The Empty Mirror (21 page)

Subject remained partly hidden behind a gas lamp for over two hours. At one point he appeared eager to move. A female resident of number 12, dressed in black, quickly departed, ushered out by two men into a waiting landau. The carriage pulled away quickly and the subject resumed his seeming watch. At 8:12 precisely, subject broke off watch and continued walking back to his accommodations in Fünfhaus
.

Gross had already finished reading his pages, and Werthen handed him the final ones for June 12. The criminologist puffed out his lips as he read, then stabbed the paper with a forefinger.

“Hah! You see, Werthen. There is a connection!”

“That was the very night Empress Elisabeth was visiting Herr Frosch,” Werthen said excitedly. “It was Frosch’s apartment Luccheni was watching. Gusshausstrasse 12. It all fits.”

“Lower your voice, my friend,” Gross counseled. “Yes, indeed. It was to Herr Frosch the anarchist had been directed. Most likely by this message handed to him by the mysterious house-painter. Thus, he was already stalking his victim long before he struck.”

“That was her the police saw leave the building, wasn’t it, Gross? The lady all in black? Empress Elisabeth.”

“Yes. It must have been. And for once she was traveling in the company of bodyguards, or the cowardly Luccheni may well have struck that very night. It seems, however, that the police watchers were ignorant of the empress’s movements. They obviously did not know her identity.”

“She often traveled incognito. I believe,” added Werthen, “that she often assumed the identity of one Countess Hohenembs, though usually her marvelous looks gave her away.”

“This changes things dramatically,” Gross said, collecting the papers. “There is nothing of interest in the later reports. The police, in fact, lost track of Luccheni by the fifteenth. It is assumed he had already left Vienna by that time. Or did he remain in Vienna for two more months, changing addresses to evade the police watch, and commit the atrocities we all put at the door of Herr Binder?”

“But for what possible motive? He was after royalty, after all, Gross. The newspapers say he was ready to kill the Duke of Orléans, but that the unfortunate empress stumbled into his path first. He was after someone important just to get his name in the papers. Why all those other victims then, several of whom were of the working class, which he, as an anarchist, professed to be protecting? It makes no sense.”

“You are, of course, correct, Werthen. Such a theory does make no sense. However, we have posited the connection between the deaths of Frosch and the empress. Therefore, the only alternative theory is that Luccheni did not kill the empress.”

Werthen simply stared at Gross, unable to say anything to such an outlandish statement.

“Come, Werthen. Close your gaping mouth and help me collate these papers and return them to Meindl. We have work to do.”

Frau Geldner’s pension was located on Clementinengasse, not far from the Empress Elisabeth West Train Station. Werthen could hear the groan and huff of engines arriving and departing; the heavy smell of smoke was in the air. This area was part of the northern extremity of the garment district, where looms and seamstresses worked twelve hours a day, six days a week.

Opening her door on the fourth knock, Frau Geldner was a large, florid woman dressed in a gingham housedress and smoking a meerschaum pipe. She scowled at Gross as he handed her his card.

“You blokes must have gotten the wrong address. We don’t cater to your class here.”

“No, Frau Geldner,” Gross said, inserting his booted foot in the door to keep her from closing it on them. “We have the correct address. The one, I believe, where the celebrated Signor Luccheni briefly stayed last June.”

She shook her head. “Don’t know any Luccheni. Don’t care much for foreigners. No toffs nor foreigners. That’s my motto.” She chuckled, coughing wetly. Three spiky black hairs bristled from the tip of her red nose.

“That is not what the police report says.”

She glanced at his card again suspiciously. “Says here you’re a professor. That right? Not police?”

“That is correct, my good woman.”

“And who’s the stooge with you? He don’t say much, do he?”

At which comment Werthen felt it necessary to introduce himself.

“A lawyer, huh? Professor and lawyer all took the trouble to come way out to Fünfhaus to visit the likes of me. Must be important, then.”

“Your working-class-rustic act is not convincing,” Gross said sternly, his foot still in the door. “I have read your writings in the
Daily Anarchist
, Frau Geldner. And while I hardly agree with your thesis that all the woes in the world have been brought about by the plutocrats and aristocracy, I certainly recognize a first-class mind when I encounter one. Now can we please cease with this hard-bitten whore-mistress role that you have assumed and get down to business?”

At this, the Frau smiled, opened the door fully, and ushered them in.

“A professor who can read,” she said, her voice now assuming a higher and, to Werthen’s ears, a more refined tone. “What a novelty. Come this way, gentlemen. Into my lair.”

They followed her down a long, dark hallway into a sitting
room that was surprisingly modern and comfortable. Werthen had been expecting a jumble of cheap and aged furniture, but he found a room appointed in Jugendstil and art nouveau chic, with chairs and divan upholstered in swirls of greens and golds that Klimt himself might have painted.

“We’re not such barbarians, after all, are we,
Advokat
Werthen?” she said, catching his look of amazement.

But Gross was not interested in the tedious puncturing of the balloons of class bias. He took a chair before being offered and set to business.

“There is no use prevaricating. We know Luccheni stayed here for several days in June.”

“Three to be precise,” she said, moving to a cherrywood sideboard fitted with stained glass that could have been the work of Koloman Moser, another of Vienna’s leading lights in the decorative arts.

“Slivovitz?” she offered. “I find it just the thing to pick up one’s spirits in these difficult hours between
Gabelfrühstück
and lunch.” She poured herself a healthy amount in a brandy snifter without waiting for their replies and merely shrugged when they both declined. The plum brandy went down in one swig, and she sat on the divan, motioning Werthen to take a chair.

“He always so simple?” she said to Gross.

“Madam-,” Werthen began, but Gross cut him off with an upraised hand.

“Please. The matter at hand, and we can let you get on with your prelunch preparations.”

She chuckled again at this. “You are a wry one, aren’t you? Gross…? You know, I may have heard of you.”

He nodded appreciatively. “My work has its followers.”

“Aren’t you the fellow who told the world the Jews were slaughtering Christians in Bohemia? Blood rituals and all. My, but you were off the mark on that one.”

“Yes,” Gross answered abruptly. “Now about Luccheni.”

“What about him? Silly little man, if you ask me. The chaps call him ‘the stupid one.’”

“The ‘chaps’? By which you mean fellow anarchists?” Gross said.

She nodded quite cheerfully. “That is exactly what I mean.”

“Why was he here?” Werthen asked, suddenly tiring of this silly sparring.

“He speaks!” Another laugh, followed by an extended bout of moist coughing. She laid the pipe down on a side table, and it slowly extinguished itself. “Sorry,” she said, once the fit had passed. “I’m not usually so rude. But with you two, I find it rather amusing.”

“Nonetheless, Frau Geldner, you failed to answer my associate’s question,” Gross persisted. “What business did Luccheni have in Vienna?”

“None at all. He was on holiday for all I know. Or care.”

“The man was a near vagrant,” Werthen said. “You expect us to believe he was visiting Vienna for his cultural betterment?”

“I rent rooms,” she said simply. “Many times such visitors are referrals and thus I know their business. Luccheni was not such a referral. He had simply heard of my pension from his friends and showed up on my doorstep on June eleventh. I could hardly turn him away, could I?”

“You said before,” Werthen quoted, “‘no toffs nor foreigners.’ Are we to assume that was a lie? Either you were lying then or now.”

But the lady remained unflustered. “Such eloquence might do very well in front of a judge, Herr
Advokat
, but here I make the rules. I am the judge. I say things. Some are true, some are jokes, and some are that awful thing you just mentioned, lies.”

Gross threw his hands in the air. “Then we have little more to discuss. Perhaps the police …”

“Oh, they’ve been over it several times with me already. But I’ll tell you something for nothing. That man Luccheni couldn’t
manage to kill a goldfish. He was all talk and no action. The ones who do the deeds, they’re all action and no talk. Believe me, I’ve known both types.”

“What do you make of her?” Werthen asked as they left the premises and headed to the
Fiaker
rank near the train station.

“Make of her?” Gross said as if pulled reluctantly out of thought. “Why, Werthen, I make nothing of the woman whatsoever.”

“I mean, was she telling the truth about Luccheni?”

“She herself confessed to being laissez-faire where truth is concerned. I see no reason to even wonder about her comments. All of them are suspect. She could be up to her eyes in the plot to kill the empress, or she could be absolutely correct about Luccheni’s incompetence.”

Gross sped up his pace and Werthen almost had to break into a trot to keep up.

“Gross, would you please slow down. What’s the hurry, man?”

He stopped suddenly, looking at Werthen with surprise. “I would have thought that was obvious, dear Werthen. We have a train to catch. If we make haste back to Josefstädterstrasse, we can pack, pick up a few essentials, and return to the West Train Station in time to catch the Alpine Express at four. That should allow us to arrive in time for early breakfast tomorrow morning.”

“Arrive? Arrive where? What are you talking about, Gross?”

“Geneva, Werthen. We’re going to interview Luccheni.”

W
erthen watched the early-autumn landscape race by outside the spotlessly clean window of the club car. Gross was holed up in his compartment, reading accounts of the empress’s assassination in a variety of newspapers, from the London
Times
, to
Le Monde
from Paris, and Milan’s
Corriere della Sera
. He had secured these from the tobacconist on the corner of Josefstädterstrasse and Laudongasse, who specialized in international editions and had saved copies dealing with the death of the empress. With the censor hard at work in Vienna, foreign newspapers might include information that had been excluded from domestic papers.

After their train passed through Innsbruck, they ate together in the dining car-a farmer’s omelet accompanied by a serviceable Müller-Thurgau from the Wachau, a wine region along the Danube that had until recently been best known for its wine vinegar. At first, there was little small talk, as Gross was in deep meditation.

Finally, Gross looked up from his barely touched meal. “Do you recall, Werthen, what I had to say of the empress’s death just
following her funeral? That is, when I dined with you and the estimable Fräulein Meisner?”

“I do very well.” Werthen laid down his fork and knife between bites. “You commented unfavorably upon the idea of some form of conspiracy being at the center of the deaths of both Empress Elisabeth and her son nine years before.”

“Yes. In fact I said I believed that ‘what we have here is not high intrigue but low and very sad comedy’”

Gross paused and Werthen took another bite of the omelet, enjoying the taste of the black mushrooms included in the hearty concoction. He chewed slowly, thoroughly.

“Have you now changed your opinion?”

“The ironies,” Gross muttered. Then louder: “The blasted ironies.”

A well-heeled couple sitting at the table behind Gross looked up from their soup disapprovingly.

“Calm yourself, Gross. What ironies are we talking of?”

“They begin, dear Werthen, with the empress’s visit to Geneva itself, well-known nest of many revolutionaries of as many stripes. She was of course advised away from the city unless she had made certain security precautions. But traveling under her useless pseudonym of Countess Hohenembs-useless because her face was too well-known to afford her any anonymity-she had only a small retinue. These included her lady-in-waiting, Countess Sztaray; her private secretary, Dr. Eugene Kromar; her English reader, Mr. Barker; her chamberlain, General Beszewiczy; and a bevy of other aides and attendants that made up her court. She had come to Geneva to see the Baron and Baroness Adolphe de Rothschild, who live in the nearby château of Pregny.”

Gross had obviously collected this information from the various papers he had been poring through all afternoon, and though Werthen was fully aware of such particulars, he let the
criminologist continue, for thinking aloud was one of his methods of arriving at new connections. Werthen did, however, take the time to tip a finger at the waiter and order a dessert of
Palatschinken
with chocolate drippings and nuts, and an eiswein to accompany it.

“In the event,” Gross continued, after declining dessert for himself, “the empress visited the baroness on the ninth and came to Geneva that same day, putting up at the Hotel Beau-Rivage. The following day she purchased a player piano and rolls of music at Baker’s, on the rue Bonivard. You see, Werthen, though she was little at home in Vienna, she never forgot her husband. That final gift was intended for him. At any rate, by one thirty-five that afternoon, the empress was on her way from her hotel, the Beau-Rivage, and walking along the Quai du Mont-Blanc toward the steamer
Geneva
, which would take her back to her Swiss base in Territet, at the other end of Lake Geneva. She had, so the French papers reported, sent her entourage by train ahead of her as she had a horror of processions. Thus, only a valet from the hotel, carrying the empress’s cloak and traveling case, and the Countess Sztaray were accompanying her as they passed the Brunswick monument on their way to the steamer. Both the valet and the countess were walking ahead, for the empress enjoyed walking on her own, taking in the lovely view of the lake afforded from the quay. And it was there and then that the man struck.”