A Matter of Breeding (8 page)

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘A new cat among the pigeons.’

It took a moment for Werthen to understand. ‘You gave Krafft-Ebing that information.’

Gross looked pleased with himself.

‘And the reporter?’ Werthen asked.

‘I merely made a conjecture in a telegram to an editor I know. We cannot very well have half of Europe believing there are vampires in Styria or that Jews are committing blood rituals.’

‘Manipulating the press now, are you?’ Werthen said.

‘Someone must,’ Gross said. ‘And neatly done, too, I believe. But I must apologize, Stoker,’ he said, turning to the third passenger. ‘This rather takes the steam out of your promotional efforts.’

‘I am not sure I follow you,’ Stoker said.

‘But of course you do, man,’ Gross said. ‘If the press takes up the cry of a sexual deviant being responsible for these murders, then the vampire angle is gone and so is your
Dracula
connection. You see, my same editor friend advised me that he had been contacted by your agent or publicist, or whatever such a person is called, regarding a possible series of articles on the vampire murders.’

Stoker had the good grace to redden in the cheeks at being caught out.

‘Now, far be it from me to suggest that you, Herr Stoker, having read in the early editions of the supposed vampire killings in Styria, fabricated the story of being followed in order to worm your way into this investigation. That, knowing Advokat Werthen and I often work together, you decided to employ our good friend as a bodyguard.’

‘How could I know that you were involved in the investigation?’ Stoker protested.

‘It has come to my attention that various newspapers reported my presence at the third crime scene.’

Werthen looked on in stunned amazement that quickly turned to pique.

‘Is this true, Stoker? You hired me under false pretenses?’

‘No, none of it,’ he said.

Werthen and Gross both stared hard at him and he finally relented. ‘Oh, all right. If you must know, I was bored senseless in Vienna waiting for the day of my speech. I do not know why my publicist brought me over so early.’

‘You’re a free man,’ Werthen said. ‘Why not just come down here on your own? Why involve me in this ruse?’

‘I feel a kinship to you gentlemen. You may not know it, but I was once clerk of court to the petty sessions. It was a position that took a degree of legal training. I traveled all round Ireland as a young man, organizing the courts, listening in on cases, advising the Justices of the Peace. It was a fascinating time, my first introduction to real life outside the cosseted home life of my family.’

‘Collecting fines and issuing beer licenses hardly qualifies you as an investigator,’ Gross said.

‘I apologize, to both of you. Sincerely, I do. But I was so eager to put my brain to some real use.’

‘Not the gentlemanly thing to do, Stoker,’ Werthen said, but he took some pleasure in the realization that Stoker had fooled Schnitzler, too.

‘Whoever said I am a gentleman? I am a writer. But I
can
be of assistance, a third pair of eyes. Just give me a chance.’

Remembering Stoker’s observation that von Hobarty had an edition of Gross’s
Criminal Investigations
, Werthen thought maybe the Irishman had a point. Perhaps he could be of service and see things with fresh foreign eyes.

Werthen looked at Gross. ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ the criminologist said. ‘We can hardly throw the man out of a moving carriage. Besides, he is rather too large for that endeavor. In fact his size might come in useful.’ Then to Stoker: ‘Are you handy with your fists?’

‘I’ve been known to spar in the ring.’

‘Then it’s settled. Roles are thus forth reversed,’ Gross said. ‘You shall be
our
protector.’

‘But what of my commission?’ Werthen said. ‘I should be taking money under false pretenses.’

‘Not at all, Werthen,’ Gross said. ‘Think of it. Who is paying you to protect our Irish friend?’

‘Well, officially the Concordia, but it seems to be coming from Court. Prince Montenuovo.’

‘Precisely. And if you discover you have the time to aid in investigations of a heinous murderer, who would be benefiting?’ But he allowed no time for a response. ‘The empire, of course. To solve such horrendous crimes is a public service, indeed a duty to the state. False pretenses, pahhh.’

Their initial stop was the village of Judendorf-Strassengel, about six miles to the northeast of Hitzendorf where they were lodged; a little over an hour by carriage. It was a pleasant hamlet set amid rolling hills with the fourteenth-century pilgrimage church of Maria Strassengel overlooking it like a watchman from atop a stony outcrop. It was just off the path of a trail up to the church where the body of the first victim, Fräulein Maria Feininger, had been found on Friday, the fourth of October.

As their carriage was pulling into the main square of the town, a train came chuffing into the nearby station. They had not taken the train from Hitzendorf as it would have necessitated a trip via Graz, where they would have had to change trains and head north for this village.

Even in the twentieth century, Werthen decided, there are times when a horse and the direction a bird flies make more sense than steam power.

The train added a sense of bustle to an otherwise sleepy village. Among the cluster of buildings near the main square was a large and sparely modern construction, the Styrian Park Sanatorium. Recently built, it was one of many water-cure establishments that were fast making Judendorf-Strassengel and other small Styrian villages well-known spa destinations.

Despite the town’s name, there were not many Jewish folk in the town any longer. Only a few shops and the cement works on the edge of town were Jewish-owned, as Gross had informed them en route.

When Stoker queried him regarding the source of such information, Gross had merely cast a haddock eye his way and said, ‘It is common knowledge for those who read.’

For those who read the
Austro-Hungarian Statistical Yearbook
perhaps, Werthen had wanted to say, but thought better of it. Gross was sure to chide him for not making that tome
his
bedside reading.

The carriage stopped at the local gendarmerie headquarters quite near the little hill atop which the church stood.

Sergeant Alfred Metzler was on duty. A bluff man, as round as he was tall, with a lazy left eye, Metzler was full of suspicion at the arrival of strangers asking questions, until he read the letter of introduction Gross carried from Inspector Thielman.

‘Felix vouches for you,’ Metzler said, handing back the hastily perused letter to Gross, ‘that’s good enough for me. But I don’t see the need for calling in fancy Viennese detectives.’

‘Actually,’ Gross said, ‘I am from Graz originally. Perhaps you know of my work as magistrate inspector, or of my textbooks for inspectors?’

Metzler blew air through puffed lips. ‘Can’t say I do. You don’t talk like one of us.’

Werthen held back the urge to clap the good man on the back.

But Gross ignored the remark.

Metzler screwed up his mouth in thought now. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, looking with renewed suspicion at the criminologist. ‘Gross. Doktor Hanns Gross, would that be?’

Now Gross began to puff up, exulting in advance at finally being recognized.

‘None other,’ he replied.

Metzler rifled through a welter of papers atop a tiny desk and finally came up with a folded letter.

‘I was to give this to you if you came my way,’ Metzler said, handing the paper to Gross, who opened it eagerly.

Werthen watched as Gross’s eyes scanned the message, at first showing surprise, but quickly followed by a squinting so fierce as to appear demonic.

‘That odious, carpet-chewing cretin,’ he thundered. Gross crumpled the paper into a ball and looked for a wastebasket into which to toss it. Seeing none, he thrust the crumpled mass into his jacket pocket.

‘Which carpet-chewer would that be, Gross?’ Werthen asked innocently.

‘Magistrate Lechner. A former colleague, and I use that world loosely. We were both investigating magistrates in Graz a decade and more ago. Seems Lechner has stayed at his post.’

Gross said this with acid disgust, for he was a great critic of what he termed the professional bureaucratic class, even though he himself, as a professor at an imperial university, was part and parcel of that very class. Werthen remembered the man from his own time as a criminal defense lawyer in Graz. Lechner took the inquisitorial system to unexpected lengths, playing not only judge, jury, and prosecution, but also the ultimate determiner of the legal code, deciding what evidence could be permitted and what witnesses called on behalf of the defendant. With such weapons at his disposal, it was no wonder Lechner had the highest conviction rate in the province. Gross and Lechner had been oil and water; the criminologist at one point even penned a letter to the editor of the Graz
Presse
complaining of Lechner’s tyrannical judicial manner.

‘He has the temerity to order me back to Graz forthwith.
Order.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, who does he think he’s talking to?’

‘As examining magistrate of the Graz region,’ Metzler chimed in, ‘he has the say so. I would catch the next train to Graz if I were you, Herr Gross.’

‘
Doktor
Gross.’

‘Otherwise I might have to bring you in myself.’

‘But why does Lechner want to see you?’ Werthen asked.

Gross fumed for a moment longer, and finally shook his head. ‘It seems our friend, Inspector Thielman neglected to notify his superior that he was calling me in on the case. Lechner always was a territorial little ferret.’

‘A most interesting name,’ Stoker added, again turning philologist. ‘Lechner. Would that be at all derived from
lechen
?’

The verb ‘to lick’ was used in all variety of less than salubrious descriptions of such bureaucratic types who curried favor by any groveling means necessary.

Gross, however, was not amused.

‘There’s nothing for it, then. I suppose I must return to Graz.’ He focused on Werthen. ‘You will be able to carry on without me?’

The implication of the question stung, but Werthen merely nodded assent.

Metzler took out an old pocket watch as large as an unripe pippin, snapped the cover open and said, ‘You’ll just have time to catch the eleven-forty.’

‘Excellent,’ Gross said with dripping irony. He tipped his bowler to Werthen and Stoker. ‘Gentlemen, keep me informed of any progress you make. I shall be returning soon, or you can reach me at the Hotel Daniel in Hitzendorf.’

The way Metzler looked at Gross as he said this made Werthen think there might very well be a third possibility.

After Gross had taken his leave, Werthen continued to talk with the recalcitrant sergeant, who reluctantly let it be known that the first victim, Maria Feininger, was the daughter of a local dairy farmer near town, and that she was contemplating joining the Cistercian nuns. Indeed, it was that plan which placed the poor young woman on the path that fatal Friday, for she was on her way to a meeting with one of the nuns at the church.

Metzler, still looking upon them with suspicion, finally added, ‘It takes a crazy person to do to that young girl what he did. The locals are talking of blood rituals. A gypsy passed through a few days before the killing. A Jewish trader came through not long after, they say.’

Werthen recalled the description of the wounds on the young girl: in addition to the multiple stab wounds, the left breast had been severed and other mutilations had been performed. All of this in the late afternoon. Werthen also recalled from the report he had read that this was the site where the datura seeds were discovered by one enterprising young policeman who at first took them for rabbit droppings on the girl’s gingham dress.

They heard a train whistle, and the sergeant consulted his watch once again.

‘Two minutes late,’ Metzler said. ‘You friend will be on his way to Graz.’

Leaving the gendarmerie, Werthen and Stoker determined first to have a look at the scene of the crime. The track leading up to the church of Maria Strassengel was nearby, and soon they were walking through dappled light as the autumn sun broke through the cloud cover and filtered through the fir trees along the path. Though the murder had happened almost three weeks earlier, the scene of the crime was still roped off, as Gross had advised. There were wooden stakes demarking the spot where Fräulein Feininger’s body was discovered by one of the nuns from the church who was taking an evening constitutional. According to the police report Werthen had read, the woman, Sister Agnes, had been walking in the woods below the church just before sunset at about six o’clock. She had spotted what she thought was a sheep kill. One of the local farmers kept sheep and they were forever getting loose and then were savaged by packs of grey wolves that roamed the foothills. But upon closer inspection, Sister Agnes was shocked to discover that this was no carrion, but instead the body of a dead woman. Finally making out the features of the young woman, Sister Agnes realized this was Maria Feininger who had been supposed to meet with her that very afternoon and had never shown up for the appointment.

Werthen slipped under the rope barricade and made his way gingerly around the site, careful not to disturb anything. He was followed by Stoker.

‘What do we expect to find?’ the Irishman asked.

A large black crow flew overhead and its cawing sound echoed in the wood.

‘Anything the local authorities overlooked,’ Werthen answered, but he had no idea what that might be.

Suddenly a low-hanging branch by his face was shattered and the crack of a rifle sounded instantly thereafter. Werthen instinctively dove to the ground seeking cover as a second shot pinged off a nearby boulder.

He was surprised to discover that he had automatically made his way behind a large spruce stump, its top charred by the lightning that had destroyed the tree.

‘It’s coming from that slope,’ Stoker, who was taking cover behind the boulder, yelled to him. ‘I saw the smoke with the second shot.’