Anne Perry - Funeral in Blue

Frau von Arpels smiled at him. “Perhaps you prefer something a little lighter? Cafe society? We can tell you all the best and most fashionable places to go. . or even some of those which are less fashionable but rather more fun? Do you dance, Herr Monk?” Her voice lifted with enthusiasm. “You must waltz! You cannot be in Vienna and not waltz. Herr Johann Strauss has made us the capital of the world. Until you have heard him conduct. . and danced till you drop, you have been only half alive!”

“Helga. . please!” Von Arpels said quickly. “Herr Monk may find that too frivolous.”

Monk thought it sounded wonderful. His imagination raced far ahead of anything of which his feet were capable. But he remembered from Venice that, surprisingly, he could dance. . rather well. “I should love to,” he said honestly. “But I know no one, and unfortunately I have to return to London as soon as my business here is completed.”

“Oh, I can introduce you to someone,” Helga von Arpels offered easily. “I am sure I can even get you an introduction to Herr Strauss himself, if you like?”

“Helga! For heaven’s sake!” Von Arpels was brisk to the point of rudeness. “Herr Monk will not wish to meet Strauss socially. The man’s an excellent musician, but he’s a Jew! I’ve warned you before about making unfortunate friendships. One must be civil, but one must also be careful not to be misunderstood as to one’s loyalties and one’s identity. Look what happened to Irma Brandt! She had only herself to blame.”

The air in the room seemed suddenly brighter and colder. A dozen questions poured into Monk’s mind, but these were not the people to ask. Helga von Arpels looked angry. She had been embarrassed in front of her friends and a stranger, but there was nothing she could do about it. She had strayed into forbidden territory, and apparently it was so by mutual agreement. Monk was sorry for her, and angry on her behalf, but also totally helpless.

“Thank you for your generosity, Frau von Arpels,” he said to her. “I shall endeavor to hear Herr Strauss conduct, even if I am alone and cannot dance. Then my imagination can store the memory.”

She made an effort to smile, and there was a flicker of light in her eyes, and recognition of his feeling.

He thanked Josef and Magda again, getting from them the address of the priest, Father Geissner, and Magda accompanied him to the door. Out in the hall, she dismissed the maid and went to the step with him herself.

“Mr. Monk, is there anything else we can do to help Kristian?”

Was that really what she wanted to say that she had followed him to speak privately? There would only be a few moments before Josef would miss her.

“Yes.” He decided without hesitation. “Tell me what you know of the feelings between Kristian and Elissa, and Max Niemann. He has visited London at least three times this year, and seen Elissa secretly, and not Kristian at all.”

She looked only slightly surprised. “He was always in love with her,” she answered very quietly. “But as far as I know, she never looked at anyone but Kristian.”

“She was really in love with Kristian?” Monk wanted it to be true, even if it did not help.

“Oh, yes,” she said vehemently. A tiny, sad smile linked her lips. “She was jealous of that Jewish girl, Hanna Jakob, because she was brave as well, and full of character. And Hanna was in love with Kristian, too. I saw it in her face. . and her voice. Max was too easy for Elissa. She had to do no work to win his love.” She gave a tiny shrug. “Very often we don’t want what we are given without an effort. If you don’t pay, perhaps it isn’t worth a lot. At least, that is what we think.”

There was a noise of doors opening and closing.

“Thank you for coming to tell us personally, Mr. Monk,” she said quickly. “It was most courteous of you. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Frau Beck,” he answered, stepping outside into the wind and walking away, new thoughts filling his mind.

Ferdi was not the person to ask about the sudden ugliness he had seen in the Beck house, and it was almost entirely irrelevant to Kristian and Elissa, and to Max Niemann. However, Ferdi was burning with curiosity as to everything that Monk had learned and where it might fit in to form a clearer picture of the people who were already heroes to him. He asked question after question about Josef and Magda as he and Monk sat over hot chocolate and watched the lights come on as the streets grew darker and the cafes filled with chattering people. Without intending to, Monk let slip von Arpels’s comment about Strauss. He saw no discernible reaction in Ferdi’s young face.

“Do many people feel like that about Jews?” Monk asked.

“Yes, of course. Don’t they in England?” Ferdi looked puzzled. Monk had to think about it a moment. He had not moved in any area of society where he would have experienced such a thing. He realized with a jolt of surprise how few people he knew in a way of friendship rather than professionally. It was really only Rathbone, Callandra and, of course, Kristian. Those relationships were intense, built in extraordinary circumstances, the kind of trust most people are never called upon to exercise. But the lighter sides of friendship, the shared trivia, were missing.

“I haven’t come across it,” he said evasively. He did not want Ferdi to know that his life lacked such ordinary solidity. He did not really want him even to know that he had been a policeman. Ferdi might regard it as having a friend of excitement, but it would make Monk unquestionably socially inferior. One called the police when they were required; one did not invite them to dinner. One certainly did not allow one’s daughter to marry them.

Ferdi was puzzled. “Don’t you have Jews in England?”

“Yes, of course we do.” He struggled for an acceptable answer. “One of our leading politicians is a Jew-Benjamin Disraeli. I’m just not sure that I know any myself.”

“We don’t, either,” Ferdi agreed. “But I’ve seen them, of course.”

“How do you know?” Monk said quickly.

“What?”

“How do you know they were Jews?”

Ferdi was perplexed. “Well, people do know, don’t they?”

“I don’t.”

Ferdi blushed. “Don’t you? My parents do. I mean, you have to be polite, but there are certain things you don’t do.”

“For example?”

“Well. .” Ferdi was a little unhappy, and he looked down at the remains of his coffee. “You’d do business, of course. Lots of bankers are Jews. But you wouldn’t have them in your house, or at your club, or anything like that.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Well. . we’re Christians. They don’t believe in Christ. They crucified Him.”

“Eighteen hundred years ago,” Monk pointed out. “Nobody did it who’s alive today, Jew or otherwise.” He knew he was being unkind as he said it. Ferdi was only repeating what he had been taught. He was not equipped to find reasons for it, even to know where to look in the history of society, or the need for belief and justification to rationalize such a thing. The boy felt a stab of shame, and yet he kept on doing it. “Do a lot of people feel like that?” Monk asked.

“Everybody does that I know,” Ferdi replied, screwing up his face. “Or they say they do. I suppose it’s the same thing. . isn’t it?”

Monk had no answer, and it probably had nothing to do with Elissa Beck’s death anyway. It was just another facet of Kristian he had not expected, and could not fit in with the man he had known, or thought he had. He ordered coffee for both of them, forgetting it was chocolate they had had before.

Ferdi smiled, but said nothing.