Vienna Secrets (23 page)

59

“D
OES THE NAME
J
EHEIL
S
ACHS
mean anything to you?” asked Rheinhardt.

Anna Katzer was wearing a crisp white blouse and a pink skirt. She straightened her back, frowned, and said, “Yes, unfortunately it does.”

Rheinhardt flicked his notebook open.

“How did you become acquainted?”

Anna’s frown became more pronounced.

“I wouldn’t call Herr Sachs an acquaintance, Inspector.”

“Why not? Didn’t you pay him a visit last week?”

Anna was evidently surprised. “Who told you that? He hasn’t made a complaint, has he?”

“No,” said Rheinhardt calmly. “No, he hasn’t.”

Anna scowled.

“Well, Fräulein Katzer?” Rheinhardt asked. “Why did you go to see Herr Sachs?”

“Inspector, do you know the new
wärmestube
in Spittelberg?”

“Yes.”

“On Wednesday, a Galician woman named Kadia Pinski fainted there. A doctor was called, and he discovered that she had been badly injured. She was a prostitute, and the man she named as her attacker was also her procurer—Jeheil Sachs.” Anna paused and secured one of her hairpins. “Apparently Fräulein Pinski had wanted to end her association with Herr Sachs, and he had responded by violating her person in the cruelest way imaginable. You see, Inspector…” She touched her neck and looked away. “Fräulein Pinski’s injuries were
internal
, and had been inflicted with the handle of a brush.” Rheinhardt winced. “Had she not received medical attention, she most probably would have died.”

“Where is she now?”

“Recovering in the hospital. We were able to make arrangements for her care.”

“We?”

“Myself and my dear friend Olga Mandl. As you can imagine, Inspector, we were horrified—and we resolved to pay Herr Sachs a visit in order to issue him with a warning, before he assaulted some other poor wretch.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“We did, but Fräulein Pinski was too frightened to make a statement. Besides, as I am sure you are aware, Inspector, the police are disinclined to assist women of her nationality and profession.”

Anna looked directly at Rheinhardt. She was tacitly challenging him to deny her allegation. He couldn’t: What she had said was perfectly true. Rheinhardt sighed, the exhalation carrying his next question. “What did you say to Herr Sachs?”

“I can’t remember exactly,” Anna replied. “We told him that we knew what he had done, that we had a doctor’s report, that we would be taking things further…”

“And how did he react?”

“At first he wasn’t very much bothered. He was clearly confident that the police wouldn’t be interested. He admitted introducing Fräulein Pinski to some soldiers, so that she could have, as he called it, ‘a good time,’ but denied everything else. He became angry only when we refused to leave.”

“What did he do?”

“He shouted and pushed me out of the way.”

Rheinhardt tilted his head quizzically.

“I was holding his door open,” Anna explained. “He had to get me out of the way to close it.”

Rheinhardt made some notes.

“It was a foolish thing that you did, you and your friend—going into Spittelberg to rile a man like Sachs. You could have been hurt as a consequence. What did you hope to achieve?”

“We thought we might scare him,” said Anna.

Rheinhardt had to make a conscious effort not to laugh out loud.

“Inspector,” Anna asked, “why are you here, asking me these questions? Is Herr Sachs involved in one of your cases?”

“Yes,” said Rheinhardt. “You could say that.” He squeezed one of the horns of his mustache between his thumb and forefinger, twisting it to sharpen the point. “Apart from the police—and the doctors who are taking care of Fräulein Pinski—have you spoken to anyone else about Sachs?”

“My parents and…”

Rheinhardt detected a certain hesitancy.

“Yes?”

“Another friend.”

Her voice had softened.

“What is your friend’s name?”

“Gabriel. Gabriel Kusevitsky.”

Rheinhardt looked up. “And where might I find this gentleman?”

60

H
ERR
P
OPPMEIER WAS A
dapper man in his early thirties. His hair was a fair reddish-brown color and was parted in the center. He looked quite young for his age, almost cherubic, and his mustache—which was also fair and meticulously combed—did little to mitigate a first impression of immaturity. His clothes were finely tailored, and his tiepin (a flamboyant coral reef of colored stones) looked conspicuously expensive. He was in the habit of constantly making small adjustments to his cuffs, and his use of cologne was so liberal that he had been preceded by a cloud of blossomy fragrances long before his actual arrival.

“Were you a happy child?” Liebermann asked.

“Happy enough…. I got on well with my mother and father.”

“And your brothers and sisters?”

“I don’t have any.”

“An only child…”

“Yes. I’m sure my mother and father wanted more children, but there must have been a problem. I used to see my cousins occasionally—but not very often.” He blinked and pushed out his lower lip. “Is this relevant?”

The tone of the question was confused rather than belligerent.

“What were they like, your mother and father?”

“They were very loving, but also rather anxious. I suppose this was because I was their only child. They tended to mollycoddle me. If I so much as sneezed, they would keep me home from school. Of course, I was delighted with their behavior at the time, but I grew to regret it in adult life.”

“Did you enjoy school?”

“Not much. I’ve never been very academic, and the school I went to was a grim place: whitewashed walls and hard benches that made your bones ache. The teachers were awful, strict disciplinarians—and petty. They used to cover the windows in the summer so that we wouldn’t be distracted, and we had only one break, ten minutes, standing like miserable wretches in a stuffy hall.”

“If your parents were so concerned about your welfare, why didn’t they send you to a better school?”

“There wasn’t a better school. It was supposed to be the best in our neighborhood.”

Liebermann nodded sympathetically. He asked Herr Poppmeier more questions about his childhood, and formed a picture in his mind of a rather lonely, unhappy boy, somewhat stifled by his overprotective parents.

“You said that your mother and father wanted more children…”

“Yes.”

“How do you know that?”

“My mother and father used to tell me that I was going to have a little brother or sister… but he or she never arrived. I imagine that my mother was getting”—he hesitated and winced—“pregnant.” Then, knitting his brow, he persevered with his unfinished sentence: “And while in the first flush of excitement, they would share their good news with me. But my mother must have miscarried.”

“Were you disappointed, when the promised brother or sister did not arrive?”

“Not desperately. I was accustomed to having the exclusive attention of my parents. I’m not sure that I was eager to share them with anyone else.”

“Can you remember your mother and father becoming sad?”

“Yes, I can. But in due course these episodes of sadness became less frequent. They must have stopped trying.”

Liebermann summarized his thoughts with great economy, writing only
Self-blame?
in his notes.

After discussing Herr Poppmeier’s childhood, Liebermann then asked him about his work. He immediately appeared more comfortable.

“I’m a salesman, for Prock and Hornbostel. I take samples of our jewelry around Vienna, but I am also required to travel quite a lot: Pressburg, Linz, Budapest. I once had to go as far as Trieste. We cater for all tastes—and classes.” Herr Poppmeier then went into an extensive and detailed description of the contents of the Prock and Hornbostel catalogue. His intonation immediately changed, acquiring the persuasive strains and cadences of a seasoned salesman. “The Belvedere range has been crafted to the highest possible standards; the brooch with pendant is quite exquisite: beaten gold leaves, inlays of pearl and shell, with a suspended tear of topaz and diamond.”

Liebermann thought that it would be prudent to interrupt. “Thank you, Herr Poppmeier. That is all very interesting, very interesting indeed.” He leaned forward to arrest the salesman’s pitch. “May I ask, when was it that you first became aware of your symptoms?”

Herr Poppmeier’s expression darkened. Clearly his well-rehearsed patter had brought him some small relief—temporary deliverance—from the shameful strangeness of his condition.

“About three weeks ago…. I think I experienced the initial bout of morning sickness around the time when Arabelle’s pregnancy started to show. When she started wearing maternity dresses.”

“Did you get any of these symptoms when your wife was pregnant before?”

“No. I was perfectly healthy.”

Liebermann paused to make some notes, but before he had finished, Herr Poppmeier said, “She was pregnant another time… just over a year ago. Sadly, we lost the child. The labor was complicated. Arabelle almost died. The child was stillborn.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been dreadful.”

“Yes, it was. And I was away when Arabelle went into labor. On one of my trips… I got a telegram.”

“Where were you?”

“Lin—” The syllable slipped out before he corrected himself. “No, Steyr.”

Liebermann made a note of the blunder. The arrival of momentous news was indelibly associated with the circumstances of the recipient. The brain absorbed everything, suspending the tragic communication in a preservative of easily accessible sense memories. Why would Poppmeier have made such a slip?

“Herr Doctor?”

Liebermann looked up.

“Will I have to stay here… in the hospital?”

“For a short period, for observation, yes—after which it might be possible to treat you as an outpatient. Let’s see.”

“What is the matter with me?”

“That is what we must find out.”

“These symptoms… I know what they are, obviously.” Again, Poppmeier winced, and a hectic rash appeared on his neck. He loosened the stud holding his collar. “I was once told that you psychiatrists treat people by learning the meaning of symptoms. Well, you don’t have to be a psychiatrist to understand the meaning of
my
symptoms. I know what they mean already, and they still won’t go away.”

“You are quite right, symptoms often remit when patients discover their significance; however, there are meanings—and then there are
hidden
meanings. It is the latter that are most important.”

“I don’t understand. Hidden?”

“Hidden in your own mind.”

“But if they are hidden, how can we find them? And where are they hidden?”

Liebermann smiled. “Tell me, Herr Poppmeier, what did you dream last night?”

61

C
OUNCILLOR
S
CHMIDT WAS SITTING
in his room at the town hall, smoking a cigar and thinking about his mistress. She had started to make unreasonable demands. From his experience, all women were the same in this respect. They became over-curious, meddlesome. They always wanted more. Private dining rooms, trinkets, and bouquets were no longer sufficient to keep them happy. They became morose, subdued in the bedroom, and maddeningly inquisitive.

Where are you going tomorrow night? Is it an official engagement? Will there be any society ladies present?

And so on…

He treated these questions as he might the singing of a canary, being barely conscious of the incessant warbling until its cessation.

Inquisitive mistresses were a liability. He did not want
them
, or
anyone
, to know his whereabouts. His plans (and he now had many of them) could be endangered by loose talk. The less people knew, the better.

Schmidt leaned back and rested his feet on his desk. The cigar tasted good. It was expensive and had been given to him, with other incentives, by a business associate in return for a small favor. The associate’s lawyer had needed to study a certain title deed in the town hall archive. A promise of future preferment was all it had taken to persuade the archivist to hand him the desired document.

The tobacco was pungent, but teased the palate with a fruity sweetness. Schmidt dislodged some ash and continued thinking about his mistress.

Yes, it’s been diverting enough—especially at the beginning, when she was more vivacious, lively, and appreciative. But the dalliance has probably run its course now. Time to move on
.

There was a knock on the door.

Schmidt quickly shifted his feet off the desk, spread some papers, and picked up his pen. Adopting the vexed attitude of someone in the middle of a taxing piece of work, he called out, “Enter.”

The door opened, and his nephew appeared.

“Oh, it’s you.” Schmidt relaxed and tossed his pen across the desk.

He saw that his nephew was clutching his mail. It was Fabian who opened and read all his official correspondence. The majority of which consisted of requests for assistance, support, advice, good causes—the sort of thing he could let Fabian attend to. The mayor’s motto was “We must help the little man.” A laudable sentiment, but in practice remarkably time-consuming and very unprofitable.

“Come in, dear boy,” said Schmidt. “What have you got for me?”

“Uncle Julius,” said Fabian, “you’ll never believe what’s happened. There’s been another murder—a decapitation again, just like Brother Stanislav and poor Faust.”

“Where?”

“The Ulrichskirche. I tried to walk through Ulrichsplatz this morning and was stopped. There were policemen and a journalist. They said it happened in the small hours.”

“And the victim?”

“A Jew, a penniless Jew.”

“A Jew, eh? Perhaps someone with a bit of backbone has finally decided to retaliate, an eye for an eye. What do you think? One of the dueling fraternities? When I was your age, I can remember Strength and Unity was full of high-spirited fellows.” Schmidt stubbed out his cigar. “The reports in the newspapers have been so tame—so assiduous in their efforts to avoid stating the obvious—that it wouldn’t surprise me. The censor is supposed to protect the public interest, not a parasitic minority.”

Fabian handed Schmidt the wad of papers. “Your mail, Uncle.”

“Anything I need to look at?”

“Not really. Oh, no… there was something.” Fabian licked his finger and, leaning forward, rifled through the papers. “Yes—this, from Professor Gandler at the hospital. You must reply today if possible.”

Schmidt took the letter from the pile and began to read.