[VM01] The Empty Mirror

by J Sydney Jones

  Werthen put such thoughts aside as he followed Gross wordlessly round to the side stage entrance. Here the criminologist presented his letter from the Police Presidium to a skeptical doorman who’d seen every trick in the book employed to get in the stage door to secure autographs from one of the stars.

  “Herr Girardi, if you please,” Gross said to the man. “Official business.”

  It didn’t help that their business was with the star of the day. The doorman, muttonchopped and flatulent, annoyed that his afternoon wurst break had been interrupted, squinted hard at the card.

  “Be quick about it, man,” Gross said impatiently, employing his hectoring, prosecutorial tone. “If you don’t believe me, you can ring up the Police Presidium. I suppose you do have a telephone here?”

  The doorman grunted something unintelligible in their direction, then waved his hand down the hall to the left, obviously indicating the direction of Girardi’s dressing room.

  The newspapers, Werthen knew, claimed that Girardi was, next to the emperor himself, perhaps the most famous person in all of Vienna at the moment. However, if you personally asked the man or woman in the street whose autograph they would rather have, you might well find nobility coming in a distant second to the stage. A master of dialect, a fine comedian and actor both in drama and operetta, Girardi was something of a phenomenon. His way of dress had infected the city and even saved him from incarceration in a lunatic asylum. Gossip had it that he and his former wife, a volatile actress, had a fearsome marriage, locked in mutual hatred. She had tried to get rid of him by having a doctor, sight unseen, pronounce her husband insane. When the attendants had come to take him to the asylum, they had mistaken a fan lurking outside the actor’s house for Girardi himself, for the man was dressed exactly like the actor, right down to the signature straw boater. Known as a folk actor for his roles in popular drama and comedy, Girardi was making his debut at the fustier Burg in a Raimund production. This was a special royal presentation for the emperor, family, noble friends, and visiting Prince of Wales from England, as the Burgtheater and other theaters and concert halls of the city were normally closed from July to September.

  Girardi had, like a star in the firmament, his own field of gravity. Even Gross, in Graz, had, apparently, heard of “Der Girardi.”

  Gross rapped on the star’s door.

  A voice from inside called out in French, “Entrée.”

  Gross swung the door open wide revealing what appeared at first sight to be the interior of a glasshouse. Flowers were everywhere, roses popping out of vases, violets and lilies worked into celebratory wreaths, bunches of carnations of every hue, and potted plants as well-elephant ears, ferns, and palms in brass tubs. The perfume of the various flowers hit them like an olfactory hammer and held them in the doorway momentarily.

  “Yes? What is it?” The large voice came from an exceedingly small man-smaller even than Meindl-all but hidden by purple chrysanthemums in a faux Ming vase set upon a dressing table. The man gazed at them in the reflection of his mirror. His face was as white as that of the corpse in the morgue. However, in Girardi’s case the whiteness was achieved by artificial means.

  Werthen now understood the reason for part of Girardi’s fame: not even gone two o’clock and the man was already getting into makeup. It seemed his whole life must revolve around the theater.

  Gross quickly introduced himself, referring to Werthen only as “my colleague.”

  Girardi stood, muttering, “Enchanté,” and looked awfully silly in his opera pumps. He eyed them with a cunning sort of suspicion; an actor assuming the role of discerning speculation. “How may I help you gentlemen?”

  “Sorry to trouble you, Herr Girardi. It’s the Landtauer matter. Fräulein Elisabeth Landtauer,” Gross said.

  Girardi changed roles-now he was the shrewd bon vivant.

  “Liesel? Dear girl, I know her well. You could say that I have known her, in fact.” His impeccable Burgtheater German suddenly became infected with the twang of Viennese dialect. Girardi’s timing was perfect: a raffish grin came right on cue.

  “Are you gentlemen acquainted with her?”

  Werthen and Gross exchanged momentary looks.

  “Then you don’t know,” Gross began. “You haven’t seen the papers?”

  Girardi slowly began to lose his stage roles; a human expression briefly peeked through his masks.

  “I do not follow the news before a performance. It unsettles one. What’s this about?”

  “It is my sad duty to tell you that Fräulein Landtauer is dead…. Murdered,” Gross added.

  For an instant Girardi thought it was a joke in poor taste. He was about to protest the badness of taste, but then saw the pained look in Werthen’s eye.

  Girardi’s hand groped blindly in back of him for the chair at his dressing table, and finding it, he slumped down onto it.

  “How?” he muttered barely audibly.

  “Someone broke her neck,” Gross said, a consoling hand on Girardi’s shoulder. “It was instantaneous. She felt no pain.”

  As silence reigned in the dressing room, the sounds from outside became louder than ever: shouted commands, last-minute hammering on sets, a contralto singing somewhere in the auditorium for God knew what purpose.

  “It can’t be,” Girardi finally said. “There must be some mistake.”

  Gross shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Herr Girardi. She has been identified.”

  Girardi looked straight ahead. “When?” Then he looked up at Gross. “What time did this happen?”

  “Sometime between midnight and three the night before last. The medical examiner could not be too certain.”

  Girardi was holding his head in his hands and cupped his eyes. He made a sudden jerk, as if pulling a marionette’s string on his own body, straightened in his chair, and clenched his jaw.

  “Why have you come to see me about this? How could you even know we were … friends?”

  Gross produced the packet of letters. “The young woman saved your letters, you see. The most recent indicates that you were together the night in question.”

  “Correction,” Girardi said, rising once again, a tiny puffed-up rooster ready for a fight. He put his hand out for the letters and Gross obliged him, handing them over.

  “She wanted to be together Tuesday night,” Girardi continued, slipping the packet into a drawer in his makeup table. “But I sent the girl packing after a light dinner at Sacher’s. You may not know it, but I have a premier tonight. Liesel thought it unimportant enough, to be sure. But a man of my age needs sleep more than dalliance for several days before such a performance.”

  “What time would that be, sir?” Gross said.

  Girardi shook his head at the criminologist, not understanding.

  “That you sent the girl packing, that is?”

  The actor puffed out his lips in contemplation. “No later than eleven. Perhaps quarter past. Ask the waiters at Sacher’s. They saw us depart. She on foot, I’m afraid. A trifle miffed at me-refused the fiaker I called for her. Just set off into the night like-”

  “Yes, sir? Like what?” Gross said.

  “Inconsiderate thing to say under the circumstance, but just like a tart. A woman of the night. There are always quite a few of them prowling the streets of an evening.”

  “And you then went home?” Gross said, reaching for the notepad in his pocket.

  “Yes. My valet can vouch for that, if you’re wondering. Though I must admit I do not much care to be interrogated like this just prior to a performance.”

  Werthen could see that the shock was wearing off now. Girardi looked at them both with suspicion.

  “And who are you chaps, after all? Not the police, obviously. Are you reporters? I’ll have you thrown out.” His hand moved to a pull cord next to the dressing table.

  “We are trying to establish the unfortunate victim’s movements two nights ago,” Gross said, stopping the actor with his stentorian tone. “No, we are not
reporters. I am Dr. Hanns Gross, formerly of Graz.”

  This brought not a speck of recognition from Girardi.

  “The slightest thing can help in such cases,” Werthen quickly chimed in, trying to smooth things again.

  Girardi sighed. “Well, talk to that painter chap of hers, then. She was supposed to see him in his studio that night, but came to supper with me instead. See him and find out what he was doing Tuesday night. A broken neck, you say. Well, that man’s built like a brick privy.”

  “This won’t do,” Gross kept saying as they plodded off along the Ring, the sun bright overhead.

  “Intolerable,” Gross spluttered again. There was impatience in his voice: desiring commiseration and not getting it.

  “What is it now?” Werthen finally asked.

  “That jumped-up blacksmith. Mistaking me for some damnable reporter in a celluloid collar. He is from Graz himself and does not even know I am one of the foremost names in criminalistics. That I have written textbooks, founded ajournai, advised monarchs and constabularies alike.”

  “Nerves,” Werthen said. “His premier tonight.”

  This comment, however, did nothing to mollify Gross.

  “Telling me my job, ‘Go find the painter chap,’ he says. Acting high-and-mighty”

  “He seemed genuinely surprised to find the Landtauer girl was dead.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “But why did you give those letters back to him?”

  “I doubt I would repeat the kindness,” Gross said, then shrugged. “What do they prove, after all, other than that Girardi is a plagiarist? Tender cooings of love, all expropriated from Shakespeare’s sonnets or Lessing’s romantic verse. But the Landtauer girl would surely not have known that; lucky if she read the tabloids or the penny dreadfuls.”

  “They are proof of a liaison,” Werthen argued. “Perhaps she was leaving Girardi for Klimt and not the other way round?”

  “We would hardly need the letters as proof of their affair. I am sure Herr Girardi would be only too happy for the world to know of that. Such conquests feed the ego. And the Sacher is certainly a public enough rendezvous. We can check his alibi in due course, but I am sure Girardi’s story is true. He simply sent the girl packing.

  “To her death,” Werthen added.

  Gross made no reply, but strode along more quickly in the direction of Schottenring.

  “So where does this leave us?” Werthen asked, following.

  Gross replied over his shoulder, “With just enough time to see a certain nerve doctor before sitting down to a hearty dinner, I should think.”

  In the event, Doktor Sigmund Freud was not at home. His practice was closed for the month of August, a sign announced. He could, in an emergency, be reached at the Pension zum See, Altaussee, Salzkammergut. The sign was dated August 10; Sigmund Freud had therefore not been in Vienna the night of Liesel Landtauer’s death.

  “Well, I’d say we’ve earned ourselves a drink before dinner this busy day,” Gross said as they stood examining the sign outside Berggasse 19. “Pity, though. I was looking forward to discussing my work with the man. Heard he is developing some new therapy for nerve patients. A talking cure, he calls it.”

  “That so?” Werthen, who had himself lain on Freud’s couch, said nothing. If Gross could have his secrets, then so could he.

  FIVE

  They were meeting him at the Café Landtmann near the Burgtheater; the choice of the venue was their guest’s. Werthen was still objecting as he and Gross sat at the small marble-topped table to await the arrival of Theodor Herzl, onetime dandy, feuilletonist, and playwright, and more recently founder of Zionism and author of The Jewish State.

  “Meindl himself said that the Jewish angle was not worth investigating,” Werthen reminded the criminologist.

  “Since when did you take traveling orders from Meindl? I believe you once accused him of having a second-rate mind.”

  Gross’s elephantine memory could at times be annoying, Werthen thought. Especially when it dredged up uncomfortable truths.

  The more Gross became obsessed with the possibility of a Jewish ritual crime, the more Werthen’s latent Jewishness came to the fore. He thought it had been well buried by education, money, and conversion to Christianity, but suddenly it reared up in him like an unbidden dragon. He bristled at the suggestion of Jewish bloodletting; it had in fact been the Jews who had suffered, who had lost their blood at the hands of the Christians of Europe for centuries.

  Gross had called in a favor from another former student, now an editor of the Neue Freie Presse, where Herzl had, until recently, been an editor and essayist. This former student managed to talk Herzl into a brief meeting in the midst of his hectic work life. Scheduling an interview with Herzl to discuss ritual killings or to look for leads to radical Jews capable of such deeds seemed the basest act of demagoguery on Gross’s part. Werthen had not credited him with such behavior.

  Yet Werthen was going to attend the interview, for his curiosity had gotten the better of him. Herzl’s was one of those names that drew public attention in Vienna of late. It was only days away from the Second Zionist Congress, to be held in Basel, and Herzl had assembled Jewish notables from around the world to help plan the new Jewish state, either in Palestine or Argentina. Werthen wanted to know what drove such a man; how he could go from assimilated Austrian to the spokesman for the Jewish state almost overnight?

  He recognized Herzl at once as he came through the double doors of the café. He was not a large man, but his long, thick beard was imposing. It gave him the air of a biblical patriarch. Herzl conferred with the headwaiter, Herr Otto, for a moment and was directed to their table. Gross and Werthen both stood to greet the man.

  “Good of you to come on such short notice,” Gross said, extending his hand to Herzl. “I know you are a busy man, what with the Zionist Congress and your own writing.” He motioned Herzl to the bentwood Thonet chair set aside for him.

  Introductions were made, and when Herzl made the usual polite response, “Es freut mich,” Werthen was almost shocked by the dissimilarity of his appearance and voice. The imposing patriarch, impeccably dressed in a dove-gray suit which looked to have been tailored by the noble firm of Knize on the Graben, was suddenly diminished by a voice only a few registers below a castrato’s.

  Gross did not seem to notice, but charged on with a quick discussion of the murders they were investigating. Herzl allowed that he had read of some of them in the papers.

  “I have not, however, followed the matter closely, as I have been rather pressed for time of late.”

  High or not, the voice had resonance and force. He spoke slowly, as if each word held special import, or as if he may once have stuttered and was working through his block with each utterance. The overall effect was rather hypnotic for Werthen; it made one hang on each word.

  “Indeed, I am not sure how I can help you in your inquiries, gentlemen,” Herzl said.

  Werthen glared at Gross, whose eyes were fixed on Herzl. “It is a matter of a possible Jewish connection,” Gross began. Then he described more exactly the wounds inflicted on the victims and the draining of their blood.

  “I see,” Herzl said. “Jewish ritual killings, is that it?”

  “Exactly.” Gross always enjoyed being in the company of men or women who demonstrated intuitive and intellectual abilities, for whom he did not need to spell out each word.

  “Or the appearance of such,” Werthen quickly added.

  “My esteemed colleague makes an important point. Or the appearance of such. Tell me, Herr Herzl, do you know of anyone specifically-”

  Here it comes, Werthen thought. He was about to interrupt, when Gross surprised him.

  “-who has a grudge against you? Anyone or any group that might want to discredit Zionism or the Jewish people by such a charade of bestial crimes? Anyone who may have made a threat, verbal or written, to you or your organization of late?”

  Werthen felt his scowl being replaced b
y an admiring glance at Gross. The criminologist smiled benignly, awaiting an answer from Herzl.

  Herzl chuckled beneath his breath. “Where should I begin, Doktor Gross? How long a list do you want?”

  “A man in your position surely comes to have a sixth sense in these matters. I assume you can discern the merely ignorant from the seriously malevolent.”

  Herzl nodded. “It is, unfortunately, a skill I have learned to hone. I will have my secretary prepare a list of those we have already noted as serious risks. Where may I send it?”

  Gross gave him his room number at the Bristol.

  As he was preparing to leave, Herzl said, “Have either of you gentlemen read my Jewish State?’

  “I haven’t had the opportunity,” Werthen replied. “But I shall, I shall…. Tell me, Herr Herzl, how is it you came back to Judaism?”

  “You are Jewish in background, Advokat Werthen?”

  “I am, yes.” Werthen found a sudden pride in this admission.

  “Then you know as well as I the subterfuges one makes regarding his origins. The desperate attempts to fit in gentile society, to deny any influence that heritage might have on one. You are perhaps aware of my early career as a playwright and ambitious young dilettante. But when I covered the Dreyfus trial in Paris for the Neue Freie Presse, I came to realize that no matter how hard we try, we will always be outsiders in European society. Now I look upon my early life as something of a waste. I was mere refuse waiting to be transformed into something useful.”

  Herzl sat in silence for a moment, as if he had said too much.