Requiem in Vienna (24 page)

“Not a bit like the English gentleman, I assure you,” Werthen was quick to say.

Herr Otto waited a moment, as if in hopes that Werthen might answer his other question, as well. But Werthen merely smiled.

“What is the expression?” the waiter said before moving off to another customer. “Thick as thieves. That’s what Herr Hanslick and Kalbeck looked like before you gentlemen arrived.”

______

So much for his plans to put in an afternoon of work back at the office. Instead, Werthen felt compelled to follow up the lead from Herr Otto and speak with Max Kalbeck.

But Kalbeck was not at his office at the
Neues Wiener Tagblatt
, nor did his editor know when he might return.

“Max makes his own schedules,” the man told Werthen, looking not the least bit abashed at such an admission, for it seemed Kalbeck had powerful
beziehungen
, connections, with the publisher of the paper—his mother had been the publisher’s mother’s best friend in school—and could indeed set the times of his coming and going.

The editor, Herr Pfingsten, had a head as round as a wheel of farmer’s rye bread. Stuck into it like buttons on a scarecrow were two eyes so dark they appeared black. A smudge of a mustache covered his long upper lip; heavily pomaded hair was combed forward giving him the aspect of a disreputable Roman senator.

“He has his contacts,” Pfingsten added, putting heavy irony on the last word. “In my day, we went to the performance, listened carefully, took notes, and then wrote up a notice for the next day’s paper. Now it’s all contacts, inside information, Hofoper gossip. I ask you, is this music or military espionage we’re covering?”

Werthen could not answer the question for the gray-faced Herr Pfingsten and took his leave. So, an afternoon at his own office, after all.

Herr Tor had been sent to Altaussee, and Berthe was supposedly visiting Viktor Adler, so Werthen thought he would not be distracted in any way from catching up on work. As he approached the doorway on the Habsburgergasse, Werthen noticed that it had been left ajar. He had complained of this several times to the
portier
, Frau Ignatz, an aging woman with a penchant for cats. One of the tenants on the upper floors consistently neglected
to pull the street door completely shut. A nuisance, really, for anyone could enter the building.

Frau Ignatz was not in her lodge in the foyer, so Werthen filed his complaint for another time. He went to his office on the second floor, and thought for a moment that he saw a shadow pass in front of the frosted glass of the door. But then that was impossible.

Or perhaps Berthe had decided to help out at the office instead. He felt a sudden surge of pride at the fact that she should give up her own investigation to help out at the office. Especially in her condition.

The door was locked, but that did not mean she was not inside. After all, it was still officially lunchtime, and the office was closed from noon until two.

He slipped his key into the lock, twisted it, and opened the door.

“Berthe,” he called out, for the reception was empty. “You here?”

There was no answer. He felt suddenly deflated. Well, nothing for it then but to get busy with paperwork.

He entered his office and was momentarily shocked to see drawers pulled out of the desk and papers strewn everywhere. He sensed a movement behind him, but before he could react, a sharp crack of pain tore into the back of his head. His knees gave out and he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

“My God, Werthen, you could have been killed.” Gross dabbed at the wound with a wet compress. “This might need sutures.”

Werthen’s head pounded like a timpani. He raised himself on one elbow and could not resist the temptation to put his other hand to the wound. It felt wet and warm; taking his hand away he saw blood, but not quantities.

“Someone broke in,” he said.

“Apparently,” Gross agreed.

“How long have I been unconscious?”

“I am a criminalist, not a psychic, Werthen. When did you arrive?”

“A little after one.”

Gross glanced at the standard clock on the wall behind them.

“Then about a half hour. The landladies to Brahms and Bruckner have both taken themselves off to the country for the month, so I decided to meet you back here.”

Gross examined the mess of the office for a moment.

“Did you see who attacked you?”

“No. No time.”

“What could he have been after?” Gross asked.

“You think it is our man?” Werthen was now sitting up and despite a momentary dizziness, he thought he would be all right. No concussion. No hospital. That was the last place he wanted to be today.

“I see no other conclusion possible. Unless you are currently engaged in some rather sensitive matter of a contentious will.”

Werthen shook his head, a mistake that turned the timpani into a kettledrum. He closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose.

“No,” he finally managed to say. “Nothing like that.”

“Then it seems patently obvious to me. But what the devil could he have been searching for? Do you keep private papers here?”

“No,” Werthen said again. And then a sudden fear tore at him. “My notes of the investigation are at home. My God, Gross. Might he have gone there? Berthe . . .”

“Quickly, man,” Gross grabbed his left arm and helped him to stand. “Not a minute to lose.”

After the first few steps he was able to control his nausea. The first flight of stairs down was an agony, but then he began to deal
with the pain, the dizziness. As they passed Frau Ignatz’s lodge, the
portier
saw his condition and came to the door.

“Advokat, what is it? Blood.”

“Not to worry, madam,” Gross said bluffly.

But her concern was not for Werthen.

“I knew it would mean trouble. That sign of yours. It attracts all the riffraff of Vienna. And now this. In my house!”

She turned and closed the door of the lodge behind her before either Gross or Werthen could reply.

They were in luck; a
fiaker
was just passing by outside. On the ride to the Josefstadt and his apartment, Werthen tried to console himself with the thought that Berthe had planned, after her brief morning at the office, to visit Victor Adler. She would not be home; she would be safe. He must believe that; he must.

But what of Frau Blatschky? Had he put her in danger’s way?

The
fiaker
was held up for a time when one of the new electrified streetcars on the Josefstädterstrasse stalled, blocking the intersection at Langegasse and backing up traffic in four directions.

Gross pounded the roof with his fist. “Find a way around this, my good man. We have an emergency.”

The driver grumbled something about pregnancy, Werthen thought, some typically droll Viennese rejoinder. He was not in the mood for drollness.

“Fifty kreutzer if you find a way around this mess!” Werthen shouted at the driver out the window.

No witty riposte this time; instead the driver reined his horses to the left. There was a scraping and jolt as the
fiaker
took over part of the sidewalk for half a block, then skidded on the cobbles down a side street to detour around the stopped traffic. The man drove his two horses like a jockey at the racecourse in the Prater’s Freudenau track. In no time they had circled the bottleneck and were back onto the Josefstädterstrasse just at Werthen’s apartment house.

He quickly leaped from the
fiaker
, leaving Gross for once to pick up the tab of his extravagantly guaranteed tip.

He did not bother with the elevator, but instead took the stairs two at a time, heedless of the pain in the back of his head, or of his damaged right knee. Up the stairs he flew with Gross now puffing behind him.

Reaching his door, he tried the latch, but it was, as it should be, locked. He quickly turned his key in the lock, threw the door open, and called out.

“Frau Blatschky!”

There was no sound and for a moment Werthen panicked, thinking the worst. But from the foyer, the apartment looked undisturbed.

Gross now joined him, breathing quite heavily, and they moved into the sitting room.

A sudden movement behind them put them both on guard.

“You simply must be more quiet, Advokat.”

It was Frau Blatschky standing in the doorway to the sitting room.

“There you are,” Werthen said.

“Well, of course I am here. And so is your poor dear wife. And future mother.” She positively beamed as she spoke these words. “You should have told me. The poor woman cannot stand rich food now. It won’t do. I have her in bed, where she should have been before. Yes, and some soothing chicken broth. We shall eat more simply now that I know of her condition.”

“She’s all right?”

“Of course. But she is with child.” Another smile at this statement. “And we must all be considerate of that.”

“Do I take that to mean no more
zwiebelrostbraten?
” Gross asked.

“And no more
bauernschmaus
or
palatschinken
or other such rich foodstuffs that will unsettle the lady’s stomach,” Frau Blatschky declared.

Gross looked downcast.

“And morning coffee?”

“Herbal tea shall suffice,” she sternly answered. “Now what sort of mischief have you got into, Advokat? There is blood down the back of your collar.”

F
orty-eight hours later, Werthen was beginning to feel human again. He spent the rest of Wednesday and all of Thursday in bed, along with Berthe, Frau Blatschky fussing over the both of them, and no longer making eyes at them for sharing the same bed. At the end of it, he didn’t care if he never saw another bowl of chicken soup again in his life.

One positive aspect of Berthe’s morning sickness, however, was that it brought a rapprochement between the two women of the house. Now Frau Blatschky did not look upon Berthe as an uninvited guest, a modern woman who had no sense of domesticity; in short, as some sort of threat to her own position in the household. Berthe’s pregnancy validated her in Frau Blatschky’s eyes.

It was as if Frau Blatschky, the widow of a naval officer who had been killed only a week after their marriage, suddenly found in Berthe the daughter she had never had. And Werthen was not going to say one word that might upset this lovely new balance.

It had been Frau Blatschky, in fact, wisely enough, who made Werthen tell Berthe about the attack on him. He was at first reluctant, not wanting to burden or upset his wife, especially at this
delicate time in her pregnancy. But Frau Blatschky convinced him that he must not lie to his wife, and Werthen was reminded of how earlier his failure to be honest about his parents had caused an unneeded rift between them.

In fact, Berthe took the news of the attack at the office quite well, telling him only that the back of his head had been rather too prominent anyway.

Gross and he had also had plenty of time to speculate about the attack over the past two days: the possible perpetrator and possible reasons. Still they came up with nothing plausible. Was it a message, then? A warning? For there was scant little to be learned about their investigation from any files in Werthen’s office or home.

But if it were meant as a warning, then it was most unsuccessful, for it only made Werthen more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this case.

Thursday afternoon, after Gross had made inquiries and with Berthe up and out of bed for an afternoon stroll about the apartment, he and the criminologist conferred, Werthen still flat on his back in bed.

After questioning by Gross, Frau Ignatz could remember seeing no strangers in the building on Wednesday. Of course she had been absent when Werthen himself had entered the building.

“A most impertinent woman,” Gross said in addition, but would not elaborate.

Gross also found it interesting that though the street door had been left open to the Habsburgergasse building that day, the door to Werthen’s office had been locked.

“This could imply someone on the inside,” Gross said.

Werthen had dissented at this suggestion. “The only person on the inside, as you say, is Tor. And he was off to Altaussee.”

Gross nodded at this, pursing his lips, and had begun speaking of nibs, pin wrenches, edge levers, and all assortment of other tools of the breaking-and-entry trade.

“Someone skilled in the profession could open your lock from the outside, and in a matters of seconds, not minutes,” Gross said with a faint hint of disapproval at the primitive state of the lock in question. “However, one wonders why he would lock the door behind him.”

“Clearly the person wanted to make things appear normal,” Werthen replied. “What if a client came early, and, ignorant of the midday closing, simply opened the door and stepped into a burglary in progress? Also, as was the case, the locked door bought the man time. Hearing me put my key in the lock, he was able to sequester himself and take me unawares when I entered the inner office.”

“True,” Gross said. “I have considered these things myself.” However, he did not look convinced.

In the end, they decided not to inform the police of the break-in. There was no reason to clutter their investigation further.

Friday Werthen was able to return to the office by midmorning. Tor had already straightened up the place. Werthen, owing the man no marital loyalty, decided to not tell Tor the full story, merely that there had been an intruder who had gone through files and that, owing to a bit of bad fish he’d eaten, he had not been able to make it to the office for a couple of days.

Tor seemed genuinely alarmed at the fact someone had broken into the office, but Werthen quickly reassured him.

“We’ll have Frau Ignatz on the lookout for any suspicious characters from now on.”

Tor, however, took this bit of levity sincerely. “She is a cautious woman.”

Werthen could only agree.

“And how was your little expedition to Altaussee, Herr Tor?”

“Uneventful, sir. But the sun was out for a change. And Herr Mahler’s further inquiries were simple enough to deal with.”