The Silence (26 page)

‘I would like to speak to Herr Wittgenstein,’ Werthen said.

‘Which one would that be, sir? We have several in residence.’

Werthen wanted to throttle the supercilious servant, pretending he did not recognize him, and acting as if he did not know exactly to whom he wanted to speak.

He was about to give the man a piece of his mind when he heard the chatter of excited children approaching the forecourt from within the house. Fräulein Mining herself came into view behind Meier, accompanied by two younger boys bundled for the cold and carrying sleds.

One of them was Ludwig Wittgenstein, who stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Werthen at the door.

‘Advokat,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

Werthen could hardly believe his eyes. ‘Master Ludwig.’ He turned to Drechsler, who could only shrug in disbelief.

The young Wittgenstein came up quickly to Werthen, sled in hand. He inserted himself in front of Werthen.

‘That will do, Meier,’ he said, dismissing the servant. Then to Werthen, ‘You aren’t going to tell Father about yesterday, are you?’

Werthen let out a nervous laugh. He felt tears build at his eyes. ‘No, of course not. We thought . . .’ Again he looked to Drechsler, but there was no help coming from that quarter.

‘May I have the envelope, Detective Inspector?’

By this time the older sister, and the brother Paul Wittgenstein, had also approached.

‘What is it, Advokat?’ Fräulein Mining asked.

He took the card out of the envelope and showed it to Ludwig, ignoring for the time being the young woman’s question.

‘Is this yours?’

Ludwig looked at it, and suddenly his face turned beet red.

‘I must have forgotten to take it out of my coat.’

‘What do you mean?’ Werthen said.

‘Before I traded it. But what happened to it? Why is it all stained? Is that . . . is that blood?’

‘Before you traded it?’ Werthen said. ‘For what? With whom?’

Ludwig now had the trapped look of a guilty child.

‘I repeat, Advokat,’ Fräulein Mining said. ‘What is this all about? Why are you pestering my brother about his coat?’

Werthen could no longer restrain himself. The relief he had felt at seeing Ludwig Wittgenstein alive was quickly being replaced with another emotion, a numbing dread and fear.

‘This is about a dead child, Fräulein Mining. He fell under an engine of the
Stadtbahn
this morning.’

‘Heidl.’

It came out of Ludwig like a groan, as if he had been struck.

He and Drechsler wasted no time in getting to the Habsburgergasse and ascertaining from Frau Ignatz that young Heidrich Beer had in fact gone out earlier in the day and had not yet returned.

‘We had a fine midday meal planned and all,’ the
Portier
said. ‘What can that rascal be thinking?’

But she said it almost fondly.

It was now clear to Werthen what had happened. The two boys had formed a friendship. Heidl had, Werthen remembered, made mention of Ludwig’s coat with the fur collar, and finally Ludwig decided to make him a present of it. As Ludwig earlier told him, they had both snuck away this morning to make the exchange. But what was Heidl doing at the Karlsplatz station? Where would he be going? The fastest way home was to walk back into the First District.

Werthen let his mind occupy itself with such thoughts to take the pain away. But this time they had to be sure. He must see the body, look for any distinguishing characteristics before he informed Fräulein Metzinger.

At the morgue in the Ninth District, Doktor Starb, director of the facility, was in charge. The highest levels of authority had been called in on the sacred Sunday when it was thought a Wittgenstein had met an accidental death. The man was dressed in a black suit today, nothing flashy or colorful. He seemed highly relieved when Werthen explained the contretemps of the exchanged coat.

‘I am not sure how you plan to identify the body,’ Starb said after Werthen told him of his mission. ‘It is badly mangled. We have done our best here for a viewing, but . . .’

Werthen understood. However, he knew what he was looking for. Fräulein Metzinger had told Werthen of the boy’s broken left arm that had never healed properly. Werthen had witnessed on several occasions how the boy favored the arm.

‘I need to look at the left forearm. It was broken and I believe is still disfigured.’

They reached the drawer containing the body of the youth and Starb signaled to an assistant.

‘If you would rather . . .’ Starb said.

Werthen had been dreading this. ‘Yes, perhaps.’ He did not have the stomach for viewing the body. Instead he looked away while he heard Starb and the assistant conferring and heard the rustle of linen behind him.

‘You may want to see this for yourself, Advokat,’ Starb said.

Werthen turned. The body was covered in a sheet; only a thin arm stuck out. There, on the forearm, was an unmistakable crook or bend.

‘It has been badly broken,’ Starb confirmed. ‘The left arm.’

‘How old would you say the boy is?’ Werthen asked.

‘Surely no more than twelve, perhaps thirteen. The Wittgenstein boy is younger, but we assumed as the museum card was in the overcoat that it belonged to the deceased.’

Starb nodded to the assistant again and the drawer was closed.

It was early afternoon by the time Werthen arrived at Fräulein Metzinger’s flat in the Third District just off the Landstrasse near Stadtpark. He was accompanied by Rosa Mayreder, friend to both his wife and to his young assistant, whom she, Mayreder, had introduced to Werthen.

Berthe, after her unfortunate experience at Laab im Walde, did not want to expose Frieda to any more stressful situations and at the same time did not yet feel comfortable leaving the baby with others. Thus, Frau Mayreder had agreed to accompany Werthen to break the news of the death of Heidl Beer to Fräulein Metzinger.

Mayreder, writer, painter, musician, and feminist, carried herself with quiet dignity. She had earlier aided Werthen in one of his cases via her connection to the composer Hugo Wolf. Mayreder had in fact written the libretto to Wolf’s opera,
Der Corregidor.

The
Fiaker
let them off mid-block. The snow had begun again after an interval of a few hours. It was falling in dense tufts, turning daylight into murky twilight. The snow settled on Werthen’s hat as they approached Fräulein Metzinger’s building, drifted on to the curls around Frau Mayreder’s forehead. A regal-looking woman though slightly plump, Mayreder had a way of gazing at a person with eyebrows slightly arched that exhibited, Werthen thought, a slight degree of derision. But not today. Her face was drawn and concerned. She did not look forward to this anymore than Werthen did.

The house door was open, and they announced themselves at the
Portier
’s lodge in the foyer before they mounted the stairs. Fräulein Metzinger’s flat was on the fourth floor, and Werthen found himself taking his time on the stairs, delaying the arrival and the inevitable emotional scene.

‘It’s not good to delay,’ Frau Mayreder said, as if understanding his intent. ‘Short and sharp is the best. The kindest.’

He knew she was right, still he could barely bring himself to carry such news to his young assistant. Fräulein Metzinger truly loved the young boy.

Rosa Mayreder lost no time in climbing the stairs and rapped assertively on the apartment door. Cowardly, Werthen hoped that Fräulein Metzinger was out. They had not called in advance to see if she was home on this Sunday. Perhaps she was meeting friends somewhere; perhaps out for a skate on the Stadtpark pond.

The door opened abruptly and Werthen felt sudden amazement.

‘Herr Beer. What are you doing here?’

Heidrich’s father looked as grizzled as he had the first time Werthen met him. His face, however, did not have any of the robust quality he had seen in it before. The eyes were red-rimmed; his mouth was sullen.

‘They’ve gone and killed my only son.’

‘It’s all right, Herr Beer.’ Fräulein Metzinger came up behind the grieving man. Her own eyes showed no sign of tears. She took the man’s arm to lead him back to her sitting room. ‘Please, come in,’ she said to Werthen and Frau Mayreder.

They took off their coats and hats and followed her into a sitting room furnished in nothing but huge overstuffed pillows on the parquet. She settled Beer on to one of the pillows covered in Turkish carpet and motioned for her other guests to do likewise. Werthen had a certain amount of trouble doing so, his right leg refusing to bend properly. But finally he seated himself, his leg sticking straight in front of him.

‘I thank you for coming,’ Fräulein Metzinger said to them, ‘but Herr Beer has already informed me of the tragedy.’

At this word the man let out a small sniffle. Werthen eyed him with real disdain. It was possible Beer felt honest sadness for the death of his son, but it was even more possible that he was trying to somehow turn this to his advantage.

‘How did you know of the accident?’ Werthen asked.

Herr Beer shrugged, lounging back on the pillow now, and his patched trousers rucked up to reveal glaringly white shins. ‘I have my informants. We stick together on the streets. News came to me fast. The boy was coming to meet me.’

Now he broke down completely, and Fräulein Metzinger put a consoling arm around him.

Equally amazing as the presence of Herr Beer was his assistant’s seeming lack of emotion. Not a tear in her eye, no hysterics. Obviously, she had been too busy taking care of the father to mourn the son.

‘You were planning to see your son?’ Werthen said.

Beer looked out warily between gnarled fingers covering his weeping eyes.

‘I know what you told me, Advokat. But he is my flesh and blood. I needed to see him, to give him a fatherly embrace.’

Fräulein Metzinger looked alarmed at this statement. ‘You have met before?’ She looked from Beer to Werthen.

‘We have, to be sure,’ Beer said before Werthen could respond. ‘Told me to stay away from my own flesh and blood.’ He cast a cringing smile Werthen’s way.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

But Frau Mayreder had no difficulty in assessing the situation.

‘A pecuniary motive, one suspects.’

‘What’s so peculiar? He’s my own son. I have a right to see him.’

But Fräulein Metzinger was not about to have the blinders taken from her eyes.

‘He is . . . was the boy’s father, after all,’ she said. Fixing Werthen with a steely look, she asked, ‘Did you actually tell him to stay away from Huck?’

‘I am not sure this is the proper time to be going into all this,’ Werthen said. Then, seeing the determined look on Fräulein Metzinger’s face, he decided otherwise.

‘Well, Herr Beer and I did make our acquaintance. He was waiting for me at my favorite coffeehouse.’ Then to Beer, ‘Another example of information from your friends?’ But Beer was not responding. ‘At any rate, there was a discussion of recompense for his son. I believe, at first, he assumed that we had spirited young Heidl off for purposes—’

‘All right, all right,’ Herr Beer suddenly interjected. ‘I admit it. I thought there might be a little something in it for me. And why not? I raised the boy. Taught him all he knew. But I did love the little tyke. I assure you of that. Loved him as much as life itself.’

And indeed the man looked so miserable that even Werthen’s heart was tugged by his words.

‘Please, Herr Beer,’ Fräulein Metzinger said, holding his shoulders even more tightly. ‘No one doubts your love. I was not trying to take him away from you. I simply wanted to give him a home.’

Now, at long last, she broke down. Tears flooded down her cheeks, and the two clasped to each other on the huge pillow like tempest-tossed survivors of a shipwreck.

Finally Beer looked again at Werthen and Mayreder. ‘I’ll do the person who killed my son. I swear. I’ll track him down and do him the same he did to Heidrich.’

‘It was an accident, Herr Beer,’ Werthen said. ‘There’s no one to blame. No one at fault.’ Yet now, for the first time, Werthen began to wonder at that simple description of Huck’s death. Was it a mere matter of coincidence that one close to him, close to his firm, should die in the midst of this investigation? Werthen ran a hand through his hair as if to clear his mind. Death happens, he reminded himself. Sometimes it simply means nothing. It really is an accident. Yet someone at the station must have seen something.

Beer’s reaction, however, refocused Werthen’s attention. The man shook his head slowly. ‘Took Heidrich away from me and the young lady here. Snuffed him out like a bedbug. I’ll see that person gets what he deserves.’

In the end, Werthen left Frau Mayreder at the apartment. There was nothing more he could do there, and Rosa Mayreder seemed genuinely interested in, if not intrigued by, Beer.

‘The perfect example of a sort of cunning intelligence,’ she said to Werthen as he retrieved hat and coat in the foyer. ‘One cannot really tell if he loved his son or not. If not, then we have just witnessed acting of a quality much better than one sees at the Burg.’

Meaning the Burgtheater, stage of the best actors and actresses in the empire. Werthen felt no such fascination with the man; to him Beer was simply a conniving rotter. However, it was not his job to persuade otherwise.

Outside the snow was still falling, but less frenetically now, and he decided to walk home to clear his head. He cut through Stadtpark and stopped for a time at the ice pond to watch the skaters. They were out in force today, spinning and circling in eddies and flows. Many of the women were dressed
à la Esquimaux
, wearing cap, coat, tight-fitting breeches, and leggings all made of fur, their hands tucked into muffs as they sailed over the ice. It was a fashion made popular after the near disastrous Austrian Arctic expedition of 1874, when sailors aboard the sailing ship
Tegetthoff
discovered and claimed the two hundred ice-covered islands of Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic Ocean. Later their ship became icebound attempting to break through polar icebergs. The trapped ship served as a virtual prison for two years for the crew of twenty-four. Finally the men had to abandon their ship and head southward on foot. Ninety days they journeyed through blizzards and with dwindling supplies until Russian fishing boats saved them. News of their safe return spread around the world by telegraph; in Vienna their exploits were celebrated by this fashion statement, still popular after a quarter of a century.