Sent to the Devil (16 page)

A window directly above us on the top floor opened, and a round face swathed in a frilly white nightcap looked out.

“Who is there?” the woman called.

“Are you the housekeeper?” Benda shouted.

“Yes, sir. What is this about? Please keep your voice down. You'll wake the baron,” she said.

“We must speak with you. Please let us in.”

“Let me dress, sir. I'll be down in a moment.” The window slammed shut.

Benda stomped his foot in irritation. “Surely she could send a lackey down to open the door, so we could get out of the rain,” he said.

We stood for five long minutes, and then the door opened to a large woman in a threadbare uniform. I could tell from the look on her chubby face that her irritation with us had turned to fear on her way down the stairs. She stepped back and ushered us into a large, cold foyer.

“What is it, sirs? If you are here to see the baron, he is not at home.”

“Where are the other servants?” Benda demanded, looking around the room, which was barren of any decoration. A simple wooden bench sat against the right wall.

“I am alone here, sir,” she said.

“In this big house?” I asked. “You do everything? That must be a lot of work.”

She cast me a friendly look, and nodded. “The baron doesn't need much, sir. He is a bachelor. Most of the rooms are closed up, so I dust them just once a week. It's so expensive to keep the fires going in them, you see—” She saw the look on our faces and put her hand over her mouth.

“Something has happened to the baron,” she whispered.

“Yes,” Benda said. “He was found in the Graben this morning.”

“Is he dead?” Her voice trembled.

Benda nodded.

Large tears rolled down her ruddy cheeks. “What happened, sir? Did he fall and hit his head?” she asked. “He rushed everywhere, leaning on that stick. I was always afraid he would fall.”

We did not answer. I pulled out my handkerchief and handed it to her. She nodded gratefully.

“How long have you worked for him?” I asked.

She wiped her eyes. “Twenty-five years, sir, since he was a boy. I was hired to watch him after his mother died. The former baron, Walther's father, had no interest in the boy after his wife died. He drank and gambled.” She sniffled. “But I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, sir. All of that happened a long time ago.”

“Was Walther married? Is there any other family?” Benda asked.

“No, sir. He was an only child. It was just the two of them, Walther and his father, until the old baron died a few years ago. Walther never married. There was an engagement, five years ago, but after the accident—”

“When he was lamed?” I asked.

She twisted my handkerchief in her chapped, plump hands. “Yes, sir. Walther was a joyful, handsome boy, but very lonely. When his father sent him off to school, he suffered from melancholia. He was never able to overcome it. That's why I was so happy when he became engaged to Mademoiselle Albrechts.”

Benda gasped.

She glanced at him and frowned, and then returned her attention to me. “She was from an excellent family. Her father was a war hero. He passed away recently. Walther adored her.” Her voice broke. “Then the carriage knocked him down over in the Michaelerplatz. Both of his legs were broken. The doctors could not set one of them right. The young lady changed her mind after that.”

She sighed. “Poor Walther never recovered from the blow. When his father died a year later, Walther discovered that the old baron had lost most of their lands at the gambling tables. Walther was left with almost nothing, just this house and its contents. He let the rest of the staff go, but kept me on to look after him. He's had to sell the furniture and all of the art to support us.”

She began to weep.

“When did you last see him?” Benda asked.

“Last night, sir. He had gone to that ball at the Redoutensaal. I was happy that he had decided to go. He usually avoids parties. ‘No one wants to dance with a cripple, Marthe,' he would say. But he didn't stay very long. I've heard those parties let out well after midnight. He came home at about eleven. He'd been drinking. I could smell the whisky on his breath.”

“What did he do when he came in?” I asked.

She blew her nose into my handkerchief. “A message had been delivered earlier in the evening, sir, after Walther had left for the ball. I gave it to him when he arrived home. He read it, and then told me to leave the front door unlocked. He said that he would be going out again later.”

“Who delivered the message?” I asked. “Was there an insignia on the seal?”

“Oh, sir, I didn't look at it. The baron's correspondence is none of my business.” She thought for a moment. “A young boy delivered it.”

I stifled a curse. These damned anonymous boys! How many were there in this city? “What happened after he read the note? Did he tell you anything about its contents?” I pressed.

“No, sir. He took it up to his room. I went to bed a few minutes later.”

“Did you hear him go out again? Did you hear him come back?” Benda asked.

“No, sir. You see, I sleep on the top floor. I can't hear anything that goes on way down here. But when I was coming to let you in just now, I looked in his room. His bed hasn't been slept in.”

“We'll need to search the house,” I told her.

“But I don't understand, sir. What is it you are not telling me? You said he tripped and hit his head.”

“He was murdered,” Benda said. “We found his body at the base of the plague column this morning. His throat had been cut.”

Her face crumpled. “Like the old priest by the cathedral?” She staggered. I grabbed her arm before she fell. As I guided her toward the bench, I glared at Benda, who was already halfway up the stairway.

“What is going on, sir?” she asked me. “Is there a maniac on the loose? Why would anyone kill Walther?” She rocked back and forth, sobbing. “My poor little boy, my poor boy,” she moaned. I sat next to her and put my arm around her shoulder. Benda continued up the stairs.

She wiped her eyes and turned to me. “Who could have done such an evil thing, sir?”

“That's what we are going to find out,” I said. “Can you tell me which rooms he used?”

“The salons on the first floor are all closed up. He used the rooms on the second floor. His chamber is there, and the library is next door. He spent most of his time in the library. Lately, he even took his meals in there. Do you want me to show you?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “You stay here. We'll go up ourselves.”

*   *   *

I joined Benda at the first landing. “We should look in all the rooms in case she's hiding something,” he said.

We walked through the grand public salons on the first floor. Every room was empty of furniture. Tattered velvet drapes hung at the tall windows. Large dark rectangles on the faded damask wallpaper were the only evidence that the Hennen family had once owned a large art collection.

On the second floor, we walked through more empty rooms until we finally reached the baron's library. The walls here also showed the telltale marks of treasured paintings sold, and most of the books had been removed from the shelves.

Benda hurried over to the writing desk at the center of the room. He shuffled through a pile of papers on its top. “Look here, Da Ponte,” he called to me. “Here's a letter Hennen was writing, to send to one of the newspapers, I imagine.” He scanned its contents. “It's the usual arguments in favor of the war.”

He picked up another paper and read it. “He's been writing a pamphlet in support of widening the draft,” he said. He slapped the table. “Yes! Hennen was a logical victim for our killer—a nobleman, highly vocal in his support of the war. Yet another symbol of the greatness of our country.”

“But the victims are not very strong symbols,” I objected.

He arched a brow. “What do you mean?”

“General Albrechts was an old man, his days of glory already faded. Alois was also old. He hadn't been involved in church affairs in over ten years. Hennen was a minor nobleman who had to sell off his family's possessions simply to survive.” I waved my hand around the bare room. “Where is the greatness your killer is supposedly attacking?”

Benda thought for a moment. “All you say is true,” he said. “But consider this. The people the killer actually wants are out of his reach. The high-ranking officers in the military and most of the nobility are in Semlin with the emperor. The senior members of the cathedral staff are usually sequestered in the archbishop's residence. The killer chooses victims whom he can confront and murder easily.”

I shook my head, but said no more. Benda's theory was far-fetched, but I did not want to argue with him until I could mull over the ideas that had begun to form as I had examined Hennen's body.

We quickly finished our search of the library, but found no paper that could have been the message Hennen had received last night. We moved next door to the baron's chamber. Most of the furniture that once had filled the large room was gone, and like the other rooms in the house, no art graced the dark bedroom's walls. A small bed sat in one corner, a stuffed reading chair in another. Next to the chair was tucked a small table, upon which sat a lamp and a pile of papers. I riffled through them as Benda searched Hennen's meager wardrobe.

The first item in the pile was a political pamphlet, the type one saw in every coffeehouse in the city. I scanned the front page and snorted.

“What is it?” Benda asked.

“It's a broadside entitled ‘Chambermaids: A Cautionary Tale for Young Gentlemen,'” I said. “The author is warning wealthy young men against their servant girls, who are looking to seduce their masters and improve their social standing.”

“You shouldn't laugh,” Benda said. “That's happening everywhere these days.” He smirked. “But I don't think Hennen had anything to fear from that one downstairs.”

I thumbed through the rest of the pile, which included a bill from Hennen's tailor for the repair of a dress suit, a receipt from a pawnshop in the Jewish quarter for a gold watch, a notice of a meeting in one of the Masonic houses in the city, and a letter from a nearby bookshop informing the baron that the proprietor could not take the baron's remaining books on consignment because the market for histories of the wars at the turn of the century had dried up.

At the bottom of the pile I found two sheets of paper of a lighter color than the ones in the rest of the pile. Both sheets were of fine rag with an elaborate watermark. Each contained a few lines written in black ink in a neat hand. I studied the contents of the top sheet. “But you have fixed your mind solely on earthly matters; you harvest only darkness from the true light,” it said.

I put the sheet aside and took up its companion. “That infinite, indescribably good that dwells above, speeds itself to love, like rays of light to a shining body.” My pulse began to race. “Come take a look at these,” I said to Benda. He came and read the lines over my shoulder.

“Quotations of some sort,” he said. “I don't recognize them. Do you?”

I took a deep breath. “Yes. The lines are from Dante, from his
Purgatory,
part of
The Divine Comedy
. Have you read it?”

Benda shook his head. “Is this Hennen's handwriting?” he asked.

“I don't know. Everything else here is correspondence from others.” I took the two sheets and replaced the rest of the pile on the table. “I'll go into the library and compare these with the draft of the letter he was writing.”

“I'll meet you downstairs,” Benda said.

I carried the pages into the library, went over to the writing desk, and pulled out the draft of Hennen's letter. A glance told me that the documents were not written by the same hand. I went over to the bookshelves and studied the few volumes that remained, but could not find anything by Dante.

I went down to the foyer, where the housekeeper was standing with Benda. “Is either of these the message the baron received last night?” I asked, handing her the papers. She held the first one close to her face and studied it. I realized that she could not read. She peered at the second sheet of paper, and then handed them back to me. “No, sir. The paper on the message last night was different. These papers are a lighter color. The message that came last night was on a darker, thicker paper.”

Benda took the papers from me, folded them, and tucked them in his coat pocket. We thanked the housekeeper and left. My mind brimmed with questions as we walked back down the Himmelpfortgasse and into the Neuer Market, the center of Vienna's flour and grain trade. We passed the Mehlgrube, a casino and concert hall on the site of the medieval grain storehouse, and the Donner fountain, a wide basin dominated by a simple sculpture of the imperial eagle—a replacement for its original elaborate statues of goddesses and nymphs whose lack of clothing had offended the old empress.

“Those Dante excerpts might be anything,” Benda finally said. “Perhaps Hennen belonged to a group that was studying the poetry.”

I remained silent as we passed the Capuchin Church, where the monks tended the tombs of the Habsburg family, and turned into a smaller square. Outside one of the grand palaces, servants were tying canvases over the tops of large carts full of household goods.

“More people leaving the city for their estates.” Benda sighed. “I wish I could join them. I've received some disturbing news about unrest among the peasants on my lands in Bohemia.”

We continued past the Spanish Riding School stables toward the Michaelerplatz.

“Damn, Da Ponte,” Benda said. “We are getting nowhere with this investigation! We have to work faster. Christiane refuses to leave Vienna until her father's murderer is found. She's determined to move out to the Belvedere at the end of the month. I don't understand what she is thinking!”