Requiem in Vienna: A Viennese Mystery (Viennese Mysteries)

by Jones, J. Sydney

  Werthen entered the side doors and made his way to the auditorium where Richter, filling in for Mahler, was just finishing morning rehearsals for Tannhäuser. The third violin chair had, Werthen noticed, been filled. A bearded, middle-aged gentleman had taken the deceased Herr Gunther’s position in the orchestra. Rosé, seeing Werthen, nodded, and they sat together in red plush chairs on the main floor as the rest of the orchestra went off for their midmorning coffee.

  “It was good of you to see me. Do you want something to eat or drink as we talk?” Werthen asked.

  “I eat sparingly,” the tall, elegant violinist said. “I assume you want to talk about these attacks on Gustav.”

  “Attacks?”

  “Please, Advokat Werthen. Justi and I do not have secrets from each other. Not a string of accidents, but a concerted effort to kill Mahler. And to answer your as yet unasked question, no, it is not I. Whether or not Gustav chooses to write his sister out of his will if we marry is of little matter to me.”

  “And your position in the orchestra?”

  “This is not a parallel case to my brother’s. Unlike him, I have real power in Vienna’s musical world. I have a secure position, one that cannot be taken from me out of domestic spite. Austrian bureaucracy, for all its failings, does at least guarantee one security in his job.”

  “Actually, I did not come to accuse you or even to vet you,” Werthen said. “Rather I want to know more about Herr Mahler’s past.”

  “You think the person who wants to kill him has an old grudge?”

  “It is a possibility. What do you know about Hans Rott, for example?”

  Rosé showed no surprise at the name. “That he is dead and could not be the one to have attacked Gustav.”

  “I realize that, as well, Herr Rosé. What I would like to know is something about their relationship.”

  “Gustav and Rott? There is not much to say. Gustav thought, mistakenly so, I believe, that Rott was the most talented of our generation.”

  “Do you know his music?”

  Rosé cast Werthen a baleful look. “Not all that again.”

  “All what?”

  “That Gustav stole the man’s music after he died in the asylum. Nonsense. Utter nonsense.”

  “How so?”

  “You’ve only to listen to the compositions of both to hear that.”

  “Have you?”

  Rosé looked suddenly discomfited. “Not in decades. I believe I heard part of one of Rott’s early symphonies. So many years ago.”

  “Then how can you call it nonsense that Herr Mahler might have borrowed from Rott’s work?”

  “Because it is not in Gustav’s nature to cheat. He is, if anything, too pure for this world. He is too hard on himself. And thus on others.”

  Werthen pushed on. “Were they friends?”

  “We were all chums of a sort back then. But those were student days. Rott was not the sort of young man to actually have friends. He had commitments instead. When his father died—his mother had already died years earlier—Rott was only eighteen. Suddenly the weight of the world was cast upon his shoulders. It unhinged him, I am sure.”

  “What weight? You mean having to make his own way as a teenager?”

  Rosé nodded. “And that of his younger brother. He had to make a living for both of them, and had to keep the brother out of trouble, as well. ”

  “What was this brother’s name?”

  Rosé thought for a moment. “Karl, I think it was. Never met him myself, but from what I heard he only wanted to carouse and play the large man with the ladies. There was some story about him, born on the wrong side of the sheets. There were rumors at the time of a dalliance on the part of the mama with a noble, perhaps even a Habsburg. It escapes me now, but this younger brother couldn’t have been more than fifteen, sixteen at the time. As I say, I never met him, not even at Rott’s funeral. He was conspicuously absent. Not old Bruckner, though. Wept like a baby for Rott, his star pupil.”

  There was little more to be learned from Rosé, so Werthen left him to the tuning of his violin. As he was walking up the aisle to the exit, Herr Regierungsrath Leitner joined him.

  “I hope you discovered something useful. This business must stop.”

  “Yes,” Werthen said. “And thank you again for arranging the interview.”

  “Are you any closer to catching the culprit?”

  “Close,” Werthen said. “And getting closer every day.”

  Werthen was not sure, but it seemed that this remark, more bluff than truth, caused Leitner a spasm of concern. The look passed in an instant, though, to be replaced by his usual neutral countenance.

  A yipping and barking erupted from the stage, and Werthen was astonished to see the stage manager, Siegfried Blauer, at the helm of a brace of hunting dogs, tugging this way and that on their leather leashes. In his outmoded muttonchops and with these dogs all about him, he suddenly looked like a younger version of Emperor Franz Josef.

  “My God, man,” Blauer boomed at a red-faced gentleman in lederhosen accompanying him. “I thought you said these animals were trained.”

  “They are,” the other replied. “For hunting, not necessarily for gallivanting about the stage.”

  “Leitner!” Blauer cried out, shielding his eyes from the stage lights to see into the auditorium. “Are you out there? Do you hear? This is insanity. Seventy hunting dogs for the entrance scene? He must be mad.”

  Leitner turned to Werthen for a moment. “He means Herr Mahler, I am afraid. It was his wish to have the dogs onstage. He is a great one for theatrical effects.”

  “Leitner,” Blauer called out again in his Ottakring drawl. “We need some beasts who can hold their water onstage.”

  “Please forgive me, I must see to this.”

  “Of course,” Werthen said. “And thank you once again.”

  But Leitner was now too engaged in this canine drama to pay him further attention.

  “What is the occasion?” Werthen asked that evening upon returning to his flat.

  An open bottle of sekt—faux champagne—lay in an ice bucket; Gross and Herr Meisner were toasting with long-stemmed glasses. Berthe was joining the toast with what appeared to be mineral water in her glass.

  “Ah, Werthen,” Gross said jovially. “There you are. Good that you could make it home in time for the festivities.”

  “In honor of what, might I ask?”

  Gross beamed a smile at him. “You are the one who makes private inquiries. Tell me what this is about.”

  “You’ve done it. You broke the code.”

  “Not I,” Gross said, somewhat sadly. “No. The laurels go to your esteemed father-in-law.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Werthen said. “And what did it say?”

  Gross waved his glass of sekt like a conductor’s baton. “Not so quickly. First, you must follow in our footsteps to the discovery.”

  “Really, Gross,” Werthen spluttered. “We hardly have the time for parlor games.”

  “Karl,” Berthe interrupted. “Don’t be such a stick. It is really quite fascinating. Papa, please tell Karl how you broke the code.”

  Herr Meisner was only partly joining in the general gaiety, Werthen could tell, eager to keep his daughter happy.

  “It is really no great achievement,” he began.

  “Nonsense,” said Gross. “I personally exhausted all my cipher knowledge in the task. Numerical codes, alphabet codes, everything from Caesar’s cipher to the Napoleon I system. I was about to tear my hair out, but of course I have little left to tear. Then our most knowledgeable colleague, Herr Meisner, joined the fray.”

  Such praise was clearly embarrassing for Herr Meisner, but he managed a bland smile.

  “Please, Papa,” Berthe urged.

  “Well, it was a bit of a puzzler at first, I must admit. As I said, I have made a study of musical codes. Musicians since the time of Bach have played with secret messages encoded in their compositions. Typically, one uses lett
er names of the notes to spell out a message. Usually these are the names of friends and associates.”

  “Right,” Werthen said. “Brahms had a penchant for such games, I am told.”

  Herr Meisner cast him a friendly glance. “Indeed. For Bach it was the use of the F–A–B–E in his canons, referring to his fellow composer and friend, J. C. Faber. Over the years, composers got more and more ingenious in developing their alphabet. For example, E-flat stands for the letter s, naturally, because in German our name for that note is Es, and B-sharp is the equivalent of Hah, or H. You mention Brahms, but also Schumann delighted in musical jests, inserting names of friends in his work. I am told the Irish composer, John Field, once complimented a dinner hostess with melodies produced by B–E–E–F and C–A–B–B–A–G–E. Just last year the British composer, Edward Elgar, published his Enigma Variations, hinting that the various melodies of his variations are based, in fact, on a well-known tune. I have yet, I dare say, to break the code, though I favor Auld Lang Syne as the inspiration.”

  “And this was a simple sort of cipher like those?” Werthen asked.

  “Unfortunately, no,” Herr Meisner said. “Musicians have also created codes using an ascending scale of quarter notes, a dozen of them to represent the first twelve letters of the alphabet. Rhythm has also been used in such endeavors, creating a cipher system not unlike Morse code. Additionally, we must also contend with basic letter substitution systems. Here, as the great ninth-century Baghdad cryptographer, Al-Kindi, has shown, one simply develops a system of replacing one letter with another. For example, the letter A is always replaced by B, or B in turn is replaced by H. Also, we have the work of Porta, whose secret alphabet was used widely in the early seventeenth century. Which brings me finally to the work of that notable seventeenth-century British clergyman, Bishop John Wilkins.”

  “Yes, yes,” Gross said, unable to control his enthusiasm. “His Mercury: The Secret and Swift Messenger was a revelation for me.”

  “You should also read his work on the construction of an artificial language for the use of diplomats, scientists, and philosophers. It makes inspiring reading.”

  “Papa,” Berthe said, urging him back to the subject at hand.

  “Yes. The good bishop wrote his book on cryptography when he was just twenty-seven and I believe it proved quite handy for chaps during the English Civil War. In that book he touches on language as concealed in musical notes. In chapter eighteen, as I remember, he posits an alphabet of descending notes, beginning with A, and leaving out letters K and Q as their sound may be created by the C. But Wilkins goes on to employ a letter substitution system as well as the use of Latin as base language. Once I recalled that system, the rest was mere secretarial work.”

  “What was the secret message?” Werthen’s curiosity was well and truly piqued by now.

  Herr Meisner took a slip of paper out of his vest pocket and, squinting at it, read, “Hans Rott salutes and condemns you from the grave, Mahler.”

  “You are absolutely certain?”

  Herr Meisner nodded his head solemnly.

  “But that is marvelous,” Werthen said.

  Gross clapped Werthen on the back, handing him a glass of sekt.

  “So now you know the reason to celebrate. Someone who was connected with Rott seeks revenge on Mahler for stealing the man’s work. Now we only need to find who that someone might be.”

  Werthen, however, began to have second thoughts. “But why would this person expose himself so? Why such an overt lead.”

  “Hardly overt,” Gross said. “In point of fact, it took two skilled cryptographers to break the code.”

  “Still,” Werthen said.

  “My friend,” Gross reassured him, “this message includes several valuable pieces of information. One points to Hans Rott, and another tells us our enemy here thinks he is invincible. His ego is immense; he believes the rest of the world is comprised of idiots. Thus he can create false leads about the murders of famous Viennese composers and at the same time thumb his nose at us with this coded piece of music. This lets us know, via the false leads, that perhaps we were getting too close to him earlier in our investigation. Still a further piece of information we gain is that our culprit has a working knowledge of music and composition. Perhaps he associated with musicians.”

  “My God, could it be?” Werthen said.

  “What is it, Karl?” Berthe took his arm, alarmed at his sudden change.

  “Speaking with Arnold Rosé today, I discovered that Rott had a younger brother who was not the best sort of citizen.”

  Gross clapped his meaty hands together. “Ah, yes, now we are getting somewhere.”

  SIXTEEN

  Werthen thought it odd that church bells should be ringing this early. It was still before dawn, and as he listened to this faux Angelus, he felt a throbbing at his temples and a dryness in his mouth. One too many celebratory glasses of sekt last evening.

  By the time he realized it was the phone and not church bells ringing, the sound had ceased, only to be followed a few instants later by an insistent tapping at the bedroom door.

  Berthe rolled over groggily. “What is that, Karl? Mice?”

  “Nothing, darling. Go back to sleep.”

  He slipped out of bed, wrapping his silk robe around him as he went to the door.

  Gross, looking bleary-eyed and with a tuft of his tonsured fringe askew, spoke quietly but with urgency.

  “Get dressed. Our man’s been at his dirty work again.”

  She lay on her back in a pool of dried blood. The gaping wound at her neck had already attracted flies. Drechsler swatted at them with his derby.

  “I don’t like this one little bit,” he spat out. “I tell you the young lady’s name and place of abode, and the next thing I know, she is dead. Who did you tell?”

  “And I do not appreciate your insinuation, Inspector. I told no one. Not even Gross, here. I forgot. Other matters intervened.”

  “Werthen,” Gross said. “How could you, man? If I had known of her existence, perhaps this young woman would still be alive.”

  The statement was so preposterous that not even Drechsler commented on or added to it.

  They were in the garret room of Mitzi Paulus, of whom Drechsler had indeed apprised Werthen just the day before. An officer had thrown the one window open, but the fumes over the Kohlmarkt this morning were not much better than those within: a combination of cheap perfume, human sweat, and dried blood. To take his mind off this, Werthen quickly explained to Gross about the young woman and her supposed ability to identify the man she saw the night Herr Gunther was killed.

  Then turning to Drechsler, Werthen said, “I take it your sergeant was unable to talk to her again?”

  “You take it correctly,” Drechsler said morosely. “But how the hell did he find out we were on to him through this tart?”

  Gross sighed. “She was in a dangerous profession. Perhaps this murder is merely a coincidence.” But he uttered this with such a lack of conviction that it was clear he did not think so either.

  “Think, man,” Drechsler persisted. “There must have been someone. Perhaps our conversation was overheard?”

  The only thing Werthen could think of was the fact that Herr Tor seemed to arrive at the office door just as Drechsler was leaving. Had he overheard? But that was patently absurd. The mouselike Tor was hardly capable of murder. He mentioned none of this, but instead went on the offensive.

  “And why not assume that it was not your own sergeant who told one too many friends about his great success? Or perhaps you yourself spoke about it out of turn and were overheard?”

  “I must say, Drechsler,” Gross added, “I agree wholeheartedly with Werthen. “Why put the blame on him?”

  “Meindl is turning apoplectic.”

  “That,” Gross said, “is Meindl’s affair, not ours.”

  They used their Montenuovo letter to gain access to the K und K Hofarchiv in the Hofburg, presenting the baleful
clerk in his white coat with a birth registration request. They were searching for the records for one Karl Rott, born circa 1860. Rosé had told him the younger brother was about two years younger than Hans Rott, who was born in 1858.

  The clerk had an ink smudge on his right earlobe, the result of a habit of rubbing his ear with his pen hand, Gross explained once the young man had taken their form and disappeared into a labyrinth of wooden shelving that held a formidable array of bulky, gray file boxes.

  Gross had been the one, after Werthen had explained about Rosé believing there to be some question surrounding the propriety of the birth of this second son, who advised a further search for birth records.

  As they waited Werthen once again thought of how the information about Mitzi Paulus could have gotten to the killer. Perhaps, as with Herr Gunther, their man was only tying up loose ends, getting rid of any possible witnesses to his crimes. Thus, he would remember the young woman who had approached him and looked into his empty eyes. He would know her territory, where to find her. But would she actually go with the man? After all, she said she could recognize him. He had frightened her the first time she had seen him. Now she knew that he was wanted by the police, one would assume she would be doubly fearful of him.

  Or perhaps, as they had suspected all along, the perpetrator was not working alone. He had someone else he could send to Mitzi Paulus, a stranger, who had bargained with her, trudged up the three flights of creaky stairs behind her to the bedroom garret over the Kohlmarkt and then slashed her throat as she began to disrobe and was defenseless.

  Their nemesis was a cur. Not a man, or men, at all. How many had died now in the pursuit of Mahler’s death? Three innocent victims.

  “Nothing here for a Karl Rott.” The clerk had returned, but not empty-handed. “I did find a file for Hans Rott, though. I was at the Rs, so thought it might be worth a look.”

  “It is not Hans we are searching for,” Gross said with some displeasure.

  “I realize that, gentlemen. But seeing’s how you’ve been dispatched by Prince Montenuovo himself, I thought you might appreciate thoroughness.”