Anne Perry - Funeral in Blue

The boy’s eyes widened, but he did his best to maintain the sort of calm his imagination told him was dignified. “I’m very sorry, sir. That sounds a terrible thing. Where would you like to begin?”

“How old are you?” Monk said, trying to conceal his mounting anger and sense of desperation.

A couple of very pretty women walked past them, giving them a curious glance.

Ferdinand stood very straight. “Fifteen, sir,” he said softly. “But I speak excellent English. I can translate anything you wish. And I know Vienna very well.” There was a definite touch of pink in his cheeks.

Monk had no memory whatever of having been fifteen. He was embarrassed and angry, and he had no idea where to begin. “The events I need to enquire about took place when you were two years old!” he said between clenched teeth. “Which is going to limit your abilities considerably, no matter how excellent your English.”

Ferdinand was embarrassed also, but he did not give up easily. He had been handed an adult job to do, and he intended to discharge it with honor. His eyes did not waver from Monk’s, even though Monk’s were distinctly challenging and unhappy. “What year exactly, sir?”

“Eighteen forty-eight,” Monk replied. “I expect you learned about it in school.” It was not a question, simply a rather tart observation.

“Actually, not very much,” Ferdinand admitted with a slight tightening of his lips. “Everybody says something different. I’d jolly well like to know the truth! Or rather more of it, anyway.” He glanced around at the marble-faced hotel lobby where a small group of well-dressed gentlemen had come in and were talking. Two ladies seated on well-upholstered chairs exchanged a piece of entertaining gossip, bending towards each other very slightly to bridge the gap between them created by the billowing of their skirts.

“Are you going to stay in Vienna for a while?” Ferdinand asked. “If you are, maybe you’d be better to find rooms over in the Josefstadt, or somewhere like that. Cheaper, too. That’s where people sit around in cafes and talk about ideas and. . and plan sedition. At least, so I’ve heard,” he added quickly.

There was no better alternative offering, except wandering around alone, unable to understand more than a few words, so with as much gratitude as he could assume, Monk accepted. He checked out of his room, settled the bill, and with his case in his hand, followed Ferdinand down the steps of the hotel and into the busy street of a strange city with very little idea of what to do or where to begin in what was looking like an increasingly hopeless task.

“You may call me Ferdi, if you don’t mind, sir,” the boy said, watching carefully as if Monk had been not only a stranger in the city but one lacking in the ordinary skills of survival, such as watching for traffic before crossing the road, or paying attention so as not to become separated from his guide and thus getting lost. Perhaps he had younger brothers or sisters and was occasionally put in charge of them. With a considerable effort, Monk schooled himself to be amused rather than angry.

Most of the morning was taken up in finding a more suitable accommodation in a very small guest house in the less-expensive quarter, where it seemed students and artists lived. “Revolutionaries,” Ferdi informed Monk in a discreet manner, making sure he was not overheard.

“Are you hungry?” Monk asked him.

“Yes sir!” Ferdi responded instantly, then looked uncomfortable. Perhaps a gentleman did not so readily admit to such needs, but it was too late to take it back. “But of course I can wait a while, if you prefer to ask questions first,” he added.

“No, we’ll eat,” Monk said unhappily. This whole thing was abortive. He had made Callandra believe he could learn something of use when it was beyond his capabilities even to ask for a slice of bread or a cup of tea-or, as it was far more likely to be, coffee.

“Very good,” Ferdi said cheerfully. “I suppose you have some money?” he added as an afterthought. “I’m afraid I haven’t much.”

“Yes, I have plenty,” Monk said without relish. “I think it is perfectly fair that the least I do is offer you dinner.”

Ferdi duly found a small cafe, and with his mouth full of excellent steak, he asked Monk who, precisely, it was that he was looking for.

“A man named Max Niemann,” Monk replied, also with his mouth full. “But I need to learn as much as possible about him before he is aware that I am looking for him.” He had decided to trust Ferdi with a reasonable portion of the truth. He had very little to lose. “It is possible that it was he who killed the woman in London.” Then, seeing Ferdi’s face, he realized that he had no right whatever to endanger him, even slightly. Perhaps his parents would prefer that he did not even know about such subjects as murder. Although that consideration was rather late. “If you are to help me, you must do exactly what I say,” he said sternly. “If I allow any harm to come to you, I daresay the Viennese police will throw me in prison and I shall never find my way out.”

“That would be very unfortunate,” Ferdi agreed gravely. “I gather what we are about to do is a trifle dangerous.”

It was completely idiotic. Monk was foundering out of his depth and trying very hard not to let despair drown him.

Ferdi looked keen and attentive. “What would you like me to ask someone, sir? What is it you really need to know, other than who killed this poor lady?”

There was nothing to lose. “Say that I am an English novelist, writing a book about the uprising in ’48,” he began, the ideas forming in his head as he spoke. “Ask for as many firsthand stories as you can find. The names I am concerned with are Max Niemann, Kristian Beck and Elissa von Leibnitz.”

“Absolutely!” Ferdi said fervently, his eyes bright with admiration.

The rest of that day was largely a matter of asking people tentatively and being more or less dismissed. By the time Monk went to bed in his new lodgings, saying thank-you in some approximation of German, he felt lost and inadequate. He lay in the dark, acutely conscious that Hester was not beside him. She was in London, trusting that he would bring back weapons of truth to defend Kristian. And Kristian would be lying awake in a narrow prison cot. Was he also trusting Monk to find some element which would be a key to make sense of tragedy? Or did he know it already, and trusted with just as much passion that Monk would wander pointlessly around a strange city where all speech was a jumble of noise, everybody else was rushing about their business, or strolling in fashionable idleness, but belonging, understanding?

Damn them! He would seek out the past! He would find it, whether it meant anything or not. If nothing else, Max Niemann would be able to tell him about Kristian as he had been then. But before he approached him, he would hear the same stories from other people, so he could judge the truth of Niemann’s account. What he needed was another member of that group from sixteen years ago, from Kristian’s list.

He finally drifted off to sleep with a firmer plan in mind, and did not waken until it was broad daylight. He was extremely hungry.

With much nodding and smiling, his hostess gave him an excellent breakfast with rather more rich, sweet pastry than he cared for, but the best coffee he had ever tasted. Repeating Danke schon over and over, he smiled back, and then set out with a freshly scrubbed and very eager Ferdi, who had spent all evening and a good part of the night reading accounts of the ’48 rising. He was full of a jumble of facts and stories that had gathered the patina and exaggeration of legend already. He relayed them with great enthusiasm as they walked along the street side by side towards the magnificence of the Parliament and the gardens beyond, now winter bare.