The Third Place Read online

  ‘Are we planning to have a watch at the Hofburg then?’

  ‘It had crossed my mind.’ Gross pointed a greedy finger at the bottle of Bordeaux lazing about on the table and put it to work once Berthe had passed it to him. ‘Duncan is once again arranging things.’

  ‘I am going to be there, as well,’ Werthen said with determination. ‘I am sick of this Klavan attempting to bring death to the office. First the bomb from last year, now the bottle of plague bacilli.’

  Berthe was contemplative. ‘You know, things begin to make more sense now. I mean, all the deaths are connected, aren’t they?’

  ‘Ah,’ Gross said, helping himself to another slice of beef and sauce. ‘I was waiting for someone to broach that. Yes, my good woman, connected, indeed.’

  Werthen had been working on this, as well. ‘It all started when Klavan had the idea to place a living bomb at the Maundy Thursday ceremony.’

  The others nodded.

  Werthen went on: ‘We cannot know what came first, the idea or the candidate for foot washing, Hermann Postling. But whichever, Klavan then needed to get the ear of the Hofburg.’

  ‘Czerny,’ Berthe said.

  ‘Right.’ Werthen poured some wine for himself; Berthe put her hand over her glass.

  ‘One assumes he scrutinized Herr Czerny,’ Gross said, picking up the thread. ‘Looking for a weak point, perhaps some way to blackmail the man into accepting Hermann Postling. But better yet, he uncovered the man’s lifelong friendship with the head waiter, Herr Karl. And it would take a man of Klavan’s skill no time at all to discover the head waiter’s dirty little secret of bribery and graft. Much better to blackmail the friend than Czerny directly.’

  ‘But then Herr Karl must have thought better of it,’ Berthe added. ‘The urgent meeting he made with Herr Czerny.’

  ‘Yes. That would appear to be the reason for Herr Karl’s death. Was the waiter naive enough to inform Klavan of his intentions to speak to Czerny about the old man? If so, that sealed his fate. Klavan killed him before he could get to Czerny and spoil his wonderful plan.’

  ‘And Falk’s murder would be a matter of insurance for a man like Klavan,’ Werthen said, ‘in case the under waiter remembered seeing him at the Café Burg. The irony is that Falk did remember and had already told me. So Falk died for nothing.’

  ‘Not for nothing,’ Berthe interjected. ‘His death brought our attention back to Herr Karl and the whole sordid affair. It led us to Czerny.’

  ‘What an evil bastard,’ Werthen said. ‘I hope I see him there tomorrow.’

  Berthe said nothing, but she fervently hoped that her husband would not do so.

  PART FIVE

  THIRTY

  The day dawned, sunny and fine. Sun poured in through the open curtains on Werthen’s face, waking him from a dream of passing through endless doors in an old house and discovering room after room, unexpected and unexplored. One door beckoned and he felt a sudden fear as he opened it. Waiting for him on the other side was a small man with massive hands, the little fingers jutting out from both like daggers. He thrust these at Werthen’s eyes.

  His heart was racing as he woke to the sunshine. Berthe was already up. He could smell freshly brewed coffee.

  And then he remembered what day it was. He glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table. Past nine in the morning. He never slept in. And today of all days.

  He got up and hurriedly washed and dressed in his finest wool suit. He needed to look presentable.

  He was going to the Hofburg.

  The ceremony began promptly at eleven in the magnificent Ceremonial Hall at the Hofburg, site of weddings and balls. Today it would be the site of the ceremonial foot-washing in celebration of Maundy Thursday, an event the Habsburgs had sponsored for generations, a holdover from Christ’s ritual cleansing of the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper. The very name of the holiday came from the Latin mandatum, or Jesus’ commandment at that final meal – after Judas had departed – to love one another. The priests in attendance today seemed very intent on that principle as they readied the emperor for his task. Franz Josef was looking rather frail, Werthen thought, even though he was decked out in the full regalia of his office, his left chest bedecked by medals. Gathered in the great hall were the mighty and powerful of the empire and from abroad as well.

  Werthen stood a little apart from the dignitaries, near Prince Montenuovo, but not too near. Gross was on the other side of the hall. Duncan and his men were situated in the Schweizerhof below, where the carriages were kept, and some fewer church dignitaries and clergy milled about in hopes of catching a glimpse of the emperor.

  Suddenly the great doors of the Ceremonial Hall opened and a line of old men was led in, taking chairs at the front of the hall, opposite the emperor. There were twelve of them; Hermann Postling was not among them.

  But what of the other chairs? Werthen wondered. For there seemed to be another dozen in a line next to those the old men occupied.

  Again the doors swung open, and now a line of old women was marched in, some so feeble that they had to be supported by court servants. They took their places alongside the men.

  Of course. How many times had he read of the ceremony in the papers at Easter? The emperor bathed the feet of twelve men and twelve women.

  But it still confused him, for he had not thought ahead to this. None of them had.

  Now the emperor, flanked by the cardinal archbishop of Vienna and the papal nuncio, approached the two dozen elderly people. At this point, the cardinal archbishop was in charge, and the emperor had left his earthly realm behind. The cardinal read from the Gospel of St John in a bellowing voice that rang throughout the hall: ‘Posuit vestimenta sua.’

  Werthen’s gymnasium Latin was still good enough for the translation: ‘He laid aside his garments.’

  At this, the emperor handed an attendant his hat and his sword. Werthen felt a sense of menace, just as he had in his dream. The emperor was truly now at the mercy of these elderly people.

  ‘Et coepit lavare pedes disciploruum.’ Werthen further translated: ‘And he began to wash the feet of his disciples.’

  A servant handed Franz Josef a silver ewer filled with perfumed water and the emperor kneeled in front of each elderly person in turn, so vulnerable, so frail.

  Werthen sought out Gross’s eyes, and it was evident by his intent and fixed gaze that his colleague, too, had overlooked the fact of the women involved in the ceremony.

  But what could it matter? He watched as the emperor carefully washed and then dried the feet of each, handed the person a fresh pair of stockings and stout new shoes, then moved on slowly to the next.

  What could there be to fear from these old people? Werthen asked himself. We found the one that Klavan had planted.

  Yet he was worried.

  Outside in the courtyard, Klavan kept a watch on the balcony to see when the ceremony would finish. He tried to still his anger, for Hermann Postling was not among those arriving in the royal carriages at the Schweizerhof. He had been betrayed, but he would see to that pompous bureaucrat later. He consoled himself that all was not lost. He was pleased now for his diligence. At the time it had seemed an unnecessary nuisance; now it was his last hope.

  He kept his eyes on the balcony. When would it end?

  The emperor was making his way down the line of elderly to where Werthen stood. The advokat eyed the last of the elderly to have their feet washed. Thus far, the ceremony had gone without incident. Only three women were left. He examined each in turn, and as with those before, on two of these he saw nothing in their faces but a sort of joyful expectancy. To have the emperor himself bathe their feet! Such an honor.

  But on the face of the last lady he thought he discerned something different. More than expectancy. Her left eye twitched. Her hands were so tightly clenched in her lap that they were white at the knuckles.

  He slowly made his way forward toward the seated women. Montenuovo shot him a nasty look, but
he ignored the prince. He did not know why, but he moved inexorably toward the last of the women just as in his dream this morning he had moved toward the last of the doors.

  The emperor slowly rose, shuffling to this final parishioner, then kneeled in front of her, taking her gnarled white feet in hand and beginning to wash them.

  She slowly unclasped her hands, moving the right one casually toward a small reticule in her lap. The age-freckled hand dug its way into the reticule and bit by bit began to withdraw again.

  When Werthen saw a small rubber bulb he could no longer restrain himself. He shouted out, ‘No! Stop!’

  Startled, the woman who had by now pulled the bottle of cologne out of the bag suddenly dropped it.

  Werthen did not think. He took one galloping step forward and then leaped through the air, his hands held out. Time stood still as he felt himself floating in the air, and then his hands encountered the hard enamel of the bottle and folded around it as he crashed, belly first, to the parquet.

  There was pandemonium as guards rushed to the side of the emperor and rough hands were put on Werthen, who managed to hang on to the deadly bottle.

  ‘Let him be!’ Franz Josef cried out at the guards. ‘The man has saved my life.’ The emperor, who had been appraised of the earlier threat, gazed at the cologne bottle cupped in Werthen’s hands, identical to the one Postling had been given by Klavan. ‘I believe he has saved us all.’

  Klavan, like all the others gathered in the courtyard, heard the commotion from above and smiled. It is done, he thought. The old woman has achieved it. Still, he would have to kill the granddaughter. Loose ends needed to be tidied. He looked upward to the balcony hoping for some announcement, some strangled cry of doom and dismay.

  Werthen lost not a moment. Once the cologne bottle was secured, he, along with Gross, questioned the old woman, Ursula Huber.

  ‘He’s a demon,’ she kept saying. ‘He told me he would kill my darling Gitty if I did not do as he told me.’

  ‘Calm yourself, please,’ Werthen said. ‘We know you were coerced into this. Tell us about this man. Did he call himself Wenno?’ God help us if he has an accomplice, Werthen thought.

  ‘He was no simple man,’ she spluttered. ‘He was a priest.’

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Gross muttered, and immediately they turned around to examine the religious congregation gathered in the hall.

  Impossible, Werthen thought. There was no way an imposter could gain access to the Ceremonial Hall. Then a sudden thought.

  ‘Gross, the courtyard. He must be down there monitoring his deadly scheme.’

  They raced to the tall windows giving off to the balcony over the Schweizerhof, threw open the doors and peered down below at the gathered priests and the drivers by their carriages ready to take the men and women back to their homes.

  ‘There he is,’ Werthen all but shouted, looking down at a priest who was staring back up at him with hatred showing on his face like a scar. ‘Duncan,’ he shouted out. ‘There, the priest in front.’

  This shook Klavan out of his rage-induced lethargy. He knew that once again Werthen and the infernal Doktor Gross had put paid to his carefully wrought plans. He would get his revenge, but for now he needed to make his way out of the courtyard, avoiding this Duncan, whoever he was. He pulled his revolver out of its holster and shot off two quick rounds into the air, causing those in the courtyard to panic and begin running in every direction for cover. He joined in, running in the chaos, but in the direction of the arched entryway to the courtyard.

  ‘Stop or I’ll shoot,’ commanded a burly looking man in a suit and brandishing a Colt.

  Klavan did not miss a step as he pulled off two more rounds, the second taking the top of the man’s head off.

  Military or police, he thought as he leaped over the man’s body. Had to be one or the other to be so stupid not to shoot first, command later.

  A tall, hawk-nosed man with a scar on his face was not so stupid, as he dropped Klavan with a shot to the left bicep. The bullet burned, but he could still take a shot with his right hand, down on one knee. And then the soldiers arrived, running in between him and the tall man. They saw the gun in the tall man’s hand first and quickly demanded he drop his weapon. Klavan wisely holstered his own and stood up, attempting once again to blend into the crowd. His upper arm was bleeding, but it was not immediately noticeable on the black serge of his priest’s coat.

  By now the military men had surrounded the tall man and taken his gun even as their prisoner pleaded, ‘He’s getting away, damn you. The priest. In disguise.’

  Klavan forced himself to walk unhurriedly past the clump of military men, with more rushing into the courtyard as he passed out under the stone archway. He said to one of these oncoming soldiers, ‘The tall one. He attempted to kill our beloved emperor.’

  ‘Bastard,’ the man cried out as his boots clattered on the cobbles.

  By the time Werthen and Gross had raced down the wide, curving flight of marble stairs to the courtyard below, all they could see was a crowd of soldiers surrounding a man near the entrance. They hurried over and as they approached, Werthen caught sight of Duncan’s head above the others, his hands raised high.

  ‘Try to kill the emperor, you son of a bitch,’ one of the soldiers was saying as Gross and Werthen waded into their midst.

  ‘This is not the one, you fools,’ Gross said in a fury. ‘He was disguised as a priest.’

  ‘Mother of God,’ the soldier who had taken Klavan’s lie to heart said.

  ‘I tried to tell them, Doktor Gross,’ Duncan said, feeling safe now to lower his hands. ‘He shot Hartmann.’ Duncan nodded his head to a body lying in a pool of blood ten feet away.

  Werthen did not bother to listen to more but dashed out under the archway to the courtyard into the Hofburg grounds. But he could not see Klavan and there were numerous directions of escape from here.

  Back in the courtyard the focus was now on the body of Hartmann, a lieutenant in Franz Ferdinand’s bodyguard detail.

  ‘He was just a kid,’ Duncan said, kneeling down by the body. ‘Engaged last month.’

  He looked up at Gross and Werthen as he spoke next. ‘But I wounded him. Left arm. He’ll need a doctor.’

  ‘This is inexcusable,’ Prince Montenuovo declared. ‘How could you let this happen?’

  ‘If you will remember rightly,’ Gross said, ‘it didn’t happen. Advokat Werthen here saved the day.’

  ‘There should have been nothing to save. Why did you not know of Frau Huber beforehand?’

  They sat in his office quarreling when all Werthen wished to do was track down Klavan and kill him. That would be justice.

  ‘I admit to failure there,’ Gross said with a voice that sounded for once genuinely penitent. ‘I should have inquired personally at the perfumery. Had I done so, I would have ascertained that two bottles of cologne had been purchased.’

  ‘But if it had not been for your own Herr Plauder none of this would have happened,’ Werthen said, coming to the defense of his colleague. For it had quickly been determined that the officious Plauder – the assistant at Herr Czerny’s office who had delayed his and Berthe’s interview with his boss – had been the one to allow the list of elderly participants to be assayed yesterday.

  ‘But he said he was a priest,’ was the unfortunate Plauder’s excuse. ‘He was dressed like one.’ Klavan had told Plauder a tale of needing to confirm the names for the archbishop in order to get a look at the list of participants.

  ‘Do not be concerned with Herr Plauder. I am sure he shall find his new posting in Galicia more in tune with his capabilities.’

  ‘None of this is getting us closer to Klavan,’ Werthen finally said in exasperation.

  ‘By now he has skulked off into the underground world of Vienna,’ Gross said.

  ‘Dumbroski?’ Werthen was sure of a connection there, despite their embarrassment. But would he dare to return to her place?

  ‘Stay away f
rom the princess,’ Montenuovo ordered.

  ‘She’s no more a princess than …’ But Werthen stopped himself before making the obvious comparison with Montenuovo, whose pedigree was the result of a tryst between the dashing Adam Albert, Count von Neipperg, and the Empress Marie Louise, wife of Napoleon, which produced his father, born illegitimately. Hardly a princely background.

  ‘As I was saying, Klavan has skulked off to the shadows for now, but what of the poor granddaughter of Frau Huber?’

  For they had learned that Klavan had kidnapped the girl, threatening to kill her if the old lady did not follow his orders and spray the emperor with the cologne. A ‘new baptism’ he had called it, according to Frau Huber. The old lady had no idea of the contents but was so frantic she would do anything to save her beloved Gitty – Brigitte – who had just turned thirteen.

  ‘That is a police matter,’ Montenuovo said, as if the life of a young girl were neither here nor there. ‘Your mission now is to track down this mad man before he finally succeeds in killing the emperor.’ He shot an evil look at both of them. ‘And let me tell you that your duplicity is not appreciated.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ Gross spluttered, and for a moment Werthen thought he might actually take a swing at the pompous little ass.

  ‘You know exactly what I mean. Bringing that riff-raff from the Lower Belvedere here as your assistants. Tell the archduke that the Hofburg has no use for his dubious gestures.’

  Werthen was about to argue and then thought better of it. It would be a waste of time. The feud between Montenuovo and Franz Ferdinand would only end with the death of one of them.

  ‘Gross, we should get word to hospitals and clinics about a priest with a gunshot wound.’

  But the criminologist was too busy glaring at Prince Montenuovo to hear him.

  Werthen tapped his arm. ‘Gross. We need to get underway. We cannot let Klavan get an advantage again. Now is our time to press on, to ferret him out.’

  Finally Gross turned his attention to his friend. ‘Very well, Werthen. You are right. Our business is elsewhere.’