Dine and Die on the Danube Express (26 page)

“Yes, I can see that having a personal involvement like that would make you particularly interested in the IMG’s activities,” I said.

He looked at his watch. “Now you must excuse me. I have some things to do before lunch.”

I also had something to do myself before lunch. I headed for the restaurant coach, went through the bakery, full of glorious aromas and hot steamy flavors, and into the coach with the storage rooms. I was seeking Herr Hofstatter, the Austrian head chef.

T
HE GENIAL HEAD CHEF
was tasting a slab of butter. He was grimacing just slightly and as he reached to dip for second taste, he saw me and smiled.

“Too much salt?” I asked.

“When we make so many foods right here on the train,” he said, “it is inevitable that slight variations creep in.”

“The amount of salt in butter is always a difficult decision.”

“It is indeed. In this case, I must go back to the salt supplier and make sure that the product they provide us remains constant.”

He replaced his long tasting spoon, wiped a hand on his spotlessly clean apron, and held it out for me to shake.

“I just wanted to clear up a detail or two,” I told him. “I hoped that before lunch was a suitable time.”

“Of course, of course,” he assured me. “How can I help you?”

“When I was here before, we talked about your stocks of fruit and nuts,” I said. That had not been the precise progression of our discussion, but I wanted to approach my point tangentially.

“Ah, yes,” he said immediately, “I told you that Fraulein Malescu asked about fruit and nuts—she said that it must be difficult to keep a fresh stock of both at all times.”

I hid a smile. He was aware of the direction in which I wanted to steer the conversation. Well, that might save some time.

“Did she examine any of your stocks?” I asked.

“Examine? Not exactly examine, no. She looked at many labels.”

“Did she appear to recognize many of them?”

“Some were familiar to her, some were not.
Ach,
I would say that most were familiar to her.”

“Did any of them appear to be of special interest to her?”

His wrinkled brow developed a few more wrinkles. “Let me think…well, yes, as she looked along the shelves, she paused at some—I suppose they were those that were less familiar to her.”

“Could it have been that she was looking for one in particular?”

He frowned still more, trying to recollect.

“Not that I recall,” he said finally.

She is an actress
, I reminded myself.
She would be adept at concealing her intention.

I made one more attempt. “Could you say that she spent longer looking at any one product than the others?”

He made a genuine try but shook his head. “No, I could not say that.”

I approached from another angle. “Do you have any nuts in the form of essence?”

“Yes, we have coconut essence, we use that in cakes. Let me see, we have also Essence of Almonds—we use that in cakes, too.”

“Is that Acid Essence of Almonds?” I asked casually.

I thought I saw a glint in his eye. He was a shrewd old bird. He might spend all his time cooking on trains, but he knew a thing or two outside the railroad. He might be right there alongside me in his thinking … “It is sometimes called that because the cakes it flavors are usually very sugary, and the acid essence balances the sugar.”

I was formulating my next question when he asked, “Do you wish to know if Fraulein Malescu showed more interest in those two—the coconut and the almond?”

I smiled involuntarily. He returned the smile, we were like two conspirators.

“I might ask that, yes. Did she show more interest in those two?”

“No, she did not,” he said promptly, and laughed a booming laugh that echoed in the confined space. I was obliged to join him.

He wiped his eyes on his apron.

“Do you have any more questions about Fraulein Malescu’s visit to my domain?” he asked.

“Not at the moment,” I said. “I certainly want to thank you for your time though. And I have enjoyed sharing a laugh with you.”

“Anytime, anytime,” he said jovially. “Please come again soon.”

He was escorting me to the door, a friendly hand on my arm. I was opening it and about to exit when he spoke again.

“The next time you are here, you may wish to ask me about Fraulein Svarovina’s visit.”

It was a great exit line except that I was the one making the exit, and he was the one with the line. I grasped the doorknob, opened the door, and went back into the coach. Facing him, I said, “Svarovina was here, visiting, after Malescu?”

He was enjoying this, the son of a gun. Through his happy smile, he said, “Yes, she was indeed.” His smile began to fade. “The poor lady, she died, I know.” A look of alarm appeared on his face. “Of course, her visit here had nothing to do with her death.”

I waited a moment, letting that thought crystallize in his mind. He was working on it, I could see.

“Acid Essence of Almonds smells like bitter almonds,” he said. “Not exactly but similar—and while cyanide is a deadly poison, Acid Essence of Almonds is quite harmless.”

I nodded and let him continue. “You see, when Fraulein Svarovina came after Fraulein Malescu, I gave her the same tour of our facilities here. When we reached the fruit and nuts storage, Fraulein Svarovina had a little trouble speaking and asked me for a glass of water.”

I looked around. “So you had to go into the next coach to do that—I see no water supply here.”

“That is correct. So she was here alone for perhaps a minute or a little less—” He broke off with another of his engaging smiles. “That is what you were going to ask me, isn’t it? Was she alone in here at any time?”

“That is what I was going to ask you,” I conceded. “My next question was going to be—but you probably know that, too.”

“Was anything missing? That would be your next question—well, no, I didn’t think that, not at first. I mean, she is—she was—the understudy to a famous actress, so I would not expect her to be taking anything.” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “But then you can never be sure—there was a Spanish cabinet minister on one of our trips, and he was constantly taking oranges. He didn’t need to do so, we could have—still, never mind.”

“So later you noticed that ajar of Acid Essence of Almonds was missing.” I had had enough of Herr Hofstatter second-guessing me. It was time for me to pull that on him.

He smiled good-naturedly. “My pastry chef noticed that a jar was missing.”

“Thank you for telling me this.”

He looked anxious. “It is true, you know. Acid Essence of Almonds is quite harmless.”

“Don’t worry. I appreciate your confidence. There is no blame to be attached to the kitchens on the train in any way.”

“Come and see us again,” he urged.

“I will,” I said, “and thanks again.”

On my way back through the train, I was still putting the pieces together. The aroma of bitter almonds that I had noticed in Malescu’s compartment had bothered me. If she had taken cyanide, she would have been dead. She was not dead—therefore, she had not taken cyanide. Until now, that had remained a puzzle, but it was no longer the case. The aroma I had observed had been from Acid Essence of Almonds and not from cyanide. From there, it was only a short step to a major breakthrough in the case.

I was still working on that short step when I met Herman Friedlander. The conductor looked unhappy. “Is anything wrong?” I asked him.

He shook his head angrily. “I cannot get it right. I keep thinking I have it, then it goes wrong.”

He noticed my perplexed look. “My symphony; I compose it as the train progresses, you see.”

“Sounds like a hard way to do it.”

“No, no, I often do this,” he said.

“Did you enjoy the banquet in Budapest?” I asked.

“It was very good,” he said, but without enthusiasm.

“Authentic Hungarian dishes,” I prompted him, but he just shrugged.

“I gather you won’t be conducting when the Mozart manuscript we are carrying is played in Bucharest?” I said innocently.

“Bah! Of course not.”

“Still, some think the manuscript is valuable,” I said. I wasn’t exactly trying to get his goat but he did offer a tempting target for a few digs.

“I can’t imagine who they could be,” he said scornfully.

“The manuscript has not yet been authenticated,” Friedlander added.

“You think it is a fake?”

“Until it is authenticated—it could be. Although that does not matter. Even should it prove to be actually written by Mozart, that does not make it a worthwhile work. Much of his music is weak, spineless, deficient in true musical content.”

“A lot of people like his music,” I said, still trying to goad him.

“People who like Muzak—not music.” Friedlander was at his most contemptuous, and I knew when to give up.

“I’ll be conducting Salieri in Bucharest,” he continued.

“Your ancestor.”

“Precisely. It will be a fine concert. Will you attend?”

“I would certainly like to do so.”

“I will send you a complimentary ticket.”

“Thank you; you’re very kind.”

He gave me a bow and went off, his head no doubt filled with the music of a large string section, and I hoped he was getting it right.

I stopped in the nearest toilet room and washed for lunch. It was a casual affair, strung out over about three hours so that the dining coach was sparsely occupied throughout. I presumed the magnificent repast of the previous night had temporarily satiated appetites.

The afternoon followed much the same pattern. I talked with as many passengers as I could but could not discern any useful information. Most apparently wanted to forget the earlier events and keep the topics trivial.

The views out of the window were of cultivated land with lots of activity. River traffic increased as we neared the town of Mohacs, and after it, village after village on the riverbank was pursuing its busy routine. We passed several vineyards as we rolled on southwards toward Belgrade.

When dinnertime came around, the passengers’ lethargy looked to be yielding to a more positive attitude. As I went into the dining coach, there were half a dozen there already, and Erich Brenner waved for me to join him. With him were Dr. Stolz and Eva Zilinsky.

Herr Brenner had ordered a bottle of
Moriezerjo,
a wine not seen outside of Hungary, he said. As the Danube Express was still inside the country, he wanted us to taste the dry, golden wine. “It was first produced here in the eighteenth century,” he told us, “by refugees from Bavaria who hacked down the trees and planted vines. The refugees knew how to make wine, and they recognized the soil here to have a high mica and quartz content. This is a very unpleasant combination for the dreaded
Phylloxera
, the bug that loves vine roots.”

We watched the waiter pour the rich-colored liquid. “The efforts of the refugees prospered, another reason for their success,” said Herr Brenner, “being that they located their vineyards on mountain slopes, where they are protected from winter frosts yet have a complete absence of shadow in summer.”

It was dry, surprisingly so in view of its strong color, and with a satisfying and lingering aftertaste rare in a wine suitable for accompanying a meal.

At another table, I saw Paolo Conti with the Sundvalls and Helmut Lydecker. At another, the Australians and Henri Larouge were ordering already when Irena Koslova came in and joined them.

At our table, Eva Zilinsky ordered a cold grape soup and carp in horseradish and sour cream sauce. Herr Brenner nodded approval. “Very Hungarian,” he agreed. For himself, he had a ragout soup, which he told us the Hungarians made from the gizzard, liver, and heart of a turkey. He looked around the table to see who wanted to emulate him, but there no takers. He followed with a sirloin steak with mushrooms.

Dr. Stolz took an asparagus salad and baked pike, while I had a cucumber salad and red mullet cooked on a spit. Dill and paprika are the only spices used by the Hungarians on the salad.

The conversation was desultory. Herr Brenner gave us a few reminiscences of earlier trips and the eccentric passengers occasionally contributed, but the doctor was not communicative and concentrated on his meal. Eva Zilinsky tried to live up to what she evidently considered to be her reputation and tossed in a story now and then. I referred to some train journeys of the past, including one or two where the train blew real black smoke and the rails clicked and clacked.

Herr Brenner’s recommendation for wine was heartily endorsed by all of us, and the waiter brought another bottle. “Dessert,” announced Herr Brenner. “We will all have a Hungarian dessert to mark our last meal in Hungary.”

No one was inclined to refuse such an invitation, and Herr Brenner called the waiter. “We want a really typical Hungarian dessert,” he said. “What do you propose?”

The waiter had several suggestions. He began with
Dios Pite
, a nut cake, then
Dobos Torte
, a chocolate layer cake. He continued with
Kepvisolofank
, a very different version of the cream puff. Various fruit or cheese strudels were available too as well as crêpes in a variety of guises.

It was a tough decision. The waiter mentioned another Hungarian specialty, golden dumplings, and we considered those but eventually, we all went for the Hungarian cream puffs. Served with a glaze of raspberry syrup, they were light as air and scrumptious.

The wine had gone by the time we had eaten dessert, and I noticed Herr Brenner exchange a few quick words with the waiter. The reason became obvious when the waiter appeared with small, elaborate glasses and a crusted bottle.

“The pride of Hungary,” Herr Brenner said theatrically. “It is particularly appropriate to serve it now as, at this very moment, we are passing through the region where this is produced. It is the great wine of Hungary—Tokay.”

Everyone had heard of it, and I was sure that some of us had drunk it, but I had no doubt that Herr Brenner’s description was about to entertain us.

“There is a condition called ‘noble rot’—it is a fungus that affects grapes. It gives them an unpleasant taste and oxidizes them. Amazingly though, with suitable climatic conditions at the end of the season, it contributes a unique taste to the wine, the reasons for which still cannot be adequately explained.