[VM01] The Empty Mirror

by J Sydney Jones

“You were at the door then when the empress departed,” Gross said.

  Planner nodded.

  “Did you witness Luccheni, the assailant, attack the empress?” Werthen asked, tired of remaining the silent “associate.”

  “No, sir, I can’t say I did,” Planner said, turning to the lawyer. “I was busy see, fetching a carriage for the Baron and Baroness Guity-Fallour. Regulars, they are. Always come in September for the opening of the opera season. And quite a fine opera it is, nothing on the par of Vienna’s Court Opera, of course-”

  “I am sure it is not,” Werthen interrupted, “but to the point. You were busy with other guests and did not see the blow. What did you see?”

  “It was Madame Mayer’s scream from above caught my attention. And then pandemonium out on the quay. I saw the empress on the ground and this bloke helping her up. I ran out to them.”

  “Did you get a good look at this man helping the empress?” Gross now put in. “Madame Mayer seems to think he was a coachman.”

  “Could have been. He was dressed common enough.”

  “You don’t know him then?”

  “Never saw him before nor since. Tall bloke. Tall and rangy. Had the empress up by the time I got there, seemed to be trying to clean her off. Only saw him from the back and side sort of before he left and let me and some other men plus the empress’s lady-in-waiting attend to her.”

  “Anything else you can remember about the man?” Werthen queried. “Anything at all?”

  “Well, one thing. Looking at the fellow from the side like I say, I thought I could see a nasty-looking scar. But I can’t be certain. It was panic, like I say. Could’ve just been a shadow.”

  At the mention of the scar, Werthen felt a shiver pass through his body. He held his counsel, however, until they had interviewed several others among the staff who saw the events.None of them, however, could recall the tall man who helped the empress.

  Gross questioned Madame Mayer once again as to why she thought the man was a coachman and was given the sensible response that she had noticed him climbing into the driver’s seat of a two-horse carriage parked nearby and speeding off after the empress was on her way to the steamer.

  Over lunch of fresh trout and a Rhine wine, Gross and Werthen discussed their findings.

  “We need to contact the Countess Sztaray, of course,” Gross said. “I believe she has left for her family estates in Lower Austria. Perhaps a telegram would be the wisest. We need to ascertain what she has to offer about this mysterious coachman.”

  “You believe this ‘coachman’ killed the empress, don’t you, Gross?”

  “Afraid so, Werthen. Under the guise of cleaning her off, he expertly stabbed her with the stiletto-sharp file. She was still in shock from the broken rib, which Luccheni had caused with his blow.”

  “Do you think Luccheni meant to kill her at all?”

  “Do you remember the words of Frau Geldner from Vienna, his onetime landlord? That he was incapable of killing anyone? I think that is the fact. All bluster and no skill. Perhaps he thought to throttle her, but was scared off when help came. The fact is, I believe that the unfortunate-yes, unfortunate-Signor Luccheni was made to look the guilty party, when in fact an expert and practiced assassin actually did the deed.”

  “In other words,” Werthen said, “Luccheni was somehow tricked into attacking the empress to provide a cover for the true killer. This was not an anarchist assassination at all. Is that what you are implying?”

  Gross shook his head vehemently. He had not yet tasted his poached trout.

  “No implications here, Werthen. That is exactly what I am saying happened. And this fits perfectly with the death of Frosch, which also was made to appear to be the work of some other hand, that of the Prater murderer.”

  “She was killed to maintain her silence,” Werthen muttered, feeling suddenly queasy. They were getting into very deep water here. “To keep the events at Mayerling a secret.”

  “Perhaps. But let us not get ahead of ourselves.” Gross picked up fork and knife and began boning his fish. “It is my opinion that this coachman simply came back to the scene later that night and tossed the file into a doorway along the route where Luccheni had run. It is the simplest thing in the world to plant such faux evidence.”

  “Gross. There is something I should tell you. The description of this coachman. If he indeed had a scar-”

  “Then he is surely the man that has been following us,” Gross finished, smiling at his friend.

  “Then you knew.”

  “I have been conscious of someone following our movements for some days now. I believe I saw him on the platform in Zurich,” Gross said. “Where, I imagine, judging from the light that fell upon the platform from your open curtain, you saw him, as well.”

  “But why did you say nothing?”

  “For the same reason you did not. I could not be sure. Perhaps it was my nerves getting the better of me. Perhaps it was simply my imagination. Now we know it is not. Now we know that we are battling a powerful enemy, dear Werthen. An expert killer who must also realize we are onto him. We must take care, Werthen. Our lives are surely in danger now.”

  SIXIEEN

  They were just in time for the one-o’clock steamer that stopped in nearby Pregny location of the Rothschild estate. They had come unannounced and thus found no little difficulty in talking their way through the gate and beyond the overly conscientious butler who answered the front door. That they were now armed did not help their cause.

  Gross had taken the precaution of bringing two Steyr automatic pistols. These weapons, invented by the Austrian Joseph Laumann only six years earlier, had been artifacts in Gross’s crime museum in Graz, but the criminologist had for sentimental reasons taken them with him when leaving for Czernowitz.

  Gross had appeared rather sheepish when presenting Werthen with one of the twin guns, but the feel of cold steel in his hand made Werthen, a crack shot, feel more comfortable. His father’s desperate attempts at assimilation-the riding, shooting, and fencing lessons young Werthen was forced to take ad nauseam-did have their benefits, it seemed. Though such efforts to wipe away the image of the intellectual Jew and replace it with the modern déclassé man of action had been far from successful, there were still atavistic holdovers of the regimen.Familiarity with pistol and sword being two of those. A knowledge of fine wines was another and more pleasing one.

  Any comfort the pistols might have afforded was, however, offset by their having to keep their heavy topcoats on to conceal the bulky weapons in their jacket pockets. Today, the afternoon heat of the day at Pregny made such a subterfuge all but intolerable.

  Finally, Werthen, speaking with the Rothschild butler, was able to dredge up the name of local aristocracy with whom his parents were acquainted. He stretched the point to say that the Baron and Baroness Grafstein had sent their personal regards to Baroness Julie de Rothschild.

  These names swayed the earnest butler, and he sent word to his mistress, who had been taking an afternoon rest. Julie de Rothschild appeared ten minutes later, a small and finely built woman with sparkling eyes and carefully coiffed brown hair. They met in a sitting room to which the butler had directed them, and Baroness de Rothschild set their two cards down on the side table next to the armchair she threw herself into.

  “So you are not anarchists, after all?” she said.

  “My good lady,” Werthen made to protest.

  “Michel, the butler, said you looked like anarchists. Why else wear such heavy coats on a warm day? Are you carrying bombs?”

  Her wry smile implied she did not for a moment suspect them, but Gross grew suddenly huffy.

  “I can assure you, Baroness, we are here on the most vital business.”

  “Then the Grafsteins … that was simply a ruse.”

  Werthen began to apologize, but she waved it away. “Never mind. Life does get boring here. I am ready for an adventure today. What brings you gentlemen to Pregny? And please, do take of
f those ridiculous coats. Armed or not, it is all the same to me.”

  They did as they were bid, and her eyes went immediately to their bulging jacket pockets, but she said nothing.

  “It is about the empress,” Gross said.

  “I thought as much. You wish to know her business here the day before she was killed.”

  Werthen appreciated the lady’s directness, though he could still feel the heat in his cheeks at having been caught in his lie about the Grafsteins.

  “Exactly,” Gross said.

  “The empress came, as you have, under the guise of mutual friendship. My husband, Baron Adolphe, once a banker in Naples, gave up that life for the refinements of Paris, where I met him. We had the occasion later to know the deposed king and queen of Naples when they lived in exile in that fair city. My husband was able to, shall we say, aid the king out of potential financial difficulties resulting from his lost kingdom. The queen of Naples, is, as I am sure you know, the sister of Empress Elisabeth, who called as a courtesy to her sister, ostensibly to personally thank us for this earlier assistance. However, she, like you gentlemen, had another motive to her visit.”

  “Which was?” Gross asked.

  “To seek my husband’s assistance in the publication of her majesty’s memoirs. Adolphe has among his many other holdings a large publishing firm in Berlin. The empress wanted to ensure that her memoirs would not be censored. They were, to use her words, ‘potentially inflammatory.’ My husband of course said he would do everything in his power. Elisabeth apparently had not begun the writing, but was most emphatic that there should be no censorship whatsoever.”

  “She gave no indication of the nature of the inflammatory bits, I presume?” Werthen queried.

  “No, Advokat Werthen. She was quite mysterious about that, I must admit. The notion did intrigue my husband. She was very nervous, almost disturbed. A condition not helped, I dare say, by her discovery upon signing our guest book. Thumbing through the leaves, she found the name of her unfortunate son, a visitor a full decade earlier when we had first settled in Pregny. She almost broke into tears seeing his signature.”

  “And Crown Prince Rudolf. Do you recall the purpose of his visit?”

  She smiled. “Neither I nor my husband were in residence at the time. A royal request came to ‘borrow’ our secluded château for a few days. One does not refuse such requests.”

  “You do know, though, don’t you?” Gross persisted.

  She sighed. “It was no great secret that the marriage between Rudolf and the Princess Stephanie was far from happy. Rudolf had his assignations. I believe he was meeting a fond friend here, one of the illegitimate daughters of the Russian Czar, to be blunt. The unfortunate girl has since taken herself off to America of all places, where she in turn gave birth to another illegitimate child. Or so the gossips have it.”

  “Well,” Gross said, standing suddenly and preparing to leave.

  “We must thank you for your frankness, Baroness,” Werthen said, rising now as well and trying to cover up Gross’s rudeness.

  “I was happy to help. You know I am no gossip myself. I have not told another soul about Rudolf’s visit here. But in the aid of justice, it is of course my duty.”

  She seemed to glow all over, Werthen noticed. The Baroness Julie de Rothschild was enjoying her little adventure.

  They now had their motive for Elisabeth’s death. Like Frosch before her, she was threatening to make public certain events that someone did not want known.

  Werthen and Gross were careful to watch for the tall, gaunt man on their trip back to Geneva. However, they saw no sign of him.

  Before dinner, and while Gross was taking a brief rest-they would be catching the night train later that evening-Werthen decided to do some quick shopping. He could hardly return empty-handed to his fiancée. According to the deskman, some of the best shopping streets were nearby, in the rue Bonivard and rue Kleberg.

  Werthen left the hotel, walked along the Quai du Mont-Blanc and past the Brunswick monument. This was exactly the route the empress had taken on the fateful day of her assassination, he remembered. He then turned right on the rue des Alpes, the street down which Luccheni had fled after striking the empress. Would they ever know the truth about that tragedy? Werthen wondered.

  Rue Bonivard was the first street on the left, and inspecting the shops, he came upon Baker’s music shop. He recalled that the empress had shopped there the morning before her death. On sudden impulse, and wishing to leave no stone left unturned in their Geneva investigation, Werthen entered the shop and spoke with a young salesclerk dressed in a claret-colored velveteen suit and sporting a Vandyke beard. Werthen’s French served him well enough as he asked the clerk if anyone was in the store who remembered the empress’s final purchases.

  “I attended the empress,” the young man said in a voice drenched in self-importance. “You have a personal interest in the matter, monsieur?”

  Werthen handed him his business card, and explained as best he could that he was working with the famous Austrian criminologist Professor Dr. Hanns Gross in illuminating various aspects of the assassination.

  Gross’s name meant nothing to the salesclerk, who now gazed at Werthen with some distrust. Werthen then mentioned that they were assisting Monsieur Auberty, and the clerk suddenly brightened.

  “Ah, the esteemed investigating magistrate. There should be no difficulties in this matter. Dozens saw the anarchist chap kill the poor woman.”

  “Yes,” Werthen agreed. “Myself and my associate are, however, attempting to put the crime in context, to give a dramatic picture of the empress’s last day. I understand that she purchased one of these new pianos that play themselves.”

  The clerk smiled at this description. “Yes, the empress was most impressed with this model of the orchestrion, more popularly known as a player piano.”

  He led Werthen to a standard-looking upright piano. The brand name Pianola showed over the keyboard.

  “One may play the piano as one does a normal instrument.” The clerk sat at the bench, cracked his knuckles, and struck the ivory keys a fierce blow that launched him into the Beethoven Piano Concerto in B-fiat major. The small, elegantly appointed shop reverberated with the strong music. As Werthen began to lose himself in the music, the clerk stopped abruptly midphrase.

  “Or,” he said, standing now and taking a paper scroll with punched holes and inserting it in a mechanism under the top hood of the piano, “one may let the instrument, in a sense, play itself.” He sat on the bench again, pushing the pedals, which in turn operated a vacuum motor that turned the scroll. Suddenly the keys to the piano depressed themselves and struck against the internal strings, playing the same Beethoven piece.

  The clerk beamed at the machine. “It works on the same principle as the Jacquard looms controlled by a punch card. The perforated paper roll passes over a cylinder containing apertures connected to tubes that are in turn connected to the piano action. When a hole in the paper passes over an aperture, a current of air passes through a tube and causes the corresponding hammer to strike the string. You will note that there is little emotion in this rendering, as a technician simply perforates the paper after it was marked up in pencil using the original music score. I believe soon, however, pianists will be able to use a recording piano that marks the paper as it is played. This will allow for nuance and individual expression in tempo and phrasing. Imagine, we shall be able to preserve the keyboard technique of say, Anton Rubinstein. People a hundred years from now will be able to marvel at the Russian’s playing as we were until his death several years ago.”

  This was all very well, but Werthen had not come into the shop for a musical or mechanical lesson.

  “The empress bought this particular model?”

  “The very one. It was shipped the week following her assassination. We sought to honor her final request despite the tragedy.”

  “And I assume she bought music for the piano, as well?”

&nbs
p; “Yes,” the clerk said tentatively.

  Werthen noted the hesitation. “What scrolls did she buy?”

  “Scroll,” the clerk corrected. “Just one piece of music, the choice of which I thought rather odd, as a matter of fact. We have a wide selection of composers, from Beethoven to Strauss. The empress, however, chose a single work. By Wagner.” Again the hesitation.

  “If you please, what was the piece?” Werthen insisted.

  “A piano adaptation of the final scene of Tristan and Isolde,” the clerk finally answered.

  “You mean the ‘Liebestod’?” Werthen said. “Love-death.”

  “A wonderful bit of musical creation,” the clerk enthused. “Magnificent in its representation of struggle and resolution.”

  “‘How gently and quietly he smiles, how fondly he opens his eyes! Do you see, friends? Do you not see?’” Werthen spoke the words that Isolde sings as the knight Tristan, mortally wounded, lies dying in her arms. “A rather odd choice as a gift for one’s husband.” The words were uttered before he could stop them.

  “It was not my place to judge the appropriateness of such music, monsieur. She was the empress, after all.”

  Werthen ended up buying Berthe a gold bracelet from Vigot’s, a fashionable jewelry shop in the rue Kleberg. He had it inscribed on the inside with the message AS PURE AS GOLD IS MY LOVE FOR YOU. KARL.

  The very message that the boulevard dandy Count Joachim von Hildesheim has inscribed in the bracelet he gives to the chanteuse Mirabel in Werthen’s short story “After the Ball.” He doubted, however, that Berthe would notice. Werthen’s short stories were, after all, hardly bestsellers.

  Gross and he had dinner together before leaving the hotel. The criminologist was interested in Werthen’s sleuthing discovery:

  “You are correct, Werthen. ‘Liebestod’ is an extremely odd bit of music to choose. It is as if she was sending the emperor a message.”

  But they put aside further discussion to fully enjoy the food fit for royalty that the Beau-Rivage chef, Fernand, had assembled that evening. They began with a half dozen oysters, followed by pâté de foie gras de Strasbourg. Next came jambon du Parma au melon and a salad of smoked highland salmon and hothouse greens. Then came a consommé of veal, succeeded by an exquisite chicken-liver mousse with port. Fresh apples and a triple-cream Camembert concluded the feast. The food was accompanied by a bottle of fine Rhine wine, an 1880 Beaune, and pear liquor with the fruit and cheese.