“No, sir. I thought it too early to disturb them, especially after the troubles of last night. Also I think it probable that they will talk to you more freely than they would to me.”
“I’ll make them my first job,” said Macdonald. “If I’d been gifted with second sight I should have tackled this problem last night. This is one of the occasions when a laudable desire not to interfere has contradicted its own intentions. Walsingham wanted to talk to me last night. If I’d encouraged him to do so, he would probably be alive now.”
“You think he was killed because he knew too much?”
“More likely because he tried to find’ out what he didn’t know,” replied Macdonald. “Now to get the preliminaries settled: will you deal with the airport authorities at Schwechat: ascertain the names of all arrivals on the B.E.A. plane on Monday and their present domiciles as far as is known, as well as checking later arrivals? I will check with London airport. And I think it would be a good thing if you saw Dr. Natzler and his son while you are here. They have both got some information which may be germane to the case. I will see Sir Walter and his sister and also get in touch with Sir Charles Bland. He was going back to London by the midday plane to-day, but he may be willing to stay on if we ask him to do so.”
“Very good, sir.” Nauheim hesitated a moment and then said, “This case is going to have repercussions—to cause a lot of trouble among important persons, mainly because I told you that, in my judgment, Mr. Walsingham was probably murdered.”
“And you may have been mistaken,” said Macdonald. “There is a possibility that Mr. Anthony Vanbrugh was right, and Walsingham was killed by a drunken driver who lost control of his vehicle on the Wattmanngasse, and that Miss Le Vendre fell backwards down the steps of the gun emplacement during the thunderstorm. I admit those possibilities. Last night I let the accident theory have the benefit of the doubt and I blame myself for doing so. It’s not going to happen again. So whether we are right or wrong, we are going to cause a lot of trouble to a lot of important people: make a nuisance of ourselves, in short.”
Albrecht Nauheim chuckled and Macdonald added, “I don’t often make forecasts, but I rather hope that somebody may think it worth their while to put paid to me: in which case things may be expedited considerably. Go and talk to Dr. Natzler: I think you’ll find him illuminating.”
2
Macdonald’s first action was to telephone to Sir Charles Bland. He gave a brief report on the events of the past eighteen hours and then went on:
“I should like to confer with you, sir. Would it be possible for you to put off your return to London? I would have come to see you immediately, but other matters must come first.”
“That’s for you to decide,” said Bland. “In the light of what has occurred I will stay on in Vienna while you need me.”
“Thank you, sir. And don’t take it amiss if I suggest that you stay indoors. Somebody has already given hostages to fortune, if I may put it that way.”
“I see. I was going to suggest that I come out to Hietzing to see the Vanbrughs—and yourself.”
“Don’t do that, sir. We don’t want any more traffic accidents,” replied Macdonald dryly.
Macdonald’s next call was to one of his own colleagues Chief Inspector Peter Reeves, in London. Having given him certain instructions, Macdonald added, “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, Pete. You’ve never seen Vienna: this may be your chance. Report to me this evening—Vienna 72577—around eight o’clock. If I’m not in then, I’ll ring you at home later.”
After that, having reported his intentions to Vienna headquarters and received an assurance that a police interpreter would await him in Hietzing, Macdonald set out for Trauttmansdorffgasse.
Rather to his relief, he was not led again up the state staircase: old Josef led him into a study on the ground floor, where Sir Walter sat at a desk against a background of books. The old man’s face looked bleached and weary and Macdonald said at once:
“I’m very sorry you are having all this distress, sir. If I hadn’t stood on ceremony last night, I might have saved you some of it—but it’s easy to be wise after the event.”
“I’m glad to have you here, Superintendent. As you probably know, I rang through to London and asked the Commissioner for your co-operation. I don’t want to show lack of confidence in the Austrian police, but I do feel that their attitude towards my nephew is preposterous. If they do not go so far as to accuse him of running Neville Walsingham down, it is plain that they consider it as a possibility.”
“All impartial and competent policemen, of all nationalities, have to envisage every possibility,” said Macdonald quietly. “In this matter the police have to envisage three possibilities: the first is that Walsingham was knocked down and killed by the van your nephew saw: the second is that he was killed by Mr. Vanbrugh’s car: the third is that he was killed by neither of those vehicles, but was killed a few minutes earlier and his body left lying in the road in the hope that a car would run over him.”
“But why?” cried Sir Walter, “why on earth make such a far-fetched assumption?”
“It isn’t an assumption, sir. It is a possibility, and the evidence for it is being carefully considered. And because the possibility exists, it is my duty to ask you to tell me the reason for Mr. Walsingham’s presence in Vienna.”
Sir Walter Vanbrugh sat and considered for a moment; then he said, “I could give you a very simple answer to that question, Superintendent. Walsingham came to Vienna to stay with me as my guest, because I had invited him to stay here, at any time convenient to him. He had been helpful to me in London, giving me advice about my book—the sort of advice that an experienced writer can give to an inexperienced one—and I was anxious to repay his generosity.”
Macdonald waited for a moment before he replied. Then he said, “You used the word ‘could,’ sir.”
“Yes. I used it advisedly. The answer I have given you is true as far as it goes. Walsingham wrote to me some ten days ago, saying he would like to revisit Vienna—he had known it for years—and asking if it would be a convenient time to take advantage of my invitation. I wired back at once, saying we should be happy to have him here. But as to why he came, I can only tell you that I do not know.”
“Do you think he had any ulterior motive, sir—apart from enjoying a holiday?”
“I should say that it is very probable. To my mind, Walsingham is not the type of man to travel thus far, and to stay with elderly people who can offer him little in the way of amusement, unless he has some underlying reason. But what the reason was he did not divulge. He had only been in this house since the day before yesterday, you must remember.”
“When Mr. Walsingham walked home with Karl Natzler and myself, he suggested that he might be able to offer me some information if I would reciprocate—or words to that effect,” said Macdonald, and Sir Walter nodded.
“Yes. I can well believe he might have expressed himself thus: and I can also well believe that he came to stay here in Vienna because he thought I could give him some information which he needed. But as to what he wanted to know, I have no idea. Neither am I prepared to believe that it was his desire for information which led to his death: the idea seems to me out of all proportion.”
“Well, let us leave that for the moment, sir, and return to Miss Le Vendre’s accident. What was the nature of the work she had begun for you?”
Sir Walter gave a sudden movement of impatience. “I cannot believe that a man of your intelligence would imagine that a young girl, newly arrived in my household, would be entrusted with information coming under the head of ‘Top Secret,’ ” he said. “Such an idea pertains to the romantic novel. There was nothing in the work she was doing that was of the remotest interest to anybody beyond my own family. She was typing my original notes on family origins, on my childhood and upbringing. In addition she was translating and transcribing personal letters written in German by members of my own family who were brought
up in Germany. The only papers she had access to were personal papers—the sort of collection which any writer of a biography works through in order to sift out a few picturesque recollections of a by-gone era. To assume that her work here could have in any way instigated violence is absurd.”
“Did she have any conversation with Mr. Walsingham?”
“She met him at dinner the night before last. The conversation turned mainly on travels in Europe—all of a quite trivial nature, though the child talked charmingly enough of her wanderings in Germany, in the Black Forest and the Rhineland, and Walsingham reciprocated with anecdotes of his own youth—he was a student at Heidelberg University in the mid-twenties. He was out to luncheon yesterday, so they did not meet again.”
“Do you know where he went yesterday?”
“He took the small car and drove into Vienna: I gathered he went to see the publisher who has translation rights in Walsingham’s last book. After lunch he drove up to Leopoldsberg—as all visitors do.”
“Well, sir, I won’t trouble you with any further questions now,” said Macdonald. “I should like to look through Mr. Walsingham’s baggage, and to see Mr. Anthony Vanbrugh when he comes down. And I think you will agree that the story told by the two maids—Clara and Greta—must be given to the local police. That is their business, not mine. In any case, I should be of no value as an interrogator: my German is quite inadequate.”
“Yes, yes: I realise I made a mistake in deferring to my sister’s wishes over that,” said Sir Walter sadly, “but I should like to stress one point. My nephew, Anthony, was very misguided in his attitude to the local police: he put their backs up. But they—the police—will be even more misguided if they assume he was not telling the exact truth.”
“Perhaps the trouble there is that Mr. Vanbrugh is not accustomed to giving evidence or to being interrogated,” said Macdonald. “He is more used to interrogating others and the two experiences aren’t identical. One of the advantages of a policeman’s training is that he has to give evidence, and, if necessary, stand up to cross-examination on it. There is one question I might usefully ask here: was Mr. Anthony Vanbrugh previously acquainted with Mr. Walsingham?”
“No. They had not met until Walsingham came to this house. Neither did they show any interest in each other—their interests are quite dissimilar. Oh, I know what you’re going to say,” added Sir Walter. “Neville Walsingham’s researches into European problems might well have come to the notice of Anthony’s department, but Anthony is not interested in a writer’s world. The two were naturally bored with each other.” He pushed his chair back, adding: “You have asked to see Walsingham’s baggage. I will take you up to his room. The local police have already examined it, but found nothing to interest them, I gather. The key of his room has been left here with me.”
3
Neville Walsingham had only brought one suitcase with him—one of the light-weight cases manufactured for air travel. It was empty, and his belongings were neatly put away in wardrobe and chest. There was an evening suit (dinner-jacket), a dark lounge suit, underwear, shoes, ties, pyjamas and washing kit. A zipped-up writing-case held writing-paper and an unused note-book: a wallet held Travellers’ cheques, an English cheque-book and English currency notes. It was a new wallet, practically unworn, and Macdonald guessed that the dead man had carried another wallet in his pocket. The only books (apart from a selection on the bedside table which obviously belonged to the Vanbrughs) were two Penguins—detective novels—and a copy of Cocteau’s La Machine Infemale. Macdonald knew that passport and money had been found in Walsingham’s pockets, but Nauheim had not mentioned any diary or note-book. “If those weren’t on him, it’s pretty sure proof that somebody had been at his pockets,” thought Macdonald. “No man travels without something in the nature of a note-book or diary or address book. And very few men refrain from stuffing old letters in their pockets. Well, I’d better have a word with Anthony Vanbrugh and then go and consider Walsingham’s remains. It’s a case of ‘Back to the Army again, Sergeant, back to the Army again.’ ”
CHAPTER X
MR. ERNEST HENRY WEBSTER, described on his passport as a professional photographer, had not the good fortune to stay in the gracious quarter of Hietzing, near to the Schönbrunn Palace and the wooded hills, when he came to Vienna. Not that this troubled him: Mr. Webster was not, as he himself put it, ‘choosey.’ He considered that he was very fortunate to be given hospitality in Vienna at all, hotels costing what they do. “If it hadn’t been for Auntie, I shouldn’t have risked coming,” he said. Ernest Henry Webster was a gregarious soul: he liked talking and he talked to anybody he could find who spoke English—and a surprising number of Viennese had picked up some English during the Occupation.
“Auntie’s an old inhabitant,” said Mr. Webster. “Came to Vienna in 1905—and that’s a long time ago, that is, even to a middle-aged chap like me.”
“Auntie,” known as Fräulein Braun, was known to a number of charitably minded English persons in Vienna: she was a survival of a once well-known type—the private governess. She had come to Vienna in 1905, at the age of twenty, as English governess to a prosperous family of Viennese bankers, and she had stayed in Austria ever since. During the troubled days of the First World War she had accompanied her original employer to a country refuge in Carinthia, where she had spent the next ten years, teaching English to another generation of young Rothmeisters and helping to run a house where poverty had superseded wealth. Undoubtedly Auntie (her real name was Elsie Brown) had shown the qualities of devotion and faithfulness which did distinguish the English governess of long ago, and she had returned to Vienna with her original mistress in 1930 and had cared for Frau Rothmeister until the latter’s death in 1940. “Fräulein Braun,” a poor and prematurely aged spinster, had been ignored under the Nazi regime—there were many ageing Englishwomen of her type in Vienna, too humble to attract retaliation for their nationality. She was left a small bequest by the Rothmeister family, who installed her in a two-roomed flat not far from the West Bahnhof. During the rest of the Second World War she had let one of her precious rooms (house room was at a premium in Vienna) to an Austrian bank clerk and his wife who “collaborated.” When the war came to an end and the Occupation began, she had once again let her room. It was not until 1955 that she had found herself in possession of two rooms again. Then, having established contact with her English relatives again, she had invited her unknown nephew—Ernest Henry (son of her married sister), to visit her in Vienna. Fräulein Braun was very poor: she had survived because she had a room to let, and since the Occupation the charitable English and American families resident in Vienna had helped to keep her in food and firing. Small blame to her if she thought her English nephew might do something to assist her—and so Ernest Henry Webster came to Vienna “to look up Auntie,” occupied her spare room, and not ungenerously spent his Travellers’ Allowance in buying her some much needed comforts. In a poor house in a poor street, Webster attracted very little attention: it was a crowded neighbourhood and the Viennese had become accustomed to the English—and French and Americans—in their midst. If he had wished, Ernest Henry Webster could have stayed on there unnoticed, for he had a trick of taking colour from his environment and becoming one of a crowd in a crowded quarter, and he could pass the time of day and say a few phrases in very passable German.
2
On the Friday morning after Walsingham’s death, Mr. Webster set out for Schönbrunn Palace. He was a very skilful photographer, and he had in mind a possible sale for a series of unusual photographs of Vienna. Whatever artistry he was capable of expressed itself in the ability to “see a picture” through the medium of his viewfinder. He had already spent several days in the heart of the city, getting pictures of people as well as streets and buildings: the old market women, the children who played in the parks, the professors who came and went in the University. Now he had decided to concentrate on Schönbrunn, the gardens, the fountain, the Tiergarten a
nd the Gloriette. The arches of the Gloriette, mirrored in the still waters of the pool, attracted him particularly. “They ought to use it for a film,” he thought, “ballet, maybe . . . there’s something about it . . .”
He took a tram out to Hietzing and strolled across to the Schönbrunn entrance. It was a beautiful day after a night of rain, and Mr. Webster walked slowly round, studying the vistas between the avenues of clipped trees and keeping an eye open for interesting types. After a while he climbed slowly up the paths which led to the Gloriette, noting the play of sunlight and shadow on the open arches and under the colonnade, and the great imperial eagle which crowned the central pediment. He took a number of shots, concentrating on his work, before he strolled to the path by the pool and looked back to the palace, away down below. A young man was sitting on a bench just below the Gloriette, reading in the sunshine, and Mr. Webster, conscious of a picture, turned his camera towards the solitary figure.
“A student,” hazarded the cameraman, and from habit his mind formulated a caption for the shot. “Young Austria . . . studying history in the grounds of the Hapsburg Palace.”
Then, as the young man turned to look at him, Mr. Webster hurriedly beamed and hurried forward towards the bench.
“What a bit of luck!” cried the cameraman cheerfully. “I mistook you for an Austrian, but of course you’re English. Now I never like to take liberties, although I’m a cameraman with my living to earn—and folks sometimes forget that—and it’s not always easy. Would you mind if I used you as a model, so to speak? ‘Student of history in the shadow of the ‘Hapsburgs’ Folly’—if you take me. A good picture needs a striking caption, and I’d say that’s a good one, though I says it as shouldn’t.”
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