J. Jones - The Third Place

This made Gross again stop and stare at Werthen as if he were a circus freak.

‘You saw the wound, Werthen. This could hardly-’ A sudden smile crossed the criminologist’s face.

‘You mean your other murder?’

‘Exactly,’ Werthen said. ‘Falk said the assailant struck Herr Karl with a length of pipe hidden in a coat sleeve. I am no scientist, but the stain on the end of the pipe surely looks like dried blood.’

‘A large jump of intuition, Werthen. That could be the blood of a rat cudgeled to death in the pension.’

‘The fingers,’ Werthen said. ‘Kaufmann mentioned the awkward way this Wenno held his coffee cup. I need to check my notes, but I swear Herr Falk mentioned something similar about the man Herr Karl had words with before he was killed. So, not so much intuition as deduction.’ He smiled at Gross. ‘And this begs a further connection: if it is the same man who killed Frau Geldner, Herr Karl and Herr Falk, then what is the connection between these deaths? Why would a professional killer bother with mere waiters or a landlady?’

‘We’ll know soon enough,’ Gross said. ‘We’ll take this pipe to the crime lab at the Praesidium. They can use the Uhlenhuth precipitin test to at least determine if it is human or animal. We can search the pipe for fingerprints as well and then see if there are any matches in the pension room, but with so many people using the same room over time, I doubt that would provide anything conclusive.’

Gross looked suddenly downcast.

‘No need to be glum about the fingerprints,’ Werthen said. ‘We’re still making progress.’

‘On which front? Our job is to keep the emperor alive, not solve the murders of two waiters and a landlady.’

‘Perhaps they are all related. After all, there is the Serbian connection.’

‘Tuition or deduction this time, dear Werthen?’

‘All right, it seems a stretch, but if that pipe can be linked to Herr Karl’s death then all this takes on a different complexion. We’re dealing with a professional killer here. Drechsler said it about Falk’s death. Starb said it about Frau Geldner. Someone expert at their job. Not simply some psychopath run amok, but somebody killing with intention, with a purpose.’

‘A passionate courtroom performance, Werthen. You almost convince me.’

‘And the letter Dimitrov had in his possession. We need to find out the exact contents of that,’ Werthen added. ‘There may be some inkling as to what a dying man was doing traveling from Belgrade to Vienna.’

‘In search of medical treatment, perhaps,’ Gross offered.

‘Perhaps. But it would be good to know.’

Gross nodded, then fixed Werthen with an icy stare. ‘You asked me a moment ago why I appeared so glum. There is another connection you’re not making.’

Werthen shrugged. ‘I am not the brilliant criminologist. Just a simple private inquiries agent.’

‘The hands,’ Gross said. ‘We have encountered those before. The misshapen little fingers.’

A chill traveled along Werthen’s spine as he remembered a bombing in his office that took the life of the building portier’s brother. The man who’d cut off the little fingers of his victims as a prize. The spy for the Russians who ran a double agent in the very heart of Austrian military intelligence and who had almost cost Gross his life.

‘But he’s in Siberia. Archduke Franz Ferdinand told us so himself.’

‘I find it difficult to believe that one so resourceful as Herr Schmidt, or whatever his real name is, would allow himself to be spirited off to the tsar’s work camps. Perhaps we should have Franz Ferdinand check with his man in Petersburg.’

‘It couldn’t be him,’ Werthen said again, but this time with little conviction.

Berthe’s day had been spectacularly unproductive and she was not really in the mood to hear of her husband and Gross’s discoveries. She had had to deal with the same fulsome bureaucrat who had kept Werthen from interviewing Herr Czerny, old friend of the murdered head waiter, Herr Karl. Neither had she been able to find any registration for the mysterious Hermann Postling.

But she hid these frustrations – or thought she did – and joined in with her husband and Gross as they discussed their revelations.

‘It’s only a pity we missed the archduke this afternoon,’ Werthen said with real animation. ‘We meet with him first thing in the morning.’

She liked to see Karl so full of life like this, so involved. But she couldn’t help feeling a bit excluded at the same time. It was as if she had been given the leftovers in her investigations. Knowing it wasn’t the case did not alter that feeling.

Now these two investigations seemed on the verge of coming together, and she was still obliged to hunt for the tail, leaving the dog for Karl and the ever-pompous Gross.

‘Why so ruminative?’ Gross suddenly asked her, as if sensing her displeasure. ‘You are doing your part, you know. We really should talk with Oberstabelmeister Johann Czerny.’

‘Don’t worry, Gross. Berthe’s not the type to sulk.’ Then, to his wife: ‘Are you, Schatz ?’

To which question she had the irrepressible desire to tell him that sulking and frustration were two very different states. She loved Karl dearly, but sometimes his sunny optimism was as annoying as Gross’s imperious manner.

‘No, not at all,’ she said. ‘Actually, I was just hoping you two would ask Franz Ferdinand or Prince Montenuovo to intercede with Herr Plauder at the Hofburg about setting up an appointment.’ The po-faced clerk at the Hofburg in his filthy white housecoat and muffler was obviously the same middling bureaucrat who had given Karl the run around about seeing Czerny. The man had actually had the effrontery to tell her that if she wished to apply for a position in the kitchen she was in the wrong office. She, Berthe Meisner, who had been commissioned by no less a personage than Archduke Franz Ferdinand himself last year to investigate a possible scandal at the famed Lipizzaner stud.

‘I would like nothing better,’ Werthen said. ‘I’ll see to it, my love. You should not have to put up with his obstructionism. I should have done so long ago.’

He reached across the littered dinner table where they were seated – Werthen’s parents were still in town and entertaining Frieda in the sitting room – and squeezed her hand. And suddenly everything was all right once again.

Am I that simple a woman that a small kindness from my husband can erase hours of frustration? She decided to leave that question for another day and simply enjoy the moment.

‘Another glass of wine, Gross?’ she said, offering him the remains of the third bottle on the table. When Emile von Werthen was in town, the wine flowed freely.

‘Don’t mind if I do, Frau Meisner. Most kind of you.’

Later that night as they were preparing for bed, Berthe remembered what she had been meaning to tell her husband.

‘Father brought some wonderful news yesterday,’ she said. ‘I completely forgot about it, being so wrapped up in murders and plots.’

‘He’s retiring,’ Werthen guessed. ‘And about time, too. He can move to Vienna full time now and be near his only daughter and granddaughter.’

‘A big life change, but not that one. He’s not quite ready yet to leave business and concentrate solely on Talmudic studies.’

‘How many guesses do I have?’

‘He’s getting married.’

‘Wonderful,’ Werthen said. ‘And who is the lucky woman?’ he asked playfully.

‘Don’t be silly, Karl. Frau Juliani, of course.’

‘Of course.’ He pulled her to him in her chemise, holding her around the waist. ‘And I hope she makes him as happy as his daughter has me.’