A Matter of Breeding (12 page)

After dinner Eddie took them out in the brisk twilight to the old, original farm building they rented out to hikers and other visitors to the region. As they entered the low front door, Werthen scraped his head on the lintel as he had so many times in the past. He had, in fact, made an unfortunate habit of this every time he had visited, for the old farmhouse was built low. For years it seemed he had a permanent scab at the very top of his head.

When he’d asked Eddie about the reason for such low ceilings, the lad had only shrugged and said, ‘The old ones must have sat a lot.’

Eddie wisdom.

There were fresh sheets on the beds and they were cold to the touch when Werthen and Berthe finally crawled in. She snuggled next to him, pecked him on the cheek, and then sought out his mouth with hers.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Werthen asked her.

‘You heard what Frau Pichler said. We have to get back on the horse.’

Later, in the middle of the night, a series of shrill cries awoke them both. At first Werthen thought it might be a bird cry, but the only night predator in this area was an owl, and this was no owl hoot. Another series of wrenching screams had them up and out of bed, hustling into their clothes. On the way out, Werthen stopped by the wood bin at the door and picked out a heavy branch as a weapon, and then they dashed out into a night illuminated by a three-quarter moon, the earlier clouds now passed. They followed another scream toward the barn that stood between the old farmhouse where they were staying and the newer one. A slanting rectangle of yellow light poured out of the barn’s open door, and as they approached yet another plaintive scream shattered the stillness of the night.

They reached the door and gazed within the barn, shocked and speechless at what they saw. Lighted in the glare of a series of kerosene lamps hanging from the rafters, the Pichlers – their backs turned to Werthen and Berthe – were dressed head to foot in blood-splattered oil cloth jackets and pants and black rubber boots, each wielded a long blade. Hanging low from a rafter in front of them was a pig, its throat freshly cut, and the blood flowing rapidly into a pail that Peter Pichler held up to the wound. They turned when they heard Werthen and Berthe approach, and smiled like idiots.

‘Pork roast tomorrow,’ Frau Pichler said, and her husband and son laughed as if it were the funniest of jokes.

‘Sorry we woke you,’ she said. ‘But we had to get this slaughter done before the full moon. The blood moon, you know. Bad luck to do it after.’

Werthen and Berthe tried to feign interest in the subsequent draining of blood and cleaning of organs, but they were both shaken by the scene and its otherworldly, Bosch-like quality.

Finally they returned to their beds and clung to each other like small children in a storm. Werthen had been particularly chilled by the professional manner in which Eddie used his blade, seeming to know by instinct where to cut and how deep. It brought back the case that introduced him to the Pichler family in the first place. Eddie had been accused of mutilating animals in the vicinity. But his parents had sworn alibis for him on each occasion when such an incident occurred. They also insisted that the poor young boy had no facility with a knife, that he was, indeed, mortally afraid of the blade. Using their sworn testimony, Werthen had argued successfully for the boy’s innocence.

It seemed that Eddie had outgrown his fear of knives in the intervening years.

Or had he?

It had been a very long day, but before Werthen fell asleep he remembered sitting in the fiaker this morning waiting for Gross and reading the newspapers on the progress of their investigation. The Krafft-Ebing article in
Die Presse
came to mind and how that psychiatrist warned that sadistic brutality toward domestic or farm animals can serve as a warning sign for later homicidal brutality involving mutilations.

Had he set a future murderer free? Had he unwittingly saved Eddie from the incarceration that the boy – and the rest of society – in fact needed and deserved? Not a pleasant thought.

And there was something else, something that Frau Pichler had said, that sat annoyingly at the edge of Werthen’s consciousness. He could not conjure it up, could not tease it forward into his thoughts.

It would come, he decided. Don’t force it; it will come. He had a dreamless four hours of sleep until the first crow of the rooster next morning.

Werthen and Berthe left in the morning, she back to Vienna to pursue the Lipizzaner investigation there, and he to Hitzendorf, his soul at rest about his connection with Berthe, but his mind in a turmoil over the various pieces of evidence he had gathered the previous day. In Köflach, Berthe caught the morning express into Vienna, while Werthen was forced to again hire a fiaker to drive him the eight or so miles back to the Hotel Daniel in Hitzendorf.

He arrived in time to find Stoker at breakfast. As he made his way to their table, he felt the eyes of the gathered journalists on him, as if expecting some drama.

‘I was just preparing to track you down, Advokat Werthen,’ Stoker said, rising from the ruins of a boiled egg dripping down the side of a Gmundener ceramic egg cup, the orange-yellow of the yolk contrasting with the green swirls of the
grüngeflammt
pattern. Next to the egg cup lay today’s
Grazer Tagblatt
with a banner headline that screamed at him: ‘Prominent Criminologist Held in Blood Ritual Murders’.

Stoker followed Werthen’s gaze. ‘Yes. They arrested Gross last night.’

‘Who? They’re insane.’

‘It was his old colleague, Thielman, on orders from Magistrate Lechner.’

‘I have witnessed professional jealousy, but this is absurd.’

‘Agreed, but Thielman had his orders. Your friend Gross seemed to think it quite a lark. Made jokes about handcuffs as they ushered him out.’

Werthen was astonished. What could Lechner be thinking? The man would become a laughing stock when it was revealed that Gross had nothing to do with these murders. He couldn’t have, in fact, as he was in Czernowitz when they all took place.

Then a moment of doubt suddenly crept in: Lechner was, as Werthen recalled, the most cautious and fastidious of bureaucrats, always making sure to please those above him, eager to elbow those on his level out of the way, and equally eager to step on fingers and toes of those below him as he made his way up the professional ladder. Yet he was punctilious in such efforts, never challenging those whom he was not certain he could not somehow defeat, always assured they could not come back at him later.

What did Lechner know about Gross that he, Werthen, did not?

‘We must bail him out,’ Stoker said, bringing Werthen out of this reverie.

He shook his head. ‘This is not England, Stoker. That may be part of your legal tradition, but not in Austria, not for capital cases, at any rate.’

‘We can’t just let him linger in prison.’

‘I do not intend to,’ Werthen said. ‘Finish your breakfast. We need to talk to Inspector Thielman.’

In the event, Thielman was just finishing his own breakfast, as well, and a grim-looking repast it was: dried toast and hot milk. Something given to a teething baby or a man with a nasty gastric complaint.
Serves him right,
Werthen thought.

‘Inspector,’ Werthen said after they had been ushered into his office in the local gendarmerie. ‘What is all this insanity about Gross being a murderer?’

Thielman cast a sour look his way, as if to say that such a question would only exacerbate his digestive malady.

‘A pure fit of pique on Lechner’s part,’ Werthen added.

Thielman sighed and shook his head, putting a napkin over the steaming milk. ‘I am afraid, Herr Advokat, that this is neither a fit of insanity or pique on Lechner’s part. He says that he has solid evidence linking Doktor Gross to the crimes.’

‘And how was Gross supposed to have committed them? By telegraph? He was in Czernowitz at the time of the murders.’

Another shake of the head from Thielman. ‘Afraid you are wrong there, Advokat. Magistrate Lechner places him in Graz since the second of October.’

‘What? Impossible.’

‘He had rooms at the Excelsior. That is, until he came here to Hitzendorf at my request.’

‘Wait. But then you knew he was in Graz when you summoned him?’

‘No. I wrote to him in Czernowitz requesting his assistance. I imagine someone there simply forwarded the message to him in Graz.’

Adele, Gross’s wife, Werthen assumed.

‘Surely there is some explanation.’

‘Not from Doktor Gross,’ Thielman said. ‘You know how stubborn he can be.’

‘What possible motive—’

But before he could put the question, Thielman answered, ‘Lechner suspects it is all about professional pride. It’s all to do with the English detective chap, what’s his name?’

Werthen looked at Stoker for advice.

‘You can’t mean Sherlock Holmes?’ the Irishman said.

‘The very one. Lechner says Gross is trying to one up that fellow.’

‘But he is a piece of fiction,’ Stoker said almost in a whine. ‘And he was killed off by his author almost a decade ago.’ Stoker, however, knew only too well that Holmes was currently making a comeback with the serialization of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
in the
Strand Magazine.

‘That is neither here nor there,’ Thielman said. ‘Magistrate Lechner reckons Gross committed these murders, leaving clues from his own book on investigations so that he could solve the crimes and become the most famous criminologist in the world.’

‘Do you believe that, Inspector Thielman?’ Werthen asked.

‘Doesn’t matter what I believe. It’s what those in a courtroom believe. And Gross is not helping himself by refusing to answer any questions.’

Werthen could well imagine the high and mighty tone Gross was assuming.

‘Where is he being held?’

‘Karlau. Where else? The maximum security wing.’

It was not until later that afternoon that they were allowed to visit Gross. Originally built as a Renaissance-style castle used by one of the minor Habsburg archdukes, Karlau was later adapted for a workhouse and then a prison, and contained few of the amenities of a modern penitentiary. Led down a long, dank, and dimly lit corridor by an aging warder, Werthen heard a flurry of activity in the darkness ahead of them.

The warder turned his grizzled face to them, looking wraith-like in the light of the kerosene lantern he carried. ‘Breeds ’em big in here, they do. Rats as big as ferrets.’ He chuckled at this, spittle flying toward Werthen.

The man now held the lantern out at arm’s length ahead of him and illuminated a swarm of the vermin and called out, ‘Könniggrätz, Könniggrätz, come here old son.’ Suddenly, out of the pack of rats lumbered a giant of a creature, almost as large as the ferret the guard mentioned. It stood fiercely on three legs, an ear missing as well as an eye.

‘The old warrior. He’s fought many a battle with other rats. Haven’t you now, my good son?’

The man reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a crumble of sausage, tossing it to the enormous rodent. Könnigratz immediately secured the food, the other rats not bothering to challenge him as he took the morsel and scurried off into the gloom.

They finally reached Gross’s cell near the end of the corridor. The jailor inserted a long, rusty key in the massive door, unlocked it, and slowly opened it to reveal Gross seated as if in yogic contemplation at the end of a narrow cot. The scene was lit by a single candle on a deal table. The criminologist looked up as they entered.

‘It took you long enough to get here.’

‘Good afternoon to you, too, Gross,’ Werthen replied.

The jailor stood at the door like a porter waiting for a tip.

‘We will call you when we are ready,’ Werthen said. ‘Doktor Gross is hardly likely to attack us.’

The man reluctantly withdrew.

Werthen eyed Gross for a moment before speaking. He felt pained for his colleague. Such a fastidious man about his appearance, Gross was not faring well in captivity. They had taken his shoelaces, belt, and even his bow tie. His shirt was open at the throat and a nacreous wattle of flesh clearly showed in the pulsing candlelight. The bit of hair Gross still had on his head was also frizzled about his temples, and his eyes were puffy from lack of sleep.

Finally Werthen said, ‘Now what is all this nonsense? Why won’t you tell them your reason for being in Graz all this month?’

‘Because they are cretins.’ He pronounced it as the French would,
crétins
.

‘That is not a defense, Gross.’

‘I have no need of a defense. I am innocent, as you well know.’

‘I know it. Mr Stoker here knows it. But a court of law knows only what it hears. You cannot seriously be considering staying in this dungeon until they decide to convene a court for you, can you?’

‘Hardly a dungeon, Werthen. Hyperbole does not aid our cause.’

‘
Our
cause? My cause, Gross, is discovering who butchered these young women.’

‘And your employer would be?’

‘To hell with employers. I wish to right injustice. Your advice to me, if you remember rightly.’

Now it was Gross’s turn to cast the withering gaze. ‘An idealist now, is it? Good to hear, because capturing the killer is also my cause. In that manner you can prove my innocence. Ergo, my cause is your cause.’

‘You are maddening, Gross. Tell them what they need to know and get out of here so you can help. Your famous criminalistic talents are wasted in prison.’

‘Actually, this is the perfect place to exercise those talents, Werthen. It allows me to experience firsthand what those I have apprehended and sent to justice have experienced. This is what it feels like to be incarcerated. A bracing experience for someone involved in the criminal justice system. You should give it a try sometime, Werthen.’

‘All right. You have had your little fun, Gross. Now let us please speak in earnest of this matter.’

‘Oh, I am dreadfully in earnest, Werthen. I shall not tell Lechner and his ghouls of my movements while in Graz nor of my reason for being here. You know I did not commit these atrocities, Werthen. It is up to you then to prove who did. That is the only way to save me.’