Death and the Maiden (4 page)

Liebermann held his father’s gaze and his reply, when it came, was indignant. ‘To the right person, yes.’

‘And is there anyone …?’ The sentence trailed off as Mendel’s confidence ebbed away. He was not used to speaking intimately with his son and making such an inquiry felt awkward.

‘No,’ said Liebermann, doubly discomfited by his father’s frankness and his own duplicity. There
was
someone for whom he had very deep feelings, but he was not inclined at that moment to reveal her identity. He was as confused as he had ever been concerning Amelia Lydgate and he knew that he would be incapable of giving a coherent account of his troubled fixation. Besides, she wasn’t Jewish.

‘You’re a young man, Maxim,’ said Mendel, ‘but not
that
young. When I was your age—’

‘Yes, I know,’ Liebermann interjected. ‘You were married and had already started a family.’

‘Well, you don’t want to end up like your Uncle Alexander, now, do you? An ageing roué?’

‘Father, many years must pass before I can be reasonably described
as
ageing
and I can assure you, whatever you may think, my general conduct is far from dissolute.’

‘I was just voicing a concern, that’s all.’ Mendel took a sip of Pharisäer coffee and, picking up a starched napkin, wiped a residue of whipped cream from his moustache. ‘What happened … with Clara. I don’t think what you did was honourable.’ He waved his hand in the air, as if simply recalling his son’s misconduct had fouled the atmosphere. ‘Nevertheless, you are my flesh and blood and the thought of you being
unfulfilled
gives me no joy.’

Why was the old man talking to him like this? Had he finally found it within himself to forgive?

‘But I
am
happy,’ said Liebermann. ‘I have my work, my friends.’

‘Yes, these things are associated with a kind of happiness,’ said Mendel. ‘But not
true
happiness, not the kind of happiness that comes from marriage and children. These experiences are essential. They are sacred.’ Liebermann flinched at this last word. The movement was so pronounced that his father noticed. ‘It isn’t so foolish, Maxim, to believe that we have been put on this Earth for a purpose.’

There were many subjects that Liebermann preferred to avoid when conversing with his father and religion ranked highly among them. He was greatly relieved when Mendel’s train of thought was interrupted by the arrival of Bruno, the waiter.

‘Herr Liebermann, another pharisäer?’

‘Yes, Bruno, and another schwarzer for my son.’

‘Herr Doctor Liebermann, you have hardly touched your
Mohnstrudel
. I trust it is to your satisfaction?’

‘Yes, Bruno,’ said Liebermann. ‘It’s very good.’

The waiter bowed and dashed off, vanishing behind the open lid of the piano.

‘You remember Blomberg?’ said Mendel. ‘You met him at my lodge.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘He has a daughter. Twenty years old. Very pretty.’

Ah
, thought Liebermann.
So this is what it’s all about!

Liebermann shook his head. ‘Not yet, father. It really is too soon.’ Mendel acknowledged his son’s request with a brusque nod, and finished his
guglhupf
in silence. The B minor waltz came to a close, and the pianist, responding to a smattering of applause, began a second Chopin waltz: the languid E flat major. Their conversation continued in a desultory fashion until Liebermann, observing the time, announced that he was expected at the hospital.

‘You’d better hurry along, then,’ said Mendel. Liebermann had the distinct impression that his father was relieved to see the back of him. Bruno arrived with Liebermann’s coat and soon the young doctor was standing on the Ringstrasse waiting for a cab. The hazy fog had still not lifted and the air smelled damp and autumnal. A woman wearing a feathered hat passed by and he found himself staring at her retreating figure. The slimness of her waist and the curve of her hips held his attention; interest slowly transmuted into desire.

Marriage
, thought Liebermann.
Maybe the old man has a point
.

A cab drew up and he stepped towards it, but another gentleman had hailed the vehicle while Liebermann had been distracted by the woman in the feathered hat. Liebermann watched as the carriage pulled away and set off towards the looming mass of the opera house, his brain teeming with thoughts and the nervous melody of Chopin’s B minor waltz.

R
HEINHARDT AND HIS ASSISTANT
were smoking cigars in the corridor outside the morgue. A sawing sound emanated from within, above which Professor Mathias’s fragile tenor was drifting aimlessly. Somewhere in the pathological institute a chiming clock announced that it was six o’ clock. The day had been long and Rheinhardt had eaten nothing since breakfast.

‘I think it would be permissible for us to stop for some refreshment on our way back to Schottenring, don’t you?’

‘There’s a new beer cellar that’s just opened on Türkenstrasse,’ Haussmann replied. ‘They serve some very spicy
Weizenbock
. Knauss, a friend of mine, went there last week. He said it was good.’

‘I was really thinking of something more substantial, Haussmann, something requiring the use of implements, such as a knife and fork.’

‘Oh, I see, sir.’

‘Boiled beef, fried onions, and dumplings, followed by a thick slice of
topfenstrudel.’
As Rheinhardt envisaged the meal his stomach produced a plangent wail that evoked images of eternal torment. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he added, positioning a placatory hand on the corrugated distensions of his waistcoat.

‘This place also serves food, sir,’ said Haussmann. ‘Simple but wholesome. That’s what my friend said. I’m sure you’d be able to get some boiled beef and dumplings.’

‘Very well, Haussmann,’ said Rheinhardt, suddenly feeling weak
and seeing no purpose in prolonging the debate. ‘That is where we shall eat. Türkenstrasse.’

‘Rheinhardt!’ It was Professor Mathias. ‘Rheinhardt, come in, will you? I’ve got something to show you.’

The two men re-entered the morgue, where they discovered Professor Mathias standing by a bench next to the autopsy table. He was looking down at something that glistened beneath the beam of an electric lamp. As Rheinhardt passed Fräulein Rosenkrantz’s corpse he saw that she had undergone a hideous transformation. All the skin had been peeled away from her chest and it now hung down from either side of her body like the loose flaps of an unbuttoned coat. Her breasts were still attached to these flaps and they drooped, piteously, over the lip of the table. Rheinhardt’s gaze lingered on the neatly packed organs of Fräulein Rosenkrantz’s thoracic cavity and he found himself swaying a little, unbalanced by the macabre spectacle.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Professor Mathias.

‘Yes, quite all right, thank you,’ Rheinhardt replied, drawing on his cigar for comfort.

‘It’s just, I can’t help noticing,’ continued Mathias, ‘that you’ve gone green. Hasn’t he, young man?’ Mathias turned to address Hausmann. ‘Oh, I see that you have too, dear fellow. Would you like some schnapps? It’s good for queasiness.’ The old man produced a bottle from a shelf beneath the bench.

‘A very kind gesture, Professor,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘But we are on duty and must decline your offer.’

‘You have no objection if I—’

‘Do as you please, professor.’

Mathias filled a shot glass, threw his head back, and downed the contents in one gulp.

‘Ah, that’s better!’ said Mathias. ‘I’m feeling the cold more than I used to. The schnapps helps. Now, where were we?’ He put the glass
down and indicated the object beneath the lamp. It was the forepart of Fräulein Rosenkrantz’s ribcage. Rheinhardt noticed that the sternum and all the projecting struts of bone were coated with a fibrous silvery material. Mathias’s eyes bulged behind his thick spectacles. ‘You said that you weren’t convinced Fräulein Rosenkrantz’s death was accidental. What made you say that, Rheinhardt?’

‘There was something about the way she was lying on the floor that looked rather odd to me. It was as if she’d been’ – Rheinhardt searched for an accurate expression – ‘tidied up.’

‘How so?’

‘She was positioned in the middle of a Persian rug and her arms were exactly parallel to its edges.’

‘Interesting,’ said Mathias. The old pathologist reached out and, taking one of the ribs between his thumb and forefinger, demonstrated that a section of bone, distal to the costal cartilage, could be moved freely in all directions within its fibrous sheath.

‘It’s broken?’ said Rheinhardt.

‘It most certainly is,’ said Mathias, turning to face the autopsy table. ‘Now, take a look at these lungs. Enormous, aren’t they? The secret of her success, I expect. I saw her in
The Flying Dutchman
last year: extraordinary power. You wouldn’t have believed that a small woman could produce such a noise. Her voice soared above the orchestra.’ The professor, inspired by this reminiscence, attempted to recreate the effect by singing in a wavering falsetto that cracked almost immediately and became a hacking cough. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mathias, resting his hands on the side of the autopsy table. ‘My asthma. It gets bad at this time of year.’

‘You were about to show me something, Professor?’

‘Fräulein Rosenkrantz is supposed to have ingested a deadly quantity of laudanum – is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yet there is no inflammation of the lungs and her pupils are only slightly contracted.’ Mathias lifted one of the woman’s eyelids, revealing a striking emerald iris with a distinct circle of darkness at its centre. ‘She most certainly drank laudanum, but I’m not altogether sure that she imbibed enough to kill her.’

‘There were many empty phials by her bed.’

‘Which signifies nothing, Rheinhardt,’ said the professor, dismissively Then he placed a finger on the spongy exterior of the dead woman’s left lung. ‘What do you see here?’

‘It’s a different colour from the rest.’

‘The distinctive cherry-purple of a contusion, corresponding with the break I showed you on the eighth rib. If Fräulein Rosenkrantz had had an accident before retiring, she would have experienced considerable discomfort. Of course, it’s always possible that she sustained the injury, went to bed, and decided to treat herself with laudanum – although that would be most irregular. The pain and respiratory difficulties associated with a broken rib would almost certainly have caused Fräulein Rosenkrantz to call her physician with all possible haste.’

‘But if Fräulein Rosenkrantz was disorientated she might have injured herself before losing consciousness.’

‘In my opinion, it is quite difficult to break a rib by merely stumbling around a lady’s bedroom.’

Rheinhardt stubbed his cigar out in a glass dish and exhaled a final cloud of smoke.

‘In which case, how do you think the rib came to be broken?’

‘It’s only a theory, of course …’

‘Nevertheless, I would like to hear it.’

‘I strongly suspect that the rib was broken when someone applied pressure to her chest.’

‘I beg your pardon, Professor?’

‘Her lungs wouldn’t have been able to expand and she would have suffocated. She might still have been conscious when it happened – or at least partially conscious. She wouldn’t even have been able to scream. No air, you see.’ Mathias stroked the dead woman’s face and adopted a tender expression. ‘She would have been helpless.’

‘Forgive me, Professor, but are you suggesting that Fräulein Rosenkrantz was crushed?’

‘In a manner of speaking – yes.’

‘Y
OUNG MAN – YOU ARE
occupying my seat.’

Liebermann looked up and discovered that he was being addressed by a frail old woman with rheumy, colourless eyes. Her face was deeply lined and her thinning hair had been lacquered and curled into a cobwebby mass through which the glass facets of the chandelier behind her were visible. She was leaning on a walking stick with a carved ivory handle, though her principal means of support was the arm of a pretty woman in a blue dress, whose flushing cheeks proclaimed her profound embarrassment.

‘Great-aunt!’ said the woman, the tone of her voice combining admonishment with desperation.

The dowager turned the whole of her body in order to look at her anguished relative. ‘Whatever is the matter with you, Anna?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman in the blue dress, smiling at Liebermann.

‘What are you apologising for?’ asked the old woman.

‘This gentleman is in the correct seat, I am sure,’ her great-niece replied. ‘Besides, it hardly matters – we’ll be able to see the stage wherever we sit.’

Liebermann stood up.

‘May I see your tickets?’

The young doctor inspected the numbers and said, ‘You are seated next to me – these two here – but I am perfectly happy to move along.’

‘That is very kind, but—’

‘No, I insist,’ said Liebermann. Before the old woman sat down she stared up at him and squinted. She had very distinctive features. A thin mouth, hooked nose, and pointed chin. It was unlikely that she had ever been beautiful, quite the contrary, but once she must have been very arresting. She exuded a dry floral fragrance, like scented talcum powder. ‘Allow me,’ said Liebermann, taking her walking stick and offering her his arm. The dowager took it and he performed the necessary actions to get her comfortably seated in her preferred chair.