‘It looks lovely,’ said Adele Gross.
‘Why, it’s just a farmhouse,’ Herr von Werthen said as they drew nearer.
‘Of course it’s a farmhouse,’ Berthe said. ‘A beautiful old fortress of a farmhouse.’
She noticed Frau von Werthen take her husband’s hand and give it a squeeze. It did not appear to be an act of affection, rather of reproof.
‘Well, yes,’ Herr von Werthen said. ‘Farmhouses can have their own sort of charm, one supposes.’
They entered the courtyard created by the sides of the farmhouse and Berthe noticed that the For Sale signs had been taken down. Obviously the owners were confident that they would meet their revised offer.
There would be a good deal of renovation, Berthe saw immediately, even from an exterior view. She must have seen the building first in bright sunlight, which disguised some of its faults. But now she could see tiles off the roof, a drainpipe hanging loose from the side of the building, patches of white undercoating showing through the paint, cracks in several of the windows and in one of the walls. But these did not deter her; she was still in love with the place, in love with the idea of a country home for her children to grow up in.
They all went to the windows, looking in the various rooms.
‘What a lovely Kachelofen,’ Frau Gross said.
‘And this would make a fine nursery,’ Frau von Werthen added, peering in another window.
‘Quite,’ her husband said.
‘Say, what are you lot doing in here?’
The voice was gruff and commanding.
Berthe spun around from the window. Three men stood at the entrance to the court.
‘Are you the owners?’ Berthe asked. ‘We checked with Herr Grundman before coming.’
The name obviously meant nothing to these three. Two of them were dressed in heavy coats and leggings as if working in the fields.
‘This is private property,’ said the one in the middle, a large man who appeared almost to burst out of his clothes. Unlike the other two, this one had a suit on under his heavy overcoat and wore no hat; his hair was cropped short like a criminal’s. ‘I’m telling you to get out of here.’
‘My good man—’ Herr von Werthen began.
‘Now!’ the big man spat out.
‘We are here to view the property,’ Berthe said. ‘We’ve made an offer on it and are here legitimately. And that is no way to speak to people.’
‘You’re trespassing,’ the same man said, now with an edge of menace to his voice.
The three men began approaching.
‘If I were you, I would take that baby out of here before someone gets hurt.’
‘This is really too much,’ Herr von Werthen said, moving protectively in front of Berthe and the baby.
‘Look, old one. You take these ladies along home now. And don’t come back.’
‘The police will hear of this,’ Adele Gross intoned.
This remark got the attention of the one doing all the talking. The other two men looked at him quizzically.
‘Lady, you are the trespasser. Who do you think the police are going to arrest?’
This brought rough laughter from the other two men.
‘Now, out of here.’ He came closer to Herr von Werthen, who stood his ground. The man gave him a sudden shove, and Herr von Werthen landed on his backside in a spot of mud.
‘You brutes,’ Frau von Werthen yelped, hesitating as if deciding whether to slap the ruffian or help her husband up. She finally opted for the latter.
‘I don’t know who’s been talking to you, but this place is not for sale. Understand? Now leave.’ The man made a fake bowing motion and swept his hand toward the road.
‘See here,’ Herr von Werthen said, struggling to his feet.
But Berthe stopped him. ‘We should go now,’ she said to the others. Frieda had begun to cry, frightened by the gruff voices. This was hardly the joyful outing they had planned.
‘That lady’s got some sense,’ the stranger said.
Before they left, however, Berthe made a close observation of each. She would be able to identify them later if need be.
‘Why, that is assault,’ Gross fumed. They were gathered at Werthen’s flat later in the day, and Berthe had informed them of their misadventure at Laab im Walde.
Werthen returned from the foyer where he had been on the telephone to Grundman.
‘They’ve taken it off the market,’ he said.
‘But they can’t do that,’ Berthe said. ‘Can they?’
‘Afraid they can,’ Werthen said, taking her hand. ‘No reasons. Grundman just says the owners have reconsidered.’
‘Draughty old farmhouse, anyway,’ Herr von Werthen said.
‘These men,’ Gross asked, ‘did they identify themselves as the owners?’
Adele Gross answered the question: ‘No. Though Frau Werthen asked directly.’
Gross had Berthe and the others describe, once again, their assailants. Werthen listened closely as she described the leader of the three, but the description – other than of a large man – did not tally with that of the man who had attacked him. That man wore an old bowler and had a thick head of hair. Neither could he see any connection between his attack and his wife’s visit to a property for sale.
‘Shouldn’t we contact the owners?’ Berthe suggested. ‘Try and trace these men? It seems awfully odd that last night the farmhouse was for sale and suddenly today it is off the market.’
‘I suppose we could,’ Werthen allowed. ‘I don’t quite see the point, though, unless we want to prefer charges.’ He looked at his father. ‘What do you say, Papa? After all, you were the one pushed to the ground.’
‘It was hardly a fair fight,’ Herr von Werthen said. ‘The blackguard gave me no warning.’
‘That is not the point, Emile,’ his wife counseled. ‘Karl wants to know if you would like a legal solution.’
‘Police, you mean? I don’t think so. Not for me, at any rate.’
Werthen imagined his father would not be over fond of having his name in the newspapers in connection with such a sordid little affair.
‘But surely you will not let those ruffians get away with their bullying,’ Adele Gross interjected. ‘They scared poor little Frieda.’
‘I think she will survive,’ Berthe said, for she too was losing her sense of outrage now.
‘I’ll have a word with Grundman,’ Werthen said, by way of addressing Frau Gross’s concern. But Berthe sensed his disappointment at losing their dream house. Perhaps it was better just to put the whole thing in back of them.
Adele Gross looked squarely at her husband. ‘Does this have anything to do with the case you and Werthen are occupied with?’
This statement brought absolute silence for a moment to the sitting room. Gross glanced at Werthen as if to accuse him.
‘Nobody told me,’ Frau Gross said. ‘So do not go bullying Werthen or his lovely wife. You do realize, Hanns, that you are far too happy lately. That cannot simply be the result of esoteric studies of a dead Flemish painter. And most definitely not the result of your attendance at Viennese balls or dinner parties. Ergo, you must be involved with a case. Every time you visit Vienna you do so.’
‘My dear Adele,’ Gross said. ‘I had no idea. You are quite the detective yourself.’
‘No. Just an observant wife.’
‘It would have been a fine place for our children,’ Berthe said when they lay together in bed that night. ‘But it’s not to be.’
‘We’ll find another place,’ he told her, wrapping an arm around her warm body.
‘With all the to-do, you never mentioned what happened with Gross’s visit to the Rathaus today.’
‘It was as he thought. There were blood traces leading from the desk to the door.’
Gross had explained that the thickness of the smudges nearer the desk meant that someone had stepped in the blood and then tracked it out with them, the smudges getting fainter as the person c
ontinued to walk.
‘Which proves . . . ?’ Berthe asked.
‘Fairly conclusively that Steinwitz was murdered. And by the same type of weapon used to kill Praetor.’
‘Perhaps the police fouled the scene?’
‘No. Gross checked with Drechsler. The police were there immediately following the shooting. They were careful to stay to the edges of the room, just as he has been advocating for them to do in order to avoid contaminating the scene. Drechsler guarantees that none of his men could have stepped in the blood.’
‘So it was murder,’ she said with a shiver. ‘You’ve got to be careful. Both you and Doktor Gross. These men . . .’
‘There is one other possibility,’ he said, trying to steer her away from these fears. ‘The architect Otto Wagner was the first to discover the body. We do not think he entered the room, but Gross wants to interview him to make absolutely sure.’
Which reminded him that he wanted Berthe to contact her friend Rosa Mayreder and see if she could arrange a meeting for Werthen with her brother-in-law, Councilman Rudolf Mayreder. He might be able to provide further inside knowledge from the Rathaus.
‘I am sure she would be happy to help out,’ Berthe said when asked, and then yawned.
‘Are you a tired mother?’
She nodded. But before sleep, she also had information to impart: her contacts at the Arbeiter Zeitung had come up with nothing more than what Adler himself had stated the other night at dinner: that Praetor was supposedly involved with the 1873 Vienna Woods preservation act.
‘Nothing there, then,’ Werthen said. Or was there? Was it mere coincidence that their own plans about the Vienna Woods had been thwarted? He and Gross suspected that whatever Steinwitz and Praetor were working together to expose got them killed. Did it, in fact, have something to do with the Vienna Woods?
Thirteen
Werthen’s late-night ruminations were vindicated the next morning. He was reading the Neue Freie Presse at his desk at the law office when he noticed the leather-bound diary Ludwig Wittgenstein had delivered. Werthen had left it on top of the desk amid what was becoming a hillock of documents. It was most unlike him to allow such a mess on his desk; he put it down to his attention being focused on this troublesome case that seemed to grow daily in complexity.
He should store the diary away with the report on the missing Hans, he figured. Idly flipping through it as he pulled out the file drawer for inquiry cases, he stopped cold at the sight of a familiar name: Steinwitz.
He read the entry from January 17 of this year:
Ricus tells me of the secret meetings he is having with Councilman Steinwitz. Personally, I have warned him against such collaboration. The man is in Lueger’s back pocket. Can he be trusted? Ricus insists that Steinwitz is one of the old boys. But to me shared attendance at the Theresianum is hardly grounds for trust. Those were miserable times for me and for Ricus. How quickly he forgets. Outsiders then, outsiders always. According to Ricus, though, Steinwitz has this same sense of being an outsider. He was after all a middle-class scholar, the first from that class to attend the Theresianum. But then so was Lueger, I reminded Ricus. Might just as well trust Handsome Karl, too. Ricus made no comment to that.
Then another entry from January 22:
Ricus has finally confided the nature of his investigations. They are planning on secretly selling off great swaths of the Vienna Woods. By ‘they’ he means Lueger and his crew at the Rathaus. To subvert the 1873 act protecting the Woods. Ricus says that he will publish and stop them, but I warn that this can be a dangerous game. Lueger does not take kindly to being confronted. Ricus assures me that he cannot publish immediately anyway. He needs more documentation from Steinwitz, and now the councilman is beginning to have second thoughts. Where will this all end? I do fear for Ricus.
The final entry was made on January 30:
All is lost. Best to leave, go right away from here and this pernicious influence.
The very next day Councilman Steinwitz was – as Gross had now partially proved – murdered in his Rathaus office.
Werthen could feel the excitement building in him. Was that what was behind all of this: a secret plan to sell off much of the Vienna Woods? But why? For what gain? And, what lengths would Lueger or his henchmen like Bielohlawek go to in order to stop publication of this intended sale? And what did Hans’s final cryptic message mean? What was lost? It could not refer to the death of Steinwitz, for that happened the next day, January 31. Or did Hans learn something about the murder beforehand? Is that what sent him off to America? And then a further thought: Could this scheme to sell off the Vienna Woods also be associated with the incidents in Laab im Walde yesterday?
Unfortunately, there was no way to ask these questions of Hans Wittgenstein, for he had given his family no return address when contacting them from New York.
Still, this truly was explosive information. If Hans Wittgenstein were accurate in the reporting in his journal, two deaths might very well be laid at the door of Mayor Lueger.
Herr Pokorny, it turned out, was almost a neighbor of Werthen’s in the Habsburgergasse. He ran a small pharmacy, was thick in the waist and small in the head, and nicely outraged at Werthen’s visit.
‘I cannot assist you. I do not know why Grundman gave you my name.’
‘You are on the deed. You are the one who listed the property. You are the one who countered my offer. Those are just a few of the reasons.’
Werthen had to resort to threats of a lawsuit claiming professional incompetence against Grundman to get the name out of him.
Pokorny lifted from the counter a large ceramic jar with Kamillentee, chamomile tea, written in blue glaze against a cream background. This he placed on a shelf about shoulder height behind the counter. The interior of the pharmacy was traditional in design, with elegantly tiled floor, an abundance of mahogany and brass, and overall the smell of respectability and Protektion, the connections with which businesses such as Pokorny’s Löwenherz pharmacy needed to open and stay in business. The issuance of new operating licenses was strictly controlled by the pharmacists’ guild and the city in order to control competition. Pokorny, oddly enough, did not look the sort to have such connections, nor did he, despite the white laboratory coat he wore, seem to have any scientific or professional inclinations.
He listened coolly to Werthen’s list of reasons for visiting him. ‘That proves nothing,’ he maintained.
Werthen lost what little patience he had with the man.
‘Understand this. My wife and child, along with my parents and close family friend, were threatened and abused on your property yesterday.’
‘That’s no matter for me. What were they doing there anyway?’
‘You know perfectly well what they were doing. Inspecting the property we were proposing to buy.’
‘That property is no longer on the market.’
‘It is still yours and you can be held responsible. In a court of law.’
This last statement got his attention. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph. That farm’s been a cross ever since my wife’s parents died and left it to her. A burden and a headache. Money to repair this, money to repair that. Money for taxes, money for land rehabilitation. I just want to be rid of it.’
‘You need to give me an explanation.’ Werthen looked at the man steadily.
‘They said not to mention it.’
‘Who?’
‘The fellows who came around yesterday. Doing a survey they were for the city, so they said. And they suddenly find that my wife’s property is sitting smack in the middle of other open and protected land in the woods. Well, what’s that to me?’
‘What was it to you?’
‘They made it clear, these men, that my property was no longer for sale. I would be hearing from important people who would give me a price for it. But I should take it off the market or else.’
‘Herr Pokorny, you are making no sense. Or else what?’
‘They take my b
usiness license away from me. That would be an end to it all. No license. How could we survive?’
Werthen turned to leave. He did not wait to hear any more complaints from Pokorny.
‘You’re so interested, where are you running off to?’
But Werthen did not bother to reply.
Only one entity could single-handedly revoke a business license: the Rathaus.
It was fitting that they take the Stadtbahn, Vienna’s metropolitan railway, for it was designed by Otto Wagner himself. Construction had begun in 1894 and was scheduled for completion next year. Wagner had done literally thousands of drawings for the massive urban rail system, employing a workshop of dozens of engineers and architects.
They were taking the River Wien Line from Karlsplatz in the center of the city all the way out to the Fourteenth District where Wagner lived. Until eight years ago this area had been merely green suburbs; now they were part of Vienna proper, the Rudolfsheim District.
On the way, Werthen was pleased to be the one regaling Gross with the startling news from Hans Wittgenstein’s diary and of his visit to the owner of the property in Laab im Walde.
Gross listened carefully, looking straight ahead at the granite walls surrounding their train as they sped westward along the trench-like carriageway. They were sitting in the first-class car of the railway; the other classes were not heated.
Gross continued to mull over what Werthen said for a few moments after he finished.
Finally he muttered, ‘As I suspected.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Werthen was damned if he was going to let the criminologist get away with such a preposterous claim.
Gross turned to look at him now. ‘Or perhaps I should have said as we suspected.’
‘Thank you, Gross.’
Werthen noticed a man sharing the first-class carriage with them – the only other passenger at this time of the day, for sensible people would be finding a cozy Gasthaus or inn where they might delight in a warm meal on this frigidly cold day. Werthen’s attention was caught at first by a resemblance in this man to someone else he was familiar with. It teased him, this similarity. The man, perhaps in his thirties, wore his curly, golden-brown hair short, a thin moustache graced his lip. It was the eyes, however, that held him. Deep-set, they looked out at the world with curiosity and a faint hint of disdain. Like a scent that recalls former times, these looks reminded Werthen of another man, perhaps older now, but with similar sensitive looks as a younger man.
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