[VM01] The Empty Mirror

by J Sydney Jones

  “What do you want?”

  “My good lady.” Gross swept his derby off his head and nudged Werthen to do the same with his. “We have come on a mission from your good friend Herr Klimt.”

  “Gustl sent you?” Her face screwed up in suspicion. She was so unlike the ethereal females Klimt portrayed on his canvases that Werthen wondered what the artist could ever have seen in her. She was somewhat hunched as well as flat-chested as far as he could see, and with a shadow of dark fuzz over her upper lip.

  “He did, indeed, madam,” Gross replied, but she only pinched her face more, her eyes tiny, wary slits.

  Werthen produced a card. “I am Herr Klimt’s lawyer, Fräulein Plötzl.”

  She took the card in a hand reddened and rough from washing, most likely her former profession, assumed Werthen.

  “What’s he need a lawyer for?”

  “Perhaps we could come in and discuss matters more fully,” Werthen suggested.

  A door opened across the dimly lit hall, and a face peered out at them for a moment. Then the door closed quickly again.

  “What matters would that be?” she asked.

  Behind her a little boy tugged at her skirts. She thrust a foot at him. “Not now, Gustl. Go play Mutti’s got business to do.”

  She looked at the card again, then up and down the hall.

  “You better come in.”

  They did so, but got no farther than the doorway, which opened directly onto a space that obviously served as living room, bedroom, and dining room all in one. A crucifix hung over a double bed, unmade, with sheets and comforter spilling onto the floor. Children’s blocks were scattered on the bed; more were to be found underfoot. In the center of the room was an oval table of indeterminate wood whose chipped surface was covered with dirty dishes, scraps of papers with childish doodles on them, and a soiled chemise.

  The domestic mess made Werthen feel ill at ease. He did not want to be privy to this part of Klimt’s life.

  “What’s he gone and done he needs a lawyer?” she asked again. Then sizing up Gross, she added, “Two lawyers.”

  “We have come to help,” Gross began, but this only increased her innate fear.

  “He is in trouble then. I don’t want any part of trouble.”

  The child, sickly looking rather than robust, hid behind a daybed in the far corner of the room. He was the antithesis of Klimt, with frail-looking limbs, sallow complexion, and smudges of dark under his eyes.

  Werthen jumped in, “There is no trouble, I assure you. We have only come to ascertain … that is, assure ourselves-”

  “I know what ‘ascertain’ means. No need to talk down to me. I read books.”

  She gestured at a bookshelf in the corner by the boy.

  “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to be impolite,” Werthen went on.

  Gross, meanwhile, moved to the bookshelf in question and picked out a volume. “Interesting.”

  “I like my books,” Anna said.

  “But to return to the question at hand,” Werthen continued as Gross thumbed through pages. “Perhaps you could assure us that in fact Herr Klimt was a visitor here last night.”

  “I can assure you of no such thing. What do you take me for?”

  “I believe you are a friend of Herr Klimt’s?”

  “Friends are one thing. He comes sometimes to draw me. Just my face, mind you. Nothing improper.”

  “Of course not. And yesterday?”

  She puffed out her lips. “I don’t think I like your incineration, Herr High-and-Mighty”

  “This is no time for false modesty,” Werthen said, finally losing patience with the woman. “Klimt needs your help.”

  “So he is in trouble after all. Why’d you lie to me? No. I want none of it. You two, get out now.” She grabbed the book out of Gross’s hands and shooed him toward the door.

  “Please, Fräulein Plötzl-”

  “It’s Frau Plötzl. Can’t you use the eyes God gave you? That’s my son there.”

  “And his father?” Gross said.

  “That’s no business of yours. Now get out before I scream for help. Fancy gents like you don’t want the complications that’ll bring, I tell you.”

  “Mutti,” the little boy said from the corner. “When is Uncle Gustl coming?”

  “Out!” she yelled. “Now!”

  They did as they were told. Once they regained the street, they could only look at one another and sigh.

  “What does that leave us with?” Werthen asked.

  “I imagine she will come around if Klimt himself were to ask her, but that would rather taint her testimony. Lower-class morality. It’s enough to make you weep at the human race. Here is a woman compromised on all counts: She has a bastard child by a lover who will hardly say her name in daylight, yet she is worried about her reputation being besmirched if said lover is in some kind of ‘trouble.’ I tell you, Werthen, sometimes it is enough for me to want to give up on humans altogether and raise monkeys.”

  “I will simply assume Klimt was telling the truth when he said he was with her last night,” Werthen said. “He was mightily embarrassed by this alibi. I now understand why.”

  “We do not, however, come away empty-handed.” Gross retrieved a slip of paper from his coat pocket. Unfolding it, he presented it to Werthen, who saw that it was a crude pencil sketch of a gnomelike bearded man very much the image of Klimt, with horns on his head and a forked tail. The block-lettering signature at the foot of the sketch was unmistakable: KLIMT.

  “Where did you get this?” Werthen asked, handing the paper back.

  “In the book I was looking in at Frau Plötzl’s. It is an interesting choice of reading, but I highly doubt it is the good Frau Plötzl’s. This sketch would indicate it belongs rather to Gustav Klimt.”

  “So the man reads. He is not an artistic barbarian, after all.”

  “I gather not. Or then again …”

  “Please, Gross, no coyness. What was the book?”

  “The Man of Genius.”

  “By Cesare Lombroso?”

  “The very,” Gross said. “One of my predecessors in the field of criminalistics, though I do not altogether agree with or approve of his theory that criminality is inherited. In some cases, yes. But the Italian depended overmuch on the physical defects which he held demonstrate the criminal type. For example you, Werthen, with your high cheekbones and rather hawklike nose fit two of the physiognomic categories for criminality, but I have never met anyone with less of a criminal nature in my entire career.”

  “I thank you for that, Gross.”

  “But it is interesting reading for your artist friend, don’t you think?”

  Werthen had not read the book himself, but knew of the theme: It argued that artistic genius was a form of hereditary insanity, and Lombroso went on to identify a baker’s dozen of types of art that he characterized as “the art of the insane.”

  “One wonders if Herr Klimt found his own art categorized in the book,” Gross said with a wan smile. “It does give us something to think about.”

  It was late afternoon by the time they arrived back in the center of Vienna. They transferred to a second tram that took them to Karlsplatz. There was today, as on most days of the summer of 1898, a large crowd of onlookers taking up position around the construction site at the far eastern end of the square, on Friedrichstrasse. Holes had courteously been drilled at various levels into the wooden wall surrounding the site to accommodate the varying heights of spectators. Now that the construction had reached heavenward, however, such holes were no longer necessary. Eyes were all focused on the very top of the cube-shaped building, at a gigantic ball of laurel leaves rendered in bronze. From a distance, however, the ball took on more the aspect of a giant golden cabbage or cauliflower. Pedestrians stopped midstride to shake their heads in wonder, to elbow one another jocularly. “It’s those crazy artists at work again,” they would say.

  “It looks very like a tomb,” one big-bosomed matron
, lorgnette to her eyes, was saying as Werthen and Gross briskly passed, headed toward the entrance of the new building.

  “Werthen,” Gross finally called out. “Why so secretive? Where in the name of Mary and Joseph are you leading me?”

  “You’ll see,” Werthen said, not slowing his pace. It was his turn to play magister ludi as Gross had done at the morgue, and truth to tell, he was enjoying it.

  He presented his card to the red-nosed guard at the main doors and was waved on into the large entry hall of the building still under construction. Dust filled the air; the chatter of workmen and the percussion of hammers assaulted the ear, making Gross cover his with his hands.

  It took only a moment for Werthen to spot their man. He was still dressed in the flowing caftan with intricate flower design embroidered on it. He seemed as at home directing carpenters and wall painters as he was behind the easel, as if he were the architect and not one of the artists who would show their work in this new gallery.

  Werthen led the way to Klimt, who was busily showing a worker how to get the desired texture on the white walls.

  The painter saw him out the corner of his eye before the lawyer could greet him.

  “Werthen. At last. What kept you?” The painter took Werthen’s frail hand into his meaty paw and squeezed it tightly.

  “We had to-,” Werthen began, but was interrupted by one of the thick builders, who was sweating under a black bowler hat. He gesticulated at a sheet of blueprints he held, spluttering something incomprehensible at Klimt, who moved aside with him for a moment.

  Gross took the opportunity to tug on Werthen’s sleeve.

  “What is this chap?” Gross nodded derisively at Klimt in his caftan. “Some sort of Mussulman?”

  “Actually, he’s our client.”

  Gross pursed his lips so fiercely that they became two white lines under his mustache. “You could have told me earlier.”

  “Yes, I suppose I could have. More fun this way, though.”

  Klimt finally eased himself away from the builder and shrugged at them by way of apology.

  “Klimt, let me introduce a colleague, here to help. Dr. Hanns Gross.”

  Klimt turned to face the man, much taller, but not half as brawny as the painter.

  “The Hanns Gross? The criminologist?”

  Gross suddenly beamed, Werthen noticed. “The very one,” Gross said.

  “Wonderful,” Klimt said, and with that he embraced the criminologist. Gross stood stiffly, hands at his side, allowing the hug, but blinking indignantly over Klimt’s shoulder at Werthen.

  “We’ve had some difficulty with your friend in Ottakring,” Werthen said, looking around them to make sure no one was eavesdropping.

  However, Klimt did not seem anxious to find some more private place to talk. The constant din made by the building crew masked their conversation, anyway. Plus, here Klimt was in the company of his peers; there was no public image of propriety to maintain.

  “She says I wasn’t with her last night?”

  “She refuses to say one way or the other. Once she discovered I was your lawyer, she decided it was not wise to be known as your acquaintance.”

  Klimt put a bear’s paw on Werthen’s shoulder. “She’ll come around. Life has not been easy for Anna. She needs to learn trust.”

  “I am sure she does, Herr Klimt,” Gross said, coming into the conversation, “but meanwhile, perhaps we could simply verify your alibis for the other nights in question.”

  Klimt looked to Werthen for assistance.

  “I said we would deal with this matter later. Now is the time. We need you to concentrate on the dates I gave you, June fifteenth, June thirtieth, July fifteenth, and August second.”

  The first three murders had set all of Vienna buzzing and turned many of its citizens into amateur detectives. The killings had at first come at regular intervals: Maria Millier, washerwoman, found on the morning of June 15. Then a little over two weeks later, on June 30, the body of Felix Brunner, a pipe fitter, was found. When a third killing happened on July 15, all of Vienna thought they could see the pattern of the crimes, for not only was this killing spaced fifteen days from the last, but it was also a person of the working class. This third victim, Hilde Diener, seamstress and mother of four, had taken the dog out for the night walk and never returned home. Her body was found in the Prater, like the others. (The dog had never been found.) Thus, all the deaths were fifteen days apart, the victims were of the working class, and they followed another pattern, as well: first a woman, then a man, then a woman.

  The gutter press had encouraged the populace to play detective, noting that the next crime was probably due on July 30, and that men should now be on guard.

  In the event, the night of July 30 had passed without incident, except for three separate cases of assault and battery. Lone men, self-appointed deputies, placed themselves as bait near the Prater. Each carried some weapon: a heavy truncheon, brass knuckles, or a walking stick with a stiletto hidden within. Approached by strangers, these three had gone on the attack. The result was the concussion of a schoolteacher from St. Pölten who was in Vienna for vacation and, having become lost, was seeking directions to his pension; the broken left arm of a petty thief and well-known pickpocket who worked the streets near the amusement park; and the stabbing injury of a constable who was dressed in street clothes in an attempt to apprehend the killer.

  Next morning, the city communally sighed in relief, thinking perhaps the killings were finished. Three days later, however, the killer struck again. This time the victim was indeed a man, but not of the working class. Alexander von Fliegel was a manufacturer who had gained membership in the nobility through his wealth rather than family. Werthen had no personal knowledge of him, but knew another lawyer who was acquainted with the man. Von Fliegel produced a popular face cream for women, Tender Skin, and had factories in Vienna, Linz, and Graz. He had been out for a night on the town with several colleagues. The last these friends had seen of him, he was a bit the worse for drink, wobbling down the Weihburggasse, lighting a cigar. He was going to walk off his inebriation, he told them. His body was found next morning, August 2, in the Prater.

  Klimt was frowning, attempting to recollect his whereabouts on those dates. Finally, he shook his head. “I’ll have to ask Emilie. Perhaps I wrote a postal card to her on one of those dates.”

  Gross and Werthen exchanged looks.

  “It’s our way of staying in touch, even if I do not have the time to see her. Beautiful cards. From our own Wiener Werkstätte.”

  “I am sure they are, Herr Klimt,” Gross said. “And I am sure you see the importance of such verification.”

  “Yes. Herr Werthen already explained that if we can show I didn’t kill the others, I didn’t kill Liesel. So these mutilations the press speaks of, there must be a consistency to the wounds, to the killer’s technique.”

  “Along those lines, yes,” Gross averred.

  “I would feel better about a positive defense.”

  “You seem to have a sense of the law, Herr Klimt. I mean, you knew me by name. And I am not such an egoist that I do not realize that the name of ‘Gross’ is hardly a household word.”

  “I do a fair amount of reading,” Klimt said with a bearish grin.

  “Including Lombroso, it would seem.”

  Klimt’s grin disappeared. “How do you know that?”

  Gross handed the sketch to him. “Found inside a copy of The Man of Genius at your … friend’s home.”

  Klimt opened the folded paper, looked at the sketch, chuckled lowly, then crumpled it into a ball and tossed it onto a rubbish heap in the middle of the floor.

  “Do you consider yourself a man of genius, Herr Klimt?” Gross asked.

  “Sometimes I do, yes. I confess. But at others, I feel a sham. Have you ever felt that way, Doktor Gross?”

  But Gross only smiled at the question.

  As they left the construction site, Gross was shaking his head.
<
br />   “What are we to make of the man? Flounces about in that outsized tutu, fancies himself a genius beyond the bounds of society, yet defends the honor of his shabby lady love.”

  “A complex individual to be sure,” Werthen said.

  “You never mentioned, Werthen. However did that man come to be your client?”

  “An act of professional charity on my part, I must confess.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by street urchins tugging at the hem of Gross’s morning coat. He sent them scurrying with a brusque wave of the hand. The two men left the carnival atmosphere of the building site, and Werthen continued his explanation.

  “As a younger man, Klimt was a bit feckless. But my, could he paint, even then. Got himself into a spot of trouble ‘going to Trieste.

  “Whatever for? And why Italy?”

  “His phrase only. Not the city but the street, Triesterstrasse, here in Vienna. A major traffic artery for teamsters bringing goods into and out of the city. Whenever Klimt’s artistic muse failed him, he would take himself off to Triesterstrasse and pick a fight with whichever driver he first found abusing his draft animals. Said it freed his vital juices to be in a bit of rough-and-tumble.”

  “And he was charged with?” Gross asked.

  Werthen shrugged. “Grievous bodily harm, I’m afraid. Broke a man’s arm with his bare hands.”

  “Like cracking a walnut,” Gross muttered.

  “I proved it was self-defense. The man had a knife.”

  But Werthen could only think of the strength of the man, the bone-breaking ability of the painter.

  FOUR

  Werthen was at his desk earlier than usual, anxious to write up his notes on the events of the day before. This morning there was no interruption of his coffee-and-Kipferl routine, and after forty minutes he realized that he was enjoying such writing far more than he did his short stories.

  Just as he was finishing his second cup of coffee, there was a knock on the double doors of the sitting-room-cum-study, and Frau Blatschky peeked her head in timidly, then entered.

  “A visitor, Dr. Werthen.”