A Matter of Breeding (13 page)

‘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.

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 were.’

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?’

‘No. The state of your father. Has he been here to see you?’

‘Daily from my admittance on the third of October,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I did not have the energy to tell him not to bother me.’

Werthen did quick calculations. So Gross had, as Thielman told him, been in the area since the day before the first murder.

‘But he has not been so solicitous of late. A visit the day before yesterday. I assumed he must be on one of his fabulous cases.’

‘In fact he is,’ Werthen responded, and then he explained why he was there. Young Otto listened with a trace of amusement on his face.

‘The great criminalist on the wrong side of the bars. What a lark. It may aid in his humility.’

‘It is not his humility I am concerned with at the moment, Otto. More like his freedom. He refuses to give a reason for being in Graz at all.’

‘His misplaced sense of propriety,’ the younger Gross said. ‘I am sure he does not want it made public knowledge that his only son has a drug problem.’

Werthen wondered if it were that simple; it was hardly a secret that Otto Gross had had his problems of various sorts.

‘But you say these murders were committed on the fourth, twelfth, and twentieth?’

‘Correct,’ Werthen said.

‘Well, I can attest to the fact that the old man was here with me almost the entire day and night of the fourth of October. Rather hard going for me at first adjusting to the lack of cocaine. He slept in this very chair. Or at least I assume he did. He was there at night when I finally went to sleep and there in the morning when I awoke. The other dates I am not so sure of. He visited, but not the entire day or night. We tend to get on one another’s nerves.’

‘
Almost
all day, you say,’ Werthen replied.

‘Well, my memory of the time is not that acute, as you might well imagine, but I believe he was missing for several hours from the afternoon to evening. I assumed he was visiting former colleagues.’

It was a beginning, Werthen thought. Two dates were left open – Gross had no real alibi for those. But for the first murder there seemed to be a strong alibi. Lechner, of course, would point to the afternoon hours, the very time when the first victim, Maria Feininger, was murdered. But could Gross have possibly traveled to the small town, killed the girl, and then made it back to Graz in such a short amount of time?

As Werthen was about to depart, Otto cast him a sardonic glance.

‘It is all his fault you know, my drug habit, my choosing to go my own way in life. That is what Herr Freud and company would say, at any rate. All brought on by childhood trauma. I once told a psychiatrist about this early childhood memory I have, perhaps my earliest. A friend came to visit and my father said to him, “Watch out. He bites.”’

Otto Gross let out a high, piercing laugh. ‘Amusing, no?’

From the university, Werthen traveled once again to Karlau prison to confront Gross with the truth about his reason for being in Graz.

The same aged warder led Werthen along the dank corridor to Gross’s cell.

‘We must stop meeting like this,’ the criminologist said by way of greeting as Werthen entered.

Despite this attempt at humor and bravado, Werthen could see more fault lines in Gross’s façade. Large pouches showed under his eyes; he had the haggard look of someone dealing with a grave illness.

‘I have been to the psychiatric clinic,’ Werthen announced.

This did not seem to faze Gross. ‘Of course you have. You surely telegrammed Adele about my plight and she gave you directions to Doktor Anton. This was to be expected. It changes nothing.’

‘Gross, for God’s sake, you have to tell Lechner why you have been in Graz all this time. It is not shameful to have a son in hospital.’

‘Werthen, you disappoint me. Is that what you think? That I fear the publicity of having a drug addict for a son?’

It was not at all what he thought, but Werthen was pleased that at least he had roused Gross, had gotten under his skin.

‘Isn’t it?’ he said innocently.