J. Jones - The Third Place

‘We do not know,’ Werthen confessed. ‘But we have so few leads …’

‘Understood. No stone left unturned. We appreciate your efforts. I have a small network of operatives at work on this matter as well, but they have been unable to turn up anything on the two gunmen at Schonbrunn. How did you come up with the Belgrade angle?’

Gross was only too happy to tell him of his discovery regarding the spent shell casings at the entrance to the palace and to the letter found in Dimitrov’s pocket.

‘We are on our way now to the Praesidium to see if there has been any new information to be gleaned from a full translation of that missive,’ Gross said.

Franz Ferdinand rose and Werthen and Gross followed his lead.

‘I wish you luck, gentlemen. I shall keep you apprised of whatever is discovered from our St Petersburg agent. And if it is our friend, Herr Schmidt, I remember that he may have a particular animus for you two. After all, you were the cause of his fall from grace with Russian military intelligence. Perhaps I should assign Duncan to watch your back.’

‘I doubt that will be necessary-’ Gross began.

But Werthen interrupted: ‘By all means, Your Highness. If you can spare him, that is.’

Duncan was the tall, scar-faced Scotsman who had served as Franz Ferdinand’s aid and bodyguard ever since he’d saved the archduke’s life in a hunting mishap in the Scottish Highlands. Duncan had come to their aid twice before, one time directly saving Werthen’s life. If it were Herr Schmidt who had come back from the dead, then they could use all the help they could get and to hell with Gross’s sense of importance.

‘Consider it done.’ The archduke shook their hands.

Werthen had shaken hands with the man before when they had been faced with dangerous situations. This was the first time the archduke’s palm was moist.

The man Werthen and Gross knew as Herr Schmidt, the Estonian, Pietr Klavan, formerly in the pay of Russian military intelligence, was shopping at this very moment.

He took his time, knowing what he needed and not wanting to take second best. However, at the Parfumerie J.B. Filz at Graben 13, there were, according to the well-attired clerk behind the counter, no second bests in this establishment. ‘Filz is all first class,’ she told Klavan. It was a tiny vault of a shop, nestled amid the other high-class emporiums of Graben in the very heart of Vienna’s First District. The double-headed eagle was proudly displayed on the back wall, announcing that the firm had been Imperial and Royal Court Perfumers since 1872.

‘But I need something fitting for an emperor,’ he said. ‘Price is no object.’

‘Woman or man?’ the clerk asked in her snotty Schonbrunner German.

‘An emperor, not an empress.’

‘I see. Not necessarily a figure of speech, then.’

She was the sort of self-satisfied cow he would love to have a few minutes with in private. She would not be smiling that supercilious superior smile of hers after he was finished.

But he controlled himself. ‘Something quite elegant – regal, shall we say – for a man.’

‘Ah, in that case, I should surely recommend Filz Feinste. They say it is used even in the Hofburg. A subtle blend of bergamot, coriander, myrtle and conifer resin, with just a trace of citrus.’

She pulled the top from of an elegantly packaged sample bottle and held the glass stopper under his nose. He almost retched. It was an automatic reaction with Klavan. Perfumes and colognes made him physically ill. But he pantomimed delight for the clerk.

‘Just the thing,’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you have it in a small atomizer bottle?’

She looked again at his clothing – hardly the finest – and at his hands, which were badly in need of a manicure.

‘It is quite expensive.’

He pulled out a wallet stuffed with bills. The perfumery clerks’ eyes bulged at the sight of this wealth.

Earlier this morning he had made his way to an alleyway in the Second District, dislodged the third brick from the bottom on the right edge of the back wall and retrieved a key he had hidden there during his mission to Vienna the year before. He had similar hiding places in Warsaw and Berlin. Then he walked into the central office of the Rothschild bank, Credit-Anstalt, on Schottengasse, went to the safe deposit box section, handed the key to the clerk and after signing in as Herr Schmidt was shown to his box, number 2213, paired his key with the clerk’s and opened the tiny door to it. He pulled out the long box, went to a private room and cleared out its contents: a thousand crowns in twenty- and fifty-crown notes, and identity papers in the name of Gregor Tollinger, a purveyor of fine cheeses from Bolzano in the Tyrol.

‘Well, the good sir displays excellent taste,’ the clerk gushed, still eyeing the money.

She sought out a small, handsome bottle of the prized cologne, a tiny rubber atomizer affixed to it.

‘Should I have it wrapped?’

‘No, I’ll see to that. And make that two, please.’

A smile crossed her face. ‘That will be eighty crowns then.’

He did not bother looking her way as he peeled two fifty-crown bills off the stack, all in blue ink with two toga-bedecked women seated and staring out like queens of the ball. What they were supposed to represent he was sure he did not know or care. But the money shut the clerk up as he traded it for the elegant little paper bag she settled the bottles of cologne into.

‘Keep the change,’ he said impulsively, merely to see her reaction. And it was worth it, for at first she seemed to be affronted that someone should dare to give her a tip, but then did the reckoning on the size of said tip, reddened and did a half curtsey instead.

‘The good gentleman is too generous.’

‘Not really,’ he said, taking the package and leaving the tiny confines of the shop. Outside, he sucked in air like a drowning man.

First step concluded, he thought.

They stopped for lunch at Krawaler’s near the Ring before going on to the Praesidium. Gross had a great need for Bauernschmaus , he averred, and there was none better served in Vienna than at Krawaler’s. Werthen, who had noticed that his pants were fitting a little tightly around the waist of late, opted for a bowl of spicy Bohnensuppe , and felt very superior for his sacrifice as they later made their way to police headquarters.

After signing in at registry, they quickly headed for the new forensics laboratory built very much to Gross’s own specifications in his writings. It seemed they were in favor today: their way was cleared for them as the Hofburg must have had a word with Chief Inspector Meindl following the misunderstanding at the Pension Geldner. That was as productive as it got, however, for they discovered that the lab had not even conducted the relatively simple precipitin test to determine if the stain on the pipe were human blood of from another animal – or even blood at all. The letter from Dimitrov’s wife was still in the evidence box labeled ‘G’ for Frau Geldner.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Gross fumed at the lowly technician who brought the bad news. ‘This is a murder investigation, not a picnic.’

He took the letter from the box, opened it and began making a rough transcription of his own.

‘You speak Serbian?’ Werthen asked. Though he was not surprised; Gross had a seemingly bottomless pit of scatter-shot knowledge that served him well as a criminologist.

‘My Amme was from a Serbian family in Sarajevo.’

He said it with a sort of sweet lilt to his voice that Werthen had never heard come from the criminologist. Gross looked upward as if recalling a fond memory of this nursemaid.