The Strangler's Waltz

by Richard Lord

  Hitler and Ricks then shook hands, Hitler gathered up all his belongings, including his new purchase, and rushed out of the bar, nodding politely to the men out front and wishing them a pleasant day.

  As he hurriedly made his way back to the Westbahnhof (from where he would catch another tram), Hitler reached into his pocket and fumbled with the knife. It felt good, quite good, and he was proud of himself that he had had the guts to go there and procure the weapon.

  It was the perfect choice, too. Weapons were strictly forbidden at the men’s hostel; possession of a weapon meant immediate expulsion with probably a permanent ban attached to it. Bringing in a gun, or even a large knife, would risk the end of his residency there.

  But this piece was perfect: if someone from the administration there found it, Hitler would claim that he needed it for his work as an artist … to slice paper, maybe other materials. Sometimes he even needed such a knife to reshape a corner of a picture frame, he could say.

  No, this weapon would not get him into any trouble. More importantly, it might be able to get him out of some trouble. Serious trouble.

  Chapter 12

  The day after the funeral, Inspectors Stebbel and Dörfner went to interview Karsten von Klettenburg. As suggested by the widower, the meeting took place at his pied á terre in the center of town. He did not wish to meet at any of his business offices, as he thought his personal tragedy should be kept separate from his business dealings.

  Shortly before three, the two policemen arrived at a striking building on the southern stretch of the Ringstrasse. Waiting for them just inside the ornate front door was one of von Klettenburg’s servants, a dour fellow trying to look cheerful. He escorted the visitors to the lift and attempted a smile as he pressed the button for the fourth floor, which was also the top floor. (This structure, unlike police headquarters and most other public buildings, had a full-service lift that allowed a complete stop at every floor.)

  As they stepped out of the lift, another servant met them. This fellow bowed so deeply, Dörfner felt he was trying to kiss his own navel. The bow ended, he guided the two visitors to the von Klettenburg flat.

  They followed the servant inside to the study, where Karsten von Klettenburg was waiting for them. He had been poring over the set-up on a chessboard, which he eased to the side before rising and politely indicating that the visitors should take their seats. He then turned and pointed to the board.

  “It’s a re-creation of the famous seventh game of the Lasker-Schlechter title match.” He duly noted that the reference made no impression on either of the inspectors.

  Stebbel took a quick perusal of the room and noticed two other chessboards on a shelf to the right, and one on a shelf to the left. “It would seem that you’re quite the chess enthusiast, Herr Geheimrat.

  “Yes, it is one of my special passions actually. And as you have noticed, Inspector, I’m also a fond collector of beautiful chess sets. Strange as it may sound, I feel they impart a sense of permanence.”

  Both inspectors smiled politely. Stebbel had flirted with chess while at the Gymnasium and later at university, but never poured much of himself into the game. The only time Dörfner had ever touched a board or chess pieces was when he burst in on a match to make a roughhouse arrest of a Serbian agitator.

  “I find that chess is also a very useful game for someone like myself. It’s excellent training for the business world. In fact, I believe that a successful businessman should always be a good chess player.”

  Stebbel nodded towards the arrangement on the desk. “Did your wife also play the game?”

  “Yes. But not very well.”

  On that note, the formal interview got underway. The first few minutes followed the standard script: full introductions, extending condolences, gratitude for seeing the two cops so quickly. Stebbel then jumped to the pivot in the script by saying they realized that the Herr must have many things to do at this time, and they didn’t wish to steal too much of his time. A round of nods later, they got down to the less pleasant matters.

  Von Klettenburg himself delivered the opening. “I want to assure you gentlemen that I’m ready to give you all the assistance I can. I want to see this monster who murdered my beloved Anneliese arrested and subjected to the full measure of justice our great country provides. I trust you gentleman will see to the first stage of that.”

  “We appreciate all your help, Herr Geheimrat,” Stebbel replied. “And we hope to reward your trust with the capture of this … person.”

  “More like a fiend than a person, I’d say. But please, please, ask me any questions you think might help here.”

  As if on cue, Dörfner flipped open his notebook and started running down the questions.

  “Herr Geheimrat, did your wife have any enemies, or anyone who might want to settle a severe grudge?”

  “Enemies? I can’t imagine anyone who would want to be her enemy. She was such a lovely person … so gracious, so generous.”

  Stebbel then stepped in. “But a grudge maybe. Could she have … unintentionally offended someone, a servant or a shop assistant who then wanted to do her some harm as retribution?”

  “Again, gentlemen, I just can’t imagine anything like that happening. As I said, my late wife was overwhelmingly gracious. She was an uncommonly sensitive person, always finely attuned to the needs and feelings of others. And, of course, generous. Generous to a fault, one could almost say.”

  “Did she express any fears, any uneasiness of late?”

  Stebbel finished the thought. “Well, what we mean is … did she feel that she was being followed, her movements tracked maybe? By …oh, let us say a thief who saw her as a likely target for an assault and robbery. Did she have any fears about the streets, going about the city?”

  “Sorry, gentlemen, none that I know of. I wouldn’t say that such fears were not there, but if so, she never chose to share them with me. But that was my Anneliese: she never wanted to burden me with worries about something that might simply be a misunderstanding. She knew how many other things I had to worry about, and she would never throw some additional worries onto the pile.”

  He paused and pursed his lips slowly. “Now I wish she had been a little less cautious in talking about such things with me and others in our circle. Perhaps if she had, this tragic event could have been prevented.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Herr von Klettenburg. Regrets are usual when something like this happens. It’s all too easy to think that our own mistakes, something that we’ve overlooked, contributed to the final tragedy. But it’s rarely the case that such cautions could have prevented the crime. The criminal would have just sought another way to get to your wife and do whatever he wanted to do.”

  “Thank you. But I still torture myself with the thought that …” He trailed off, swirled his head to the side and slapped the desk harshly.

  Dörfner turned to Stebbel who gave him a slight nod, signaling that they could now move to the rather awkward stage of the interview.

  “Was your wife acting strangely of late, Herr von Klettenburg?”

  “Strangely?”

  “What I mean is, acting out of character. Saying strange things. Showing an interest in things that might not be so … respectable. Maybe overlooking caution where caution is clearly called for.” He stopped and took a deep breath before throwing out the next question. “Did she perhaps go out and not explain where she was going? Or give an account of where she had been that you didn’t find entirely credible?”

  Von Klettenburg stared first at Dörfner, then at Stebbel; his patrician stare had a clear measure of distaste to it. Dörfner responded perfectly. “We don’t mean to be in any way offensive, Herr von Klettenburg. And we certainly don’t wish to go poking into your private affairs. But when such a horrible crime takes place, it’s our duty as police inspectors to pursue every possible avenue. Even those that are barely possible.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I see that you are both fine gentlemen and that
you would never engage in anything gratuitously offensive.”

  He then sighed as he tapped his upper lip. “All I can tell you is that at this moment, I cannot think of any behavior my late wife exhibited that could fit any of the descriptions you just threw out there. But I will try to examine the darker recesses of my memory and see if anything like that surfaces. If I do think of something, I will certainly contact you right away and share it with you.”

  It was now Stebbels’ turn. “We would appreciate that, Herr von Klettenburg. On the very unlikely chance that any such thing ever comes to your mind, of course.”

  “Of course. I think we all understand the situation quite well, gentleman. And let me again remind you that we are all working on the same side with this. As I already assured you, I will do everything in my power to help you find this murderer and bring him to justice.”

  The two policemen again thanked von Klettenburg and wrapped up the interview neatly. They then took their leave and were escorted out the door and into the lift by the servant. Back on the ground floor, they managed to make their own way out the front door as the dour servant stationed there earlier had disappeared.

  They flagged down a cab to take them back to police headquarters. As they rode, they traded their impressions of the interview. Stebbel’s uneasiness about von Klettenburg’s demeanor as he walked out of St. Stephan’s was in no way weakened by having now met the gentleman personally and questioned him. As he they rode along, he turned to Dörfner, “Did our Geheimrat strike you as a bereaved man, someone suddenly widowed, and widowed in such a horrible way?”

  Dörfner brushed it off as typical of von Klettenburg’s class. “These people, they have different ways than the rest of us. They like to keep their emotions wrapped up tight. Or at least, they don’t want to show their emotions to people like us.” Stebbel gave a skeptical shrug. “They’re trained most of their lives to act this way, don’t you know. The way they’re brought up, if one of them got caught in a burning building, he’d probably walk out slowly, never letting his panic show, maybe even stopping along the way to admire a painting or something.”

  “OK, you might be right, but I still think there was something missing there. I realize this thing about the upper classes maintaining a façade, but with von Klettenburg, I had this feeling there wasn’t much under the façade.”

  Dörfner shrugged, then glanced out the window to see how close they were to police headquarters. He was anxious to get back into a universe of people like himself; the very wealthy always made him feel uncomfortable.

  “Ja, maybe. I don’t know. I guess I really don’t know how people in that class function. But I’m pretty sure he’ll give us all the help he can.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Absolutely. He obviously wants this thing solved, and solved quickly. No matter how bereaved he is, or not, the whole mess has got to be a stinking embarrassment for him. He wants the mess taken care of.”

  “Oh, I have no doubts about that: he clearly wants the mess taken care of.”

  Just then, the taxi turned into the Burgring and headed for the police headquarters, four streets away.

  There was, however, some parade slithering along just outside the Palace of Justice, so the whole area was blocked off to motor traffic. As a result, the inspectors had to climb out and walk the last three streets.

  “Another one of those damned visiting dignitaries,” Dörfner hissed. “I don’t know why they don’t just stay where they belong.”

  “Is your leg alright?” Stebbel asked. “We can maybe – ”

  “No, no, I’ll be alright. Just the time lost really.” He rubbed the back of his head hard with his full palm. “God damn dignitaries; not good for anything but making everything inconvenient for the rest of us.”

  Dörfner walked with a noticeable limp – a result, he claimed, of a combat injury from his military days. When asked to give details, he told everyone – including Stebbel – that it was the sort of thing soldiers don’t like to talk about. Everyone left it at that.

  But one day, a friend of Stebbel’s whose job gave him access to the police department’s personnel files provided the details of that “combat injury”. Dörfner was, indeed, shot in the lower leg, but it wasn’t enemy fire. He was stationed in eastern Galicia, and members of his battalion would fight the evening boredom in that God-forsaken outpost by drinking heavily and sometimes playing a game they called Morons’ Csárdás.

  The rules of that game were as simple as they were stupid. One soldier would shoot towards the lower legs of another standing about ten meters away. That soldier would move to dodge the bullets, kicking up his legs in imitation of the popular Hungarian Csárdás dance.

  Often the soldiers would play in pairs, a drunken marksman and a “dancer” in each pair. The marksman would shoot at the other team’s dancer, then his armed partner would shoot at the legs of the one standing next to the soldier who had just fired. A favorite variation would be for the dancer and the shooter to switch roles: after firing, the marksman would hand the gun to his partner and would then prepare to start “dancing” himself.

  And like the Csárdás music and dance itself, the action would start out slowly, then speed up, until the dancing soldier had to start dancing his way clear of ringing bullets every few seconds. The game ended when each side had fired two full rounds, which was deemed the right amount for a good game.

  It’s not quite clear if Dörfner was so drunk that night that he couldn’t kick his legs up at the right time, or if the shooter was too drunk to come close while still trying not to hit him. Whichever it was, one bullet caught Dörfner right in the flank of his left leg. He let out a sharp scream and fell to the ground.

  Fortunately, the excess alcohol he had consumed helped him bear the pain until a doctor could be found and brought to the infirmary where the wounded dancer lay, a clumsy tourniquet strapped around his leg. A week later, he was reassigned back to Vienna to complete treatment for his wound.

  The injury was not crippling, but it was still enough to earn Dörfner an early discharge from the army. Ironically, he was given a citation upon his release with a commendation saying that he had taken his injury during the course of “meritorious action”.

  When Stebbel asked his friend with the personnel files why the army had issued such a citation, he was told it was standard practice in the Austro-Hungarian military for soldiers injured doing stupid things like that. Apparently, the military did not want Russian operatives to get a clear notion of what fools the military of the Dual Monarchy was stationing out near the Russian border.

  But the citation certainly helped Dörfner’s application to join the Vienna police service move quickly to approval. As Stebbel’s friend in the Personnel Office said, “It just proved that he had the necessary stupidity to become one of us.”

  Chapter 13

  The distinguished looking gentleman in an elegant blue suit arrived some ten minutes before the appointed time. He approached the desk sergeant at the reception and said, “Excuse me, but I was asked to come in and speak with Inspectors Dörfner and Stebbel.” He then presented the sergeant his card. The sergeant pulled over the Visitors Sheet and copied the name exactly as it appeared on the card: Professor Doktor Sigmund Freud.

  Freud declined the offer of a seat on the visitors’ bench and stood surveying the office while the two inspectors were informed of his arrival. Then the honored doctor was escorted in by the sergeant.

  The session took place in the main interview room, the one used for special guests. The chairs in that room were finely upholstered and stuffed to the point of extreme comfort. And the man about to be interview certainly qualified as a “special guest”. Freud was at the peak of his fame and influence then, and it was an honor just to have him appear at police headquarters as a witness.

  Hours before the meeting, the two policemen had agreed on a strategy about how the session would proceed: Stebbel would serve up most of the questions, while Dörfne
r would just poke in a follow-up here and there. Otherwise, Dörfner would serve as backdrop to the Q&A, a visual reminder of how serious the whole affair was.

  Freud had now settled into his seat. Stebbel smiled at him. He was struck at how ramrod straight the great psychiatrist sat. More, he had placed his left hand on the arm of the chair, at its knob, in fact; his right hand was laid easily on his right thigh, the fingers slightly arched. He looked like he was posing for a photo, perhaps a photo to appear in the inside flap of his next book. And it looked like a pose he had working on and struck hundreds of times already.

  The celebrity doctor and the police inspectors traded greetings and other amiable formalities. Then they started in on the real business.

  Stebbel started out carefully. “Doktor Freud … we called you in here because we hoped you could help us with the case of Anneliese von Klettenburg.”

  “Yes; the officer who presented the summons to me had already mentioned that fact.”

  “We happen to know that Frau von Klettenburg was one of your patients.”

  Freud nodded. “This is true.”

  “So what we wanted to know …”

  “Excuse me,” Freud interjected. “But I’m curious as to how you came to know that.”

  “We were given access to Frau von Klettenburg’s appointments book. Also, her chauffeur reported that he had driven her regularly to Berggasse 19, and then waited there until Frau von Klettenburg re-emerged an hour later.”

  “Ah, I see. It’s … reassuring to know that our guardians of public safety are so thorough.”

  “We try to be thorough, Herr Doktor. And sometimes we succeed. Now, what we would like to know is anything that can help us break the case. For instance, did Frau von Klettenburg reveal any fears that she had, or talk about any enemies, or anyone who was unusually jealous of her?”