The Empty Mirror

Thanks first go to Alexandra Machinist, an agent of wit, intelligence, grit, insight, determination, and loyalty. You are a writer’s dream come true. Also a round of applause to Peter Joseph, an editor whose enthusiasm for this project was palpable in every query and edit. Additionally, Peter’s able assistant, Lorrie McCann has earned this author’s best regards for her efficiency and good humor. The stellar and thorough copy editing of Steve Boldt, under the very able direction of production editor Bob Berkel, proves once again the importance of the old adage that the devil is in the details. My book-savvy daughter, Tess Jones, also added encouragement in the early stages of this project as did writing buddy supreme, Allen Appel. Finally, thank you Thomas Dunne, gentleman publisher, for seeing the promise and potential in this work.

S
he hurried along the darkened, cobbled streets, angry and full of self-recrimination. If she hadn’t missed the last tram; if Girardi had invited her to his pied-à-terre instead of pleading early rehearsals; if she had only taken her friend Mitzi’s advice to drop that pompous little jellyfish of an actor and sleep with Klimt instead. So many ifs.

A man tipped his hat to her at the corner of Kärntnerstrasse and Graben. “How much?” he asked.

Couldn’t blame him really; not many respectable girls out alone this late, and half the whores in Vienna plied their trade at that intersection. But it unnerved her, being mistaken for a prostitute, and she turned into a jumble of unfamiliar, darkened lanes behind Stephansdom before she had intended to, eager to get to her lodgings in the Third District.

Now there was nobody about; as quiet in Vienna at ten thirty as it was in her little village in Vorarlberg. She felt a sudden shiver of fear. The newspapers were full of reports about a mad killer on the loose in Vienna, about bodies dumped in the Prater amusement park. Another shiver rattled her body.

She picked up her pace and took her mind off such thoughts
by remembering what she had achieved so far in her young life. The muddy streets of her village in Vorarlberg seemed like another world. It had taken her three years to steal enough pfennigs from her father’s wage packets to finally buy a third-class ticket to the capital, escaping said father and his black moods. She never looked back, seizing her opportunity like a life raft, and she had made it. Lover to the most famous actor in Vienna, model to the most famous painter. But if her papa ever saw one of her portraits … Not much danger of that, though; never took his nose out of his beer.

She thought of Klimt as she hurried along. He had eyes that penetrated. That bloke could look at you so he made you feel naked, even when you already were. As if he saw inside you. Cold his studio was. Made her all goose bumpy. But when she complained, he told her that was the way he wanted her; made her nipples perk right up did the cold, just the way he needed for his paintings. Clever old dog that Klimt.
Call me Gustl
, he said. And no funny business, though she knew he wanted her.

Suddenly she realized she’d become lost. Wasn’t sure which way was which in the narrow and dark lanes. She saw a pulsing glow of light to her left and took that street. The light came from a canvas tent over a manhole cover; men working. That seemed safe. She followed the glowing light, but as she passed the manhole, she found nobody about. Must be working below. She shuddered at the thought. A terrible life working in the sewers.

“Fräulein.”

She spun around at the sound of the man’s voice. Then, seeing who it was, she smiled in relief.

“Oh. Hello.”

Those were her last words.

D
amn that Gross, he thought as he sat restlessly in front of his untouched breakfast, a blank sheet of folio staring at him reproachfully from the desktop.

Advokat
Karl Werthen was at loose ends this morning. The lawyer usually reserved the breakfast hour for writing. To date he had published five short stories, tales of “interrupted lives,” as he liked to describe them.

Today, however, he had appetite neither for Frau Blatschky’s excellent coffee nor for the antics of his foppish protagonist, Maxim, and the mysterious woman in the checkered mask he had met at the Washerwoman’s Ball. And it was all the fault of his former colleague from Graz, the esteemed criminologist Doktor Hanns Gross, with whom Werthen had had dinner and a subsequent conversation last night. By his very presence, Gross had made Werthen realize that such scribblings were a poor substitute for real action and adventure. Werthen suddenly saw his literary ambitions for what they were: vain attempts at adding spice into his otherwise stodgy life. After all, his creations were far from art; merely clever little stories of amorous boulevardiers
which the young ear-nose-and-throat man Dr. Arthur Schnitzler wrote much better, anyway.

Damn that Gross.

He should not be too hard on the criminologist, though, for truth be told this was not the first time in the last six years-since giving up criminal law in Graz to establish himself as one of Vienna’s top men in wills and trusts-that Karl Werthen had wondered if he had made the right decision. Had he been too rash in his decision, too self-sacrificing?

He was distracted from these morose thoughts by a ruckus in the hall outside his sitting room, followed by an urgent rapping at the white double doors.

He glanced automatically over his shoulder to the Sevres clock on the marble mantel. Too early for the first post.

“Yes?”

The door opened slowly. Frau Blatschky, red-faced, peered around it, then stepped timidly into the room, chapped hands digging into the pockets of her freshly starched apron.

“A man here to talk with you, Herr Doktor,” she began.

He was about to remind her of his sacred breakfast hour when the door behind her was thrust more widely open and a thick, stocky man burst into the room. His short hair was disheveled, his beard in need of a trim, and he wore a violently magenta caftan that hung down to his sandaled feet.

“Werthen!” the man thundered, his working-class Viennese accent clear even in this two-syllable pronouncement. “I must see you, man.”

“I believe you are doing so, Klimt,” Werthen answered calmly, smiling at Frau Blatschky to indicate she might withdraw.