J. Jones - The Third Place

When they reached the building on a bleak street in the Sixth District, they were surprised to find a constabulary sergeant stationed at the front desk. Werthen recognized him as a former witness for the prosecution in an art theft case that Werthen was defending. The officer had managed to make Gross, who was acting as an expert witness, look a bit of a fool. Werthen searched for the name: Friedman? Feltz? The officer gave him no time to wonder.

‘Well, if it isn’t Advokat Werthen,’ the sergeant said. ‘And his expert witness. I’m sure you remember me: Sergeant Feldman. What brings you two here?’

‘I was about to ask you the same,’ Werthen replied.

‘Murder.’ Sergeant Feldman said the word with relish.

‘Who?’

‘The old frau herself. Geldner. I always said it’d be the pipe-smoking that’d do her in or one of her anarchist guests.’

‘Murder,’ Gross intoned. ‘Well, there goes a possible informant.’ And then, as an afterthought: ‘In that case, it must have been a guest.’

Feldman nodded.

‘When did this happen?’ Werthen asked.

‘Saturday night, it appears. The body was discovered on Sunday by the woman’s nephew. Pretty cut up about it, the boy was.’

‘Murdered Saturday night and you still have the premises guarded?’ This from Gross, who made such a proposition sound like a breach of good manners.

‘That would be your doing, Doktor Gross,’ Feldman said with a degree of irony.

‘How so?’ Werthen asked.

‘I believe the good sergeant is making a small joke,’ Gross said to Werthen. ‘My dictum about protecting the crime scene from clumsy feet and fingers.’ Then, to Feldman: ‘Which means you folks have not yet had the time, more than twenty-four hours after discovery of the body, to visit the scene or to make more than a preliminary investigation. Which suggests,’ Gross plunged on despite the efforts of Sergeant Feldman to reply, ‘that the death of an anarchist innkeeper takes very low priority in the Police Praesidium.’

Sergeant Feldman shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

‘Oh, I do say so, sir. But for myself and my colleague, this death may assume very high priority indeed. I assume the body has been moved?’

‘Bodies,’ Sergeant Feldman said. ‘Looks like the Serbian chap did the deed with a blade and then collapsed on his bed, dead from a hemorrhage or some such.’

‘Or some such. Most scientific,’ Gross said.

But the word ‘Serbian’ had caught their interest.

‘How do you know the nationality of the other?’ Werthen asked. ‘I very much doubt the guests here oblige by registering with the correct information.’

‘He was carrying a letter. Seems to be from his wife. The postmark is from Belgrade. They’re still translating the Serbian, but it’s pretty clear he was from there, too. Dimitrov’s the name. But I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. It’s police business.’

‘It’s our business now,’ said Gross, presenting Feldman with the letter from Montenuovo with a flourish.

Feldman glanced at the letter, then handed it back with a shrug. ‘Means nothing to me. Like I said, this is police business. No one’s allowed in the room.’

Werthen saw a phone on the desk and without asking permission he placed a call to a number at the Hofburg. It took fifteen more minutes, but a call came through for Sergeant Feldman that made his ears turn red. Werthen could hear the anger in the voice on the other end of the line.

‘Yes, sir,’ Feldman finally said. ‘I understand, sir.’ He hung up the receiver, looking like a well-chastised pupil.

‘I assume we can examine the crime scene now,’ Gross said with a satisfied smile on his face.

The sergeant nodded, not bothering to speak.

‘The key?’ Werthen said.

‘For what?’

‘The crime scene.’

Feldman sighed. ‘It’s unlocked. That’s why I’m here.’

‘Twenty-four hours a day?’ Gross thundered. He looked at Werthen, exasperation replacing his former smile.

They both shook their heads.

Down the hall, they soon came to a room which had a sign pasted on it: Entrance Forbidden.

Opening the door, Werthen was greeted with a smell from a butcher’s shop. The stench of blood was strong; its visual presence was, as well – on the coverlet of one bed and on the floor beside another cot.

‘Two beds,’ Gross said.

Werthen nodded. It implied two occupants, not one.

They spent the next hour going over every nook and cranny in the room. In the first ten minutes Werthen found a length of metal pipe with stains at one end that looked like dried blood. The pipe had been ill concealed on top of the sole wardrobe in the room, as if cast aside and simply forgotten. There was no telling how long it had been there, but there was very little dust on it as opposed to the top of the wardrobe.

Not sure of the pipe’s importance, he still handled it carefully, gripping it with a handkerchief from his breast pocket and setting it by the door to be taken away for further examination.

‘What brought her in here?’ Gross suddenly asked.

‘Perhaps she was killed elsewhere and hidden in here.’

‘Or maybe she was caught snooping,’ Gross said. ‘We need to inspect the bodies.’

Werthen was afraid he was going to suggest that. The morgue at the General Hospital was not his favorite place to visit.

There was a small valise in the wardrobe containing the meager belongings of the mysterious Herr Dimitrov. A shaving kit, grimy shirt with two celluloid collars, a change of underwear. At the very bottom was a ball of fur that unrolled into a very long and very real-looking gray beard.

‘Stranger and stranger,’ Gross mused, looking at the beard.

Feldman had decided to take a chair; he was seated behind the desk when they came back to the entrance.

‘Who was sharing the room?’ Gross asked.

Feldman looked up from the illustrated paper he was glancing at. ‘What do you mean, sharing?’

‘Two cots. Two occupants.’

‘There was only one when we got here. Nothing in the registry.’

‘May we see it?’ Werthen asked. ‘The registry.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Feldman said, getting out of the chair so that Werthen could sit in front of the large leather-bound registration book open on the desk.

He flipped the pages for recent dates and quickly saw that a page was missing. ‘A page has been torn out,’ he said.

Feldman didn’t react.

‘It could very well hold the name of the other lodger.’

‘I’m not the investigating officer,’ Feldman said. ‘Talk to Drechsler. I’m just the watchdog.’

‘This nephew that discovered Frau Geldner’s body. Is he still around?’ Gross asked.

Feldman made a slight laugh. ‘He’s about the only who is, I can tell you that. The rest of the lodgers had someplace else to go suddenly. Room twelve, down the other hall. He was in there last I knew.’ He looked at Gross now, spying the length of pipe the criminologist was carrying. ‘You can’t be tampering with evidence.’

Gross stared at him for a moment. ‘Sergeant Feldman, you may have a great mind for measurements but I have a feeling you would not know what evidence would look like if it came up and bit you. Now what is the name of this nephew?’

Feldman glared back at Gross. ‘Kaufmann. August Kaufmann. And that’s a bit of evidence, too. So there.’

As they walked down the hallway, Gross tucked the length of pipe into the deep evidence pockets he’d had sewn into the lining of his overcoat.

‘Can’t be frightening the witnesses now, can we, Werthen?’

Werthen realized something fundamental about Gross at that moment. Other people do their jobs; Gross reveled in his. He was enjoying this more than he would a plate of schnitzel or a fine wine from Gumpoldskirchen.