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

by J Sydney Jones

  ‘Do you still have the note?’

  Stiegl shrugged. ‘That was part of the game, see? Monika was supposed to bring the note with her to receive a prize. She thought Rainer finally meant to propose.’

  ‘So she took the note with her,’ Gross said.

  ‘She took the note all right.’ Then Stiegl paused. ‘But I think she left the envelope lying on the hall table where she opened it.’

  Both their eyes went to the hallway at the same moment. From where they were sitting, they could clearly see the bit of white envelope still on the small hallway table. Gross looked at his reflection in the mirror above the table; there was the barest trace of a smile on his face.

  After leaving the Stiegl apartment, they went to the Frank apartment to speak with Rainer Frank and ensure that he had not written a note to his sweetheart. An earnest young man with eyes that betrayed recent weeping, he assured them that he had done no such thing. He wanted only to get his hands on the maniac responsible for Monika’s death.

  They double-checked his alibi and then proceeded to Monika Stiegl’s place of work, Kleinman and Brothers pharmaceutical firm in the heart of Graz. There they spoke with the girl’s supervisor and learned that she did have a sort of competitive friendship with another typist, a young woman named Hannah Vogel. When Hannah was introduced, it was evident she was hiding something. She could not look them in the eye and was most eager to return to work.

  Werthen sensed that Gross was about to pounce, using his magistrate’s threatening tone to find out whatever she was holding back. And he also sensed that such an approach with this independent young woman would be counterproductive.

  ‘Perhaps we could have a word alone,’ Werthen quickly said to Hannah. ‘A coffee?’

  Gross shot him a scornful look as Werthen escorted Hannah out of the tiny office where they were speaking with her, the girl’s supervisor also in attendance.

  There was a café across the street from the pharmaceutical firm and there Werthen seated them at a corner table out of the traffic and away from other guests. He waited for the coffee to arrive and the waiter to be gone before he commenced.

  ‘You want to tell us something, I am sure. Monika was your friend …’

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I mean, it may sound cruel to say so now she is dead, but I didn’t really care for her. Not my type. She was too flighty. It was just that we worked together and she was about the only other young person with a semblance of intelligence. We used to have vocabulary contests. Every week a new word. But friends …?’ She shook her head.

  ‘Still, I am sure you would want to tell us anything that might help us track her killer.’

  Her cheeks reddened and she looked down into her coffee.

  ‘It is good that you are a typist, Fräulein Vogel. You would make a most miserable thespian or professional card player.’

  This brought a faint smile to her face.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘We need any help we can get.’

  ‘It may not be anything,’ she finally said. ‘And it makes me look like a rotten person.’

  ‘I am not judging your behavior. Really.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘All right.’

  And then she proceeded to tell Werthen about one day last week when, after work, she determined to follow Monika Stiegl.

  ‘You see what I mean? It makes me appear to be a real cat. But she was always so secretive about her beau. She would never introduce him, and I wondered if perhaps she did not even have one. She let it be known that she was going to meet him for an early dinner that day, and I was just too curious. I had to see if this boyfriend were real or a fabrication to impress her colleagues.’

  ‘What did you see, Fräulein?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t want to get too close to her, you know. I didn’t want her to know I was following her, so I stayed about a block distant and would stop when she did to look in shop windows. And after a couple of blocks of this, I noticed this other person across the street who appeared to be doing the same thing. He stayed at least a block away but seemed to be following Monika just like I was.’

  ‘He?’

  She nodded.

  ‘How long did this go on?’

  ‘Until Monika finally reached her restaurant. Her young man was waiting at the door for her and gave her a peck on the cheek. He was real, but no Prince Charming.’

  ‘And the man across the street?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He was there, as well. Paying special attention to both Monika and her young man. I left then. He sort of scared me the way he was looking at them.’

  ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘No. I mean, I don’t think he was expecting somebody else to be following Monika.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘I didn’t get a good look at his face. He wore a hat with a wide brim, so his face was in shadow. He wasn’t a big man. Sort of middle sized. I don’t think you could pick him out of a crowd very easily. It was almost like he wanted to become part of the background. Medium weight, medium height. Sorry, nothing much more I noticed about him.’

  ‘I’m not sure what it shows,’ Gross said later as they were examining the envelope. ‘But it is the first real physical connection we have to the killer. The handwriting has obviously been disguised to resemble the unsteady penmanship of a child.’ In fact that writing seemed somehow familiar to Gross, but he could not tease out the link.

  ‘Even if the writing has been disguised,’ he continued, ‘there is the ink to examine and the envelope itself. Perhaps we can trace these to a stationery shop. And we also now have an inkling of how the killer may have lured the other victims. He managed to learn enough about each of these young women to fabricate notes that drew them to their deaths.’

  ‘That is a rather broad interpretation of the evidence, I would say, Gross.’ Magistrate Lechner sat at his desk at the Graz Praesidium where they had now set up an incident room for the killings. They were all playing on the same team, it seemed, and this was not simply because another murder had been committed while Gross cooled his heels in prison. After all, if Lechner wanted to press the point, he could claim that the criminologist had an accomplice or accomplices who carried out this latest act of savagery.

  No, it was more than that, Werthen knew. Following Gross’s release, Werthen had heard the rumor that Archduke Franz Ferdinand himself had intervened, sending a note to Lechner to stop being a silly ass and work with Gross and company to solve these atrocities.

  ‘We know positively of only this one situation,’ Lechner added. ‘The other families mentioned no such notes.’

  ‘Neither did the Stiegls initially,’ Gross said. ‘Perhaps we need to re-interview the others.’

  Lechner seemed less than impressed but said nothing. No one else was eager to fill the void either.

  Werthen eyed Lechner cautiously. He did not trust the man and figured he was just waiting for Gross to somehow step in it and make a fool of himself. He had to resist the impulse to reach across the desk and wipe off the rouge from the man’s cheeks. It made him look like a circus clown.

  Besides Gross, Lechner, and Werthen, there were also Inspector Thielman and Stoker gathered in the office. Lechner had only reluctantly accepted the presence of the novelist after hearing of the man’s legal training and his credentials as clerk of court to the Irish petty sessions. On the wall behind Lechner’s desk was posted a large map of the province of Styria and next to it a calendar for October, 1901.

  On the calendar, the dates of October 4, 12, 20, and 27 were circled. The map was also marked with the scenes of the four crimes: Judendorf-Strassengel, Köflach, Hitzendorf, and Gösting Castle. These formed an oblong rectangle to the north and west of Graz.

  The more Werthen gazed at the map, the more he wondered about the distances between the crime scenes. They seemed to fit a pattern.

  The distance between the first murder in Judendorf-Strassengel and the second in Köflach was a little over ten miles. B
etween Köflach and murder number three in Hitzendorf it was about eight miles. From Hitzendorf to the scene of the fourth murder, Gösting Castle, it was about five miles. The distance between crimes was decreasing. Did that mean that the next crime would be some distance less than five miles from the ruined castle? But in what direction?

  Or, by completing the quadrilateral, the distance between Gösting Castle and Judendorf-Strassengel was only three miles, which fit the pattern of decreasing distances between crime scenes. Could this mean that murder number four – closing the quadrangle – was the last?

  Wishful thinking. But was there anything to be learned by the locations of the murder? Were these connected in some way they could not yet discern?

  Gross broke the moment of silence in the room. ‘And there is also the information from the young typist,’ Gross reminded them. ‘That is how our killer was able to gather information. By following the victims.’

  ‘Hardly monumental information,’ Lechner said. ‘We cannot even be certain the man was following the Stiegl girl, or if the victim’s colleague is a reliable witness.’

  ‘I spoke with her,’ Werthen said. ‘She did not want to offer up the information as it would show she too was following Monika Stiegl just to get a look at her boyfriend.’

  ‘A man of medium height, medium weight.’ Magistrate Lechner shook his head. ‘Not much to go on.’

  ‘It is more than we had before,’ Gross said. ‘And as I noted earlier, it provides us with a kind of profile of this killer. Someone who takes the time to get to know his victims, thus, someone not known by them.’

  Another shrug from Lechner.

  ‘And let us not forget the profile we have from our learned colleague Professor Krafft-Ebing,’ Gross added. ‘Though these young women were not interfered with, theirs was still a deeply sexual crime committed by a person with a deep-seated sexual neurosis. He is, however, according to Krafft-Ebing, able to keep this sexual deviancy in check most of the time. But as a child or youth he may have displayed such impulses by mutilations of animals.’

  Werthen once again thought of young Eddie Pichler; a chill ran up his spine as he did so.

  ‘We should not forget one important fact linking these murders,’ Stoker suddenly said.

  Lechner cast a fish eye at the Irishman. ‘And that would be?’

  ‘Doktor Gross. The first three crime scenes contained clues straight out of his criminalistic writings. The killer even taunted him at one point with a note.’

  ‘By God, he’s right,’ Gross thundered. ‘I had quite forgotten about that note.’ And now he realized why the writing on the envelope to Monika Stiegl seemed familiar. ‘I will have to check this against the note that I kept in my hotel room, but I would swear they are very similar.’

  ‘And the fourth murder?’ Lechner asked. ‘How does that fit in with your theory?’

  ‘It proved Gross innocent,’ Werthen said.

  ‘One thing I am curious about, Lechner,’ Gross said. ‘How did you learn that I was already in Graz at the time of the first murder?’

  Lechner sat in silence for a moment, looking down at some papers on his desk. The coloring on his cheeks was suddenly redder.

  ‘There was an anonymous letter. The writer wanted the police to know that the famed Doktor Gross might be committing heinous crimes so that he himself could solve them and add to his fame. I discounted that until the writer included the name of the hotel you were staying at.’ He paused. ‘Really, Gross, all you had to do was explain about your son—’

  ‘How did you find out about that?’

  ‘Not much in Graz escapes my observation.’

  ‘And you have the letter still, I assume,’ Gross said.

  Lechner pursed his lips. ‘It must be filed somewhere,’ he said.

  ‘If it was to be used as evidence against me, I should hope so,’ Gross added acidly.

  ‘I will have my assistant find it,’ Lechner said. ‘Let me see that envelope from the Stiegls.’

  Gross handed it over and Lechner examined it front and back. ‘They are similar,’ he allowed finally. ‘I initially discounted the letter sent to me simply because of the primitive penmanship.’

  There was silence in the room for a time, and then Stoker spoke up.

  ‘As I said, Doktor Gross may very well be the linkage in all these murders. If the note sent to Doktor Gross matches the writing of these other two, then it proves the killer was directly attempting to implicate him.’

  ‘Which means,’ Gross said, ‘that our killer had bigger fish than myself to fry.’

  Inspector Thielman, quiet as a church mouse all this time in the presence of his superior, finally decided to add his voice to the discussion: ‘And if Advokat Werthen is correct, there will be another murder in just two days, on the thirty-first.’

  Twenty-One

  Berthe thought she was dreaming about a Lipizzaner stallion nickering to its handler, hoping to be fed. But she awoke in the middle of the night to realize it was actually a whimpering sound coming from Frieda’s bedroom.

  She got up quickly, put on a robe, and went down the hallway to her daughter’s room. Turning up the gas lamp, Berthe saw that Frieda was still sleeping. Perhaps it really had been a dream, she thought. But then suddenly her child twisted under the covers, emitting the pitiful whimpering sound she had earlier heard. Now Berthe saw that Frieda’s face was covered in sweat and that she had a red rash on her cheeks and neck. She put her hand to Frieda’s forehead and the child felt as if she were burning up.

  Frieda opened her eyes now and seeing her mother, she murmured, ‘Mama, I hurt.’ She grabbed her throat to show where the pain was.

  Berthe felt panic rising, but calmed herself, taking deep breaths. Bring the fever down, she told herself. That’s the first priority.

  ‘It’ll be fine, dear. Don’t worry. Mommy is here. I need to get a cool towel for your head. OK? You just lie back and I’ll be right back.’

  ‘No, Mama.’

  ‘It’s fine, Frieda. Mommy has to go for just a few seconds. You know how to count to five, right?’

  Frieda swallowed with difficulty and nodded.

  ‘Good, then. Just count to five. I bet I’m back before you finish. But you have to do it nice and slow, right?’

  Frieda’s eyes were big and frightened-looking now.

  Berthe ran to the kitchen, soaked a tea towel in cool water and was back just as Frieda was reaching number four.

  ‘There. I told you I could beat you.’ She forced a laugh and hoped that the concern she was feeling was not written on her face.

  The next morning, Werthen decided to follow his hunch about Eddie, and traveled to the Pichler farm once again. Either he had to lay his doubts about the young man to rest or take him into custody as a suspect in the murder of these unfortunate young women.

  He arrived at the farm mid-morning and was surprised to see very little activity going on outside. No one was in the barn or in the fields. The place had an eerie feeling, as if abandoned.

  He went to the front door and knocked. Frau Pichler answered it after a second round of knocking, a lock of hair misplaced from her bun and dangling into her face. She looked harried, as if she had not slept in days.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, Frau Pichler, but I was just wondering if I could see Eddie.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  The question took him back. They must know of their son’s guilt, he surmised.

  ‘Is he here, Frau Pichler?’

  ‘Of course he is. You think we would send him to some filthy hospital to die.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Isn’t that why you’ve come?’ she said. ‘To pay your last respects?’ And then she crumpled into Werthen’s arms, weeping inconsolably.

  He returned to the Hotel Daniel midday after learning that young Eddie had the perfect alibi for the murder on Sunday. He could not have killed Monika Stiegl, for he was too busy dying hims
elf. The grief-stricken Frau Pichler told Werthen in fits and starts that her only surviving child had fallen ill not long after he and Berthe had stayed at the farm. By Saturday the local doctor told them it was scarlet fever; by early Monday morning he was already in a coma. He died later that day, and now the body was still laid out waiting for the undertaker. Frau Pichler had been afraid that Werthen was that man and hesitated to open the door.

  ‘I don’t want them taking him away,’ she said through her tears. ‘Not to lie all alone in a cold pine coffin. Eddie always liked sleeping near somebody.’

  Werthen had made no attempt at explaining his visit; he simply listened to her sad story several times and then, when a neighbor came to visit bringing food, he made his escape in the fiaker he had waiting for him.

  ‘We’ve been looking for you,’ Gross said as he entered the hotel dining room at lunch time. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘Nothing of consequence,’ he said, still shaken by the visit. Poor Eddie. A simple soul after all. A brief life and a lasting sadness for his parents, now childless. What an awful thing it is, he thought, for a parent to outlive his child.

  Gross reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a telegram.

  ‘This came for you shortly after you left this morning.’

  Werthen suddenly did not want to take the paper, just as Frau Pichler had not wanted to answer the door that morning.

  ‘Take it, Werthen. It’s for you.’

  Werthen opened the envelope slowly, unfolded the telegram and read the cold, precise words.

  ‘Frieda taken ill. Doctor says scarlet fever. Please return at once. Father.’

  He stared at the words for several moments before he could understand them. He felt the paper slip out of his hand and he could only sit at the table as if in a dream.

  Gross picked up the telegram. ‘My God,’ he uttered after reading it. ‘We’ve got to get you on the next train to Vienna. Stoker, quickly now, to the train station.’

  ‘The investigation,’ the Irishman began, but stopped when Gross handed him the telegram.