Anne Perry - Funeral in Blue

“Of course I did! Knew lots of them. Saw the best-those that lived through it, and those that didn’t.” He reeled off half a dozen names. “Max Niemann, Kristian Beck, Hanna Jakob, Ernst Stifter, Elissa von Leibnitz. Never forget her. Most beautiful woman in Vienna, she was. Like a dream, a flame in the darkness of those days. As much courage as any man. . more!”

Ferdi’s eyes shone. He was leaning forward, lips parted.

Monk tried to look skeptical, but he had seen Allardyce’s painting of her, and he knew what the old man meant. It was not a perfection of form, or even a delicacy of feature, it was the passion inside her, the force of her vision, which made her unique. She had had the power to carry others into her dreams.

The old man was frowning at him. He spoke to Ferdi, and Ferdi smiled at Monk. “He says I’m to tell you that if you don’t believe him, you should go and ask others. Shall I tell him you’d like to do that?”

“Yes,” Monk agreed quickly. “Ask him about Niemann and Beck, but don’t sound too keen.” He must find something relevant to the personal passions and envies, more than a history lesson, however ardent.

Ferdi ignored the warning with great dignity. He turned to the old man, and Monk was obliged to listen to a quarter of an hour of animated conversation, mostly from the old man, but with Ferdi putting in increasingly excited questions. Ferdi kept glancing at Monk, willing him not to interrupt.

As soon as they were outside again in the rain and the shifting pattern of gas lamps, the wind sharp-edged and cold in their faces, Ferdi began. “Max Niemann was one of the heroes,” he said excitedly. “He came out for the reforms straightaway, not like some people, who waited to see the chances of success or what their friends or family would think of them.”

They came to the corner of the street and a carriage swished by, spraying mud and water. Monk leaped backwards but Ferdi was too absorbed in his story to notice. He was wet up to the knees, and oblivious of it. As soon as the street was clear, he set out across the roadway and Monk hastened to keep up with him.

“He was brave as well,” Ferdi went on. “He was right out there on the barricades when the real fighting began. So was Elissa von Leibnitz. He told me one story of how when the fighting was really awful in October, after they’d hanged the minister and the army just charged in, several young men were shot and fell in the street. She took a gun herself and went out, shouting and waving, firing the gun at the soldiers. She knew how to and she wasn’t scared. All by herself, she drove them back until others could crawl out and get the wounded men back behind the barricades.”

“Where was Kristian?” Monk asked. “Or Max?”

“Max was one of the ones hurt,” Ferdi replied, glancing sideways to make sure Monk was keeping up with him in the dark. “Kristian was trying to stop a man from bleeding to death from a terrible wound. He had one hand holding a pad on the man’s shoulder, and he was shouting to Elissa to stop, or someone to help her, and waving his other arm.”

“But Elissa wasn’t hurt?”

“Apparently not. There was one woman called Hanna who was with them. She went right out in front, too. She was one of those who dragged the wounded men back. And she used to carry messages, too, right through where the army had taken the city back, to where their own revolutionaries were cut off at the far side. And carry messages to their allies in the government as well.”

“Can we speak to her?” Monk asked eagerly. It would be a firsthand account from another person who knew them well. She might have noticed more of relationships, the undercurrents of envy or passion between Kristian and Max.

“I asked,” Ferdi agreed, his face suddenly very sober. “But he thinks she is one of those killed in the uprising. He told me roughly where Max Niemann still lives. He’s very respectable now. The government hasn’t forgotten which side he was on when it mattered, and they just can’t afford to punish everybody, or it would all get out of hand again. Too many people think highly of Herr Niemann.” He waved his hands excitedly. “But that’s not all. It seems that your friend Herr Beck was a pretty good hero too, a real fighter. Not only brave, but pretty clever, a sort of natural leader. He had the courage to face the enemy down. Could read people rather well, and knew when to call a bluff, and just how far to go. He was tougher than Niemann, and prepared to take the risks.”

“Are you sure?” It did not sound like the man Monk had seen. Surely Ferdi had it the wrong way around. “Beck is a doctor.”

“Well, he could have it wrong, I suppose, but he seemed absolutely sure.”

Monk did not argue. His feet ached and he was exhausted. He felt cold through to the bone, and it was still more than a mile back to his room in the Josefstadt. Before he could even think of that he must make certain he found a carriage to take Ferdi safely home. This was the boy’s city, but Monk still felt responsible for him. “We’ll start again tomorrow,” he said decisively. “Speak to some more of the people on the list.”

“Right!” Ferdi agreed. “We’re not finding anything very helpful. . are we?” He looked anxiously at Monk.

Monk had his own feelings. “Not yet. But we will. Perhaps tomorrow.”

Ferdi was prompt in the morning, and with renewed zeal they planned where to continue their search. This time they found a charming woman who must have been in her twenties thirteen years ago, and now was comfortably plump and prosperous.

“Of course I knew Kristian,” she said with a smile as she admitted them to her sitting room and offered them a choice of three kinds of coffee, and melting, delicious cake, even though it was barely half past ten in the morning. “And Max. What a lovely man!”

“Kristian?” Monk asked quickly, by now catching from Ferdi a large part of the sense of the conversation. “Is she speaking of Kristian?”

But apparently it was Max she considered lovely.

“Not Kristian?” Monk persisted.

Little by little, Ferdi drew from her a picture of Max as quieter than Kristian, with a wry sense of humor and an intense loyalty. Yes, of course he was in love with Elissa, anyone could see that! But she fell in love with Kristian, and that was the end of the matter.

Was there jealousy? She shrugged her shoulders and smiled across at Monk with a little laugh, sad and rueful. Of course there was, but only a fool fights the inevitable. Kristian was the leader, the man with the courage of his dreams and the nerve to make the decisions and pay the price. But it was all a long time ago now. She was married with four children. Kristian and Elissa had gone to England. Max lived very well, somewhere in the Neubau District, she thought. Was Monk staying long in Vienna? Did he know that Herr Strauss the younger had been appointed Keppelmeister to the National Guard during the uprising? No? Well, he had. Mr. Monk could not visit Vienna and not listen to Herr Strauss. It would be like being a fish and not swimming. It was to deny nature and insult the good God who created happiness.

Monk promised that he would, thanked her for her hospitality, and urged Ferdi to leave.

They saw two more people on Kristian’s list, and they confirmed all that they had heard so far. According to them both, the revolutionaries had worked largely in groups, and the group of which Kristian Beck had been the leader consisted of seven or eight people. Max Niemann, Elissa, and Hanna Jakob had been in it from the beginning. Another half dozen or so had come and gone. Four had been killed, two at the barricades, one in prison, and Hanna Jakob tortured and shot in one of the back streets when she would not betray her fellows.