Dine and Die on the Danube Express (12 page)

We swooped underground again, under the Danube River, and picked up a little speed—but no more noise—as we headed for Bratislava on the Slovak border.

W
E HAD HAD SOME
new passengers join us on the train in Vienna. One of them came through the observation coach, introducing himself. He seemed to be a gregarious individual, smiling, chatting to everyone. He was young to middle-aged, with a round, happy face and a habit of bending forward to talk to people. He seemed genuinely friendly, and the smile never left his face.

“Franz Reingold,” he said with that jerky motion that many Germans have. It has always been my opinion that it is all that is left of that heel-clicking motion so common in the Germany of the past, an affectation abandoned because of its association with excessive militarism.

I reciprocated—but without that particular mannerism—and gave him my story about being a food-finder. It was my watered-down version, the one that contains no suggestion of a detective. He listened with interest. “
Ach, gut,
then I shall call on you when I am in doubt what to order for dinner!”

He looked more than capable of making up his own mind on that subject, and I asked him if he was traveling on business. “I presume you are not a tourist,” I said.

His smile did not waver. “I am not on business and I am not a tourist. I am a Swiss—I live near Bern, the German-speaking part of Switzerland. I am very fortunate that my family has money—quite a lot of money, in fact. You see, my grandfather was clever enough to invent one of the early ski lifts. Of course, they have been changed and improved several times since then, but each improvement just makes them more in demand and brings us in more money!” He beamed with pleasure, and I reflected that he had good reason to do so.

“To answer your question,” he went on, “the one about being on the Danube Express … You see, I am an idle fellow and spend my life indulging in my hobbies. One of those is trains. I have what is possibly the finest collection of model trains in Europe, but I also like the real ones. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the famous
Donau Schnellzug
is an occasion that I simply could not miss.”

He had the Swiss-German accent that can be difficult for foreigners to understand, even foreigners who are proficient in German. His accent had been refined and smoothed out, though, probably by frequent travel, so I could follow him without difficulty.

We chatted a little longer. He wanted to meet everyone on the train, he said finally, and wandered off, glowing with bonhomie and shaking more hands than a politician.

Farther along in the observation coach, Elisha Tabor, the Hungarian woman in the publishing business, was sitting alone, and I joined her. She gave me a charming smile and wished me a good evening. “Did you enjoy the banquet?” she asked.

“It was excellent. Like everyone else on the train, I wished we could have spent more time in Vienna, but I know this is not that type of trip. At least, it serves as a reminder to us all that we should return soon.”

“I like Vienna, too,” she said. “Naturally, my first love is Budapest, but Vienna is second.”

“And third?”

“Paris, without a doubt.”

“You were born in Budapest?” I asked.

“Yes. I have left it several times but always returned. I have lived there now for some years.”

“You must know it well,” I said, steering the conversation.

“Very well.”

“Tell me something about Budapest-—”

“Of course.” She turned large brown eyes toward me. She was a good-looking woman with a complexion like cream. Her features were regular and might have been ordinary, but the nose was just Roman enough and the chin just strong enough to give her real character. She looked as if she might be a formidable figure in the publishing business and more than able to hold down a responsible position.

“Tell me about Mikhel Czerny.”

Her eyes searched my face. It was a moment or two before she answered. “I’m surprised you know the name. He is famous in Hungary, of course, but not known well in other countries.”

“I’ve heard about him a few times since I have been on the Danube Express.”

“Ah, yes, the story on Magda Malescu.”

“Yes. What’s the opinion in Budapest? Does he have some reason to hate her?”

“Hungarians are a very volatile people. When they love, they love more than any other people. When they hate, they hate more than any other. The blood of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan courses through their veins. They are a very passionate people.”

“So it is nothing personal?”

She shrugged. “If it is, the public doesn’t know about it. You know the story about Leo Szilard, the Hungarian-born atomic scientist?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Szilard was talking to Enrico Fermi, another scientist, and they were having a discussion about extraterrestrial life. Szilard said he thought it was a distinct possibility. ‘In that case,’ Fermi said, ‘they should have been here by now. So where are they?’ Szilard said, ‘They are among us—only they call themselves Hungarians.’”

I laughed. “But that still doesn’t explain Czerny’s attitude toward Malescu—or if it does, why doesn’t Czerny treat every one of his victims that way?”

“He does. His style is always caustic, critical, biting, but Malescu is such a vulnerable target, so easy to attack. She almost makes it easy for him. She hardly makes a move that is not reason for him to write at least a paragraph on her.”

She glanced at her watch. “Well, I think I’ll retire. It has a been a long and exhausting evening.”

“There’s still a lot of it left,” I told her.

“Maybe, but it will have to get along without me.”

I couldn’t see any other good-looking women either to interview or to chat with but some minutes later Helmut Lydecker came through the coach, and I invited him to sit in the seat vacated by Elisha Tabor.

“How is the illusion business?” I asked by way of openers.

“I’ll know better when we reach Bucharest,” he said.

“The Romanians are big on illusions, are they?”

“I’m hoping so.”

Well, that didn’t advance my knowledge of either his business or him. I tried another approach. “At least you can’t have much competition.”

“I am well-known now, so I don’t.”

Perhaps another topic would draw him out. “This Malescu affair is mysterious, isn’t it?”

“All her affairs are mysterious.”

“First, she’s dead, then she disappears, now she’s back with us.”

“What have you heard?” he asked.

I could hardly give the pompous response of
I’m the one asking the questions
so I decided to go along. “I understand there have been threats against her life, so she decided to become invisible for a while,” I said.

“Threats?” he said.

“Yes, haven’t you heard that? She wants to star in a play called
Rakoczi’s Daughter
but the IMG doesn’t want her to do so. They have been threatening her.”

“Ah, I see.”

“You have heard of the play?” At last I had reversed the process. Now our relationship was as it should be, and I was asking the questions.

“The papers and the TV have been full of stories about that play,” he said. “It would be just like her to build up a big publicity campaign like this. Wonderful advertising.”

He didn’t sound sympathetic to the star. “You think that’s what it is? Publicity?”

“She’s done this sort of thing before.”

“Makes a practice of it, does she?” I asked.

“When she was a teenager, she faked a disappearance. She’s been doing it ever since. In recent years, it’s become a more elaborate story.”

“You know a lot about her.”

“I should,” he said. “I gave her her first job.”

“Really?” This had to be a breakthrough, I had to keep him talking. “I thought she had always been in the theatre.”

“She has.”

“Were you in the theatre at that time?”

“In a way.”

“A producer?”

“No,” he said simply. It didn’t seem to matter to him whether I made sense of his answers or not. I persevered anyway. “You were in publicity yourself—public relations?”

“No,” he said, and I thought he was going to say no more when he added, “I was then—and still am—a magician.”

So that was what he meant by saying he was a seller of illusions. “And you hired Malescu?”

“Yes, as an assistant.”

“On the stage?”

“Yes, I was perfecting an illusion at that time.”

“What was it?”

“The Vanishing Lady.”

He didn’t acknowledge the irony of that; perhaps he didn’t realize it.

“She said she was eighteen, but she was probably sixteen, I learned later,” he said. “She was exceptionally lovely, a little gawky and untutored, but that made her all the more attractive. She didn’t stay with me long, she matured rapidly, got into the chorus of a show, then got a singing part in another. She didn’t have much of a voice, but with her looks and figure, that didn’t matter. She was a fast learner and exceptionally ambitious. She would do anything to progress in the theatre, and at an early age she was clearly a star in the making.”

He smiled, clearly reminiscing. “I had two assistants at that time, Magda and another girl—I don’t remember her name, I have had so many. An accident during rehearsal almost killed Magda and another, similar, occurred shortly after. Both might have been the fault of the other girl. I dismissed her though she swore she was not responsible.”

“Did you ever learn if she was?”

He shook his head slowly. “I was never sure, but I heard later that Magda bragged of getting rid of the other girl. Soon after, Magda left me to further her ambitions.”

“Did you see her after she left your act?”

“Oh, yes. Now and then, the shows we were both in would be running in the same city.”

“Have you talked to her on the Danube Express—this trip, I mean?”

“No.” He looked out of the window, but only blackness was out there. “The last time we met was a few years ago in Copenhagen. It was—well, acrimonious. We haven’t talked since.”

I was thinking how quickly Lydecker had gone from a clam to a nightingale. What had caused the change?

“You can tell all of this to the security chief, Kramer,” he said.

“Why should I do that?” was the best I could come up with at short notice.

“You are working as an assistant to him, are you not?”

Before I could answer, he said, “I saw you go into Malescu’s compartment with Kramer and Brenner.”

That was ironic. He had reached the right conclusion for the wrong reason. At that time, I had not been asked by Kramer to work with him, but from Lydecker’s point of view, it was a fair assumption.

“I—er, helped Scotland Yard on one or two occasions, and Kramer has asked me for my opinions,” I conceded.

He yawned and stood. “You can tell him that I had nothing to do with Malescu disappearing,” he said. “My ‘Vanishing Lady’ illusion is confined to the stage.”

He wished me a good night and walked off down the coach, leaving me with several points to ponder. First, if I was supposed to be operating undercover, I was doing a terrible job.
Damage control?
I asked myself. The best answer seemed to be to turn it to my advantage by utilizing the prestige of Scotland Yard and continuing to aid Kramer to investigate. As long as Scotland Yard didn’t hear how I was shamelessly using their name, I was safe.

Lydecker’s earlier association with Malescu raised a few possibilities, especially as it sounded as if he might have had liaisons with her since then. Had they parted on terms that could lead to murder? If so, could Lydecker have mistaken Talia Svarovina for Malescu and killed her in error? Pretty fanciful, I thought. Hercule Poirot would have sneered at it as a conclusion.

I followed the example being set and retired for the night.

When I awoke the next morning, it looked as if we had not made much headway. We were doing little more than thirty miles an hour, and the railroad track zigzagged its way along the Danube River valley in a series of corkscrews, steep climbs, and spiraling descents. Its erratic progress had clearly been determined in an earlier day when railroad engineering was cautious and limited. Old stone bridges carried us from one bank of the Danube to the other, affording fine views of one of the world’s great rivers.

The scenery was highly rural, with tiny hamlets, inns with porches, and balconies covered with red, white, and yellow flowers, and farms with fat cattle grazing under the windows. This, I thought, was the way to see a country and a vivid contrast to flying over it in a jet plane at near the speed of sound.

The dining coach was not yet half-full, and I was able to reflect on breakfast habits. There is the fast American breakfast of bagels and coffee or the more extensive one of bacon and eggs with hash browns. In contrast is the Italian breakfast of sweet, cream-filled buns, a small glass of brandy, and hot, thick black coffee. The English are perhaps the only people that eat fish for breakfast, and kippers are an acquired habit. The French stick to their flaky croissants, while Germans and the Dutch like various cheeses with cold salami, ham, and tongue. In Morocco, workers will stop at a hole-in-the-wall street-corner cafe for a dish of stewed fava beans and a glass of hot mint tea.

The Danube Express, with supreme nonchalance, offered all of those plus the Austrian variation—small finger sausages. I knew there was a bakery on board, so that all the bread served was literally fresh from the oven. Austrian bread is among the best in the world—it comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors and is made with a wide variety of flours and grains. I chose a flat, saffron-colored bread, moist and succulent and filled with poppy seeds.

Franz Reingold, one of our most recently arrived passengers, came in and wished me a jovial “Good morning.” I chose a boiled egg and a slice of ham to go with my poppy seed bread. Then came the choice of coffee. With most European countries offering their finest and all being different, this was a problem. I said to the waiter, “I suppose I should ask for Viennese coffee. I know the city’s coffeehouses are famous.”