The Third Place Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by J. Sydney Jones

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Two

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Part Five

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Recent Titles by J. Sydney Jones

  THE GERMAN AGENT *

  The Viennese Mysteries

  THE EMPTY MIRROR

  REQUIEM IN VIENNA

  THE SILENCE *

  THE KEEPER OF HANDS *

  A MATTER OF BREEDING *

  THE THIRD PLACE *

  * available from Severn House

  THE THIRD PLACE

  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.

  This first world edition published 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

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

  Trade paperback edition first published 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2015 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.

  The third place. – (A Viennese mysteries novel)

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

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

  Investigation–Fiction. 4. Franz Joseph I, Emperor of

  Austria, 1830-1916–Fiction. 5. Vienna (Austria)–

  History–19th century–Fiction. 6. Detective and mystery

  stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  813.6-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8526-5 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-626-8 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-679-3 (e-book)

  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.

  Once again, for Kelly, my partner in crime

  The Viennese call it the ‘third place’: first is home, next comes work, and then there is the coffeehouse.

  PROLOGUE

  It was his place. All 148 seats, 37 tables and three stations – Austerlitz, Wagram, Königgrätz.

  Herr Karl was an Austrian patriot; it was not his fault his favorite tactical battles resulted in crushing defeats for Austrian forces.

  He deployed his lesser waiters Napoleon-like to these stations, caring for every whim of their prized clientele.

  Yes, his place. Even though Herr Regierungsrat Wolfgang Mintz owned the Café Burg, Herr Karl was its lifeblood.

  He had spent his career here, beginning as a youth. While men like the customers he now served were busily studying calculus, Latin and romance languages in their adolescence, Herr Karl had left school early and toiled as a scrub in the vast kitchen of the café.

  But he had progressed over the years, venturing into the main hall when he was thirteen, clearing and wiping tables, straightening chairs, even being allowed to replace newspapers on the giant rosewood display rack by the front entrance. Then at sixteen he exchanged the full apron for a half one, a cutaway black suit and the white shirt and tie of an under-waiter. That was the life, he thought. Never mind that at that time the Herr Ober, the head waiter and majordomo of the Café Burg, Herr Siegfried, was a tyrannical ogre.

  Herr Karl liked that description; it was muttered by a steady customer the day Herr Siegfried gave him an Ohrfeige – a slap – for dropping cutlery and disturbing the clientele.

  ‘An ogre,’ Herr Bergstrom had said under his breath, yet loud enough for Herr Siegfried to hear and for his face to redden.

  That had been a wonderful day for Herr Karl. The beginning of his real profession, truth be told. And the beginning of the end for Herr Siegfried.

  Herr Karl had nothing against the man, to be sure. Herr Obers were meant to be autocratic, to command the respect of those under them. He learned a good deal from Herr Siegfried, particularly in regard to his physical bearing.

  ‘One must look the part of Herr Ober to be Herr Ober.’

  That was Herr Siegfried’s motto. Herr Karl had taken it to heart and also taken to doing a routine of vigorous calisthenics each night after work: sit-ups, trunk twists, pull ups on the door frame. By the time he was eighteen he could do several hundred sit-ups at a time, and he could feel it in his body, sense it in his movement – cat-like, yet assured. Quiet authority began to ooze from him, he felt.

  Herr Karl was just twenty-six when Herr Siegfried died of apoplexy; the man had the good manners to do so at his home and not at the café. Despite his relative youth, Herr Karl was catapulted to the exalted position of head waiter. No longer simply addressed by his surname, Andric, but as Herr Karl.

  And thus he had been addressed for the past thirty-two years.

  Ach, where has the time gone? he wondered.

  Flown away, as have the customers for the day, he told himself.

  Time to close. The under-waiters had done their tallies; the night crew was on the premises, ready for the cleaning, preparing the café for the morning. Time for Herr Karl to leave as well.

  He looked at the standard clock above one of the hat racks. Not quite ten yet. If he hurried, he could get home with enough time to finish painting the last of the French troops in their royal-blue uniforms and black tricorn hats.

  Herr Karl, like many men who had never served in the army, who had never fired a shot in anger at another, was fascinated by all things military.
>
  Perhaps Frau Polnay would serve him some warm milk upon his arrival on this bitterly cold March evening. A very thoughtful landlady was the frau. They shared a kinship of sorts; a kinship of service to others.

  Other Herr Obers, on their monthly get-togethers at the Waiters’ Association, would voice surprise when they learned that Herr Karl was still in rooms and did not have his own place. But Herr Karl was pleased with the arrangement; a perennial bachelor, he had no use for more than a pair of rooms.

  He tipped his hat to Kleinman, the supervisor of the cleaning crew, bidding him good night. He turned up his collar of his heavy coat against the chill wind off the Danube Canal. The sidewalk was treacherous, for the local merchants were forgetting their duty: they had not salted their patch of sidewalk in front of their shops as Herr Karl had in front of the Café Burg.

  Well, as he had directed the young under-waiter Falk, it should be done this afternoon when the temperature began plummeting. There was a boy who would never make Herr Ober, he thought. Can’t even learn to brush his hair properly, leaving a dusting of dandruff on the shoulders of his black cutaway as if he lived in perpetual winter. He’d had to give the youth a dressing down just the other day for forgetting a cloud burst – the extra glasses of water – to Herr Bergstrom, their oldest regular, still with them after all these years.

  Herr Karl hurried out of the Inner City, reaching the broad expanse of the Ringstrasse, virtually empty at this time of night.

  Once away from the café, he allowed his mind to dwell on the matter at hand.

  What a most unpleasant man, he thought. And what a fund of information he had. It gave Herr Karl a slight shiver to think that the man had tracked him so thoroughly and was so conversant with all his little schemes with the café suppliers and his workers. Very unpleasant. The fellow had calmly sat there across from him this afternoon in the café with his strange hands occasionally appearing on the table; the little fingers of each poked straight out while the hands were clenched.

  The man had given no name and it finally dawned on Herr Karl that he was actually performing a bit of extortion on him, demanding that he convince his friend to add a name to his list. Even had the name scrawled on a slip of paper he passed to Herr Karl.

  Failing that, Herr Karl’s employer would be informed of his little schemes, the man warned in his odd little accent.

  Nothing for it. He had called Johann at his office and set up a meeting for tomorrow. Johann was none too happy about it, either, but the meeting was arranged.

  The stranger was a horrible man with a face as devoid of emotion as a corpse.

  Herr Karl took his usual shortcut through the green space separating the twin museums, passing under the watchful eye of Maria Theresa mounted atop her bronze memorial. He could remember the unveiling of that monument only fourteen years earlier. Herr Karl had taken a special day off for the occasion: Maria Theresa was a personal favorite of his. If only Franz Josef would reinstate her Chastity Commission, they would not have to shoo away the ladies of a certain profession every day who gathered about the entrance to the Café Burg, hoping for a well-appointed customer on his way home from afternoon coffee and cards.

  There was a place for such women, he thought, and it was not in front of his café.

  From above, Maria Theresa’s outstretched hand always seemed to offer a personal benediction and salutation to Herr Karl. He saluted her on high as he passed.

  His arm did not finish the salute, however, for a blinding light and searing pain exploded in his head, the back of his skull shattered by a blow so extreme, so well placed, that he could not even let out a moan as he crumpled to the frozen ground.

  The assailant quickly lifted the body, slamming the back of the head against one of concrete pillars surrounding the monument and through which an ornamental metal chain was looped.

  There was a hollow plonking sound as of a pumpkin being split open.

  The killer left Herr Karl sprawled half on the icy path and half at the base of the monument. Those who later discovered the body would surmise that the unfortunate man had slipped on the unsalted ice and cracked his head.

  PART ONE

  ONE

  Werthen kept a keen eye on the judge, Dr Felix Landauer. It was after lunch, and Landauer, dubbed ‘lounging Landauer’ for good reason, was suppressing a monumental yawn following his intestinally challenging meal of gulyasch soup followed by four sausages, red cabbage and parsley potatoes, topped off with a cheese plate and palatschinken with chocolate sauce, and all washed down with a liter of the finest Gumpoldskirchen white wine.

  It gave Werthen indigestion just to recall the litany of food- stuffs he had witnessed the judge ingest at Kulauer’s Restaurant and Weinhaus, favorite of the legal elite of Vienna.

  It was just as Dr Landauer lifted an insouciant hand over his mouth to cover a yawn that Werthen made his announcement.

  ‘I think we can all agree that it was too dark for Herr Karlsen to recognize the defendant. Too dark for him to identify even his own mother.’

  He gave the seven men of the jury his meaningful glance, to let them know he understood they were not fools to be led by the nose by Advokat Pinkop, the prosecutor.

  Pinkop, of course, chafed at this, interrupting in a chirrupy voice that brought Landauer out of his near somnolence, sputtering and blowing and jiggling his jowls like a whale breeching.

  ‘I must protest, Advokat Werthen,’ Pinkop said in a voice that sounded like he was in training for the Vienna Choir Boys. ‘That is supposition on your part. Darkness has not been established in evidence.’

  Pinkop looked to Landauer for assistance, and the judge, not knowing where legality lay but not much liking Werthen on principle for his activities as a private inquiries agent in addition to his lawyerly duties, agreed with the prosecutor.

  ‘My apologies to the court,’ Werthen said, and once again shot a meaningful look toward the jurors.

  In the event, said jurors had no need to leave the august precinct of the courtroom to reach their verdict. Five to two for acquittal.

  ‘By damn, that was well done.’ Werthen’s client, Herr Vogelsang, clapped him on the back, as well he should. If convicted of breaking the arm of his arch-rival on the tennis courts, Vogelsang could have gotten four years.

  ‘Nothing to thank me for, Herr Vogelsang,’ Werthen said, gathering his papers. ‘Perspicacious jurors. They could see you were innocent.’

  ‘Clever of you about the lighting. Never occurred to me.’

  Werthen smiled, not responding and not wishing to continue the conversation. Truth be told, he did not care for Vogelsang, not in the courtroom and not on the tennis court. The man tended to be full of bombast in both spheres. The type to puff out his chest after hitting a forehand winner on the line.

  ‘You were absolutely right, though, Advokat. Karlsen couldn’t have seen me that night. Not plainly, anyway. Hah, what a genius you are.’

  The comment chilled Werthen to the bone and he shivered uncontrollably. He dropped his file, papers floating down around him like autumn leaves.

  Vogelsang bent to help him retrieve them, and it took all of Werthen’s will power to keep his hands off the man.

  ‘I’ll see to that,’ he murmured, gesturing Vogelsang away.

  Now he remembered why he had given up criminal law for so many years.

  And he wished he could rid the system of the prohibition against double indemnity.

  He had just managed to get a guilty man off.

  At the office later that afternoon, he was still fuming. Familiar with the symptoms of such disappointment and utter disgust, he could also recognize them clearly in the face of their young office boy, Franzl Hruda, who brought him the afternoon papers.

  ‘Why so glum, young man?’

  Franzl shrugged, puffing his lips. ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll bet you do. You’re usually the sunny one around here. Not feeling well?’

  He shook his head vigorous
ly. ‘It’s not that, Herr Advokat.’

  ‘Werthen,’ the lawyer corrected. ‘Herr Werthen will do.’

  ‘It’s just … well, just that my aunt can’t afford them, you see, says they’re silly and not something a young man like me needs, birthday or no birthday.’

  ‘Perhaps we can slow down and take it point by point,’ Werthen said. ‘By birthday, I assume you mean it is your birthday?’

  A sullen nod.

  ‘Well congratulations, Franzl. How old are you then?’

  ‘Eleven, Herr Ad— Herr Werthen.’

  ‘Wonderful age, eleven,’ Werthen said. Though recalling now his eleventh birthday at Hohelände, his family estate in Upper Austria, he could sympathize with the youth.

  ‘And what is it your aunt cannot afford?’

  Franzl chewed his lower lip for a moment. ‘She’s right, I guess. It is silly. I mean, I’ll never be an artist.’

  ‘You would make a difficult witness to question in court, Franzl.’

  ‘Oh, right. Sorry. I just had my eye on a box of charcoals for sketching. Lovely to work with, they are.’

  Werthen nodded at this admission. ‘Your aunt sounds like a practical sort of woman, Franzl.’

  ‘You’re right about that,’ the boy said sullenly.

  Werthen caught himself from making further excuses for the boy’s guardian. No need for further explanation. He put himself into the shoes of this eleven-year-old and remembered his own disappointment at that same age when, in love with words and writing, he had desperately wanted the 1872 revised edition of the complete works of Shakespeare translated by Schlegel and Tieck; instead, he had gotten a Purdey twelve-gauge shotgun.