A Matter of Breeding: a mystery set in turn-of-the-century Vienna (A Viennese Mystery)

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A Matter of Breeding: a mystery set in turn-of-the-century Vienna (A Viennese Mystery) Page 10

by J Sydney Jones


  What did Lechner know about Gross that he, Werthen, did not?

  ‘We must bail him out,’ Stoker said, bringing Werthen out of this reverie.

  He shook his head. ‘This is not England, Stoker. That may be part of your legal tradition, but not in Austria, not for capital cases, at any rate.’

  ‘We can’t just let him linger in prison.’

  ‘I do not intend to,’ Werthen said. ‘Finish your breakfast. We need to talk to Inspector Thielman.’

  In the event, Thielman was just finishing his own breakfast, as well, and a grim-looking repast it was: dried toast and hot milk. Something given to a teething baby or a man with a nasty gastric complaint. Serves him right, Werthen thought.

  ‘Inspector,’ Werthen said after they had been ushered into his office in the local gendarmerie. ‘What is all this insanity about Gross being a murderer?’

  Thielman cast a sour look his way, as if to say that such a question would only exacerbate his digestive malady.

  ‘A pure fit of pique on Lechner’s part,’ Werthen added.

  Thielman sighed and shook his head, putting a napkin over the steaming milk. ‘I am afraid, Herr Advokat, that this is neither a fit of insanity or pique on Lechner’s part. He says that he has solid evidence linking Doktor Gross to the crimes.’

  ‘And how was Gross supposed to have committed them? By telegraph? He was in Czernowitz at the time of the murders.’

  Another shake of the head from Thielman. ‘Afraid you are wrong there, Advokat. Magistrate Lechner places him in Graz since the second of October.’

  ‘What? Impossible.’

  ‘He had rooms at the Excelsior. That is, until he came here to Hitzendorf at my request.’

  ‘Wait. But then you knew he was in Graz when you summoned him?’

  ‘No. I wrote to him in Czernowitz requesting his assistance. I imagine someone there simply forwarded the message to him in Graz.’

  Adele, Gross’s wife, Werthen assumed.

  ‘Surely there is some explanation.’

  ‘Not from Doktor Gross,’ Thielman said. ‘You know how stubborn he can be.’

  ‘What possible motive—’

  But before he could put the question, Thielman answered, ‘Lechner suspects it is all about professional pride. It’s all to do with the English detective chap, what’s his name?’

  Werthen looked at Stoker for advice.

  ‘You can’t mean Sherlock Holmes?’ the Irishman said.

  ‘The very one. Lechner says Gross is trying to one up that fellow.’

  ‘But he is a piece of fiction,’ Stoker said almost in a whine. ‘And he was killed off by his author almost a decade ago.’ Stoker, however, knew only too well that Holmes was currently making a comeback with the serialization of The Hound of the Baskervilles in the Strand Magazine.

  ‘That is neither here nor there,’ Thielman said. ‘Magistrate Lechner reckons Gross committed these murders, leaving clues from his own book on investigations so that he could solve the crimes and become the most famous criminologist in the world.’

  ‘Do you believe that, Inspector Thielman?’ Werthen asked.

  ‘Doesn’t matter what I believe. It’s what those in a courtroom believe. And Gross is not helping himself by refusing to answer any questions.’

  Werthen could well imagine the high and mighty tone Gross was assuming.

  ‘Where is he being held?’

  ‘Karlau. Where else? The maximum security wing.’

  It was not until later that afternoon that they were allowed to visit Gross. Originally built as a Renaissance-style castle used by one of the minor Habsburg archdukes, Karlau was later adapted for a workhouse and then a prison, and contained few of the amenities of a modern penitentiary. Led down a long, dank, and dimly lit corridor by an aging warder, Werthen heard a flurry of activity in the darkness ahead of them.

  The warder turned his grizzled face to them, looking wraith-like in the light of the kerosene lantern he carried. ‘Breeds ’em big in here, they do. Rats as big as ferrets.’ He chuckled at this, spittle flying toward Werthen.

  The man now held the lantern out at arm’s length ahead of him and illuminated a swarm of the vermin and called out, ‘Könniggrätz, Könniggrätz, come here old son.’ Suddenly, out of the pack of rats lumbered a giant of a creature, almost as large as the ferret the guard mentioned. It stood fiercely on three legs, an ear missing as well as an eye.

  ‘The old warrior. He’s fought many a battle with other rats. Haven’t you now, my good son?’

  The man reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a crumble of sausage, tossing it to the enormous rodent. Könnigratz immediately secured the food, the other rats not bothering to challenge him as he took the morsel and scurried off into the gloom.

  They finally reached Gross’s cell near the end of the corridor. The jailor inserted a long, rusty key in the massive door, unlocked it, and slowly opened it to reveal Gross seated as if in yogic contemplation at the end of a narrow cot. The scene was lit by a single candle on a deal table. The criminologist looked up as they entered.

  ‘It took you long enough to get here.’

  ‘Good afternoon to you, too, Gross,’ Werthen replied.

  The jailor stood at the door like a porter waiting for a tip.

  ‘We will call you when we are ready,’ Werthen said. ‘Doktor Gross is hardly likely to attack us.’

  The man reluctantly withdrew.

  Werthen eyed Gross for a moment before speaking. He felt pained for his colleague. Such a fastidious man about his appearance, Gross was not faring well in captivity. They had taken his shoelaces, belt, and even his bow tie. His shirt was open at the throat and a nacreous wattle of flesh clearly showed in the pulsing candlelight. The bit of hair Gross still had on his head was also frizzled about his temples, and his eyes were puffy from lack of sleep.

  Finally Werthen said, ‘Now what is all this nonsense? Why won’t you tell them your reason for being in Graz all this month?’

  ‘Because they are cretins.’ He pronounced it as the French would, crétins.

  ‘That is not a defense, Gross.’

  ‘I have no need of a defense. I am innocent, as you well know.’

  ‘I know it. Mr Stoker here knows it. But a court of law knows only what it hears. You cannot seriously be considering staying in this dungeon until they decide to convene a court for you, can you?’

  ‘Hardly a dungeon, Werthen. Hyperbole does not aid our cause.’

  ‘Our cause? My cause, Gross, is discovering who butchered these young women.’

  ‘And your employer would be?’

  ‘To hell with employers. I wish to right injustice. Your advice to me, if you remember rightly.’

  Now it was Gross’s turn to cast the withering gaze. ‘An idealist now, is it? Good to hear, because capturing the killer is also my cause. In that manner you can prove my innocence. Ergo, my cause is your cause.’

  ‘You are maddening, Gross. Tell them what they need to know and get out of here so you can help. Your famous criminalistic talents are wasted in prison.’

  ‘Actually, this is the perfect place to exercise those talents, Werthen. It allows me to experience firsthand what those I have apprehended and sent to justice have experienced. This is what it feels like to be incarcerated. A bracing experience for someone involved in the criminal justice system. You should give it a try sometime, Werthen.’

  ‘All right. You have had your little fun, Gross. Now let us please speak in earnest of this matter.’

  ‘Oh, I am dreadfully in earnest, Werthen. I shall not tell Lechner and his ghouls of my movements while in Graz nor of my reason for being here. You know I did not commit these atrocities, Werthen. It is up to you then to prove who did. That is the only way to save me.’

  ‘Could he be guilty?’ Stoker inquired as they made their way out of the prison.

  Werthen considered the question for the millisecond it deserved.

  ‘No.’


  ‘Then what do you propose to do, advokat?’

  ‘What smart men always do when in difficulty. Consult the wife.’

  At the train station awaiting the local to Hitzendorf, Werthen sent a telegram to Adele Gross in Czernowitz explaining her husband’s situation and requesting to know the nature of his business in Graz. He noted his return address as the Hotel Daniel, knowing that any communication would now take overnight as it was nearing early evening.

  Once back at the hotel, Werthen wished that Berthe had stayed. ‘Consult the wife,’ he had told Stoker. He would love to be able to consult his own at this moment.

  ‘More horseradish, Herr Sonnenthal?’ Berthe asked.

  For some reason this seemed to embarrass the young man; a red flush went upward from his throat to his smooth-shaven cheeks.

  ‘It’s absolutely delicious, Frau Meisner,’ the journalist said.

  ‘You must forgive Bernhard,’ Fräulein Metzinger said. ‘When nervous, he can be a master of non sequitur.’ She placed a reassuring hand over his and they smiled at one another in that way people do who are intimates.

  Berthe was momentarily surprised at this discovery and then quickly felt a flutter of elation for Erika. She so deserved a good man, she thought. And young Sonnenthal did indeed appear to be a good young man.

  ‘Just what line of work did you say you were in?’ asked Berthe’s father, Herr Meisner.

  And when Sonnenthal answered that he was a journalist, her father’s friend, Frau Juliani, began waxing eloquently on the Fourth Estate in the English manner, arguing without opponent on the need for a strong press and for the end of the infernal censorship.

  The more Berthe was around plucky little Frau Juliani, the more she liked her and the more she understood her father’s attraction to her. And attracted he obviously was, for he was spending much more time in Vienna in his small apartment than he was in the old family home in Linz. It had been almost twenty years since the death of Berthe’s mother. She was happy he could finally find some companionship.

  As these two couples chatted about the latest events, Berthe again mentally thanked Frau Blatschky for reminding her when she arrived from Styria this morning of the long-planned dinner party to introduce Erika’s new beau. Frau Blatschky had even planned out the menu of roast beef and potato dumplings. Berthe had learnt to rely on her housekeeper so much recently. In fact, from a fractious and contentious beginning – due to Frau Blatschky’s understandable resistance to a new woman in what she thought of as her household – Berthe and Frau Blatschky were slowly becoming good friends.

  Little Frieda had helped. The frau, the widow of a naval officer, doted on the child, for she was childless herself. Indeed her marriage had been so brief – wed on Wednesday and widowed by the next Tuesday – that the couple had barely had time to share a wedding bed. He was killed in action against the Danish navy in 1864 during the Second War of Schleswig. Her husband, Captain Manfred Blatschky, had died saving Rear Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthof, head of the Austrian fleet, when their ship, the frigate Schwarzenberg, had caught fire in the Battle of Heligoland.

  Of course, Frau Blatschky was far too unassuming to offer such information; Berthe had learned of it only inadvertently through old editions of Die Presse consulted at the Royal Library searching for naval news dealing with a will Karl was assembling.

  Frau Juliani broke out into sudden laughter strong enough to bring Berthe’s attention back to the here and now.

  ‘Really, Herr Sonnenthal, the feuilleton cannot be blamed for all the ills of the modern newspaper.’

  ‘Can’t it?’ he said, suddenly impassioned. ‘Those senseless, breathless essays about nothing, serving only as a showcase for the writer’s linguistic pyrotechnics. I submit that the feuilleton has much to answer for, Frau Juliani. As Herr Kraus has said, “To write a feuilleton is to curl locks on a bald head. But the public likes such curls better than a lion’s mane of thought.”’

  Berthe liked Sonnenthal’s passion about his chosen profession; she also like the fact that he quoted from Karl Kraus, friend and sometimes confidante of her husband.

  ‘But Berthe,’ Frau Juliani suddenly turned to her, ‘if I may use your given name.’

  Berthe nodded with a smile at the woman.

  ‘You have been awfully quiet this evening. You must know we are all dying to hear of your current case and that of your husband. You have, of course seen the latest headlines?’

  She had not. No time for newspapers today.

  Frau Juliani was happy enough to impart the news of Doktor Gross’s arrest.

  ‘But that is impossible,’ she said. ‘There must be some mistake.’

  Herr Sonnenthal joined in. ‘My sources tell me it has something to do with rivalries in the world of criminology. That Doktor Gross committed the murders so that he might quickly solve them, blaming some innocent, and thereby gaining increased notoriety.’

  ‘What madness,’ she said. If this is what responsible journalists were saying, what must the gutter press be printing? She thought of Karl still in Styria; he must be frantic, she thought.

  ‘Gross is no killer,’ she said finally. ‘Boring and authoritarian and didactic and often humorless he may be, but a homicidal maniac, never.’

  The party sat in silence for a time until Erika finally asked her about the investigation into the Lipizzaner matter. Sonnenthal brightened at the mention of the journalist, Theo Krensky, who was investigating the scandal.

  ‘Krensky? I know that name. Wasn’t he the one who wrote that article a few months ago about the revival of the Styrian wine trade? Seems hardly the man to be taking on a real news story, but bravo for him if he has.’

  The party broke up early that night, and everyone, even the ever critical Frau Blatschky, deemed it a huge success.

  Upon departure, Berthe’s father leaned into her, whispering in her ear, ‘You do like her, don’t you?’

  A question she answered simply with a kiss on his freshly shaven cheek. She still could not get used to her father, industrialist and famed Talmudic scholar, without a beard.

  Fifteen

  Frau Gross’s telegram in reply came first thing Saturday morning. Opening it hastily, Werthen read: ‘See Doktor Gabriel Anton at the psychiatric clinic in Graz.’

  Werthen made excuses to Stoker – he had a feeling he might not want to share information that he received from this psychiatrist with the Irishman. This was obviously a personal matter, and one delicate enough for Gross to risk his own freedom to protect.

  He was in luck at the hospital, for Doktor Anton was on duty this Saturday at the Graz University clinic. As a full professor of psychiatry, Anton dressed in a formal suit rather than the usual white coat of the doctor. A tall, thin man, he wore a full beard and moustaches twisted upwards at the ends. Werthen caught up with him just as the doctor was about to make his rounds.

  By way of introduction, he showed Anton the telegram from Frau Doktor Gross.

  ‘It is not my aim to compromise any privacy issues between doctor and patient,’ Werthen quickly added. ‘But it is extremely important that I find out what Gross was doing here.’

  ‘Well, I hardly think it a secret. He is, in fact, a patient here.’

  Werthen was stunned for a moment. ‘A patient? When was this?’

  ‘Now.’

  Werthen shook his head. ‘But it can’t be …’ And finally he tumbled to it. ‘You mean Otto Gross, the son?’

  ‘Yes. A most able assistant, I must tell you. He has worked here for several months, but the poor young man suffers from cocaine addiction. Ever since his travels to South America as a ship’s doctor, he has been in the grips of that drug. I know there are those in the medical community who find curative effects in its use. It is so common that you can buy it in pharmacies for everything from toothache to sore throat. It is even found in some wines. But for me cocaine is a scourge worse than alcohol. Finally I convinced young Gross to allow me to help. To wean him of the drug, as it w
ere.’

  Now Werthen had a better lay of the land. ‘I know the young man,’ Werthen said. ‘I wonder if it would be possible to speak with him.’

  Anton pursed his lips, thinking about it. Then he said, ‘A family friend you say?’

  ‘I am a colleague of his father. I have known Otto since he was an adolescent.’

  ‘He could probably use a visitor. His father had been here on a daily basis until about a week ago. More sporadically since then, though I believe he last visited about a night or two ago. At any rate, Otto is coming along nicely. The worst part is over for him. Now it is a matter of readjusting one’s priorities.’

  ‘So, could I speak with him now?’ Werthen said, eager to get to the bottom of things.

  ‘But of course. I was just going to pay him a visit.’

  Werthen followed the psychiatrist down a narrow corridor, noting with a touch of irony the fact that both father and son were incarcerated at the moment, one way or another.

  The doctor led him to a rather spacious room in the corner of the ward, with windows looking out onto a nearby park. Otto Gross was dressed in a flannel bathrobe and slippers, and was seated in an armchair near the window, a thick tome in his hand. Werthen could see, as he approached, that it was an edition of Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. The doctor left Werthen on his own at the door and the young man looked up as he entered the room. He appeared drawn and had obviously lost weight; his eyes were over-large and his nose beak-like in his thin face. However, there was still the same light in his eyes Werthen had seen when Otto was younger. He smiled as he recognized Werthen.

  ‘Advokat Werthen, whatever are you doing here?’

  Werthen almost responded, I might ask you the same, but thought better of it. ‘Your mother said I should check here.’

  ‘Check about what? The state of my addiction?’

 

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