Mortal Mischief lp-1

by Frank Tallis

  The professor does not listen to a word I say – he is only interested in his infernal machines. I have asked him about alternative treatments but he refuses to discuss the matter. I have heard that there is a new talking cure but he says that no such cure exists. I know that this is not true. The electrotherapy is unbearable – I feel like I am being punished. I cannot go on like this. Please come back soon. I am so unhappy.'

  Locatelli folded the sheet and placed it back in his pocket.

  'There is much more, Professor.'

  'I'm sure there is,' said Gruner, suddenly showing signs of irritation. 'But your wife was ill – very ill. That is why you admitted her. If you are trying to suggest that your wife was mistreated while she was in my care, then you are very much mistaken. She was in the throes of a suicidal melancholia: that she should have taken a dim view of her treatment is hardly surprising, Signor.'

  During the ensuing pause each torturous second registered like the creaking turn of a rack. Finally the Italian diplomat stood up.

  'Concerning the propriety of her treatment, this is a matter that I will be raising, in due course, with your minister responsible for hospitals and health. Now, Professor, if you would kindly ask the porter to come back in, I wish to be escorted to the mortuary.'

  48

  'STEFAN, WOULD YOU cover for me? Just this morning?'

  'Aren't you in enough trouble already, Max? If Gruner finds out—'

  'He won't. Today's demonstration has been cancelled.'

  'Really? That's unusual. Even so, why tempt fate, Max?'

  'It's an emergency, I think.'

  'You think?'

  'Yes, I've just received this note – it's from Rheinhardt, my friend the police Inspector.' He handed it to Kanner.

  'Dear Max,' Kanner read aloud, 'please come to the following address in Leopoldstadt. It is a matter of some urgency.'

  'Will you cover for me? Please?' said Liebermann.

  'Of course. But you must return by midday.'

  Liebermann rushed out of the hospital and ran to the main road where he found a cab waiting on the corner.

  'Leopoldgasse,' he called to the driver as he opened the door. 'And I'd appreciate it if you could get me there fast.' The cab driver touched his hat and whipped the horse. The carriage jolted forward and Liebermann fell back onto the black leather seat. Dodging two tram cars the driver crossed Wahringerstrasse and headed down Berggasse towards the Danube. They were over the canal in minutes and rattling down a small road that took Liebermann to his destination.

  When he got out of the cab Liebermann found himself standing in front of a small row of shops. The entrance to one of them, painted in dull green paint, was made conspicuous by the two police constables standing outside. He introduced himself and they allowed him to pass. It wasn't until he stepped inside that Liebermann realised the shop belonged to a locksmith.

  A worn brown curtain separated the vestibule from the workshop. Liebermann could hear Rheinhardt's voice. As Liebermann was deciding whether or not to proceed, Haussmann followed him through the front door, his notebook and pencil in his hand.

  'Inspector Rheinhardt is interviewing one of the neighbours,' he whispered. 'Would you be kind enough to wait in here, Herr Doctor?' Haussmann offered Liebermann a chair.

  'What has happened?'

  'Murdered in his sleep.'

  'Who?'

  'Herr Uberhorst – one of the medium's circle. An ugly business.'

  Haussmann walked towards the curtain, shaking his head and looking rather pale. The brown material billowed in his wake.

  Liebermann took the seat and waited. He strained to hear Rheinhardt's interview but Herr Uberhorst's neighbour was too softly spoken. He could hear questions, but no answers.

  Eventually, Rheinhardt raised his voice: 'Thank you for your assistance, Herr Kaip. I am much obliged.'

  'Not at all, Inspector. I only wish I could have been more helpful.'

  The curtain parted and Rheinhardt ushered a bearded man in a kaftan to the door.

  'Goodbye, Herr Kaip.'

  'Inspector.'

  Liebermann rose from his seat.

  'Max,' said Rheinhardt, 'I'm so glad you could come.'

  'I persuaded a colleague to do my ward round – I can only spare an hour.'

  'That will be quite enough. Did Haussmann tell you what happened?' Liebermann nodded. 'Let me warn you, it's not a pleasant sight.'

  Rheinhardt led Liebermann through the cluttered workshop to a staircase that spiralled up to the first floor. The landing had only two doors, one of which was ajar. As Liebermann crossed the threshold he knew that something dreadful had happened. The air was tainted with an ominous metallic fragrance.

  The room itself was small and bright. Shafts of sunlight slanted through the angled slats of a battered jalousie; the blind swung backwards and forwards, rocked by a gentle breeze, sounding an irregular tattoo against the window frame. A crude rustic table stood against the wall. On it rested a large washbowl, a jug, a hand mirror and a pair of pince-nez. The room was dominated by a large four-poster bed veiled with white muslin drapes. From Liebermann's position he could see that the two visible drapes were dappled and striped with blood.

  'How was he killed?' Liebermann asked.

  'Bludgeoned to death, we think.'

  Liebermann approached the bed and gently pulled the nearest piece of muslin aside. What he saw filled him with a deep sense of revulsion. His stomach heaved and for a moment he thought that he might be sick.

  The drapes made a luminous white box, the sides and top of which were splattered with congealed blood and globs of fibrous tissue. Herr Uberhorst (or at least the person whom Liebermann presumed had been Herr Uberhorst) was still lying beneath the bed sheets, but half his face had been destroyed. His left cheek had been stoved in and the maxilla had been smashed. Liebermann could see directly into the corpse's mouth, as far back as the soft palate. Several teeth were scattered around the dead man's shoulders and some had got caught in his hair, which was matted with yet more blood and a dried crust of cerebrospinal fluid. Worse still, the upper cranium had been perforated, revealing the wrinkled grey-pink matter of his brain: it glistened wetly, a strange fruit surrounded by petals of shattered bone.

  Liebermann swallowed. He let the drape fall back.

  'He was discovered,' said Rheinhardt, 'at seven o'clock this morning by the maid. She'd come to change his bedding.'

  'Poor girl.'

  'Yes, she's speechless. The lock on the front door is intact, and there's nothing here to suggest a forced entry. Herr Kaip – the neighbour – didn't hear anything in the night. He and his family weren't disturbed.'

  'There's no sign of a struggle.'

  'And the bed sheets are still quite tight.'

  'Indeed. So he must have killed Herr Uberhorst while he slept.'

  'Why do you say "he"?'

  'Oskar, a woman – even one with a heavy club – could not inflict such wounds. Look at how deep they are. This is a man's work.'

  'Alternatively,' said Rheinhardt, 'he could have been killed quite suddenly. In which case, the man's presence in the bedroom did not alarm him.'

  Liebermann looked at his friend quizzically.

  'What I mean,' Rheinhardt continued, 'is that he may have known the assailant.'

  'He was killed by a friend?'

  'Perhaps.'

  'Was Herr Uberhorst a homosexual?'

  Rheinhardt shrugged. 'He was a sensitive man, certainly. But whether or not he was a homosexual, I have no idea.' He paused for a moment and then added: 'However, I do not think so.'

  'Why?'

  'The way he talked about Fräulein Löwenstein. It's unlikely.'

  Liebermann looked over at the jalousie, which continued to knock loudly against the woodwork.

  At that moment Haussmann entered the room. He still looked very pale.

  'Sir, Herr Kaip has come back again. He says that his wife has just told him something that he thinks might
be important.'

  'Excuse me, Max.'

  In spite of the revulsion that he had felt earlier, Liebermann felt compelled to examine the corpse again. He pulled the drape aside.

  Death was revelatory. It exposed the fundamental physical nature of the human condition. He looked from the pulpy mass of Herr Uberhorst's face to the abandoned pince-nez and back again. Some obscure connection made him feel inexpressibly sad.

  This is what we are, he thought.

  Meat and bone. Cartilage and viscera.

  'Max.' Rheinhardt appeared again at the door. 'Frau Kaip – she said that Herr Uberhorst had a visitor early yesterday evening. An odd-looking man with a drooping moustache who carried a cane.'

  49

  'YES,' SAID PROFESSOR SPIEGLER. 'A definite improvement. The catch is so much easier to operate.'

  'Thank you, sir,' said Bruckmüller, assuming an ingratiating and somewhat insincere smile.

  The professor of surgery placed the clamp on the table and then picked up a curette whose weight he gauged in his expert hand.

  'This is very light.'

  'A new amalgam,' Bruckmüller replied. 'The scoop is made from the same alloy.'

  Spiegler exchanged the curette for the scoop, and then compared the weight of each against an equivalent instrument of the same size.

  'Have you sold many?' Spiegler asked.

  'Yes,' said Bruckmüller. 'We recently had a large order from Salzburg.'

  'Professor Vondenhoff?'

  'I think it was, sir. And we also sold several of the large curettes to Professor Surány.'

  'In Pest?'

  'Profesor Surány is a frequent visitor.'

  'Indeed,' said Spiegler, clearly satisfied with the intelligence that he had gathered concerning the acquisitions of his academic peers.

  Bruckmüller turned to the junior sales assistant.

  'Eusebius, fetch the specula, there's a good chap.'

  The young sales man crossed the room and began to remove a wide drawer from a large cabinet.

  'No, no,' Bruckmüller called. 'Those are the hook scissors!'

  'Sorry, Herr Bruckmüller,' said the assistant.

  'Next cabinet along – third drawer from the top.'

  'Very good, Herr Bruckmüller.'

  Bruckmüller smiled at the professor and rolled his eyes.

  'Just started,' he whispered.

  The young man pulled the correct drawer from the adjacent cabinet and struggled back to the table. The drawer contained several rows of silver instruments with wooden handles.

  Bruckmüller picked out the largest and offered it to the professor, whose face beamed with pleasure.

  'Excellent. You made it!'

  'Exactly to your specifications. See how much larger the bills are. We will describe it in our catalogue – with your permission – as The Spiegler.'

  'Well, I'm honoured, Bruckmüller.' The professor squeezed the handles together and watched the flat metal bills open. 'It's a beauty.'

  'To lock the bills, the long handle slides up and the short handle slides down,' said Bruckmüller.

  The professor followed Bruckmüller's instructions and the various parts of the speculum moved, snapping into place.

  'Do you know what this is for, young man?' said Spiegler to the junior assistant.

  Eusebius looked towards Bruckmüller.

  'It's all right, Eusebius – you can answer.'

  'No, sir. I only know that it is a speculum.'

  The professor laughed.

  'Make a little circle with your thumb and forefinger – like so.' The professor demonstrated and the young man followed suit.

  'When I wish to examine a growth in a patient's rectum, I slide this instrument into the anus.' Spiegler pushed the closed bills through the small hole created by the assistant's thumb and forefinger. 'And I prise it open.' He squeezed the handles and the metal bills drew apart, widening the simulated sphincter.

  The assistant swallowed.

  'Does it hurt, sir?'

  'Of course it hurts!' said the professor, laughing amiably.

  Bruckmüller joined in with a hearty guffaw and slapped the junior assistant hard on the shoulder. But his good humour was immediately moderated by the sudden appearance of a policeman looking through the shop's front window. Bruckmüller recognised him immediately. The young man had been at Fräulein Löwenstein's apartment.

  'Excuse me, Herr Professor,' said Bruckmüller. He marched across the shop floor and opened the door. There was a blast of noise. The street outside was full of afternoon traffic. A tram rolled by, its bell clanging loudly.

  'Yes?' Bruckmüller was almost shouting.

  'Herr Bruckmüller,' replied Haussmann. 'I wonder if you could spare a few minutes?'

  'Again?'

  50

  COUNT ZÁBORSZKY PRESSED the needle through the parchment-like skin of his arm and depressed the plunger of the syringe. He closed his eyes and waited for the morphine to take effect.

  The police had found him taking his lunch at the Csarda restaurant. They had insisted that he accompany them to the Schottenring station where he had been questioned all afternoon. During one of the rest periods he had been allowed outside to smoke a cigarette. He had strolled towards the Danube canal. On his return, he had seen a carriage pull up outside the station. A young man had been frogmarched into the building. It looked like Otto Braun.

  The police had wanted to know why he had been to see Herr Uberhorst the previous evening.

  'I have enemies,' he had said, pointing at his bruised eye. 'I wanted to consult Herr Uberhorst on a matter of security.'

  'You wanted him to supply a lock?'

  'Yes. A good one for my front door.' The Inspector had looked at him sceptically. 'I lost some money at cards . . . to a gentleman. It is my understanding that he is anxious to get it.'

  'Why did you not come to the police for protection?'

  'The gentleman in question is from my homeland. We have our own way of doing things.'

  And so the questions had continued – a relentless inquisition.

  That irritating, fat Inspector!

  As the morphine took effect a gentle warmth spread through Záborszky's body. His eyelids became heavy and a blurred impression of the world flickered for a few moments before giving way to shadow. The day faded and magical colours began to coalesce out of the infinite darkness. He saw a great house sitting on a wall of rock and heard the sound of a foaming river, rushing through a deep valley.

  'Zoltan.' The voice was female and sounded distant. 'Zoltan?'

  Was it his mother? One of his sisters?

  He tried to open his eyes but found it difficult to do so.

  'Here, let me take that.'

  Slowly, his lids lifted and he saw the vague shape of a woman kneeling beside him.

  His hand was still holding the depressed syringe and the needle was still in his arm. She carefully placed her thumb and forefinger on the glass body of the syringe and tugged it from his weak grip. Záborszky watched a bead of blood well up from the dermal puncture. It grew, and finally trickled along the crease of his elbow joint. He was fascinated by its brilliance – a bright scarlet.

  The woman's feet appeared in his field of vision.

  She was wearing a pair of small leather boots with high heels – the laces crossing between two columns of silver-edged holes. He could not see the hem of a dress or any evidence of an undergarment. She was wearing black cotton stockings, and as he raised his eyes he noticed that her legs were slim and shapely.

  It wasn't his mother.

  The woman's stocking tops were heavily embroidered with a complicated floral pattern, and were supported by green garters that bit into thighs of luminous white flesh.

  In order to continue his examination Záborszky had to raise his head – a task that seemed to require an extraordinary amount of effort.

  Struts of whalebone fanned out from a tiny waist, supporting sails of shiny red silk. Záborszky became engr
ossed by every detail – the dangling ribbons, the threads of green and gold, the hook-and-eye arrangement that kept the corset tightly closed. The woman's statuesque breasts were pressed together, and were powdered. For the first time Záborszky became aware of her perfume – which reminded him of night-scented stock.

  With one final Herculean effort, Záborszky tilted his head back and looked up at her face.

  'Well.' Her lips were moving, but there seemed to be no correspondence between the motions of her mouth and the sounds that she produced. 'Do you want some kätzchen?'

  She opened her legs and sat on his lap – straddling him as though he was a horse. She pulled his face on to her breasts, and without thought he began to kiss them. The flesh was firm and remarkably cool.

  Her hands were in Záborszky's hair. She pulled her fingers together and jerked his head back.

  There was something about her face that made him feel uneasy. She was curiously familiar.

  'What's the matter?' Her words had a shifting, liquid quality. 'You look scared.'

  Those green eyes . . . those spirals of blonde hair.

  'You mustn't be scared.'

  How could this be?

  'I've got something for you.'

  'Lotte,' he whispered. 'Lotte?'

  Szépasszony. Fair one. Demonic seductresss.

  His hands slid up the woman's bare arms, over her smooth shoulders and settled in the hollows beneath her lower jaw.

  The witch had said: She will get you.

  'What are you doing?'

  Záborszky's fingers closed around the woman's neck.

  Those green eyes. Storms and showers of hail.

  The woman tried to move but discovered that the Count's grip was resolute. His expression betrayed the kindling of a strange passion.

  'Please . . . let me go,' she said.

  Squeezed through the passage of a constricted windpipe, her voice was suddenly very thin.

  51

  COSIMA VON RATH seemed entirely out of place in Rheinhardt's office: too large and too colourful for such a functional space. She shifted her weight on the hard wooden chair, her capacious haunches spreading and bulging over its edges. Rheinhardt would have found her presence less disconcerting had she been held aloft in a palanquin, supported on the shoulders of eight Nubian slaves.