The Silence (25 page)

‘I had no idea you were an enthusiast of the Old West,’ his assistant said.

‘Actually we are here on business. But it looks like you are prepared for a good time.’

Both young boys had large bags of popcorn in their hands.

‘And how were you able to effect an escape this time, Master Wittgenstein?’

The boy blushed. ‘Well, I practiced a bit of magic.’

He nudged Heidl as he spoke, for the other boy was obviously in on the scheme.

‘Yes?’ Werthen said. ‘Don’t worry. I am no longer representing your father.’

‘Saturday afternoon is my piano lesson. I go to Madame du Pauly in the First District for my torture and am not expected back until teatime. So—’

‘Allow me a conjecture,’ Gross said. ‘You had your young friend here, Herr Heidl Beer, appear in all his finery at Madame du Pauly’s with a message.’

Young Wittgenstein’s eyes grew large at Gross’s speculation.

‘Ah, I see I am close to the truth. Perhaps the message would be from your parents, stating that you needed to return home. A sensitive young lad like you would not use illness as an excuse; that could have an unfortunate resonance.’

‘You said you wouldn’t tell anybody,’ Ludwig said, turning on Heidl.

‘I didn’t.’ The other boy sounded outraged at the suggestion.

‘Thus, barring medical emergency, I would suggest the unexpected arrival of a favorite relative. An aunt, perhaps. Or an uncle, latterly traveling in South America.’

‘You’re a wizard,’ Wittgenstein said.

Gross shrugged. ‘No. Merely a reader of the “Notables” column in the daily paper. I see your uncle did return from Paraguay this very week.’

Wittgenstein now looked disappointed, and huddled himself into his fur-collared coat.

‘Explanation ruins magic,’ he said.

He sat back in the first-class coach of the Alpine Express and watched the snow-blanketed landscape race by outside his window. The time away from Vienna had done him good; no longer was his left foot so swollen and painful. Gout, the doctors said, but he knew better. It was only a matter of time. He could try to control his disease, but he knew that eventually it would get the better of him.

He lit a Gross Glockner cigar, only his third of the day, and exhaled a wreath of blue smoke into the compartment where he sat alone. He had taken the entire car; his aides were scattered in the other compartments.

The train whistled through the station at St Pölten. Its platforms were empty except for a mother and her small daughter standing at her side, thumb in her mouth, staring wide-eyed at the express flying past her, ruffling her long mauve skirts.

How long did he have? No one was saying, but he tried to live each day as fully as possible. Keep your mind in the present; the future will take care of itself.

But events in the present were now intruding on his future. His vendetta against the Habsburgs was so near to coming to successful closure, all his careful machinations about to come to fruition.

Yet at the same time everything was beginning to unravel. He understood from Bielohlawek that investigators were snooping about, picking at the ashes of Steinwitz’s death, nosing around the affairs of the Rathaus. If so, it was only a matter of time until they would make associations, put the pieces together. The press had not come into it yet, but that, too, was only a matter of time.

He had to contain this, at least until Wednesday. Then let the critics wail and gnash their teeth. He would weather it. The Christian Democrats would weather it. He could always count on the small people of Vienna who loved him like a saint. He could always blame it on the Jews. After all, the Jew Wittgenstein represented one group of bidders; Remington, or whatever he chose to call himself, the other. And he, Mayor Lueger, had done his homework on Taylor Remington, formerly Thomas Remminghaus. The man was a chameleon. Not only had he re-created himself as a frontier American, a character out of the pages of Karl May, but before that he had already reinvented himself as a German. For, Lueger and his aides had discovered, the impresario and his family had originally hailed from Galicia, where his name as a young boy was Tomas Remstein. The Jewish Remstein.

Lueger looked at his bearded handsome reflection in the window of his train compartment and smiled contentedly.

Once again, the Jews did it. The despoilers of the country.

And once the money was collected there were a thousand and one ways to conceal its uses. Through years of redirecting ‘gifts’ from industrialists and municipal funds toward campaign expenditures, Lueger and his team had devised a Byzantine structure of funding channels and money redirection and ‘cleaning’ that not even a Swiss bank director could follow. Just get him the money from the sale, and it would be safe.

Lueger looked at the stub of cigar wedged between his forefinger and middle finger. Those fingers were stained almost as dark as the cigar itself. He had long ago given up on trying to eradicate that nicotine stain.

But this stain of disclosure was another matter. Only a few more days of containing this affair.

Was it time to enlist Kulowski’s aid in the matter?

Karl Lueger was a tidy man in his personal habits; he liked to have his desk neatly arranged, his affairs in order. Hildegard, his older sister, looked after domestic arrangements at his simple apartment in the Rathaus. Lunch was always on the table promptly at twelve ten. Clean suits and freshly polished gold cufflinks awaited him every morning after his bath. His life was untroubled by marriage. Like a priest to the church, he felt he was married to politics, to his duties as mayor of the finest city in Europe. He found release with Marianne, but that, like the state of his health, was a closely guarded secret.

Now, his orderly plans were at risk of becoming messy in the extreme. And all because his old school chum Steinwitz had suddenly found a conscience. That was a deep betrayal. Middle-class boys, the both of them. And the Theresianum had been the making of them. They were the bright boys, the day boys, the first of their generation to claw their way into the lair of privilege and nobility. And Lueger had not forgotten his friend Steinwitz. He had taken him with him on his meteoric rise in Vienna politics. He had made the man. And to be paid back in such a pitiless manner. It was really too much. Where was the man’s sense of loyalty? The killing paid him back, though. He could almost understand—

His thoughts were interrupted when the door to his compartment opened unexpectedly, letting in the noise of the rushing train. Kulowski stood there, looking uncomfortable as usual in a suit that appeared at least one size too small.

‘Just to let you know we will be there in ten minutes, chief.’

‘I am quite aware of that,’ Lueger said, irritated at having been torn out of his thoughts.

‘You told me to remind you.’

‘And now you have.’ Lueger waved his cigar dismissively at the man.

After the door closed, Lueger leaned back against the linen-covered headrest, closed his eyes and said quietly out loud, ‘Buffalo.’

But at least Kulowski was loyal.

Sixteen

S
unday morning Werthen awoke to a nearly silent world. It was not just that Sundays were usually more quiet than other days, with less traffic and fewer pedestrians on the street. He knew this Sunday was special.

His robe on, he looked out the front windows of the sitting room and saw a swirling mass of snow coming from the skies. A childish glee filled him.

All morning long it snowed with an intensity that he had not known since his youth. The green ceramic oven in the sitting room hummed with heat and outside the snow fell silently. A white, mute presence. They did not even attempt their usual Sunday stroll around the Ringstrasse.

He determined to take his mind off the case for at least one day. Really, he had no choice. The Viennese were sticklers for Sunday-day-of-rest. There were no interviews he could conduct, no leads to follow on the hallowed Sunday.

So, he and Berthe sat reading in the sitting room while Frieda gurgled and lolled about on a large blanket between them on the leather sofa. Werthen held his little daughter through her morning nap, marveling, as millennia of doting parents have, at the absolute perfection of their progeny. Today he was focusing on her ears, miracles of precision and sweetness. The pinkness of the lobes, the almost translucent quality of the skin filled him with a sudden awe. Were he a religious man he would have put it down to God’s doing.

This thought spurred others: he would have to come to terms with his battling parents and father-in-law sometime. Herr Meisner should be here; should be enjoying his granddaughter. He felt guilt at this, but it was as much his father-in-law’s fault as theirs. He was a stubborn goat. At least he had gotten his parents to remain quiet about a possible baptism, yet he knew it was only a matter of time before they began clamoring again for a proper church ceremony. The old hypocrites, he thought, not without a certain degree of fondness.

Werthen managed to put these thoughts out of his mind and enjoy the morning and the unexpected snowfall. They were just about to sit down to their Sunday lunch of
Backhendl
, fried chicken served with parsley potatoes and a fresh kraut salad, when the ringer on their apartment door sounded. He and Berthe exchanged quick glances, for no one was expected today. Perhaps his parents, he thought, bored with nothing to do on a wintry day. It was Frau Blatschky’s day off, so he got up to answer the door.

Standing on the threshold was Detective Inspector Drechsler looking rather glum.

‘Detective,’ Werthen said, attempting to hide his surprise. ‘Please come in and warm yourself.’

Drechsler shook his head at the invitation. ‘Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, Advokat. We have a problem.’

‘Please, come in. What is it?’

‘I don’t want to disturb you.’

‘You already have,’ Werthen said with a smile, but he was not feeling very jolly. Drechsler’s expression was worrying. ‘We can’t talk out here.’ He took the man by the arm and guided him in.

Berthe had come to the foyer by now, Frieda in arms, and smiled as the policeman came in.

‘You remember my wife,’ Werthen said.

Drechsler tipped his snow-dusted derby at her. ‘Good day, madam,’ he said. ‘Apologies for the intrusion.’

‘You must be frozen,’ she said. ‘Can I offer you anything? Tea?’

‘No, not now. Too kind of you. I just need a quick word with your husband.’

Berthe nodded at this implicit request for privacy, and returned to the dining room.

‘What is it, Drechsler? You look done in.’

‘I wouldn’t bother you except that I know you have a certain relationship with Herr Wittgenstein.’

‘Well, yes. He was, as you know, a client. But what has Herr Wittgenstein got to do with anything?’

Drechsler pulled out an envelope from his coat pocket and retrieved a small card kept in the envelope. It looked to be something official, for he caught a glimpse of the Austrian eagle stamp. It was also smudged with what appeared to be dried blood. Drechsler was careful to handle the card so as not to get his fingers on the stains.

‘This was found earlier today on the body of a . . . a person who fell to his death under the
Stadtbahn
at the Karlsplatz station. Not a large person.’

‘You mean a child?’ Werthen began to feel his heart race.

‘Yes,’ Drechsler said, his head bowed. ‘A child. He was killed immediately and his head . . .’ He let out a long sigh. ‘Well, he could not be identified. They think he must have slipped. All this snow, you know, and the platforms were wet from people’s shoes. Irony is, the trains just started running again before he fell. They had to clear the tracks and there was quite a crowd at the station waiting. No one saw it happen, just that he suddenly fell as the train was pulling into Karlsplatz.’

‘And this card was on the body?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does it have a name?’ But Werthen knew already. Knew with a sickening feeling in his heart.

‘It is a yearly pass to the Imperial Natural History Museum. All that could be found on the body. It was in the boy’s overcoat.’

‘Young Ludwig Wittgenstein?’

A curt nod of the head from Drechsler.

‘You’re sure?’ Werthen asked.

‘Like I say, physical identification is impossible. But with this card and the proximity to the Wittgenstein palais . . . I thought perhaps it would be better coming from someone who at least knows him. I don’t mean to avoid responsibility.’

‘You were quite right to come, Detective Inspector. Just let me tell my wife. I’ll be with you presently.’

Drechsler had secured a
Fiaker
from the Police Praesidium; it was still waiting in the street at Werthen’s apartment.

They spoke little on the way to the Palais Wittgenstein, but at one point Drechsler did grow expansive.

‘I wanted to thank you and Doktor Gross. That surgeon fellow, Praetor, we had a consultation with him and he says he can make the wife fit as a French horn in no time. She goes in for surgery the end of the week.’

‘Splendid news, Drechsler. I am happy for you.’

The policeman seemed to want to add something, but thought better of it, as if this was hardly the time to express feelings about his good luck.

The
Fiaker
pulled up to the Wittgenstein mansion finally and Werthen still did not know what he was going to say to Karl Wittgenstein.

Drechsler accompanied him, but it was clearly on Werthen to break the news to the industrialist. He had thought of approaching the daughter, Fräulein Mining, first, but then remembered how Wittgenstein had chastised him before for not summoning him to the morgue. No. He would go straight to the father.

Meier, the servant, opened the door.

‘Yes, sir?’