Requiem in Vienna (29 page)

“Yes,” Gross said. “Very good, Werthen. And thus gets ink on the edge of his palm thereby smudging the paper intermittently. By the way, your father-in-law is here.”

“Herr Meisner.” Werthen looked around the room.

“With your lady-wife, man. In her room.”

“Why did you not tell me straightaway?”

But Gross had turned his attention back to a close inspection of the Schreier letter, mounted under the lens of the microscope.

Frau Blatschky waved at him as he passed the kitchen on the way to the bedroom.

“I know,” he told her. “Gross informed me.”

She nodded and he continued on his way to the bedroom, knocking first on his own door and feeling a bit of a fool for doing so.

“Yes?”

Berthe’s voice from within.

He opened the door and there was Herr Meisner seated in a chair next to the bed reading from the Talmud. His long, gray beard made the man look like a patriarch. Berthe, lying in bed under the lightweight summer comforter, held a restraining hand up to him, for her father was continuing with the tractate. As far as Werthen could ascertain, he was reading, in Hebraic, from the Third Order of the Mishnah, regarding marriage. He stood at the door, allowing the old gentleman to finish the reading. Strangely, he found comfort in these spoken words, only a few of which he understood. A Talmudic scholar, among other accomplishments, Herr Meisner lived his faith. Berthe seemed to take comfort from the words as well, resting her head on the pillows, and smiling sweetly at Werthen.

As he finished his reading, Herr Meisner carefully placed a length of embroidered silk in the book as a marker, closed it, and laid it on the bedside table next to Berthe’s copy of Bertha von Suttner’s
Lay Down Your Arms
, which she was reading for the tenth time at least.

Herr Meisner rose and cast Werthen a full smile.

“It is good to see you again,” he said, his large hand outstretched to his son-in-law.

They had not seen each other since the wedding in April. Despite Berthe’s forebodings, her father had made no argument with their civil marriage. It was, instead, the Werthens who boycotted the proceeding because it was not held under religious auspices. Ironies abound, Werthen thought. Here was a man who held to the old ways in the modern world. A devout Jew, yet he bowed to his daughter’s wishes for her marriage. It was his own parents, passionate assimilationists, Protestant converts for convenience’s
sake, who were so outraged by the decision to hold a civil ceremony that they would not be part of it.

Herr Meisner, a widower for many years, was not a cloying, protective father. He had wide interests. In addition to his successful Linz shoe factory and to his reputation as one of the most noted Talmudic scholars in Austria, he was also an amateur musician of no little talent and a historian of prodigious knowledge.

“Good to see you too, sir.”

Their handshake was warm and heartfelt from both sides, but there were no artificial pleadings on Herr Meisner’s part to call him by his family name, or worse, his given name. In fact, Werthen did not even know the man’s given name.

“Father promises to stay for more than a few days this time,” Berthe said, for she knew Werthen was fond of the man.

“Well, I am forced to now, whether I wish to or not.”

They had not told Herr Meisner before of Berthe’s pregnancy, a precaution until the first delicate months were past and the baby was well on its way. But she had obviously shared the secret with him now and he was not angry. Rather, his comment bespoke his usual gruff irony.

“Especially with this Mahler business afoot,” the older man added. “You must bring me up to date on your activities on his behalf. I was at the premiere of his Second Symphony in Berlin in 1895. A gifted composer. Not exactly to my personal taste, but clearly a major talent.”

Werthen and Berthe smiled at this, a warm understanding passing between them that it was a comfort to have her father with them once again. Like old times with both Gross and Herr Meisner as houseguests. It was fortunate they had not yet begun redecorating the second guest room as a nursery.

The four of them were gathered around the dinner table and Berthe had convinced Frau Blatschky to cook her old specialties
again. The days of bed rest had done her good and the nausea seemed to be in abeyance for the time being.

In deference to Herr Meisner, Frau Blatschky stayed away from pork tonight, opting instead for
beuschel
, a delicate ragout of fine strips of calf lung in a cream sauce served with a tender
knödel
. She paired this with an endive and radicchio salad drizzled with wine vinegar and rapeseed oil.

Gross remained silent through his two helpings of
beuschel
. Berthe contented herself with salad only. Werthen and Herr Meisner made small talk about the latest scandal in Parliament and the rise in strength of Mayor Lueger’s Christian Democratic Party: “Neither truly Christian nor democratic in outlook,” Herr Meisner pronounced.

Finally, as Gross daubed at his lips with a damask napkin, Herr Meisner brought them around to the subject of Mahler.

“So,” he said, “where does the investigation stand?”

For the next half hour Werthen and Gross took turns detailing the progress of their attempts to protect Mahler and to bring the person or persons responsible for the attacks to justice. It had been a long and torturous route, from Alma Schindler’s first alert, to the investigation of the deaths of Fräulein Kaspar and Herr Gunther, to the interviews of likely suspects such as Leitner and the stage manager Blauer, as well as hostile critics like Hassler and Hanslick, resentful artists and performers, including Hans Richter, and even the head of the banned claque, Schreier. They also detailed the domestic suspects, the sister Justine who had been disinherited, the faithful Natalie Bauer-Lechner, and Arnold Rosé, suitor of Justine. They described the attempts on Mahler’s life, including the cut bicycle brake and most recently the poisoned Turkish delight and the arrest and release of Schreier.

They went on to explain how their investigation had broadened, spurred on by the reception of an anonymous letter. How they probed the possibility that other famous composers recently
dead had been the victims of a serial killer at work. There were Bruckner, Brahms, and Strauss, as well as the young composer Alexander Zemlinsky who had suffered an accident similar to one of Mahler’s, falling from his director’s podium at the Carl Theater.

“In the case of Brahms, however,” Gross intoned, “we have ascertained that his death was, as reported at the time, the result of liver cancer. Strauss, though, is a different matter.”

He briefly explained the mysterious summons to the Hofburg that ultimately cost Strauss his life.

“And Bruckner?” Herr Meisner asked.

“We have not yet had the time to investigate that,” Werthen said. “Nor have we looked more deeply into the Zemlinsky matter.”

“With the latest attack on Mahler we have decided to refocus, returning to our initial investigation,” Gross explained. “Your daughter and Werthen have made some intriguing discoveries about Mahler’s student days.”

Werthen described the most recent information uncovered, about Hans Rott and the gossip that Mahler may have stolen from the dead composer’s works.

“You’re forgetting the attack on you, Karl,” Berthe said, pushing her unfinished salad aside.

Werthen told how his office had been torn apart.

“It was nothing, really,” he said, trying to downplay the danger for Berthe’s sake.

“Doesn’t sound like nothing to me,” Herr Meisner said. “What was the intruder looking for?”

“We don’t know,” Werthen said. “As far as I can tell, nothing is missing.”

“And this letter?”

Meaning their anonymous letter, Werthen thought, as the letter to Schreier had not been discovered until after the break-in and assault at the law office.

“It is here. I keep many of the files for my private inquiries at home.”

“But the assailant couldn’t know that, could he?” Herr Meisner said.

Gross suddenly pounded the table in excitement.

“Exactly. The man was after the letter. There must be something compromising in it.”

“Perhaps the musical score,” Berthe offered.

Werthen left the table to fetch the letter. Returning, he spread it out on the dining-room table.

“Ah, yes,” Herr Meisner said, viewing the letter and paying close attention to the musical annotation at the bottom of it. “Of course there is little to be learned from the primitive handwriting. But the musical score could be a code. A small hobby of mine, musical codes.”

Werthen was reminded of Kraus’s tales of how Brahms inserted coded messages into his works.

Gross, who made a study of codes for his book, got up now from his chair and moved next to Herr Meisner.

“I am not so certain about the code,” Gross said, “but I do see something new in this letter.”

At that, he went into the sitting room and came back with the letter to Schreier and placed it next to the anonymous one.

“There,” he said, pointing at several places on each. “You see?”

“The smudges,” Werthen said.

“Right. At regular intervals. It seems our letter writer could not restrain himself from making corrections in the text, thereby staining his hand and smudging the paper. I should say these letters were written by the same person, despite the fact that the handwriting is disguised in both. Find the man who wrote these and we have our killer.”

“Then it was most likely this letter your man was after at the law office,” Herr Meisner said. “Do you think it safe that you keep it in your home? Come now, Werthen. You have a family to protect.”

A sudden and insistent rapping sounded at their apartment door, and everyone froze for an instant.

Finally Gross said, “Rather unlikely the killer would knock.”

Nonetheless, he and Werthen went to the door before Frau Blatschky could see to it. Gross made a detour to his room first, and a distinct bulge in the right pocket of his dinner jacket let Werthen know he was now armed.

Gross stood to one side of the door, hand firmly gripping the pistol in his pocket, while Werthen peered through the fish-eye peephole in the door.

“My Lord.” He sighed. “What does she want?”

He glanced at Gross. “Put it away. You won’t need a gun.”

He opened the door to Alma Schindler, looking downcast and almost sheepish, and attired in evening dress as if she had just come from the Hofoper.

“Fräulein Schindler,” Werthen said as he ushered the young woman in.

“I am sorry to bother you like this,” she said, looking from Werthen to Gross. “But I have felt so awful since our last meeting. I just could not let it go as it did. I was at the opera tonight and I had to leave during the interval. My sister awaits me in a
fiaker
below, so this must be brief. Please accept my apology.”

“It is perfectly all right, Fräulein Schindler.”

“No, it is not,” she said, and stamped a petulant foot. “I was willful and cruel. I want to apologize. I need to apologize.”

Berthe and her father had now joined them in the foyer and quick introductions were made all round.

“For pity’s sake, Werthen,” the older man said. “What kind of host are you? Invite the young lady in for a coffee.”

She brightened at this, happy to find an ally.

“No, no. I do not want to interrupt anything. Only to say how sincerely sorry I am for the way I acted.”

“Fräulein Schindler,” Berthe said. “I am sure we can take care of this tomorrow at the office.”

But Herr Meisner again interrupted. “So this is the famous daughter of Schindler. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your late father’s work, young woman. The man was a genius of landscape.”

She looked almost adoringly at Herr Meisner. “Do you think so really? So do I, but then I am not impartial. He was such a good man.”

“I am sure he was, dear girl. Now do come in and join us for a spot of coffee.”

He ushered her into the dining room, a protective arm around her shoulders.

Werthen, Gross, and Berthe were amazed at this, and could only follow. What in the world could the old man be thinking of? Werthen wondered.

Alma allowed herself to be guided into the dining room; so much for her concern for her waiting sister.

In the dining room, Herr Meisner seated the young woman next to him. Upon entering, Gross quickly swept up the letters and put them in his jacket pocket along with his pistol.

“Now exactly what is it you have to apologize for?” Berthe’s father asked.

She blushed down to her partly exposed décolletage.

“I can hardly imagine such a charming young lady to be guilty of a major faux pas,” Herr Meisner continued.

“Fräulein Schindler made some rather unfortunate remarks while we were visiting Zemlinsky,” Werthen said.

She looked up. “Your son-in-law is too generous. The unfortunate comments were of a racial sort. Anti-Semitic, in fact.”

The older man let out a sort of guffaw at this. “Well, you would hardly be Austrian without a bit of that in your blood, young lady. Do not lose sleep over it, but I find it commendable that you have come to unburden yourself of this. Bravo for you.”

Frau Blatschky appeared in the doorway. “Shall I serve coffee, madam?” she said to Berthe.

“Please, Frau Blatschky,” Berthe said.

“And an extra cup for our young visitor,” Herr Meisner said.

“Oh, no. Thank you so much, but I really must be going.” She reached out and patted Herr Meisner’s hand. “I thank you so much, sir. You have made me feel so much better. Perhaps I can actually watch the last act of the opera now.”

She was up and made her adieus. No one but Herr Meisner attempted to detain her. She left behind a slight smell of violets in her wake.

“My Lord,” Herr Meisner said as the apartment door closed. “What a splendid young woman. Werthen, you do her a disservice to describe her as a spoiled dilettante. She has something, does Fräulein Schindler. A real presence.”

“A presence, to be sure,” Werthen said, but meant something quite different than did Herr Meisner.