Requiem in Vienna (11 page)

“The same could be said for Hassler,” Gross added. “After all, a music critic surely could gain access to rehearsals.”

The three sat in silence for a time; all about them was a constant hum of conversation; waiters, attired in tuxedoes, brought trays of coffee and water to customers with elegant, quiet dispatch.

“The list is indeed long,” Gross finally said. “And these are only the obvious choices. This is a desperate business. I must admit I do not care for the odds against us.”

T
he next evening Werthen received a call at his flat from Mahler. The composer’s voice sounded strong if not strident; he was seemingly recovered from his latest “accident.” He informed Werthen that he was off in the morning to the village of Altaussee in the western Salzkammergut region for his annual summer holidays. He and his sister, in the company of their friend Natalie, had taken a remote house for six weeks, the Villa Kerry, about a half hour from the village. There Mahler would continue work on his new symphony.

He spoke eloquently of the rustic wonders of Altaussee and its magical surroundings: the clear, deep blue-black waters of the alpine lake ringed by peaks of the Loser mountain and others; the quiet and hidden charm of the village with its few hundred inhabitants; the excellence of hiking and bicycling paths.

“Sounds idyllic,” Werthen managed to say between Mahler’s gushing pronouncements.

“You think so? Yes, I believe you will like it.”

Werthen waited a moment to make sure he understood.

“You want me to accompany you?”

“Not accompany. Shadow, perhaps, would be a better description.
Of course there is no spare room at our villa, but in the village there are excellent accommodations at the Hotel am See. I hope you do not mind that I have taken the liberty of booking you a room. One cannot be too cautious about such matters this time of year.”

“Herr Mahler—” Werthen began.

Mahler, however, interrupted: “Your two simianlike employees would stand out much too much in such bucolic surroundings, Werthen. No, I believe you will do, if you feel I need personal protection.”

So Mahler had discovered his bodyguards, Werthen thought. Of course, it had only been a matter of time before he would. But this was news to him that Mahler was moving house for the summer. Perhaps it was for the best; after all, what could happen to him in the country? Their nameless adversary would be loath to strike in such surroundings, where any outsider would be instantly noticeable.

“Herr Werthen? Are you still there?”

Werthen looked over his shoulder and into the sitting room where Berthe sat reading, a splash of gaslight casting a halo of warm orange-yellow light over her face, her lips squeezed tight in concentration. He felt a sudden and overwhelming love for her.

“Yes.”

“Shall we see you in the country then?”

“Yes. Fine.”

“Excellent,” Mahler said, though with little enthusiasm. “We shall see you tomorrow then.”

Werthen felt rotten to be leaving Berthe in Vienna, but someone had to find a new junior member for the firm. Berthe assured him that she could see to that, and Gross for his part was quite content to continue their investigation and interviews in Vienna.

The lawyer suspected Gross was secretly relieved to be on his own with the investigation; there was nothing for it, however, but to follow Mahler to the country. Surely he would not be needed
the entire six weeks of the composer’s stay. He intended to take stock of the situation and then return to Vienna at the earliest possible opportunity.

Werthen boarded the Salzburg express on Thursday with a guilty joy at his upcoming time in the country, for Vienna was stifling under a hazy blue sky and a humidity.

However, he met with the direct opposite in terms of meteorological conditions once he had set down from the narrow single-gauge train in Altaussee.

It rained for the next two days. A slow, persistent rain that made the hedgerows of lilac bushes, long since out of bloom, hang like weeping willows.

Werthen was installed in the Hotel am See, an immense alpine building positively bristling with stag horns and oozing
gemütlich
touches, such as Tyrolean curtains, foot-thick eiderdown comforters on the beds, and freshly churned butter for the homemade rolls at morning coffee. Were Werthen’s favorite boulevardier character from his short stories, Count Joachim von Hildesheim, to describe the hotel, he would characterize it as “aggressively charming.”

Werthen himself, however, was warily seduced by the actual charm of the place and of the friendly
gastgebers
, or proprietors, the family Woolf. They were too good to be true: friendly, full of bonhomie, brimming over with solicitousness and concern for the comfort of their guests. However, sometimes things are just what they seem, he told himself, and one should damn well enjoy oneself. The Woolfs were indeed almost too good to be true: three towheaded young dirndl-clad daughters served in the dining room, their rosy cheeks a constant reminder to Werthen to get more fresh air and exercise, even as he feasted on fresh venison steak or a goulash made of mountain goat lung. The older sons, equally blond and alarmingly blue-eyed, resplendent in lederhosen and sparkling white shirts, served as attendants in the hotel, working the desk, carrying luggage, helping as guides for adventurous
wanderers. And Frau Woolf supervised the kitchen while Herr Woolf was the organizing spirit and genial host of the establishment.

Both parents were dark-haired, which made Werthen wonder at their progeny; such wonderment and his subsequent jottings regarding the family were the first inklings of a return of his creative energies, creating mood pictures of Austria and the Austrians in short stories. Perhaps, though, he thought, such creativity would be better channeled into recording the minutiae of the cases he had become involved in rather than in the goings-on of such characters as the foppish Count von Hildesheim.

At night the Woolf family charmed their guests with musical evenings following dinner. They sang alpine melodies to the accompaniment of Herr Woolf’s guitar and Frau Woolf’s accordion. Werthen was usually no great fan of this wheezing and often skirling instrument, but in the hands of Frau Woolf it was turned into a plaintive and melodic joy.

Now, however, it was Saturday, and the dreary alpine weather had finally broken. Steam rose from the damp earth under a high, warm sun. Werthen determined to set out for Mahler’s. He had been there only once, the very afternoon he had arrived, and managed to get soaked to the skin on his return journey to the hotel, barely escaping the dangers of an electrical storm that sent huge jagged daggers of wild energy slanting into the very lake bottom it had seemed.

What a difference two days had made, for now the weather was clear and fine. Songbirds accompanied him on his way along the sodden dirt path leading out of the village. An occasional oxen-drawn cart passed, its owner casting a suspicious glance his way, eyes half-hidden under a green alpine hat with a brush of oxen tail hair sprouting from its side. However, suspicion would turn to warm greeting when Werthen offered the traditional, “
Grüss Gott,”
God’s greeting. It was a salutation he studiously avoided in Vienna, opting instead always for the more formal and
neutral “
Guten tag
” or “
Guten abend
.” Rejecting his own Judaism, he wanted his greetings to be as secular as possible.

He was just approaching the Villa Kerry when he heard the faint melody of the village band wafting from the village, the tuba carrying the melodic line along with clarinets and horns. He was unsure of the tune. As he came in sight of Mahler’s rented house, he noted a small group of three men and two women gathered on the road in front, conversing and looking up at the Villa Kerry as if expecting a changing of the guard. They were obviously city dwellers—the women wore long white dresses and impossibly floppy hats that no sensible villager would ever don; the men were bowler-clad and their city suits looked foreign amidst the greenery and flowers of the front park to the Villa Kerry. As he passed them, Werthen overheard a distinctive Schönbrunner German accent that marked them as upper-class Viennese. One man, who wore dramatically curling mustaches, told the others: “He’ll be at his piano now, composing. But later he likes to take a stroll. Perhaps then . . .”

Werthen did not linger to find out what the man expected. Clearly they were no threat to Mahler, just music-mad and devoted fans of the Hofoper director and conductor. Had they planned their holiday to coincide with Mahler’s? But then Werthen reminded himself that the fashionable
kurort
of Bad Aussee was nearby; they were most likely staying there and taking the waters.

At the house, Werthen was greeted by Mahler himself, who quickly drew the lawyer in before closing the front door behind them.

“Did you see them?”

He sounded in a panic.

“Who?” Werthen asked.

“Those.” He swept his right hand in the direction of his front park. “Those parasites gathered outside. My God, they even send me letters asking for an autographed portrait. Soon they will take to spying on me through opera glasses.”

“They mean no harm—” Werthen began.

“No harm! They are insufferable. Can they not simply let me be and get on with my work? And that infernal racket from the village. Every day now they will begin their blasted hooting and trumpeting before lunch and go on into the afternoon. One prays for rain to dampen their spirits.”

Mahler, agitated, went to one of the windows set on either side of the front door and peeked through lace curtains at his unwelcome visitors.

He turned back to address Werthen. “Be a good chap and send them on their way.”

“Don’t be absurd, Mahler. I am here to protect you from deadly intent, not from your fans.”

“But they
are
killing me.” His voice was desperate. “Killing my creativity, which is the same thing. I have but six weeks each year in which to compose. But how can I be expected to concentrate on my Fourth Symphony with those interlopers gaping up at my windows? With that hideous noise seeping through the woodwork?”

Werthen went to the other window and found that the little group had moved on. He was blessedly saved from such an onerous task.

Two days later, Gross, in Vienna, smiled amiably at the young woman seated across the desk from him. Quite a fetching young thing, he thought. Normally the charms of the fairer sex had little appeal for him. Adele and he had been married for decades now; he was settled into a quiescent domestic complacency where matters of the flesh were concerned. Theirs had never been a deeply physical union; Gross in fact found such couplings rather laborious as well as interfering with his main concern in life—devising a system of detection and analysis that would revolutionize the science of criminology. He imagined Adele probably
felt the same; after all, women—except for the occasional nymphomaniac—were not intended to enjoy the acts of the bedroom. Following the birth of their only child, Otto, they had largely foregone those supposed pleasures. Staying with Werthen and his wife, he was startled to discover that they shared a bedroom. A rather messy state of affairs, as far as Gross was concerned.

No. Gross had adapted a Socratic attitude where sex was concerned, reaching the age of reason wherein he was no longer controlled or even affected by such impulses.

Or so he had thought.

However, the presence of this young Schindler woman across the desk this Monday morning caught him off guard, quite unnerved him, and had set off some long dormant feelings. He felt himself wanting to please her; he found himself needing to avert his eyes from her, as if she were casting some spell on him; her scent pleasurably engulfed him, much as a well-baked
guglhupf
cake might.

She had called earlier in the day, telling Berthe that she had new information for Advokat Werthen. However, learning that the lawyer was otherwise disposed, Fräulein Schindler had agreed to meet with Werthen’s colleague at the law offices. As before, Berthe was seated near the door taking notes as Gross began to conduct the interview.

“So, young lady, how may I be of assistance?”

“I had hoped to speak with Advokat Werthen,” she said, smiling coyly at Gross.

“Yes. As Frau Werthen told you, he is not at this time available.” Gross ignored the fiery look Berthe cast him at his mistake in her name.

“No, no,” Alma went on. “Do not misunderstand me. I meant to say that I hardly expected to be speaking with the distinguished Dr. Hanns Gross in his stead.”

Gross manufactured a rictus of a smile at this comment. “At
your service, Fräulein.” He seemed not to hear the sigh that came from Berthe. “I know that Advokat Werthen was interested in people who might, for some reason or another, have reason to wish Herr Mahler ill.”

Just as in her first interview, Fräulein Schindler now leaned across the desk, as if confiding in the bulky criminologist. Gross instinctively retreated at this advance; the springs of his desk chair groaned as he leaned backward.

“There is someone you should know about,” she continued in a breathless fashion.

Slowly Gross was unwrapping himself from the young woman’s blanket of charms, so obvious were her techniques of entrapment.

“Please elaborate,” he said now with neutral authority.

It was as if she had caught the subtle shift in power and relaxed in her own chair once again.

“I have—and I do not mean to sound full of myself—numerous admirers. Among them I count one Heinricus von Tratten. He is of an old German family. In his case the ‘von’ is hereditary and not purchased. He insists I call him Heini, but that is rather too much. He is, in fact, a great deal older than I. We have been much thrown together of late, sitting next to each other at dinner parties, accidentally meeting at art openings. He is a bit of a philistine, but he is also a generous sponsor of the Secession. Carl, my stepfather that is, values Herr von Tratten in that regard.”

She smiled winningly at Gross, but by now he had steeled himself against Fräulein Schindler’s seductive powers and was concentrating solely on the information at hand.