A Matter of Breeding: a mystery set in turn-of-the-century Vienna (A Viennese Mystery)

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles in this series by J. Sydney Jones

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Recent Titles in this series by J. Sydney Jones

  THE EMPTY MIRROR

  REQUIEM IN VIENNA

  THE SILENCE *

  THE KEEPER OF HANDS *

  A MATTER OF BREEDING *

  * available from Severn House

  A MATTER OF BREEDING

  A Viennese Mystery

  J. Sydney Jones

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2014 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA

  eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2014 by J. Sydney Jones

  The right of J. Sydney Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Jones, J. Sydney author.

  A matter of breeding. – (A Viennese mysteries novel)

  1. Werthen, Karl (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Lawyers–Austria–Vienna–Fiction. 3. Murder–

  Investigation–Austria–Styria–Fiction. 4. Horses–

  Breeding–Corrupt practices–Fiction. 5. Stoker, Bram,

  1847-1912–Fiction. 6. Vienna (Austria)–Social

  conditions–20th century–Fiction. 7. Detective and

  mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  813.6-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-07278-8380-3 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-530-7 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  To Vienna, city of dreams, for making mine come true

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks go to my agent, John Talbot, and Kate Lyall Grant, publisher at Severn House, whose enthusiasm for the book has been much appreciated by this writer. Also thanks to my editor at Severn House, Anna Telfer, for her work making this a much better book, and to book cover illustrator Jem Butcher who has given the series resonant atmosphere with his artwork. To Tom Ovens a large tip of the hat for his friendship and invaluable services. And, as always, to my family – you are my bulwark.

  Prologue

  A sudden crackling sound in the brush caught his attention. It was just before sunrise and he could see very little. Not one of his snares, though. He was fairly certain of that. Most likely a woodcock in the fallen leaves and bracken sounding much bigger than it was.

  Johannes Schmidt knew his flora and fauna. He had grown up in these woods; played in them as a child and hunted in them as a man.

  But they were no longer his woods. Banished by that bastard von Hobarty and his gamekeeper.

  But Johannes would have his own back. These pre-dawn trips into the estate were small extractions of vengeance for such banishment.

  Schmidt was careful of these snares; he kept them out of sight of the new gamekeeper, Kupfer, and only chose the most remote beats. He placed them in strategic positions at the center of the beat, where the rabbit would be sure to run as it went to feed. He used gloves to set the snares so that there would be no human scent on them.

  Every time he prepared a rabbit stew with his catch he felt as if he had struck a blow against von Hobarty, Kupfer, and the rest of them that claimed the forests and dells as their own land, their private domain.

  The morning chill bit into him. Schmidt loved the Fall, the smell and feel of it, but it was no longer so easy to get up in the predawn cold and traipse about in the woods. His right leg, where he’d broken it as a young forester, pained him now when the nights grew colder. His reactions were just that one bit slower. He dreaded the day when he would no longer be able to enjoy this bit of poaching.

  He walked cautiously through the bracken and low brush. The sun began to rise behind him, and he relished the feel of it on the back of his neck and shoulders. He would need to check the remaining traps and make his way out of the estate before Kupfer and his dogs started their rounds. No luck so far this morning, not a single hare.

  And then ahead of him he saw a shapeless mound that did not belong in the woods. He felt his heart race as he approached, not really trusting his eyes. The dark reddish brown against pearly white material of a blouse were not colors of the woods. As he drew nearer he could see that it was the body of a young woman.

  He thought for a moment that this must be some terrible hoax, a gruesome trick laid on by the gamekeeper to teach him a lesson. He half expected the young woman to jump to her feet at any moment and laugh at his bulging eyes.

  And then he saw the evisceration, the cruel slashes and desecration of the body of what had once been a robust and vital human.

  Bile rose in his throat and he turned his head from the corpse as he retched, hands on his knees.

  Part One

  One

  Doktor Hanns Gross nodded for the gendarme to remove the covering. The young man did so and the famous criminologist could see a flush of red go up the gendarme’s face. Warned by Inspector Felix Thielman what to expect, Gross knew to focus away from the wounds at first. The gendarme had no such training. He gulped once and dropped the canvas covering.

  ‘Not here,’ Gross warned him. ‘If you must be sick, follow the lines out
and away from the crime scene.’

  Thielman at his side made a tssking sound with his tongue as the young gendarme hurried to the edges of the crime scene. They could hear him vomiting.

  Gross ignored this, bending low over the mutilated corpse as if to embrace it. He did not view the body as that of a human being, that was the trick. He went close up, looking at bits and pieces of what was instead a former living human animal.

  He lifted an eyelid and stared into a sightless pupil, registering its color: light brown, commonly called beer eyes. The skin was waxy to the touch; he inserted a finger into the oral cavity, found nothing. Likewise nothing in the nostrils and ear passages.

  Resting on a knee now, he let his gaze follow down the line of the torn bodice and bloodstained blouse the young woman was wearing.

  Without looking up, he said to Thielman, ‘You have a description of the crime scene?’

  Thielman grunted assent, as if it was beneath his office to be asked such a question.

  As it should be, Gross thought, for he had trained Thielman himself, more years ago than he liked to think of, not to disturb anything at the scene of the crime before a complete description had been made.

  ‘We’ve had Morgenstern out, too. Our photographer.’

  ‘The others had similar wounds?’ Gross asked, for this was the third such outrage.

  Another grunt.

  Beneath the ripped and slashed garments there was scarlet turning rusty red, great gashes of it covering cloth and skin. On her sternum, between the entry points of four different stab wounds, there was a circular wound about the size of a five-kronen coin incised into the skin, its left half seared black. Lower down, beneath the abdomen, entrails dangled out of a cavity where the woman’s womb had been lacerated apart in a frenzy.

  ‘The others weren’t pregnant, though,’ Thielman added.

  ‘Any trace of the baby?’

  ‘None.’

  Gross examined the hands and arms. No defensive wounds. She’d been taken by surprise, though the wounds were in front. So she saw her attacker coming. Which implied she knew him. Or that she did not find it out of the ordinary to see the person in the woods near the tiny village of Hitzendorf. A villager, perhaps?

  Or a hundred other possibilities. A stranger who asked for directions then struck before the young woman could react. Too early for such speculations.

  Gross lifted himself back from the corpse now, still resting on one knee. He could feel moisture from the forest floor coming through his wool pants. His wife Adele would warn against arthritis were she here.

  Only now did Gross allow himself to take in the corpse as a whole. A rather attractive young woman, he noted. Vaguely Semitic features, not that it mattered. The stab wounds at her chest had done the damage. The rest of the savagery was postmortem. Or so he hoped, for her sake.

  ‘Identification?’

  ‘Ursula Klein. Kitchen maid, the von Hobarty estate.’

  ‘What was she doing out here all alone at night?’ Again an assumption, but not far off the mark, he thought, by the feel of her body. Dead a good dozen hours.

  ‘That, my dear Doktor Gross, is what you are here to find out.’

  Irony from Thielman. The man was indeed feeling his oats, Gross thought. Even if he has to call in his old mentor to help out with a series of brutal murders committed in Gross’s own native Styria.

  The sun was at its zenith now. It was the twenty-first of October, but the sun still had warmth, still made him squint.

  He stood, brushing at his knee. ‘Who found her?’

  ‘A local. Johannes Schmidt. He puked. It’s over there.’

  Thielman pointed at a blueberry bush that had a stake driven in the ground by it as if it were evidence.

  ‘Just to make sure it’s not confused with something the killer left behind.’

  ‘And who says Schmidt is not our killer?’ Gross asked, but only out of reflex, not conviction. It takes a very cold-blooded criminal to report his own crime.

  ‘Schmidt says he was out for a walk,’ Thielman added. ‘Poaching, more like. He and von Hobarty have a bit of a feud going, you might call it.’

  ‘So this is part of the estate?’

  A nod from Thielman.

  Gross’s eyes alit on a bonnet not far from the body. Thielman followed his gaze.

  ‘The victim’s?’ Gross asked.

  ‘I assume so. No one has moved it. Just like you always taught.’

  Which brought the trace of a smile to Gross’s lips. Suddenly, inexplicably, he was looking forward to a hearty lunch. Bauernschmaus, perhaps. Something substantial.

  He went to the bonnet, glanced at Thielman, and then picked it up.

  Underneath lay a pile of human excrement. He bent low over the feces, not so much sniffing as trying to discern its temperature.

  Satisfied, he stood once again. The excrement was warmer than the ground surrounding it. The bonnet had been deliberately placed over it to hold the warmth.

  A calling card.

  Gross put the bonnet back in place over the pile.

  He went back to the body of Ursula Klein. The front of her was covered with blood, that was for sure. But on closer inspection, Gross remarked on the lack of blood about the body. He gently lifted one side of the torso; very little blood to be seen underneath. With wounds such as she had sustained, even postmortem, there should have been pools of blood on the ground all around the corpse.

  He could feel Thielman leaning over him now.

  ‘So you noticed, too,’ the inspector said. ‘Just like the others. Drained of blood. Like a ritual killing.’

  Gross shook his head. Not another one. Blood ritual killings had filled the newspapers recently. Gross himself had been called in to testify in one gruesome case in Polna in Bohemia not long before. It had become the Austrian Dreyfus case, for a trio of Jews were accused of having killed two young women and using their blood for religious rituals. The case had spurred anti-Semitic riots and had quickly split the Empire, just as the Dreyfus case had in France, with the political scandal involving the Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus falsely accused of selling military secrets to the Germans.

  ‘We don’t need another Polna, Doktor Gross,’ Thielman said over his shoulder.

  Gross could well understand the man’s concern. Nearing retirement, Thielman wanted simple pathological killings, not some religiously motivated murder that would spark a racial firestorm.

  Gross continued to lean over the woman’s body, noticing something on the side of her neck. He gently moved the collar down to display two puncture marks at the neck along the carotid artery.

  ‘That looks like a vampire bite,’ Thielman said, though Gross doubted the man had ever seen such a mark.

  The young gendarme had recovered enough to return to the scene just at this moment, and he shot an astonished expression at Thielman as he made this remark.

  There was a note of relief in Thielman’s voice, Gross noted. Better vampires than Jews.

  Two

  Later that same day in Vienna, Advokat Karl Werthen – wills, trusts, criminal law, and private inquiries agent – sat at his new desk in his freshly refurbished office at Habsburgergasse 4. A visitor could see no sign of the bombing several months ago that had gutted Werthen’s interior office and left much of the exterior office and waiting room in shambles. Werthen’s private office, in particular, had seen the most change in this refurbishing. Before, it had been decked out in stolidly safe professional-class décor: green wallpaper with a scattering of conservative prints of animals and flowers; furniture that was of heavy, substantial mahogany. Werthen’s friend and onetime client, the painter Klimt had often enough declared the place stodgy; Werthen would rejoin such criticism by saying that was exactly the effect he was looking for.

  ‘People come to me for reassurance,’ he would say, ‘not an introduction to aesthetics.’

  But that tragic bombing episode had made Werthen reconsider. Why shouldn’t a lawy
er’s office also have a touch of style to it?

  Thus, the buttery yellow walls now formed a backdrop for a number of paintings on loan from the Secession: a wintery park scene from Carl Moll, a landscape by Kolo Moser, a portrait by Klimt, an exhibition poster by Anton Kling. Furniture and desk accoutrements by Josef Hoffmann.

  However, Werthen was unaware of his surroundings today. In front of him lay the paperwork for a codicil to the seemingly never-ending Kleist family trust. Neither was he paying attention to these legal duties. Instead, he was doodling on a piece of foolscap folio, writing the name ‘Bastian’ over and over again in increasingly stylized strokes.

  A knock at his door interrupted this mindless activity.

  ‘Yes,’ Werthen said, slightly dazed.

  Fräulein Metzinger opened the door and poked her head in. ‘A visitor, Advokat.’

  Their code word for an actual visitor, not a client or scheduled appointment.

  ‘I am in the middle of something—’ Werthen began, but a voice from behind his assistant caught his attention.

  ‘It is rather urgent.’

  He knew the voice, knew the tone, felt the urgency even if it were fabricated. And fabricated it may very well have been, for the author of said voice was the well known playwright Arthur Schnitzler.

  ‘You may send him in, Fräulein Metzinger.’ He leaned back in his chair, looked down at the foolscap and felt a stab of pain realizing what he had spent the last number of minutes producing. He turned the page over as Schnitzler entered the room.

  ‘Advokat,’ the man said, sweeping the homburg off his head dramatically, ‘how good to see you once again.’

  Werthen doubted the words. He knew for certain it was not a delight for him to see the dramatist. Schnitzler was a recent client and though Werthen had performed the duties for which he had been hired, he had also been forced to confront the man with some hard truths about himself. They had not parted on friendly terms at their last encounter.

  Werthen rose, nodding his head toward the leather armchair across the desk from him. Schnitzler glanced around the office and smiled tightly.