J. Jones - The Third Place

‘I shall be most discreet, rest assured, Princess Dumbroski.’

But he said this as an implicit threat; his discretion would come at the price of a place to stay and regroup.

She fixed him with a steely gaze, then turned on her heel like a martinet and was gone.

Good old Lisette, he thought after she had left him to the fresh rolls and pot of coffee. True to form, she had not even bothered to ask him how he was able to track her to Vienna, nor to attempt an explanation of her new-found wealth. He, however, had heard it all from Monsieur Philipot in Brussels, for it was a minor member of the royal house of Belgium who was Lisette’s unwitting benefactor.

According to Philipot, after last working with Klavan – this was before his debacle in Vienna – Lisette had decided to cut out the middle man. She no longer waited for a target chosen by St Petersburg, but went hunting on her own, picking a minor, though not impoverished, member of the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, third cousin to the Count of Flanders. Laurent II was younger than her other targets had been, yet he was still a man of certain appetites and fantasies.

‘Laurent II is said to be a great admirer of the Austrian, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch,’ Monsieur Philipot had told him with a sly smile. Philipot knew about the scheme because Lisette had come to him to hire a photographer who would not ask too many questions. The subsequent photo gallery she had produced for the astonished Laurent had obviously been scandalous enough that he had put up little resistance to Lisette’s demands for money, selling off some of the family shares in the Congo Free State to finance this payoff.

‘She’s set up quite nicely, now,’ Monsieur Philipot had gone on to tell Klavan. ‘Calls herself Princess Dumbroski, from what I hear, and fancies herself a fashion setter in Vienna.’

Such gossip had meant little to Klavan at the time, but as with most information, he filed it away in his mind for possible future use.

The future had arrived more quickly than Klavan had planned.

As Klavan ate his breakfast, he took stock of his situation now that Dimitrov was no longer available. He suddenly realized it was Palm Sunday, just a week until Easter. Only four days from Maundy Thursday.

He had his work cut out for him. And suddenly, after recalling the painful incident at the music academy, after seeing once again the glee on the face of the wealthy bullies who had ruined his life, he was filled with a new urgency, even an eagerness for the job. It would be his own personal revenge on the world of wealth and privilege. After all, what did he have to look forward to but a life on the run, a life of servitude to people like Monsieur Philipot or Apis, men too greedy or cowardly to do their own dirty work? It was suddenly as if all this were preordained. The mission to Vienna, scene of his previous disgrace; the death of Dimitrov whom he must now replace.

Four days to go.

He would be ready.

Police Praesidium Inspector Meindl was in fine form today. It was their bad luck that Drechsler had felt compelled to telephone his superior; usually Meindl could be counted on to be at his favorite cafe on a Sunday afternoon, sharing a friendly game of Tarock with a group that included an assistant to the interior minister and two deputies to the parliament.

Instead, he sat behind his massive cherrywood desk at the Police Praesidium, dressed neatly as ever in finely tailored English tweeds, sporting the usual tortoiseshell pince-nez and so diminutive looking that he seemed like a marionette rather than a canny navigator of Vienna’s corridors of power, which in fact he was. Behind the pince-nez Meindl’s brown eyes glared at Werthen and Gross.

‘Obstruction of justice, I call it,’ Meindl said in his high, nasal voice, strongly modulate with an acquired upper-class Schonbrunn accent. ‘Withholding vital evidence in a murder investigation.’

‘Strictly speaking,’ Werthen was quick to point out, ‘there was no murder investigation. The death of Herr Karl was put down as an accident by the police.’

Meindl’s normally rosy cheeks grew brighter at this comment. ‘And had you apprised us of this Herr Falk’s confession, there would surely have been such an investigation.’

‘Information, not confession,’ Werthen said. He could feel Gross’s eyes on him, for it was usually Gross who did the bear-baiting of the preening Meindl. Werthen was beginning to enjoy himself.

‘No legal semantics today, Advokat. And you, Gross – with your background in the law one would hope for more.’

‘Actually,’ Werthen replied, ‘Doktor Gross had nothing to do with the Falk matter. I took that on entirely on my own. I, of course, had every intention of notifying the police once I ascertained the verity of his assertions.’

‘I’m sure you did,’ Meindl said with a degree of sarcasm. ‘That is why it has taken almost two weeks for you to provide us with your notes. Not to mention the death of another man. Had you come to us in a timely fashion-’

‘Quite,’ Werthen interrupted Meindl. ‘That is something I shall have to live with. However, other events intervened.’

Meindl looked from Werthen to Gross with ill-concealed contempt. ‘And what other events are we talking about? More obstruction of justice? And what are you doing in Vienna, Doktor Gross, if not helping Advokat Werthen in one of his meddling investigations? One would assume your students in Czernowitz need your professorial attentions.’

‘The University of Prague, as of this year,’ Gross was happy to correct the inspector. ‘And for your information, I am in Vienna at the request of a higher authority.’

Meindl clapped his hands in glee, fixing Werthen now in his glare. ‘Hah. This would be the mysterious investigation you refused to share with Detective Inspector Drechsler, I suppose.’

‘The very one,’ Werthen allowed.

Meindl slapped his right hand down forcibly on the desktop. ‘There will be no secrets from the Police Praesidium. Is that understood?’

Werthen and Gross merely looked back at the inspector calmly. They could hear Drechsler clearing his throat, seated in back of them.

Their ensuing silence made Meindl raise his voice another notch. ‘If you two do not want to find yourself behind bars, I demand to know what diverted your attention from the murder of this waiter.’

‘Head waiter, in point of fact.’ Werthen could not help himself.

‘Do not toy with me, gentlemen. You don’t want me for an enemy.’

But we already have you as one, Werthen thought, though he decided silence was a better option at the moment.

‘Meindl,’ Gross said pleasingly, leaving off any titles in a collegial manner, ‘we have no intention of angering you. It is simply that we have been sworn to secrecy in this matter. I can, however, share with you a missive that empowers us in said investigation.’

Gross brought the letter from Montenuovo out of his jacket pocket and laid it on the desk in front of Meindl. The inspector looked with suspicion from Gross to the letter then finally unfolded the paper, smoothing it carefully on the leather desk pad, and slowly read it, his thin lips moving with each word.

Finishing, Meindl held the letter up to the light from his window as if searching for signs of forgery.

‘You can call the prince if you are unsure,’ Gross said. ‘Werthen here bears a similar letter of commission. We are at work on a case of the highest importance to the empire. That is, unfortunately, all that we are allowed to say of the matter.’

Meindl shoved the letter back across the desk at Gross as if it were a bad smell.

‘Which still does not excuse your actions, Advokat. I assume you have brought all pertinent information so that we may initiate a systematic investigation into these deaths?’