[VM01] The Empty Mirror Page 8

  “It is a rather odd request, you must admit, Herr Landtauer.”

  “It’s not like you think,” the large and ungainly man said as he tucked into his meal. “My Liesel, she wrote back to me and told me what a kind man Herr Klimt had been to her. A real gentleman, she said. The way she described him in her letters, I figure the fellow can’t be a murderer.”

  Landtauer’s eyes began to tear up as he said the last word. He took a swig of the foamy beer as if to chase away the sadness.

  “I cannot tell you how sorry I am for your loss, Herr Landtauer. From everything I have heard, your daughter was a wonderful girl.” Werthen was always at sea in such situations; he hoped his white lies provided solace. The words echoed hollowly to him, though.

  “She was, Advokat Werthen. A true angel of a girl.” Landtauer wiped a rough sleeve across his watery eyes. “Her mother died when she was just a wee one, and I raised her on my own. Raised her to be honest and God-fearing. I’ll be straight with you, I never wanted her to come to the capital. Knew she’d be exposed to wicked people and wicked ways.”

  For a moment another emotion other than sorrow showed in the man’s eyes. Then he quickly took another gulp of beer. Werthen joined him.

  “Have they released your daughter’s body?” Werthen asked.

  The big man nodded solemnly.

  “Then leave it at that, Herr Landtauer. Take your daughter home and bury her. Seeing Herr Klimt will not help your grief. I can only assure you I also believe him to be innocent. I and my friend Professor Doktor Hanns Gross are working to find the real culprit. That person or persons will be brought to justice, I swear that.” Another white lie? Werthen wondered. After all, his first and primary obligation in this matter was to secure Klimt’s release and freedom. What came after that, well…?

  “I wish I could just leave it at that,” Landtauer said. “But I feel honorbound to visit the man my daughter praised so highly. It’s like an unpaid debt. I couldn’t rest easy knowing I hadn’t seen it through.”

  He fixed Werthen with a pleading look. “You’ll help me, sir, I know you will. You, too, seem like a kind gentleman.”

  They ate on in silence. Finished, Werthen dabbed at his lips with the linen napkin, folding it again neatly and placing it by his plate, knife and fork resting side by side at a diagonal to signal his completion. Meanwhile, Landtauer soaked up the last of the meat juices with a thick slice of rye bread.

  “First time I’ve had a real meal in days,” he said, eyeing the scraps still remaining on Werthen’s plate. “Ever since getting the news. Local constabulary knocked at the door just as I was sitting down to lunch. It’s been a nightmare ever since, I can tell you.”

  Werthen nodded at the waitress for the bill, and the big man struggled a change purse out of his coat pocket.

  “No, please. Allow me, Herr Landtauer.”

  Werthen placed the correct amount plus a generous tip on top of the bill. The buxom waitress flashed him a smile as he and Landtauer left the restaurant and came out into the glaring sunlight of Reichsratsstrasse. A Saturday afternoon in the midst of August, the street was virtually deserted. Half of Vienna was off taking the waters at a spa or hiking in the Alps, while Werthen was left sweltering in Vienna and looking into the pleading eyes of a man who had just lost his only daughter. Words alone could not console, he knew.

  “It can only be a short visit, Herr Landtauer.”

  The man grabbed Werthen’s hand and shook it vigorously.

  The Landesgericht prison was in back of the Rathaus, a few blocks away. Werthen led Landtauer to the registration, where he signed his own name and added “plus guest.”

  “They’ve finished lunch,” the red-nosed desk sergeant told Werthen. “Just coming back to their cells. Be a few minutes.”

  They waited at the registry, Landtauer pacing back and forth, his thick-fingered hands held tightly in back of him. Poor man, Werthen thought. His daughter’s loss had to be a terrible blow.

  Finally a warder came to take them to Klimt’s cell. Klimt, lounging on his bunk, tipped a forefinger at Werthen and looked quizzically at his companion.

  “Wait here while I explain matters to Herr Klimt,” Werthen told Landtauer.

  “Just want to shake his hand,” the man said. “Tell him that. For being so good to my Liesel.”

  Werthen patted his shoulder. “I’ll let him know.”

  Inside the cell Werthen quickly explained the man’s presence.

  “Well, bring him in, Werthen, by all means,” Klimt said volubly.

  Werthen turned to Klimt so that his back was to Landtauer, outside the cell; the man could neither see his face nor hear him.

  “Perhaps it is best just to say hello through the bars. I don’t personally know the man. He seems honestly devastated by his daughter’s death, but-”

  “Nonsense,” said Klimt emphatically. “I will see the man face-to-face and with no bars between us. Then he’ll know I could never have killed his daughter.”

  Klimt shouted to the guard outside the door, “Well, what are you waiting for, Officer? Show the man in, please.”

  Klimt’s two cellmates, who had been listening to the conversation, swung their legs off their bunks. Hugo, the taller one, said, “You think that’s a good idea, Gustl?”

  “The man’s lost his daughter,” Klimt said over his shoulder. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “Seems dodgy to me,” Hugo said, glaring at Werthen.

  The cell door swung open and Josef Landtauer entered, a grateful smile on his lips.

  “Herr Klimt,” he said, closing on the painter, who held out his hand to the man. “This is from my daughter.”

  The man simultaneously closed the cell door behind him and pulled his hand from his pocket to produce a knife. He lunged at Klimt.

  Werthen, seated on the bed between the two men, acted out of instinct. He thrust a foot out and Landtauer tripped over it, falling onto his face in the cell. Hugo leaped from his upper bunk, crushing the man’s knife hand underfoot. Landtauer groaned in pain, but this only seemed to infuriate him further. He tossed the inmate off his hand like so much firewood and was on his feet again before the guard could get the cell door unlocked and come to their aid.

  “Put the knife down,” another guard shouted from outside the cell.

  “You bastard,” Landtauer spit at Klimt. “You killed my Liesel. You’re going to pay.”

  Klimt crouched as if to do battle with the man.

  “Guard!” Werthen shouted. “Do something.”

  The first guard was still fumbling with his key in the lock while the one behind him was attempting to get a clear shot at Landtauer. However, Klimt was in his way.

  Landtauer swiped the knife at Klimt, who managed to parry the thrust. The painter tore the blanket from his bed and quickly wrapped it around his left arm.

  “I didn’t kill her, I swear,” he said to Landtauer in a surprisingly calm voice. “Put the knife down, man, before someone gets hurt.”

  “You fiend, beast, animal,” Landtauer growled. “You defiled my little angel.”

  Landtauer made another lunge, which Klimt blocked with his wrapped arm, but the knife managed to cut through the thin blanket, leaving a streak of red behind.

  Just as the guard was bursting through the cell door, Hugo jumped on Landtauer’s back, ripping at his eyes with long, bony fingers. Landtauer screamed in pain, twisting his body and flailing with both arms. He finally managed to stab Hugo in his left thigh, but by then the guard had drawn his weapon and put the cold metal of the barrel next to Landtauer’s temple.

  “Enough,” the guard said. “I’ll use it. Now drop the knife.”

  Landtauer stared around him like a caged animal, his eyes wide and his breath fast and shallow. Suddenly he crumpled into a ball on the floor, the knife clattering beside him.

  Werthen quickly kicked the knife aside, and the guard put handcuffs on Landtauer, now blubbering incoherently. As the guard lifted the man to his f
eet, Werthen saw a familiar-looking piece of newsprint in the inside pocket of Landtauer’s coat. Werthen reached in and removed the paper, unfolding it to discover the front page of one of Vienna’s gutter tabloids. This one had run a picture of Klimt next to the sketch of Liesel as Nuda Veritas.

  Landtauer seemed to come to himself for a moment seeing the page of newsprint. “I would have killed the little bitch myself rather that let that pig sully her.” He thrust his head around to look at Klimt as the guards dragged him from the cell. “May you rot in hell, you piece of filth!”

  “Sounds like a busy afternoon” was Gross’s first comment when, later that evening, ensconced in Gross’s suite of rooms at the Bristol, and poring over the evidence thus far collected, Werthen told him of his misadventures.

  “It was all my fault.”

  “Nonsense,” Gross said, scanning the enemies list Herzl’s secretary had hand-delivered that afternoon. “You warned Klimt. It was only his own misguided sense of duty and honor that put him in jeopardy.”

  “I should never have taken Landtauer to the prison. But he seemed genuine to me. So much for my ability to read my fellow man.”

  “I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself, Werthen. I am sure the man’s grief was genuine, whatever its origin. And even the lowliest villager can demonstrate an animal cunning in times of crisis.”

  “I tell you, Gross, Girardi could take lessons from our Josef Landtauer.”

  “Speaking of whom,” Gross said, “I had the opportunity to check on his story this afternoon. The headwaiter at the Sacher remembers him in the company of a young woman the night in question and that they left separately.”

  “At least one of us has been doing something productive today.” Werthen sighed audibly.

  “And how is Klimt and his criminal protector?”

  “A superficial wound for Klimt, though he was shaken by the incident. Prison is no longer such a lark for him, that is sure. And his newfound friend Hugo has secured a cushy place in the sick ward for the time. Perhaps it will even work to his credit when he is brought up on murder charges himself, that he stopped a homicide in the Landesgericht.”

  “Landtauer, I assume, is a guest of the state?” Gross said, laying aside the list and returning to a perusal of a Vienna telephone directory.

  Werthen nodded. “Klimt refused to press charges, and the police were willing to simply put it down to the effects of the foehn.” Vienna’s sirocco, a warm wind that blew off the Alps, unnerved the steadiest of men. Surgeries were not performed during these winds; the presence of the foehn was a legal defense in some cases, to Werthen’s chagrin. “But I requested them to contact the constabulary in Vorarlberg first and ascertain whether Landtauer had any history of violent behavior. It was quickly enough discovered the man was infamous for the way he beat his family. The police there in fact suspected him of beating his wife to death, though they could not prove it. His daughter Liesel, it seems, ran away from his abuse the first chance she could get. The Vorarlberg police say Landtauer has been a laughingstock ever since the penny press splashed Klimt’s nude portrait of Liesel all over the front pages. Not able to even show his face at the local Gasthaus.”

  “So Landtauer was avenging himself rather than his daughter when he attacked Klimt,” Gross surmised.

  “It would appear so.”

  Gross shook his head. “Charming man, Herr Landtauer. But, let us put all this behind us, right, Werthen? No real harm done.”

  “Once the newspapers get wind of this, they will have a high old time.” The lawyer sighed, leaning back in the rococo chair and sipping from a snifter filled with fine cognac. One thing the ruckus had done: cured him of his hangover. “The gutter press will be trying Klimt in its pages now, most likely turning that hideous paterfamilias Landtauer into a national hero and Klimt into a despoiler of young virgins.”

  But Gross was no longer listening; his attention, briefly diverted by Werthen’s tale, was again fully focused on the long refectory table he’d had installed in his rooms. Spread out upon it were photos of the victims that Gross had borrowed from the forensic lab and lists of possible suspects supplied by Herzl and compiled by Werthen of Klimt’s possible rivals and enemies.

  There was also a list sent by special messenger from Inspektor Meindl, which contained names of political dissidents and anarchists who were being watched; according to Meindl these people might be interested in stirring up trouble of any sort that might lead to a revolution. Gross dismissed this as poppycock, but Werthen decided to examine the watch list closely for possible suspects, only to be alternately amazed and amused by those who had made the list: everybody from hardened Italian anarchists to homegrown critics of the government such as Herzl and the socialist Viktor Adler.

  Next to these were stacks of notes in Gross’s precise and minuscule hand, a playbill from the Burgtheater advertising the Girardi performance, and the Vienna telephone directory for 1898, which had dozens of bookmarks gummed in place.

  Later that evening, they met another former colleague of Gross’s from his Graz days. Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, chair of the psychiatry department of the University of Vienna. Werthen, too, was familiar with the man, for he had been director of the Feldhof Asylum near Graz until 1889, when he was summoned to Vienna to become director of the State Lunatic Asylum. Then in 1892 he took the chair in psychiatry at the University of Vienna vacated by the death of Theodor Hermann Meynert. Werthen knew Krafft-Ebing in his role as forensic psychiatrist, who both aided in developing profiles of suspected criminals from the specifics of their crimes, as well as championed the cause of what was becoming known as diminished capacity. For Krafft-Ebing, those who committed crimes because of mental illness should not be held accountable for such crimes. Instead, he proposed the novel concept of treatment rather than punishment, a course that would never, Werthen thought, find a basis in law.

  Added to this, Krafft-Ebing was among the foremost researchers in syphilis and its side effects, a believer in hypnotism as a possible treatment for mental problems, and a pioneer of the study of sexual deviancy His 1886 book, Psychopathia Sexualis, documented hundreds of cases of what Krafft-Ebing termed masochism, sadism, and other deviancies, including homosexuality, incest, and pederasty. Despite that Krafft-Ebing had written the case histories in Latin to avoid sensationalism, the textbook had still become an international bestseller, which never ceased to embarrass this prudish man. It was said that the sale of Latin dictionaries increased tenfold in Germany and Austria at the time of the first publication of Psychopathia Sexualis.

  Krafft-Ebing hardly looked the part of a social revolutionary. He was of medium height and dressed conservatively. His graying and thinning hair was cut short, and his beard trimmed to a sharp V under his chin. His eyes were the most distinctive thing about the man, Werthen thought. They were gray-green and full of a kind of luminescence that seemed to come from within.

  He was kind enough to act as if he remembered Werthen, but the lawyer doubted it. Krafft-Ebing and Gross were, however, fast friends as well as colleagues.

  They met at the Griechenbeisl, a favorite of Werthen’s in the First District, and after a few minutes of small talk and study of the menu, Gross got down to business. They were seated in one of the private booths, so they could speak freely. Gross explained to the psychologist the crimes they were investigating, detailing minutely the wounds to the bodies of each of the victims.

  The first course arrived, and Krafft-Ebing, obviously not put off with such graphic details, happily attacked the liver dumpling floating in his consommé.

  “No signs of sexual interference, I take it?” he asked.

  “None whatever. Though …”

  Krafft-Ebing, seeming to understand Gross’s unspoken reservations, said, “I quite agree. Such wounds could be a sign of inversion on the part of the killer. Inspired by certain deep-seated neuroses, sexual in nature, but which are released asexually. Which means that the killer keeps his deviancy well under
control. He … I assume you suspect a male killer?”

  Gross nodded, forking some cucumber salad into his mouth.

  “He,” Krafft-Ebing continued, “would be a person no one could suspect of deviancy. Outwardly, he projects the picture of decorum and balance. Inwardly he seethes. This makes your work that much more difficult.”

  “You are describing half of Vienna,” Werthen joked.

  “Do not misunderstand me,” Krafft-Ebing said, his eyes burning a hole in Werthen. “Sexual feeling is the root of all ethics. However, sexual feelings, misguided, can also be the most damaging impulse known in society. It is not to be taken lightly.”

  “That is why you are here,” Gross said, his demeanor also having taken on a new gravitas.

  As if satisfied by this avowal, Krafft-Ebing went on, “The nose is intriguing. The obvious inference-further enhanced by the draining of the blood-would be a Jewish ritual murder.”

  “We had wondered about that,” Gross said, raising his eyebrows at Werthen.

  “As I say, that is the obvious inference. However, my research in syphilis suggests another possibility.” Krafft-Ebing took a moment, dabbing his lips with his linen napkin.

  The three were silent while a serving girl, under the direction of the tuxedoed headwaiter, delivered the house specialty, Pariser Schnitzel, made with paper-thin cuts of fresh veal.

  When the girl left, Krafft-Ebing continued, “Modern systems of treatment with mercury have led to progress, but still fifteen percent of the male population are estimated to be infected with the disease. We all know famous examples of those who have suffered and died. Most notably here in Vienna, the painter Hans Makart.”

  Krafft-Ebing paused for a moment to cut a trim bite of schnitzel and pop it in his mouth. Werthen was growing impatient with the man’s account, wondering what this might have to do with their own case. Gross, however, the lawyer noted, was nodding his head appreciatively at the psychologist.