“I am on holiday, having no other purpose of any kind,” replied Macdonald. “I thought I had made that clear.”
“Abundantly clear,” chuckled Walsingham. “Well, I respect a man’s holidays—so I’ll leave you to yours. Nevertheless, I doubt if a specialist of your calibre is any more capable of ignoring detection than a medical man is capable of ignoring diagnosis.”
“I leave you to your doubts,” retorted Macdonald, “only reminding you that detectives observe professional etiquette as doctors do. In other words, we don’t butt in on other men’s cases.”
Walsingham laughed a little. “Very high-minded. I’m a writer—perhaps not a very high-minded one. I take an interest in anything interesting that comes my way. Good night.”
3
Karl Natzler paused in the hall. “What did you make of that chap?” he inquired.
“I didn’t like him too much: but he has a capacity for fitting together the bits and pieces he has observed, and I think it’s probable that he has more powers of exact observation than you might imagine from his conversation,” replied Macdonald. “In fact, I know he has: he’s a pretty able writer—J. B. S. Neville. You’ve probably heard of him.”
“I know his name—but what does he write?”
“Travel stuff, generally with a political angle. Between the wars he wrote up his travels in Eastern Europe: in 1945 he published Wings over the World—an assessment of aerial attack in the future. His last book dealt with the north polar regions, a medley of exploration, adventure and future air bases on the polar ice cap. It sold in thousands.”
“What’s he doing in Vienna?” demanded Karl.
“Ça, se voit—getting material for yet another book. Perhaps he thinks he’s found it. A lot of writers are cashing in on the popularity of the intellectual ‘blood’.” Macdonald paused for a moment before entering the sitting-room. “I was interested in the fact that Walsingham thought out for himself the two possibilities—that Clara Schwarz might have been attacked because she was mistaken for Elizabeth Le Vendre, or vice versa. And he produced a reason of sorts to account for an attack on the latter.”
Karl nodded. “Wouldn’t it have been more logical to attack Sir Walter himself, though?”
“More logical but less easy,” said Macdonald. “Vanbrugh doesn’t go for solitary walks in the Hietzing woods, and I expect he’s driven to all his appointments, with a chauffeur to see him in and out of the car. He couldn’t be got at ‘accidentally’ in short. If Vanbrugh were attacked there would be an uproar.”
“Then you think this man Walsingham may be right in his ideas?”
“I’ve no means of knowing—and anyway it’s not my business,” said Macdonald firmly. “The Vienna police don’t butt in on my preserves and I’m not poaching on theirs.”
CHAPTER VII
NEVILLE WALSINGHAM, known the world over under his pseudonym of J. B. S. Neville, had all the qualities which make a successful writer. He wrote admirable prose, lucid, rhythmical, shapely, with a real understanding of words and a capacity to use them in a forcible and original way. Perhaps his outstanding quality was controlled dramatic emphasis: everything he wrote was exciting—and at the same time highly literate. Someone had once said of him: “He’s a common denominator between the Royal Society and the twopenny libraries: he embraces brows of all dimensions because he’s a natural dramatist.” There was, also, inherent in his writing, a sense of detection: like Kipling’s famous mongoose, his motto was ‘Run and find out.’ and he satisfied his readers not only by facts, tersely and vividly narrated, but by the synthesis which he was capable of developing to make sense of those facts.
Macdonald would have agreed with all these comments; the C.I.D. man had read Neville’s books and enjoyed them, but he was aware of a quality underlying them which was less admirable than their prose—a self-assurance on the part of the author which amounted to a defect. Put in the plainest possible way, Neville was conceited, and it was this quality which had made Macdonald very guarded in his response to Neville’s advances: the last thing the C.I.D. man desired was to find himself figuring in an unofficial investigation brilliantly described in a Neville best-seller.
Walsingham, for his part, was very much aware of what he called Macdonald’s “cageiness,” and had been considerably irritated by it. The writer had gone out of his way to give Macdonald an opportunity to open up: while it was natural, perhaps, for a Superintendent of the C.I.D. to be cautious while talking to the Vanbrughs, pondered Walsingham, it had surely been unnecessary during their walk through the quiet streets. And it was this irritation which caused Walsingham to formulate an error of judgment.
“Holiday my hat,” he said to himself. “He knows perfectly well that there’s something damned odd in the offing and he’s no intention of letting me in on it.”
Walsingham walked back slowly to Trauttmansdorffgasse, and went up to the salon. Miss Vanbrugh had retired to bed, but Sir Walter was sitting over the wood fire, smoking a cigar. He glanced up as the younger man came into the room.
“I’m very troubled over the whole thing, Neville,” he said. “My sister is still unwilling to bring those two maids to the notice of the police, and it did seem to me that Superintendent Macdonald was satisfied that accident accounted for that poor child’s misfortune. He’s an exceedingly nice chap—and I’d trust his judgment in a matter like this.”
“A very nice chap,” agreed Walsingham, forbearing to point out that Macdonald had urged the Vanbrughs to put all the facts before the Vienna police. “Have you had any further report about Miss Le Vendre?”
“The hospital thinks she is in no danger: there is no fracture, her general condition is good, and they think she may recover consciousness within twenty-four hours. But what a maddening contre-temps, Neville. She was exactly the person I wanted—intelligent, diligent, trustworthy, and a most delightful person to work with. Moreover, she really is familiar with the German language and script, and what I would call ‘biddable.’ I’ve suffered from a few erudite young men as my secretaries—they all knew better than I did.”
“Yes. All very bad luck, sir,” agreed Neville, “but if she makes a good recovery—as healthy young people do—is there any reason why she shouldn’t resume her work with you?”
“The devil of it is—shall we ever know?” muttered Vanbrugh.
“Know what, sir?” asked Neville, and since there was no answer he went on: “Whether it was accident or assault?”
Sir Walter did not reply immediately, and then he said: “You know this city. It’s not so simple as some people like to think. The old intrigues go on.” He broke off abruptly. “I’m tired, Neville—and probably talking nonsense. I’ll go to bed and think things out afresh in the morning. I’m sorry to be a bad host. There are some journals there you might like to look at, and if you want anything, ring for Josef. He’s always around until midnight, and Anthony will be coming in later. He was dining with Sir Charles Bland.”
“That’s all right, sir,” said Neville Walsingham. “Josef and I are old friends. He knows my uncivilised addiction to a pot of strong tea around midnight—so good night and sleep well.”
Walsingham waited for some ten minutes after Sir Walter had gone, and then walked slowly through the music-room and paused to glance back at the salon, conscious of the beauty of the graceful rooms. He was deliberately memorising his impressions, knowing that some time he would use them as a background—star-studded arch, ormolu cabinets, the chessmen on the black table-top, the golden-shaded lights gleaming on cut glass, on silver and ivory. He went down the state staircase slowly and touched a bell when he reached the entrance hall: old Josef, solid, solemn and respectful, materialised like a silent apparition from the shadows of an archway.
“Sir Walter has gone to bed, Josef—he’s tired. I’m going for a walk, it’s a lovely evening now.”
“Bitteschön, Herr,” murmured the old man. “You have only to ring.”
“Thanks.” Wals
ingham looked directly at the old man. “Clara or Greta—which of them told the truth, Josef?”
“Greta,” he replied. “Clara should not have come here. I tell you this, Herr—but Frau Schmidt would be angry if she heard me saying it.”
“All right. I won’t quote you.”
Walsingham spoke German easily, using the Austrian idiom, and the old servant smiled at him as he opened the front door and then went ahead to unbolt the complicated “postern” in the double doors which opened on to the street.
Walsingham was conscious of a sense of exhilaration as he strolled along the beautiful silent street, where the trees cast graceful shadows, thrown by the street lamps on to stone and stucco walls and elaboration of iron grille and moulded doorways. He loved foreign cities; the hectic never-ceasing movement and brilliance of Paris, the immense statuesque ancientry of Rome, the contrast of squalor and magnificence of Naples; yet for him Vienna had a charm all its own. It was a civilised city, Walsingham was apt to declare: but he knew also that Vienna of to-day still held the aftermath of its seventeen years’ occupation. Seventeen years from the time the Nazis took control in 1938, ten years since the Quadripartite occupation: Germans, Russians, French, British and Americans, they had all been in “occupation.” “And Vienna’s not finished with them yet,” thought Walsingham. “After all, under its gaiety and brilliance Vienna has always been a centre of intrigue: from the Romans to the Holy Roman Empire, Caesars and Hapsburgs, pro-Germans and anti-Germans, pro-Russian and anti-Russian, anyone with a gift for intrigue can make hay in Vienna.”
He was rambling on, word-spinning, and he knew it, but the events of the evening had fired his imagination. These quiet dignified streets with their air of security and reticence, and the graceful Hietzing woods, had been the background to an “incident”—and Walsingham used that modern jargon-word in preference to simple “accident.” He was in process of developing an idea, as he had so often done before; an idea based on correlating what he had observed, during and since his flight from London in the Viscount. “If he’d been willing to talk, I’d have talked too,” thought Walsingham to himself, still resentful of Macdonald’s guardedness. “Since he wouldn’t talk, he’s no reason to complain if I undercut him.”
2
Walsingham’s stroll was not as purposeless as an onlooker might have imagined: walking diagonally across the quiet streets of Hietzing, he was making for an inn which he remembered well—the Grünekeller—situated just beyond the main streets of Hietzing, in the direction of Hutteldorf. The Grünekeller stood just below the slopes which led up into the woods, and it had acquired a local fame because its owner, Frau Kahlen, had a fine singing voice. There was always music to be heard of an evening in the Grünekeller: a young zither-player made a habit of playing there, and the company in the inn (mellowed by the white wine which was a speciality) would join the zither-player in a chorus which always had quality. Towards the end of the evening, if the fancy took her, Frau Kahlen would stand up and sing herself: sometimes the traditional airs of the Styrian province where she had been born, sometimes Schubert, or Johann Strauss: and after a moment for consideration, the zither-player would improvise a soft accompaniment, never at fault in pitch or rhythm.
Walsingham was never quite sure if it was the quality of the music, the quality of the wine, or the fact that there were one or two outstanding old habituees at the Grünekeller which attracted an unusual clientele there, but he did know that you could count on finding a writer or two, some painters, some amateur politicians and a number of very vocal local characters, not excepting an occasional agitator, whose views were at variance with orthodoxy. Of one thing Walsingham was pretty certain. The story of the English girl’s accident in the woods would be known to the habituees of the Grünekeller, and among the opinions expressed over the local wine there was a very fair chance that some interesting facts would emerge—even the truth itself.
The Grünekeller stood in its own garden, a little above the level of the road: lights were shining from its windows, and Walsingham was quick to observe that no cars were parked outside. This was a matter of satisfaction to him, because it implied that those within were local people, or at least Viennese: not foreigners or interested onlookers from the Embassies, who would certainly have come in cars. The sound of the zither, and of men’s voices singing softly and tunefully, floated out across the leafy roadway, giving the whole scene a fairy story aspect.
When Walsingham got inside, he found the place was packed: the company sat around well-scrubbed tables, with their glasses or tankards, and a couple of plump red-faced maidservants pushed their way around, refilling glasses and collecting payment. At the far end, the kitchen door stood open, and the heat from the cooking-stoves could be felt right across the room, for supper had been waived to those who asked for it. The whole scene was a complete contrast to the interior of an average English pub: more friendly, more domestic, more sedate, as though good music and good wine brought a measure of dignity and picturesqueness into the simple interior.
Walsingham stood against the wall, signalled for a drink, and studied the faces around the tables, to see if he could recognise anybody he knew. At the end of the table nearest to him he saw a stout dark fellow whom he recognised as a music critic—a man he had met on earlier visits to Vienna—and when the chorus came to an end, he saw a hand raised in greeting.
“Come—Willi is going home, there is a place for you here,” said the stout man.
“Boris Schulze,” thought Walsingham to himself, remembering the other’s name as he pushed his way between the tables and took Willi’s vacated chair. Boris greeted the Englishman cheerfully, in a deep rumbling bass.
“And what are you doing in Vienna, my friend?” he asked. “Austria is no longer a problem country: we stand on our own feet, we are a second Switzerland, yes? Do you seek a story in a neutral state?”
“You’re the focal point of the musical world again, Boris,” said Walsingham cheerfully. “If I can get in touch with old friends, I may yet get a ticket for the reopening of the Opera House.”
“Ach—you are an optimist. Half Europe hopes to be at the Opera House. That is not good enough. And as for old friends—the old friend who is your host has been in trouble to-day, I hear.”
“And how did you learn that?” asked Walsingham, noting that Boris Schulze knew where he (Walsingham) was staying.
“All the world knows it,” rejoined Boris. “A matter of a thunderstorm, I hear. Herr Vogel here knows one of the ambulance men: he knows everybody, does Vogel: he knows the Herr Doktor Natzler. I wouldn’t put it beyond him to know the Herr Rittmeister, eh, Vogel?”
A short grey-haired man across the table turned and smiled obsequiously at Schulze, with a little bow: in contrast to most of the rubicund faces around the tables, Vogel’s was pallid—damply, unpleasantly pallid. He was curiously colourless, with pale eyes and a long nose which twitched, so that Walsingham was reminded of an albino rat.
“As a man of law, I know the police of our district,” he said mildly, “but I have no information I can give to your English friend; I only know that the young English lady was stunned by the thunder and taken to hospital in an ambulance.” He turned more directly to Walsingham. “It happens that I drove an ambulance during the war,” he said, “and I still know the ambulance unit—I am on the reserve, as you say. If you, sir, are a writer—a journalist, perhaps?—I think there is nothing here to make a story of. Though it was a violent storm. I thought my own house was struck by that first flash, the vibration was so great. You were, perhaps, out in this storm?”
Walsingham became aware of a curious quality in the obsequious voice: curiosity? suggestiveness? something with an undercurrent of unpleasantness. “Had you been at home, in the house, you would doubtless have gone to search for the young lady when she did not return,” concluded Vogel.
“I drove up to Leopoldsberg after lunch,” said Walsingham, “and I saw the storm break over Vienna—it w
as quite a spectacle.” He returned Vogel’s deliberate stare. “As Schulze says, you are well informed, Herr Vogel.”
“There is very little information about the matter,” rejoined Vogel. “I met Fräulein Bruckner as I walked to this inn: it was at her house that Dr. Karl Natzler telephoned for the ambulance and the police, so she heard such details as there were—a most unfortunate accident.” He pushed back his chair. “It is time I went home,” he said. “I had expected to meet my young guest here—Herr Stratton: but he must have been delayed. He had business in Vienna to-day. I bid you good night, gentlemen.”
Vogel got up and pushed his way to the door, and Walsingham became aware that the foregoing conversation had aroused considerable interest among the men who sat at their table. Schulze was smiling to himself and he grinned at Walsingham.
“Vogel is like that: he likes to make mysteries,” he said, “while always explaining that there is no mystery at all. I also must be going. Will you stroll back with me, my friend? I go to catch the late train to town.”
Walsingham finished his beer and got up, and the zither-player swept his fingers over the strings again, so that the hum of conversation was blurred by the music.
When they were outside, strolling down the shadowy road, Schulze said:
“It is an odd story, my friend. It is surprising how news travels. Did you notice the big fair young fellow at the end of the room? His name is Flüchs. He is a journalist—a reporter. He has collected enough facts to make an interesting story, though I doubt if his paper will ever publish it.”
“Look here—I’m puzzled over all this,” said Walsingham. “What business is it of Herr Vogel’s where I am staying or what I’ve been doing?”
Murder in Vienna Page 8
