A Matter of Breeding (27 page)

At that moment, Frau Paulus stuck her head out of the door to the inner room. ‘Tea anyone? I should have asked before.’

‘No,’ Paulus said with animus. ‘The gentlemen are just leaving.’

Another strained smile and she ducked her head back in, quickly closing the door behind her as if afraid that one of her energetic children might wriggle out of the opening.

Werthen stood his ground, gazing at the door and then back to Paulus, as if to remind the spa manager of what he did not want his wife to know.

‘
Gott im Himmel
,’ he finally spluttered. ‘No, as far as I know, there have been no raises given in the past year.’

‘And you would know, Herr Paulus?’ Gross asked.

‘Of course I would. I’m the manager. I approve any such changes in expenditures.’

‘And these two young women,’ Gross continued, ‘did they have any special admirers at their respective spas? These things sometimes happen. An older client or patient becomes besotted with the help. Especially if they are young and attractive.’

‘We do not allow such fraternization, I assure you. Had I heard of any such irregularities, the young woman in question would have been terminated. And now, gentlemen, if you please.’ He ushered them toward the front door.

Once they were outside and the door was closed brusquely behind them, Gross and Werthen looked admiringly for a moment at the little garden that Frau Paulus – obviously she and not her husband – had fashioned in the front.

‘Interesting choice of words, don’t you think, Werthen?’

He nodded at Gross, for it had sounded odd to him, as well. ‘Terminated,’ Werthen said. ‘Not how I would describe dismissing an employee.’

Berthe was early for her appointment with the archduke. She waited in the Marble Hall of the Lower Belvedere, where Franz Ferdinand lived and worked during the colder winter months. The two-storey hall was drafty; she could see the snow-covered grounds outside the tall windows. High overhead, the ceiling fresco depicted Prince Eugene of Savoy, the original inhabitant, as Apollo. Gazing upward, Berthe grew dizzy with the swirling mass of celestial putti, floating angelic, dimple-thighed ladies, and defiant warriors in bright blues and rose.

An army officer who introduced himself as Lieutenant Petschner finally came for her.

‘We spoke not long ago on the telephone,’ she said.

‘Yes. I remember,
gnädige Frau
. I regret I was no longer on duty to greet you that day.’

He seemed a pleasant young man, but his form of address made her feel suddenly very old.

Lieutenant Petschner led her through the Marble Room to an interior suite of offices where a number of officers seemed to be busy at desks, each with a telephone and some of which even had typewriters upon them, seeming so out place among the gilded columns and tapestries on the walls. This was a different route than she had taken when visiting Franz Ferdinand before, but finally she reached his corner of the room and he greeted her heartily.

They made small talk for a time; he had heard of her child’s illness and asked after Frieda by name. It seemed there was little that transpired in Vienna without the archduke knowing about it.

‘And now, what is this urgent business you referred to on the phone?’ he asked.

She opened the large handbag she carried today and removed the Krensky file she had received in the mail the previous Friday. That and the murder of Hohewart, director of Premium Breeds, convinced her that Franz Ferdinand would once again open the investigation into the alleged Lipizzaner breeding scandal.

He took his time reading the file. When he handed it back to her, he said, ‘This is rather what we had heard before.’

‘Yes, but here it is all written down with dates and names of breeding houses.’

He shrugged; she imagined his stiff red collar on his military tunic must scratch with such a gesture.

‘It still means little if we do not have corroboration.’

‘I thought the murder of Herr Maximillian Hohewart would lend some credence to these allegations.’

‘Not unless we discover the killer had some connection to the Lipizzaner matter.’

This comment deflated her. She obviously wore her disappointment on her face.

‘I am sorry to be so discouraging, Frau Meisner. I, too, want to get to the bottom of this, but we need hard proof to do so. We need Herr Krensky’s informant.’

‘There have been other developments in addition to the death of Director Hohewart.’ She quickly explained about the picture they had discovered linking Hohewart to Christian von Hobarty; the fact that it was Hobarty who had secured the breeding contract for Premium Breeds; and the connection, finally, between Hobarty and Krensky, who had once interviewed the former member of parliament for an article on Styrian wines.

‘You have been busy,’ the archduke said with a smile. ‘Von Hobarty … And you suspect him then of being the source of the story?’

‘There is the connection to Krensky.’

‘The young man must have interviewed any number of people during the course of his brief career.’

‘Not someone so connected to Premium Breeds and the Lipizzaner stud,’ she protested.

He considered this. Finally: ‘Motive?’

‘You think Hobarty killed Hohewart?’

He shook his head at this. ‘I mean motive for making such a scheme public.’

She had considered this, but had always come up with more reasons against such a possibility than for.

‘I know it does not sound rational. When all is said and done, von Hobarty was the one to help secure the Premium Breeds contract with the Imperial Ministry. If Premium Breeds were discredited, you would think he would want to avoid any publicity, anything that might bring disrepute to his name. And if he were part of the scheme, financially gaining from it, there would be an even stronger reason not to want it made public. Or if he were an investor—’

‘He isn’t,’ Franz Ferdinand said, pushing a hefty ledger book across the desk to her. ‘After hearing of Hohewart’s death, I had the finance minister bring a copy of the Premium Breeds investors’ list and went through it. You are free to examine it, but I would surely have remembered von Hobarty’s name if I had seen it.’

‘Well, then …’

‘Perhaps he is a simple patriot,’ Franz Ferdinand said. ‘Perhaps his involvement with Premium Breeds was purely innocent, and then, when getting word of a breeding fraud, he chose to do the right thing.’

‘Why not just go to the police, then? Or to the Imperial Ministry for Agriculture? He may be out of politics, but von Hobarty must still command some respect.’

‘You
have
given this some thought,’ he said.

She sighed. ‘Not enough, apparently.’

‘Well, enough to convince me there is reason to re-open the matter. Perhaps I should investigate the finances of Herr von Hobarty a little more closely.’

She sensed an eagerness in Franz Ferdinand for such an investigation: Von Hobarty with his German leanings and his knack for stirring up race animosity had been a thorn in the side of the Habsburgs for decades.

‘Meanwhile,’ Franz Ferdinand said, ‘can you not think of any new direction your investigations should take?’

She was about to answer in the negative when suddenly she remembered something.

‘What an idiot I am. I forgot completely about the list.’

Franz Ferdinand looked perplexed. ‘What list might that be?’

‘When I interviewed Herr Hohewart, he told me that negotiations on these new bloodlines were all done through what he called respectable intermediaries. I asked to speak with these people, but Hohewart indicated he had dispensed with their services as he was dissatisfied with their field work, whatever that meant. He had no addresses for them, but promised to have his secretary send me a list of names. I hardly expected him to carry through with it, and when it came I admit to surprise. But then Krensky was killed and the Lipizzaner scheme was put on a back burner, so to speak. I simply filed the list away.’

‘Well, we are moving things back to the front of the stove, Frau Meisner. It is time you unearthed that list. Perhaps I can be of service in tracking down those mentioned.’

Later that afternoon back at the Josefstädterstrasse flat, she went through her files and quickly discovered the letter sent from Hohewart’s secretary, Frau Czerny. The list was not long, just ten names, none of which were recognizable to Berthe.

There was, however, something familiar about the typing itself. She looked closely at it, then fetched the Krensky file sent to her and placed a sheet from those notes next to Frau Czerny’s list of names. The similarities were unmistakable. The lower case ‘e’ on both was out of line, somewhat raised above the baseline, and that the lower case ‘p’ key likewise needed a cleaning, for the loop of the letter was obviously gummed with ink, creating a dot-like bowl rather than a circular one. The descender of the ‘p’ key was also feathered from ink accumulation in both these samples.

The same typewriter had been used to write both Krensky’s file and this list of names from Herr Hohewart’s office.

Meanwhile, in Styria, Doktor Hanns Gross was also examining a written document, this one sent from London and forwarded by his wife from Czernowitz:

My Dear Doktor Gross,

I hope this finds you well and that you will forgive my writing in English. Speaking German is quite a different matter from writing it, and for one who makes his living by the pen, I find I have too much ego to use language – any language – less than professionally.

Perhaps you have seen my article in the
Telegraph
. If so, I hope you do not take it amiss. In fact, you should take it as an homage rather than subterfuge. But if you did take offense, I believe the contents of this letter may prove to have some remedial effect.

I have a young friend by the name of Aleister Crowley. He travels in what one might call esoteric circles, most interested in matters of the mystical and occult. An interesting chap and most convincing about his magical experiences. At any rate, Mr Crowley and I correspond regularly; he is currently abroad once again, traveling in the East. We have been discussing my recent travels in Austria in our letters.

The long and short of it is that Crowley mentioned a most bizarre dinner to which he was invited when he also was in Transylvania not long ago. He found himself at a ceremonial dinner of the Bathory Circle held on August 24 – the anniversary of the death of the Blood Countess, who had been bricked up in a small suite of rooms at Cachtice Castle following her trial in 1611. It seemed the celebratory rites at this dinner included speeches by relatives of the clan condemning the ‘false’ accusations against the countess. Crowley further notes that the master of ceremonies of this auspicious occasion mentioned a distant relation of the Bathory clan who settled in Styria, but now refused to use his real surname.

Does any of this sound familiar to your, Doktor Gross?

Once again, I hope this finds you and yours in fine health. Please give my regards to your colleague, Advokat Werthen and to his delightful wife the next time you see them. I do hope his young daughter recovered from her illness.

I remain yours very truly,

Bram Stoker

Werthen, reading over Gross’s shoulder, finished at about the same instant as the criminologist.

‘What do you make of that, Werthen?’

‘I am amazed.’

‘Quite so. The man sounds more than a little smitten with Frau Meisner.’

‘My God, Gross. Stoker reveals a Bathory link to Styria and all you can say is—’

‘Levity, Werthen. One must never forget its power, even at the most crucial moments.’

Werthen felt a bit of a fool for falling for Gross’s little joke, but he still found nothing frivolous about this information.

‘It seems patently clear who this distant relation might be,’ Werthen said. ‘Stoker assumed as much with his theory of the anagram of Hobarty for Bathory.’

‘One can hardly blame the man or his forebears for changing their name from that of the infamous Blood Countess,’ Gross said.

‘Klapper did the same thing,’ Werthen said. ‘According to von Hobarty, he changed his name to Kupfer in order to get a new start. But if Klapper were also a distant relation, then wouldn’t he know of von Hobarty’s real name?’

‘It is possible,’ Gross said. ‘But it rather depends what side of the family Klapper was from. I, however, have a different question regarding this information. What is this false accusation the letter speaks of?’

‘I shouldn’t wonder that Bathory descendants would want to say the countess was actually innocent,’ Werthen said. ‘Barbaric crimes she was convicted of.’

They were both silent for a moment, oblivious to the chattering evening crowd of travelers gathered in the Hotel Daniel dining room.

Finally Gross spoke again. ‘Perhaps Herr von Hobarty can enlighten us about this.’

‘But before he does,’ Werthen interjected, ‘I would like to visit a certain Herr Prochazka in the Sievering district of Vienna.’

‘Ahh, the Czech parliamentarian assaulted by von Hobarty. You suspect he might have something valuable to tell us?’

‘Karl Kraus does, and now Frau Czerny also adds her enigmatic remark. So, yes, I would like to hear the reason for their altercation before we meet again with Herr von Hobarty.’

Werthen took the early morning train to Vienna and then hailed a fiaker to take him to Josefstädterstrasse.

God, how he loved this city. The smell of coal fire was in the air, and snow was standing several feet high in the parks. Butcher wagons were making deliveries to restaurants and inns along the way; street vendors were doing a brisk business with roasted chestnuts and potatoes.

When he arrived at the flat, Frau Blatschky fussed over him, taking his coat. He was eager to change to his warmer one and get rid of the itchy long underwear. In his wardrobe, he had a set of long underwear made of angora; he would also change into that, for the weather had turned colder, even here in Vienna.

‘You look like you could use a nice second breakfast,’ she said as he placed his homburg on the hat tree in the entryway.