A Matter of Breeding (21 page)

The two other gendarme officers hurried to the scene once they heard the shots, as did some of the spectators from the bonfire. These they pressed into service to carry the corpses to the local gendarmerie. Next to Krensky’s body lay a razor-sharp horn-handled knife obviously used to kill him. This Gross wrapped in his handkerchief; he hoped to get some fingerprints off the knife and this time he had the suspect – or at least his corpse – readily available for matching the prints.

Then Thielman and he set off for Klapper’s cottage. Gross still expected to find nothing. In the event, however, they were rewarded within minutes of entering the filthy place. While Gross was busying himself in the cooking area, Thielman discovered a loose floorboard in the bedroom and hidden underneath it was a Ben Austrian cigar box. By the time Gross got to his side, the inspector was already investigating the interior of the box to find mementoes of Klapper’s crimes, a bit of bloody cloth, a brooch, and one grizzly prize: what appeared to be a human nipple.

Gross had little doubt these could all be traced to the victims.

There was also a bottle of ink and a pen with a fat nib in the same box. Gross imagined that after chemical analysis, the ink in that bottle and on the notes sent to him, Monika Stiegl, and Magistrate Lechner would also prove a match.

This angered Gross. Once again he had been wrong in this case, counseling against searching the cottage for evidence instead of laying a trap for Klapper. But the Klapper he had known those years before would never have left such incriminating evidence about. Klapper had obviously become careless during the time he had spent in prison.

It was late when Magistrate Lechner finally arrived at the Hitzendorf gendarmerie and viewed the bodies. Lechner shook his head.

‘You’re a lucky man, Gross.’

Gross did not reply, but simply focused on the corpse of young Theo Krensky, whom he had failed to save.

‘I told you I would feed you to the media if you let another person die,’ Lechner said. ‘But this is hardly some helpless young virgin, now, is it? In fact, he was a member of the press himself, and not very beloved. As I understand it, he had been poking around the breeding program of the Lipizzaner stud. Not much of a loss. And now you have the dead culprit in hand and some very foolproof evidence to boot.’

Another shake of the head before Lechner pronounced, ‘A very fortunate man, Gross.’

When questioned in the morning, von Hobarty seemed genuinely shaken.

‘He was a relative,’ he told Gross and Thielman. ‘I was doing him a favor, trying to rehabilitate the man. He swore he was innocent of the crimes he went to prison for. I confess, I felt sorry for him. I had no idea he was a psychopath … a killer.’

They were gathered in his library once again, but this time, humbled by the fact that he had been harboring a criminal, von Hobarty invited them to sit down and had his cook, Frau Anschitz, send up coffee.

Gross was again impressed by the man’s vital appearance, something he had noted at their first meeting. He did not show his age, for his thick black hair and beard showed very little gray, and the brownish hue of his skin made him seem an outdoorsy sort.

‘As I recall,’ Gross said, ‘at our first interview you conjectured that these murders were the doings of “riff-raff”. I believe that was the term you used, implying either Jews or gypsies.’

Von Hobarty did not so much as blink. ‘Your point being?’

‘Things are not always as they appear.’

‘If you are trying to embarrass me, Doktor Gross, do not bother. I engaged in verbal duels with far better orators than you while in Parliament. And I have told you that I am deeply sorry that I was responsible for bringing this man into our midst. He should never have been let out of prison. Had the investigating magistrate who prosecuted the case done his job, he would have been put away for life.’

Gross felt his scalp go red and was sure von Hobarty knew it was he, Gross, who had prosecuted Klapper’s case.

‘One thing is unclear to me,’ Gross said. ‘You are a relative. Surely you knew Klapper’s true name, yet he went under an alias as your gamekeeper.’

Von Hobarty shrugged. ‘Of course I knew his real name was Franz Klapper. But when he joined my staff, he said he wanted to put his old life behind him. Wanted a fresh start and a fresh identity. So he came up with the alias Fritz Kupfer and I agreed to it. I saw no harm in it at the time. In hindsight, however …’ He lifted his left hand palm upward as if to say hindsight deals in perfect vision.

Inspector Thielman queried von Hobarty further about the movements of Klapper, his days off, and whether he had access to von Hobarty’s equipage. Meanwhile, Gross, examining the bookcase, saw a number of books on folklore just as Stoker had earlier noted.

‘Did Herr Klapper go in for books on folklore and folk customs?’ he asked.

‘He may have been a relative,’ von Hobarty retorted, ‘but I assure you our relationship was one of employer and servant. I hardly know what Klapper went in for in a literary way. Why do you ask?’

‘Just a thought,’ Gross said. The information about the distinctive mutilations – the quarters of the moon carved into the victims’ sternums – had still not been made public.

‘Now you mention it though, he did ask to borrow a book or two now and then,’ von Hobarty said, ‘but I hardly kept track of his reading preferences.’

Which did not sound to Gross very much like a master-servant relationship, but he said nothing. Klapper was dead, caught at the scene of the crime; evidence of all sorts had been collected from his cottage. It was not part of Gross’s brief to make von Hobarty eat crow.

Werthen looked at the front page of the London
Daily Telegraph
that Gross had sent from Czernowitz. A note accompanying the page noted, ‘I had the feeling that our Irish friend would find a way to use this material.’

The headline of the story below the fold read, ‘Austrian Sherlock Holmes at Work’
.

Berthe was sitting by his side on the leather couch in the sitting room, while seated at the Biedermeier table in a corner, Frieda was busily playing Mikado with Frau Blatschky. The cook was gingerly attempting to lift the prized blue stick from a bundle of other sticks dropped on the table, only to move nearby yellow and black ones, losing her turn.

She muttered something that made Frieda laugh quite hysterically.

‘Stoker was pleasant enough,’ Berthe said. ‘He was quite helpful when Frieda was so ill. One can hardly blame him for doing what writers do.’

‘I suppose,’ Werthen said somewhat absently.

Truth was, Werthen was feeling somewhat irritable. When Frieda miraculously recovered from scarlet fever, he felt that he had learned a vital lesson in life: that there was nothing so precious as family. Nothing else mattered.

Yet here he was on a quiet family Sunday just a matter of weeks later, with Christmas approaching, and all he could think of was the Styrian affair.

It had all ended so abruptly; not that he was displeased that the killer had been found and brought to a rough sort of justice, but that after working so hard on the case he had not been in on the finale. There was no doubt that Klapper was the killer. Even though there were no prints to be taken from the knife used to kill Krensky, he had been caught in the act with his last victim. And he was soon connected to the other crimes. Locals who thought nothing of the fact of von Hobarty’s gamekeeper being in their vicinity before his death suddenly came forward to announce that they had seen the man – and his unmistakable birthmark – on the day of the killings in their respective villages. Such are the vagaries of witnesses: expecting the unusual, they overlook the familiar. This was another Gross precept that Klapper had evidently internalized and used against the criminologist.

Crime solved; still, Werthen wished he had been there on that final tracking.

The Lipizzaner matter was another annoyance. With the death of Theo Krensky, that scandal was put to rest. The publisher of the
Kronen Zeitung
did not have Krensky’s research file, only his initial story. And without the source available to back up Krensky’s assertions, no one would publish. Berthe had tried to get the young man to share his source with her before his death, but to no avail.

The Praesidium in Graz, Magistrate Lechner in particular, was satisfied with the theory that Krensky was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though Klapper had only killed young women up to then, it was felt that he wanted to confound the police – and particularly Doktor Gross – by changing his modus operandi.

Gross was immediately thereafter called back to Czernowitz where the new and rival sociology department seemed to be luring away his best criminology students; he made no comment about Klapper’s choice of a fifth victim, nor indeed about the resolution of the case. Otto, finished with his treatment, went back with his father for a brief visit.

Werthen for one, however, found Krensky’s death awfully convenient for those involved in the Lipizzaner scandal.

His worries found little support. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, so often in the past his champion, sought only to let the matter rest. And Berthe was only focused on Frieda, so relieved that the child had survived.

As I should be, as well, he thought.

‘How about an outing to the zoo,’ he said, which suggestion elicited squeals of delight from all.

Berthe had decided to stop the art lessons, but a phone call from Tina Blau brought her to the artist’s studio the following Monday. Blau had been rather vague about her request to speak with Berthe, who feared that she was in for a lecture on the importance of art and commitment. Arriving at the studio, she was thus pleasantly surprised by a request for a professional consultation.

‘It has been going on for several weeks now,’ Blau explained. ‘At first I thought these were merely accidents or perhaps the work of some small animals that might have gained access to the studio.’

She pulled out a canvas from a wooden storage rack, turning it so that Berthe could see the front.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Obviously not the work of a squirrel, then.’

A black ‘X’ had been scrawled over one student’s effort at a Prater landscape.

‘No,’ Blau said, shaking her head. ‘Frau Polster was quite indignant about it. She had put in quite a number of hours on this painting.’

‘What other sorts of mischief have there been?’

‘At first there was a broken window pane. I thought it the work perhaps of a bird or of some child with a penchant for rocks. I merely had it repaired. Then there was another broken pane a few days later. I had it repaired as well and there was nothing for a week or so. I quite put it out of my mind when one day I discovered a broken easel.’

‘Inside the studio, then,’ Berthe said.

Blau nodded. ‘It could have been the result of an accident. Perhaps one of the students had broken it and felt so badly that she tried to cover it up. Then a few days ago I discovered a hole in one of the students’ paintings. Again, I looked for the simplest explanation …’

‘Or most innocent,’ Berthe added.

‘Yes, I suppose so. I mean, who wants to believe someone is consciously vandalizing one’s property? It could have been a small animal that gnawed through the canvas.’

‘You still have the painting?’

Another nod from Blau. ‘And then came the defacement of Frau Polster’s painting.’

‘I will examine them later.’

‘Then you will help?’ She sounded awfully relieved.

‘Someone is, as you say, vandalizing your property. The police should be consulted.’

Blau, normally so imposing, suddenly looked sheepish. Her face reddened and she looked down.

Berthe smiled. ‘Which, by your downcast look, you must have already done. And they said …?’

‘They would look into it in due course.’

‘So you called me, thinking that meant the police would not bother with such a trifling matter.’

‘Frau Mayreder did highly recommend you … There is one thing more. This morning at the front door to the studio I found Fritz. A cat that is half wild but that I have fed for some time. Someone had killed him and placed the carcass just by the entrance. That vile act is what made me call you this morning.’

‘And I am glad you did because I do not find this a trifling matter. I see an escalating pattern here, someone crying out for attention, someone determined to cause damage for some reason. Do you have enemies, Frau Blau?’

‘Besides the art critics, you mean?’

Berthe smiled. ‘Yes. Besides the obvious.’

She shook her head. ‘For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would want to do this to me.’

Berthe looked at the slashes of black on the canvas. ‘Perhaps this is not personal. Not directed at you, that is, but at the studio.’

Werthen was at the office this morning. A new client, Herr Wiesenthal, a distillery owner, was involved in a complicated dispute over land in Upper Austria, and Werthen was up to his ears in deeds and survey maps of boundary lines.

Franzl, their new office boy, brought in a mid-morning cup of coffee. Werthen had been initially skeptical about hiring the youth – the protégé of the dead riding master – not because he thought the child ill-suited to the work, but because of Erika Metzinger’s history. His secretary had earlier taken in a street urchin with traumatic results. However, this time it seemed to be different. Franzl continued to live with his aunt, and Erika, involved with the journalist Sonnenthal, was not becoming overly attached to him. Werthen felt a real affinity for the young boy, so eager to please and always drawing pictures of horses in his free time.

He turned his attention back to the documents littering his desk, wishing that he had the excuse of an investigation so that he could hand the lot over to the capable hands of Fräulein Metzinger.

At that very moment, his wife arrived, accompanied by an older, rather august looking woman. Though diminutive in height, the woman carried herself almost regally, wearing her graying hair in a bun atop her head, and dressed in a sort of smock-like coat, hardly warm enough for the chilly day. She had, Werthen further noted, the most penetrating eyes he had ever seen.