A Matter of Breeding (9 page)

A third crack made them duck their heads.

‘I’m going to work my way around the back of the slope,’ Stoker said. ‘Throw your hat to the left when I tell you.’

‘No heroics, Stoker. I was hired to protect you.’

‘On a count of three, then,’ the writer hissed.

‘Stay in place.’

‘And let whoever it is come to pick us off? One—’

‘Do as I say, Stoker.’

‘Two.’

‘This is madness.’

‘Three.’

Madness or not, Werthen did as he was bidden, and tossed his homburg to the left, drawing two rapid shots that went far wide of the intended target. He had not even noticed Stoker slinking off into the underbrush and could only make out a faint rustling of bracken now and again.

Werthen kept his head down as two more shots rang out. Time dragged on interminably and he began to wonder if the last two shots had been meant for Stoker. He let another several minutes go by and then determined he must do something. Perhaps Stoker lay wounded on the slope.

‘Werthen!’

The voice was unmistakable.

‘Where are you, Stoker?’

‘Up here. I’ve got him.’

Werthen glanced to the slope and now saw Stoker waving down to him. He raced straight through the bracken up the slope, branches catching on his woolen trousers, not giving a thought to the usual throbbing pain in his right knee, an old wound.

Once on higher ground, he found what appeared to be a makeshift hunting box. Stoker, legs spread wide, was holding a Steyr Mannlicher bolt-action rifle on a man sprawled out on the ground. There was a strong smell of schnapps coming from him.

‘Shoot me, you coward,’ the man said, his tongue thick from drink. A red welt in the shape of a rifle butt made an exclamation mark on his left cheek. ‘Kill me like you did my beautiful little daughter.’

Werthen and Stoker looked at one another.

‘Herr Feininger?’ Werthen ventured.

The man, laid out on the ground like a hunting trophy, glared at Werthen.

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Your daughter was Maria?’

‘Don’t use her name. Jews. Killers. Monsters.’

‘We did not harm your daughter,’ Werthen insisted. ‘We are here to find out who did.’

‘Always come back to the scene of the crime. That’s what they say.’

‘That’s why he was lying in ambush,’ Stoker said. ‘He figured the killer would come back to the scene, just like in the penny dreadfuls.’

‘We are here to help,’ Werthen said again. Suddenly this message seemed to get through to the father. He sat up, rubbing a finger over the bruised cheek, wincing.

Then he broke down completely, weeping piteously. ‘She was my little baby,’ he moaned.

Werthen went down on a knee beside him and put an arm around the man’s shoulder.

‘We will catch the killer. I promise you that.’

They took Herr Feininger down the hill to a local gasthaus and put coffee into him until he was sober enough to provide some details about his daughter. The one valuable piece of information they gained was the name of Maria’s best fried: Dagmar Henninger.

They left Herr Feininger in the gasthaus, and Werthen had the feeling that he would soon be turning from coffee to schnapps.

As they walked toward the spa where young Dagmar worked, Stoker glanced at him.

‘Don’t you find it odd that any number of shots can be fired near the village and no one is suspicious?’

‘It’s not London, Stoker. People hunt here.’

‘But it is not exactly the wilderness, either, is it?’

‘Your point being?’

‘That path between the village and the church is not some desolate place. There must be a fair number of people who use it.’

‘It
is
the back way in to the church,’ Werthen said. ‘Most would, I assume, use the road that leads to the church.’

‘All right. Assume that is true. Then can we make any conclusion about the choice of victim? Was it just pure blind chance that put her in harm’s way?’

‘I do not believe in random violence, Stoker. There is method here despite the savagery.’

‘Is that instinct speaking or deduction?’

‘I am no statistician, but the likelihood of some young woman coming along the path that afternoon just where the killer was lying in wait is very low. More likely she was followed, that the murderer targeted her. Or he knew in advance what her movements would be that day. There is a connection between these crimes and once we find it, we find our killer.’

Stoker seemed to mull this over as they approached the Styrian Park Sanatorium on the main square. Werthen figured there was a fair amount of money invested in this place, for the grounds were well kept, like a public garden in Vienna. Gardeners were busy at work tying down the rose bushes for the winter and putting a heavy layer of mulch over them against the coming frost. The day had turned warm and such precautions seemed curiously misplaced at the moment. Fountains still flowed, but those would also be covered soon. The three-storey main building was done in harsh modern lines; window frames and the façade had no decorative flourishes, making the edifice appear almost naked.

Inside the glass front doors, the receptionist, a big-boned farm girl, eyed Werthen with suspicion when he asked to speak to Fräulein Henninger.

‘Who wants to see her?’ she said in a broad Styrian accent.

Werthen presented the letter from Inspector Thielman that Gross had left with him. She read it, her lips moving as she did so, then handed it back.

‘What do you want to talk about?’

‘You are Fräulein Henninger?’ Werthen said.

‘Clever man,’ she said.

Werthen felt his cheeks go red. ‘We understand you were a close personal friend of Maria Feininger.’

The young woman tensed a cheek muscle. ‘That is so. Best friends since we were kids.’

‘Can you tell us if she had any concerns of late? Did she seem worried about anything, did she have any enemies?’

‘Maria wasn’t the kind that made enemies. She was a good girl. It’s those damn gypsies that came through town that week. One of them must have done it. Animals.’

‘Did she have other friends in the village? Someone else she might have confided in?’

‘Maria and me were close. She told me everything.’

Stoker cleared his throat. ‘And I am sure she would want such a trusted friend to share any secret she had in order to catch her murderer. Anything, no matter how trifling it seems to you. It could have larger meaning.’

She chewed the inside of her lower lip for a moment. ‘Well, if you must know, she was sort of engaged to a local boy.’

‘Sort of?’ Werthen said.

‘Intended like, you know. Thomas was Maria’s boyfriend for years. It was understood they would marry. But then Maria suddenly decided to become a nun. It broke his heart. It wasn’t as if she jilted him for another man, but Thomas took it hard.’

‘Does this Thomas have a last name?’ Werthen quickly asked. ‘And where can we find him?’

Thomas Lucasz was in the baggage room of the local train station, just as Dagmar Henninger said he would be. He was a blond-haired, fair-complexioned youth who looked like a more likely candidate for his first Holy Communion than he did the wedding altar. His cheeks were rosy and eyes pale blue, and these squinted at Werthen as he requested a moment of the youth’s time.

‘Must be about Maria,’ Thomas said. ‘That was a real pity.’ He hoisted a large trunk onto one of the upper shelves of the baggage storage, a feat of strength that did not go unnoticed by either Werthen or Stoker. Young looking he might be, but not fragile.

‘I understand you two were engaged,’ Werthen said.

Thomas smiled at the idea. ‘Engaged? We walked out together. But there were no banns read.’

‘So Maria’s decision to become a nun didn’t bother you?’

‘Why should it? I’m a good Catholic. More power to her.’ He managed to avoid eye contact as they spoke, organizing and reorganizing the stored luggage.

‘So you parted amicably.’

‘Best of friends,’ Thomas said. ‘I just hope you catch the creature who did this. It’ll be a Jew or a gypsy, I guarantee that. Some are even saying the vampires are at work again.’

‘As far as you know, Maria had no enemies?’ Werthen asked.

‘She wasn’t the type to make enemies.’

There it was again, Werthen noted. Much the same as Dagmar Henninger had said.

‘You’ll excuse me for saying so, Herr Lucasz,’ Stoker broke in. ‘But you seem to be taking this all very calmly. From what we hear, you and Fräulein Feininger were a couple for a number of years.’

Thomas set down a leather valise and rubbed his palms on the leather apron he wore.

‘I’ve had my time to grieve. A man’s got to look forward, not backward.’

Stoker nodded. ‘Understood. But I have to tell you, I for one would be jealous and put out if my girl left me for the nuns. Doesn’t say much for your appeal to the ladies.’

The blow was delivered so quickly that Stoker, who had spent time in the ring, had no chance to duck or block it. The youth’s fist caught him straight in the jaw and knocked the Irishman down.

Realizing what he had done, Thomas dropped his fists and helped Werthen to lift Stoker to his feet.

‘Please forgive me,’ the young man said. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

Stoker felt his jaw with his left hand and then flexed it, opening wide.

‘No damage done, I guess,’ Stoker said.

‘I need to get back to work,’ Thomas said. ‘There’s nothing else I can help you with.’

They left the train station with Stoker still manipulating his sore jaw.

‘There’s a young man with anger beneath the skin,’ he said.

Werthen appreciated Stoker’s ploy, baiting him to see how calm he really was about the death of his girlfriend.

There was anger under the skin, to be sure, but Werthen had the feeling that Thomas was keeping something else back from them as well.

That afternoon, after a hasty lunch and after learning that Sister Agnes – the nun who had discovered Maria Feininger’s body – was visiting another nunnery and was not available to be interviewed, Werthen and Stoker made their way by fiaker to Köflach, scene of the second murder. Annaliese Reiter was just eighteen, and worked at a small spa, the Köflach Bad Terminus, near town. Her body had been found in secluded woods near her place of employment. Apparently, she had been on her way home, taking a shortcut, after her shift at the spa. As with the other victims, she had died of multiple stab wounds, and her body bore signature mutilations. This time, the killer had cut off the right breast and seared a small circle into the flesh above this gruesome wound, blackening a round patch of skin at the sternum.

Annaliese was not, like the other victims, a simple village girl, but was instead, as Werthen had read in the police reports, the daughter of artist parents who had escaped the claustrophobic streets of Vienna for the fresh air of Styria. They had moved to a small cabin at the foot of the Stubalpe about two miles from town with Annaliese, then fourteen, and her younger brother, Kurt.

Stanislaus Reiter was a minor painter whose work Werthen had once seen in an exhibition of independent artists at a small gallery maintained by the Academy of Fine Arts. He specialized in portraits of artisans and laborers, not a very fashionable subject in a Vienna increasingly dominated by Jugendstil art. Since arriving in Köflach four years ago, he had assembled quite a rogue’s gallery of coal miners from the local pits. His wife, Petra, was a sculptor, originally from Germany. She worked in stone, carving small, fantastical animals such as dragons, centaurs, and mermaids. Their humble cabin was littered by the art work of both; a studio to the back of the cottage provided working space.

The Reiters were sitting down to afternoon coffee when Stoker and Werthen arrived. Once Werthen explained their mission and produced the introductory letter from Inspector Thielman, Stanislaus welcomed them in and bid them join them in the freshly baked Bundt cake.

Werthen was somewhat surprised. These two parents displayed none of the histrionics of Herr Feininger. Their daughter was dead less than two weeks, and here they sat making polite conversation and cutting extra slices of
Gugelhupf
for guests.

‘I do not wish to bring up painful subjects,’ Werthen began as both the coffee and polite conversation dwindled. ‘But I am sure you want to assist in bringing whoever is responsible for your daughter’s death to justice.’

It was all that was needed to rip the calm façade off Petra Reiter: she dashed from the sitting room to what was apparently a bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

‘You must forgive my wife,’ Herr Reiter said after a moment’s pause. ‘This is not easy for her.’

‘Not easy for anyone, I am sure,’ Werthen said. ‘I cannot imagine the pain you feel, but I fear I must ask a few questions. Perhaps there was something overlooked when the gendarmes spoke with you.’

‘I will do my best,’ Reiter said, his bottom lip beginning to twitch. Werthen could now see the cracks in his bluff façade as well, marveling at the multitude of ways that people dealt with grief.

‘You know that there have been similar crimes recently in other parts of Styria?’

Reiter nodded. ‘We read about the young girl near Hitzendorf. Vampires, indeed.’ He said this last bit with the scorn a city dweller has for the folkways of the country.

‘There seems to be a connection between them,’ Werthen said. ‘We are trying to find what that might be. Did your daughter know either of the two other girls, Ursula Klein or Maria Feininger?’

‘No. I’ve never heard of either of the unfortunate young women.’

‘Was your daughter a happy young woman, Herr Reiter?’

The man seemed surprised at the question, but it also brought the trace of a smile to his lips.

‘Very much so, Advokat Werthen. She would awake always with a song. Like a bird. I used to call her my little skylark.’ He paused again, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if he wore spectacles. There was a long sigh. ‘Yes. A happy young woman with the whole world before her. She was saving money to go to art school in Vienna. She had talent, Liese did. Could draw rings around me.’