An Exhibition of Murder

by An Exhibition of Murder (retail) (epub)

  An Exhibition of Murder

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Acknowledgements

  Murder Will Follow

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  ‘Hopefully when the exhibition finally opens and the golden mask has been in every newspaper in the city, Peter will have some time for planning our wedding.’

  Beate Herziger threw her weight back in the delicate chair she sat in and surveyed her friends who were nursing their tea and cakes. She expected the word ‘wedding’ to create a nervous flutter and provoke questions as to the when and where. Who would be bridesmaids? Where would she get flowers?

  And most importantly, which couturier would make her dress?

  But her friends acted like they hadn’t even heard her. They were all busy turning the spoon around and around in their teacups or eyeing the bite on their fork as if they had never seen anything like it before.

  Unease rippled through her stomach. Did they know? Suspect? Had word got around already?

  Her hand tightened around the armrest of the chair. A vice-like grip strong enough to tear the fabric. She laughed, too loud and nervous. ‘I would have thought a little more enthusiasm would be appropriate.’ She had to swallow down her pride before she could add, ‘After all, we’ve had to wait long enough for this day.’

  She was the spinster of their group, the one who had believed she might never find a husband. Years ago, her father hadn’t deemed her choices worthy of his approval. And even after she had stopped making her own choices and hoped he would simply find her someone rich and influential so she need not be ashamed anymore, he had done nothing, caring more for his museum and the old dusty artefacts on display there than for the happiness of his only daughter.

  Her eldest and dearest friend, Countess Lavinia LaRue, looked up from her cake and said with a forced smile, ‘We are happy for you, Beate, really, we are.’ It sounded like they had discussed the matter at leisure and decided on their opinion like it was a troublesome political statement. Something to weigh and consider before it was finally pronounced with trepidation about how it would be received.

  ‘It’s just that…’ Lavinia glanced at the others. ‘We know very little about this man.’

  It seems like what you know is enough not to like him… and to feel pity for me for marrying him.

  ‘If you’ve been reading the papers, you must know more than a little. He’s a very respectable English archaeologist who recently made some spectacular discoveries. Including the golden mask of death – a coveted piece which others have been looking for in vain.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about such things,’ Nadja Bruckner said. ‘Objects used for the dead are macabre. They bring bad luck.’ She shivered as she said it, crossing herself quickly.

  Nadja had been born in Moscow, but moved to Vienna when she was only eight to get a classical education there. She had married a diplomat when she was just seventeen and had since then moved in cosmopolitan circles, but apparently the superstitions of her Russian upbringing were still strong on her mind.

  Beate frowned at her. ‘Objects do not bring bad luck. In fact, the golden mask of death was a token of immense honour and wealth. It was placed across the features of deceased kings, honouring them as head of their family and state. It is made of solid gold, quite heavy, and—’

  ‘He took it from a grave,’ Nadja insisted and crossed herself again. Her green eyes sparkled with conviction. ‘Grave robbery is a sin, and for those sins people are punished.’

  ‘I read somewhere that the Egyptians built traps into the pyramids and grave robbers who got caught died of hunger and thirst in there,’ Anna Liebknecht said with a sense of glee that sooner befitted a schoolgirl than the wife of one of the richest jewellers in Vienna. But then she was only twenty, the third wife of a man who had already buried two spouses and who was hoping Anna would bear him the much-wanted heir for the jewellery empire which sold precious stones to the royal courts around Europe.

  Anna’s young fresh face with the luminous blue eyes provoked a deep jealousy in Beate, which clawed its way up from her chest to lodge itself in her throat, preventing her from speaking normally. Her father had hoped to marry her off to the jeweller but Liebknecht had spurned her in favour of this young, ridiculous girl who didn’t even speak flawless French, who giggled about grave robbers dying a gruesome death inside some ancient pyramid while she gobbled down cake like she didn’t have to worry about her waistline.

  And she probably didn’t have to, either. Some people had all the good luck in the world.

  ‘It’s a very serious matter,’ Nadja said with an angry look at Anna. ‘I cannot wish a friend well who goes to marry such a man. He’s a grave robber and he should have died and been tossed into the very grave he robbed.’ She nodded firmly, the reddish braids pinned to her round head nodding along.

  Scooting to the edge of her seat, Anna said, ‘Perhaps he will still die? I read somewhere that a curse can follow you wherever you go.’

  ‘Do not speak of curses.’ Nadja rose abruptly. ‘I’m leaving. I do not wish to hear any more of this.’ She walked to the door. A servant who had waited in the corner for anything they might need followed her softly.

  Beate didn’t take the trouble to see her off. ‘Nadja is so boring with her endless nonsensical beliefs about bad luck.’ She looked at the two friends still sitting opposite her. ‘Peter has had his hands full with the exhibition, but now that it is finally all settled and he will officially open it in three days, there is no more reason to postpone our wedding plans. You’ve all had your own day of bliss. You can advise me, share what is important when I start preparing it. I do not wish to rush things. It will be in spring, I think.’

  She flushed a moment thinking there might be a spiteful thought going through her friends’ heads right now that she need not rush things as it was most unlikely for her to be with child. Not at her age… Thirty-eight wasn’t that old, perhaps, but some of her boarding school friends were already sending their own children to that esteemed institution in the Swiss mountains and Beate felt like an entire season had passed her by.

  Finally, with Peter’s approach to her father, a door had opened into a world that had been denied to her for so long: marriage, children, family life. And Peter wasn’t a dry intellectual type either, burying himself in work, but a handsome man with a head full of curls barely touched by grey and deep brown eyes that seemed to see right through her. His magnetic personality made him the centre of attention at parties. A husband others would envy her.

  Yes, that was her friends’ reason for mentioning this nonsense about him being a grave robber. They were only jealous.

  She forced a smile. ‘April? Or May? I do love it when the trees blossom but I also don’t want it to be too cold.’

  ‘Oh, nein.’ Anna jumped to her feet. ‘That late already, I must be going. I have an appointment with the dressmaker.’ She leaned over to Beate to press a perfunctory kiss on her cheek. ‘We will speak soon, darling. Auf Wiedersehen.’ She left the room, almost bumping into the servant who was just returning after h
aving escorted Nadja to the front door. In a flutter of giggles, she waved him along.

  ‘She really shouldn’t flirt with the footmen,’ Lavinia observed. She cast a quick look at her elegant silver wristwatch as if she was herself getting ready to leave.

  A chill breathed across Beate’s back. Finally she had a fiancé; she was making wedding plans, at last, and her friends treated her like she had the plague, running away from her as if she were a woman in mourning, sitting in a darkened room in drab black robes. She was happier than she had ever been…

  At least she should have been, if only she had been able to silence the voice in the back of her mind.

  ‘Lavinia.’ With a pleading look she placed her hand on her best friend’s arm. ‘Discuss the wedding with me. You have experience, also from organising other people’s weddings. I know nothing. People have stopped asking me even as a bridesmaid.’ It was painful to admit but she had to win her friend’s sympathy, and save the afternoon which she had envisioned so differently. ‘Tell me what I need to prepare, whom I should invite, how I can make it a party to remember.’

  Lavinia sighed. She put her own hand on top of Beate’s and patted it gingerly as if she was afraid to hurt her. Or afraid to touch her even?

  Like there was some curse on her, because she was marrying a grave robber?

  What nonsense! Nadja and her silly superstitions…

  Lavinia said slowly, ‘I wish you all the happiness in the world, Beate. I really do. It hurt me to see you so unhappy as all of us married and had children, found our way into the world, leaving you behind here in your father’s house. But… your marriage to a man who isn’t Austrian, who will drag you away to England with him, brings me no joy.’

  Her heart grew lighter that it was merely that. A sense of coming separation. Of course. Dear Lavinia.

  But Lavinia continued, ‘I can’t call him a grave robber like Nadja does, and his profession seems to be respectable enough but… he has been married before. He has a grown daughter. I would have wished something easier on you.’

  Beate frowned, unsure. ‘Anna married a man who has lost two wives already. You never said…’ She flushed realising her faux pas. ‘Not in public, of course. But to her personally perhaps… Yes, you’re considerate like that. Of course, she couldn’t listen as her family wanted it so badly.’

  Lavinia shook her head. ‘For Anna it is of no consequence what life her husband led before she married him. She’s a silly girl who only cares for the things her husband can give her. As long as she has dresses, hats and shoes to show off at the opera, she will never think twice about where he is or what he does. I wonder if she even thinks at all.’

  Beate had rarely heard Lavinia speak in such a harsh manner about their young friend, no matter how empty-headed Anna usually showed herself to be.

  Lavinia patted her hand again, this time more warmly and with force. ‘I’m not afraid for her, as she will find her way. But you, my friend… you do think. And you will care.’

  The chill that had touched Beate earlier returned in full force. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Had it been any man other than this Sir Peter Treemore…’ Her tone loaded the name with disdain. ‘He is like the kings of old whose masks he likes to dig up. He is a conqueror. He is not satisfied with what he has. He wants more. Expansion of his territory. Legally or illegally.’

  ‘Are you also going to start about this supposed grave robbery?’

  ‘I mean his personal relationships.’ Lavinia looked her straight in the eye. ‘His women.’

  Beate flinched. ‘How do you mean, women?’ she said weakly, but Lavinia held her gaze with a probing look.

  ‘You must know of his behaviour since he came to Vienna. Who he has been seeing.’

  ‘I cannot take that seriously. Yes, he has been to her performance once or twice—’

  ‘Every night. He goes to hear her sing every single night. Just because his daughter loves music?’ Lavinia laughed, a short dry laugh. ‘Sir Peter uses his own daughter as a cover for his…’ She hesitated. ‘I wanted to use a word you are not familiar with: lust. But I doubt you have ever lusted after anything. Your life is so quiet and unobtrusive.’

  You’re wrong, Beate thought as the claws she had sensed earlier grabbed her throat again. I do lust after something. Revenge on all those people who never thought me good enough, pretty enough, rich enough to be a wife. Retribution for all the slights, the insults and the pain.

  ‘You have no idea what happens to a man when he loses his head over a beautiful woman. It would pain me to see you unhappy once… well, once he starts to betray you. I don’t believe for one moment that Sir Peter Treemore can be faithful to a single woman. It’s not in his nature.’

  ‘If he betrayed me, I’d kill him.’ The words welled up from deep within Beate, from the place where she ached for the humiliations suffered. She couldn’t take any more. It would have to stop, at once.

  Lavinia looked her over and laughed again, this time disbelieving. ‘You really do not take me seriously. And perhaps you have a good reason not to. Your father would never accept your decision not to marry him. It brings such advantages to the museum. So you must wed Sir Peter. I do see your position. I just wish it wasn’t so. You’re too soft and sweet to endure it. It will slowly kill you inside. He will not die, but you will. And I dread to see that happen.’

  Lavinia turned away to collect her purse. ‘I must be going. The others advised me not to speak my mind to you because you must marry him anyway, for your father’s sake. But I have ignored their warnings, because you and I have been friends for so long. I do hope you will not blame me for being too candid.’ She rose with something of relief in her features.

  She had done her duty. Even if it made no difference, Beate thought bitterly. After all, Lavinia had said herself that the marriage had to take place. Her father would never accept it if she was to decide otherwise.

  But if something happened, preventing it from taking place… setting her free without involving the shame of a revelation of Peter’s unfaithfulness… If Peter were unable to marry her…

  She hardly noticed her friend leaving the room and stopping at the door to look back at her with a pitying expression. Beate clenched the armrests, her eyes staring into the distance. Seeing a grand perspective, a way out of everything without loss of face. If she broke off the engagement, there would be a scandal. People would whisper about her, point at her when she went into the street.

  But they might actually pity her if Peter died, suddenly and unexpectedly. Poor girl, engaged at last and then to face such tragedy. To bear it with such dignity and strength.

  She straightened her shoulders as she pictured herself, all in black, standing at the graveside, blinking, not against tears but to produce tears. The tears people would be waiting for.

  It would be perfect.

  Chapter Two

  ‘If you don’t stop bothering me about that dried-out archaeologist, I will produce a high C that will break every window here.’ Isobel Maurin threatened her lover as she sat in front of the dingy dressing table with the smudged mirror, restoring her makeup. She turned her head slowly from left to right, searching for any imperfection that she needed to address before walking out of the door.

  ‘Do you deny he comes to see you every night?’ he asked.

  ‘Anyone buying a ticket for one of my performances can see me.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. I mean when he comes to your dressing room afterwards. Or you meet him for drinks. Don’t deny it. I know you’re leading him on. You’re probably thinking there is something in it for you. If only a diamond necklace or two.’

  Isobel couldn’t stand his knowing tone as if he could see inside her soul. What she wanted or needed he didn’t understand at all, or else their relationship would never have ended like it had. She should cross him out of her life permanently, but somehow when his note came again to invite her to a secret rendezvous in a rented room in one of Vienna�
�s lesser neighbourhoods where they ran little risk of being recognised, she did go. He exerted a pull on her she couldn’t explain or deny. As, it seemed, she did on him.

  Funny. She had never believed herself to be attached to any one person in this world. She had learned to fend for herself from a young age, working hard to get to where she was today. People believed it had all fallen into her lap, had been given to her by men, but she had earned it. She deserved it. It wasn’t easy living like she did.

  ‘Come back to me.’ He patted the bed. ‘You needn’t leave yet. Unless of course you have somewhere pressing to go?’

  His jealousy was annoying and flattering at the same time. He cared enough to hate any other man who touched her. Who even looked at her.

  ‘I have a rehearsal.’ She applied a touch more lipstick to her lower lip. ‘Nothing special. Not that I need to explain myself to you.’

  ‘But you can’t be serious about that old man. He must be sixty.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate. He’s only forty-five.’

  He scoffed as if it was the same thing. ‘His daughter is about your age.’

  ‘She’s nineteen.’

  ‘So? Aren’t you nineteen as well?’

  ‘Flatterer.’ She smiled at him in the mirror’s hazy reflection. ‘I know very well I am not nineteen anymore, and I’m glad about it. I don’t want to think about what that poor girl might have to endure. The insecurity of being so young. Living with her father, getting dragged all over the globe not to see cities and people, but to breathe dust in the desert.’ She shivered.

  ‘Keep that in mind when you accept his gifts. If you marry him, you have to go to the desert too.’

  ‘Marry him? My dear, you have the wrong view of the situation altogether. The poor man is already engaged to be married, and not to me.’

  ‘As if that stopped you from preying on a man.’

  She turned and pretended to throw her brush at him. ‘Are you going to bring that old affair up again?’

  ‘I broke off a very profitable alliance to be with you.’

  ‘Yes, and then you regretted it.’ She pulled the brush through her hair so hard she tore out a few hairs, root and all.