Beware of Pity (16 page)

“And now, Lieutenant Hofmiller, pay attention,” Condor continued, turning to me. “All the time this oration was in progress our friend Kanitz was curled up like a hedgehog in the corner, saying nothing, cap well down over his eyebrows, drinking in every word. He realised right away what it was all
about, because at the time the Orosvár trial—I’ve changed the family’s name, the real one is too well known—that trial was making the headlines in all the Hungarian newspapers, and it was really an amazing business; I’ll give you just a brief summary.

“Old Princess Orosvár, stinking rich even before she arrived from the Ukraine, tough as old boots and evil-minded as they come, had survived her husband by a good thirty-five years … Ever since her two children, the only ones she had, died of diphtheria on the same night she had heartily hated all the other Orosvárs for being alive while her children were dead. It seems to me perfectly possible that she lived to the age of eighty-four purely out of spite and malice, to keep her impatient nephews and great-nieces from inheriting her fortune. When one of her would-be heirs tried to visit, she refused to see him; even the friendliest letter went straight into the wastepaper basket unanswered. Misanthropic and cranky as she was after the death of her husband and children, she never spent more than two or three months a year at Kekesfalva, and no one came to see her there. The rest of the time she travelled around the world, living the high life in Nice and Montreux, where she got dressed and undressed, had her hair done, had her nails manicured and her face painted, read French novels, bought a great many clothes, and went from shop to shop bargaining and haggling like a Russian market woman. Of course the one person she would tolerate near her, her companion, didn’t have an easy time. The poor soft-spoken woman had to feed and groom three bad-tempered pinschers and take them for walks every day, she had to play the piano to the old Princess, read aloud to her, and put up with savage scolding for no reason at all. There were times when the old lady drank a few glasses of cognac or vodka too many, a habit she had brought from the
Ukraine with her, and it’s credibly reported that then she actually used to beat the unfortunate companion. The massive figure of the old Princess with her heavily painted pug face and her dyed hair was a familiar sight in all the luxury resorts, in Nice and Cannes, in Aix les Bains and Montreux. She was always talking at the top of her voice, never mind whether anyone was listening to her, she would abuse waiters like a fishwife, and she made faces at anyone she didn’t like. And wherever she went on her terrifying promenades, the companion followed her like a shadow—always walking behind her with the dogs, never beside her. She was a slim, pale, blonde woman with frightened eyes, and you could see she was constantly ashamed of her mistress’s overbearing ways, while at the same time fearing her like the Devil incarnate.

“At the age of seventy-eight, staying at the hotel in Territet that also enjoyed the custom of Empress Elisabeth, Princess Orosvár suffered a bad attack of pneumonia. How the news travelled from Switzerland back to Hungary remains a mystery. But without any mutual consultation the old lady’s relations came swarming in, booked out the hotel, pestered the Princess’s doctor for news, and waited and waited for her to die.

“However, bad temper kept her going. The old dragon recovered, and on the day when they heard that the convalescent was coming downstairs to the hotel foyer for the first time, the impatient relations moved out. All the same, Princess Orosvár had heard about the arrival of her ostentatiously anxious heirs. Spiteful as she was, she began by bribing waiters and chambermaids to tell her everything her relations said. It was all true. The would-be heirs had fought furiously with each other over who should get Kekesfalva, who should inherit Orosvár, who was to have the pearls, who the Ukrainian estates and
the grand town house in Ofnerstrasse. That was the first shot fired in the battle. A month later she received a letter from a Budapest broker by the name of Dessauer, saying that he could not extend the term of his loan to her nephew Deszö unless he, Dessauer, had her written assurance that the aforesaid nephew would be one of her heirs. Princess Orosvár sent by telegraph for her own lawyer from Budapest, drew up a new will with him, and did it—for spite can open your eyes—in the presence of two doctors who explicitly certified that the Princess was in full possession of her intellectual faculties. The lawyer took this will back to Budapest with him, and it stayed sealed in his chambers for six years, because the old lady was in no hurry to die. When it was finally opened it came as a great surprise. It named as sole heiress the companion, one Fräulein Annette Beate Dietzenhof from Westphalia, whose name thus struck terror for the first time into all the old woman’s relations. She was to get Kekesfalva, Orosvár, the sugar factory, the stud farm, and the town house in Budapest. The old Princess left her Ukrainian estates and her cash there to her home town in the Ukraine, to pay for the building of a Russian church. None of her relations was to inherit so much as a button, as she explicitly and maliciously stated in the will, on the grounds that ‘they couldn’t wait for me to die’.

“So now there was a full-blown scandal. The family raised hell, flocked to their lawyers, and the lawyers made the usual appeals against the will. The Princess had not been in her right mind, they said, because she had made it while she was suffering from a severe illness, and as in addition she had been pathologically dependent on her companion there could be no doubt, said the lawyers, but that the latter, through cunning suggestion, had distorted the sick woman’s true wishes. At the
same time they tried to inflate the story into an affair of national importance. Were Hungarian estates that had been owned by the Orosvár family since the time of Árpád to fall into the hands of a foreigner, a Prussian woman, while what remained of the old lady’s fortune went to the Orthodox Church? Column upon column of the newspapers was devoted to the subject. But in spite of all the fuss kicked up by those involved, the family had a weak case. They had already lost it on two points—first, it was their bad luck that both doctors were still living in Territet, and confirmed once again that the Princess had been fully
responsible
for her actions when she made her will. And second, other witnesses had to admit under cross-questioning that while the old Princess had been cranky in her last years, her mind had been as sharp and clear as ever. All legal tricks and attempts at intimidation failed; the chances were a hundred to one that the royal court of appeal would not overturn earlier decisions in favour of Fräulein Dietzenhof.

“Kanitz, of course, had read about the case himself, but he listened closely to every word, for he was passionately interested in the financial affairs of others as object lessons, and moreover he knew the Kekesfalva estate himself, from his days as an agent in those parts.

“‘As you can imagine,’ the clerk was telling his friends, ‘my boss was left stewing in his own juice, furious with the stupid woman for being fooled like that. She’d already put it in writing that she gave up all claim to Orosvár and the town house in Ofnerstrasse, and was happy to be fobbed off with the Kekesfalva estate and the stud farm. That cunning fellow Wiezner had obviously impressed her mightily by promising that she’d have no more trouble with the courts now, and the old lady’s natural heirs would even be generous enough to pay her own lawyer’s
costs. Well, in law it would still have been possible to contest this settlement. After all, it had not been signed before a notary, only in front of witnesses, and that greedy gang the old woman’s family could easily have been starved out. They didn’t have a penny to their names to enable them to drag the whole thing out by more and more appeals to new authorities. Of course it was my boss’s duty to tell them so and contest the agreement in the interests of the heiress. But the gang knew how to get around him—they offered him a fee of sixty thousand crowns, no questions asked, not to make any more trouble. And since he was so angry anyway with his stupid client, who had let herself be wheedled out of a fortune of a good round million in
half-an-hour’s
talk, he declared the settlement valid and pocketed his cash—sixty thousand crowns, what do you say to that, for letting his client ruin her whole case by his own stupid decision to go to Vienna? Well, we all need luck, and it looks as if the good Lord sends even the greatest fool luck in his sleep! So now she has nothing left of that legacy of a million but Kekesfalva, and if I know her sort she’ll soon make such a mess of things that she’ll throw that away too!’

“‘Do what with it?’ asked one of the other men.

“‘Throw it away, I bet you! She’s sure to do something stupid! And anyway, I’ve heard that the sugar cartel would like to take the factory off her hands. I believe the chairman of the board is coming from Budapest to see her the day after tomorrow. And I understand there’s a man called Petrovic would like to lease the estate—he used to manage it—but maybe the sugar cartel will take that over as well. They have plenty of money, there’s talk of a French bank—didn’t you read about it in the newspaper?—wanting to prepare the ground for a merger with Bohemian industries …’

“Here their conversation turned to general subjects. But our friend Kanitz had heard enough to set his ears burning. Few people knew Kekesfalva as well as he did; he had been there twenty years earlier to give an estimate of the house contents for insurance purposes. He also knew Petrovic, in fact he knew him very well from his early days doing business deals. Through his, Kanitz’s, agency that apparently upright character had invested considerable sums of money—acquired by annually lining his own pockets from the management of the estate—in securities offered by one Dr Gollinger. Most important of all to Kanitz, however, was this—he remembered the cupboard of Chinese porcelain very clearly, along with a number of jade figurines and silk embroideries acquired by Princess Orosvár’s grandfather, who had been Russian ambassador to Peking. As the only person aware of their immense value, Kanitz had tried, on behalf of Rosenfeld in Chicago, to buy them from the Princess in her lifetime. They were very rare objects, worth perhaps two or three thousand pounds each. Of course the old lady had no idea of the high prices that had been paid in America for East Asian art during the last few decades, and had sent Kanitz off with a flea in his ear, saying she wasn’t letting anything out of her hands, and he could go to the devil. If those pieces were still in the house—Kanitz trembled at the mere thought—he might be able to get them really cheap if the place was changing hands. It would be best, of course, to make sure he had the right of first refusal for the entire inventory of the house contents.

“Our friend Kanitz pretended to be suddenly waking up—his three fellow travellers had been talking about other subjects for some time now—yawned elaborately, stretched, and took out his watch. The train would be stopping here in this town, where you are stationed yourself, Lieutenant Hofmiller, in
half-an-hour’s time. He quickly folded up his dressing gown, put on his usual black coat, and tidied himself up. At two-thirty in the morning he got out of the train, went to the Red Lion, had himself shown to a room, and I don’t have to point out that like every military commander before a battle where the outcome is uncertain he slept poorly. At seven o’clock—he didn’t want to waste a moment—he got up and marched down the avenue along which we have just come to reach the little castle. I must get there first, he was thinking, I must get there before anyone else. I must deal with it all before the vultures from Budapest arrive! Now for some fast talking to get Petrovic to let me know at once if there’s going to be a sale of the house contents. If necessary I’ll join him in bidding for them all, and make sure I get the
objets d’art
when it comes to dividing them up between us.

“Few of the domestic staff had been kept on after the Princess’s death, so Kanitz could easily steal up to the house and take a good look around. A handsome property, he said to himself, and in excellent condition too, the shutters freshly painted, the walls attractively colour-washed, a new fence—oh yes, Petrovic knows why he’s had all these repairs done, thinks Kanitz, he pockets a good commission on every bill that comes in. But where, our friend wonders, is he? The front door at the porch of the house turns out to be locked, there’s no one stirring in the yard where the estate management buildings stand, however hard he knocks—damn it, has the man already taken himself off to Budapest to settle everything with that fool of a Dietzenhof woman?

“Kanitz goes impatiently from door to door, calling out, clapping his hands—no one, not a soul. At last, cautiously looking in through the side door, he sets eyes on a woman in
the conservatory. He can see her through the panes, watering flowers—at last, someone who can give him information. Kanitz taps sharply on the glass. “Hello,” he calls, clapping his hands to attract attention. The female busy with the flowers starts in alarm, and it is some time before, as timidly as if she has done something wrong, she approaches the door. Blonde, slender, no longer young, wearing a plain dark blouse and a cotton apron, she is now framed in the doorway, still holding the half-open garden scissors.

“Rather impatiently, Kanitz snaps at her, ‘You certainly take your time! Where the devil’s Petrovic?’

“‘Who?’ asks the thin young woman with a surprised
expression
. She instinctively retreats a step, hiding the garden scissors behind her back.

“‘Who? How many men called Petrovic are there around here? I mean Petrovic the estate manager!’

“‘Oh, I’m sorry … Herr Petrovic the estate manager … well, I haven’t seen him yet myself. I believe he’s gone to Vienna … but his wife said she hopes he’ll be back before evening.’

“Hopes, hopes … thinks Kanitz angrily. I’ll have to wait until evening. Kick my heels in the hotel for another night. More unnecessary expense, and no idea what will come of it.

“‘So stupid! Today of all days the man has to be out,’ he mutters in an undertone, turning back to the woman. ‘Can I look round the place in the meantime? Does someone have the keys?’