Dine and Die on the Danube Express (11 page)

“Then you know who did.”

“No, I have no idea.”

Kramer glanced at me. We were beginning to develop the initial stages of a partnership, each knowing when to make use of the other.

“Why are you dressed as each other?” I shot out the question.

“We are not! She—”

“You are wearing one of her pantsuits, are you not?”

“No, it’s mine.”

“We can quickly determine if that is the truth,” Kramer cut in. “Do you wish to change that statement?”

“I—” She stopped whatever she was about to say.

“Go on,” snapped Kramer, not wanting to give her time to think.

“We sometimes wear each other’s clothing—”

“This is more than exchanging clothing. You exchanged identities. Why?” Kramer was uncompromising, and she looked at us, from one to the other.

“All right, I’ll tell you.” She sounded humble, and I had the thought that it was uncharacteristic of the star.

“I—I have had these letters—”

“What sort of letters?” Kramer sounded as if he were not going to believe a word of it, whatever she had to say.

“Threatening letters. I had another one of them delivered to me on the train just before we left Munich.”

I recalled the steward, Hirsch, telling us of delivering a message to Malescu that had terrified her.

“These threats, how many have you had?”

“Four, I think, yes, four.”

“Have you reported them to the police?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“They threatened my life if I told the police.”

“Do you have any of these letters?”

“No, I don’t—”

“What about the letter that was delivered to you on this train?”

“I don’t know. It may still be in my compartment.”

Throughout this interchange, Malescu was dry-eyed, and her voice was steady. It was easy to believe that she was still shocked by her understudy’s death. She was controlled, though, and Kramer’s uncompromising method of interrogation did not upset her.

“These letters,” Kramer continued. “Do they merely threaten to take your life? Don’t they give any reason, do they say anything else at all?”

“Oh, yes,” Malescu said. “They are very clear.”

Kramer must have been surprised at that, but he didn’t show it. “Tell us, Fraulein, what do they say?”

“Well,” she said, “they all concern Rakoczi’s daughter.”

T
O HIS CREDIT, KRAMER
didn’t turn a hair at the reply. He was remarkably calm as he asked the predictable question.

“Who is Rakoczi?”

Malescu looked surprised. “You don’t know Rakoczi? Well, I suppose he is not well-known outside Hungary.”

“And his daughter? Is she better known?”

Germans are not noted for their ability to be sarcastic. Sarcasm is not a weapon in their verbal vocabulary. Perhaps that wasn’t derision in Kramer’s tone—perhaps it was merely probing.

Whatever it was, it was wasted on Malescu. “I will have to tell you the whole story,” she said, and proceeded to do so.

“Ferenc Rakoczi is one of Hungary’s heroes. He was the son and grandson of famous rebels. His family was wealthy and powerful, but they detested the terrible acts of the Emperor and his troops. The Rakoczi family led rebel armies against them for generation after generation. When Ferenc came of age, he was a prince of Transylvania, but he was determined to free the people from their oppression.”

As she paused for breath, Kramer said, “Fraulein, I hope you are going to tell us—”

“Of course,” said Malescu, and her imperious manner was returning with each breath. “Ferenc Rakoczi spent time at the court of the Emperor Leopold because of the high position of his family, and the emperor even sent Rakoczi to make a deal with the rebels. Instead, though, Rakoczi found himself supporting the rebels more and more, and soon he became their leader. They gained control of all of Transylvania and most of Hungary.

“Rakoczi fought on. He was captured but escaped before he could be executed. Poland wanted to join his struggle and offered to make him king, but he refused. Still he fought on, but the imperial army was too strong. His rebellion crumbled.

“Rakoczi went to France for support but could get none. He went to Turkey and died there. His two sons died soon after …”

“The history of your country is fascinating, Fraulein,” Kramer commented, “but I fail to see what this has—”

“I am about to tell you,” said Malescu firmly. “A legend arose that he had a daughter. There is no proof of this, but it became a rallying point for the rebels. A woman leader appeared who may have been Rakoczi’s daughter. She was executed, and another appeared immediately.

“Now, we come to today. A Hungarian playwright has written a play called
Rakoczi’s Daughter
, and I have been asked to star in it. It is a wonderful role”—her eyes took on an anticipatory gleam—“and I would do anything to play it.”

“But,” said Kramer, who had been commendably restrained throughout this recital, “you are now going to tell us what this has to with the threats against your life.”

“Yes, I am. You have heard of the IMG surely?”

Kramer nodded. “Hungary’s independence movement for the northern states.” He looked at me. “It is akin to the IRA in Ireland, the ETA in the Basque area, the Quebec separatists …”

“That is right,” said Malescu. “The IMG are the ones making these threats. They believe that making a heroine out of Rakoczi’s daughter will harm their movement.”

“Sounds as if it should help,” I said. “Make more people aware, bring up more support.”

“The IMG don’t believe that. They believe that fictionalizing Rakoczi’s daughter glamorizes her and turns her into a star of operetta—a sort of Merry Widow of the Resistance.”

“So they don’t want you to play the role,” Kramer summarized.

“Exactly.” Malescu turned the full candlepower of her magnificent eyes on the security chief.

“You take these threats on your life that seriously?” I asked.

“The IMG shot and killed the assistant public prosecutor a year ago in Szeged,” Malescu said indignantly. I took her answer as a definite affirmative.

“Are you suggesting that the IMG murdered Fraulein Svarovina in mistake for you?” Kramer asked.

The question bothered Malescu. She thought, looked away, thought more before she answered, “I am not sure …”

“Have you definitely turned down the role?” Kramer went on.

“No.”

“You told me earlier that you haven’t told the police of the IMG threats.”

“That was true.”

Kramer tried another approach. “So you persuaded your understudy to change places with you.”

Malescu nodded again.

“If you suspected an attempt on your life, wasn’t it cold-blooded of you to expose your understudy to murder?”

“She has replaced me on many occasions,” said Malescu loftily. “She never considered it as being a risk.”

“Unfortunately, we can’t ask her that,” commented Kramer.

“It is an understudy’s job to take the star’s place whenever it is necessary, both on the stage and off. It is not at all unusual in the theatrical world.”

“So while your understudy replaced you in your compartment, you went to the banquet in the city? Wasn’t that exposing yourself to danger?”

Malescu gave him a scornful look. “Of course not. I was not Magda Malescu, I was Talia Svarovina. I was safe.”

“You were certain no one would recognize you?”

“I am an actress,” she said simply.

“Fraulein Svarovina was wearing only underwear and a revealing robe. Does that not suggest to you that she was expecting a man?”

I noted that Kramer’s question did not include the possibility of the visitor being a woman. He was leaving it to Malescu to bring up that alternative.

She did not bring it up though. She gave a careless shrug. “No, it does not. She liked to wear my clothes. Naturally they were better and much more expensive than she could afford.”

“She has done so before?”

“Many times.”

Kramer looked away, then turned back to her with an assault on a different front. “Are you aware that a report appeared in the Budapest
Times
to the effect that you had been murdered?”

Her lips curved in a slight smile. “That reporter has been telling lies about me for some time. This was another one of them.”

“A lie or a mistake?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know about the story then?”

“Certainly. Everyone at my table in the Hotel Imperial wanted to know what I thought of my mistress—the star—having been described as murdered.”

“Then,” said Kramer, “when we went to your compartment to check on this story, we found it empty. Where was your dead body?”

“I wasn’t dead,” Malescu said contemptuously.

“So where was Svarovina’s body?”

“She wasn’t dead either. She was obviously somewhere on the train.”

“This reporter on the Budapest
Times
—”

“Mikhel Czerny.”

“Is that his name?” Kramer said. “You know him?”

“No, and I don’t wish to.”

“Why does he harbor such a grudge against you?”

I saw a definite hesitation in Malescu’s reply. Kramer must have, too.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Would you say he hates you?”

Malescu raised her head in a gesture that must have come from a role in one of her plays. “Many people think so. He is a hateful person.”

“Hates you enough to want to kill you?”

“I—I don’t know enough about him to say that.”

“It sounds unlikely though, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know, I suppose so.” Malescu sounded unwilling to debate the issue, and it led Kramer to continue more intensely.

“Surely reporters don’t kill people they hate? Even if their business is persecuting personalities on paper, they don’t pursue them in real life and kill them, do they?”

“As you say, it is unlikely.”

“But not impossible. Is that what you are saying?”

She shook her head in a meaningless gesture.

Kramer pursued the investigation with questions about the number of years Svarovina had been Malescu’s understudy, where she had been and what she had done before that, what kind of a person she was, who were her friends, and so on. She replied to them all in a matter-of-fact way, but I could not detect anything of real value in her responses.

Finally, Kramer let her go.

“She is not telling the truth,” was Kramer’s first comment after she had left.

“In the most confusing way,” I said. “Truth is here and there among her statements, the trouble is that so are nontruths.”

Kramer picked up a paper from his in-tray. “Thomas has been busy collecting information for me.” He read through it quickly. “The maid seems to be quite legitimate. She stayed in Munich because her mother was ill. The Munich police have confirmed that the mother is in hospital but will be able to leave next week.”

He read the next item. “Now, this is interesting. I asked Thomas to see what he could find out about this Mikhel Czerny. It seems that his column in the Budapest
Times
became so popular that the Hungarian television service invited him to appear on a nightly news program. He declined.”

“Unusual,” I agreed. “Any apparent reason?”

“None given,” Kramer said, reading on. “Thomas also contacted a person he knows on the rival newspaper, the
Daily Journal.
It seems no one knows what this Czerny looks like.”

“So ugly he didn’t want to appear on television?” I queried. “He can’t be on this train then, even under another name. I haven’t seen anyone that ugly on it.”

“H’m,” Kramer murmured, rubbing his chin, “an intriguing thought nevertheless.”

“Worth following up. I had a friend with the London
Daily Telegraph,
one of Britain’s most prestigious newspapers. It had a gossip columnist for many years, and no one knew what he looked like. Perhaps the same reason as Czerny, he didn’t want to risk some aggrieved victim of his tittle-tattle taking a shot at him.”

“‘Tittle-tattle,’” Kramer said, “I do not know the expression, yet I can see what it means. Yes, as you say, it is worth following up. Herr Brenner is well-known in Budapest and has good connections there. I will see if he has one at the Budapest
Times.
Someone at the newspaper must know this Czerny.”

“I’d like to meet this Thomas—he sounds like a valuable man.”

“Valuable indeed. And so you shall—but not at the moment. I have schedules to check.”

I rose. “I’ll see what I can learn from some of the passengers.”

Kramer looked at his watch. “The train will be leaving any moment now. We continue our journey. From now on, we will be seeing a lot of the Danube as we progress along its valley. I say progress, but it will be slow. Not only does this so-called Express cover only about seventy kilometers each hour—about forty miles—but we weave along the banks of the river, crossing bridges frequently so as to provide the best views and utilize tracks that are accessible to us.”

Several people were in the corridors and in the lounge and observation coaches. It was dark outside but they presumably wanted to watch the brightly lit city of Vienna by night as we pulled out of the station and “steamed” out through the suburbs.

The strains of that eternal waltz,
The Blue Danube
, filtered softly out of the invisible speakers, setting the mood. Then a voice announced our imminent departure. From down the platform came the thumps of coach doors closing—an unmistakable sound to any train traveler, and inexplicably unique to trains, quite unlike the sounds of any other doors. A finality was in them and perhaps a sad farewell.

The steam whistle added a final note to that farewell and, without a jerk or jolt, the Danube Express moved from stationary to motion, smoothly as a panther.

The lights of the station faded and were promptly replaced by the city lights, but then they were lost as the track dipped underground to pass beneath the Stubenring, one of the ring roads that comprise the Ringstrasse, a string of roads that run along the old city walls and enclose the inner city.

We exchanged the darkness of the tunnel for the darkness of the night as we emerged to climb onto the bridge crossing the Vienna River, a waterway completely eclipsed by its world-famous companion river. We rolled along, silent except for the muted sound track that reminded us of simpler times, on through the eastern part of the city.