The Empty Mirror (20 page)

“Exactly. Let us surmise that his silence about certain incidents had been purchased or otherwise won-”

“By threats?”

Gross shrugged at the suggestion. “Perhaps. But facing death anyway, perhaps he decided he had no reason to hold his tongue any longer.”

“I see your point. This is intriguing to be sure.”

“It becomes even more intriguing once one looks at the date of the empress’s visit. June twelfth.”

Gross said this with a nourish, as if pulling a final rabbit out of a hat, but it took Werthen a moment to figure out why this date should be so important.

“You mean that the Prater murders began just a few days later?”

“The body of the washerwoman, Maria Müller, was found on June fifteenth,” Gross concurred.

“You’re saying the murders were somehow connected to what Frosch knew about the Mayerling tragedy? That seems a bit of speculative fancy.”

“I am surmising nothing, merely stating certain facts. Herr Frosch was the sixth victim in that string of murders. Yet he is the first for whom we can now find a possible motive. Such motive being that he was going to release damaging information about the death of Crown Prince Rudolf. If Rudolf’s death was not a suicide, then those responsible would not want such information made public. This is instructive, I believe.”

Werthen’s head began to spin with possibilities. If Rudolf had not killed himself, then who had murdered him? And why?

The crown prince had been known as a firebrand and a liberal. He had written surreptitiously for Moritz Szeps’s liberal
Wiener Tageblatt
for several years before his death; his articles criticized the do-nothing aristocracy and the foreign policy of his father that favored alliances with Germany and Russia. Rudolf was also known to consort with powerful Magyars in Budapest seeking Hungarian independence, and to court the
French for secret treaties, both of which would have been treasonable activities. The crown prince had, in fact, numerous enemies at court, in the diplomatic corps of the Ballhausplatz, and in the military. Even the new heir apparent, Franz Ferdinand, could be said to have a motive for Rudolf’s death. It had, after all, cleared the way for him to become emperor upon the death of Franz Josef.

Theories about the crown prince’s death had abounded at the time, in part the fault of the clumsy handling of the matter by the then prime minister, Count Taaffe, who had wanted to employ Habsburg censorship to control the tragedy. The official version had, at first, laid the cause of Rudolf’s death to a heart attack, and no mention was made of the unfortunate young Vetsera woman, who accompanied Rudolf in death. Taaffe had, however, quickly discovered the limits of censorship, for the foreign press got wind of the double shooting, and wild story followed wild story: The Hungarians assassinated him because he betrayed their plot; the French killed him for fear he would tell of their secret negotiations; a local hunting guide had shot him for seducing the man’s wife; he was killed in a duel over the honor of a young Auersperg princess. Finally, it had to be made public in Austria that the crown prince had killed his young lover and then himself, but some still blamed a Magyar or French plot, even an assassination by the prime minister.

Such thoughts were, for Werthen, an open door to unhealthy and unwarranted suspicions, what Krafft-Ebing and other psychologists termed paranoia.

In fact, Gross was getting too far ahead of himself, making too rapid a connection between Frosch’s position as former valet to Rudolf and his death last August. Werthen decided to temper such thoughts with sober reality.

“You forget, Gross, that Binder confessed to those crimes. There was no motive other than the wretched nightmares playing in the mind of a man diseased with syphilis.”

“Such was the official version, yes.”

“The version you subscribed to, as well,” Werthen reminded him.

But Gross ignored this statement. “I recall a comment at the time of Frosch’s death. Something along the lines that Frau Frosch, who had clearly been beaten by her husband, had sufficient motive to want him dead. That in fact perhaps the other deaths were committed only to cover up the real one, that of Herr Frosch. I made that statement with no small amount of levity. However, it may be a theory we now need to reexamine in light of new evidence.”

“Surely you cannot be suggesting we reopen the Prater murders?”

Gross merely raised eyebrows at Werthen.

“You cannot seriously believe that those other unfortunates were killed simply to divert attention from the death of Frosch?” Werthen went on. “Besides, if Frosch were the intended victim all along and the other five only used to cover up the true crime, then why risk exposure by waiting over two months to do him in?”

“That, my dear Werthen, is something to be taken into consideration as we proceed.”

But Werthen did not fully attend to this reply. Instead, he was now struck with a more serious consideration, one he was sure Gross had already thought of.

“But following these admittedly wild conjectures on your part…

“Follow on,” Gross encouraged.

“That would lead one to wonder about the death of the empress, as well. If Frosch were killed because of something he knew about the death of Crown Prince Rudolf, then was Empress Elisabeth’s death connected to that of the former valet to her son? Was she killed because of what Frosch disclosed to her?”

Gross smiled contentedly. “Fine reasoning, Werthen.”

“Outlandish reasoning. The anarchist Luccheni committed
that crime.” And suddenly it was there, popping into his mind unbidden.

“What’s the matter, Werthen? You look as though you’d seen a ghost.”

“The man’s name. That feckless Luccheni. I knew I had seen it somewhere before. Gross, remember the watch list we secured from Meindl? That of anarchists and other terrorists the police were keeping a watch on this summer?”

“Luccheni was on that list?”

“I’d swear I read his name there. ‘Luccheni, Luigi, stonecutter.’ He was in Vienna this summer. My god, Gross, could Luccheni have committed all the Prater murders? But what of Binder, then?”

“We are, it seems to me, Werthen, in the strangely unique situation of having too many guilty parties.”

“This is all supposition, Gross.”

“And supposition it will remain unless we investigate further, my friend.”

Werthen knew what Gross was implicitly asking of him, and it took him no longer than an instant to answer.

“Then let us begin, Gross.
Herr Ober”
Werthen called to the headwaiter. “Another round of wine here.”

As they left the Café Central an hour later, neither Gross nor Werthen was aware of the figure sitting in the covered carriage across the street. He sat in the shadows and watched the pair as they made their way down the Herrengasse.

Not now, he thought. Too public.

So the swimmers had, as he earlier feared, floundered onto something. Amateurs with the luck of amateurs.

Their luck, however, was running out.

Soon. Very soon.

B
erthe had taken his decision well. It was during the intermission in Gustav Mahler’s debut at the Musikverein at the helm of the Vienna Philharmonic. Werthen had met her for dinner and the symphony after leaving the company of Gross at the Café Central.

Mahler was making a name for himself in the city of music. The year before, he had taken over direction of Vienna’s Court Opera and was transforming that house to be the leading one in Europe. Of course to assume that official court position, Mahler, a Jew (though nonpracticing) had had to convert to Christianity.

For his debut, he was conducting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, Werthen’s favorite. The evening had begun with Mozart’s
Jupiter Symphony
, and in the interval Werthen explained to Berthe what Gross had discovered and his own decision to assist the criminologist once more. Werthen’s legal assistant, Dr. Wilfried Ungar, three years out of Vienna law, was a capable young man, well able to take over the work at the law firm for the time being. Werthen’s most important commission, the preparation of Baron von Geistl’s trust, had just been completed.

“You need not explain all this to me, Karl. When I agreed to
be your wife, I did so knowing I am an independent woman well able to provide for myself. I am not marrying you for your earning power. You must do in life those things that most satisfy. Otherwise, what is it all for?”

He wanted to embrace her then and there in the second-floor interval salon of the Musikverein, amid the potted palms and the tuxedoed and bejeweled patrons who were milling about during intermission,
Sekt
flutes in hand. He closed his eyes and smiled at her instead.

Once seated again in the darkness of the auditorium, she took his hand. As the music swelled during the adagio section of the Seventh, he thought he had never been happier in his life.

Meindl was surprised to see Gross back in Vienna. Gross, so he had told Werthen, was playing on instinct. They had come to the Police Presidium this morning to request a favor.

“So you intend writing up the assassination of the empress in your journal,” Meindl said, when presented with the request.

“It should present a fascinating case of the terrorist personality,” Gross said. “Anything we can learn about Herr Luccheni could aid in preventing such another outrage.”

This implicit appeal to Meindl’s professionalism finally did the trick. They were presented with the Luccheni file ten minutes later.

“But how is it you knew we had a watch file on the man?” Meindl asked.

“My colleague, Dr. Werthen, remembered a list of names you so graciously supplied when we were engaged upon … that other business.”

Meindl nodded at Werthen, casting a weak smile. “Quite so.” Then to Gross again: “I will need that file back as quickly as possible. This is all rather irregular, you realize.”

Not a word of thanks for their earlier assistance; not even an
acknowledgment of their participation. The man was an infernal crawler, Werthen decided. Always on the lookout for his own career.

Meindl showed them to a room normally used for interrogation, its windows so high on the wall that one could not see the outside, only imagine it. They sat at the large and rather bruised table placed in the middle of the room, dividing up the pages of the lengthy report between them.

Werthen took the first part of the report, which included a biography of the anarchist Luccheni. Born in Paris in 1873 to an unmarried laundress of Italian extraction, Luccheni never knew his father. His mother left France the year following her son’s birth and placed the infant in an orphanage in Parma. From there he was cast like so much flotsam onto the streets at an early age, to become a laborer. Soon he found an easier occupation as a soldier, serving in Naples under Captain Prince Vera d’Arazona. After three years, Luccheni left the army and became a servant to the prince, but this lasted for only a few months.

Luccheni took to the road, settling for a time in Switzerland, but also roaming to various capitals, including Vienna and Budapest, and falling into the company of anarchists who supplied the pliant and barely literate young man with literature espousing the destruction of society leading to the creation of a free and classless world in its place. Soon he began, according to Swiss police informants who had infiltrated anarchist cells, to espouse his belief in the “propaganda of the deed,” or letting one’s actions spread the philosophy of anarchism.

From the pages before Werthen, it was apparent that Luccheni had come to Vienna in early June. Word had come from the Swiss police that Luccheni had boarded a train in Geneva bound for Vienna on June 10. The police in Vienna had not picked up his trail, however, until June 12, when he was spotted outside a known anarchist haven in the workers’ district of Fünfhaus, a pension run by a Frau Geldner. Luccheni had spent
the day of the twelfth in the grounds of the Volksgarten, the lovely gardens built on what were once part of the city walls, destroyed by French troops under Napoléon. Werthen himself often enjoyed a pleasant afternoon in these rose gardens, laid out to resemble Paris’s Luxembourg Gardens.

Luccheni had passed the morning and afternoon moving from one bench to the other, keeping in clear sight of the entrances and exits to the park, as if expecting someone to enter the gardens at any moment. Finally at precisely 5:28 that afternoon, he was approached by a tall man wearing the clothes of a house-painter: white overalls and a boatlike hat fashioned from an old newspaper. He handed Luccheni a note and left the park. Unfortunately, just at that time, the other half of the pair of police watching Luccheni had had to retire to the nearest pissoir on the Ring. Thus the police had been unable to trace the further movements of this other man. The partner did, however, return in time to aid in the tracking of Luccheni out of the Volksgarten and onto the Ringstrasse, where he turned left, headed toward the Opera.

One watcher crossed the Ringstrasse to follow parallel while the other kept a discreet distance behind the anarchist, careful not to be noticed. Luccheni walked with speed, according to the police report, as if he knew his destination and had to be there at a certain time. Just beyond the Court Opera, he crossed the busy Ringstrasse on Kärntnerstrasse. The two police watchers now changed positions vis-à-vis their quarry. Luccheni continued onto Wiedner Hauptstrasse past the Karlsplatz. Just in back of the Technical University he suddenly turned left onto Paniglgasse, then right at the first intersection, with Argentinierstrasse, and then another left on Gusshausstrasse. The police watchers followed him to about midblock, where Luccheni stopped and seemed to assume watch himself on a building across the street. They did not know which one, either number 12 or 14.

Suddenly Werthen stopped reading. He felt a chill go through his body.

“Gross,” he said. “You should look at this.”

Werthen handed the criminologist the pages he had finished and continued reading from where he had left off.