by Frank Tallis
There was a knock on the door and a stocky bodyguard entered. He was dressed in the green ‘court’ uniform sported by the mayor’s inner circle: a green tailcoat with black velvet cuffs and yellow coat-of-arms buttons. He was carrying a tray loaded with yet more pilsners.
‘Ah, Anton,’ said Lueger. ‘Most thoughtful.’
The bodyguard collected the empty steins and replaced them with full ones before bowing and making his exit.
‘A good man, eh?’ said the mayor.
His companions drank to the bodyguard’s health.
Steiner wiped the froth from his upper lip with the back of his hand and said: ‘Oh, before I forget, Karl, I think you should know that I’ve received another one of those ever-so-discreet communications from the palace.’
‘About your comments?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who was it from?’
‘One of the emperor’s aides, Count Lefler. He asked me to consider whether my attack on the vivisection practices at the anatomical institutes was really wise.’
‘Did he now,’ said Lueger, adjusting his necktie.
‘It was worded politely enough but it was clearly meant as a warning. He said that certain members of the medical faculty were deeply offended. You can guess who, of course.’
‘Perhaps they’re not so stupid after all,’ said the mayor. ‘Perhaps they can see where this is going?’
‘Gentleman,’ said Bielohlawek, ‘I am a simple merchant, an honest trader. I am afraid that you will have to explain.’
‘My dear fellow,’ said the mayor, ‘it’s all very simple. If we can arouse a little public feeling, a little antipathy, then the hospitals will have to accept stricter controls. In due course, if we have more say in hospital affairs, we will be able to address the other problem. That is to say, the principal problem.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Bielohlawek. ‘Them.’
‘How did this happen, I wonder?’ said the mayor.
Steiner became agitated. ‘The Jewish doctors tell the Jewish bankers, and the Jewish bankers tell the emperor’s mistress!’
‘Now, now, Leo,’ said Lueger, holding up a finger in mock admonition. ‘I can’t have you saying anything too disrespectful about the money-Jews. It was Rothenstein, remember, who allowed us to use all his land, at no cost, for the reservoir.’ The mayor’s errant eye did unstinting service for the cause of irony. ‘You will recall, I hope, my fulsome praise last year: one of the best and a true citizen.’
‘Rothenstein,’ said Steiner. ‘As if he couldn’t damn well afford it!’
The company fell silent until the mayor spoke again — more softly this time, and more serious in tone. ‘The emperor has the empire. But Vienna is mine. When will the palace realise this?’
6
‘death and the maiden?’ said Rheinhardt.
Liebermann flicked through the pages of the songbook until he found Schubert’s early masterpiece, which occupied only a single page and looked easy to play. He saw octaves, minims and quavers, nothing that a beginner couldn’t tackle. Yet he knew that this simplicity was deceptive. He understood that this sparse notation had much in common with the exposed beams and empty sashes of a derelict house. There was enough space and silence here to permit the uncanny to make its presence felt. He glanced at the two beat rests and felt a thrill of anticipatory dread. The little black rectangles were like coffins: the bar lines like shelves in a vault.
The young doctor depressed both the sostenuto and soft pedals of the Bosendorfer and placed his fingers over the keys. He relaxed and allowed the force of gravity to draw his hands down. Solemn harmonies became something like a funeral march, composed with such subtle genius that its measured tread also sounded a little like a berceuse, a fateful lullaby.
Rheinhardt began the maiden’s plea on an anacrusis, and the piano accompaniment immediately became agitated.
Voruber! Ach, voruber!
Geh, wilder Knochenmann!
Away! Ah, away!
Away, fierce man of bones!
Rheinhardt leaned against the piano, as if weakened by the approach of the grim reaper.
Ich bin noch jung, geh Lieber!
Und ruhre mich nicht an.
I am still young, please go!
And do not touch me.
His voice trailed off and the four chords that followed invited the listener to step into the damp hollow of an open grave. The subsequent fermata was chilling.
When Rheinhardt sang again, he did so in the person of Death.
Gib deine Hand, du schon und zart Gebild!
Bin Freund, und komme nicht, zu strafen.
Give me your hand, you lovely, tender creature!
I am a friend, and do not come to punish.
It was barely a melody — a chant on a single note.
Sie gutes Muts! Ich bin nicht wild,
Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen!
Be not afraid! I am not fierce,
You shall sleep softly in my arms.
The final bars were peaceful, the funeral march, transposed into a major key, progressing inexorably to the second fermata and eternal rest.
After a respectful hiatus, Liebermann said, ‘I have heard it a thousand times but it still never fails to touch me. The maiden, begging for her life, and Death, like a lover, taking her in his cold embrace.’
‘Yes,’ Rheinhardt agreed. ‘And it is peculiarly epic, don’t you think, for a song of such brevity?’
‘Indeed,’ Liebermann replied. ‘A metaphysical opera condensed into forty-three bars.’
He closed the piano lid and the two men retired to the smoking room, where they took their customary places in front of the fire. Liebermann poured the brandy and they lit cigars. In due course, Rheinhardt produced an envelope and passed it across the cube-shaped table that separated the two armchairs. Liebermann opened the seal and withdrew a set of photographs.
‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, ‘That’s-’
‘Ida Rosenkrantz,’ Rheinhardt interjected.
‘She’s dead?’
‘Yes. It’ll be in the newspapers tomorrow. Because she’s a singer at the court opera we were obliged to inform His Majesty before notifying the press. Unfortunately, the lord chamberlain experienced considerable difficulty locating him. Our emperor had gone hunting.’ Rheinhardt paused before adding, ‘In Hungary.’
‘What a tragedy,’ said Liebermann, shaking his head. ‘She had such a fine voice.’ He looked again at the first image and his expression communicated both bewilderment and horror.
Rheinhardt described his arrival in Hietzing, the discovery of the dead singer, and summarised the particulars of his interviews with Doctor Engelberg and the housekeeper, Frau Marcus.
‘Engelberg was confident that Rosenkrantz’s death was accidental. He expressed a modest qualification with respect to suicide, on account of the singer having seen a psychiatrist last year for a throat condition called globus hystericus; however, she did not suffer from suicidal melancholia and the laudanum was only prescribed to help her sleep. Be that as it may, I found myself disinclined to accept his opinion. There was something about the position of the body that wasn’t quite right. You see?’ Rheinhardt gestured at the photograph Liebermann was studying. ‘The way she’s lying there, in the middle of the rug and with her arms by her sides. Engelberg insisted that there was nothing irregular about it, but I wasn’t so sure.’ Rheinhardt paused to draw on his cigar. ‘Professor Mathias conducted the autopsy and his findings confirmed that I had good reason to feel uneasy. Rosenkrantz had imbibed a significant quantity of laudanum, but not enough to cause her death. She also had a broken rib.’
‘Which one was it?’
‘The eighth, on the left side of the ribcage.’ Rheinhardt exhaled and watched the smoke from his cigar ascend and disperse. ‘There was no evidence to suggest that a struggle had taken place: no marks on her body, no rips in her garments, and no smashed items on the floor of her bedroom.’
‘Fr
aulein Rosenkrantz wouldn’t have retired for the evening with a broken rib. She would have called a doctor.’
Rheinhardt nodded. ‘I asked Professor Mathias if the injury could have been caused by a fall, but he didn’t think so. You see, the rib was completely broken, snapped in two.’
‘And apart from this broken rib?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No other symptoms of pathology?’
‘None at all.’
Rheinhardt waited to see if Liebermann would reach the same conclusion as Professor Mathias. The young doctor lit a second cigar,played a five-finger exercise on his knee, and after a lengthy pause said: ‘Then the cause of death was compressive asphyxia and the rib was broken unintentionally.’
‘Bravo, Max,’ said Rheinhardt, raising his glass.
‘The perpetrator,’ Liebermann continued, ‘discovered Fraulein Rosenkrantz either unconscious or very close to the point of losing consciousness. He or she then applied pressure to her chest to ensure that her lungs would not expand.’
‘And how do you think that was achieved?’
‘Fraulein Rosenkrantz was a small woman. A strong man might simply have pushed down on her chest.’ Leibermann stretched out his fingers to demonstrate. ‘However, compressive asphyxia would probably have been achieved more effectively — and with greater efficiency — if the perpetrator had simply sat on her.’ Liebermann paused, his flow halted by an intrusive image of the opera singer, drugged and laid out on the floor, defenceless. He hoped that she had lost consciousness completely when death finally arrived to take her. ‘Unlike strangulation,’ Liebermann continued, ‘suffocation leaves no tissue damage detectable at autopsy. The perpetrator’s expectation was that attention would focus exclusively on the empty bottles of laudanum and that, eventually, a verdict of accidental death or suicide would be delivered. In the absence of any alternative explanation for Fraulein Rosenkrantz’s death, this would indeed have been the most probable outcome. Most pathologists would reasonably presume that respiratory failure was in some way connected with the laudanum, even if the common signs associated with an overdose were absent.’
The two men stared into the flickering fire. Liebermann found that he could still hear the introductory bars of Death and the Maiden. He was listening to a vivid auditory hallucination and the sombre chords provided a fitting accompaniment to his thoughts. This inner music fell suddenly silent when Rheinhardt asked, ‘Can we deduce anything of the perpetrator’s appearance from Fraulein Rosenkrantz’s injury? His weight and size, for example?’
‘I’m afraid not. The eighth rib is not particularly strong. It would be as likely to break under the weight of a small woman as a large man.’
‘The method itself is of some significance, surely.’
‘One must suppose that the perpetrator had made a thorough survey of the options available to a would-be murderer. Compressive asphyxia would not be the first choice of an uninformed party.’
‘Then the murder might not have been opportunistic, as you at first suggested, but planned.’
‘Indeed, that is also possible. He or she could have forced the singer to drink laudanum at gunpoint, prior to suffocation.’
Liebermann worked his way through the photographs and returned to the initial image, a full-length view of the opera singer lying within the fringed rectangle of a Persian rug.
‘What manner of individual,’ Rheinhardt said, ‘would leave a room in which they had just committed murder, neglecting to address such an obvious cause for suspicion?’
‘Someone in a hurry. Or an obsessive,’ Liebermann replied. ‘Someone whose fastidious character might find expression in the habitual lining-up of objects: a person — most likely male — who favours well-cut clothes and is prone to pedantic speech; an orderly man of above average intelligence who is careful with money and may own a collection of some kind — a numismatist or philatelist.’ Rheinhardt raised an eyebrow at the specificity of his friend’s description. ‘I am simply listing the features of a certain neurotic type,’ said Liebermann testily. ‘You did invite me to speculate!’
Rheinhardt inclined his head, acknowledging his friend’s rebuke.
‘Quite so,’ he said.
Liebermann extracted a head-and-shoulders portrait of Fraulein Rosenkrantz from the pile of photographs. The camera had exposed a wealth of detail — the curvature of her long eyelashes and the dimples on her cheeks. Her mouth, pouting even in death, suggested a fragile sensuality, the awkward, self-conscious charm of an ingenue.
‘I spent much of today,’ Rheinhardt continued, ‘perusing Fraulein Rosenkrantz’s address book. It contains many names: musicians, bankers, actors, even a Hungarian prince. Some of them might be able to help us with our inquiries. But tomorrow I intend to begin at the opera house. I have an appointment with the director.’
Liebermann sat up in his chair.
‘What? You are seeing Director Mahler tomorrow?’
‘I am indeed.’ Rheinhardt was aware of how much the young doctor venerated the director of the court opera. Such was his devotion to the director’s music that he had travelled to Munich for the premiere of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. ‘You are welcome to come along with me, if you want, but I had supposed you would be working.’
‘Mahler.’ Liebermann repeated the name with soft reverence. He stubbed out his cigar and asked, ‘What time are you expected?’
‘Eleven o’ clock.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘But what about your patients?’
‘They …’ Liebermann’s expression became pained. ‘They are just as likely to benefit from a consultation later in the day.’
‘You won’t get into trouble?’
‘No,’ said Liebermann, extending the syllable expansively but failing to sound very convincing.
‘Very well, then,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘Let’s meet at Cafe Schwarzenburg. Ten-thirty.’
7
Franz-Josef — Emperor ofAustria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Jerusalem, King of Bohemia, King of Dalmatia, King of Transylvania, King of Croatia and Slovenia, King of Galicia and Illyria, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow, Margrave of Moravia, Duke of Salzburg, Duke of Bukovina, Duke of Modena, Parma and Piacenza and Guastalla, Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, Prince of Trient and Brixen, Count of Hohenembs, Grand Voyvoce of Serbia and Duke of Auschwitz — woke from a nightmare. It had taken the form of a hellish vision: mobs in the street, gunfire, and improvised incendiary weapons spilling fire across the cobblestones outside the palace. Field Marshal Radetzky, in reality dead for over half a century, had burst into the chancellery wing. All is lost, he had cried. It is over. Undone. These lamentations had been appropriated from a play that the emperor had attended at the court theatre only the previous evening. In the strange permissive world of dreams there was nothing contradictory about Radetzky quoting a line from a tragedy written decades after his own death. Similarly, the emperor had not troubled to question why a large orchestra had been playing a Strauss waltz while Vienna burned.
The awful vision had left him with a sense of foreboding, a portentous dread that sent shivers of unease down his spine.
It was still dark.
After reaching out for some matches, the emperor lit a candle. The clock face showed that it was three-thirty. Franz-Josef doubted that he would be able to get to sleep again. And anyway, there was little to be gained by trying because he rose every morning, without fail, at four, and was never at his desk later than five. It was a custom that he broke with only under exceptional circumstances, and nightmares could no longer be classified as exceptional.
Throwing the eiderdown off, he swung his legs out of bed and his feet made contact with the cold parquet. The bed itself was low and made of iron, a simple truckle bed and an absurdly modest piece of furniture in so large a room. Taking a deep breath, the emperor stood up and pulled the bell cord.
Within moments, a team of servants arrived carrying a rubber bath, which was subse
quently filled with lukewarm water. The emperor was relieved of his nightshirt and one of the retainers, an ancient gentleman with a pronounced tremor, remained to perform such essential functions as passing the soap and scrubbing the emperor’s back. When His Majesty’s ablutions were finished, Ketterl, the valet de chambre, emerged silently from the shadows, ready to dress Franz-Josef, as he did every morning, in a military uniform. As soon as the emperor was fully accoutred, Ketterl withdrew, walking backwards through the double doors, leaving his monarch alone to say his prayers.
Franz-Josef knelt, made the sign of the cross, joined his hands, and prayed for the late Empress Elisabeth, his immediate family, his ‘friend’ — the actress Katharina Schratt — his ministers, and the peoples of his vast empire, united, by a miracle as magnificent as the transubstantiation of the eucharist, in the flesh of his own person.
Rising from his prayer stool, he expanded his chest and, defying the aches and pains of age, marched with a spring in his step to the study. Sitting at his desk, he lit an oil lamp and paused to consider the oval portrait of the late empress. Electric lighting gave him headaches.
The emperor’s study was hung with red silk damask decorated with a stylised pineapple motif, and the ceiling was embellished with raised gold tracery. For a royal and imperial apartment, however, the room was unimposing. The rosewood and walnut furniture, sober and practical, might have graced the home of a successful businessman.
There was a knock on the door.
‘Come in, Ketterl.’
The valet de chambre entered, carrying a tray of coffee, rolls and butter.
‘Your Majesty.’
‘Thank you.’
Ketterl placed the tray on the emperor’s desk, bowed, and backed away through the doors which were shut by unseen hands as soon as he was beyond the threshold. The emperor ate his simple breakfast and watched the sky brighten as he smoked a trabuco.
