murderer, and if I killed you now the world would be a better place. But there's that poor devil locked up in the dark, and I owe him a duty now I've seen him, so you're going to help, you understand?"

  He shook her hard. She spat at him. He shook her harder. She twisted and tried to bite him, and he slapped her so violently she could hardly breathe for shock. She looked at him with bewildered eyes. Carefully he let go of her hair and helped her up into the armchair.

  Karl brought her the brandy, and she held it with both hands, trembling.

  "Drink," said Jim.

  She sipped. He bent to pick up the purse, which had fallen into the fireplace, and found it light and empty.

  She wiped her face with the flat of her hand: no dainty dabbing with a handkerchief but an honest animal physicality. The mark of his hand on her cheek flared red, and with her hair disordered and her eyes smudged with tears she looked suddenly older, but more real, more approachable.

  He sat down. "You have to tell me everything. Begin with Prince Leopold."

  She drew breath in a shuddering sigh. "He fell in love with me in Paris. We married almost at once. Why should I not marry a prince? I was worthy of being a queen. But they would not allow it. They tried to annul the marriage, they tried to bribe me to give him grounds for divorce, they tried blackmail, they tried threats. No good. So they kidnapped me and had me taken to Mexico, to a dirty little town on the Pacific coast a thousand miles from anywhere. They had the power to do that! And the next I heard, my husband was dead. But I knew all the time he was not dead. I knew they would do anything, they have no scruples, no conscience. None of them! They were all behind it, the whole corrupt mess of stinking inbred fear and decay and rotten putrid disease of the Court, eve
ry one of them..."

  "Count Thalgau as well?"

  "That name I don't know. Who is he? He is not important."

  "Otto von Schwartzberg?"

  "A cousin. He means nothing. They despised him as a wild man, uncultivated. I mean the corruption at the heart of it all, the Court itself. The old King, he knew what they'd done with Leopold. He didn't have to say anything to Godel or anyone else; just a nod, a flutter of the fingers -" she acted it - "and they understood, and it was done. Lock him up, pretend he's dead. Anything I have done -" she pressed her hand to her heart and sat up flashing proud defiance from her eyes - "was clean. Dynamite and bullets are clean, not that sort of filthy cowardice of imprisoning a man until he goes mad. I killed them! Yes! And I would go on until they are all dead and all in hell!"

  "You didn't do it on your own. You had accomplices."

  "I didn't have accomplices. I had money. You can pay men to do anything."

  "But you've got none left..." He held out the empty purse.

  "I have enough to pay the landlady."

  "And what then?"

  She looked at him directly, and it was a real, confused, unhappy human soul that looked out of her eyes, and not a confected blaze of passion to strike across the footlights and dazzle the pit.

  "I don't know," she said. "I want to help him. The nurse, Frau Busch, she can't get him out; she bribed the guard to leave us alone for five minutes, but she's afraid of Godel. I'm not, but I have no power on my own."