Last Act Read online

  “Not a thing.”

  “No. You don’t look like international drug smuggling, though I suppose that might just be the secret of your success.” He stopped the car and leaned out to carry on a friendly German conversation with two guards who appeared simultaneously from opposite sides of the barrier, one in grey Swiss uniform, the other immaculate in dark green breeches and high brown boots. “Would you like your passport stamped?” Michael turned to ask her.

  “Not if I don’t have to.”

  “It costs five Lissmarks. The tourists all go for it.” He was laughing as he let in the clutch and the car moved forward on to the bridge. “They gave poor Signor Falinieri the full treatment,” he told her. “That will teach him to take the wrong taxi. All his silk shirts out in the rain, and nothing to show for it except a few filthy pictures, and we don’t mind them in Lissenberg. I expect we’ll catch them up on the road. This car may rattle but she goes.”

  “I don’t understand.” She was looking down at the wide, swiftly flowing river, grey, with here and there white water showing.

  “The Liss.” He waved a hand. “Welcome to Lissenberg, Niobe. About Falinieri?” he asked. “Being searched? Because he had a foreign taxi driver. We’re not mad about foreigners taking our jobs in Lissenberg, whatever our Rudolf may say. They knew at the border that I was meeting him; they saw what had happened; so, of course …” He laughed again. “They congratulated me, by the way. Thought I’d done better than the opposition after all. Pity you don’t understand German. You’d have enjoyed it. If you do that to Kurt Weigel with your hair wet and your lipstick smudged, I can’t wait to see you clean and dry.”

  “It’s not smudged!”

  “Want to bet?”

  “You speak English very well.” She got the mirror out of her bag and saw, crossly, that he was right about the lipstick.

  “It says Oxford, doesn’t it? Positively no deception.”

  “You mean you went there? Then what on earth are you doing driving a taxi?”

  “Snob!” But his tone was friendly. “I’m dropping out, of course. Besides, what do you do in Lissenberg with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics? No, don’t tell me now.” He took a hand off the wheel to pat hers where it lay in her lap. “You may have notice of that question and answer it when you’ve been in Lissenberg a day or so.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anyway,” he went on cheerfully as he took a great swoop round a group of green-overalled schoolchildren. “If friend Meyer won’t pay me, I reckon I won’t be a taxi driver much longer. Uncle Adolf seems to think time-keeping is important. And he does hate to be scooped by those black cabs from the hotel. Well, so do I. Except this time. Compliment.”

  “Thank you. And I’m sure Herr Meyer will pay you.”

  “Sure. But that won’t mean I was on time, will it? I was just lucky. Uncle Adolf doesn’t go much for luck. He prefers judgment, he says.”

  “Is he really your uncle?”

  “I told you. We’re all cousins in Lissenberg. Well, look!” Mountains rose steeply on each side of the river beside which the road ran. “Before Napoleon built this road, the only way into Lissenberg was at the other end, over the mountains, and hard work every step of the way. The Liss and its branches come down from Austria in a series of waterfalls. Oh, there’s a road now, since the last war, zig-zag, zag-zig and pray your brakes hold. But in the good old days Lissenberg was cut off all winter. Nothing much to do but go to bed with a cousin. And very nice too. They call this progress!” The valley was widening and he pointed to a long, low building set into the side of the mountain. “Industry,” he said. “That was our Rudolf’s first idea when he took over. Light, of course. Ball-bearings; spare parts for computers; bits of digital clocks for export to Switzerland. All tucked away, tidy as can be, where you only run into them by accident. More and more people working in them, and less and less land for farming. Do you know, up till the last war, Lissenberg was self-sufficient. What we needed, we grew. What we didn’t grow, mostly, we did without. Salt beef in the winter and veal in the spring. Goat cheese and barley bread, and a damned healthy population. Now we have white bread for the tourists, deep freezes all round, microwave ovens, and any minute we’ll have our first case of scurvy. Maybe that’s what’s the matter with Alix.”

  “You said, a sore throat?” She had been wanting to ask more about this. “She is the one who is singing Marcus?”

  “Page to Regulus.” She had stopped being surprised at how much he knew. “Yes, that’s Alix. Quite a voice. Well, you must know—presumably you’ve got one like it. Bad luck for her if she can’t sing the part. Regulus was her idea in the first place. A natural, of course, all things considered, and once they had decided to push on with the opera house and open it for the peace conference. Do you know the part?”

  “No, but I learn fast.” Please God she still did. “Anyway, I’m only understudying the understudy.”

  “That’s what Meyer told you? Crafty devil. He must know—everyone does—that Lotte’s set to walk out when you walk in.”

  “Lotte?”

  “The understudy. She’s been a disaster from the start.” He slowed the car as a spur of the mountain came down to lean over the road where it ran close beside the river.

  “She’s not a cousin?”

  “Quick, aren’t you? Well, in a way she is. The wrong kind.”

  “And Alix?”

  “Oh, Alix is much more than a cousin. Alix is—Gott!” He stamped on the brake and brought the taxi to a skidding halt as they rounded a blind corner and saw the big black car half across the road. “You all right?” He turned to her, white-faced.

  “Yes.” She uncurled herself slowly. She had thought so often of car accidents since Robin’s that head on to knees was a reflex action when, as now, there was no safety belt.

  “Value your life, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.” And how odd that was. But he was already out of the car and running forward to where two men stood angrily arguing in the road, one the chauffeur she had seen at Schennen, the other, of course, his passenger, whose elegant raincoat already showed dark wet patches.

  She sat where she was, digesting shock and listening to the furious, incomprehensible voices. The black car had one flat tire, and must have swerved when it blew, so that it now blocked both traffic lanes.

  “Can you lend a hand?” Michael had come back to lean in at her window. “Get back round the corner and stop the traffic while we get this hearse off the road? I don’t want my car wrecked too.”

  “Can you manage?”

  “Oh, I think so. Signor Falinieri has graciously consented to steer while we push. Pushing wouldn’t suit his dignity.”

  “Nor his clothes.” She accepted the huge scarlet and white striped handkerchief Michael produced from his sleeve and went back round the corner. Nothing in sight, luckily, and a clear stretch of road so that she was bound to see and be seen if something did come. They had seen very little traffic so far except ox-carts, mules and donkeys. She turned to look over the guard-rail at the fast-running river. The driver of the car in front had been lucky—or skilful—to have checked his skid in time. Otherwise the heavy car might easily have been through the flimsy railing and into the current which rounded the corner close to the bank, deep-looking, fast and dangerous.

  A noise from down the valley brought her quickly back to her post as a motorbike came in sight, going fast. Stepping out into the centre of the road and waving the red handkerchief, she recognised the green uniform of the Lissenberg customs officer. She ought to have been thinking of useful phrases, but had left her bag with the phrase book in the car. As usual, she ran quickly through her German operatic tags and came up with one that might actually do, from the first scene of The Magic Flute. “Zu hilfe,” cried the prince, pursued by his papier-mâché dragon. “Help!” What could be better?

  “Fräulein?” Pulling up beside her, the customs officer recognised her and broke into flue
nt English. “What’s the matter?”

  “There’s been an accident. A car across the road. Just round the corner. A flat tire.” It was beginning to rain again, hard.

  “So! And our Michael has put you on guard duty. Good. Continue, I beg, Fräulein, for the moment.” He stood his motorbike across the road as a barricade behind her, then, as an afterthought, reached into the saddle-bag, produced a green mackintosh cape and draped it round her shoulders. “Michael’s my good friend,” he said, “but he thinks everyone’s made of iron like himself. We must take care of our understudy. In the mean time, thank you, Fräulein Paget.”

  “You know about me?”

  “Natürlich. In Lissenberg the police know everything.” A broad smile, gleaming with white teeth, robbed the remark of any possible sinister emphasis. “All twenty of us. And now, I’ll be as quick as possible. You’re shivering.”

  “Thanks.” But it still seemed a surprisingly long time before Michael appeared with the news that the road was clear.

  “Sorry it took so long …” He walked beside her, wheeling the policeman’s motorbike. “Rock splinters and oil all over the road. Surprising. We had to clear it up before it was safe to let anyone through. Herr Brech was lucky he didn’t puncture two tires and go straight into the river.”

  “Herr Brech?” She noticed the unusual use of a surname, instead of the friendly “cousin.”

  “The rival enterprise. Brech’s luxurious limousines. If you’d seen what his spare tire looked like, you’d have wondered about the luxury. Ah, he’s got it changed.” They rounded the corner to see the black car moving sedately away and the policeman taking a last careful look at the road surface. “All clear?” Michael asked him.

  “I think so.” Kurt Weigel put one last jagged piece of rock into a bulging polythene bag.

  “You’re keeping the rock?” Anne asked, surprised.

  “Funny sort of landslide,” said Weigel.

  “Right.” Michael had been inspecting the damp overhang of cliff. “Not a sign of where it came from.”

  “Off a lorry, maybe?” said Weigel. “There’s oil, too. Proper death trap. Lucky Brech’s a good driver. And those heavy cars he runs hold the road like tanks. Now, if it had been you …”

  “Yes,” Michael said. “I’d thought of that.” He broke suddenly into a language that sounded even less intelligible than German, then, after a brisk exchange with Weigel, turned to Anne. “By the way, here’s your chance to report that lost purse of yours. I’d meant to take you round by police headquarters on the way to the bus station. We won’t have time now. But here’s your policeman.”

  “Why, of course. Thanks!” She explained what had happened as briefly as possible, admitted, with shame, to ignorance of her bank card number, and thanked Herr Weigel warmly when he promised to report its loss for her at the same time as checking with the Zurich police in case the purse had been recovered.

  “What a nice man,” she said as he rode away on his motorbike. “And what on earth were you two talking? It surely wasn’t German.”

  “Got a quick ear, haven’t you? That was Liss, the local language. German with a dash of French and just a touch of Italian. The result of those long winters when no one could get in or out. Napoleon banned it when he took over here. All for European union, was Boney—with him for boss, of course. But I sometimes think it was a pity he didn’t make it. We might be in less trouble now. All the fault of you pig-headed British. Boney incorporated Lissenberg in Bavaria, you know. Or rather, I bet you don’t. It was the Congress of Vienna that gave us back our independence. Such as it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well—” He pointed at another long, low, obviously industrial building half-screened by young trees. “Now we’ve got industry, we’ve got world finance. It was one thing when we just acted as a tax haven, and charged through the nose for it. Now we’re in the export line we’re getting more and more dependent on international big business. And when you come right down to it, who pays, rules. Myself, I liked us better the way we were. Salt beef, barley bread, goat’s milk and all. Sorry! Lecture ended. Look!” He pointed ahead. “Schloss Lissenberg itself.”

  “Not Lissenberg.” She drew in a deep, delighted breath. “Ruritania.” It stood on a spur of the mountain, among green pastures and against a frame of dark pines, the original fairy-tale castle. Silver-grey battlements were crowned by grey turrets and one round, central red-roofed tower much higher than the rest.

  “Eligible family residence, isn’t it?” Michael’s tone was dry. “Forty bedrooms, usual offices—I forget how many recep. Strictly private, you understand: viewed only from here. In the good old days it was open to the public. Justice liberally dispensed in the great hall. The Diet used to sit here well into the nineteenth century. The first Prince only bought the place in the 1780s. No doubt he thought he’d better keep in with the natives.”

  “Bought?”

  “Sure.” He pulled the car into a lay-by obviously intended for people who wanted to gaze their fill at the castle. “He was a minor aristocrat in Hanover whose family nose had been put out of joint when the ruling Prince went off to England to be George I. They applied their minds to making money, and made a lot. The one who bought Lissenberg had sold his army to George III for use in the United States—beg pardon, the revolting colonies. Funny thing, none of them ever came back. The ones who didn’t get killed or die of disease and starvation and homesickness just settled in the United States. I met one of their descendents at Harvard: Liss, he was called. By what he said, he seemed to own most of Texas.”

  “I thought you went to Oxford.”

  “I did a year at the Harvard Business School. Afterwards. You could call me a rolling academic stone. And not much moss to show for it.” His tone was wry. “Now, young Cousin Liss was learning to manage the family millions.”

  “Cousin?”

  “I told you, we’re all cousins here in Lissenberg. And plenty of Lisses, too. The first one, Heinz Gustaf, who bought Lissenberg because it went so well with his family name, had practically stocked his army with his bastards, they say. One answer to the population problem.”

  “Have you one?”

  “I’d say. End of World War II we had 20,000. Just right for the valley. Fed ourselves—I told you. Then, tax haven and all that, it began to grow. You can imagine how. Old people who thought their pensions would go further. Well, they soon learned their mistake. Not with our cost of living, they don’t. Then: tax dodgers. Statutory residence of six months a year. Food from Fortnums, wine from France, clothes from Italy. Much use they are to Lissenberg. That’s when our Rudolf up there”—he pointed to the castle—“put his mind to tourism. And light industry. So what do we get? The scaff and raff from miles around. Half of them wanting jobs in the factories and the chance of our social security. It’s good, by the way. The other half—and I mind them more—wanting Steak Diane and egg and chips. Oh, and souvenirs, of course. You just wait till you see the souvenirs on sale here in Lissenberg. They’ve created a whole new industry—or we have for them—and it’s meant more immigrants. We’re craftsmen, we Lissenbergers; what we make, we make well. To make the—what’s your British word?—to make the old tat the tourists want, we have to import tatty labour. One way and another our population’s up to 36,000 now, and not all of them people I want to call cousin. And that’s not racism either.” He turned on her, almost angrily. “D’you know what happened here when the war was over?”

  “No.”

  “Remember your history? Remember Churchill promising at Yalta that the Russians should have all their beloved sons back? And how they killed themselves rather than go? Or got killed when they arrived?”

  “Yes. Horrible.”

  “We didn’t send ours. Little Lissenberg hung on like Liechtenstein. Most of our Russians were Russian Jews. Some of them were Polish. Everyone knew what would have happened to them. They’d got in, mostly, over the mountains from Austria, helped by our p
eople. The kind of dangerous journey no one forgets. Well, it came up to the Diet—that’s our House of Commons. There are twelve men in it. Six of them then were mountain guides; the other six were … oh well, call it war rich. The vote was even. So Michael Josef cast his; and they stayed.”

  “Michael Josef?”

  “You want people here to like you, don’t ask that question here, not in that tone of voice. Michael Josef was the Hereditary Prince then; he had the casting vote in the Diet. They threw him out ten years ago.”

  “Who did?”

  “The Diet. Four of the six guides had died, see, and been replaced. By business men. Michael Josef was standing in the way of progress, they said. He didn’t want light industry, and tourism on the grand scale and Steak Diane. He wanted Lissenberg to stay Lissenberg.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Nothing. Unless you call a broken heart something. He has a very nice modern flat. Oh, they offered him rooms in the castle, but he had more sense than that. He got a job and a flat that went with it.”

  “A job?”

  He laughed. “He’s not that old. He was twenty when he gave that casting vote. Not an old man now exactly. But not a happy one either. You’ll see. You’ll meet him.” He glanced up at his rear view mirror. “Here comes your bus. Let’s go! Stand by for your first view of Lissenberg.”

  4

  The Town Was a remarkable mixture of old stone gable-ended buildings, many with ornate wooden balconies, and drab concrete modern offices. “A muddle, isn’t it?” Michael slowed the car and pointed to a mounted statue in a small flower-filled garden. “That’s the first Hereditary Prince, Heinz Gustaf. He’d turn in his grave if he saw his town now. He’d planned it as a kind of rus in urbe. Country in town,” he translated for her.

  “I know,” she said. “Girls get educated in England, too. But how exactly did he plan his country-town?”

  “Every house was to have its plot of ground, for vegetables and vines. We make very good wine here in Lissenberg—you must try it. The self-supporting bit was his idea, and a very good one. It worked for years. Until after the last war, when the banks came along, bought up the vineyards, and—see!” He turned the car into a park at the bottom of a fair-sized square and pointed to a handsome gabled building at the upper end. “That’s the third Heinz Gustaf’s Rathaus—council chamber to you. He built it in the local stone and style when he got tired of having the Diet troop up to the castle for their meetings. And facing it we have the brain-child of the Tenth National Bank of Nebraska.”