‘You’re an amber fisher not a musician, Klavan. Go back to your own kind.’
He poured himself into his studies to prove them wrong. Auer was a harsh master, focusing on both technique and interpretation. His criticisms came so fast and furious that sometimes Pietr wondered why he had accepted him as a pupil; he must be terrible to deserve such criticism. He broke down one day, while playing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, and voiced this sentiment. Auer, who sat across from him bow in hand, usually brooked no such emotional outbursts. But the older man looked at him kindly, with sparkling eyes.
‘It’s because you have greatness in you, Klavan. That is why I am so hard on you. You of all the students in this Conservatory are headed for a concert career. You need to be strong, supple. Learn to bend against criticism and not let it break you.’
From that day on, Pietr began to feel at home in St Petersburg and at the Conservatory.
But it was short-lived comfort.
One afternoon, as he was about to prepare for his lesson with Auer, he came upon Heimito von Kornung and three of his wealthy friends. They were in the cloakroom, huddled near his locker. They seemed to be having a great deal of fun, giggling like little girls. He approached to retrieve his violin, and then saw what was amusing them. They had opened his violin case and were plucking the embedded bits of amber out of the cherished knife his uncle had given him.
Red-hot rage overcame him and he let out an animal scream as he plunged into their midst and grappled with Heimito for the knife. The other took up a defensive posture, switching instantly from humorous vandalism to deadly intent. Pietr could see it in his eyes: Heimito wanted to kill him. And Pietr understood the urge, for he too wanted to do as much damage as he could to these animals.
Pietr had never been in a fight, but he had witnessed plenty between the men on pay-days when they had spent too much time at the local inn. As Heimito swooped at him with the blade, Pietr dodged and spun out of range, whipping off the jacket of his woollen suit and wrapping it round his left arm. He quickly surveyed the area for a weapon, but the only thing within reach was his violin. He grabbed it and began circling to the right, out of range of the knife. Heimito made a sudden lunge and Pietr was able to block his thrust with his left arm, though the blade penetrated the wool and sank into his forearm. But he ignored the pain and swung his violin into Heimito’s left temple, stunning the larger boy, who stumbled backwards, tripping over a bench. Pietr was on him now, lashing out with the violin mercilessly, hearing the crack of wood, the ping of broken strings, but not caring.
The others pulled him off, holding him by the arms. He was panting like a wild animal. Heimito struggled to his feet, blood coursing down his face. His eyes were tiny slits of hatred as he came up to Pietr, who struggled to free himself.
‘Hold him,’ Heimito ordered his companions.
And then he grabbed Pietr’s left hand, securing his little finger in a tight grip and bent it until it broke like a twig. The pain tore at Pietr, but he forced back the tears. That he did not show the pain served only to anger Heimito further. He took Pietr’s right little finger in the same grip and broke that one as well.
A scream filled the small room, and Pietr only slowly realized it came from him.
‘Now try playing the fiddle, amber man.’ Heimito spat at him and then left the room. The others followed.
The affair was, of course, covered up, for Heimito’s parents had power. The others accused Pietr of attacking them; and the administration, despite Auer’s protests, took their side.
Pietr rode the train back to his little village in disgrace, the broken violin in its case, his injured fingers splinted and bandaged, the wound on his forearm hot and sore.
It took two weeks before he finally told his uncle what had happened.
‘So you won’t be a famous musician,’ his uncle said with surprisingly little sympathy. ‘Did you fight back?’
Pietr nodded. ‘I bloodied him.’ His only regret was that he had not killed Heimito.
‘Good. In that case we will make a knight of you.’
It happened very quickly. His uncle had a word with Count von Girzwold, who used his connections in St Petersburg to obtain a place for Pietr in the officers’ cadet school. It was there an instructor saw his potential: the chameleon who could be at home in the country or the city; the man of no distinguishing characteristics. A person of iron will, both ruthless and clever. Thus was born Schmidt, agent number 302.
Schmidt suddenly realized he had been standing by the same flower-bed for minutes on end, staring at the orange-red swirl of geraniums on the ground before him. He blinked hard, feeling sudden moisture in his eyes. The pollen must be getting to me, he told himself.
And then he saw his quarry, the lawyer and his older companion, leaving the Upper Belvedere and heading for the gate in the Rennweg. He did not follow immediately, however, waiting until the cornstalk man took up position behind them. Schmidt quickly took off his bowler hat and tossed it into a bin when no one was watching. He needed to alter his appearance in some way. Cornstalk had not noticed him yet, but Schmidt was a cautious man.
Then the tall watcher suddenly turned and scanned the gardens once again, his eyes flickering past Schmidt, with his changed appearance.
No more following today, Schmidt decided. Caution had kept him alive for many years now.
Besides, he had the pressing matter of Doktor Schnitzel to deal with.
His experiences at the St Petersburg Conservatory had closed Schmidt’s mind to the arts. Thereafter, they had become dead for him. He avoided mention of or contact with artists of any kind.
But now he realized such a stance was impractical. The fact that he had not known of this playwright, Schnitzler, made him less effective as an agent. His personal history had impinged on his mission. And that was something he would not let happen again.
TWENTY-ONE
‘Klimt, it’s marvelous! However did you finish it so quickly?’
Berthe was in Klimt’s studio near their flat in the Josefstädterstrasse. The oil painting rested against the single-ply wall of the small studio built in the courtyard of an old apartment house. A cat twined around her legs as she examined the portrait. The woman was seated, wearing a soft chiffon dress in a wonderful shade of light blue – Berthe was unsure what to call the color. Not sky blue; paler. And not baby blue. Somewhere in between. A graceful portrait. The face of Marie Louise von Suttner, the troublesome niece, stared back at her, quite lifelike. The very image she had captured with the Brownie camera.
‘Waste not want not,’ Klimt said, smiling. ‘It is quite good, no? One would never know the identity of the actual sitter.’
Klimt gave Berthe a sheepish look. ‘Her husband was not well pleased to discover his wife was sitting for me. Gossip, you know.’ In other words, Berthe understood, Klimt had slept with the lady in question, then her husband had found out and cancelled the commission. Marie Louise’s head had been superimposed upon the body of the original subject.
‘Fortunate they have the same body type,’ Berthe said.
‘Do they?’ Klimt glanced at the painting now, appreciating his own work, or perhaps regretting that he was unable to paint Marie Louise in the flesh. Quite literally, for it was said that Klimt painted his female sitters in the nude and then later painted on layers of clothing.
‘This will serve the purpose perfectly, Klimt. You are a genius.’
‘Yes, so I’ve been told. Now, how about some coffee and cake?’
No Prokop or Meier today, Werthen noticed, as he sounded the bell on Schnitzler’s flat. Gross stood next to him, surveying the ornamental plasterwork over the door: putti draped in what appeared to be grapes.
Werthen heard the brass plate on the peephole on the other side of the door slide back and saw the lens go dark as an eye was put to it. Then came the rattle of unbolting and unchaining, and the playwright himself opened the door.
‘Herr Advokat! How good to s
ee you. I rather thought you had given up on my hopeless case.’ He looked from Werthen to Gross with a question in his eyes.
Before Werthen could answer, Schnitzler rushed on. ‘Ah, that must be it. I have been rather remiss in sending payment. I do apologize.’ He continued to look at Gross as if trying to place him.
‘I assure you, Herr Schnitzler, that is not the case. This is my colleague, Doktor Gross. If we may come in, I can explain the purpose of our visit.’
‘Please,’ Schnitzler stood aside, sweeping his left hand towards the hallway. ‘I was just having coffee in the study. Perhaps you would like to join me?’
The walk from the Upper Belvedere to the Ninth District had done little to cut through the heavy meal they had enjoyed courtesy of Franz Ferdinand. ‘That would be good,’ Werthen said. As they entered the flat, the scent of hyacinths greeted them, from a bouquet in a crystal vase on a side table by the coat and hat rack.
‘I am honored to be host to the eminent criminologist,’ Schnitzler said, closing the door behind them.
‘And I,’ Gross said, turning to face him, ‘am equally pleased to finally make the acquaintance of the famous playwright.’
‘Hardly famous,’ Schnitzler said. ‘Outside Vienna, that is. But let me tell cook to bring more coffee. I was in my study, but we can . . .’
‘The study would be fine,’ Werthen said.
They followed Schnitzler as he quickly ducked into the kitchen to give instructions, and then led them past the sitting room where they had met previously and on to double doors deeper in the apartment. Schnitzler was moving well and seemed to have gotten over most of his injuries. Apparently he had also gotten over his fear of further attack, if the absence of Prokop and Meier signified.
They went into a large and rather dark room; heavy drapes partially concealed floor-to-ceiling windows, a massive Persian carpet covered much of the parquet, and a bear skin sat under a large desk in the center of the room, its teeth bared at Werthen. Two walls were littered with framed photographs of friends, theater bills, and lithographs of foreign capitals. Another wall was completely covered by a bookcase that held leather-bound volumes of German and French writers from Goethe to Balzac.
Before they had a chance to sit down, the door opened behind them and the cook, a shy little woman with the shadow of a moustache on her upper lip, brought in a porcelain coffee pot and matching cups. A ring-shaped Gugelhupf cake accompanied this. Gross patted his stomach as if readying it for battle.
‘Thank you, Martha,’ Schnitzler said as the cook set it down on the desk. ‘We’ll serve ourselves.’
‘Very good,’ she said in a raspy voice.
Gross and Werthen pulled straight-backed leather-seated chairs to the desk. Schnitzler had obviously been at work when they arrived; manuscript pages littered the desk.
‘A new play?’ Werthen asked.
‘A novel, actually. I’ve been attempting it for years. Perhaps I should just content myself with theater pieces and short stories. Olga . . . That is Fräulein Gussman, my fiancée, advises as much.’
Werthen noticed that Schnitzler now referred to Fräulein Gussman as his intended. She must be a powerful young woman, indeed.
‘I’m sure you must follow your own instincts in this, Herr Schnitzler,’ Gross said. ‘Only an artist knows an artist’s mind. Wouldn’t you agree?’
Gross was being rather fulsome, Werthen thought. Normally he berated bohemia for self-indulgence. Science was for him – besides the work of his beloved Brueghel the Elder, of course – the only true art. But in fact Gross was simply employing his own interviewing technique for witnesses who do not wish to speak the truth, as set down in his book Criminal Investigation: ‘You must take the witness entirely out of the circumstances and ask something which he does not anticipate.’
There was a time in Werthen’s life when that work was his bible.
‘I do agree, Herr Doktor Gross. It is good to see a man of practicalities such as yourself in tune with the artist’s psyche.’
Gross smiled blandly at this and accepted the cup of coffee Schnitzler poured for him as well as a not insignificant slice of the Gugelhupf. Werthen took the coffee but not the cake.
‘So, gentlemen, what may I do for you?’ Schnitzler said once they had taken initial sips.
Gross set his cup down. ‘You can tell us the truth about Fräulein Mitzi.’
This made Schnitzler sit up straight in his chair. ‘But I have. What more is there to tell? It is not a pretty picture I have painted of myself.’
‘But it is the picture Vienna knows you by,’ Gross said. ‘The roué who takes the virginity of the sweet young thing and then casts her aside when she falls in love with him. The subject of so many of your theater pieces.’
Schnitzler turned from Gross to Werthen. ‘Advokat, what is your colleague getting at? I have been honest with you. Painfully so.’
‘I think not, Herr Schnitzler,’ Werthen replied. ‘I think that perhaps you have been protecting your reputation as a debauchee and rake. We have reason to believe that Fräulein Mitzi was not quite the sweet young innocent you portray her as.’
‘What does it matter? The girl is dead.’
‘It matters in terms of a range of suspects,’ Gross answered. ‘And of motive. We need to know who stood to benefit from her death.’
‘I did not kill her.’
‘We are not accusing you, Herr Schnitzler,’ Gross said calmly. ‘But we must have the truth from you about the young woman.’
Schnitzler tapped his right forefinger on the desktop as if transmitting Morse code.
‘Alright,’ he said finally. ‘The truth. But this must not reach Olga’s ears.’
Neither Gross nor Werthen assured him of this. Another moment of silence ensued.
Schnitzler let out an exasperated sigh. Then began to tell them about Mitzi.
‘She brought nothing but trouble. A regular little vixen. We met in the park, as I told you. She appeared to be such a sweet young thing. And acted the part as well – until I got her in bed. It was obvious she had been with a man before. She told me it was her uncle who had done it, who had ruined her. And I felt sorry for her. But then she threatened to go to Olga, to tell her of our affair. She demanded I marry her. Her! A common little thing from the country. I finally had to buy her off. Not cheap, either, I can tell you. But anything to get her out of my life.’
‘Then she was not cast out on the streets penniless after leaving you?’ Werthen said.
‘On the contrary. She could well afford lodgings after depleting my savings. You know what she told me when she finally left? She laughed at me and said that she had chosen the name Mitzi—’
‘I thought you had given her that pet name,’ Werthen said.
Schnitzler shook his head. ‘That’s what I told you. To save face. In fact, she had studied me and learned that I had affairs with two women named Mitzi in the past. One of them my great love.’ He sighed again.
Werthen knew the story. The Mitzi he was talking about had had a child, stillborn, by Schnitzler, and then died from sepsis.
‘She used me. Played me for a fool. She was only ever in it for the money, I am sure.’
‘Then why go to the Bower?’ Gross asked.
‘Search me,’ Schnitzler said. ‘But there must have been money involved.’
‘And you discovered her there later?’ Werthen asked.
‘Yes. Just as I told you. That part was the truth. But I stayed away.’
‘Yet you told your friend Altenberg about this sweet young thing,’ Werthen pressed. ‘Weren’t you afraid she would do the same to him?’
‘No, no. Peter is, well . . . Peter does not get involved with women in the same way. Besides, she threatened to disclose our affair if I did not send her a nice steady regular. Peter fitted that description, and I assumed he would enjoy her schoolgirl act.’
‘So you see, Herr Schnitzler, how important it is we have a true picture of the victim,’ Gross said
.
‘I don’t understand . . .’
‘Motive,’ said Gross, in his prosecuting magistrate’s voice. ‘You’ve got heaps of motive. There must be others, as well.’
‘I swear that I did not—’ And then he stopped himself. ‘If anybody had motive it would be that uncle of hers.’
‘We have reason to believe that Father Hieronymus was also badly used by her.’
‘I see,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘That would make sense. In that case, I think I might have made an error. I should never have let those two go.’
‘Prokop and Meier, you mean?’
Schnitzler nodded at Werthen. ‘I assumed that after two weeks the danger had passed. But . . .’ He trailed off, looking towards the ceiling as if computing a maths problem. ‘If they had still been in my employ, the man would never have got in to see me. When you rang, I thought he’d come back.’
‘That who had come back?’ said Werthen.
‘The father. Mitzi’s father. The man was insane with grief. Cook let him in unsuspectingly. He came here accusing me of ruining his daughter. Seemed truly out of his mind.’
‘And what error did you make, Schnitzler?’ Werthen demanded. ‘What did you tell him?’ But he had already guessed the answer.
‘That he had the wrong man. It was the uncle he should be accosting, not me. The uncle who took her virginity.’
‘Jesus,’ Werthen said. ‘How long ago was this?’
Schnitzler shook his head. ‘An hour ago, maybe more. But at the time I thought that was the case. It was an honest mistake.’
‘Was he armed?’ Gross asked.
‘He was menacing. Crazy.’
‘We’ve got to get to the uncle,’ Werthen said.
As they quickly made their way to the door, Schnitzler called out to them, ‘An honest mistake.’
They were in luck; a fiaker drove by just as they came out of the apartment house. Werthen flagged it down, gave the driver the address, and promised a healthy tip if he could get them there as fast as possible. With Werthen’s usual fiaker driver, Bachmann, at the reins, it had taken forty-five minutes to reach the parish church of St Johann near the Meidlinger Haupstrasse. This cabbie accomplished the journey in thirty, with Werthen and Gross holding on to leather grips with tightly clenched fists and bobbing back and forth on the seat as the horse’s hooves sparked on the cobbles and the carriage rattled along.
The Keeper of Hands Page 21
