by Rick Blechta
When Seidelmann went over to his desk to take an urgent phone call, I got up and sat in the chair next to Tory’s, reaching out for her hand. A twitch showed her first reaction was to snatch it away, but with a tight smile she placed it tentatively in my palm.
“So what have you been finding out, Rocky?”
“I’ve been given information about women who were involved with von Heislinger. My hope is that Schultz will be using the information for your defense at the trial.”
“That’s good.”
“I also had an interesting meeting late last night with someone who was at von Heislinger’s castle: Gertrud Schatzader.”
The change in Tory was galvanic. She leapt to her feet, nostrils flaring. “That bitch? What the hell did she want with you? If she came on to you, I swear to God I’ll rip her goddamn head off!”
Seidelmann immediately stopped his call, and I could feel him looking at us with the utmost interest. The guard out in the hall also got off his chair and took a few steps towards the doorway.
Putting my hands firmly on Tory’s shoulders, I got her to sit down again, feeling her anger fairly vibrating through her body. “Relax, Tory. Jesus! She didn’t do anything. We talked, that’s all. What have you got against her? You’ve hardly said two words about her up till now.”
“I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her, and that would be off the nearest cliff! Did she set up this meeting or did you?”
“Actually, she did.”
“I thought so. I’ll bet she tried to put the make on you, too.”
“As a matter of fact—”
“Well, you just stay away from her! You hear me?”
“Tory, don’t you think your reaction here is a little extreme? I only wanted to tell you that I’ve learned some very interesting things from her, more than she meant to tell me, I think.” I smiled. “Although you’re right about not trusting her as far as you can throw her. If she has your and my best interests at heart, then I’m a horse’s ass.”
Tory turned her head away. “The only horse’s ass here is me.”
“Chwedl a gynydda fel caseg eira.” (A tale increases like a rolling snowball.)
—Welsh Proverb
Chapter 28
TORY
When Seidelmann pulled me out of hypnosis again, I stretched and was aware by mid-stretch that something was terribly wrong. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife. Seidelmann looked completely dumbfounded. Schultz had arrived while I was under, and he didn’t look much better. The door to the corridor was shut and Rocky was gone.
The psychiatrist and Rocky had convinced me that it would be a good idea to try hypnosis again, the idea being that I might have made enough progress internally possibly to allow any repressed memories about von Heislinger’s death to surface more easily. Even though I really didn’t want Rocky to be present, since a lot of other things might come out that I didn’t want him subjected to, I had agreed, since having any information about that horrible night would help him immeasurably.
“What’s wrong?” I asked uneasily. “Did it work? Did I remember anything new?”
“It is a grave setback,” Schultz intoned.
“For heaven’s sake! Will one of you tell me what’s going on?”
“Yes,” Seidelmann answered. “We were partially successful, and we have some information, certainly not all—but we do have a clearer picture. However, my probing led to... something else.”
“Well, you better get it over with and tell me what I said.”
But before Seidelmann could speak, another part of my missing memory crashed back into my consciousness without any post-hypnotic help. While still having that fuzziness of a dream remembered: disjointed and unreal, I also knew without a doubt that it was real, had actually happened.
Rudolph’s eyes were open, staring at me through a red haze of panic, his blood already streaming from the horrible wound across his neck. As the knife I was holding slid into his chest with an almost sensuous smoothness, he twitched several times, let out a long sigh, then lay still.
The shard of memory was enough to start me shaking as tears streamed down my face. I remember Dr. Seidelmann getting up and going rapidly out of the room. Schultz sat there still looking shocked, lost in dark, dark thoughts. Seidelmann returned, and I felt a sharp prick in my arm. My last thought was of Rocky. I wanted Seidelmann to tell him for me...to beg his forgiveness—but consciousness floated away before I could get the words out.
ROCKY
What could anyone say to me? Hell! I didn’t know what to say to myself.
Schultz had offered to drive me back to the hotel, then abruptly changed his mind, asking his driver to circle the Ringstrasse until we were finished talking.
“This is a very bad thing that has happened, my friend, a very bad thing!” he said.
I could do nothing but agree. At last we had the answer to the biggest question of this whole mess, but it was certainly not the one I had been expecting. What we had found out from Tory wasn’t bad; it was devastating. I hadn’t been able to face staying in the room to hear the whole thing. Schultz had finally talked me into listening to the recording of the hypnosis session so that I would know the worst.
“You must touch bottom in a pool to know how far up you must travel to get back to the surface,” he had intoned as he’d taken a small tape recorder out of his briefcase and switched it on. Tory’s voice, followed by Seidelmann’s, flooded the car.
T: I am a very bad person, a pig!
S: Do you know who stabbed Rudolph von Heislinger?
T: Don’t ask me that! Please don’t ask me that!
S: But you insist you don’t remember.
T: I remember.
S: And the maid, Thekla?
T: You already know what happened. I haven’t hidden that away.
S: But you are hiding something away about Baron von Heislinger’s death?
T: (sounding infinitely tired) Yes. And that’s why I’m being punished.”
S: Punished? How are you being punished?
T: My gift has been taken away. I deserve to be punished, and it has happened in the worst way possible. Not being able to play... It’s worse than being dead.
S: But don’t you think that if you tell me it will help to restore your gift? Is there something about Rudolph von Heislinger’s death, something you are frightened to tell me?
T: (whimpering now) No...no! Don’t make me say it!
S: It is all right to tell me, Tory. It is safe now. You will come to no harm from it.
T: No, I can’t!
S: You must tell me, Tory. It is the right thing to do. The baron cannot hurt you any more. Do you remember?
T: (comes out like a hiss) Yes!
S: Who was it? You will feel better if you share this knowledge with the people trying to help you. You cannot keep it any longer inside you. It is poisoning your spirit. Tell us who killed Rudolph von Heislinger?
T: Me!
The tape went on inexorably, as Tory told how she’d sunk the blade into von Heislinger and of the blood pouring out. It was horrible to listen to.
Feeling as if I’d been booted hard in the gut, I told Schultz to turn it off, that I didn’t want to hear any more. The car continued circling the gay old streets of Vienna. Give Schultz one thing: he allowed me plenty of time to pull myself together.
“Where do we go from here?” I finally asked.
“I think you have to look after yourself and your own needs at the moment, Herr Lukesh. This has been quite a blow—especially for you.”
“Not quite the result we were looking for, was it?”
“Yes...and no. Seidelmann tells me that he has suspected from the beginning that Fräulein Morgan was running away from her memories, and this is merely the worst confirmation of what she could not face.”
“What can we do to help her?”
“One word from your wife in court about what she told us today, and her trial would be as good as over
. Do you trust her to keep this from the magistrates?”
“Frankly, the way she’s feeling now, I think it could well be the first thing to happen when the trial begins. I have never seen her so fatalistic.”
“Seidelmann and I would agree with you then. Schultz needs to think more before speaking about this again. You will need to pull your thoughts together, as well, my friend, but now we are firmly up against it.”
“How is Tory?”
“She is fine, considering. Seidelmann gave her an injection, and she will be asleep for many hours. She will also be under constant monitoring from the cameras. Come. Let me take you for a little bite to eat, and then you go back to your hotel and get some rest.”
Easy for him to say. The last thing on my mind was food. “Just take me back to the hotel, please.”
Pulling up in front, Schultz said, “Herr Lukesh, I sincerely regret what has happened today, but,” he sighed heavily, “it is probably for the best that we now know exactly where we stand. You will call me tomorrow morning? We should sit down and make plans. You will do that?”
“Yes. I will call you tomorrow.”
Elen was just coming out as I was going in. “Oh, hello, Rocky. How did you get on yesterday at your... Good heavens! What’s wrong?”
I looked at Elen. “What I really need to do now is take a good long walk. Want to come?”
Without another word, we started walking. I let Elen take the lead. Even though we weren’t talking, it felt good to have someone along. We crossed the street, entering the Stadtpark, and I kicked fallen leaves as we walked along. The golden statue of Strauss glittered even in the muted light of a cloudy day and I thought back to the plans Tory and I had made to visit Vienna some day, just doing the tourist thing and soaking in the music. Now, I was wishing with every fibre of my being that I’d never heard of the damn city. When we ran out of park, we walked along the tree-lined Ringstrasse, heading in the direction of the Danube Canal.
Eventually, I started talking, just rambling talk, really, about how I’d met Tory and our first days together. How I’d had trouble dealing with her gypsy lifestyle, her foibles and problems, the good times and the bad. Elen proved the ideal companion, letting me go on and giving my arm a little squeeze when she felt I needed it. She didn’t push to find out what had happened.
The giant Ferris wheel, Vienna’s second most recognizable landmark, appeared on our right as we crossed the bridge over the Danube canal. We stood in the middle for a while, watching it turn majestically.
“Tory remembered a bit more of what happened,” I finally said.
“And what was it?”
There was no way to put it nicely. “She remembered sticking the knife into von Heislinger.”
Elen didn’t say anything, and when I turned to look at her, she was staring down at the canal, tears dripping off the end of her nose into the water below. “But couldn’t she be imagining that, you know, sort of taking the guilt of his death on herself?”
I shook my head. “Not a chance. Seidelmann had her hypnotized, and it’s pretty clear she did it. Then there are her fingerprints on the knife. It won’t get more conclusive than that.”
“What happens now?”
“The only thing keeping me going is that Thekla told me the video would exonerate Tory. She saw it, and I have to trust that she was telling the truth. There has to be something we don’t know yet. I don’t know how that could be, but all we have to go on now is hope. Hope that the tape still exists. Hope that we can get our hands on it. If we can’t, there’s someone out there who knows something, and we have to find them. Tory still steadfastly maintains she didn’t kill Thekla.”
Elen smiled sadly. “God, Rocky, I don’t know how you do it.”
“What?”
“Here your wife admits that she killed someone, and you still find something to be optimistic about. It makes my problems seem insignificant!”
“Are the problems with your husband worse?”
“No.”She looked into my eyes and shook her head. “Right now this is about you and Tory. Tell me everything that’s happened since you left for that appointment with Ertmann yesterday.”
“It yielded some really useful information.” I told Elen about Ertmann’s video and his promise to help—and why. “And then when I got back to the hotel, I found a message waiting from the wife of one of the attendees at von Heislinger’s that weekend.”
“The one Tory calls ‘The Bitch?’” Elen asked with a smile.
I smiled grimly. “Yeah, that’s her.”
“What did she want with you?”
By the time I’d finished telling Elen everything Ertmann’s video had contained, what Gertrud had told me and what I’d read between the lines from that encounter, and everything that had happened in Seidelmann’s office that afternoon, we were standing on the rocks of the Praterspitz, the extreme end of the Prater, Vienna’s huge park along the Danube. Walking through it had been a revelation, starting with the slightly tacky amusement park (all except the big wheel), followed by a long, tree-lined boulevard. This changed to a smaller road, then paths through a forest, finally ending in waterside meadows. I would have liked to have experienced it in happier times.
As we stared into the murky water at the end of a dull autumn day, a chill wind blew into our faces and the rock-reinforced shores around us looked dead and deserted. Ahead, all the various branches of the mighty Danube, having joined up again, disappeared as they rushed towards the Hungarian border.
I pointed across to the shore opposite. “What’s that up ahead on the right?”
“What, behind those grain elevators and things? That’s a park, more of a grillplatz actually. The Viennese use it for picnics in the good weather. Max took me there when I first arrived. We ate at a Heurigen, a tavern back in the woods. Quite nice, actually. And there’s a small cemetery just over there. Max told me it’s where they bury bodies they can’t identify that are pulled out of the river. There’s a backwater just past those rocks over there that the bodies float into. The cemetery’s a very macabre place. Right out of some old Dracula movie: wrought iron crosses with white crucifixes and numbers instead of names to say who has been buried underneath. They call it Der Friedhof der Namenlosen, the Cemetery of the Nameless. Brrr! I wouldn’t want to see it on a day like this.”
“That must be where the body of that poor Hungarian girl I was telling you about washed up. I didn’t realize the place was around here.”
“I must admit that the area looks a bloody lot more cheery in the summer.”
“How did you get mixed up with this Max guy?” I asked gently.
Elen didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know. It just happened.”
“You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t mind,” Elen began as we started walking back. “It was a strange time for me. I hadn’t been getting along all that well with my husband, and the grant I’d applied for to study abroad came through unexpectedly. I just basically packed up and said I was going to Vienna for six months. I don’t think Dafydd even noticed I was gone until his laundry ran out. To him, life is working in the breakdown shop, playing rugger, and pints down at the pub with his mates. I don’t think he knows what to make of a wife who wants to write learned papers on Viennese art.”
“Why did you marry him?”
Elen laughed bitterly. “I’ve asked myself that bloody question a lot the past few months, believe me!” She shrugged and buried her hands deeper into her coat pockets. “We were both very young. Dafydd was handsome and virile and fun to be with. We went around together for a year and eventually got married like all our friends were. After we’d been married a while, I woke up one day and realized I was just a substitute for Dai’s mum. Sometimes I felt the only difference was that I slept with him.
“Then I met Tory when she came to Aberystwyth to do master classes two years ago last summer. She was everything I wanted to be: funny, free, happy
, her own person. And she was brilliant. My God! Was she brilliant! Her talent shone like the sun. Amazingly, she was also a terrific teacher. The students blossomed under her. We became close friends, and I have to tell you that at first it was like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m actually hanging around with a famous person!’ People turned to stare at us when we walked down the street. As time went on, though, I realized that Tory was a lot more than she appeared to be at first—and a lot less, if you know what I mean. She tries hard to be just like anyone else, even though she isn’t.”
“It’s one of the things I find most attractive about her,” I said.
“Tory opened my eyes to what was possible if I believed in my talents and strengths. We spent hours together playing fiddle and piano, old Welsh and Irish tunes. I’m not very good, but she made me feel like I could actually show her things she didn’t know. That was a pretty heady experience. It took a while to work up the nerve, but eventually I decided to ask for a leave from the university in order to work on my thesis. I realized I wanted the word ‘doctor’ in front of my name. I’d been afraid of taking that step before.
“So on the flight to Vienna, I decided to remake myself completely. Here I was coming to a place where no one knew anything about me. I could be whomever and whatever I chose to be. And do you know what? I actually did it! I went out and blew most of my first three month’s budget on new clothes. I didn’t care whether I would have money for a roof over my head. Things would take care of themselves. And they did, just as Tory said they would. I met Max, and within two days, I had that apartment and spending money, and I was somebody’s mistress. You’re probably shaking your head inwardly at what I’m telling you, but it was bloody marvelous! The people Max introduced me to thought I was clever and intelligent. I never wanted to go back to dull, old Bangor, Wales, again.
“Then Tory called me from Trieste. If she’d told me why she was calling and just what was going on, I don’t think I would have had the nerve to get involved. As it was, what I heard on the radio on the way to pick her up was enough to make me contemplate turning around. She was a mess when I got there. I hardly recognized the woman I’d admired so much.
