CHAPTER NINETEEN: TWINKLE, TWINKLE

“Stop!” I shouted to the coachman.

As he reined in the horses, C-G demanded to know what was the matter. Clutching the empty case, I ignored her, stood up, turned and, whilst the other boxes tumbled off my lap and onto the floor of the coach, I saw Searcy’s back as he re-entered the portico.

“SEARCY!” I yelled.

“Jasper,” said C-G as she scooped up Sisi’s jet, “whatever is the matter?”

In answer I dropped the empty case onto her lap. She let out a horrified gasp.

“My God, it’s my wedding all over again.”164

“That had a happy endin’, m’dear, at least as far as the pearls were concerned.” I said as I saw Searcy turn and head in our direction. “We may not be so lucky this time if…” but I didn’t finish the sentence.

Thank goodness C-G wasn’t a mind reader or she’d have seen an image of a naked Miss Watsername flitting down an iron ladder with all twenty-seven of Sisi’s priceless pearl and diamond stars in my wash-bag. It was the only plausible explanation.

“If what?” C-G demanded.

“If I’ve got anythin’ to do with it,” I added quickly, as Searcy, a tadge out of breath, reached our carriage.

“What’s the matter, Colonel?”

I prised the empty jewel box from C-G’s gloved mitts and showed it to him.

“The Empress’ hair ornaments, Colonel?” he asked.

“The very same. What the hell am I to do? Fahran hid them overnight in my bathroom and you handed the case to me just now. By the way, where is he?”

“Fahran? I’m afraid I don’t know, Colonel. He gave me the jewel boxes whilst you were taking luncheon and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Did you check the cases when he gave them to you?”

“No. I saw no need to. You don’t think…”

“I’m afraid that I do,” I said as the image of Miss W was replaced by one of Fahran – with or without Miss W - legging it to a pawnbroker and then booking a ticket for Valpariso.

“But Mo’s son would never do such a thing.”

“You’d have thought not, but where else could they have gone?”

Before Searcy could reply, the coachman turned on the box and said that if we didn’t get going we’d be late for the Audience. As disaster stared me in the face C-G piped up.

“There’s nothing for it, Jasper, you’ll just have to tell the Emperor that you lodged the diamonds in the hotel’s safe overnight and forgot to replace them in their box before leaving for the Hofburg. That should give us time to catch the first train over the border…”

Charlotte-Georgina had started the day by shocking me into silence with her unexpected appearance but, coming from her of all people, this outrageous proposal left me with my mouth hanging open.

“I’m sure it won’t come to that m’Lady,” said Searcy, who appeared to be completely unruffled by events. “Leave it with me – and please give me the rest of those boxes.” I was still in shock so, as C-G handed them over, I didn’t ask why he needed them. “I’d be obliged, Colonel, if you could tell whichever official of the Imperial Household who meets you to expect me with the jewels before the Audience is over. Whip up driver!”

I’d known Searcy for far too long to have questioned him and, anyway, what else could I do except head for the Palace and pray that my semi-retired secretary would be able to pull a jewel-bedecked rabbit out of his bowler. Truth to tell, I was at that moment more troubled by the idea that Fahran, working with or without Miss W, had absconded with the famous trinkets than I was of having to explain to Franz-Josef why I didn’t have them. It simply didn’t seem to be in Fahran’s character and was an action that would have appalled his late father. But what else was I to think? Fahran had hidden the stars in the bathroom and Fahran had spent time alone in the bathroom with Miss W. Had he, perhaps, caught her in the act of stealing them? Had she then sucked his brains out through his dick and got him to agree to divide the proceeds of a quick sale? What other explanation was there? The only thing that was certain was that the rocks and Fahran were both missing.

I would have gone on agonising over the facts all afternoon had the coach not at that moment turned into the covered entrance to the Hofburg. The excessive Court flummery that then overwhelmed us drove the terrible problem of Fahran’s treacherous dishonesty to the back of my mind. Besides which, as we paced down the endless red-carpeted corridors behind another gold-coated Chamberlain, I had the comfort of C-G’s proposal of a lie - followed by instant flight – as an insurance against the looming debacle.

Eventually, we fetched up in an ante room where another Chamberlain quite needlessly instructed us in the correct protocol before knocking on the double doors at the end of the room. They swung open. Behind them was a spartan looking office with a high desk at which F-J, in white tunic and red trousers, was working. In the years since we’d last met he’d aged considerably: in particular, his absurd facial furniture was now quite white and set underneath a gleaming bald pate. As C-G and I stepped forward into the room we made the triple obeisance required by the Habsburgs (each time C-G practically sank through the threadbare Turkey carpet) and then we waited. Franz-Josef, who I suspected was quite deaf, appeared not to have noticed we were there, despite the Chamberlain having bawled out our names; it seemed like an age before he looked up but, eventually, he did.

“Colonel Speedicut, we meet again and once more in tragic circumstances. And this is your wife, who I do not believe I have met before.”

“No, Your Imperial Majesty,” C-G said with unaccustomed demureness whilst giving the old boy a quite unnecessary fourth curtsey.

“I believe, Colonel Speedicut, that you were with my late wife when she was attacked. I would be most grateful if you could tell me about it.”

So, mindful of the fact that I needed to give Searcy as much time as I could, I spun him the story of Sisi’s demise at very considerable length. He lapped up every word as I embellished the tale with some quite unnecessary – and barely truthful – details, all the while hoping and praying for the knock on the oak behind me that would announce Searcy’s arrival with the Imperial swag. Eventually, I could spin it out no longer and brought the saga to a rather lame close.

“I am deeply grateful to you, Colonel, for that account. My dear wife,” he pulled a black-edged handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose with considerable vigour, “always held you in very high regard. It is a comfort to me that you were with her at the end. Her life was sad, and unnecessarily lonely, but it was her choice.” For a moment, he seemed to go into a day dream of his own, then just as abruptly he returned to the present. “I believe, Colonel, that you have with you my late wife’s jewels,” he said giving me a beady-eyed stare that seemed to ask where I’d hidden them about my person. Before I could reply, C-G piped up.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” she said as she once again headed for the dusty pile below her, “my husband had the foresight to entrust the late Empress’ jewels to me and, as a matter of prudence, I lodged them in the hotel’s safe. Unfortunately, Madam Sacher, who has the only key, was nowhere to be found when we were collected and so we have arrived without them. However, our private secretary has been given the written authority to collect the jewels once Madam Sacher has been located and we are expecting him to arrive with them at any minute.”

“I see,” said Franz-Josef. “In that case, I suggest that you wait in the ante room until he arrives and then entrust them to my private secretary. It has been a great pleasure, Colonel – and Lady Speedicut – now, if you will forgive me…”

The Audience was clearly over. As if by magic the doors opened behind us, the Chamberlain reappeared at our side and we all reversed out of the study. But where was Searcy, I thought, as we were shown to a pair of deep leather armchairs in the ante room? Although she didn’t say so, I’m sure C-G was thinking the same. The clock on the marble fire place chimed three o’clock, then three-thirty but still there was no sign of Searcy. It was mid-way through striking four when the man himself appeared bearing the jewel boxes under his arm. Silently he gave them to me, I handed them to the Chamberlain whilst praying that he wouldn’t open them. He did. The jet and onyx stuff was, of course, all present and correct but what about the pearl and diamond stars? Their velvet-lined resting place was the last box in the small stack. At last the Chamberlain opened it and there, twinkling as though they had just been made, were all twenty-seven of the little buggers. As C-G and I let out sighs of relief, the Chamberlain thanked me for delivering everything. Five minutes later we were on the pavement.

“How did you…?” I started to ask Searcy.

“Not now, Colonel. I suggest we take a coffee at Demel and I’ll tell you there.”

Neither C-G nor I felt strong enough to argue so we meekly followed him the short-ish distance to the famous coffee shop and waited patiently whilst he ordered a pot of mocha, three helpings of Sachertorte and, for me, a large brandy.

“I think I’ll have one of those as well, Mr Searcy,” said C-G, who looked quite as emotionally drained as I felt. It was only once we were tucking in to the cake that Searcy revealed all.

“It was really quite simple, Colonel, m’Lady. I remembered that I’d seen a copy of the Empress’ stars in a jeweller’s window in the Kärtnerstrasse when I took a walk this morning whilst you were at the funeral. So, when you drove off to the Hofburg, I went straight back to the shop. The jewels were no longer in the window but I went inside the shop anyway and made enquiries. An assistant told me that the set of barrettes – that’s what they are called – had been purchased earlier in the day. I asked him who had bought them but he wouldn’t tell me. Then I asked him if he had another set, but it seemed not. I was half-way out of the door when he called me back. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, sir, but the barrettes have been frequently copied in paste – for the tourist market – it not the sort of stuff we sell here, but…’ and he gave me the name and address of a shop on the other side of the First District that specialised in cheap geegaws for foreign visitors.

“So I hailed a fiacre and drove over to the place. Sure enough, they had a full set but the price was outrageous – a hundred Krone – however, I managed to beat the owner down to seventy-five, hailed another fiacre, placed the new stars in the old box and delivered them to you along with the other pieces. The whole exercise has, I’m sorry to have to tell you, Colonel, cost you eighty Krone.”

“How much is that?” asked C-G.

“Just under two Pounds, m’Lady, at the current rate of exchange.”

“Bugger the loose change,” I exclaimed, whilst C-G tut-tutted at my obscenity. “Are you tellin’ me that I returned a set of fakes to the Emperor?”

“That is correct, Colonel.”

“Well you’d better make some reservations on the evening tr…” Searcy held up his hand.

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Colonel. The Chamberlain inspected the stars and clearly thought there was nothing amiss. I doubt very much that the Emperor will even look at them and, even if he did, that he would be able to spot that they were fakes.”

“But what if they are sent for cleaning to the Crown jeweller – or if they are offered for sale?” asked C-G.

“I doubt that will happen, m’Lady. There was a report in this morning’s Wiener Zeitung to the effect that Her Late Imperial Majesty’s Will stipulated that, whilst her personal jewellery was to be sold and the proceeds divided amongst her charities, the set of pearl and diamond barrettes were to go to her late son’s only child, the Archduchess Elizabeth. I don’t think that it’s very likely that she’ll sell them or even wear them. No, I think we are quite safe in this deception.”

For a moment or two there was silence as we digested, along with the cake, this utterly brazen turn of events.

“I’ve always said you were a genius, Searcy,” I said at last, “and you have proved me right yet again. However, there remains the problem of Fahran. What’s your solution to that?”

“I’m not sure that I have one, Colonel. Shall we wait and see what happens?”

We didn’t have long to wait. We’d returned from Demel’s to the Sacher and had made our way up to the suite, where Miss Prissy was waiting for C-G with a very worried look on her face. She said nothing, however, and disappeared off with C-G to bathe and change her whilst Searcy and I headed for my room. I threw open the door - and there stood Fahran.

“You’ve got a nerve comin’ back here,” I exclaimed. “If it wasn’t for your father’s memory I’d call the police.”

“But, huzoor…”

“But me no buts, Fahran. Her Ladyship and I have spent the past few hours in hell, thanks to you. I may not turn you over to the Peelers but you will leave my service now.”

“But, huzoor…” I was about to give him some more of my mind when he thrust a hand into one of his coat pockets and pulled out a bag which he handed to me. I opened it and twenty-seven pearl and diamond stars twinkled back at me.

“Are these the Empress’ jewels?”

“Yes, huzoor.”

“So why have you brought them back?”

“Because you have to deliver them to the Emperor, huzoor.”

“It’s too late for that now,” I said, as I tossed the bag onto the bed. However, before I could go on, Searcy coughed – a sure sign that he wanted to intervene.

“Fahran,” he said in a quiet voice, “I think you’ve got some explaining to do.”

“Yes, Uncle Fred.”

“Well?”

“It was like this, Uncle Fred. After the Colonel and Her Ladyship went to the funeral I decided that it might be a good idea to check on the jewels that I’d hidden – on the Colonel’s orders - in the bathroom cabinet. I went to look for them and found that the stars were missing. It was immediately obvious what had happened: the Colonel’s, err, companion of last night must have stolen them. I would have told you, but you’d gone out for a walk and I needed to do something quick.

“At first I hadn’t any idea what to do, for the Colonel didn’t even know the lady’s name. Then I had an idea: perhaps Mrs Sacher would know who she was. So I went to find her, but she’d already gone out to an appointment. I told her secretary that I had to see her most urgently but he refused to help. Then you came back and asked for the boxes, so I gave them to you without explaining that the stars were missing. I’m really sorry about that, Uncle Fred, but I still thought that I could get them back before they were missed.”

“I hope you’ve learned that deceiving me is no solution, Fahran.”

“I have, Uncle Fred.”

“So what did you do then?” I asked.

“I went straight back to see Mrs Sacher’s secretary but he still refused to help, so I showed him father’s Kyberi knife. That did the trick and he told me where I could find her. It wasn’t far, but I had to wait until she came out of her meeting, which lasted until after lunch. When she did at last appear, I introduced myself and told her that you, huzoor, were very anxious to see the young lady again and had asked me to deliver a message to her. Mrs Sacher didn’t seem to think that was at all strange, took out a small book from her handbag, consulted it and gave me the address.”

“What happened next?” Searcy asked.

“I went to the address Mrs Sacher had given me, Uncle Fred, and was told by the landlady, who I don’t think liked the look of me, that Miss Schmidt – that’s her name - was still asleep and had left word that she was not to be disturbed. Well, I wasn’t having any of that, so I pushed past the old lady, forced the lock on the door and confronted Miss Schmidt, who was still in her night clothes.”

“And?” asked Searcy.

“Well, she took a bit of convincing, Uncle Fred, but eventually I got out the Khyberi knife and my - and she handed over the jewels. I got back here about an hour ago. That’s really all there is to tell.”

“Fahran,” I said with considerable feeling, “I owe you an apology for ever havin’ doubted you. I’m so pleased with you that I’m going to increase your wages by ten bob a week.”

“Thank you very much, huzoor – but really it was all in a day’s work – and I did get a couple of good f…” He stopped and blushed.

“Quite,” I said quickly to cover the lad’s embarrassment, “although you have left me with a bit of a problem,” I added pointing to the diamonds.

“I think not, Colonel,” broke in Searcy.

“I can’t just drive back to the Hofburg, hand in the stars and say ‘oops, sorry, I gave you the wrong set’, now can I?”

“No, Colonel. I had something altogether different in mind.”

“Tell.”

“If I remember rightly, Colonel, it’s Her Ladyship’s seventy-fifth birthday in January.”

“It is, but what of it?”

“If you let me have them, I can get my friend Mr Gregory Dennis, the trade jeweller in Maddox Street, to convert the stars into a tiara, necklace and earrings as a birthday present from you to Her Ladyship. You’ll have to get rid of that big pearl,” he said, indicating the largest of the ornaments, “as it’s too well-known but I can do that for you and the proceeds will pay for the work Mr Dennis will have to do. He won’t ask any questions, stars are a common enough design in jewellery and, even if Her Ladyship suspects their origin – which I doubt – she’s hardly going to look a gift horse in the mouth, now is she?”

“I’ve said it before and I’ll doubtless say it again: you are a genius Searcy!”

…

The following March, Charlotte-Georgina almost performed a cartwheel when I gave her Sisi’s reset diamonds for her birthday. Dennis had done a wonderful job and – as Searcy had correctly predicted - created a complete suite of sparklers out of the twenty-seven stars, all encased in red leather boxes lined with white silk. Thank goodness, C-G didn’t spot the allusion to the Austrian national colour, although Searcy and I did.

“Jasper,” she enthused as, after breakfast, she opened the last case containing a simple tiara frame adorned with the five largest stars. “I’m overwhelmed… and how clever that each piece converts into something else… so practical… I’ll have to get Prissy trained in how to work the changes… if only dear Mama were alive to see them, she would be green with envy, as will be Dorothea when I show them to her when we’re next in St Petersburg… I shall wear them all for my birthday dinner tonight… dear Count Deym will be sure to admire them…”165

Please God he doesn’t recognise the rocks, was all I could think. In the event the old Austro-Hungarian diplomat made all the right noises and none of the wrong ones.

“Did you rob a bank or a jeweller when you were in Vienna, Speed?” demanded Johnny Dawson over the brandy and cigars that evening, “or, on the way home, win the Frankfurt lottery like Fat Mary’s mother?”166

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, there’s no other explanation for your lavish birthday gift to Charlotte-Georgina – unless, that is, you’ve still got stuff stashed away from the time you looted the Grand Chink’s Summer Playground back in ’60.”

“I didn’t loot it – that was what the Frogs did – but I admit that I did collar a trinket or two whilst tryin’ to stop the garlic eaters destroyin’ or pocketin’ everythin’ in sight.”

“I thought so!” exclaimed Johnny. “So what else have you got hidden away?”

“A black jade chess set…”

“Pull the other one, Speed. There’s no such thing as black jade.” But, as that obliging jewellery dealer in Hatton Garden had told me all those years previously, there was and my chess pieces were still in Coutts’ lock-up as insurance against a rainy day.167 But I wasn’t going to argue the toss with Johnny and, anyway, wanted to get him off the subject of the birthday gift’s origins: diplomats have long ears and Franz Deym’s were no exception.

“I hear you’re up for the Victorian Order,” I said, tacking briskly to port as I passed the ghastly stuff to Johnny, “for all that time you’ve spent dozing in the Bodyguard’s Mess.”

“So I believe,” Johnny replied. “Although you can never be sure until you get the letter or Vicky raps you on the shoulder with a, hopefully, blunt blade whilst sacking you.”

“Probably the latter in your case. What are you now – Clerk of the Closet or the Harbinger of Doom?

“Actually, I’m the Lieutenant, although I can’t think how I’ve progressed that far.”

“Nor can I. Gentlemen, perhaps we should re-join the ladies?”

The subject of C-G’s new adornments didn’t come up again that evening, although I was pretty sure that the girls had talked about nothing else whilst I was sinking the Corsican Corporal’s best and the other men were poisoning themselves with Portugal’s only saleable export.

So much for the positive part of the start to 1899, during much of which I sought refuge in the clubs as I had nothing much better to do. On the negative side, whilst wining and dining around St James’s as the guest of my ageing contemporaries, I heard from various sources that I was crotch deep in the brown stuff at the War House. But how could this be?

It emerged, so I was told, that bugger Kitchener – or Major General the Baron Kitchener of Knitting as we now had to address the frightful sod - had been blackening my name at every turn. Of course, he should have been in the Soudan, to which delightful spot he’d been appointed Governor General by the Khedive but, since his triumph at Omdurman, he’d spent more time in London than in fuzzy-wuzzy land. According to my source at the Rag – a frightful dump, full of down-at-heel Sappers and Gunners - the shit was shamelessly using his track record in mowing down spear-wielding tribesmen as a passport to high command on the velt where the Boers were once again getting uppity.168

Actually, under normal circumstances I would have welcomed being in the mire with my employers as it lessened greatly the chances of my ever again being called upon to put my (non-existent) skills in communications and propaganda at the disposal of HMG. However, Bertie had told Alix, who had told C-G, who had told me, that he (Bertie, that is) had put my name up for the Bath ‘in recognition of my recent services to a friendly power’, which was one way of describing Franz-Josef. But, so I was advised, with Kitchener shouting the odds against me, I’d be lucky to get the Order of the Bath Scum, let alone hear the words ‘Arise, Sir Jasper’. And why had K of K chucked a slop-pail full of turds all over my chances of being given a knighthood? Churchill, of course.

Let me explain. My less senile readers, if there are any of you, may recall that I’d been sent on the Soudan caper in the mistaken belief that, on the evidence of my work in keeping Lockhart & Co out of the sewerage, I was some sort of a wizard at controlling the sluice gates in Grub Street. In addition to which, following the rumpus that had arisen from the publication of Churchill’s book, The Malakand Field Force, I’d had the very specific task of ensuring that none of the scribblers-in-uniform wrote anything detrimental to the reputation of the brass hats in the War Office or in the field. Readers may also remember that, having censored Churchill’s first dispatch from Omdurman, I was packed off home presto (albeit via Geneva and Vienna) without so much as a thank-you from Kitchener.

Anyway, despite what the sodding Sirdar might have thought of me, ‘well done, Speedicut’ should have been the mood music in Whitehall on my return to London in October 1898. However, whilst I’d been tending to the hapless Habsburgs, Churchill had written more reports from the front, all of which had been highly critical of Kitchener. Then the boy scribbler had returned home, announced that he would resign his commission after he’d won the Inter-Regimental polo in India, put himself on the candidates list for the first available seat in Parliament and started work on a two-volume stinker about the recent campaign. This book was, apparently, to be published in October 1899 under the title The River War. Most of the garbage within its doubtless lavish covers I have already reported. However, before leaving for India, Churchill had boasted around the clubs – doubtless in a bid to boost the pre-publication sales and so justify a fat advance - that there would be more in the book than I’ve related and he’d even given details of some of it. It included, so a chap I knew at Brooks’s averred, taking Kitchener to task for looting The Mahdi’s tomb and carrying off the old boy’s head as a trophy to hang in the Gubernatorial bedroom in Khartoum. Added to that, it appeared that Churchill planned to criticise the War Office for sending British troops into action with shoddy boots and sub-standard bullets.

Then, to add insult to our national pride in addition to the black eyes he was going to land on Kitchener and Wolseley, he proposed to state that the locomotives which ran on K’s railway had had to be obtained from anywhere other than the ‘sceptred isle’ because Swindon and Birmingham were unable to supply on time, on price or to specification. I’d then overheard, I think it may have been at the Carlton, that Lady C’s bumptious offspring had been accepted, in absentia, as a Tory candidate for one of the seats in the industrial constituency of Oldham. Although I knew that the electorate of that northern slum were undoubtedly stupid and probably illiterate, I consoled myself with the thought but they couldn’t be so dim or unread that they would vote for Churchill after he’d slurred the British working man’s ability to make bullets, boots and steam engines.

Anyway, if all of that wasn’t enough, a chap I met in the Garrick said that Churchill was also going to imply in the dratted book that using modern weapons against the heathen was unsporting. According to my source, Churchill would allege - somewhat contradictorily - that the Khalifa’s followers weren’t all bad (or words to that effect) and that if Islam ever had access to the Maxim gun Christian civilisation would go the way of the Medes and the Persians. The fellow who told me all that worked for The Times as a book reviewer and had been shown an early draft; he said that it looked as though the work would contain enough material for two good books and one bad one – and that it would be the bad one which would make the more interesting reading.

And here was the rub. For, despite the fact that I’d had absolutely no power of censorship over the contents, blame for the reputational damage that was to arise from the wretched publication had already been laid firmly at my door: hence the end of my prospective promotion to the Knightage.

In the wake of all this, and to rub further salt into the wounds that would not be inflicted on my shoulders by Vicky, it was inevitable that the next time there was a dust up in foreign parts, Colonel (not yet Retired) Speedicut, would be packed off by a vengeful War Office as OC Field Latrines. So why didn’t I send in my papers, which at my age I could have done easily? The answer was that, in the absence of what my beloved wife believed was my ‘long overdue recognition’, if I had followed Churchill’s example C-G would undoubtedly - Sisi’s swag notwithstanding - have petitioned for divorce and, even though she didn’t know about the jade, I couldn’t have afforded that financially or socially. So I let matter stand: it was a bad mistake.