The Hanging Artist

by Jon Steinhagen

  But Franz could think of no way he could do that.

  First off, there were too many murders that were too disconnected and too far apart. Aside from bearing the markings of having been hanged, there was nothing to link the two dozen currently known together.

  Currently known. Were there unknown murders, too?

  Franz shuddered at the thought.

  Second, the connection to The Hanging Artist was tenuous at best. Yes, the man’s act was many things, including tasteless, sensational, macabre, and disturbing, but the man himself appeared to be above suspicion given the known facts. Why this focus on Henker? Franz felt it was a waste of time.

  Third, he was getting nowhere.

  He paced in front of the morgue, hands in his pockets, and waited for Beide to appear.

  And what of Beide? As far as Franz could tell, Beide seemed to be the only person working on the cases. Wasn’t the entirety of Vienna’s police force committed to solving these crimes? If so, why had he not seen any other official? True, Beide had claimed to be a member of the mysterious “ICPC,” but why would Beide operate alone? The scope of the murders was too great for one person.

  Two people, Franz thought. I’m mixed up in this, too.

  Franz went over what little he knew about some of the victims. According to Hannah Bickel, Hermann Herbort was nothing more than a handsome young man, and no one would profit by his death. As for Inge Hersch, her reputation as some sort of professional mistress might not have won her any awards for good conduct or pristine morals, but who would have wanted to kill her, especially if her health would have put a stop to her in a few months anyway?

  Some nearby clock struck the hour of eleven. A church? The town hall? A bank?

  A bank…

  Franz startled a young woman pushing a perambulator by asking her in a highly excited manner for directions to the Citizens Bank. The young woman obliged, and Franz was off and running down the street.

  ROBERT PRINSKY COULDN’T decide if the gentleman from Zurich was an utter moron or an inveterate ass. From the looks of him, anyone might think him a schoolteacher or even a Lutheran minister, with his high cheekbones, gaunt features, and severe demeanor. But to hear him talk…

  “Herr Herbort had no business telling you that, sir,” Prinsky said. “Not that it would have done you the least bit of harm, of course, you would have been directed to the correct person, which would be me, but… well, that’s as it may be.”

  “God rest his soul,” the gentleman said, crossing himself.

  Not Lutheran, Prinsky observed.

  “Yes,” Prinsky said. “Indeed.”

  “If only I’d returned to Vienna sooner,” the man continued, “I could have seen him before his unfortunate accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” Prinsky said. “Now then, let’s see what we can…”

  “I just assumed it was an accident,” the gentleman said. He looked around the big, cheerless bank, shafts of weak sunshine dropping in from high windows. “You know, it’s funny: I walked in and saw all of the employees wearing black armbands, and I thought, ‘What an unusual dress requirement for a bank!’ and then I thought, ‘That’s nonsense, I must have entered a mortuary by mistake!’ and then I thought, ‘No, I see a vault,’ and then I reasoned that someone very important must have died.” He beamed at Prinsky, as if proud of his chain of thought.

  “No, no one important,” Prinsky said. “Herr Herbort was hardly important.” He glanced at a framed photo on his tiny desk.

  “He must have been quite popular,” said the other man, surveying the employees. “All of you are in mourning; that is to say, it’s a very somber picture, everyone in armbands, and—oh. Well, everyone but you.”

  Prinsky cast a glance at the unadorned sleeve of his gray suit and shifted his gaze back to the gentleman from Zurich.

  “I… yes,” he said. “I had to remove it, you see, because… it was too tight, my arm kept falling asleep.”

  “How inconvenient for you. I don’t recall Herr Herbort being ill.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Well, if he didn’t have an accident, I assume it was some illness?”

  Prinsky cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “He was killed,” he said.

  “You mean he was murdered?” the stranger asked, with such force that everyone in the bank turned around.

  “Yes,” Prinsky said, “and if would be so good as to lower your voice…”

  “But who would want to kill such a nice man as Herr Herbort?” the gentleman asked, even louder.

  “I’m sure I don’t know. Now, then, as to the sorts of accounts we have available…”

  “So full of life,” the stranger said. “So young, so much potential, and such a good-looking man. I quite envied him in that regard. I know it’s a sign of vanity to admit it, but… well, you understand.”

  Prinsky glanced at the photo on his desk. “Yes, yes,” he said, “a tragedy. We were all aghast.”

  “Naturally. You saw him day after day, right here… and socially?”

  “As a matter of fact, he went to the theater with us the night he met his unfortunate end.”

  The gentleman from Zurich smiled. “Ah, yes. He was a great patron of the theater.”

  “How well did you say you knew him, Herr…?”

  “My dear Herr Prinsky, one doesn’t have to know someone their entire life to know a great deal about someone.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Prinsky said. “Now, as to the transfer of foreign accounts to our…”

  “I hope he enjoyed his final outing,” the stranger said.

  “I have no idea. He seemed to be having a good time.”

  “Oh! You were with him?”

  “In a manner of speaking. There was a group of us, and he…”

  “Had you gone to the Musikverein? I adore that place.”

  “No, Traumhalle.”

  The stranger gave the dyspeptic-looking little man a look of kinship mixed with surprise.

  “What a small and completely bewildering world we live in,” he said. “I was there last evening!” He leaned closer to Prinsky and, with a knowing looked, whispered, “The Hanging Artist.”

  Prinsky paled. “Yes, indeed,” he said.

  “A performance I’ll never forget.”

  “No,” Prinsky said.

  “I see you were affected by it the same way as I.”

  “It was singular.”

  “And I tried so hard to be chosen to join him on the stage,” the gentleman said, sitting back. “The man’s a genius. Imagine what a privilege it would be to be near him! To assure myself that he isn’t a… a… a phantom!”

  Prinsky tugged at his sleeves. “As a matter of fact, sir,” he said, betraying the hint of a smile, “I shared the stage with him for a moment.”

  The gentleman from Zurich’s eyes widened. “Go on,” he said.

  “It was… unique.”

  “You searched him thoroughly?”

  “Short of asking him to strip, yes.”

  “And you found…?”

  “Nothing. Nothing but the man himself, that is.”

  “And the rope?”

  “It was just a rope,” Prinsky said.

  “Surely it was more than that.”

  “Well, a rope of silk, to be sure.”

  “To be sure.”

  “Warm to the touch.”

  “Interesting!”

  “I credited that to the stage lights. It was hot as blazes up on that stage.”

  The man regarded him for a moment or two while Prinsky wiped his hands on a handkerchief.

  “Your wife must have been so proud of you,” the gentleman said.

  “My wife?” Prinsky asked.

  “I sense that you are the most devoted of husbands,” the other said, “and you are to be congratulated.”

  “And how do you sense that?” Prinsky asked.

  “Pardon me for noticing, sir,” the man said, “but you have been
stealing glances at the photograph on your desk. No doubt it’s of your wife. She is a lucky woman.”

  Prinsky hesitated, then reached for the photograph as his brow cleared.

  “It’s kind of you to say so,” he said, handing it to the stranger. “I consider myself equally as lucky.”

  The gentleman looked at the photograph: a snapshot of Hannah Bickel. He returned it to Prinsky.

  “The picture of youth and beauty,” he said.

  “Now, then,” Prinsky said, restoring Hannah’s photo to its hallowed spot on the desk, “how much were you thinking of depositing today?”

  The man looked at him, began to say something, and then searched his coat pockets.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, “money. Money. Naturally. The reason I’m here. Now where did I put my billfold? I must have…”

  Two men entered the bank just then, each in black uniforms, caps, and capes. One looked straight at the gentleman and Prinsky and nudged his companion, and the two strode to Prinsky’s desk. They stood on either side of the gentleman, each placing a hand on his shoulders.

  “You’re wanted,” one said.

  “By whom?” the gentleman from Zurich asked.

  They hoisted him from the chair and propelled him across the lobby.

  “Immediately,” said the other, “if not sooner.”

  “Now just a moment—!” were the last words Prinsky heard from the gentleman from Zurich. He watched as the trio banged out of the bank.

  He dabbed at his straggly moustache with his handkerchief, glanced at the photo of Hannah, and wiped the perspiration from his hands for the forty-eighth time that day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE UNSETTLED GUEST

  FRANZ HAD NO time to recall that a mere hour-and-a-half previously he had vowed to never see another corpse, as the sight of the second prompted him to faint.

  Later, he would attribute this to missing breakfast.

  At the moment, however, he attributed it to the corpse itself, hanging from the ceiling, its face black, its tongue protruding, its eyes nearly out of its sockets, indecorously presented without clothing.

  MANY SAY THAT the only way to appreciate the Old World grandeur of the Hotel Das Gottesanbeterin is to approach it as royalty of a century past once had: sedately, by horse-drawn carriage, past the glorious Palais Windisch-Graetz, and then onto Tiefer Graben, where the hotel’s eponymous mantis was displayed in terra cotta bas relief above the gleaming brass and polished wood of its grand entrance.

  Franz, however, was denied such an atmospheric approach. The automobile into which he was forced by the two men raced down Taborstrasse and over the canal—the wrong way down Laurenzerberg, the wrong way along Fleischmarkt, and then up Wipplingerstrasse, where it screeched to a halt in front of the hotel. This was the only screech the automobile had produced; all of the other screeching had come from the many people nearly flattened by it during its record-breaking journey.

  The two men had fairly carried Franz into the hotel; trapped between them and held by the elbows, he had been working up the language to deliver a livid remonstration when he was bundled into the elevator and whisked to the top floor. Once there, the doors slid open with such speed that one would assume they had been greased, and Franz had been propelled into a grand suite where the first thing he saw was…

  ACRID SAL VOLATILE sent swift arrows into his brain, and his eyes opened.

  To the naked corpse hanging above him.

  He had not been mistaken.

  “Very good, Herr Kafka,” said a soothing feminine voice. “That’s it. Come back to us. Gentlemen, some assistance.”

  Franz was conscious of hands hauling him to his feet, dragging him to a chair, and dumping him into it. Again, the lilting voice: “That’s a brave boy.”

  Inspector Beide came into view, smiling.

  “You’ve had quite the morning, haven’t you?” she asked.

  Franz gurgled a response.

  “Water,” Beide said, and a hand appeared with a full tumbler.

  Franz drank, looked up, winced, and sputtered.

  “What,” he asked, “is going on?”

  “A great many things, as you’ve no doubt noticed,” Beide said.

  He took in his surroundings. Beide was accompanied by the two men who had rushed him to the hotel, and by two more men, similarly uniformed, lurking in a corner. One was setting up a camera on a tripod.

  The suite itself was possibly the most elegant accommodation Franz had ever been inside: the walls were papered in a shimmering pale yellow, the silver-gray drapery framed wide French windows, the white carpeting was as soft as fresh butter, and the furniture looked as if it had been transferred from the court of Louis XVI. A wide bed, big enough for a small family and draped with a satiny maroon-and-silver coverlet, dominated the room. It was unmade, and upon it a checkered suit had been meticulously laid out.

  Franz recognized the garish suit at once.

  He stole a look at the body hanging in the center of the room, one of the delicate chairs on its side beneath it. Disfigured as the face now was, he knew where he’d seen the man: the night before, on the stage at the Traumhalle.

  He looked away.

  “Must he stay up there?” he asked.

  “All right, cut him down,” Beide said to one of the men. “And don’t be savages: care over expedience. And I want as much of that rope left intact as possible.”

  One of the men removed a pair of shears from a leather case while another moved an exquisitely carved chaise near the body.

  Beide said, “Wait.” Then, “Step aside.”

  The men stepped away from the body and the man with the camera took a photograph.

  “One more, this side,” Beide said.

  The photographer crossed to Beide, reset the tripod, focused, and took a second photograph of the body from a new angle.

  “Another in repose, when ready,” Beide said to the photographer, who nodded. “And images of the room from each corner, as many as you like, but remember film is expensive.”

  She turned to the fourth man: “Inventory.” He nodded as well.

  The man with the shears climbed on top of the chaise while his partner stabilized it, and began to saw at the rope.

  Beide turned to Franz.

  “We don’t have to sit and watch this,” she said.

  She led him to the anteroom, but kept the door to the bed chamber open in order to check on progress.

  “Have you sufficiently collected yourself?” she asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” Franz said. “Would you object if I loosened my necktie and collar?” he asked.

  “Not in the least,” Beide said. “Where have you been?”

  “You know exactly where I’ve been,” Franz said, “or you wouldn’t have known where to send your goons. The question is, where have you been?”

  “I apologize for leaving you with the late Inge Hersch; it couldn’t be helped.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Beide’s attention drifted to the officers moving about the bed chamber. The shearsman was still working away at the rope.

  “Leo Kropold,” Beide said and, reaching into her tunic, withdrew a slim cigarette case and a lighter. “Cigarette?” she asked.

  “I don’t smoke,” Franz said.

  “It will cloud the smell of death.” She lit a cigarette.

  Franz discovered that he did indeed smoke.

  “What was that name again—?”

  Beide waited for his coughing to subside. “Better?”

  Franz massaged his throat. “An all-too-familiar tightening,” he said. “For different reasons, now, but still… go on, I’m fine.”

  “The gentleman hanging from the ceiling was Leo Kropold,” Beide said. “At least, that is the name under which he was registered. He checked in three weeks ago—to the day. Gave his address as ‘Bern,’ which may or may not be the truth. We’ll be checking on that, naturally.

  “Reg
ardless of his origin, Herr Kropold returned to the hotel last night at fifteen minutes past eleven. He asked the clerk to prepare his bill and to have it ready for him in the morning, as he had decided to leave.”

  “Is that what he said to the clerk? That he had decided to leave?”

  “According to the clerk, yes. Why?”

  “It would seem obvious that he was intending to leave if he asked for his bill. Why would he bother to point out the obvious?”

  “I don’t know,” Beide said, blowing smoke. “Perhaps to make a point? After all, he had booked the suite for the month.”

  “I see. Notification of early departure.”

  “In more ways than one,” Beide said, and put out her cigarette in a compact ashtray that she then covered and tucked into her tunic. “You’re not satisfied.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, that’s all,” Franz said. “A man returns to his hotel, asks for his bill to be prepared, goes to his room… and sometime during the night, hangs himself. Why ask for a bill if one has no intention of paying it?”

  “Perhaps he hadn’t decided to hang himself until much later,” Beide said. “We might get a better idea of that once the medical examiner takes a look at him.”

  “He returns to his hotel with every intention of departing the next day,” Franz said, “and no intention of hanging himself, but somewhere in the night he gets the notion to do away with himself. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “It’s one possibility,” Beide said.

  One of the officers stood in the doorway. They had finished cutting Kropold down and had placed the body on the floor. The officer gestured to Beide.

  “Are you willing to take a closer look?” Beide asked as she rose.

  “Before I continue with this,” Franz said, “I’d like to know why I’m here.”

  Beide nodded to the officer to leave them.

  “You’re part of this investigation,” Beide said. “And I’ve been very happy with your participation thus far. Why do you ask?”

  Franz shook his head. “That’s not what I wanted to know,” he said. “I meant why are we here, investigating this man’s death?”