Sent to the Devil (15 page)

“Marta is feeling ill. Come, I promised your mother I would see you safely home.”

She glanced at von Gerl as she fumbled with the ties of her bodice.

“I'll take you home in my carriage later,” he said.

She looked from him to me. I raised a brow. She chewed on her bottom lip. “Oh, I had better go with Signor Da Ponte,” she told von Gerl.

He bowed and kissed her hand. “If that is your wish,” he murmured. “I will say good night for now, my beautiful Sophie.” He nodded to me and left.

Sophie gazed after him and sighed.

“Take a moment to compose yourself,” I said. “Where is Stefan?”

“Oh, we had an argument,” she said. “He was angry because I wanted to talk with Valentin. He can be such a jealous booby sometimes.”

“Come along,” I said, taking her hand. I dragged her down the hallway into the third ballroom. The band had granted my throbbing head some mercy and stopped its playing. Mozart and Constanze had left. I saw no sign of Casanova, but was not concerned. He could see himself home. Marta sat forlornly on the chair where I had left her.

“I'm afraid we must leave,” I told her. Sophie directed a small wave across the room, where von Gerl stood chatting with a pair of merchants.

Marta's eyes followed the girl's. “Yes, I see,” Marta said. She took Sophie's arm. I marched them through the two front ballrooms, collected their cloaks, and led them downstairs and outside.

A line of hansom cabs waited at the edge of the plaza. “Wait here,” I told the ladies. I walked over to hail one. As I returned, Baron Hennen came out the door. The cab I had signaled for halted suddenly as a fancy carriage, drawn by four horses wearing golden plumes, cut in front of it and pulled up at the door. Four very drunk, fashionably clad young ladies stumbled out of the Redoutensaal. The driver descended and helped them into the carriage, taking time to admire the heels of the first and the cleavage of another.

“You whores!” Baron Hennen lifted his cane and shouted at the young women. “Wasting four good horses for your silly entertainment! The troops in Semlin could use those horses!” The girls gawked at him from the windows of the carriage, and then collapsed into fits of giggles. The baron swore loudly at them and hobbled out of the plaza, heading down one of the narrow streets leading to the Neuer Market.

Our cab pulled up and I helped Sophie and Marta in. Sophie stuck her head out the window and looked wistfully at the departing carriage. “Did you see the blond one's necklace?” she asked Marta. “And the dark-haired one's purse. It must have been silk.” She sighed. “My friend Barbara met a nobleman at one of these balls. He fell madly in love with her. He gave her jewels like that, and drove her around in a fancy carriage just like that one.”

Marta pulled Sophie back into the carriage. I gave the driver the address and we drove away. Marta sat quietly, staring out the window into the dark streets, as Sophie babbled on about the ball. Exhaustion seeped through me. My head throbbed.

After a while, Marta spoke. “You must be careful of these noblemen,” she told Sophie. “A girl in your situation can easily get into trouble. Trust me. I know what I am talking about.” Sophie looked at her blankly. Marta's warning did not spend much time in that pretty young head.

“‘There with tokens of love and embroidered words he deceived Hypsipyle,'” Marta murmured.

“Who?” Sophie asked.

“Hypsipyle, the queen of Lemnos. She was seduced by Jason, the leader of the Argonauts—oh, never mind,” Marta said. She shook her head and returned to staring out the window.

*   *   *

Back at the house, I helped the ladies down from the cab and paid the driver. We walked into the courtyard, where a sole lantern burned at the door.

“Please, Signor Da Ponte,” Sophie said. “Don't tell my mother that you had to bring me home. If she finds out Stefan left me there she'll never let him come here again.”

I sighed. How had I become involved with all this female drama? “All right, Sophie,” I said. She bade us good night and tiptoed into the house.

I turned to Marta. “Would you like to sit in the garden for a moment?” I asked. “We've had no time to talk all evening.”

She followed me to the garden bench and sat beside me. Her floral scent wafted to my nose.

“It's so dark out here,” Marta said. “I'm not used to it. It is like being out in the countryside.”

“It is not Venice, that is certain,” I said. “Tell me, where did you read Dante?”

She looked at me, puzzled for a moment, then laughed. “Oh, what I told Sophie, about Hypsipyle? My father provided me with a fine education. He was a younger brother of the family. If you lived in Venice, I'm sure you've heard of us.”

I nodded. The Cavalli family's palace was near the church where I had led mass when I lived in Venice.

“My mother died giving birth to me. I was my father's only child. He encouraged me to read everything—Dante, Petrarch, even Shakespeare.”

“Does your father know you've come to Vienna?” I asked.

“No. He died when I was fifteen. Since then I've lived with my uncle's family. I am the poor relation, I'm afraid. That's how I met Valentin. My uncle collects butterflies. Valentin came to the palace to purchase a part of his collection.”

“Are you really married to him?” I blurted. She looked at me sharply. I flushed. “I am sorry. That is none of my affair.”

“No, you have been so kind to me, I owe you an explanation,” she said. “When Valentin came to my uncle's house, I found myself attracted to him immediately. I had never felt that way about any man. I tried to control my feelings, but I could not.” Her eyes took on a faraway look. “He promised to marry me. I pledged myself to him, and let him seduce me. I was deliriously happy. I bribed one of the servants to leave the palace door unlocked, and he would come to me late at night. We planned to announce our marriage when my uncle returned from a long trip to Asia. Then Valentin received a message from Vienna. He told me his father and brother had died, and that he had to return to assume the title. He promised he would send for me when his affairs were settled.”

She sighed. “As you know, six months passed, and I did not hear from him. That is why I came here. To answer your question, yes, we are married. No, not with the full pomp of ceremony, but the old way. He promised to make me his wife, and I gave myself to him. The church would agree that we are married, I believe.”

I sat there, a hollow pit in my stomach.

She shivered and drew her cloak around her. “But he's not ever going to send for me, is he?” she asked in a small voice.

As her tears began to fall, I took her in my arms. She sobbed into my shoulder. I brushed my hand over her soft hair.

Finally, when her tears were spent, she raised her head and looked into my face. “I'm all alone here, in this dark place,” she whispered. “What shall I do?”

“I don't know,” I said. “But I am here to help you.” I ran my finger over her cheek to wipe away her tears. She gently pulled away from me and stood. “I had better go in. Thank you, Lorenzo, for the evening. Good night.”

“Good night, Marta,” I said. I sat on the bench staring at the shadows the moonlight cast against the walls of the small garden. The door to the house opened and closed. I stood and looked up at the house. A moment later, a light appeared in her window. I turned back to the garden and stood there for a long time, staring into the night.

 

Eleven

A soft knock on my door roused me from sleep. The gray light of dawn filled my room as I wrapped myself in my dressing gown and opened the door to find my landlady, her hair still bound in her nightcap, her brow furrowed with concern.

“Signore, there is a carriage waiting for you downstairs,” she said, pulling her shawl around her worn wrapper.

“Thank you, madame. I'll be right down.”

I glanced out my window and saw a black carriage standing in the mist. The driver lounged in the street. I washed hastily, dressed, took my cloak and satchel, and hurried down the stairs.

The driver tipped his cap and held the door for me. “I'm from the Ministry of Police, sir. I'm to take you into town. Inspector Troger and Count Benda are already there.”

“What is it?” I asked him, although I had already guessed the terrible answer to my question.

“There's been another one, sir. Another murder.”

*   *   *

The carriage clattered loudly through the Stuben gate and onto the deserted, silent streets of the city. I turned my head away from the north side of the Stephansdom as the driver pushed the horses around the cathedral, into the empty Stock-im-Eisen-Platz, and past the curved apartment building that marked the entrance to the Graben. The stalls of the cloth market, which would soon be busy with vendors selling fabric, buttons, ribbons, and thread, sat closed, dark and still.

The carriage halted. The driver climbed down to open the door for me. “I'm afraid I'll have to leave you here, sir. They are closing off the Graben at both ends.”

Ahead of me, constables were setting barricades along the width of the large plaza.

The driver shouted to one of the constables. “Just go in there, sir, before he places the barrier. You'll find the inspector and the count straight ahead.”

I thanked him and trudged into the Graben. A light rain had begun to fall, and despite the warmth of the early morning air, I was grateful for my cloak. A small group of men huddled around the plague column. Benda saw me and came over to greet me.

“Good, you came quickly. We want to get him out of here before the city wakes up and we have a furor on our hands.”

“Who is it?” I asked. “It is the same?”

Benda gestured toward the base of the large monument. Walther Hennen lay on the steps at the base, his gnarled right leg splayed off to the side at a sharp angle. His right arm rested against the bloodstained, squat balustrade wall that separated the plinth of the huge pillar from the stones of the plaza; his left arm lay at his side. He stared unseeing at the sky, his mouth shaped in the same surprised rictus as Alois's had been, his throat slashed from ear to ear. Blood seeped over the coat of the dress suit I had seen him in just hours before at the Redoutensaal. His ornate stick lay several feet from his body.

Troger nodded at me. “It's our killer,” he said. “The placement of the body, the slashes on the throat are the same. And his forehead—the cuts are the same as those on the old priest.”

My empty stomach heaved, but I forced myself to look carefully at Hennen's body. His forehead was covered with blood. “Could someone clean off his forehead?” I asked.

Troger opened his mouth to object, but then nodded at a constable, who leaned over the body and gingerly wiped the crimson mess off the dead baron's head.

My legs shook as I knelt and examined the forehead.

“It's the same man, for certain,” Benda said. “The pattern fits. First he attacks a great war hero, next a priest, and now an aristocrat.”

The markings were the same as Troger had described to me when he and Pergen had told me that Alois's body had been mutilated. A shallow, straight line stretched from the spot in the center of Hennen's eyes to about a half-inch below his hairline. To the right of the straight line, the killer had cut a broad arc beginning at the top of the straight line and ending halfway down it, in the middle of the baron's forehead. I squinted, trying to avoid Hennen's vacant stare as I studied the cuts. A memory niggled in the back of my brain. Something about the shapes was familiar—

“You must arrest that protester, Richter, right away,” Benda told Troger.

“On what evidence, sir? I need more than your theory and intuition before I can convince Count Pergen to issue an arrest warrant,” Troger replied.

I stared at Hennen's forehead, racking my brain to remember where I had encountered this figure before. I looked up at the statues on the plinth of the monument, and then down at Hennen's forehead again. Then it came to me. A ball of ice settled at the pit of my stomach. I knew that Benda's theory was wrong. We were not confronting a man who, motivated by his hatred of the war, was killing symbols of the country's might and power. No, the devil committing these crimes was driven by urges that were much more malevolent.

 

PART II

Women and Good Wine

 

Twelve

Benda and I walked down the Kärntnerstrasse to the Himmelpfortgasse, where Hennen had lived. We said little, each of us lost in our thoughts.

“I saw Hennen just last night, at the Redoutensaal,” I finally said as we turned into the street. “He was wearing the same clothes.”

“He must have met his killer on his way home,” Benda said, as we walked by a large, opulently ornamented palace that was now used for ministry offices.

“No, I don't think so,” I said. “He left early, as did I. I heard him berate some girls in a fancy carriage as I was hailing a cab. He was angry that they hadn't donated their horses to the war effort. He stalked away, in this direction, not toward the Graben. And besides, the Graben would have still been busy that time of night. This man waits until everyone in the city has gone to bed before he comes out to commit murder.”

Hennen's palace stood at the end of the next block. It was a bit smaller than its neighbors, and not as well maintained. There was no courtyard entrance, just a large, plain wooden door. The paint on the façade had peeled off in large patches in some places, and the stone caryatids that flanked the large doorway were each missing several toes.

Benda knocked on the door. We waited in the light rain for a few moments. There was no answer.

“It's early, but there must be servants about,” Benda said, pounding on the door.