The Empty Mirror (25 page)

“She gave no indication of the nature of the inflammatory bits, I presume?” Werthen queried.

“No,
Advokat
Werthen. She was quite mysterious about that, I must admit. The notion did intrigue my husband. She was very nervous, almost disturbed. A condition not helped, I dare say, by her discovery upon signing our guest book. Thumbing through the leaves, she found the name of her unfortunate son, a visitor
a full decade earlier when we had first settled in Pregny. She almost broke into tears seeing his signature.”

“And Crown Prince Rudolf. Do you recall the purpose of his visit?”

She smiled. “Neither I nor my husband were in residence at the time. A royal request came to ‘borrow’ our secluded château for a few days. One does not refuse such requests.”

“You do know, though, don’t you?” Gross persisted.

She sighed. “It was no great secret that the marriage between Rudolf and the Princess Stephanie was far from happy. Rudolf had his assignations. I believe he was meeting a fond friend here, one of the illegitimate daughters of the Russian Czar, to be blunt. The unfortunate girl has since taken herself off to America of all places, where she in turn gave birth to another illegitimate child. Or so the gossips have it.”

“Well,” Gross said, standing suddenly and preparing to leave.

“We must thank you for your frankness, Baroness,” Werthen said, rising now as well and trying to cover up Gross’s rudeness.

“I was happy to help. You know I am no gossip myself. I have not told another soul about Rudolf’s visit here. But in the aid of justice, it is of course my duty.”

She seemed to glow all over, Werthen noticed. The Baroness Julie de Rothschild was enjoying her little adventure.

They now had their motive for Elisabeth’s death. Like Frosch before her, she was threatening to make public certain events that someone did not want known.

Werthen and Gross were careful to watch for the tall, gaunt man on their trip back to Geneva. However, they saw no sign of him.

Before dinner, and while Gross was taking a brief rest-they would be catching the night train later that evening-Werthen decided to do some quick shopping. He could hardly return empty-handed to his fiancée. According to the deskman, some
of the best shopping streets were nearby, in the rue Bonivard and rue Kleberg.

Werthen left the hotel, walked along the Quai du Mont-Blanc and past the Brunswick monument. This was exactly the route the empress had taken on the fateful day of her assassination, he remembered. He then turned right on the rue des Alpes, the street down which Luccheni had fled after striking the empress. Would they ever know the truth about that tragedy? Werthen wondered.

Rue Bonivard was the first street on the left, and inspecting the shops, he came upon Baker’s music shop. He recalled that the empress had shopped there the morning before her death. On sudden impulse, and wishing to leave no stone left unturned in their Geneva investigation, Werthen entered the shop and spoke with a young salesclerk dressed in a claret-colored velveteen suit and sporting a Vandyke beard. Werthen’s French served him well enough as he asked the clerk if anyone was in the store who remembered the empress’s final purchases.

“I attended the empress,” the young man said in a voice drenched in self-importance. “You have a personal interest in the matter, monsieur?”

Werthen handed him his business card, and explained as best he could that he was working with the famous Austrian criminologist Professor Dr. Hanns Gross in illuminating various aspects of the assassination.

Gross’s name meant nothing to the salesclerk, who now gazed at Werthen with some distrust. Werthen then mentioned that they were assisting Monsieur Auberty, and the clerk suddenly brightened.

“Ah, the esteemed investigating magistrate. There should be no difficulties in this matter. Dozens saw the anarchist chap kill the poor woman.”

“Yes,” Werthen agreed. “Myself and my associate are, however, attempting to put the crime in context, to give a dramatic picture
of the empress’s last day. I understand that she purchased one of these new pianos that play themselves.”

The clerk smiled at this description. “Yes, the empress was most impressed with this model of the orchestrion, more popularly known as a player piano.”

He led Werthen to a standard-looking upright piano. The brand name Pianola showed over the keyboard.

“One may play the piano as one does a normal instrument.” The clerk sat at the bench, cracked his knuckles, and struck the ivory keys a fierce blow that launched him into the Beethoven Piano Concerto in B-fiat major. The small, elegantly appointed shop reverberated with the strong music. As Werthen began to lose himself in the music, the clerk stopped abruptly midphrase.

“Or,” he said, standing now and taking a paper scroll with punched holes and inserting it in a mechanism under the top hood of the piano, “one may let the instrument, in a sense, play itself.” He sat on the bench again, pushing the pedals, which in turn operated a vacuum motor that turned the scroll. Suddenly the keys to the piano depressed themselves and struck against the internal strings, playing the same Beethoven piece.

The clerk beamed at the machine. “It works on the same principle as the Jacquard looms controlled by a punch card. The perforated paper roll passes over a cylinder containing apertures connected to tubes that are in turn connected to the piano action. When a hole in the paper passes over an aperture, a current of air passes through a tube and causes the corresponding hammer to strike the string. You will note that there is little emotion in this rendering, as a technician simply perforates the paper after it was marked up in pencil using the original music score. I believe soon, however, pianists will be able to use a recording piano that marks the paper as it is played. This will allow for nuance and individual expression in tempo and phrasing. Imagine, we shall be able to preserve the keyboard technique of say, Anton Rubinstein. People a hundred years from now will be able to
marvel at the Russian’s playing as we were until his death several years ago.”

This was all very well, but Werthen had not come into the shop for a musical or mechanical lesson.

“The empress bought this particular model?”

“The very one. It was shipped the week following her assassination. We sought to honor her final request despite the tragedy.”

“And I assume she bought music for the piano, as well?”

“Yes,” the clerk said tentatively.

Werthen noted the hesitation. “What scrolls did she buy?”

“Scroll,” the clerk corrected. “Just one piece of music, the choice of which I thought rather odd, as a matter of fact. We have a wide selection of composers, from Beethoven to Strauss. The empress, however, chose a single work. By Wagner.” Again the hesitation.

“If you please, what was the piece?” Werthen insisted.

“A piano adaptation of the final scene of
Tristan and Isolde,”
the clerk finally answered.

“You mean the ‘Liebestod’?” Werthen said. “Love-death.”

“A wonderful bit of musical creation,” the clerk enthused. “Magnificent in its representation of struggle and resolution.”

“‘How gently and quietly he smiles, how fondly he opens his eyes! Do you see, friends? Do you not see?’” Werthen spoke the words that Isolde sings as the knight Tristan, mortally wounded, lies dying in her arms. “A rather odd choice as a gift for one’s husband.” The words were uttered before he could stop them.

“It was not my place to judge the appropriateness of such music, monsieur. She was the empress, after all.”

Werthen ended up buying Berthe a gold bracelet from Vigot’s, a fashionable jewelry shop in the rue Kleberg. He had it inscribed on the inside with the message
AS PURE AS GOLD IS MY LOVE FOR
YOU. KARL.

The very message that the boulevard dandy Count Joachim von Hildesheim has inscribed in the bracelet he gives to the chanteuse Mirabel in Werthen’s short story “After the Ball.” He doubted, however, that Berthe would notice. Werthen’s short stories were, after all, hardly bestsellers.

Gross and he had dinner together before leaving the hotel. The criminologist was interested in Werthen’s sleuthing discovery:

“You are correct, Werthen. ‘Liebestod’ is an extremely odd bit of music to choose. It is as if she was sending the emperor a message.”

But they put aside further discussion to fully enjoy the food fit for royalty that the Beau-Rivage chef, Fernand, had assembled that evening. They began with a half dozen oysters, followed by
pâté de foie gras de Strasbourg
. Next came
jambon du Parma au melon
and a salad of smoked highland salmon and hothouse greens. Then came a consommé of veal, succeeded by an exquisite chicken-liver mousse with port. Fresh apples and a triple-cream Camembert concluded the feast. The food was accompanied by a bottle of fine Rhine wine, an 1880 Beaune, and pear liquor with the fruit and cheese.

After all, they could not, as Gross said, come to Geneva and not appreciate the cuisine, could they?

It was almost nine o’clock by the time they finished eating. The train departed at ten thirty. Thus they made haste to have their bags brought down, while Werthen settled the bill. They set off from the Beau-Rivage with full bellies and much to contemplate on the return journey to Vienna.

The carriage jostled as they traveled along the cobbled quay. The motion, combined with the amount of wine he had drunk, began to make Werthen feel sleepy. He opened the curtain on his side of the carriage just in time to see another carriage approaching quickly from a side street. The two horses pulling this carriage were in full gallop, their shoes sending blue sparks off the cobbles as the carriage wheeled onto the quay at a terrific
speed. Werthen was about to yell to their cabbie to watch out when the carriage in fact struck theirs a vicious blow on the side. Instead of reining in his horses, the driver of this other carriage whipped them on, further crashing into their own carriage.

Werthen heard their cabbie shout out something in anger, and a third crash sent their carriage careening out of control.

“Jump, Gross,” Werthen shouted. “We’re going off the quay!”

But it was too late. The carriage nipped once before splashing upside down into the waters of Lake Geneva. The inside quickly filled with water. Wearing their bulky coats, both Werthen and Gross were instantly weighed down. Werthen had been a strong swimmer as a youth, though he had not practiced the skill in many years. He thought to take a large breath before the carriage was completely filled with water, but could see that Gross had made no such precaution and was now flailing about in a panic.

Werthen grabbed the criminologist by the back of his collar and was struck for his troubles by one of the man’s flailing arms. He shook off the blow, thrust himself feetfirst out the open window of the carriage, then began trying to tug the larger Gross out the same opening. He felt his lungs almost bursting. To save himself, he would have to let Gross go. Get to the top and suck in more air, then dive again. But Gross surely could not last that long.

Suddenly from behind a strong hand seemed to grip his own coat. Another yanked the door of the carriage open and retrieved Gross. They came spluttering and gasping for air to the surface next to a rusty metal mooring hoop. Werthen grabbed on to this and held Gross in his other hand, as he surveyed the surface of the water in search of their rescuer.

He was nowhere to be seen.

By this time, however, a hue and cry had brought others to the scene, and these men now pulled Werthen and Gross out of the chill water.

Their cabbie had jumped from the carriage before it
plummeted into the water and was bleeding from a head wound suffered upon his landing on the edge of a cobblestone. He was dazed, but otherwise seemed to be fit enough.

“The man was a maniac,” the cabbie moaned. “My horses. My beautiful horses.”

The carriage had now completely sunk, taking the horses with it. There was no sign of the other carriage.

“Terrible accident,” a constable who now appeared on the scene muttered. “People will drive their horses too fast, and this is the result.”

But both Werthen and Gross knew it had been no accident.

Yet who had been their miraculous savior?

Sunday, September 25, 1898
-
Vienna

A
fter being fished out of the cold waters of Lake Geneva, they had returned to the Hotel Beau-Rivage and assumed their old suites. Their clothes were dried and pressed for them by the morning, but they decided not to venture out of the hotel that Saturday. Their assailant might well be awaiting a second opportunity at squelching their investigation, and this time with means less subtle than last night.

Neither did they make an official complaint of the attack. Gross knew it would serve no real purpose other than tying them up in Switzerland for several more days, when their business now was most assuredly in Vienna.

They had reached the Austrian capital on Sunday morning, taking the night train on Saturday and sharing a sleeping compartment to ensure mutual safety-which meant a sleepless night for Werthen, listening to Gross’s stentorian snores.

By the time their train pulled into the Empress Elisabeth West Train Station, a steady cold drizzle or
NieseI
had settled over the city. They were, however, traveling light, for all their cases had been lost when the carriage had spilled into Lake Geneva, and it was easier for them to navigate the arrivals platform and catch
the first waiting
Fiaker
. Luckily, Werthen had been carrying the present for Berthe on his person, and that, along with his pistol and soggy leather notebook, had survived the murder attempt.