The Silence (10 page)

Werthen had a guilty conscience. The young chap Praetor was a pompous ass, but Werthen could not stop feeling shame at having coerced him with the threat of exposing his homosexuality. The deed hung like a metaphorical albatross around his neck.

All that afternoon at the office it stood in the way of his concentrating on Herr Eckhof’s newest will.

He worked late at the office and walked home in the gathering darkness, up the gentle slope of Josefstädterstrasse leading from the Ring out of the Inner City. Werthen suddenly decided he would do something about the heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He would pay one more visit to Praetor. And he would do it this very evening before returning home for dinner.

Werthen turned left off the Josefstädterstrasse at Piaristengasse and followed that street to the corner of Zeltgasse. The little lane extended for only one city block. The house door at Zeltgasse 8 was already closed for the evening, unlike at his last visit to Praetor when he had been able to simply walk up the stairs to the man’s flat. Werthen looked up at the windows of the apartments, seeing the lights on in Praetor’s flat on the third floor. A shadow passed in front of the curtained window. So the young journalist was at home. Sometimes a
Portier
would close the house door early in hopes of earning tips from those caught outside.

Surprisingly, the building, though old, actually had one of the new house intercoms for visitors to ring the tenants when the house door was locked. But Werthen did not want to take chances on Praetor simply hanging up on him. Just then, a young couple stopped at the door to Praetor’s building, the man ringing an apartment and getting an immediate answer. The house door clicked open. On impulse, Werthen decided to follow them in. The couple looked surprised as he did so, but he tried to reassure them.

‘Sorry. I’m newly moved in. I left my change purse in the apartment and cannot very well bother the
Portier
without tip in hand.’

The woman smiled at this, but her husband, a thin and wary man, simply stared at Werthen as he headed to the stairs and they made their way to a street-level apartment.

Reaching the third-floor landing, Werthen knocked lightly on Praetor’s door, trying to gather his thoughts, wondering just how he would approach the young man. There was no answer and he knocked again, a bit louder. Another half-minute passed and this time he used the zinc twist knob of the manual doorbell. Still no response.

He put his ear to the door and thought he heard movement from within.

‘Herr Praetor,’ he said to the blankness of the door, feeling rather silly as he did so. ‘It is I. Advokat Werthen. I have come to apologize. Please let me in.’

He tried knocking once more, raising his voice a notch in volume this time. ‘Herr Praetor?’

A door opened down the dimly lit corridor and the figure of a woman appeared in a backlit silhouette in the doorway.

‘What is it you want, young man?’

‘Sorry. Just trying to rouse my friend. We were to meet. He must have fallen asleep.’

‘I suggest you take that as an official rejection then and cease with the everlasting clamor.’ She peered more closely at him as if trying to recognize this visitor. ‘And how did you get in if your friend is sleeping?’

Werthen did not wait for the woman to gather steam; she was sure to start making a grand fuss, summoning the
Portier
and who knows what all. He did not attempt further explanations. Instead, he sensibly turned on his heels and beat a hasty retreat.

At home, Werthen made no mention of this abortive visit to Praetor. He enjoyed a quiet dinner with wife and child, and an early night in bed.

The next morning at the office Werthen sat back in his chair to peruse the morning edition of the
Neue Freie Presse.
Since the birth of Frieda, his newspaper reading had been confined to the Habsburgergasse. When at home, he liked to be able to give full attention to his beautiful daughter.

He let out a contented sigh as he began with the front page of the newspaper. His contentment was short-lived, however, for prominent on that page was a report on the mysterious death of a young journalist, whose body had been found in his apartment in the Josefstadt.

Henricus Praetor – friend to Hans Wittgenstein and the journalist who had first written about financial wrongdoings at City Hall pointing to Councilman Steinwitz – had been found with a bullet through his head, an apparent suicide.

Eight

‘
I
am not necessarily saying it was murder. But there appears to be something decidedly strange about it.’

The man speaking, Victor Adler – head of the socialist party in the empire and publisher of the
Arbeiter Zeitung
– sat at the Werthens’ dinner table on Saturday evening. He was diminutive with a bushy head of hair and wire-framed glasses over bulging eyes. A thick moustache drooped over his lips and extended to the sides of his mouth, giving him a scowling appearance even when smiling. Next to Adler sat his wife Emma, who was a friend of Berthe’s, and who, Werthen decided, was far more appealing physically than her husband. Though in her forties, she still had a glow to her skin and a softness of features that drew one in. Her husband, on the other hand, was above all earnest in demeanor, like a family doctor. Indeed, Adler had been trained, Werthen knew, as a doctor and a psychiatrist.

As Werthen listened to the man speak, he felt his stomach sinking. When Berthe had mentioned that the Adlers were coming to dinner, he feared that there might be this connection to the death of Henricus Praetor. After all, Praetor had freelanced for Adler’s newspaper.

‘I am not at all sure the verdict of suicide is warranted,’ Adler added.

‘Suicide is a strange business,’ Herr von Werthen said. Werthen’s parents were in attendance tonight, much to their obvious discomfort.

Werthen quickly glanced at his father. It was hardly like him to address this taboo topic, given the history of his own dead son, Max.

‘Yes,’ Adler allowed. ‘But it is more than that. More than the mere shock of death. More than one wishing to discount the possibility of suicide in one so vital. After all, suicide in one both young and healthy, with all of life stretching before him, is one of those actions that seems an affront to all of us. A challenge to our own predications of the value of this life we lead. It is, in that sense, an assault against the very fabric of society.’

Emma Adler placed a hand over her husband’s now, as if to restrain him. Did she know of Werthen’s dead brother?

‘Not a very pleasant topic, darling,’ she said to her publisher husband.

Frau von Werthen muttered assent to this.

However, Adler smiled at his wife as if he had not heard.

‘At any rate,’ he continued, ‘the strangeness comes not so much from the deed, but from its context. As you might know, young Praetor was engaged in a series of articles for us on various dealings at the Rathaus.’

‘There was the Steinwitz article,’ Werthen said. ‘Perhaps he felt remorse at having possibly brought about Steinwitz’s death through his disclosures.’

Since learning of Praetor’s death, Werthen had been wrestling with competing and distressing feelings. On the one hand, he was anxious that the newspapers were correct about the cause of death. After all, he, Werthen, had been at Praetor’s flat Thursday evening, and several people in the apartment building had seen him. In effect, he might become a suspect in the event that Praetor’s death was not suicide. But at the same time, if Praetor had committed suicide, was it because of Werthen’s visit? Had he pushed the young man over the edge of reason? Had Praetor thought Werthen had come to further threaten him?

Werthen had not told Berthe Thursday night about the attempted visit, not wanting to bring up the whole matter again because of the residual guilt he bore about his first interview with Praetor. And now he was trapped in this unspoken lie. The death of Henricus Praetor was the last topic he wanted to discuss tonight.

‘There were other articles, as well, weren’t there?’ Frau Adler said. After attempting unsuccessfully to redirect the conversation, she apparently decided to join in.

Victor Adler quickly nodded at this. ‘Yes. Praetor was looking into the 1873 Vienna Woods preservation act at the time of his death. Our editor-in-chief told me yesterday that the young man felt he was on to something quite important. Herr Praetor was, however, rather secretive. No one at the newspaper knows the direction his investigation was headed.’

‘He kept no notes?’ Berthe asked.

Adler shook his head. ‘Not at his desk at the newspaper.’

‘I thought he was freelance,’ Werthen said.

‘The roast beef is delicious,’ Frau von Werthen interjected, another implicit plea for a change of conversation.

‘There are several desks set aside for those people,’ Berthe explained, and then, to her mother-in-law, she replied, ‘Yes, Frau Blatschky has quite outdone herself tonight.’

For the next half-hour the talk was of a more domestic variety: extolling the charms of young Frieda, who was approaching one month of age; describing a recent letter the Adlers had received from their son, Friedrich, studying physics in Zürich and how he had made the acquaintance of a terribly talented young student at the Federal Polytechnic, one Albert Einstein; and of the possibility of Werthen and Berthe buying a country home in the Vienna Woods, though there had been as yet no response to Werthen’s offer. The last topic in particular brought out emotion in Herr von Werthen, who pronounced how glad he was to see his son taking part in the world in such a way.

It was a typical remark, and Werthen did not take it wrongly. The sole worldly participation his father thought valid was the accumulation of property.

His parents left soon after dessert was served, his father confiding to him at the door, ‘That Adler chap is not half so bad as one would expect. A family man and a businessman. Not the dreadful Marxist one hears of.’

‘Yes, Father,’ Werthen said. ‘He seems a very regular sort.’

‘Not a bad looking bride he has, either.’ Followed by a lascivious wink, which took Werthen aback. It seemed that now they were two conspiring males together in his father’s eyes.

‘Quite attractive,’ Werthen agreed.

‘Rather too much unsavory talk at table, Karlchen,’ his mother chided on her way out. Then she gave him a peck on the cheek.

After his parents left, the four of them settled in for a brandy in the sitting room, and Werthen hoped they would not resume the discussion of young Praetor’s death.

‘Now,’ Berthe said to Adler, ‘you were saying about Praetor’s investigations . . .’

Werthen let out a barely audible sigh that caught Berthe’s attention.

‘Yes,’ Adler said, warming the snifter of brandy in his hand. ‘About his research notebooks. Clearly he kept such notebooks, for his fellow colleagues witnessed him scribbling notes in them.’

‘Perhaps at his flat?’ Emma Adler suggested.

‘Yes, they must be at his flat,’ Berthe said, a note of excitement in her voice. ‘But why are you so concerned about these notebooks, Victor? Do you want to continue with his articles?’

Werthen had a very strong premonition of where all this was leading. If he were not so distressed about his own presence outside Praetor’s flat the night of the man’s death, he would take the conversation to that end point at once. Instead, he sat back observing as it unfolded before him.

‘Praetor’s father came to me late yesterday,’ Adler said. ‘He thinks his son was murdered.’

Once this was said, Werthen felt a sudden release; no longer was there any internal conflict. He realized that fear of being implicated in Praetor’s death was far outweighed by the possibility that his visit had tipped the scales and made the journalist commit suicide. Thus, he knew what he had to do. Prove the death was a homicide.

‘Why does the father think that?’ he asked.

Adler turned his attention to Werthen, seemingly relieved that the lawyer was finally taking interest.

‘Herr Doktor Praetor knew his son. I am not absolutely certain he was aware of his son’s sexual inclinations, but they were best of friends. The two of them were planning a trip to Ravenna just next week. His son gave him no indications that he was troubled, let alone feeling suicidal. I trust the good doctor’s judgment in this matter. It is more than the self-delusion of a grieving parent. And then there is the matter of the missing notebooks.’

‘I understand what you are implying, Herr Adler,’ Werthen said. ‘You feel that these notebooks might supply some motive for Praetor’s murder. But we can hardly say they are missing. Has the father examined his son’s flat?’

Adler shook his head. ‘The police have secured it until a coroner’s verdict of suicide is given.’

‘Then, as suggested, these notebooks could very well be in the flat. I remember seeing a writing desk when I visited Praetor.’

‘You mentioned sexual inclinations, Victor,’ Berthe said. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘Well . . .’ He brushed his walrus moustache and glanced at Werthen for assistance.

‘Come now, Victor,’ his wife said. ‘We are all adults here.’

‘He is . . . he was homosexual,’ Werthen said.

‘You never mentioned that,’ Berthe said to Werthen. ‘Not that it matters, I suppose.’

Werthen nodded. ‘Yes, it matters. You see, I thought he and Hans Wittgenstein—’

‘Were lovers?’ Berthe finished for him.

Another nod. This was the time to make a clean breast of things. Now. And not let this secret fester a second longer.

‘And I cruelly used his secret to force information from him. Not something I am proud of. As it turns out, Hans Wittgenstein was not his lover, merely his old school chum. But I felt miserable stooping to such tactics. That is why I did not mention that I stopped by Praetor’s flat Thursday evening.’