A Matter of Breeding (10 page)

‘Did you notice anything out of the ordinary in the last few weeks or months? Any change of mood? Did she appear agitated at all?’

He shook his head vehemently. ‘No agitation, only excitement. She’d been accepted at the Academy of Fine Arts. Set to enroll in the spring.’ He suddenly slumped over the table, face in his hands. ‘My God, who would do such a thing to my sweet girl?’

‘That is what we are determined to discover,’ Stoker said with a voice at once calming and authoritative.

He made Werthen almost believe it.

The front door to the cabin suddenly opened and a tall, good-looking youth strode in, crossbow in one hand and a brace of rabbits in the other. He looked at the tableau in front of him and his eager expression was immediately replaced with distrust.

‘What’s going on here?’ the boy said. ‘Father, who are these men?’

Herr Reiter quickly regained his composure. ‘Kurt, these men are investigators helping to track down your sister’s murderer.’

The youth placed his crossbow in a stand near the door, and took the rabbits to the trough-like basin that obviously served as a sink.

‘Why are you so concerned?’ he said. ‘The others weren’t. They acted like it was Liese’s fault for getting herself killed.’

‘I am sincerely sorry to hear that,’ Werthen said. ‘But we do care. We are trying to gather any information that might have been overlooked in the earlier interview with the gendarmerie.’

‘What’s to tell?’ Kurt said. ‘Liese went to work one day and never came back.’

‘Kurt.’ His father’s voice held both reprimand and decisiveness. ‘They have come to help. You will show common courtesy.’

‘Yes, Father,’ he said. ‘I am sorry that we do not have further information.’ But as he said it, Kurt locked eyes with Werthen and nodded toward the door.

Werthen asked a few more inconsequential questions and then he and Stoker made to leave.

‘I will show them out, Father,’ Kurt said, and followed them out to the waiting fiaker.

‘What information do you have, Kurt?’ Werthen said.

‘I didn’t want my father to hear. He and Mother are barely coping as it is. They try to act brave in front of me, but I know how they feel. I swear, if I find who did this to my sister, I will kill him myself.’

‘What is it you know? Tell me and leave the vengeance to us.’

Kurt looked back to the cottage to make sure that his father was still inside.

‘You should talk with Herr Paulus. The director of the spa where Liese worked. He wanted her for more than clerical duties, I can tell you that.’

Werthen put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Thank you, Kurt. You will be hearing from us.’

Berthe sat in the expansive director’s office of Premium Breeds in the little Styrian town of Piber. The walls of the office were covered in representations of Lipizzaner stallions in oil, water colors, and black and white photographs. Herr Maximillian Hohewart sat in an over-sized leather desk chair behind an empty terrain of rosewood desktop.

‘I must confess, Fräulein Meisner—’ he began, but she immediately interrupted.

‘Frau Meisner.’

‘Indeed. At any rate, I must confess that I am meeting with you only out of courtesy to the wishes of the archduke. If I had my way, women would remain in the home where they belong.’

‘Ah, then Herr Hohewart it is fortunate for me that you are simply a businessman with contractual obligations to the government and not the emperor.’

This comment, rather than putting the fleshy little man with his obviously dyed Van Dyke beard in his place, instead flew rapidly over his bald dome. Hohewart was the sort, Berthe immediately assessed, who was much too fond of his own voice to bother listening to others.

‘I have business to conduct, madam. So perhaps we can …’ He rocked impatiently in his chair.

‘But of course. My line of questioning is quite straightforward. His Highness hopes that I might get to the bottom of this breeding scandal.’

This Hohewart
did
hear, and blood rose immediately to his face.

‘What scandal would that be?’ he all but shouted.

‘The one involving –’ she now consulted her notes gathered from the journals of Theo Krensky – ‘the bloodlines of three different new sires introduced to the Lipizzaner stud over the past number of years. These include Siglavy Primavera, Tulipan Fantasca, and Maestoso Redux. The bloodlines of these three cannot be verified. I believe you are very aware of this mounting scandal, Herr Hohewart, as you were interviewed in regards to this by a very knowledgeable journalist.’

‘I can hardly be expected to remember every scrivener who comes my way, Frau Meisner. Is this journalist and his anonymous source the sole basis of your charge of scandal?’

‘I don’t remember saying anything about anonymous sources, but no, that is not all. There is also the unfortunate death by suicide of Captain Putter, the riding master at the Spanish Riding School. It appears that he left a note claiming that death was the only way out of his shame.’

‘Perhaps the man was a deviant. Shame can come in many forms. I have heard tales of a young boy Putter seems to have taken under his wing.’

Berthe filed this away for later rumination. Now, however, she did not want to be derailed from her primary task.

‘In addition,’ she said, ‘Franz Ferdinand himself has heard of the possible corruptions of the bloodline. So, humor me, Herr Hohewart. Let us examine a notional situation.’

‘If such an incident occurred,’ the pompous little man said, ‘and I emphasize
if,
then neither I nor Premium Breeds could be held accountable. All negotiations on these new bloodlines were done through respectable intermediaries. If fraud were committed, it could only have been perpetrated by the breeders themselves. And their fraud was not subsequently discovered by our intermediaries. I cannot see how any of this would attach itself to Premium Breeds.’

Berthe looked at him for a moment, very much wanting to deflate the man’s arrogance.

‘Once again,
if
that were the case,’ Berthe said, ‘I would assume this would be a matter for the courts to decide, not for the possible litigant.’

‘You speak as if you know your way around the law.’

‘My husband is in practice in Vienna.’

‘Meisner,’ Hohewart said to himself. ‘Advokat Meisner? Can’t say as I have heard of him.’

‘His name is Werthen. Advokat Karl Werthen. I kept my own name when marrying.’

He looked at her grimly. ‘A modern woman, is it?’

‘But we are not speaking of my choice of name, Herr Hohewart. Rather, it is your business misalliances that are at issue.’

‘I thought we were having a notional conversation, Frau Meisner.’

‘
Notionally
, then, I should like to speak with these intermediaries you mentioned.’

He shook his small, round head which his beard did nothing to elongate.

‘That would be difficult, you see, for they are no longer in my employ.’

‘Because of a notional scandal?’

‘Because I was dissatisfied with their field work.’

‘Perhaps you would be good enough to supply a list of names.’

He sat, hands clasped over a protuberant belly, and thought about this.

‘Archduke Franz Ferdinand would, I am sure,’ Berthe prompted, ‘expect no less cooperation.’

‘I will see to the list. Leave an address with my secretary, Frau Czerny, where it might be sent.’

Berthe smiled at this. ‘One more woman spared confinement to her home, I see.’

Hohewart only squinted with incomprehension as Berthe left the office.

Meanwhile, Werthen and Stoker had discovered that Herr Paulus had already left the spa for the day. Getting his home address from reception, they headed off to talk with the man. It appeared Paulus lived a few kilometers north in a small village. He had a modest home near the main square of the little town, a two-storey stucco affair in the traditional golden yellow favored by Empress Maria Theresa and now to be seen on houses and public buildings throughout the far-flung Austrian empire. The house’s window frames and door were painted in contrasting forest green, and the paint was new, Werthen observed. A small, tidy garden separated the house from the street; a pebble path led to the front door, next to which stood a wooden bench in the same forest green.

Werthen could hear the joyful voices of children from inside before working the door clapper. Its sound immediately stilled the frivolity from within.

A woman in her early thirties answered the door; she appeared out of breath and was tidying a loose strand of hair as she opened the door with her free hand. A handsome rather than pretty woman, she looked vaguely disappointed to see Werthen and Stoker on her doorstep.

‘Frau Paulus?’ Werthen asked.

‘Yes.’ A flicker of suspicion crossed her pleasant face, quickly replaced by a smile. It was as if she internally chided herself for such suspicion of strangers.

‘How may I help you?’ she asked.

‘My colleague and I are aiding the gendarmerie in its investigation of the death of Annaliese Reiter.’ He showed her the letter of introduction, but she merely glanced at it.

‘That poor girl,’ she said.

‘She worked for your husband, we understand.’

She nodded. ‘A terrible thing.’

Werthen knew she meant it. There was a deep well of empathy and human sympathy in Frau Paulus. Trained in the art of questioning witnesses, he had a sense for such things.

‘We stopped at your husband’s spa, but he had already left for the day. Would it be possible to speak with him?’

‘Of course.’ She looked from Werthen to the silent Stoker. ‘But where have my manners gone, leaving you out on the step. Please, come in.’ She led them into a small vestibule with coat hooks on the wall, a tall reed basket with several umbrellas stuck in it, and a half-moon table against the wall, a bouquet of dried statice in a pottery vase on top of it.

‘Henricus … Herr Paulus is in his study. He leaves work early one day a week to spend more time with his family, but usually spends it with reports and accounts up in the study.’

She smiled as she said this, obviously proud of her husband’s work ethic.

‘I’ll let him know you are here,’ she said as she moved up the stairs briskly.

Meanwhile, the owners of the gleeful voices Werthen had heard before knocking on the door had gathered in the doorway of a room giving off the vestibule. There were three of them and they ranged in age from a toddler with a runny nose and Indian feathers stuck in his curly hair, to an older brother who looked about school age and a still older brother of about eight or nine with so many freckles that he appeared to have just come in from the tropical sun with a violent case of sunburn.

‘Hello,’ Stoker said in English with a cheery Irish accent that sent the children scurrying back to wherever they had come from.

‘I see you have a way with children,’ Werthen said jokingly.

‘My son Noel didn’t much think so, either. You have children, Advokat?’

Werthen felt a twinge of sorrow at the thought again of their lost child, but suddenly saw what a foolish sentiment that was in light of the fact that they had a beautiful and healthy daughter. There was no reason for grief.

‘Yes,’ Werthen finally answered. ‘My wife and I are fortunate in that regard. A little girl.’

‘Ah,’ Stoker said as if discovering a new continent. ‘Girls. Wonderful.’

There came movement from the stairs and looking in that direction, Werthen saw Frau Paulus coming down the stairs followed by a man old enough to be her father. A tall, gaunt man, Herr Paulus was still dressed in coat and tie as if at the office. He took the stairs with a degree more caution than his younger wife and when introduced, produced a rather limp right hand that allowed itself to be shaken quite passively.

Werthen wondered what his wife saw in the man other than a provider for the family. But the attraction between men and women was a mystery for him.

‘I understand you gentlemen have some questions about Fräulein Reiter,’ Herr Paulus said as his wife returned to the children. ‘May I inquire as to your authority in this? My wife mentioned something about you aiding the gendarmerie.’

Werthen again pulled out the letter of introduction from Inspector Thielman, but this time close attention was paid to it.

‘I know Thielman, of course,’ Paulus said, handing back the letter. ‘A competent fellow. Surprised he felt the need to call in reinforcements. I thought it was a case of Jewish blood ritual. One must be ever vigilant.’

Werthen did not respond at first, but felt himself forming an intense antipathy for this man, not a good thing preceding an interview. Paulus made no offer to move into another room and sit down, so Werthen got on with it standing in the vestibule like a tradesman.

‘There is scant evidence to support such a theory,’ Werthen said. Even though official confirmation had not yet returned from Professor Gruber in Vienna, Werthen decided to squelch this ugly rumor once and for all.

‘In fact, no blood was drained from the bodies. Instead it soaked into the clothing the young women wore. So perhaps we can move on to matters of fact rather than speculation. How long had Fräulein Reiter worked for you, Herr Paulus?’

‘I would say a little over a year. Capable young woman and quite dependable. Surprising, considering her antecedents.’

‘You don’t approve of her parents?’ Werthen asked.

Paulus shook his head. ‘I must confess I have never understood art. I mean, what purpose does it serve? How can two adults with children in the home choose to spend their days doodling and carving strange, unsalable objects? I asked Fräulein Reiter once if her father might want to take on a little illustration work for the spa to be used on posters. That sort of thing. And she only laughed at the suggestion. She told me her father was an artist and not a graphic designer. But what is the difference, I ask you? The poor young girl was headed in the same direction, I fear. I tried to counsel her against such a choice, though.’

‘Then why hire her?’ Werthen said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you so disapproved of the family she came from, why give Fräulein Reiter a job? Why believe she would be any different than her parents?’