The Empty Mirror (29 page)

“Was about to be unfaithful and reveal the truth about the death of Crown Prince Rudolf,” Werthen finished for him.

“Who would do such a thing?” Klimt said in disgust.

“Someone for whom symbols are terribly important,” Gross answered. “For whom loyalty is a be-all and end-all. And someone with enough power to strike at the very heart of the empire, brazen enough to assassinate a crown prince and the empress.”

Gross turned his back to them once again, gazing out the window. “Also, someone who thinks he is very clever. We shall see about that.”

He could see the criminologist standing in the window of the flat across the street. If he had a riñe with him, the man would be dead.

He was still fuming about the catastrophe in Geneva. “Make it look like an accident,” he had been ordered. That was a mistake; instead of killing the lawyer and the professor outright, he had to try to arrange a traffic accident and ended up wasting the lives of a perfectly good pair of horses.

All the mystery and false leads. All the drama with mutilation of the Prater victims. He had done his best to create
eine schöne Leiche
, or a beautiful corpse, with each of those, but why all the extra trouble? He’d had to arrange an underground surgery to accommodate that tall order; outfitting a
Keller
in the Third District with surgical instruments and vats for siphoning off the blood, which he subsequently leached into the nearby sewer channel. He had used maps of the sewers and catacombs supplied to him by his controller to become an expert at navigating the underground world of Vienna and was careful to avoid any of the squatter cities established underground by the homeless. Such a lot of bother for death. The only satisfying part of all of those had been the initial contact, the odor of fear as he took them from the back, his hands in a viselike grip on their head and a quick twist to break their neck. The satisfying sound of it.

He was never given anything but orders: no explanations, no reasons. Of course he was a soldier; orders were orders. But one wondered, what were they playing at? Even with the empress he had had to play the role of a coachman rushing to the scene in assistance. And why the charade with the idiot Italian? Orchestrating that had taken more effort than ten clean kills.

Even meeting with his controllers had turned into an opera. At the last meeting with his Major-actually a lieutenant colonel now, but he would always be the Major to him-another person was there to make sure the orders were set out clearly. Dressed like a monk in a hooded cassock, he was, his face hidden in the shadows. All he could discern in the dimness of the room was the figure of a small golden sheep dangling from the man’s neck. Why all the drama? It was only killing, after all.

Now he had to make up for the fiasco in Geneva with the lawyer and the professor. It had been the first time he’d failed. It would not happen again. He didn’t care what the Major told him, next time he would make no mistakes. Subtlety was for pastry chefs. A bullet to the brain would do the trick, and let the constabulary try to piece together the crime.

T
hey were to meet with Professor Krafft-Ebing the next morning in his university office, for Werthen, going over his notes the night before, had come across a possible link in the murders to Franz Ferdinand. The brother of the heir apparent, Archduke Otto, was, as Krafft-Ebing had described during their first meeting, a member of the notorious One Hundred Club, those sufferers of syphilis who regularly debauched young virgins. Thus, perhaps the matter of the nose mutilations still involved syphilis, but not Herr Binder. Perhaps it was somehow connected to Franz Ferdinand and his brother. In any case, this link, albeit tenuous, to Franz Ferdinand was too tantalizing to pass up.

Gross was skeptical, but came along anyway.

Before they left the fiat, Werthen noticed the early mail on the table by the door. On the very top was a letter with Berthe’s handwriting. He opened it quickly and with Gross breathing impatiently over his shoulder read her note:

Dear Karl
,

Please forgive the histrionics Sunday. I do love you. But we must also learn to trust one another. To hold nothing back from each other. And please tell Dr. Gross to stop reading this over your shoulder!

Werthen turned around, and indeed Gross had been perusing the letter, but showed not a whit of remorse.

“Clever girl, that one” was all he said.

Werthen returned to the note, this time facing Gross:

This is a hellish busy week for me, and I am sure for you as well. Let us meet on Friday night and have a celebration. Kisses, darling. Sorry to sound like a schoolgirl, but I miss you. And I do love the bracelet
.

Love, B

Werthen sighed with relief. How he loved her. Her angry words had been plaguing him; now he felt that he could truly move ahead with their investigation once again.

“What are you waiting for, Gross? Time’s wasting.”

Krafft-Ebing had a corner office on the third floor of the new Ringstrasse building completed by the famous architect Heinrich von Ferstel a dozen years earlier. The immense limestone facade of the building dominated the boulevard. Werthen knew that five years earlier Klimt had been commissioned to create a series of ceiling paintings for the entrance, but that after much haggling no themes had yet been agreed upon. The ceiling still looked awfully bare. As they climbed the broad stairs to the third floor, Werthan was surprised to see a female student in braids and a pale blue navy dress hurrying to a lecture, then remembered females had been granted entrance to the university-in the philosophy faculty only-the previous year.

Krafft-Ebing was waiting for them as arranged this morning by
Rohrpost
, the pneumatic underground post that was often as fast as using the telephone, and glanced at the silver-tipped walking stick Werthen was affecting today. A razor-sharp sword was inside, and Werthen knew how to wield it.

Krafft-Ebing’s office was utilitarian in appointment: glass-fronted lawyer’s bookcases lined the walls and framed large
windows overlooking the Ringstrasse. His desk resembled a schoolmaster’s, small-literally dwarfed by the large room-and piled high with notebooks and hefty tomes generously book-marked with slips of blue paper.

They made small talk for a few moments, the psychologist expressing surprise that Gross was not in Bukovina, then got down to business.

“I really do not see how I can help you regarding the One Hundred Club. I shared with you what information I had regarding that infamous society at our last meeting.” Krafft-Ebing leaned back in his leather chair. “But why the continued interest, gentlemen? I understood that the Prater murders had been solved.” His supercilious grin let them know that the psychologist did not for a moment believe that the real culprit in those murders had been brought to justice.

“We have discovered new evidence,” Gross said, informing Krafft-Ebing of the alibi discovered for Herr Binder, but not of the connection between the Prater murders and the assassination of Empress Elisabeth or her son. Gross did not want to endanger his old friend, and knowing too much about this case was to put oneself at risk. Werthen, after the departure of Klimt the evening before, had roundly been chastised by the criminologist for having given the painter too much damning information. Werthen’s ears were still ringing from that dressing-down.

Krafft-Ebing nodded sagely as Gross imparted the new facts. “Then you are looking for a new profile. But you can hardly suspect Archduke Otto. I mean, the man is a flamboyant fool, but hardly a murderer. Besides, I would imagine that you would now be looking for other connections than those having to do with syphilis. If Binder is innocent, it means that someone wanted to make him look guilty and was thus using the unfortunate man’s infection as part of that charade.”

“Or was using Binder’s syphilis to cover up his own,” Werthen quickly offered.

Gross made no response to this, but Krafft-Ebing pursed his lips and said, “Possibly,” without much conviction. “I was reminded of our earlier conversation,” the psychologist went on, “at news of the death of the empress.”

Gross and Werthen exchanged glances at this non sequitur, but by this time Werthen was aware of the psychologist’s roundabout way of discussion.

“At first I heard only that she had died in Geneva, poor woman. I had not seen the newspapers yet and read of her assassination. Thus I thought-and this is what reminded me of our earlier conversation-that she had finally succumbed to her illness.

Gross and Werthen sat in silence, but this very silence was a question.

“You see, she was a sufferer, as well.”

“The Empress Elisabeth had syphilis?” Werthen all but choked on the question.

Krafft-Ebing nodded solemnly. “Not many knew. It was a very well kept imperial secret. Which explains her estrangement from her husband and her continual travels. She was forever seeking a cure, forever trying to run far from the memory of that disease.”

Gross was finally nudged back into speech: “How do you come by this information, Krafft-Ebing?”

“I was, during the final years of his life, the personal physician of Crown Prince Rudolf, if you recall.”

“Of course.” Gross nodded. “You were much away from Graz then. A most prestigious appointment.”

“Yes, it was. And it was also a burden in many ways. For you see, that sad young man was also infected. Had been at birth, as a matter of fact. Congenital syphilis.”

“But where…?” Werthen left his question half-spoken, for the answer was obvious. Franz Josef, the kindly father figure of the empire,
Der Alte
, the bewhiskered gentleman who ruled the
empire with punctilious efficiency, who had been at the helm for half a century. He had infected his young wife with the disease, who in turn gave birth to a child who carried the deadly bacteria in his blood. Werthen suddenly understood the empress’s final gift to her husband: the player piano with the single scroll: “Liebestod.”

“The first child, Archduchess Sophie,” Krafft-Ebing continued, “lived only a pair of years until succumbing to the inherited disease. The second child, Gisela, managed to escape its effects, as did the fourth child, Marie Valerie, born about a decade later. But the third child, the long-awaited heir to the throne, Crown Prince Rudolf, was born with syphilis. By the time of his death, it had gone beyond the second stage.”

“Tragic,” Werthen muttered. He was also confronted with a totally different picture of Franz Josef than he had ever had before. “But what of the emperor?”

“I have never examined him, but apparently he is one of those lucky enough to escape the ravages of the illness, thus far. He is far from a young man and there is very little visible effect from the disease, so far as I can make out. Her majesty, however, was a different matter. By the time of her death, she was afflicted with tremors, her legendary beauty had gone, and she preferred to cover her face as if living in Islam.”

“Was the crown prince in his right mind at the time of his death?” Gross asked.

“I should say so. He had not yet reached the tertiary stage; you might say he was in a sort of remission. In some, this time between the early stages and the tertiary can last decades. But it preyed on him; he knew he was living in the shadow of the gallows.”

“Was he suicidal?” Werthen now asked.

But Krafft-Ebing showed sudden suspicion at all this interest so far removed from their stated investigation. “Gross,” he said,
and then nodded at Werthen, “Herr
Advokat
, I think you are not being forthright with me.”

“Idle curiosity,” Werthen said, trying to smooth it over. It sounded insincere even to his own ears.

“Your choice to know or not,” Gross finally said. “But let me warn you, knowledge can be dangerous. We ourselves have narrowly avoided death once as a result of our investigations. I do not want to involve others if not absolutely necessary.”

“Nonsense,” Krafft-Ebing spluttered. “Now you have got
my
curiosity up. How can I know how to help you if I am kept ignorant of the facts?”

Gross exchanged a glance with Werthen, then sighed deeply before outlining the connection between the Prater murders, including that of Herr Frosch, and the death of Empress Elisabeth and Rudolf a decade earlier. He did not, however, provide any details about the direction their investigation was currently taking-toward Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The psychologist sat in stunned silence for a time after Gross finished.

“My God, it sounds like something the American writer Poe might come up with,” he finally said. His mind worked quickly, piecing together this information with Werthen’s earlier questions regarding Archduke Otto. “So you suspect Otto … No. You suspect his brother, Franz Ferdinand! He would be the one to stand to gain most by Rudolf’s death.”

“A kingdom,” Werthen said.

Krafft-Ebing shook his head violently. “No. Completely wrongheaded.” He focused on Gross. “You believe this?”

“He has motive,” Gross allowed. “And whomever we are battling-for it is a life-and-death battle, make no mistake-has terrific power, that is clear from the way he has controlled the investigation into the Prater murders from the very outset.”

“Nonsense,” Krafft-Ebing insisted. “Franz Ferdinand is
sometimes a blustering fool, frustrated at being kept out of policy-making, just as his cousin Rudolf had been. But I have met him. He is actually quite a knowledgeable chap. He has even written a book about his travels, visiting the warmer climates in an attempt to cure his tuberculosis. I had cause to examine him in March, as a matter of fact. I pronounced him cured and able to take on full duties of heir apparent. You should have seen him once I made the pronouncement. He danced around like a small child. The man grows roses, for Lord sake. How can he be a cold-blooded killer?”

“Roses?” Gross said. “Interesting. The same hobby as our Herr Binder.”

When Gross glanced at him, Werthen noted for the first time that the criminologist might be taking his theory about Franz Ferdinand seriously.