[VM01] The Empty Mirror

by J Sydney Jones

  Finally Klimt asked him, “What is bothering you, Werthen? We are friends, after all. I hope you believe that. You came to my aid when I desperately needed someone to believe me. Now tell me.”

  Werthen looked into the smoky brown depths of the rum.

  “It’s the bill, isn’t it? I’ve been meaning to call on you and explain that. Several portrait fees are long past overdue, and until they arrive, I am rather strapped for funds. That’s the problem with working for people with a ‘von’ attached to their names. One can hardly send a bill collector to their door. But as soon as I am paid, I shall send along my remittance.”

  “It’s not that, Klimt,” Werthen finally said, rather touched by the painter’s explanation. Werthen took another sip of the rum and felt the warmth course through him. He and Gross had been going it alone for too long; he suddenly felt the need for an objective ear, if only to confirm that their theories were not fantastical.Thus, he decided to take the painter into his confidence, laying out the course of events since they had last seen one another the day of Empress Elisabeth’s funeral.

  Werthen left nothing out, not even his spat with Berthe, and when he finished, Klimt sat very still, saying nothing. The cat had come in now through an open window and was weaving itself in and out of the painter’s legs. Klimt absently broke off a piece of pastry and gave it to the animal, who sniffed at it for a moment, then moved off to a far corner of the studio.

  “My God, man,” Klimt suddenly exploded. “You could’ve been killed. What are you doing playing at policeman? Leave painting to the painters. Leave catching criminals to the cops.”

  “But what if the police are prevented from doing their work? What then?”

  “You actually suspect the archduke?”

  “It is one avenue of inquiry.”

  This was followed by another extended silence. There came a crunching sound from the corner to which the cat had retired.

  “One thing is for sure,” Klimt finally said. “You two need help.”

  “Leave painting to the painters, Klimt. You said so yourself.”

  “But that is exactly what I intend to do. My father was a master engraver, and I grew up working with him. As a result, there is nothing I do not know about the imprint of signatures and the delicate individual characteristics of the hand at work sketching or writing. You do not know how many times I had to forge my own father’s signature on those engravings.”

  When they arrived at the fiat, Gross was still hard at work on a close examination of the writings of Herr Binder.

  “See who I ran into, Gross,” Werthen announced upon entering the study.

  Gross looked up from his microscope with a scowl on his face. He barely muttered a salutation to the painter.

  “Don’t be such a gruff bear, Gross. Klimt has come to help.”

  “With what?” Gross said, gazing once again into the lens.

  “With Binder’s handwriting analysis, of course.”

  This time when Gross looked up from the instrument, anger rather than mere peevishness showed in his face.

  “What have you been discussing, Werthen?”

  “It’s all right, Professor,” Klimt interrupted. “Werthen here’s told me all about your adventures in Switzerland. No need to worry, I won’t be spreading news of it all over Vienna. And it’s time you fellows got some help in your endeavors. It’s the least I can do to repay your earlier kindness to me.”

  Klimt quickly explained his unique training in engraving to the criminologist, who slowly lost his anger. Instead, he seemed almost amused.

  “And so you believe that you can tell me about this writing?” Gross said. “Granted, Ames on Forgery lists the occupation of engraver as one of those which could provide insight to handwriting identification, but I have yet to see it of any worth.”

  The criminologist stood upright now, putting his palms in the small of his back and stretching. “However, this could be a mild diversion. My mind needs one. A sort of competition. I must warn you, though, Klimt. I have made a close study of graphology and handwriting.”

  “I’m sure you have, Professor. Now, if I could take a look at the documents.”

  Gross handed him both the order book and the suicide note. He no longer bothered with the vellum envelope for the note, for he had examined it minutely for fingerprints and found a bewildering jumble, far too many for identification purposes. One day, the criminologist continually complained, the police would awaken to the value of fingerprinting and handle evidence with care.

  Klimt took the two samples, the book in his left hand, and the note in his right. He squinted at them for a time, then set them down and pulled out a pair of reading glasses from the frock coat he now wore. Werthen assumed the more ostentatious and breezier caftan had been put in mothballs for the colder months. Fixing the wire arms of the glasses around his ears, Klimt picked up the two samples once again, working his lips as if reading aloud. He flipped through the pages of the order book, examining each against the note. He sniffed once, sucked his teeth, then handed the two samples back to Gross.

  “Simple enough, I should say.”

  “Oh, should you?” Gross said with heavy irony. “Do tell.”

  “Well, first off, the suicide note’s a clear forgery.”

  Gross’s sense of levity was exchanged for interest.

  “How so?” Werthen asked.

  “Several things,” Klimt said, addressing them both. “Not that it isn’t a good job of penmanship. Obviously, the forger knows his business and had a sense for Herr Binder’s eccentricities. You can see he has the letter ‘e’ down. Binder writes it in the Greek fashion, like an epsilon. And the curious spelling of ‘scalpel.’ Binder inverts the final ‘1’ and ‘e.’ You can see it all throughout the order book and also in the suicide note. Our man’s done his homework, all right.”

  “So you discern a male hand at work in the suicide note?” Gross said excitedly.

  “Oh, most definitely, Professor. No way to disguise that, is there?”

  Gross shook his head in agreement, looking now with a newfound respect for Klimt.

  “But if it is so accurate in the details,” Werthen said, “how can you know it is a forgery?”

  “Because of the likeness. The writing in the order book and that on the suicide note are far too similar,” Klimt answered. “The upward slant of the line, the clear penmanship, the careful spacing between letters. I ask you,” he turned to Werthen, “if you were writing your farewell letter, about to put a revolver in your mouth and blow your brains out, would your hand be as steady as when leisurely filling out an order for three dozen scalpels?”

  Werthen did not bother with an answer. “You mean the absence of signs of nervousness in the suicide note make it a forgery.”

  Klimt shrugged. “That about sums it up. Your conclusion, too, Professor?”

  “Bravo, Klimt,” Gross said, clapping his hands noiselessly. “Exactly my conclusions. I, too, noticed the absence of a sense of urgency in the suicide note. Observe that it was written with a steel-nib pen, a number two, I should think. When writing with such a pen and dipping it into the inkpot at intervals, a certain number of words can be written before the line becomes too light and illegible. I compared both texts for such a detail and discovered that, while the order book displays a regular variation between blacker letters and paler ones, denoting the spot where the writer had to dip the pen again, no such breaks occur in the suicide note. All the letters are of a uniform darkness; pale letters are in fact missing altogether. Which tells me that the note was not written out spontaneously, but rather copied meticulously to disguise the writing. The writer was constantly dipping his pen to create the perfect lettering, not waiting for the line to begin to pale before doing so. Ergo, this is a forgery, a well-constructed copy of Binder’s hand.”

  Werthen looked now at both samples and could see for himself what Gross was talking about; it was so obvious once explained.

  “Moreover,” G
ross continued, “I have made one further discovery while examining Herr Binder’s order and schedule book. He could not possibly have killed Fräulein Landtauer, for he had an alibi for that evening after all.”

  “But the doctor in Klagenfurt-,” Werthen began.

  “Not in Klagenfurt, but in Graz,” Gross said. “Binder’s mind must have begun to play tricks on him, the effects of syphilis. He in fact noted his visit to Graz, but in the wrong month. I only caught it as he wrote the date ‘16-8-98’ next to the doctor’s name, though it was in the July section of the schedule. He must have taken the train from Klagenfurt to Graz on the Tuesday, for he was conferring with a doctor there at the end of the evening surgery. It turns out I am personally acquainted with the chap, a capital surgeon, one Doktor Bernhard Engels. I went to the local exchange and confirmed by telephone the fact that Binder was, indeed, in our old hometown the very night of the Landtauer girl’s murder. He had to wait until the doctor’s evening surgery was finished before presenting his wares. Engels says that Herr Binder was at his office until at least nine in the evening. Consulting the k. und k. Railway Timetable you keep in your desk, I discovered that the last train for Vienna departs from Graz at eight thirty in the evening; the first in the morning leaves at six thirty and does not arrive until long after the police had already discovered the body of Fräulein Landtauer. Thus, Binder was indeed innocent of her murder. Which, in turn, means he was innocent of them all.”

  Though they had speculated such, this proof came as a shock to Werthen. Suddenly they were no longer working with hypothesis. Binder’s innocence set all their other assumptions into place now. Werthen felt a chill go over his body and shivered.

  “Looks like you fellows are onto something big,” Klimt said.

  “Now we are left with the question of why Binder,” Gross said, moving to the window and looking out at the afternoon street. The light had already changed to the golden soft rays of fall.

  “Scalpels?” Werthen offered. “They were involved in the murders, and he could thus have a logical linking to the crimes.”

  Gross nodded. “That is, if the person responsible for all these outrages was trying to direct us toward Binder. And I believe he was. Binder was chosen early on as the sacrificial lamb for these crimes. There is also the matter of the noses.”

  Klimt jumped in now. “Now that Binder is not your man, the whole affair of syphilitic rage at those without the disease no longer washes.”

  “Exactly,” Gross said. “Yet those mutilations were a signature. We examined the idea of anti-Semitism and decided that was a false lead. What other symbols concern the nose?”

  “Conceit,” Werthen said. “Being hochnäsig, or having one’s nose in the air.”

  “Nosy,” Klimt quickly added. “Sticking your nose in other people’s business.”

  Gross closed his eyes in contemplation. He heard the offerings but made no immediate response. “Something to do with Frosch, for he was the real victim,” he said absently. “It is teasing me, this connection. Infuriating.”

  “Something to do with smell,” Klimt said, thrashing about now for connections.

  Suddenly Gross slapped his hand on the windowsill. “That’s it!”

  “A smell?” Werthen said.

  Gross looked at him in bewilderment. “Of course not. No, it has to do with American Indian lore. The Sioux of the Plains tribes, if I am not mistaken, cut off the noses of squaws unfaithful to their husbands. And Frosch-”

  “Was about to be unfaithful and reveal the truth about the death of Crown Prince Rudolf,” Werthen finished for him.

  “Who would do such a thing?” Klimt said in disgust.

  “Someone for whom symbols are terribly important,” Gross answered. “For whom loyalty is a be-all and end-all. And someone with enough power to strike at the very heart of the empire, brazen enough to assassinate a crown prince and the empress.”

  Gross turned his back to them once again, gazing out the window. “Also, someone who thinks he is very clever. We shall see about that.”

  He could see the criminologist standing in the window of the flat across the street. If he had a riñe with him, the man would be dead.

  He was still fuming about the catastrophe in Geneva. “Make it look like an accident,” he had been ordered. That was a mistake; instead of killing the lawyer and the professor outright, he had to try to arrange a traffic accident and ended up wasting the lives of a perfectly good pair of horses.

  All the mystery and false leads. All the drama with mutilation of the Prater victims. He had done his best to create eine schöne Leiche, or a beautiful corpse, with each of those, but why all the extra trouble? He’d had to arrange an underground surgery to accommodate that tall order; outfitting a Keller in the Third District with surgical instruments and vats for siphoning off the blood, which he subsequently leached into the nearby sewer channel. He had used maps of the sewers and catacombs supplied to him by his controller to become an expert at navigating the underground world of Vienna and was careful to avoid any of the squatter cities established underground by the homeless. Such a lot of bother for death. The only satisfying part of all of those had been the initial contact, the odor of fear as he took them from the back, his hands in a viselike grip on their head and a quick twist to break their neck. The satisfying sound of it.

  He was never given anything but orders: no explanations, no reasons. Of course he was a soldier; orders were orders. But one wondered, what were they playing at? Even with the empress he had had to play the role of a coachman rushing to the scene in assistance. And why the charade with the idiot Italian? Orchestrating that had taken more effort than ten clean kills.

  Even meeting with his controllers had turned into an opera. At the last meeting with his Major-actually a lieutenant colonel now, but he would always be the Major to him-another person was there to make sure the orders were set out clearly. Dressed like a monk in a hooded cassock, he was, his face hidden in the shadows. All he could discern in the dimness of the room was the figure of a small golden sheep dangling from the man’s neck. Why all the drama? It was only killing, after all.

  Now he had to make up for the fiasco in Geneva with the lawyer and the professor. It had been the first time he’d failed. It would not happen again. He didn’t care what the Major told him, next time he would make no mistakes. Subtlety was for pastry chefs. A bullet to the brain would do the trick, and let the constabulary try to piece together the crime.

  NINETEEN

  They were to meet with Professor Krafft-Ebing the next morning in his university office, for Werthen, going over his notes the night before, had come across a possible link in the murders to Franz Ferdinand. The brother of the heir apparent, Archduke Otto, was, as Krafft-Ebing had described during their first meeting, a member of the notorious One Hundred Club, those sufferers of syphilis who regularly debauched young virgins. Thus, perhaps the matter of the nose mutilations still involved syphilis, but not Herr Binder. Perhaps it was somehow connected to Franz Ferdinand and his brother. In any case, this link, albeit tenuous, to Franz Ferdinand was too tantalizing to pass up.

  Gross was skeptical, but came along anyway.

  Before they left the fiat, Werthen noticed the early mail on the table by the door. On the very top was a letter with Berthe’s handwriting. He opened it quickly and with Gross breathing impatiently over his shoulder read her note:

  Dear Karl,

  Please forgive the histrionics Sunday. I do love you. But we must also learn to trust one another. To hold nothing back from each other. And please tell Dr. Gross to stop reading this over your shoulder!

  Werthen turned around, and indeed Gross had been perusing the letter, but showed not a whit of remorse.

  “Clever girl, that one” was all he said.

  Werthen returned to the note, this time facing Gross:

  This is a hellish busy week for me, and I am sure for you as well. Let us meet on Friday night and have a celebration. Kisses, darling
. Sorry to sound like a schoolgirl, but I miss you. And I do love the bracelet.

  Love, B

  Werthen sighed with relief. How he loved her. Her angry words had been plaguing him; now he felt that he could truly move ahead with their investigation once again.

  “What are you waiting for, Gross? Time’s wasting.”

  Krafft-Ebing had a corner office on the third floor of the new Ringstrasse building completed by the famous architect Heinrich von Ferstel a dozen years earlier. The immense limestone facade of the building dominated the boulevard. Werthen knew that five years earlier Klimt had been commissioned to create a series of ceiling paintings for the entrance, but that after much haggling no themes had yet been agreed upon. The ceiling still looked awfully bare. As they climbed the broad stairs to the third floor, Werthan was surprised to see a female student in braids and a pale blue navy dress hurrying to a lecture, then remembered females had been granted entrance to the university-in the philosophy faculty only-the previous year.

  Krafft-Ebing was waiting for them as arranged this morning by Rohrpost, the pneumatic underground post that was often as fast as using the telephone, and glanced at the silver-tipped walking stick Werthen was affecting today. A razor-sharp sword was inside, and Werthen knew how to wield it.

  Krafft-Ebing’s office was utilitarian in appointment: glass-fronted lawyer’s bookcases lined the walls and framed large windows overlooking the Ringstrasse. His desk resembled a schoolmaster’s, small-literally dwarfed by the large room-and piled high with notebooks and hefty tomes generously book-marked with slips of blue paper.

  They made small talk for a few moments, the psychologist expressing surprise that Gross was not in Bukovina, then got down to business.

  “I really do not see how I can help you regarding the One Hundred Club. I shared with you what information I had regarding that infamous society at our last meeting.” Krafft-Ebing leaned back in his leather chair. “But why the continued interest, gentlemen? I understood that the Prater murders had been solved.” His supercilious grin let them know that the psychologist did not for a moment believe that the real culprit in those murders had been brought to justice.