A Matter of Breeding: a mystery set in turn-of-the-century Vienna (A Viennese Mystery)

by J Sydney Jones

  ‘Redecorated, I see.’ He sat in the chair holding a silver-tipped walking stick in front of him like a master of the dance about to beat out a rhythm.

  Werthen said nothing and then Schnitzler seemed to suddenly recall the event that necessitated such redecoration.

  ‘I do apologize. It must have been an awful experience.’

  Werthen sat without response, having no inclination to go into the matter. ‘What brings you here, Herr Schnitzler?’

  ‘Meaning if I were searching for a painful experience, why not simply visit my dentist?’

  He smiled winningly at Werthen, giving him no chance for reply. ‘I came simply because you are the best at what you do. I do not want to allow our personal history to interfere with that.’

  ‘And what is it I do so well, Schnitzler?’

  ‘Protection, of course. I was, after giving it some thought, more than satisfied with your thoroughness. And I have a similar commission for you.’

  It was not something Werthen relished doing, playing bodyguard, though he had done it for the composer Gustav Mahler a couple of years previously, as well as for Schnitzler just last summer. He was about to decline, when Schnitzler charged on.

  ‘I realize such work is beneath your deductive talents, but I implore you, Werthen, in the name of Austria. We have an important foreign visitor here, a man about to speak at the Concordia, and he appears to be in need of protection.’

  The Concordia, the journalists’ club, meant, in all likelihood, some literary fellow, Werthen deduced. After his dealings with Schnitzler and other writers of the Jung Wien movement the past summer, Werthen was even less inclined to take the case.

  ‘I might as well tell you, the man asked for you personally. Seems he has heard of your achievements via your colleague’s little monthly magazine.’

  By which he meant Doktor Hanns Gross and his Archive for Criminalistics. Gross and he had formed an irregular partnership, working on several cases together, which Gross, ever the meticulous recorder of events, had chronicled in his Archive.

  ‘It seems you have a fair amount of fame, even in London,’ Schnitzler added. ‘That is where our guest hails from. Well, latterly, that is. Dublin is his place of origin.’

  ‘Am I to guess at his identity?’

  ‘Sorry, no. Simply trying to increase the drama. We would all be very grateful were you to take the case. Even Prince Montenuovo would find pleasure in such a turn of events. A great enthusiast of our chap’s work is the prince.’

  Schnitzler was referring to the powerful second-in-line to the master of the court, a man who was the emperor’s eyes and ears in all things cultural, and a major force in the direction of the court theaters, including the Burg, where Schnitzler’s plays were often performed. Werthen and Gross had earlier been aided by a letter of introduction from the prince in the Mahler case.

  ‘Enough drama, Schnitzler. Who are we talking about and why?’

  ‘Mr Bram Stoker.’

  Schnitzler pronounced the name with such a self-satisfied look that Werthen almost felt guilty when he said, ‘Who is that?’

  For once, Schnitzler was at a loss for words. Finally he said, ‘The writer. You must have heard of The Primrose Path?’

  A shake of Werthen’s head.

  ‘The Snake’s Pass?’

  A shrug of the shoulders.

  ‘The Shoulder of Shasta? Miss Betty?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Werthen said.

  ‘My God, man,’ Schnitzler almost shouted, ‘Stoker was the business manager of the Lyceum in London for over quarter of a century. He’s been the manager for the actor Henry Irving for years. You’ve surely heard of Irving?’

  This did ring bells for Werthen. He had seen Irving’s Hamlet once on a visit to London. And now the connection was made.

  ‘You mean that fellow who writes about vampires.’

  ‘Well –’ Schnitzler waved his hand as if brushing off crumbs from the ether all around them. ‘A mere bagatelle. Dracula. A silly little book. We can all be forgiven such a creation once in our careers. Stoker will surely be remembered for more substantial works by later generations.’

  Hardly the sort of thing Werthen read, so he was not going to argue the point with Schnitzler.

  ‘Suffice to say, Stoker is a real talent and a visitor from London. Here to address the annual convention of the Concordia Club. But he seems to be dogged at every step by some cursed devotee. “Fan” is the word he used for it, a word he picked up on a visit to America. From “fanatic”. Most appropriate in these circumstances, I should say. For the past several months, as Stoker tells it, this fan has sent communications that indicate he has been following him, watching and planning.’

  ‘Planning what?’ Werthen asked.

  ‘Stoker can only fear the worst. Perhaps it is someone deranged by all this vampire business. Stoker thought he would leave it all behind him in London, but it appears the person has followed him to Vienna. Last night there was a note left for him at his room in the Hotel Bristol.’

  ‘The police, Schnitzler. Go to the police. Just as I advised you to do.’

  ‘Yes, yes. My very advice,’ Schnitzler said. ‘But as I stated, the man has all but demanded your services. His very speaking engagement might be in jeopardy if you refuse.’

  ‘Extortion? And I am the payment? A sorry state of affairs, Schnitzler. Perhaps you should find another speaker.’

  Once again Schnitzler was momentarily at a loss of words. Werthen was beginning to enjoy this.

  A sigh from the playwright, and then: ‘It is only for a week. It would mean much to the Concordia … and to Prince Montenuovo.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the prince being a fan, too.’ Which brought a grimace to Schnitzler’s face. Werthen quickly held a hand up. ‘Not to worry, Schnitzler. You may tell Mr Stoker I will take on the task.’

  Werthen had no other cases at the moment and was not in the mood to tackle the Kleist codicil. Besides, he thought – looking at the foolscap he’d turned face down on the desk – he could use a diversion, something to take his mind off personal matters.

  Schnitzler all but leaped to his feet, reaching his arm across the desk in a futile attempt at shaking Werthen’s hand. The desk, however, was wide enough to rebuff any such advances. Schnitzler quickly recovered, swooping his hand back as if he had simply intended to straighten his hair.

  ‘That is good news, Werthen. Austria will thank you.’

  ‘The Order of the Golden Fleece can wait,’ he joked. ‘A payment will suffice.’

  They arranged for Werthen to meet with Stoker in his suite at the Bristol at four thirty that afternoon.

  Strangely energized by this new commission, Werthen worked on the Kleist codicil for a couple of hours and then handed over the remaining work to Fräulein Metzinger. As reliable and knowledgeable as any lawyer Werthen had ever worked with, his assistant was barred from legal studies by antiquated laws at the university regarding the entry of female students. Fräulein Metzinger and her feminist friends had made a close study of advances – if you could call them that – in women’s rights in Austria. In 1869 women could become public school teachers; three years later they could hold positions in the post and telegraph office. It was not until 1878 that women could audit classes at the university and in 1895 the university was actually open to women in medicine and teaching. However, they continued to be firmly shut out of the legal field.

  From a long line of lawyers and judges, Fräulein Metzinger had made a private study of the law and now it was Werthen’s good fortune that she worked as his assistant. She took the sheaf of papers he handed over and shuffled through the pages quickly.

  ‘Will tomorrow afternoon do?’ she asked. ‘I need to leave a bit early today.’

  ‘Of course,’ Werthen said. ‘Theater?’

  She shook her head. ‘The opera, actually. Verdi’s Masked Ball.’

  ‘Mahler?’ Werthen asked.

  ‘No. The new one, Bruno Walter. I haven’t seen h
im conduct yet.’

  ‘Then it should be a pleasant evening for you and …?’

  ‘Herr Sonnenthal.’

  ‘Yes. The journalist. Please give him my best.’ Werthen felt like a gossip hound eliciting this information, but he was interested in Fräulein Metzinger’s happiness. She deserved a good young man in her life, and Sonnenthal, on the staff of the socialist daily, the Arbeiter Zeitung, seemed the perfect fit for her: progressive, intellectual, passionate about the rights of the common man, and also evidently very much attracted to Erika Metzinger.

  Werthen filed this information away to share with his wife Berthe later this evening.

  Out of the office, Werthen took his time strolling through the inner city. He went left out of his building toward the Josefsplatz, and turned again left into Stallburggasse and past the stalls where the famous Lipizzaners were kept.

  Werthen loved this time of year in Vienna. As he made his way along Stallburggasse toward the Neuer Markt, he buttoned his overcoat against a sudden chill wind from the east of the plains of Hungary. The smell of coal fires was in the air and deliverymen could be seen carrying sacks of coal and coke from their horse-drawn wagons to low metal doors on the sides of buildings that opened to chutes leading to basement bins. Others had to hump the heavy sacks up several flights of stairs for delivery. A small inn at the corner of Stallburggasse and Dorotheergasse advertised the last of the Sturm, the freshly fermented stage of this year’s wine. Werthen made a quick stop to enjoy a small glass along with some roasted chestnuts, then continued on his way, following Dorotheergasse to Augustinerstrasse and around the massive structure of the Court Opera and finally to the corner of Kärntnerstrasse and the Opera Ring, home of the Hotel Bristol. Less than a decade old, and even younger at this location, the Bristol was already a Viennese institution.

  In the elegant lobby Werthen cast a glance at the ten-foot grandfather clock next to the reception desk. In addition to the time, the old clock also displayed a circle of planets, a calendar, and the phases of the moon. This last area displayed a circle with the left half blacked in, signifying yesterday’s first quarter of the moon.

  As a youth growing up in the country house at Hohelände, Werthen had been very aware of such things: the passing of the seasons, the phases of the moon. Having lived in cities for so many years now, however, it was only the seasonal changes such as Fall that registered.

  He did not bother with the reception desk, but took the elevator to the third floor, which was actually the fifth, but in order to avoid building regulations many of the builders in Vienna used an arcane scattering of intermediate floors to avoid the reality of their actual count of stories. Thus, the Bristol, for example, had a ground floor for its lobby, and a mezzanine floor above that. The first floor then actually began on what should have been the third. Stoker’s suite on the third floor was in reality the fifth.

  A red-haired man of over six foot – about Werthen’s height – answered his knock. He was heavily built with broad shoulders and thick arms and hands; his tweeds fit him loosely as if he had long worn them and had allowed them to bag.

  ‘You must be the famous Advokat Werthen,’ he said as he grabbed for Werthen’s hand and pummeled it in an aggressive handshake.

  His German was passable, about as good as Werthen’s English, so the lawyer decided on German as he replied, ‘And you, I assume, are our famous literary guest, Herr Stoker.’

  ‘Hardly famous,’ Stoker said. Like many large men, Werthen noticed, Stoker spoke in a strangely high voice. ‘In some quarters infamous, perhaps. But do come in.’

  Still shaking his hand, Stoker all but dragged him into the opulent suite. Werthen was struck first and foremost with the view out the floor-to-ceiling windows giving onto the Kärntnerstrasse side of the building: he had a fine bird’s-eye glimpse of the Court Opera.

  Werthen barely had a chance to take in the elegant carpets, the Empire furniture, and crystal chandelier before Stoker said breathlessly, ‘You have seen the evening papers, of course. Vampires at work. My lord what an opportunity for me. There were those who doubted my Dracula. Now I shall show them. It’s off to Styria for us, Advokat Werthen.’

  Three

  Gross was livid. He sat amid a scatter of papers from Graz and Vienna. There were even ones from Berlin and Milan. He didn’t have to be proficient in Italian to know that ‘VAMPIRO!’ in the headline of Corriere della Sera was referring to the murders in Styria.

  It had to be that young gendarme from yesterday, Gross figured. He had overheard Thielman’s silly comment about vampires, and his loose mouth with some local journalist had managed to spread the tale of vampire murders across half of Europe. And, Gross thought, had managed to bring half the journalists of the continent to Graz by the looks of the crowded dining room of the Hotel Daniel. With the arrival of each train at the nearby station, the number of these scriveners seemed to grow exponentially. No matter that the two punctures on the unfortunate young woman’s neck appeared to be made by a very sharp and regular tool, perhaps an ice pick, rather than irregular teeth that would tear a bit, leaving feathering. There was no such sign of feathering. However, these ghouls had come for vampires, and vampires there would be. They would come resurrecting tales from the eighteenth century when the supposed prevalence of vampires in Styria had prompted the Empress Maria Theresa to send vampire hunting troops to the region along with her court physician, Gerard van Swieten. A product of the Enlightenment, van Swieten proved that the outbreak of vampires was a mixture of superstition and ignorance: the unusual states of some corpses in their graves was due not to their rising to drink blood at night, but rather to lack of oxygen in the caskets which prevented decomposition. But obviously it took more than science to put such beliefs to rest.

  And for those still crying blood libel, the supposed exsanguination of the victim was another fairy tale. Yes, there was only a puddle of blood left under the corpse of Ursula Klein, but on closer examination Gross discovered that her clothing was soaked in it. She had, in fact, bled out into the clothing. He imagined the same would be the case for the other victims, but he had only begun to study evidence from the other two crime scenes last night.

  As the breakfast room continued to fill, Gross decided to set off for the local gendarmerie to further investigate the crime-scene remnants firsthand. There were indeed a number of interesting and telling facets to the reports. Then, as he waved to the serving girl for his check, he was astounded to see a familiar face enter the room.

  ‘Werthen!’ he cried out. ‘How good to see you.’

  Some of the journalists familiar with the detective pair turned their heads at this outburst and then quickly exchanged comments with one another.

  Werthen was just as amazed to see Gross, who should have been in Czernowitz where he was the chair of the department of criminology at the Franz Josef University.

  ‘I had no idea you were involved in all this,’ Werthen said as he and Stoker came to Gross’s table.

  ‘Thielman, you’ll remember him,’ Gross said. ‘It was he who asked for my assistance on a pair of murders. I arrived only yesterday, just in time for the discovery of a third victim.’

  Indeed, Werthen did remember the fleshy Thielman whom Gross had so painstakingly trained as his assistant. Years ago now, it seemed, when Werthen had practiced criminal law in Graz before moving to Vienna.

  Gross directed his remarks at Werthen, but his inquiring eyes finally locked on Stoker.

  Werthen made quick introductions which hardly seemed to satisfy Gross, but Werthen did not feel like going into particulars at the moment.

  ‘Might I say what an honor it is to meet you, Doktor Gross. I am a keen follower of your work.’

  As opposed to ‘fan’, Werthen thought.

  Gross made a noncommittal grunt at this compliment, then said abruptly, ‘Let us leave this circus. As long as you are here, Werthen, I could use your help.’

  He stormed out of the breakfast room without fur
ther explanation, and Werthen followed, Stoker close behind. The Irishman made no protests, even though he had been looking forward to a second breakfast. The brioche and coffee they had on the early-morning train from Vienna was hardly enough for the burly writer.

  Werthen caught up with Gross as he was going through the front door of the hotel.

  ‘Where are we going, Gross?’

  ‘The local gendarmerie, of course.’

  Werthen turned to Stoker. ‘Perhaps you should see to that breakfast you wanted,’ he told the Irishman. ‘I will be back before noon.’

  ‘I would much rather accompany you chaps.’

  ‘I must steal your companion away for a few hours, Herr Stoker,’ Gross said. ‘I am sure you will understand. And there are all these journalists about who would, I am sure, be most eager to speak with the famous author of Dracula.’

  Werthen had not mentioned Stoker’s authorship of that novel, but of course Gross would know. The man seemed to know everything.

  Stoker’s eyes lit up in sudden inspiration. ‘Yes, that might be interesting.’

  They left him to his self-promotion and made their way on foot to police headquarters. En route they discussed their mutual cases.

  ‘I thought you had sworn off such work,’ Gross said, once Werthen explained his commission.

  ‘Schnitzler made a rather fervent argument, all for the good of the Empire.’

  ‘You were bored,’ Gross said.

  ‘I was in need of diversion, yes, I admit. But now I begin to wonder about the wisdom of accepting this case. Stoker complains of unsettling communications, yet he can produce none of these. Not a single letter or telegram. No description of whomever he thinks is following him around.’

  ‘More self-promotion?’ Gross said.

  Werthen shrugged. ‘Perhaps. If so, then the handsome fee from the Concordia will be easy enough to earn. But let us speak of more intriguing matters. What have you learned of these murders? Surely no vampires or Jewish ritual sacrifices, I hope.’

  Gross informed him of his discoveries on that score and then added, ‘More likely the work of a psychopath, or someone who wishes to make it appear so.’