Dine and Die on the Danube Express

by Peter King

  Ferocious battles had been fought many times in history over this crucial bend where two great rivers meet. I knew that such conflicts had persisted since Celtic times and decided that, after breakfast, I would seek out Professor Sundvall and ask him to fill in the details.

  I was watching boats on the gently flowing Danube when the door to the dining coach opened with an unusual abruptness. A steward burst in, looked around the tables. He evidently did not see the person he was looking for, but at that moment the door at the other end of the coach opened and Karl Kramer entered.

  The steward immediately approached him, and the two spoke in low tones. The steward was clearly agitated and, over his shoulder, Kramer saw me. He exchanged a few more words with the steward, then the two of them came to my table. The adjacent tables were empty, but even so, Kramer’s voice was kept low.

  “You had better come with us. Werner here tells me we have another dead body.”

  I almost choked on the coffee. Werner, the steward, was a small man with streaky gray hair and an alert manner.

  “Tell us,” Kramer invited.

  “It’s a young lady,” Werner said. “I’m afraid she’s dead.”

  I felt a freezing cold grip me. After carefully swallowing the mouthful of coffee, I took another sip for restorative purposes. It didn’t help. Fortunately, Kramer looked so disturbed by the news that he didn’t notice my alarm, and the steward was so upset he was not in an observant mood either.

  “Where is she?” Kramer asked.

  “In her compartment. I think she—you had better come and see,” said Werner.

  We walked out of the dining coach, all endeavoring to look calm. I wasn’t sure any of us were convincing. Werner led the way through the adjacent coach and into the next. My heart was pounding, my brain filled with disbelief and anguish.

  When had this happened? After I had left Irena’s compartment? But such a short time had elapsed. Would she admit anyone at such an hour? Perhaps she had thought it was me returning. Who else would she admit?

  When the steward stopped in front of a compartment door and Kramer produced his master key, my stomach flipped over, my head was in turmoil—but now the reason was different.

  I had been rehearsing my answers. “She was alive when I left her … Certainly, I had no reason to harm her … No, I had never met her before this journey … What time had it been? …”

  Now my brain was settling. I was still puzzled, but knew I didn’t need my defensive answers.

  It was not Irena’s compartment.

  My utter relief must have showed in my attitude, but neither Kramer nor Werner the steward noticed. My relief was that Irena was all right—but Werner had spoken of a dead woman. Who was it?

  The door opened and we entered. She sat in a chair at a table for two. She wore a sky-blue dressing gown and puffy slippers. It was Elisha Tabor.

  She was in a normal sitting position, though her head rested on the chairback, her eyes closed. She was not breathing, but her face appeared relaxed. Kramer pressed his fingers on the inside of her wrist, then shook his head. He placed his hand flat on her forearm. “She has been dead six to eight hours,” he said.

  An empty wine glass was on the small table in front of her. I sniffed at it but could detect nothing. All was orderly and completely normal.

  Kramer moved restlessly through the room, looking, peering, probing, and Werner took his lead from the security chief and did likewise but touched nothing.

  I went into the bathroom. In front of the large mirror, an array of cosmetics was spread and several bottles and small boxes of pharmaceutical products. I looked through them—headache remedies, sleeping pills, cold remedies. Kramer came in, and I shook my head.

  “Then it is far beyond coincidence,” he said. “It is murder.”

  We continued our investigation, but none of us found anything unusual. Werner glanced out of the window as we were concluding our third tour of the compartment.

  “We are leaving Hungary,” he told Kramer.

  I knew that he was reminding him that the train was no longer under the official jurisdiction of Hungary and that would make it easier to continue on to Bucharest without hindrance. The multinational nature of the Danube Express blurred those lines of delineation anyway, and the blurring was compounded by the diplomatic leverage that Herr Brenner could exert.

  Kramer had his phone out and called Dr. Stolz first. I could hear that there was some amazement at the other end of the connection. It was understandable that the doctor should be bewildered at being called upon to attend to yet another dead body. It was clearly not turning out to be the relaxing journey he had anticipated.

  Kramer then called Thomas, and I could hear that he was asking him to check what messages had gone out in the recent hours. Next, he called Erich Brenner and broke the news to him. He didn’t do it gently—there was no way to do that.

  He had hung up, and we had patrolled the compartment once more without seeing any item that was unusual, when Herr Brenner arrived. He was out of breath and bordering on the incredulous. He stared at the body, then listened to Kramer and shook his head sadly. “Two women dead. I can’t believe it.”

  He and Kramer had a discussion on the political ramifications and agreed that it should be possible to continue the journey to Bucharest and turn over the investigation to the authorities there. The possibility of stopping in Yugoslavia because the crime had been discovered there was dismissed as quickly as it arose.

  “Besides,” Kramer said grimly, “we intend to solve both deaths before reaching Bucharest.” He looked at me and I nodded vigorously. “That’s right. We will.”

  Herr Brenner looked relieved. He and Kramer put together a short message to send back to Donau Schnellzug headquarters in Germany and secure strong backing there first for the train’s continuation, then another to send ahead to Bucharest to have them prepare a forensic team to bring on board.

  “We will have this solved before then,” Kramer said, “but we need to have Bucharest believe that they will have authority over it.

  Brenner left, and, as he did so, Kramer’s phone buzzed. He listened, then, the phone still in his hand, said to me, “A message went out from a cell phone just before midnight. It went to the Budapest Times.”

  “Czerny?”

  “It could have been.” He shook his head. “What a pity we are not permitted to have a full trace on every call that goes out.”

  “Can you have Thomas have a look at the morning edition of the Budapest Times? See if there was a story that could have gone out?”

  He talked with Thomas, then shook his head at me. I held up a hand. “Don’t hang up—one other thing.” I took out my notebook, ripped a page from it, and scribbled a short message on it. I riffled through the notebook pages and added an e-mail address. I handed the message to Kramer. “Have Thomas send that.”

  He read it out into the phone. First, he gave Thomas an e-mail address in Geneva, Switzerland. There was a note of perplexity in Kramer’s voice as he read my message.

  “‘Emil—one, before you drink your next glass of Pinot Noir, ask 121 ADU for full physical description. Two, potential cargo buyer beside original? Urgent response vital.’” Kramer had to repeat it for Thomas. It must have sounded just as mysterious to him. Kramer slapped his cell phone cover back in place.

  “It’s a wild idea,” I told him. “A long shot—but it’s worth a try.”

  “‘Long shot,’” he repeated, “ah, yes, from the days of horse racing, yes?”

  “Correct.”

  “And so wild, you don’t want to tell me what this is all about?”

  “On the nose,” I said.

  He nodded wisely. “Another horse racing expression.”

  “Precisely,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I WAS STILL FEELING an immense relief as I left Kramer’s office—relief that it had not been Irena who had been killed. I regretted that Elisha Tabor had to be the victim but
I did not feel ashamed of being glad it was not Irena.

  That she had been killed was no longer in doubt. The conclusion was that the same person had killed both victims, and it was probable that the motives were closely linked.

  I returned to the restaurant coach, and the first person I saw was Irena. She was sitting alone, and I joined her. She smiled brightly, then her expression changed.

  “Is something wrong?”

  She was very intuitive, I had learned that.

  “I’m afraid so,” I said, and told her of Elisha Tabor.

  Her face clouded. “Oh, no! That’s terrible! The poor woman! How did she die?”

  “The same poisons that were used on Talia Svarovina and Paolo Conti.”

  She shuddered. “I hope it was a quick death.”

  “It was, and a painless one,” I assured her.

  “I didn’t know her really well, but we talked a number of times.” A glint came into Irena’s eyes. “So now we have to find out who killed her—and before we reach Bucharest.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  She saw me eying her breakfast. It was a boiled egg, a slice each of salami, ham, and cheese and a roll. She had only just started on it. “I felt hungry today,” she explained, eating quickly. “We have to go to work. What can I do?”

  “Have you seen Magda Malescu this morning?”

  “No, why?” She caught her breath. “You suspect her?”

  “Not especially, but a lot of questions still hang over her head.”

  “I haven’t seen her in here. Maybe she takes breakfast very late or more likely in her compartment.”

  “In her compartment probably. Tell me, did you learn anything at the banquet in Budapest? I didn’t have a chance to ask you last night.”

  “Neither of us had much chance for talking about murder, did we?” she said with a mischievous smile. “After the banquet, I talked to Helmut Lydecker.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Making women disappear.”

  “I hope he didn’t think you were volunteering.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t. No, he talked about Magda Malescu though.”

  “Why her?”

  “Because I asked him.”

  “Good for you,” I said with a smile. “What did he say?”

  “Oh, he said she was a very good assistant for the act. She was a fast learner and willing to practice as long as was needed.”

  “Did he say anything about her on a personal level?”

  “I tried to get him to do that, but he steered away from it. I reached one conclusion though—”

  “Go on,” I urged.

  “I think he’s still in love with her.”

  “After all this time? Surely he—”

  “What do you mean, ‘after all this time’? How long is love supposed to last?”

  “Well, it’s thirty years ago, isn’t it?” I said weakly.

  “So? Couldn’t he be in love with her still?”

  “I suppose so. You think he is?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I’m trying to figure out what that might mean,” I said.

  Irena cooled off a little. “He’s a magician, isn’t he? Makes women disappear? Maybe he had something to do with her disappearance the time we all thought she was dead.”

  “I wonder how well he knew Talia Svarovina,” I said. “I also wonder just what was the relationship between Malescu and Svarovina.”

  “I thought you interrogated Malescu on that subject?”

  “Herr Kramer and I did talk to her, and we asked that specific question. Naturally, Malescu said they were good friends. What else would she say?”

  Irena looked pensive. “There are many strange relationships between people on this train. Malescu and Doctor Stolz are another—he was once her lover, too, and he’s a doctor, so he has drugs and medicines, doesn’t he?”

  “We have no evidence against him at all though.”

  Irena tossed me a look of disdain.

  I shook my head sorrowfully. “Centuries of barbarian ancestors and decades under Nazism and Communism have given you a disregard for some of the conventions of democracy like evidence and proof, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Well, it does sometimes protect wicked people when we have to produce silly things like those,” she protested.

  “Do you know any good tortures?” I asked. “Perhaps that would be our best method of getting truthful answers to all our questions.”

  “Ha-ha,” she said.

  “But as we can’t do that,” I said, “we have to resort to more sophisticated methods.”

  “By ‘sophisticated,’ you mean clever.”

  “Clever would be good. Do you have any ideas?”

  “You’re the detective. What would Scotland Yard do?”

  “Kramer and I are going to have to talk to Malescu again. There are still some things she hasn’t told us.”

  Irena nodded emphatically. “Torture—you’re right. This may be the time for it—and Malescu would be the one to try it on, perhaps you should—”

  “We’ll try a normal interrogation first,” I said.

  She pouted in disappointment. “It may be a mistake. She is a devious woman.”

  “Nevertheless, we’ll try it first.”

  Her shrug said, All right, go ahead and make your own mistakes. Aloud, she asked, “What can I do?”

  “Larouge still sounds suspicious, probably because we don’t know much about him. Friedlander has more motive than anyone to want to get hold of the Mozart manuscript—”

  “I thought he was a famous conductor?”

  “Well-known, if not famous.”

  “Then he can’t be a crook, can he?”

  “Even famous people can be crooked.”

  “H’m …” She digested that for a moment. “I suppose I can talk to Herr Lydecker again. He knew both Malescu and Talia Svarovina.”

  “All right. Maybe some connection exists between those two women that we haven’t found yet.”

  “And I suppose,” she said, with a toss of her head, “that while I’m interrogating the men, you’ll be interrogating the women?”

  “Sounds like a sensible division of labor.”

  “Who comes after Malescu?”

  “Eva Zilinsky.”

  “You like her, don’t you?”

  “She’s refreshing to talk to and—”

  “Refreshing!”

  “Yes, you know what I mean—lively.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Irena said tartly. She paused to glance out of the window meditatively. “Two women murdered. Both of them sort of attractive …”

  “I’m glad you said that. It’s been bothering me. A pattern of some kind might be suggested although two women are not quite enough to reach any conclusion.”

  “Would you like more women to be murdered so that your ‘pattern’ could become more definite?”

  “Of course not, but it worries me when I think there may be an association I’m missing, that’s all.”

  She had a charming smile, and she displayed it. “I know what you mean.” She pointed out the window. “We’re approaching the Iron Gate. Do you know it?”

  Sloping, tree-grown hills rose on the left bank, up to high sandhills on the Romanian side. On the Serbian side, large expanses of green grass unfolded like well-kept lawns.

  “The Iron Gate is a series of cataracts, isn’t it?” I asked. “I have heard of it but never seen it.”

  “Yes, it is. It used to be wild and rushing water, shallow and with huge rocks but a lot of work has been done to clear it and make it safer for boats. I remember learning in school about the stone bridge that crossed the Danube here. It was built by the Romans, but then the Emperor Hadrian destroyed it so the invading Goths couldn’t use it. You can still see a few pieces of the original bridge though, sticking up above the water.”

  “The Danube must be shallow all through here.”

  “It is, but you can often see dred
gers at work—they keep it just deep enough for the passenger boats.” She started to rise. “I’ll see you later, I—oh, I meant to tell you, Elisha Tabor was having an affair with a man on this train.”

  “What?” I exploded.

  She looked at me innocently. “Yes, she—”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Oh, I don’t exactly know it.”

  “Then why do you say—explain yourself, Irena,” I said sternly.

  “I mean, she didn’t tell me, and I didn’t see her with any particular man—but I knew.”

  “Intuition?”

  She shrugged. “If you want to call it that.”

  “Your Gypsy ancestors?”

  “Don’t make fun of me,” she said with mock anger. “I know that I do, well, sense things.”

  “So what else can you tell me? Who the man was, for instance?”

  “Just because she was having an affair with a man on the train doesn’t mean that he was the one who killed her.”

  “It puts him high on my suspect list,” I said.

  “I suppose so. Oh, if I knew who he was, I’d tell you.”

  “Can’t you intuit?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Use intuition to work out who he was.”

  She looked out of the window for inspiration. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment.

  “Care to guess?”

  She pondered. “I don’t think so.”

  This investigation is in a sorry state, I thought to myself, when here I am asking a girl I had never even met a week ago to guess who had murdered two women.

  She saw my doubt. “Does this help?”

  “I can’t say. Are you really sure about it?”

  “I’m sure that I know this is what I feel. I already told you I don’t actually know.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about it before?”

  “Before when? No, you don’t need to answer that—no, it was a sort of confused mixture in my mind, and it all just came together now.”

  “Suddenly?”

  “I suppose my mind had already registered Elisha’s change of attitude. The shock of hearing that she was dead must have been what sparked the realization that she was having an affair. Does that sound strange?”