A Matter of Breeding: a mystery set in turn-of-the-century Vienna (A Viennese Mystery) Page 3

  Werthen said nothing, peering at Gross with a curious expression.

  ‘By which I mean,’ the criminalist said, ‘that the murders have a staged appearance to them. Mutilations, fake clues like the puncture wounds on the last victim, signs left at the crime scenes.’

  ‘What sort of signs?’

  ‘The sort I have documented in Criminal Investigations. At the first crime scene, Thielman found poisonous datura seeds, the sign that gypsies have committed a crime. The gendarme who found these took them for rabbit droppings initially and was about to brush them off the victim before Thielman was able to still his hand. At the second crime scene, the young woman’s clothes were scattered about, and some taken away, which clearly indicates, as I have written, psychopathic superstition. And at the third I discovered human excrement kept warm by the victim’s bonnet. In northern Germany murderers believe that leaving excrement at the scene of the crime will prevent them from being discovered. And the crime itself will not be discovered so long as the excrement is kept warm.’

  ‘Thus the bonnet,’ Werthen said. ‘Not to conceal it but to keep it warm.’

  ‘Right,’ Gross said. ‘All three of these were mentioned in my handbook for inspecting magistrates.’

  ‘You believe these signs were left on purpose to arouse your attention?’

  ‘No belief about it. I know it to be so.’

  ‘I realize you are well-known in the world of crime, Gross, but really—’

  ‘It is not about ego, Werthen.’ He dug a slip of paper out of his coat pocket and handed it to Werthen.

  ‘Someone slipped it under the door of my hotel room this morning,’ Gross explained.

  Werthen read the message written in what looked to be a schoolboy’s hand:

  Let’s see how you deal with this investigation, Herr Criminalist.

  Four

  Berthe Meisner sat in front of the easel in her life drawing class. Try as she might, she just could not get the limbs correct. They were bent and straggly where they should be strong. Likewise the two orbs dangling so delicately on the model: in her painting they appeared to be glass Christmas ornaments not living, organic objects.

  She wondered again at the wisdom of taking these art classes, but her good friend Rosa Mayreder highly recommended the Vienna Art School for Women and Girls and its principal and main teacher, the painter Tina Blau. Berthe badly needed the distraction, needed to focus on other things than her own feelings of loss.

  Perhaps, however, she would be better off devoting more time to her daughter, Frieda, or volunteering to work again at the settlement house in Ottakring which helped to educate the disadvantaged youths of the city. Or even by returning to her early love for journalism.

  The last two she had neglected of late, too involved in family and in working with her husband, Karl Werthen, on his private inquiries. She felt a twinge of jealousy that Karl was off now in Styria with the Irish author without her.

  ‘That is a rather interesting interpretation.’

  The voice startled her. Tina Blau was looking over her shoulder at her canvas.

  ‘I’m not sure I am cut out to be an artist.’

  ‘Nonsense, Frau Meisner. Art is not merely about representation, but also about feeling. There is feeling in this.’

  They both looked at the model and then back to Berthe’s painting. The model in this case was not a human, but a small, potted, espalier apple tree with two apples in the middle. Blau was noted for her atmospheric impressionistic landscapes; for her, the tree was one of the noble forms of life.

  ‘You have made from this a crucifixion, if you look closely,’ Blau said. ‘Trust your heart.’

  Berthe could see now what the painter saw. But still she was little pleased with the result. She was hoping to find diversion in art, not further, albeit unconscious, reflection on her sadness.

  Berthe detested self-pity; she was rapidly becoming disgusted with herself.

  This must end, she resolved. You have a beautiful daughter, a wonderful husband. Most women would give anything to trade lives with you, she told herself.

  Look at Tina Blau, she thought. There were no complaints from her, even though her work did not receive the attention it deserved, for the almighty critics felt it was the mere daubing of a woman and a Jew in a market dominated by the likes of Gustav Klimt and Carl Moll.

  Berthe knew the rough outlines of the woman’s life from Mayreder, who was a partner with Blau in the Vienna Art School for Women and Girls. Though Blau had been exhibiting since the 1870s, the only work of hers to gain renown was her Springtime in the Prater, from 1882. Blau had happily left Vienna to escape the dominance of the landscape painter Emil Jakob Schindler, her lover, but who was most often mistakenly described as her teacher, though he was three years her junior. Schindler, of course, subsequently became quite well known, and died young of a ruptured appendix. His daughter, Alma, was now being courted by the composer Gustav Mahler, while Schindler’s widow was remarried to the painter Moll.

  Vienna is an incestuous town, Berthe decided.

  Blau, on the other hand, converted to Christianity in 1883 in order to marry the German painter Heinrich Lang, who specialized in paintings of horses and military campaigns, and the couple had happily lived in Munich. The happiness was short-lived, though, for Lang died in 1891. After a number of years of traveling and painting in Holland and Italy, Blau finally returned to Vienna in 1897 and opened the landscape section of the art school in her own studio, which was part of the huge Prater Rotunde, originally built for the Vienna World Fair of 1873. Thus, instead of being able to make her living as a professional painter, Blau taught painting to others.

  But Berthe had never heard the older woman complain.

  ‘Stay with it, Frau Meisner. You are finding your line.’

  Berthe took a fiaker home from the lesson, and began to feel better about herself and her resolution to let the past go. She was eager to reach the flat in the Josefstädterstrasse and give her daughter a big hug. She wondered what Frau Blatschky, their housekeeper and cook, had decided on for lunch, but whatever it was, Berthe suddenly had an appetite.

  Letting herself into the flat, Berthe was greeted by Frieda who raced into her arms with a delighted squeal.

  ‘Opa and Oma, Opa and Oma.’ She sang this as she hopped from foot to foot.

  ‘What about your grandparents?’ Berthe said.

  Frau Blatschky stepped out of the kitchen and shook her head with disgust. ‘There will be four for lunch,’ she said, obviously put out.

  In the sitting room Berthe discovered Karl’s parents, Emile and Gertrud von Werthen. There was no greeting from the father, who merely looked at Berthe accusingly and said, ‘Is it true? Karl is in Graz?’

  ‘He has a client …’ Berthe began, but Emile von Werthen sank back in his chair looking so dejected and desperate, that she said, ‘What is it? Can I help?’

  He puffed out his cheeks and shook his head agitatedly at such a notion, but when his wife shot him a poisonous look, he relented.

  ‘I seem to have made an unwise investment.’

  ‘It is rather more than that, Emile,’ said Gertrud von Werthen. ‘Explain the matter to her. Berthe has proven herself more than competent in such matters.’

  Emile looked down at his hands, clasped rigidly in his lap, and then nodded.

  ‘A young journalist came snooping around Hohelände the other day. He is investigating a story that the bloodline of the Lipizzaner horses may have been compromised by a fraudulent stud line.’

  This statement seemed to take all the energy out of him. Berthe waited, but nothing more was forthcoming.

  ‘I do not understand what this has to do with you, Herr von Werthen.’ Berthe, even after her several years of marriage to the man’s son, was still not comfortable using his Christian name.

  ‘Emile.’ His wife’s voice cut through the ensuing silence like pruning shears.

  ‘I am an investor, one of many I am sure, in
the breeding firm at the center of this, Premium Breeds. I was assured that such an investment was not only profitable but also highly advantageous to the blood line of the stud. Now this snip of a journalist tells me that the famous Lipizzaner stallions may be hopelessly compromised by defective breeding on the cheap. Good God, if this hits the newspapers they may even revoke my ennoblement.’

  Berthe listened to this calmly, showing no emotion. But she did find it almost humorous that his main concern would be the ‘von’ in front of his family name. If there was fraud involved, there might be worse consequences than that for those involved. But Emile von Werthen was a proud man. Proud of his name and his family history, though his son, Karl, refused to use the ‘von’, calling it an affectation.

  The Werthen money came from the wool trade just as the Werthens themselves had come, not that long ago, from Moravia, hard-working Bohemian Jews hoping to assimilate. It was grandfather Isaac who had established the fortune through a blend of shrewd business sense and twelve-hour days. Werthen’s father, Emile, reaped the rewards of such labor when the ‘von’ was granted in 1876, five years after the family’s conversion to Protestantism.

  They delayed further discussion of the matter until after lunch and Frieda was settled in for her afternoon nap. Then Berthe got out pen and pad and began making notes, recording the address and principal of Premium Breeds, and also listing the name of the journalist, Theo Krensky, who had contacted her father-in-law.

  ‘He gave me his card in case I wanted to be interviewed by him,’ Emile von Werthen thundered. ‘The cheek! What am I, an entertainer?’

  It was a flimsy, inexpensive card that listed Krensky as a correspondent for the new, and somewhat salacious newspaper, the Österreichische Kronen Zeitung, which most people simply called the Kronen Zeitung or Krone. The name of the paper had nothing at all to do with the Habsburg crown, as many thought; rather, it referred to the monthly cost of the paper, one crown, or krone. Thank whomever for the absurd story of vampires in Styria, Berthe thought, or this Lipizzaner scandal might already be making headlines.

  ‘But how can you be sure this journalist has his facts straight?’ Berthe asked.

  The sheepish look he returned let her know that Emile von Werthen had been none too careful about vetting Premium Breeds.

  ‘I was informed that one of the board members of Premium Breeds had a friend in high places in the Agricultural Ministry responsible for management of the Spanish Riding School and its prized stallions.’

  He said this with such obvious distaste that she did not further press him on the subject.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Oh would you dear,’ Gertrud von Werthen said. ‘That would be wonderful.’

  Berthe’s professional demeanor seemed to cheer Emile. He made no thanks, but did nod to her in a friendly manner.

  After an uncomfortable silence, Gertrud finally said, ‘We were so sorry to hear of your … your …’

  ‘Thank you,’ Berthe quickly jumped in, knowing the von Werthens were not the sort to have the language to discuss a miscarriage. They had been so happy last summer to learn that Berthe was once again pregnant. However, their little baby was lost to a miscarriage just the month before, and this loss was compounded by the fact of complications following that incident, so that Berthe’s physician was doubtful she could have more children.

  ‘We did not know quite what to say,’ Gertrud added.

  ‘Nor I,’ Berthe said. ‘It’s better now, though.’

  The little lies one tells to make others feel better. Karl had taken it as badly as she had. He had convinced himself the baby was a boy and had even found a name: Sebastian.

  ‘But I’ll call him Bastian,’ he would often say.

  The awful thing was that their sadness did not bind them more tightly, but instead seemed to drive them apart, each to experience grief individually.

  Five

  ‘Yes,’ Werthen agreed. ‘It is apparent that the clothes absorbed a great deal of the blood.’

  The bloodstained remnants of clothing from victims one and two – seventeen-year-old Maria Feininger and eighteen-year-old Annaliese Reiter – lay in front of them in the makeshift crime laboratory of the Hitzendorf Gendarmerie.

  Makeshift because there were still those in the police who rejected scientific analysis of crime scene evidence, who still dealt with crime from the point of view of the criminal solely and not also from that of the victim or the physical evidence left at the scene of a crime. Werthen knew there were others, like Gross, making headway in turning criminalistics into a mainstay of police investigation, but until the time came that it gained general acceptance, it was relegated to such broom closets as the one they were currently in.

  At least Gross had influenced his former colleagues sufficiently to establish rules of dealing with evidence: these garments had been kept in a paper bag and were clearly marked.

  ‘We’ll know better after I send these to Vienna for analysis,’ Gross said. ‘Professor Gruber at the university in Vienna can analyze the quantity of dried blood and give us a good idea of the percentage of the total. Women of the size of the three victims will have a little over four liters of blood in the body. Fräulein Klein, the third victim, would, of course, have had more blood because of the baby she was carrying.’

  Werthen shuddered at the thought of the butchery of this third victim; he was grateful he had not been present to view the corpse. Pictures of the other two young women lay on the small desk in front of him, lit poorly by a kerosene lamp, the sole source of light in this windowless cubbyhole.

  What had been done to these victims was gruesome enough: multiple stab wounds and mutilations. Maria Feininger’s left breast had been cut off, while Annaliese Reiter’s right one had been crudely hacked off. Both victims had some sort of further spherical or circular wounds at the sternum. The Feininger girl’s wound had the right half of a sphere burned black while the entire circle was burned black into the skin of the Reiter girl.

  Werthen felt his gorge rising and shoved the photographs over to Gross.

  ‘All this just to show you up?’ Werthen said. ‘Mutilations and signs left simply to confound Doktor Hanns Gross?’

  Gross stared at the photos for a long moment. ‘Let us hope not, Werthen. Let us hope that someone is simply taking advantage of these heinous crimes to revenge a perceived wrong.’

  ‘Or killing women to do so. Gross, you must have made scores of enemies in the criminal class in your decades as an investigating magistrate.’

  ‘I was able to send a goodly number of unsavory characters to prison, if that is what you mean.’

  ‘Many of whom may have served their sentences and now be free men who hold a grudge.’

  Gross shook his head. ‘I do not believe any criminal with whom I had dealings would be capable of such hideous crimes as these.’ He thumped the photographs with his thick forefinger. ‘No one so beastly, so savage. Not on his own, at any rate.’

  ‘Then look to your former colleagues. Or competitors. Have you upstaged some fellow criminalist, poked at tender egos? You do have a brash way about you, Gross.’

  ‘Puncturing egos is one thing, Werthen. The proper revenge for that might well be a letter to the editor, not the disembowelment of innocent young women.’

  ‘Just thinking out loud, Gross.’

  ‘A rather sloppy habit.’

  ‘See what I mean?’

  ‘Should I put you at the top of the suspect list then, Werthen?’

  The spires of the old castle rose dramatically out of the surrounding pine forests like a stage setting at the Court Opera.

  ‘It is just as I imagined it,’ Stoker said, taking in the view from the fiaker they had hired.

  The Irishman would not be put off a second time, so this afternoon he was accompanying Werthen and Gross as they continued their investigation, heading for an interview with the employer of the murdered Ursula Klein.

  ‘Well,’ he said, as
if reconsidering his statement, ‘just as I imagined the castle in Carmilla, that is.’

  He did not elucidate, and though Werthen had not the faintest idea what Stoker was talking about, neither did he care for an explanation.

  Gross was ready enough to fill the void, however. ‘Written by your fellow countryman, if I am not mistaken.’

  Stoker turned toward him with a look of amazement. ‘You have made a study of vampirism, Doktor Gross?’

  ‘I have made a study of general knowledge,’ the criminalist said. ‘Something that appears to be woefully lacking in the modern world.’

  ‘I was fortunate enough to meet Sheridan Le Fanu before I left Dublin. An interesting fellow.’

  ‘A rather piquant tale he spun,’ Gross said.

  ‘All right,’ Werthen finally said in exasperation just as the fiaker drove over a large bump in the road. ‘Would someone care to fill me in on all this?’

  ‘Mr Stoker finds a similarity in the lines of the von Hobarty castle and that of the fictional Styrian castle that serves as the setting for Le Fanu’s novel Carmilla. It features a female vampire with a taste for the blood of young women.’ Gross said this last with eyebrows upraised.

  ‘A very fine précis, Doktor. But do you know where the title comes from?’

  ‘The vampire, one assumes. Was she not called Carmilla?’

  ‘Indeed she was, Doktor. The name is also, however, an anagram of Mircalla, a former countess of the castle. She was not the nicest of countesses, I assure you.’

  ‘You make it sound as if she were real,’ Werthen said.

  ‘The genius of Le Fanu,’ Stoker said.

  ‘There are those who say his novel influenced your Dracula,’ Gross said, and this seemed to quiet the Irishman for the time being.

  At the castle their carriage was met by a young groomsman who led them into the main hall, letting them know that Herr von Hobarty would see them soon. Gross therefore bid the groomsman to take them to the kitchen to interview the help there first.