I hadn’t considered it. In fact it was better having Pinkerstein as my partner than trying to deal with the matter alone. After all that had happened, I was pleased never to see or set foot in the Fenix Theatre ever again.
“Of course, Mr. Pinkerstein. I am sure you know best.”
“In the meantime, I’ve taken enough of your time, Your Ladyship. I promised the ‘Duke’ that I’d take no more than a minute. Come with me.”
I took his arm as he led me through into the ballroom. There were balloons and streamers — was this for someone’s party? There was the sound of more corks popping and the sudden blinding flashes of photographers’ assistants igniting their powders. There stood His Majesty the King and the Kaiser Wilhelm — both resplendent in each other’s uniforms. The mellifluous tones of a duet of two sopranos could be heard and I looked across to see not one but two Emmy Destinnovas singing it!
There, too, was James Northcott — and even Inspector Schneider back from his unpleasant duties. Over the heads of other guests, some of them familiar to me, I noticed Müller and Sabine. One of the ladies (and in such a fine silk dress too — all turquoise), I noticed, had already had her hair cut short. Such a compliment to me, or perhaps more to Sabine’s scissors.
The King raised his glass first saying, “To our charming Countess from Prague,” he declared, “who has saved our lives and solved an almost impenetrable mystery!”
The Kaiser raised his too: “Not from Prague, Uncle, we give you The Countess von Prag, or so she should be!”
A veritable forest of hands raised glasses: “To the Countess of Prague!”
Announcing
Sins of the Father
Book Two of
The Countess of Prague Mysteries
It is 1905, a year after The Countess’ first case.
Beginning with the discovery of a headless corpse with a slip of paper bearing the Countess’ phone number on the funicular railway which climbs Petrin Hill in Prague, the story moves swiftly into the arcane and often murky world of stage illusionists. The Countess identifies the body as that of the Great Orsini, whose spectacular invention — the illusion of levitation — is much coveted by his sinister rival from New York, Ira Devine. The Great Orsini’s head is eventually found in his famous Disappearing Cabinet, then in pawn at Moses Reach’s premises in the Prague Ghetto….
Thanks to her fame spreading in the highest circles, the Countess is also summoned to Vienna for a private audience with Emperor Franz-Josef, who sets her off on the second strand of the story: a strange and secret quest to resolve certain matters concerning his ill-fated son, Crown Prince Rudolf, who had committed suicide at Mayerling sixteen years before. In due course this will involve the clandestine opening of the Prince’s coffin in the Habsburg vault in the crypt of the Capuchin monastery…and this is only the beginning of the story, which ranges from Prague and Vienna to Paris and the South of France, with its eventual climax in the wilds of the Austrian Alps.
As in the Countess’ first case, the two strands of the story — that of the high life and its low life counterpart — come together in a complex and unusual conclusion.
Familiar characters come and go from the Countess’ first adventure.
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