A Fatal Waltz lem-3

by Tasha Alexander

  “Have you spoken with Rina recently?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How is she?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “I—I’ve heard that you found a house for her. I—”

  “I’d prefer not to speak with you about this. Forgive me.” He stood up and walked away from the table, crossing to the far side of the studio and staring blankly at the pictures on the wall.

  “You must go easy on him,” Klimt said, leaving Cécile to manage the coffee on the stove.

  “I haven’t done anything,” I said, rubbing the soft fur of the cat that had taken up residence on my lap.

  “You let him fall in love with you. You can’t expect there to be no consequences.” He stepped back from his canvas, tilted his head to one side, and studied his work.

  “Consequences?”

  He did not answer for a moment, still looking at the painting in front of him. Then, all at once, he touched a brush to his palette and went back to work. “I’m an expert when it comes to such matters. It’s delicious to have people adore you, but it’s exhausting, too. Particularly when your own feelings don’t match theirs.”

  “Is that how it is between you and Cécile?” I asked.

  He laughed. “She would never allow that.”

  “No, I would imagine not.” The cat slunk off my lap and stalked after Jeremy, who took no notice of it brushing against his legs.

  “She and I are well suited. We understand one another,” he said.

  Jeremy did not speak to me for the rest of the morning. I hoped this would change on our way to Herr Schröder’s house that afternoon.

  “It’s colder today, don’t you think?” I asked once we were bundled into a fiacre.

  “I hadn’t noticed.” He did not look at me, focusing instead on the buildings we passed. So intent was his stare I found myself following it, half expecting to find something stunning outside the coach rather than another row of elegant shops.

  “It always feels colder here when the sun’s out. Why is that?”

  “I’ve not the slightest idea.”

  “You’d think it would warm the air.” I watched him closely; he did not move, nor did he reply. “Have you plans for the evening?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Are you adamant about refusing to engage me in conversation?” I asked.

  “I’m tired and don’t feel like talking.”

  We sat in silence for twenty more minutes before we reached our destination. As we approached the house, Jeremy spoke at last. “It’s unlikely your friend is going to want to talk in front of me. If that’s the case, I shall stand directly outside the door of the room you’re in, eavesdropping in the most obvious fashion. Shout for me if you feel threatened in the least.”

  “Thank you, Jeremy,” I said. He did not return my smile.

  Herr Schröder’s house was not at all what I expected. It was in a fine neighborhood, elegant and graceful, nothing like the areas in which his compatriots lived. I could have imagined myself in Mayfair until I’d knocked on the door and Herr Schröder answered it himself.

  “You look surprised,” he said, ushering me into a cavernous entrance hall. No carpet covered the polished marble floor; our footsteps echoed as we walked. “And you’ve brought your favorite chaperone. How charming.”

  I ought to have introduced them, but stumbled over the words. How to announce a duke to an anarchist? Our host held out his hand.

  “Gustav Schröder.”

  “Jeremy Sheffield.” They shook hands.

  “Lord Sheffield?” Herr Schröder asked.

  “I’m a duke, actually, so it would be Your Grace, if you’re the sort of man who insists on standing upon ceremony. Otherwise you can call me Bainbridge.”

  Herr Schröder laughed. “In other circumstances I think I might like you, but as it is, I’ve no time to form a new acquaintance. You’ll forgive me if I don’t allow you to join me and your companion while we speak?”

  “So long as you’ll forgive me for hovering outside the door. I will not leave her alone.”

  “I’ll get you a chair.” He dragged an elaborately carved chair across the hallway and put it next to a doorway that led into a well-appointed sitting room. “We won’t be long.” He ushered me in and closed the heavy door behind us. The room in which we stood was furnished in the style of the Napoleonic era, much of it with an Egyptian flair, as had been popular after the Frenchman’s adventures in the land of the pharaohs. I was drawn at once to a spectacular stone panel that hung on the wall.

  “Is this authentic or a copy?”

  My host shrugged. “For the price my grandfather paid, it had better be genuine. Do you read hieroglyphs?”

  “No, but I wish I did.” I reached up, longing to touch the worn stone, to feel the words carved by ancient hands. “Your grandfather was a collector?”

  “I don’t know. I never knew him.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and turned to take in the rest of the room, full of shades of gold and green.

  “You don’t like my house?” he asked.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “You have an odd expression on your face.”

  “I confess to not having expected to find an anarchist living in such luxury.”

  “I come from a good family.”

  “You’re a man of contradiction. It’s fascinating. What do your peers think of your wealth?” I asked. “I’m surprised they haven’t demanded that you renounce your fortune. Or at least divide it equally among them.”

  “I’ll gladly renounce it the moment human beings are treated as equals in this world. Until that day, I need it to finance my work. Enough of this. What information have you brought me?” he asked. I handed him the papers Colin had sent to me. He gave them a cursory glance, then began looking at them more closely. “This is better than I could have hoped. Does he know you took this?”

  “Of course not. What do you take me for? I was…with him in his rooms last night and took them after he’d fallen asleep.” My cheeks felt hot as I said this. “I’ll need to return them before he gets home this evening. You’re free to copy whatever you want.”

  “Are you certain he hasn’t missed them?”

  “He hadn’t when he left this morning.” I watched him sit at a table and begin scribbling furiously in a notebook. “What do you have for me?” I asked.

  “I haven’t yet decided. You surprised me by being so successful with your acquisition. I confess to having had very little faith that you could do what you said.”

  “So will you give me what I want? Did someone in Vienna order Lord Fortescue’s murder?”

  “I will find out what I can. My ‘organization,’ as you call it, was not involved.”

  “What about Mr. Harrison?”

  “Give me twenty-four hours.”

  “You want to meet on Christmas Eve?”

  “Have you something more important to do?”

  “Not in particular. Shall I meet you here again?”

  “No. Go to the Stephansdom. I’ll come to you in Saint Valentine’s chapel at nine o’clock.”

  I agreed to the meeting, then stood up and started for the door. The sight of something hanging on the wall brought me to a dead stop: a dueling pistol embellished with the image of a griffin in profile, the arms of the Baron of Beaumont. I recognized it at once as the twin of the one used to murder Lord Fortescue.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “This is one of the guns from the duel in which my brother was killed. I keep it to remind me why I continue to fight for justice in this world.”

  I went directly from Herr Schröder’s house to the offices of the Neue Freie Presse, towing Jeremy with me. He did not play unwilling companion on the journey, instead telling me in matter-of-fact tones what he’d seen while he waited for me in the hall: the Countess von Lange, wearing an evening gown in the middle of the afternoon, coming down the stairs. A friendly chat with a
servant and a handful of change had confirmed his suspicion that she’d spent the night at the house.

  Once we arrived at the Neue Freie Presse, we did not emerge for nearly two hours, but when we did, I had with me an item cut from an old issue of the newspaper, full of details of a duel fought more than ten years earlier, in which it was reported a Mr. Robert Brandon had killed Josef Schröder.

  The duel that recently took place between Robert Brandon and Josef Schröder proves once again why this barbaric practice is illegal. Schröder was mortally wounded and Brandon fled the country immediately, but that was not the end of this tragic story. Schröder’s second, an Englishman, Albert Sanburne, was found dead yesterday morning, having killed himself with a single shot to the head. He used the same pistol that had ended the life of his friend. One can only suppose that the guilt he felt at not having been able to dissuade Schröder from fighting was overwhelming.

  But in a season of suicides, Sanburne’s is unremarkable when compared to that of the woman who jumped from a car on the Budapest express, ending up a tangled mess in her bloody wedding gown and veil.

  —NEUE FREIE PRESSE, 20 SEPTEMBER 1880

  Chapter 17

  “This is very troubling,” Colin said, pacing in front of my fireplace at the Imperial, reading the article from the Neue Freie Presse over and over. “To have Brandon connected to this set of pistols more than once…Not good at all.”

  “No one knows but us,” I said. “Unless it was part of the information Lord Fortescue was holding over Robert, and whoever is in possession of that now decides to come forward with it.”

  “I can’t imagine that Fortescue would have missed such a detail. But unless we can find his private papers, we’ve no way of discovering what precisely he knew.”

  “He was too sharp to keep them somewhere people would search. I’m going to write to Mrs. Reynold-Plympton. She was more of a wife to him than any of his three legal ones, and so far as I can tell, she exerted a great deal of influence over him politically. They were more than lovers.”

  “I suppose now that Fortescue is dead she’d have no reason to keep his secrets hidden.”

  “Unless she’s planning on using them herself,” I said. “She might not be ready to relinquish her political power.”

  “Perhaps, but she’d have a difficult time wielding it without Fortescue.”

  “Doesn’t that depend on how spectacular the information she knows is?”

  “To a degree. But the fact is that without him, she has very little clout.”

  “I had one other thought,” I said. “I think Fortescue was also having an affair with Flora Clavell. Could his murder be a simple case of jealousy?”

  “You think Flora Clavell killed him? I seem to remember you suspected her husband at one point.”

  “I don’t think either of them is guilty. But what about Mrs. Reynold-Plympton? She wouldn’t have ever felt threatened by Lady Fortescue, but Flora’s young and pretty and smart.”

  “An interesting theory. But she wasn’t in Yorkshire.”

  “She was. At Highgrove, attending the Langstons’ party,” I said. “Jeremy was there, too.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “I remember it distinctly.”

  “That’s a lead worth pursuing.” He tossed the newspaper article onto a table. “Damn Brandon for lying about this.”

  “He lied?”

  “He was shown the gun—held it in his hands—and denied ever having laid eyes on it before,” Colin said.

  “I can’t believe he’d do such a thing.”

  “He was in desperate circumstances, Emily, and he probably assumed that no one other than Fortescue could make the connection between the guns. In theory, it shouldn’t matter, but if it were to be exposed during the trial…” He shook his head. “What I don’t understand is how the pair of pistols was separated, and how one of them wound up back in England if their owner died in Vienna.”

  “Mr. Sanburne’s personal effects would have been returned to his family, wouldn’t they? And that must have included one of the pistols and perhaps their case.”

  “It’s odd they didn’t send both of them,” he said.

  “Perhaps Schröder stole it after his brother was killed. We can find out easily enough how he came to get it.”

  “Perhaps it doesn’t matter.” He was pacing again.

  “I don’t believe for a moment that Mr. Sanburne killed himself because he didn’t stop the duel. Did you know about his suicide? I thought he’d died of influenza.”

  “That was the story circulated by the family. His sister was in dire enough straits without having the stigma of suicide to contend with.”

  “I’ve one other distressing piece of news. Would you like it now, or shall I wait?”

  “May as well bludgeon me with all of it at once.”

  “I believe I know who warned Lord Fortescue.”

  “One of Schröder’s men?”

  “Not quite. Schröder is having an affair with a woman who is…connected with politics in England.”

  “Who?”

  “The Countess von Lange.”

  “Kristiana?” he asked. I nodded. “How do you know this?”

  “I was suspicious when I saw his reaction when I told him she was still romantically involved with you.”

  “But you have no firm proof?”

  “Jeremy confirmed it this afternoon.” Meeting Colin’s eyes was difficult. I was afraid of what I might see in them. “She is not an infrequent guest at Herr Schröder’s house.”

  If he felt any emotion at that moment, he did a superb job of hiding it. His demeanor did not change in the least, but he did stop pacing. “I’ll speak to her at once. If it was she, and she’s been hiding it all this time…” He paused. “No. I can’t imagine she would do that. She’s unscrupulous in many ways, but she would never stand by and send an innocent man to his death.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I said, but I was skeptical, and not entirely pleased that he was so quick to defend her. “But if so, it doesn’t bode well for Robert unless there’s another part to the story that we’re missing.”

  “While we’re on the subject of illicit loves, have you talked to Bainbridge?”

  “What on earth do you mean?” I asked, hoping I looked imperturbable.

  “He’s in love with you, and I’m feeling a bit guilty for sending you around with him. He must be feeling supremely tortured. But I can’t go myself without neglecting my own work, and I can’t let you continue what you’re doing alone.”

  “I could ask Cécile to come instead.”

  He shook his head. “You’re treading in parts of the city that could turn dangerous in an instant. I’d prefer to know that you’ve a gentleman to—”

  “To protect me?”

  “Forgive me, yes.”

  “Do you want me to stop what I’m doing altogether?” I asked.

  “Would you?”

  “No.” I stared at him, feeling more than a little uneasy.

  “Good. I think it’s easier that we are both embroiled in complicated messes. I don’t mean Bainbridge—I mean the work. Neither of us would ever expect the other to stop.”

  “Of course not. But Colin…”

  “What is it?”

  I could not meet his eyes. “He kissed me.”

  “I know. Kristiana saw everything and was all too glad to tell me.”

  “I’m so sorry. I should have told you as soon as it happened, but I—”

  He put three fingers on my lips. “I have never doubted your fidelity.” My breath started coming more quickly as our eyes met. “Perhaps I’m overconfident.”

  “Not at all. No one else could be to me what you are,” I said.

  “I’ll have to make sure you never forget that.” He kissed me, slowly at first, gradually increasing the intensity and depth till I was so consumed with pleasure that were I the sort of woman who fainted, it would have required several applications of smelli
ng salts to make me sensible enough to tend to the mundane rituals of daily life.

  Colin confronted Kristiana as soon as he’d left me. She admitted that she had spoken with Lord Fortescue when she saw him at Beaumont Towers about trouble brewing in Vienna. But she insisted that she did not warn him of any specific threat. Most particularly, not a threat against him. All she’d told him was that the city was like a tinderbox, ready to burst into flame at the slightest provocation.

  Lord Fortescue, she said, was hardly interested. He’d commented that the Balkans were headed for disaster and that Britain would keep out of any trouble in the region for as long as possible. This, he said, was a problem for the emperor of Austria and the kaiser to address. Britain was not concerned.

  But why, then, had he confided in Robert that he’d been threatened? A dark thought crossed my mind, and I pushed it away before it could fully form. It was impossible to ignore altogether, though. Robert had lied about the gun; could he have invented the conversation in which his mentor told him he’d been threatened? Or, Kristiana might have spoken to Lord Fortescue before he’d received the written warning. Someone had stolen political documents from Beaumont Towers—documents significant enough that their disappearance had merited charging Robert with treason. If Mr. Harrison was the culprit—something I did not doubt for an instant—he might have also stolen any written evidence of the warning sent to Lord Fortescue.

  Snow fell all that day and through the night, leaving the inhabitants of Vienna to crawl out from under their warm covers in the morning and find their city still reposing beneath a glistening white quilt of its own. When I dragged myself from my bed, I did not get dressed, but pulled on a robe, moved a chair in front of one of the enormous windows in my bedroom, and sat, watching the snow but not really focusing on it. I had slept fitfully, plagued by troubling dreams. Meg opened the door to bring me tea, but I had no time for it. Having spent too long mesmerized by the snow, I would now have to hurry to keep my appointment with Herr Schröder.

  Jeremy and I walked in silence to the Stephansdom. As we approached the cathedral, I saw Rina standing outside. Jeremy took her arm and invited her to join us; they sat together in the nave, keeping in sight of the chapel where I was to meet the anarchist. He was kneeling when I arrived, a look of such piety on his face that I could not help but laugh.