Stately Homicide (16 page)

Jurnet remarked inadequately: ‘We heard all about it on the radio.'

‘I hope you found us sufficiently entertaining.' The Hungarian's lips twisted with uncharacteristic bitterness. ‘We screamed
help!
to the world, and the world answered with a deafening silence. The Russians trapped our General, Pal Maleter: they tricked Prime Minister Nagy and Janos Forro into leaving the Yugoslav Embassy where they had taken refuge, and they took all three to Romania and imprisoned them in the palace at Sinaia. I had Laz to thank they hadn't caught me along with the other lesser fry. Already, at his urging, we had gone underground. Mara was safe in England, Hungary was back under Red tyranny, and I was a child again, playing cops and robbers with my friend. Except that, this time, the cops and the robbers were on the same side – the Avos and the Red soldiers who were going about the city stripping it of everything of value that wasn't actually bolted to the floor. And I was so happy!' The man's eyes, aslant in his head, widened at the absurdity of it all. ‘Can you believe it? My country in ruins, I had lost the woman who, to me, was the joy of life, and I was happy, playing games with my friend – only this time, games in which men got killed nastily and silently, none of your English nicety for the Queensberry Rules. But I tell you, I lived life, in that time as a hunted and a hunting animal, as I have never lived it since. And when my friend said one day, why not get Imre Nagy and Pal Maleter and Janos Forro out of that Romanian palace where they are locked up, I answered light-heartedly, why not? If my friend Laz says it can be done, it can be done.'

Jurnet said: ‘I saw what it said about the escape in the Appleyard Room. You almost pulled it off.'

‘You think? We were seven kilometres from the Yugoslav border, in a forester's hut deep in the hills. Laz had gone to spy out the little river that was the frontier crossing. Pal and Janos were playing cards with a pack they had picked up somewhere on our travels. The courage of those two men! They could have been on a picnic. I was the uneasy one. So near to safety, yet so far! I am country born and bred, and in spring a countryman expects the country to be noisy with birdsong and the many small noises animals make as they find their livings after the winter cold. But not a sound.' The Hungarian looked bleakly at the detective. ‘As a countryman, then, I was not really surprised when, all of a sudden, the hills were full of soldiers, Russian voices shouting commands; grenades, guns firing. We had settled among ourselves that if the Reds came we would each go our own way, as offering the best chance of escape; and I found for myself a pond in which I crouched below the surface, breathing through a hollow reed until the noises died away, and at last the birds began to sing. When I dared to come out from my hiding place I was so cold from the water I could not walk. Somehow I crawled back to the hut. Empty: but blood on the cards. I have them still. I would not exchange them for the riches of all the Rothschilds.'

This time the silence was so prolonged that Jurnet asked at last: ‘And that's the end of the story?'

‘The end and also the beginning.' The man's face was sombre. ‘Laz came back and found me, and for two weeks he nursed me night and day, or I would have surely died. When I was well enough to walk a little, he got me across the border to Yugoslavia, carrying me for most of the way on his back. And from there we came to England, to Bullen Hall where he was the English milor and Mara was already waiting for him.'

‘They married.'

The other nodded agreement.

‘They married, my loved one and my friend. In Bullensthorpe Church the bells rang out. But alas they did not, those two, as should happen with fairy princes and princesses, live happily ever after. No one woman was ever enough for Laz Appleyard. Once possessed – finished! He was on to the next one, and the next one, and the one after that. I watched Mara's beauty fade away, and after Istvan – Steve – was born, her bodily strength also. The child that could have been a consolation was only an additional torment. I do not know if Laz truly loved him, or if he only acted love to bind the boy to him and hurt the mother further; but bind him he did, with bands of steel. The boy lived for his father. My poor, pale Mara had no place in his world.' In an even tone, carefully colourless, Ferenc Szanto said: ‘I did not think I could ever be glad that Mara should be dead. But when she died, when Steve was six years of age, I, who had never believed in Him until that day, thanked God for it.'

Jurnet commented: ‘I wonder you stayed on.'

‘I have not yet told you the worst thing. Eighteen months after Laz and I came back from Hungary, the news came for certain that Imre Nagy and Pal Maleter and Janos Forro had been executed. Six months after that, information came to me from sources which are quite unimpeachable that Laz Appleyard, for money paid into a Swiss bank account, had sold Pal and Janos to the Reds. That charade in the forester's hut had all been prearranged.'

‘I wonder even more that you stayed on. Surely you had it out with Appleyard? Why didn't you expose him for what he was?'

‘Questions! Questions! I said nothing, did nothing. Does that surprise you? Then this will surprise you more – that, despite everything, Mara still loved her husband with all the love of a passionate woman. I could not add to her griefs by letting her know that this devil, her husband, had sent her own father to his death and taken money for it, like Judas Iscariot. And after she was dead, how could I tell Steve the true nature of the hero-father he worshipped like a god? Especially as I gradually came to see, with the passing years, that justice does not exclusively fall to be administered in courts of law. Much as Steve looked like his father all over again, that was the whole of the resemblance. Everything that mattered – his loving nature, his inability to hurt any living creature – was all from Mara. So, I stayed on at Bullen to be a shield to Mara's son. And when his father was killed, I stayed on to take the dead man's place, so far as I could, and to undo such harm as might have been done to him.'

Ferenc Szanto fell silent. Jurnet, having pondered what he had heard, said: ‘Quite a story. Except that I still don't see it adding up to you wanting it written up in a book for all the world to read – above all, for young Steve to read. You said yourself you've kept it dark so far to protect him from the truth. So what's changed?'

‘Time is what's changed, my friend. Steve is no longer a boy. It is time to grow up.' The Hungarian smiled, a smile of great sweetness. ‘Don't think I have any illusions about him. He is a decent, ordinary young man, only moderately clever, who, providing he is allowed to, will lead a decent, ordinary life. That is what he must be given the chance to do – to stand on his own feet without forever measuring himself against that heroic father figure who never existed. I give you an instance –' The man jumped up and began to pace the room again. ‘I hear from Jessica that when Steve saw Mr Shelden's body in the water with the eels, he was sick, he nearly fainted. What is wrong with that, such a horrible thing? It is only natural in a person of sensitivity. But no: the boy is ashamed. It is not the way the son of Appleyard of Hungary should behave. You see? For more than two years now I know it is time to destroy this pernicious myth if Steve is to have a proper life. This I do not tell Elena – only that it is high time a definitive biography should be written. And at last, when it is Mr Coryton's time to go, she makes arrangement with Mr Shelden.'

‘You're not telling me Miss Appleyard actually wants to have all the dirt about her brother spread around? Or doesn't she know all you've told me?'

‘Unless she has information not told to me, the betrayal in Hungary she does not know. All the documents relating to it are in Hungarian which she – unlike Laz – could never be bothered to learn. And the reason I am here today is to remove these documents before Jessica notices anything out of place, and translate them into English, so that they will be ready and waiting when Mr Shelden's successor comes to Bullen.'

‘Miss Appleyard will never allow them to be used!'

‘Is possible,' the Hungarian readily admitted. ‘But I think yes, she will allow. Elena is a very remarkable lady, and I think she too is tired of this Appleyard of Hungary who is the real ghost of Bullen Hall. When she was a child, at Kasnovar, she was very close to her brother. I was the one she did not like, because Laz would rather be with me, doing boys' things. But after they grew up, it was different. Elena is also a very correct lady, with much pride of family; and although she did not, I think, regard Mara as a grand enough match for an Appleyard, neither did she like the womanising and the wild parties, the drinking and gambling – oh, I haven't told you the half of it! Only enough, I trust, to convince you that I did not push Mr Shelden off the roof, nor shall I any future biographer who may be so reckless as to come to Bullen.'

Jurnet digested what he had been told. Plainly not satisfied, he demanded: ‘What I don't get is – why hang about waiting? If Steve's the one it's all in aid of, who says it has to be in book form? What's stopping you from taking him aside, man to man, show him your proofs, tell him the story as you've told me?'

‘Don't think I haven't thought about it. But I am a coward. I admit it.' The Hungarian sighed deeply, rubbed a hand over his face. ‘I cannot bear the thought of Steve's face when he learns the truth about his so wonderful father. Ah yes, in later years he may bless me, but how will that pay for losing his love now? And who could blame him? So –' with a fatalistic shrug – ‘only at second hand, the printed page. Black and white doing my dirty work for me. In spite of all, I cannot forget that I owe Laz Appleyard my life. Even though I know it was all a play-acting, the hiding in the hills, the stealing out at night to get food, even the carrying me over the border. He could have handed me over to the Reds and been rid of me. True, I was no Maleter or Forro, but still I was someone the Reds would have been happy to get their hands on. They might even have paid money for me. Yet he chose to save me. He threw the baby storks to the ground from the sheer pleasure of killing, yet he chose to save me, his friend.' The Hungarian sighed once more. ‘He is not the only Judas.'

They parted at the entrance to the lime alley, Jurnet politely declining an invitation to inspect the smithy, hidden away behind shrubbery in what had once been a gardener's bothy.

‘On such a day I cannot blame you. But if you come at once I will not yet have made my fire.'

‘I have to have a word with your compatriot, Mr Matyas.'

‘Jeno?' A note of concern sounded in Ferenc Szanto's voice. ‘Be gentle with him, if you please. He is not a well man. Besides, what can Jeno know about Mr Shelden and his murderer?'

‘That,' Jurnet returned reasonably, ‘is what I propose to find out. Who knows? Perhaps he too has a story to tell me.' A sudden thought disturbing him: ‘I take it he speaks English?'

‘Jeno?' Szanto's laugh was warm with affection. ‘Too well, the simpleton. He has not my sense, never to speak it except like a comic turn in the music hall. Nothing in England, I tell him, more arouses suspicion than a foreigner presuming to speak English like an Englishman. But he doesn't listen.'

‘He certainly doesn't look very English.'

‘Neither, my good sir, do you,' the Hungarian pointed out, his face crinkled with mischief. ‘But I know you to be so because you are too good-mannered to knock me down for my impertinence. I cannot sufficiently tell you, Inspector, what it means to a Hungarian not to be afraid to be cheeky to a policeman!'

‘Don't push your luck,' Jurnet advised with a grin. Then: ‘This Jeno – did you and Appleyard bring him over to England with you?'

‘Certainly not! Jeno was only a child in the rising. You must not go by his ill looks. Even so, he played his part. His father was a printer and bookbinder, and every morning, before light, Jeno was out pasting up the posters his father had printed during the night. After it was over, his father went on printing books and articles it was not permitted to print, and one day the Avos came and took him away. A week later Jeno's mother was called to the police station where they gave her her husband's clothes wrapped in brown paper, and a note from the police doctor to say he had died choking on a chicken bone.' The man's face twisted into its clownish semblance. ‘Oh, he was a comedian, that one! Chicken served in an Avo cell! A wonder he did not tell Mrs Matyas what was on the wine list for that day.'

‘What happened to Jeno?'

‘That was a boy! Young as he was, he took over the business, and he was cleverer than his father. The books and articles were still printed, but with wiliness and organisation, so that he was not found out. I think he would still be in Buda today except that his mother died and he wanted to see the English birds.'

‘English birds? Girls, you mean?'

‘No, Inspector –' with a flapping of arms by way of explanation – ‘English birds that fly in the sky and sing songs in the English language. Ever since a boy, Jeno is a bird lover, and from somewhere he had a book about the birds of the Norfolk coast of England. So it happens that one afternoon in summer I am drowsing on the beach at Holkham, when suddenly somebody on a sandhill above me trips and drops his binoculars, and says something very naughty in Hungarian.' The Hungarian chuckled. ‘So long it is since I have heard such words, for a moment I wonder if it is not Norfolk dialect! But it is Jeno.'

‘You were the one, then, who brought him to Bullen Hall?'

‘It was providential! Somebody was needed to take care of the books in the Library, and repair the bindings. It was a very good day when I find him – good for the books, good for all of us here at Bullen. Jeno is a good man.' There were not all that many people about in the Coachyard, the threat of wandering storms enough to keep attendances down. The peacock moved about dispiritedly, pecking at the cobbles as if it expected little to come of it.