The Silence (30 page)

Obviously Berthe had not given him all the information. ‘No. He was attacked.’

Doktor Praetor took a breath. ‘Was it in association with your investigations?’

‘I believe so,’ Werthen said. ‘I think the same assailant may have earlier attacked me in an effort to stop the investigation.’

‘That it should lead to your family . . .’ Doktor Praetor was clearly shaken. ‘I do apologize. Perhaps we should stop.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Gross. ‘We will not be cowed by such savage actions.’

‘No,’ Doktor Praetor said. ‘Nor will I.’

They were silent for a moment and then Doktor Weisman, who Werthen had almost forgotten, offered, ‘I was the physician who attended him in the first instance. If I may be of any assistance . . . ?’

‘A pleasure,’ Praetor said, shaking the man’s hand. ‘I believe you have already been of immense help. Most wise to bring him here post-haste. Head injuries can be notoriously deceptive.’

Doktor Weisman bowed his head at this, not offering a correction or explanation.

Praetor hurried back to assist Sulzman, and Doktor Weisman pleaded other obligations and departed. Gross and Werthen found their way to the second-floor waiting room, already filled with several groups, their faces wearing similar expressions of pinched expectancy.

‘Perhaps in the hall,’ Werthen said, going outside where there was a bench. If Praetor came to find them he would have to pass in this direction, and Werthen could not see spending hours in the company of others so filled with tension and anxiety.

‘We are close, very close,’ Gross said. ‘Our killer grows frantic. This was obviously a most desperate act.’

‘Agreed,’ Werthen said, sitting and leaning forward, elbows on his thighs.

‘Where to from here?’ Gross asked.

‘Not now, Gross.’ For now another thought filled him with fear and anxiety.

‘Sorry. I thought it might take your mind off—’

‘He could just as easily have injured Berthe or Frieda. Killed them.’

He could hardly bear to think of that. His wife, his baby girl. That some demented stranger could force his way into his home . . .

‘I can stay here,’ Gross offered. ‘You should be with them.’

But at that very moment Detective Inspector Drechsler approached, two uniformed men along with him.

‘Bad business,’ he said, shaking their hands in turn. ‘I’ve stationed two officers at your flat, Advokat. Not to worry.’

‘Berthe?’

‘She is holding up. Your cook seems to be solid as a rock. She gave us a description.’

‘A large, unkempt man in worker’s clothes,’ Werthen said. ‘Wearing a bowler with a thick growth of coal-black hair underneath. A thickened lump at the bridge of his nose as if it had been broken several times. Spoke in an Ottrakring accent.’

‘She told you then,’ Drechsler said.

Werthen shook his head. He explained to Drechsler about being attacked himself, apparently by the same man.

Drechsler rubbed his chin. ‘You seem to have turned over a rock someone wants left in place. Care to explain?’

Werthen glanced at Gross.

‘Well, Detective,’ Gross began, ‘I think we have fairly well proved a connection between the death of Steinwitz and that of Praetor.’

‘On the widow’s say-so?’ Drechsler shook his head. ‘She came to us and mentioned how she had great nerve stress after her husband’s unfortunate death. That she had even thought for a time that both he and the journalist Praetor were murdered because of some silly newspaper article they were working on.’

‘Hardly
silly
,’ Werthen interjected. ‘Nothing more than revelations about a scheme by Lueger to sell off an enormous section of the Vienna Woods.’

Drechsler rubbed his chin again at this news, clearly impressed.

‘Be that as it may,’ the inspector continued, ‘she said she was recanting any suspicions she had about her husband’s death. She said she could just not stand the shame of knowing he was a suicide, so she let her imagination run away with her.’

‘Why would Frau Steinwitz bother coming to the police with this story?’ Gross asked. ‘When we spoke to her earlier, she would not go to you even though she feared for her life.’

‘Makes sense then, doesn’t it,’ Drechsler said. ‘She wasn’t really in fear of her life.’

‘I repeat my question,’ Gross said. ‘Why come to you at all with this explanation?’

Drechsler looked somewhat sheepish.

‘Out with it, Inspector,’ Gross thundered.

‘She said she had spoken to a couple of private inquiry agents who had been very pushy about wanting information. She did not want to be bothered by those men again.’ He turned to Werthen. ‘In point of fact, my man told me you went to pay her a visit early this morning.’

Gross turned to him. ‘Is that so, Werthen?’

Werthen explained his visit and also his surprise at the change in Frau Steinwitz’s story. But as events had thereafter overtaken him, he’d had no time to inform Gross of the interview.

‘It was quite cordial, I assure you, Inspector. As was our former visit. I had been her husband’s
Advokat
before he became a council member.’

‘Any other evidence except what the widow said and then later recanted?’

‘You gave me the first bit of connection yourself, Inspector,’ Gross said, reminding him of the use of the same type of weapon in each case, a 7.65 mm Roth-Sauer automatic.

‘Correct. Not the same weapon, though.’

‘No, of course not.’ Gross peered at Drechsler. ‘Has someone talked to you, Inspector?’

Drechsler did not look at either man when he spoke. ‘Frau Steinwitz spoke with Inspector Meindl directly. He was furious, of course.’

‘He always is,’ Werthen said.

But Drechsler was not to be humored. ‘I feel awful about this, after what you are doing for my wife with her upcoming surgery and all. But after the drama of last Sunday with the Wittgensteins, Meindl told me to warn you two off. Now, with this latest incident—’

‘Warn us off?’ Gross said. ‘Off what? That infernal little toad.’

‘He was quite serious this time,’ Drechsler continued. ‘Lueger’s office also spoke with Meindl earlier today. After that call he made it very clear to me that there’s a posting in Carinthia where I will end up tracing cattle thieves if I don’t convince you two to call it quits with the investigation of Steinwitz.’

‘I quite understand,’ Gross said.

The statement shocked both Werthen and Drechsler.

‘You do?’ Drechsler said.

‘And you may tell Inspector Meindl that as of today we will curtail our investigation of Councilman Steinwitz.’

Drechsler’s face broke into a wide grin. It was the first time Werthen had ever seen the man smile.

‘Thank you, Doktor Gross. And you too, Advokat. I won’t forget this, you can be sure of it. I’ll have every available man looking for the thug that did this to your father-in-law.’

‘Much appreciated, Inspector,’ Werthen said.

Once Drechsler and his two policemen left, Werthen wheeled on Gross.

‘Whatever got into you to make that promise?’

‘The man’s obviously distressed,’ Gross said. ‘Do you wish him to end up in the cow patties of Carinthia?’

‘No, but—’

‘I am sure you will notice that I made no such promise about curtailing the investigation of Henricus Praetor’s death.’

It felt good to smile. ‘You cunning old dog,’ Werthen said.

‘And now tell me, Werthen, just what enticement did you offer that
Fiaker
driver to take a badly wounded man in his carriage? How much did it cost?’

‘Nothing.’

‘
Und bitte
,’ Gross said with utter disbelief.

‘Truth is I helped Bachmann with some family difficulties last summer. He was very grateful for the support.’

‘Legal problems?’

‘A strange situation. You see it turns out that Bachmann is actually the son of a certain count, distant cousin to the Habsburgs themselves.’

‘Werthen, if you are having me on—’

‘I assure you, this is only too real. I do not know if you noticed, but Bachmann moves with a distinct limp.’

‘No, I must admit I was too concerned with other matters at the time. Quite unlike me to miss something like that, though.’

‘He compensates well, but he was born with a club foot. His parents – well, the count in particular – were most adamant about not having a cripple for a son and heir. So they sought out a fine healthy specimen from the lower classes, a cabby’s son, as a matter of fact.’

Werthen found himself rather enjoying the recounting of this curious history; it was a distraction from the harsher realities at hand.

‘You don’t mean to say they traded sons?’ Gross was indignant at the idea.

‘Actually, they purchased the new one and gave their deformed baby in return. All quite legal, I assure you.’

‘The aristocracy.’ Gross almost spat the word out.

‘Well, the count’s true son thus grew up with the cabby’s family and later began to drive a
Fiaker
himself, while the cabby’s son grew up in the count’s family and later went into the military, where, I am sorry to say, he was killed on maneuvers in the Balkans last year. And since the count too had already died, the countess wanted her real son back. She petitioned the courts, and when Bachmann received word of how matters stood, he contacted me. He had heard from other
Fiaker
drivers that I was an honest man – how they determine that, I do not know other than that I tip well. At any rate, Bachmann wanted no part of any nobility. “A cabman I am and will always be,” he told me. He hired me to write up an official renunciation of the title of count, which would pass to him. Instead a distant cousin in Voralberg is now the count and inherits millions.’

‘What a curious story.’

‘Bachmann is happy as he is. His adoptive father is long dead, but his mother still cares for him and his wife and small family. He told me he would never renounce that woman, not for all the gold in Budapest.’

They were interrupted by the approach of Doktor Praetor, who was walking briskly toward them along the hallway.

Werthen could not read his face.

‘Doktor?’ he said.

Praetor said nothing until he was within arm’s length of Werthen.

‘They are still operating. But I think he will survive. There was leakage in the brain from the contusion. The surgeon has now allowed the blood to drain and released the pressure on the brain.’

He did not sound optimistic, however.

‘What else?’ Werthen said.

‘We cannot know how much damage was done to the brain until later. There could be lasting effects, with speech, perhaps with movement. We will only know these things in the next days and weeks.’

‘The man must be on Lueger’s payroll,’ Werthen said.

Both Gross and his wife were at dinner, as well as the von Werthens.

‘Do you think it is completely safe here?’ Herr von Werthen said. ‘I mean if that animal struck twice, why not again?’

Werthen attempted a jocular tone: ‘Do you need assurances beyond the fact that there is a police watch and that Frau Blatschky assures me next time the shotgun will be loaded?’

The cook was just taking away the dinner plates as Werthen said this, and blushed down to the starched white band of her collar.

Berthe sat silently, Frieda on her lap now, for the child’s naptime had been turned topsy-turvy. Berthe had gotten back from the hospital not long before with good news. Her father was out of surgery, and seemed to be recovering well. Still, the doubt about long-term damage lingered.

Werthen and Gross had had little time to discuss all these alarming new developments, and so used the dinner hour for that purpose.

‘As I was saying at the hospital,’ Gross said, ‘we must be very close now to provoke such a desperate act.’

He nodded to Berthe as if to apologize for speaking so clinically about her father’s injuries, and she quickly shook her head, moving Frieda to her shoulder to burp her.

‘No, please go on,’ she insisted. ‘I want this monster behind bars in the Liesel.’

Werthen put a hand on her shoulder reassuringly, and Frieda suddenly gripped his forefinger with rather extraordinary firmness.

‘It’s about time at that,’ Herr von Werthen said. ‘I don’t see how you fellows can make a living of this investigating business if you can’t solve cases.’

No one, not even Frau von Werthen, responded to this. Nor, seemingly, even paid the man any attention.

‘As you noted to Detective Inspector Drechsler today,’ Gross continued, ‘each time we have paid an official visit to the Rathaus, there has been an attack. Of course I discount my little inspection tour of Councilman Bielohlawek’s office, as no one was aware of that. Is this a mere matter of coincidence? It would seem unlikely.’

‘Right,’ agreed Werthen. ‘There was nothing Lueger could do to us directly while we were at the Rathaus this morning, for I made it painfully obvious that others knew our whereabouts. So later he dispatches this creature of his to put a further scare into me.’

‘What do you think he would have done if you had been home?’ Berthe wondered aloud. But as with Herr von Werthen’s comment, this one drew no response.

‘It has to be Lueger,’ Werthen said.

‘Guilty of corruption, but of murder?’ Gross said.

‘Find the attacker and we will know,’ Frau Gross said, joining the discussion.

But Werthen knew this would not be easy. Such a man could easily hide away among the criminals and other lowlifes of Vienna; there was nothing distinctive about his features except for the broken nose. And how many toughs in Vienna’s Second District bore such battle scars? Perhaps they could attempt to trace him back to Lueger’s known employees?

‘If I had only been here,’ Herr von Werthen said, puffing out his chest.