Deadly Communion (36 page)

In due course Amelia returned.

He heard her saying: ‘It fits perfectly’ before she made her appearance.

The garment hung loosely from her shoulders and undulated as she stepped into the room. It was cut from a material of the richest red, covered with a repeated circular gold motif. These colours found corresponding tones in Amelia’s russet and copper hair, which she had unpinned.

Liebermann had always found reform dresses unflattering — but now he was persuaded otherwise. This was how a modern woman should be dressed: unconstrained, unfettered — free to inhale the air of a new century.

Amelia turned a full circle, creating a ripple of brilliance on the fabric.

She was like the high priestess of some ancient mystery cult, a primal power, enigmatic and ineffable. Hygeia. Her femininity was at once alluring and also a little frightening.

It was clear that she had discarded her corset and Liebermann became acutely aware of the proximity of her nude form just beneath the fabric. His thoughts misted and he was troubled by ghostly images
of pale flesh. Once again, the love duet sounded in his mind and he was overcome with a yearning so strong that it was as if he had been mortally wounded and his life blood was ebbing away.

—
One for ever without end

—
Never waking

—
Never fearing

—
Embraced namelessly in love

Amelia Lydgate stopped revolving. She fixed him with her pewter eyes.

‘More tea?’ she asked.

The spell was broken.

I
WOULD LIKE TO THANK
Hannah Black, Clare Alexander and Steve Mathews for their editorial assistance and useful comments; Nick Austin for the supply of excellent copy-editing skills and Simon Dalgleish for checking my suspect German; Luitgard Hammerer for translation services and consulting the Funeral Museum in Vienna with respect to my questions concerning embalming practices and legislation around 1900; Mirko Herzog for explaining the role of concierges around 1900 and providing information concerning the Sperrgeld. I would also like to thank Dr Yves Steppler, consultant pathologist, who on a memorable walk on Hampstead Heath alerted me to the fictional potential of the foramen magnum. Finally, I would like to thank Nicola Fox for continuing to be an exceptional human being and for doing all those things that need to be done while I blithely disengage from the real world.

The description of Ancient Egyptian mummification techniques was adapted from passages in
The American Way of Death
by Jessica Mitford. The medical faculty of Vienna’s obsession with pathology and its belief in the healing properties of cherry brandy is discussed in
The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History 1848 — 1938
by William M. Johnston. The explanation that Freud offers Liebermann of the Oedipus complex is a bowdlerisation of excerpts from his letter to Wilhelm Fliess dated 15 October 1897, as well as selected passages in
The Interpretation of Dreams
and
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.
Freud’s views on polymorphous sexual perversity, cruelty and fetishism
are taken from
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,
and his account of the psychological significance of doppelgängers is freely adapted from his essay ‘The Uncanny’; however, it should be noted that many of these ideas are more accurately attributed to Otto Rank, whose landmark publication Der Doppelgänger appeared in an edition of Imago during 1914. The notion that doubling in dreams is a defence against castration fears can be found in
The Interpretation of Dreams.
The proposal for a highspeed pipeline running from the Innere Stadt to the Zentralfriedhof for the purpose of transporting corpses was made in the nineteenth century and is mentioned in
Only in Vienna
by Duncan J.D. Smith. Gustav Macé was a real French detective and the case details described by Rheinhardt are historically accurate. Rheinhardt’s description of contemporary female dress is based on a passage taken from
The
World
of Yesterday
by Stefan Zweig. Lieder and poetry translations were by William Mann, Lionel Salter and Richard Stokes. Information on the reform fashion movement and reform dresses came from
Vienna 1900 and the
Heroes
of Modernism
edited by Christian Brandstätter,
Gustav Klimt: Painter of
Women by Susanna Partsch, and
Wonderful Wiener
Werkstatte: Design
in Vienna 1903
— 1932 by Christian Brandstätter. House Vogl is based on photographs and descriptions of the Flöge sisters’ fashion house which was located in Vienna’s eleventh district. Information on the Flöge sisters and their fashion house can also be found in these volumes. Katharina Schratt’s dinner party — as reported in the society magazine — was based on a real gathering described in
The Emperor and the Actress
by Joan Haslip. The guest list is accurate. Details of Alfed Roller’s sets for the 1903 Court Opera production of
Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde
can be found in
Gustav Mahler: Vienna: the Years of Challenge
by Henry-Louis de la Grange. I borrowed the Two Darlings — with gratitude and admiration — from Arthur Schnitzler’s 1902 short story ‘An Eccentric’.

Frank Tallis

London, 2009

Also by Frank Tallis

Love Sick

Mortal Mischief

Vienna Blood

Fatal Lies

Darkness
Rising