The Empty Mirror (6 page)

Klimt put a bear’s paw on Werthen’s shoulder. “She’ll come around. Life has not been easy for Anna. She needs to learn trust.”

“I am sure she does, Herr Klimt,” Gross said, coming into the conversation, “but meanwhile, perhaps we could simply verify your alibis for the other nights in question.”

Klimt looked to Werthen for assistance.

“I said we would deal with this matter later. Now is the time. We need you to concentrate on the dates I gave you, June fifteenth, June thirtieth, July fifteenth, and August second.”

The first three murders had set all of Vienna buzzing and turned many of its citizens into amateur detectives. The killings had at first
come at regular intervals: Maria Millier, washerwoman, found on the morning of June 15. Then a little over two weeks later, on June 30, the body of Felix Brunner, a pipe fitter, was found. When a third killing happened on July 15, all of Vienna thought they could see the pattern of the crimes, for not only was this killing spaced fifteen days from the last, but it was also a person of the working class. This third victim, Hilde Diener, seamstress and mother of four, had taken the dog out for the night walk and never returned home. Her body was found in the Prater, like the others. (The dog had never been found.) Thus, all the deaths were fifteen days apart, the victims were of the working class, and they followed another pattern, as well: first a woman, then a man, then a woman.

The gutter press had encouraged the populace to play detective, noting that the next crime was probably due on July 30, and that men should now be on guard.

In the event, the night of July 30 had passed without incident, except for three separate cases of assault and battery. Lone men, self-appointed deputies, placed themselves as bait near the Prater. Each carried some weapon: a heavy truncheon, brass knuckles, or a walking stick with a stiletto hidden within. Approached by strangers, these three had gone on the attack. The result was the concussion of a schoolteacher from St. Pölten who was in Vienna for vacation and, having become lost, was seeking directions to his pension; the broken left arm of a petty thief and well-known pickpocket who worked the streets near the amusement park; and the stabbing injury of a constable who was dressed in street clothes in an attempt to apprehend the killer.

Next morning, the city communally sighed in relief, thinking perhaps the killings were finished. Three days later, however, the killer struck again. This time the victim was indeed a man, but not of the working class. Alexander von Fliegel was a manufacturer who had gained membership in the nobility through his wealth rather than family. Werthen had no personal knowledge of him, but knew another lawyer who was acquainted with the
man. Von Fliegel produced a popular face cream for women, Tender Skin, and had factories in Vienna, Linz, and Graz. He had been out for a night on the town with several colleagues. The last these friends had seen of him, he was a bit the worse for drink, wobbling down the Weihburggasse, lighting a cigar. He was going to walk off his inebriation, he told them. His body was found next morning, August 2, in the Prater.

Klimt was frowning, attempting to recollect his whereabouts on those dates. Finally, he shook his head. “I’ll have to ask Emilie. Perhaps I wrote a postal card to her on one of those dates.”

Gross and Werthen exchanged looks.

“It’s our way of staying in touch, even if I do not have the time to see her. Beautiful cards. From our own Wiener Werkstätte.”

“I am sure they are, Herr Klimt,” Gross said. “And I am sure you see the importance of such verification.”

“Yes. Herr Werthen already explained that if we can show I didn’t kill the others, I didn’t kill Liesel. So these mutilations the press speaks of, there must be a consistency to the wounds, to the killer’s technique.”

“Along those lines, yes,” Gross averred.

“I would feel better about a positive defense.”

“You seem to have a sense of the law, Herr Klimt. I mean, you knew me by name. And I am not such an egoist that I do not realize that the name of ‘Gross’ is hardly a household word.”

“I do a fair amount of reading,” Klimt said with a bearish grin.

“Including Lombroso, it would seem.”

Klimt’s grin disappeared. “How do you know that?”

Gross handed the sketch to him. “Found inside a copy of
The Man of Genius
at your … friend’s home.”

Klimt opened the folded paper, looked at the sketch, chuckled lowly, then crumpled it into a ball and tossed it onto a rubbish heap in the middle of the floor.

“Do you consider yourself a man of genius, Herr Klimt?” Gross asked.

“Sometimes I do, yes. I confess. But at others, I feel a sham. Have you ever felt that way, Doktor Gross?”

But Gross only smiled at the question.

As they left the construction site, Gross was shaking his head.

“What are we to make of the man? Flounces about in that outsized tutu, fancies himself a genius beyond the bounds of society, yet defends the honor of his shabby lady love.”

“A complex individual to be sure,” Werthen said.

“You never mentioned, Werthen. However did that man come to be your client?”

“An act of professional charity on my part, I must confess.”

Their conversation was interrupted by street urchins tugging at the hem of Gross’s morning coat. He sent them scurrying with a brusque wave of the hand. The two men left the carnival atmosphere of the building site, and Werthen continued his explanation.

“As a younger man, Klimt was a bit feckless. But my, could he paint, even then. Got himself into a spot of trouble ‘going to Trieste.

“Whatever for? And why Italy?”

“His phrase only. Not the city but the street, Triesterstrasse, here in Vienna. A major traffic artery for teamsters bringing goods into and out of the city. Whenever Klimt’s artistic muse failed him, he would take himself off to Triesterstrasse and pick a fight with whichever driver he first found abusing his draft animals. Said it freed his vital juices to be in a bit of rough-and-tumble.”

“And he was charged with?” Gross asked.

Werthen shrugged. “Grievous bodily harm, I’m afraid. Broke a man’s arm with his bare hands.”

“Like cracking a walnut,” Gross muttered.

“I proved it was self-defense. The man had a knife.”

But Werthen could only think of the strength of the man, the bone-breaking ability of the painter.

W
erthen was at his desk earlier than usual, anxious to write up his notes on the events of the day before. This morning there was no interruption of his
coffee-and-Kipferl
routine, and after forty minutes he realized that he was enjoying such writing far more than he did his short stories.

Just as he was finishing his second cup of coffee, there was a knock on the double doors of the sitting-room-cum-study, and Frau Blatschky peeked her head in timidly, then entered.

“A visitor, Dr. Werthen.”

He glanced automatically at the clock. Too early even for Gross, he thought.

“A woman.” She said it with faint disapproval. Had she approved, the visitor would have been labeled a “lady.”

He could not imagine who it might be. Shaking his head, he said, “Send her in, Frau Blatschky.”

A woman entered the room in a graceful sweep of fabric and sinew, all youth and beauty, her skin alabaster, almost translucent. Her hair was done up in a fashionable frizz bound by a lavender scarf.

“Herr Werthen. Finally.” Her voice was soft, almost a whisper.

“May I be of service, Fräulein?”

Suddenly he recognized her from the Klimt paintings. “Fräulein Flöge.”

She nodded at his recognition.

“That will be all, Frau Blatschky.”

The housekeeper gave a final disapproving glance, then pulled the doors shut behind her with extra force.

“Gustl has been arrested,” the woman, clearly in distress, blurted out. “They came for him at his apartment and took him away like a common criminal in front of his mother and sisters. You must help,
Advokat
Werthen.”

He was astounded and for a moment quite speechless. Then he recovered his wits and his lawyer’s bedside manner.

“We will get him out,” Werthen reassured her. “After all, the police could have no case against him.”

“You mean his alibi, Fräulein Plötzl.”

Werthen tried to hide his further surprise.

“Please, counselor. Gustl’s affairs are an open secret to all of Vienna.”

“He was trying to protect you,” Werthen said, relieved that he would not have to battle Klimt’s misplaced sense of propriety.

“But he cannot know that I know.” Her voice might have been no more than a whisper, but it breathed determination.

“I don’t think
you
understand, Fräulein Flöge. Herr Klimt has been arrested for murder. His life may depend on an alibi.”

“And I do not think you understand, Herr Werthen. A man is a man. His word must mean something or he is nothing. We all know that Gustl is less than perfect. It is just that
he
doesn’t realize that. I for one will not take that away from him. Surely the police cannot believe he is a mad killer. We will take our chances, thank you very much.”

“We?”

She merely looked at him, her alabaster skin bearing a faint skein of glisten over the lips. She was hard as nails, but also playing a game. A risky game, a gambler’s game.

“It is Gustl’s decision. I am here to ask you not to try and convince him otherwise.”

“Does his mother know of his …”

“Infidelities?” she offered. “Of course. But not of his bastard child.”

She said the word with a harshness that spoke volumes about her true feelings.

“She is a weak woman. Her heart. News of such a thing might-no, surely would-cause her harm. It is Gustl’s decision,
Advokat
Werthen. We must both honor that.”

“The fools,” said Gross, seated in a straight-back chair in the office of Inspektor Meindl at the Police Presidium overlooking the plane trees of Schottenring. “They’re playing to the press. What evidence could they have against him?”

“My position exactly,” said Meindl, a diminutive man, even smaller than Werthen remembered. He sat behind an expanse of cherrywood, nestled in an immense armchair that looked as if it might have done service to a medieval potentate, all of which made the man seem even smaller than he was. On the wall behind him was the usual photographic portrait of the emperor, muttonchopped and scowling; next to it was a smaller portrait in oils. This depicted a noble-looking head topped by a shock of white hair. Just at the bottom of the frame the artist had hinted at the vast chestful of medals that the man wore. Werthen knew who this man was immediately, for he was almost as recognizable as the emperor himself: Prince Grunenthal, the éminence grise behind Franz Josef. That the picture was in oils suggested to Werthen that the prince might well be Meindl’s sponsor, which would account for the man’s meteoric rise in Vienna.

“That there is the possibility of some mistake is why I welcome this visit.” Meindl smiled at Gross, ignoring Werthen.

Today he is on our side, Werthen thought. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Meindl was clean-shaven and pink-cheeked and wore a pair of the newly invented spring-bridge, tortoiseshell pince-nez. “I strongly advised against a too precipitate arrest. But the criminal police are, as you note, Doktor Gross, under the gun as well as understaffed. The citizens want results. They demand results. And your Herr Klimt
seemingly
presents an easy target. An outsider, someone who flaunts bohemian behavior, who insists on leaving the official art league to set up his own gallery. All artists are a bit unstable then, are they not?”

“So he is to be tried for being an artist?” Werthen said. “Absurd. I see no real evidence.”

“There is the matter of the bloody rag found in his studio,” Meindl replied, still focusing on Gross.

“A bloody rag does not a crime scene make,” Gross noted. “We are still several years away from determining whether such blood is even human in origin.”

“Klimt says it is his cat’s,” Werthen added. “The cat in question got in a fight recently. It lost.”

Meindl pursed his lips. “Then why was the rag hidden?”

“Hardly hidden,” Werthen protested, finally getting Meindl’s direct attention. “It was among a bag of rags Klimt uses to clean his brushes. And if it was actually the blood from the unfortunate Fräulein Landtauer, don’t you think he would have destroyed it?”

“Absolutely,” Gross concurred. “If anything, one would think the presence of the bloody rag proves the man’s innocence. He has nothing to hide.”

“Perhaps it was his bizarre form of a memento of the victim.” Meindl smiled with thin, saurian lips.

“I assume you are familiar with my writings on blood, Meindl?” Gross said. “The difference between venous and arterial blood
splattering? Were Klimt to have opened a victim’s artery in his studio, even a dead victim, there would have been a clear splatter pattern. The human body holds five liters of blood more or less, and much of that would have found its way onto the walls and floor of his studio. Quite a cleanup job, yet your men found no other traces of blood besides this rag.”

Meindl nodded. “I was not saying I agreed with the criminal police, simply that there are questions that require answers.”

“We can produce the corpse of the animal,” Werthen said, advancing the attack. He had had a hurried consultation with the painter in his cell at the Landesgericht prison before coming to this meeting with Meindl. Klimt had obviously been distraught, but still cogent enough to dismiss the charges against him.

“Klimt says he buried it under the apricot tree in the studio garden,” Werthen added.

“Which proves nothing,” Meindl replied sharply. “Herr Klimt could be more clever than any of us give him credit for. Perhaps this is all a feint, a ruse.”

“I thought you said you advised against his arrest,” Werthen said.

“At this juncture, yes. But we may well find further evidence. To be fair, this murder is the only one with loose ends vis-à-vis the people who knew the victim. In the other cases wives or husbands could all account for their whereabouts at the time of the murder. In Fräulein Landtauer’s case, however, the man closest to her, Herr Klimt, cannot account for his whereabouts.”