The Third Place Read online

  ‘Perhaps they are all related. After all, there is the Serbian connection.’

  ‘Tuition or deduction this time, dear Werthen?’

  ‘All right, it seems a stretch, but if that pipe can be linked to Herr Karl’s death then all this takes on a different complexion. We’re dealing with a professional killer here. Drechsler said it about Falk’s death. Starb said it about Frau Geldner. Someone expert at their job. Not simply some psychopath run amok, but somebody killing with intention, with a purpose.’

  ‘A passionate courtroom performance, Werthen. You almost convince me.’

  ‘And the letter Dimitrov had in his possession. We need to find out the exact contents of that,’ Werthen added. ‘There may be some inkling as to what a dying man was doing traveling from Belgrade to Vienna.’

  ‘In search of medical treatment, perhaps,’ Gross offered.

  ‘Perhaps. But it would be good to know.’

  Gross nodded, then fixed Werthen with an icy stare. ‘You asked me a moment ago why I appeared so glum. There is another connection you’re not making.’

  Werthen shrugged. ‘I am not the brilliant criminologist. Just a simple private inquiries agent.’

  ‘The hands,’ Gross said. ‘We have encountered those before. The misshapen little fingers.’

  A chill traveled along Werthen’s spine as he remembered a bombing in his office that took the life of the building portier’s brother. The man who’d cut off the little fingers of his victims as a prize. The spy for the Russians who ran a double agent in the very heart of Austrian military intelligence and who had almost cost Gross his life.

  ‘But he’s in Siberia. Archduke Franz Ferdinand told us so himself.’

  ‘I find it difficult to believe that one so resourceful as Herr Schmidt, or whatever his real name is, would allow himself to be spirited off to the tsar’s work camps. Perhaps we should have Franz Ferdinand check with his man in Petersburg.’

  ‘It couldn’t be him,’ Werthen said again, but this time with little conviction.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Berthe’s day had been spectacularly unproductive and she was not really in the mood to hear of her husband and Gross’s discoveries. She had had to deal with the same fulsome bureaucrat who had kept Werthen from interviewing Herr Czerny, old friend of the murdered head waiter, Herr Karl. Neither had she been able to find any registration for the mysterious Hermann Postling.

  But she hid these frustrations – or thought she did – and joined in with her husband and Gross as they discussed their revelations.

  ‘It’s only a pity we missed the archduke this afternoon,’ Werthen said with real animation. ‘We meet with him first thing in the morning.’

  She liked to see Karl so full of life like this, so involved. But she couldn’t help feeling a bit excluded at the same time. It was as if she had been given the leftovers in her investigations. Knowing it wasn’t the case did not alter that feeling.

  Now these two investigations seemed on the verge of coming together, and she was still obliged to hunt for the tail, leaving the dog for Karl and the ever-pompous Gross.

  ‘Why so ruminative?’ Gross suddenly asked her, as if sensing her displeasure. ‘You are doing your part, you know. We really should talk with Oberstabelmeister Johann Czerny.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Gross. Berthe’s not the type to sulk.’ Then, to his wife: ‘Are you, Schatz?’

  To which question she had the irrepressible desire to tell him that sulking and frustration were two very different states. She loved Karl dearly, but sometimes his sunny optimism was as annoying as Gross’s imperious manner.

  ‘No, not at all,’ she said. ‘Actually, I was just hoping you two would ask Franz Ferdinand or Prince Montenuovo to intercede with Herr Plauder at the Hofburg about setting up an appointment.’ The po-faced clerk at the Hofburg in his filthy white housecoat and muffler was obviously the same middling bureaucrat who had given Karl the run around about seeing Czerny. The man had actually had the effrontery to tell her that if she wished to apply for a position in the kitchen she was in the wrong office. She, Berthe Meisner, who had been commissioned by no less a personage than Archduke Franz Ferdinand himself last year to investigate a possible scandal at the famed Lipizzaner stud.

  ‘I would like nothing better,’ Werthen said. ‘I’ll see to it, my love. You should not have to put up with his obstructionism. I should have done so long ago.’

  He reached across the littered dinner table where they were seated – Werthen’s parents were still in town and entertaining Frieda in the sitting room – and squeezed her hand. And suddenly everything was all right once again.

  Am I that simple a woman that a small kindness from my husband can erase hours of frustration? She decided to leave that question for another day and simply enjoy the moment.

  ‘Another glass of wine, Gross?’ she said, offering him the remains of the third bottle on the table. When Emile von Werthen was in town, the wine flowed freely.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do, Frau Meisner. Most kind of you.’

  Later that night as they were preparing for bed, Berthe remembered what she had been meaning to tell her husband.

  ‘Father brought some wonderful news yesterday,’ she said. ‘I completely forgot about it, being so wrapped up in murders and plots.’

  ‘He’s retiring,’ Werthen guessed. ‘And about time, too. He can move to Vienna full time now and be near his only daughter and granddaughter.’

  ‘A big life change, but not that one. He’s not quite ready yet to leave business and concentrate solely on Talmudic studies.’

  ‘How many guesses do I have?’

  ‘He’s getting married.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Werthen said. ‘And who is the lucky woman?’ he asked playfully.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Karl. Frau Juliani, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ He pulled her to him in her chemise, holding her around the waist. ‘And I hope she makes him as happy as his daughter has me.’

  There was nothing playful about the kiss he gave her.

  Time was running out and he still had not finalized the plan. He refused to allow himself to dwell on Dimitrov’s demise. Look forward, not backward, he commanded himself.

  He now had a powerful weapon in his arsenal, and must determine how best to deploy it. No longer a matter of Dimitrov serving as a living bomb in the disguise of an old man, one Hermann Postling.

  No. And there was no time to organize another such human bomb from Belgrade.

  Be logical, he told himself. Look at the options. It is either Postling himself for Thursday or I take his place in disguise. He had already drawn a line through that second alternative when he resolved to steal the vials from the Josefinium. If he was not prepared to blow himself up to complete his mission, he was surely not willing to kill himself in that manner, either.

  So, Postling. But how?

  He could put some of the material on the old man’s clothes before going to the ceremony. Act as if he accidentally spilled a small glass or some such. But there it was again – he too would be sacrificed. Was there a way he could trick the old man into deploying this new weapon without him even knowing it?

  As he paced the floor in the small servant’s quarters the ‘princess’ had put at his disposal, he squeezed his hand in his pocket, once again almost setting off the charge with a blast of air from the hollow ball.

  And then it came to him. The perfect plan. All of a piece.

  A fresh coating of snow had fallen in the night. Gross and Werthen took a fiaker to their meeting at the Lower Belvedere with the heir apparent to the Austrian crown, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Werthen had formed a soft spot for the archduke in the course of their professional relations, for he had sympathy with the man held in waiting so long to take up rule. The archduke had established what some referred to as the Clandestine Cabinet at this former palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy, a Military Chancellery of his own which would be ready to move into positions of power on
ce Franz Josef, his uncle, relinquished power or, more likely, simply died of old age.

  A liveried servant awaited them at the columned entrance to the Lower Belvedere and led them through the Marble Room to an interior suite of offices where a number of officers were busy at desks, each with a telephone and some of which had typing machines upon them, seeming so out place among the gilded columns and tapestries on the walls. Finally they reached a far corner of the room where Franz Ferdinand greeted them heartily. It was clearly his day for reports and conferences, for he was at his more public desk and not his private one behind closed doors.

  ‘How good to see you gentlemen once again,’ the archduke said, bidding them to take seats across the desk from him. A picture of his wife, Sophie von Chotek, and their firstborn was in a silver frame on the desk. That was a marriage that had cost the archduke dearly, Werthen thought. And this was another reason for his fondness for a man who most found brusque and overweening. He’d married for love and had to live with a morganatic marriage as a result, his own offspring never to be in line for succession, his wife forced to sit at lower tables than he at formal receptions. It was the doing of Prince Montenuovo, who could be a spiteful creature at times.

  ‘It’s good to see you, as well, Your Highness,’ Werthen said sincerely.

  Gross added his good wishes and the archduke spread his hands apart as if asking the purpose of their visit.

  As agreed, Gross took the lead, for the criminologist felt they had a delicate balance to maintain. Were the archduke to realize that Prince Montenuovo had commissioned them on their present case, he might very well be less likely to help them out with information from St Petersburg. Werthen had argued that surely Franz Ferdinand would not let animosity between him and Montenuovo come between him aiding his uncle, the emperor, in any manner possible.

  ‘I would not be too sure of that, Werthen,’ Gross had said on the fiaker ride to the palace. ‘After all, the death of the emperor would be just the thing for Franz Ferdinand. No longer waiting like the bridesmaid who is never the bride.’

  Werthen would not believe that of the man, yet agreed to let Gross find his own way in this matter.

  ‘We have come about old business that may have new life,’ Gross said importantly.

  ‘Indeed?’ The archduke’s slightly bulging blue eyes sparkled at this rather mysterious introduction.

  ‘There may well be the possibility of an old foe coming back to Vienna from the dead. Or rather, in this case, from Siberia.’

  Franz Ferdinand nodded. ‘Continue.’

  ‘I assume you know of whom I am speaking?’

  ‘The deadly Herr Schmidt, I believe he called himself. And what makes you think that he is once more a guest of our fair city?’

  Gross carefully explained the deaths they were investigating, the description of the suspect’s peculiar hands and the very professional manner of the killing.

  Franz Ferdinand listened to all this closely and then said, ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with the little job Prince Montenuovo enlisted you for, would it?’

  ‘Well …’ Gross looked flustered at this.

  ‘Your eyes and ears at court are as thorough as always, Your Highness,’ Werthen said, jumping into the conversation. ‘And yes, I … we believe it could impact directly on your uncle. There are indications that this killer may have been dispatched from Belgrade.’

  ‘Belgrade.’ Franz Ferdinand repeated the word like a curse. ‘Then we must determine what has happened to our Herr Schmidt.’

  Werthen gave Gross a knowing look that did not go unnoticed by the archduke.

  ‘Does my eagerness to help surprise you, Doktor Gross? Montenuovo and I are hardly on friendly terms. He has, after all, caused me and my family a great deal of discomfort, if not pain. But personal vendettas are put aside at such times.’

  The archduke straightened in his chair. ‘And though I do not know the particulars of the case, I assume that when you mention Belgrade, you imply that there may be an attempted assassination. I am well aware of the events of two weeks ago at Schönbrunn. If there was one attempt there may be more.’ He eyed each of them in turn. ‘My uncle and I may have our differences of opinion on international relations and yes, I am anxious to serve my country as its leader, but blood is blood, duty is duty. He is my uncle, but first of all he is my emperor!’

  The small speech stirred large emotions in Werthen. Were he English, he might have shouted ‘Here, here!’ Instead he smiled broadly at Franz Ferdinand.

  ‘Exactly what I told my colleague, Advokat Werthen,’ Gross responded. ‘Far too big a man to allow private grudges to impinge on matters of the state.’

  Seeing that Werthen was about ready to explode in denial, Gross quickly blustered on.

  ‘We were hoping that Your Highness might make use of that source of yours in St Petersburg. The one who informed you of Schmidt’s fall from grace last summer upon returning from his previous mission in Vienna.’

  ‘Yes. I think that would be a good starting point,’ Franz Ferdinand said. ‘I’ll have my adjutant get in touch with him directly.’

  Werthen was still fuming, but he decided to take a page out of the archduke’s book and put personal animosities behind him.

  ‘My wife sends her best,’ Werthen added. ‘She is once again aiding us in our inquiries.’ He briefly told the archduke of their thwarted attempts to speak with the good friend of the murdered Herr Karl, and asked if it were possible for him to intercede.

  ‘I will do what I can,’ Franz Ferdinand said, ‘but I have very little influence over affairs at the Hofburg. That one should really be directed to your employer, Prince Montenuovo. You actually think this Czerny fellow might know something useful?’

  ‘We do not know,’ Werthen confessed. ‘But we have so few leads …’

  ‘Understood. No stone left unturned. We appreciate your efforts. I have a small network of operatives at work on this matter as well, but they have been unable to turn up anything on the two gunmen at Schönbrunn. How did you come up with the Belgrade angle?’

  Gross was only too happy to tell him of his discovery regarding the spent shell casings at the entrance to the palace and to the letter found in Dimitrov’s pocket.

  ‘We are on our way now to the Praesidium to see if there has been any new information to be gleaned from a full translation of that missive,’ Gross said.

  Franz Ferdinand rose and Werthen and Gross followed his lead.

  ‘I wish you luck, gentlemen. I shall keep you apprised of whatever is discovered from our St Petersburg agent. And if it is our friend, Herr Schmidt, I remember that he may have a particular animus for you two. After all, you were the cause of his fall from grace with Russian military intelligence. Perhaps I should assign Duncan to watch your back.’

  ‘I doubt that will be necessary—’ Gross began.

  But Werthen interrupted: ‘By all means, Your Highness. If you can spare him, that is.’

  Duncan was the tall, scar-faced Scotsman who had served as Franz Ferdinand’s aid and bodyguard ever since he’d saved the archduke’s life in a hunting mishap in the Scottish Highlands. Duncan had come to their aid twice before, one time directly saving Werthen’s life. If it were Herr Schmidt who had come back from the dead, then they could use all the help they could get and to hell with Gross’s sense of importance.

  ‘Consider it done.’ The archduke shook their hands.

  Werthen had shaken hands with the man before when they had been faced with dangerous situations. This was the first time the archduke’s palm was moist.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The man Werthen and Gross knew as Herr Schmidt, the Estonian, Pietr Klavan, formerly in the pay of Russian military intelligence, was shopping at this very moment.

  He took his time, knowing what he needed and not wanting to take second best. However, at the Parfumerie J.B. Filz at Graben 13, there were, according to the well-attired clerk behind the counter, no second bests in this establis
hment. ‘Filz is all first class,’ she told Klavan. It was a tiny vault of a shop, nestled amid the other high-class emporiums of Graben in the very heart of Vienna’s First District. The double-headed eagle was proudly displayed on the back wall, announcing that the firm had been Imperial and Royal Court Perfumers since 1872.

  ‘But I need something fitting for an emperor,’ he said. ‘Price is no object.’

  ‘Woman or man?’ the clerk asked in her snotty Schönbrunner German.

  ‘An emperor, not an empress.’

  ‘I see. Not necessarily a figure of speech, then.’

  She was the sort of self-satisfied cow he would love to have a few minutes with in private. She would not be smiling that supercilious superior smile of hers after he was finished.

  But he controlled himself. ‘Something quite elegant – regal, shall we say – for a man.’

  ‘Ah, in that case, I should surely recommend Filz Feinste. They say it is used even in the Hofburg. A subtle blend of bergamot, coriander, myrtle and conifer resin, with just a trace of citrus.’

  She pulled the top from of an elegantly packaged sample bottle and held the glass stopper under his nose. He almost retched. It was an automatic reaction with Klavan. Perfumes and colognes made him physically ill. But he pantomimed delight for the clerk.

  ‘Just the thing,’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you have it in a small atomizer bottle?’

  She looked again at his clothing – hardly the finest – and at his hands, which were badly in need of a manicure.

  ‘It is quite expensive.’

  He pulled out a wallet stuffed with bills. The perfumery clerks’ eyes bulged at the sight of this wealth.

  Earlier this morning he had made his way to an alleyway in the Second District, dislodged the third brick from the bottom on the right edge of the back wall and retrieved a key he had hidden there during his mission to Vienna the year before. He had similar hiding places in Warsaw and Berlin. Then he walked into the central office of the Rothschild bank, Credit-Anstalt, on Schottengasse, went to the safe deposit box section, handed the key to the clerk and after signing in as Herr Schmidt was shown to his box, number 2213, paired his key with the clerk’s and opened the tiny door to it. He pulled out the long box, went to a private room and cleared out its contents: a thousand crowns in twenty- and fifty-crown notes, and identity papers in the name of Gregor Tollinger, a purveyor of fine cheeses from Bolzano in the Tyrol.