A Matter of Breeding (20 page)

Reaching the Hitzendorf gendarmerie, he discovered Inspector Thielman on duty and asked assistance in tracking down a certain Franz Klapper.

‘What are you on to?’ Thielman said.

‘I’ll know when you make that inquiry.’

Thielman shook his head at his old colleague, but finally complied with the request.

A half an hour later, they received word from the authorities at Karlau Prison, the very penitentiary where Gross had been held, that Franz Klapper had been released from that prison last October after serving a fifteen-year sentence for attempted murder.

The final bit of the communication proved to be the most important: Klapper had been remanded into the oversight of his relative, Herr von Hobarty, in Hitzendorf.

‘He had plenty of time to plan his revenge,’ Gross explained. ‘Fifteen years to read my works, to learn my crime-solving techniques, to make it appear that I was personally involved in these heinous crimes.’

They were once again gathered in Lechner’s office in the Graz Praesidium, and the magistrate did not look convinced.

‘How many men did you put behind bars in your time, Gross? A hundred? Two hundred?’

‘Perhaps more,’ the criminologist allowed.

‘And none of those have sought vengeance.’

‘Many are still in prison, where they belong. Klapper was guilty of far worse crimes than I could convict him of. He should be serving a life sentence.’

‘All right,’ Lechner said, lifting his hands as if faced with a hopeless situation. ‘Let us say your theory is correct. But I believe you are forgetting something.’

‘And that would be?’

‘Your witness, the one following Monika Stiegl, made no mention of such an unsightly birthmark on the face of the other person following the girl.’

‘No, but then as Werthen reported, Fräulein Vogel said the man was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and that she could not make out his features. Presumably she would not have been able to distinguish a birthmark, either.’

Lechner leaned back in his chair, his hands cupped over his stomach. ‘Do you think that von Hobarty has anything to do with this?’

‘As far as I can make out, Klapper is a distant relative to whom he is giving a second chance. No one is suggesting direct involvement from Herr von Hobarty.’

‘Bring Klapper in for questioning then if you are so convinced he is the killer.’

‘We could do that, magistrate,’ Inspector Thielman said. ‘But Doktor Gross has another idea.’

‘I am sure he does.’

It had been a long day. Werthen napped off and on, but refused to leave Frieda’s room other than to relieve himself. He was not going to let her die; he was going to will her to live. With so little sleep, he actually believed that her fate was in his hands. He would not let her down.

‘You need to lie down, son,’ his father said to him at one point. ‘What good will you be if you become sick as well?’

The words passed over him; they were sounds only. They had no meaning to him at this moment.

Stoker returned from his hotel, telling Werthen that he needed to return to London immediately following his speaking engagement at the Concordia. Henry Irving, for whom he acted as agent, was opening in a revival of
Coriolanus,
and Irving expected him there for opening night.

‘He writes that he cannot speak a line of Shakespeare unless I am in the wings. Nonsense, of course, but theater folk are a superstitious lot.’

Werthen thought he was speaking a foreign language; he had no conception of what the man was prattling on about.

‘Yes, fine,’ he said, and this seemed to please the fellow.

Stoker made more polite noises and wishes for Frieda’s speedy recovery, but Werthen had already dismissed the man from his consciousness before he left the room.

Berthe seemed to understand and did not disturb his watch. Doktor Weisman stopped by later in the afternoon, took Frieda’s pulse and temperature and clucked his tongue. He pulled back an eyelid and put a strong light to her eye. Frieda stirred but did not wake.

Weisman sighed, gathered his equipment and made an elaborate performance of closing his medical bag.

‘I do not know what to tell you, advokat. Perhaps the fever was too high for too long.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘She is not responsive. I … I think—’

‘Papa. Papa.
Wa-wa
.’

Werthen swung around and saw his child with eyes wide open and a look of concern on her face. Berthe, who had just then come into the room, put her hand to mouth.

‘But of course, darling,’ Werthen said. ‘A nice glass of water.’

‘I’ll get it,’ Berthe said.

‘Papa home,’ Frieda said.

He sat on the bed and lifted her tiny body into his arms. ‘Yes, I came home. Just to see my little monkey.’ Her head against his chest did not feel as hot as before.

By the time it was dark, Gross, accompanied by two uniformed gendarme officers, had taken up position behind dense brush near the gamekeeper’s cottage.

‘You’re sure he is in there?’ Gross asked the younger of the officers, who had been in position since about four that afternoon.

‘I am, sir. I followed him from his rounds and he went straight back to the cottage.’

‘And he did not see you.’

The young officer shook his head. ‘Not a peek, sir.’

It was a chill evening with fog tracing the darkened branches overhead. They were armed, for Gross knew a man like Klapper would not come without a fight.

Magistrate Lechner’s words hung heavy on him, for he planned to catch Klapper in the act, knowing how difficult it had been to convict the man of his vicious crimes before.

‘It is on your head, then,’ Lechner had said, finally agreeing to the entrapment plan. ‘If this backfires and someone else is killed because of your thirst for notoriety, then it is you that will be served up to the newspaper wolves, not I.’

‘We will be on his trail from the minute he steps foot outside of his cottage,’ Gross had countered. ‘Nothing will go wrong.’

Though now, as he huddled behind the thicket of brush, he knew only too well how many things could go wrong with the plan. For a starter, Inspector Thielman was late.

Lechner was wrong about motive, however; Gross was not after notoriety, but closure. Klapper would manage somehow to continue his murder spree unless drastic measures were employed; Gross knew this only too well from years before when prosecuting the man. Klapper was a careful one, and had covered his tracks at every step.

‘Why not simply search the man’s cottage?’ Lechner had advised. ‘He’s an ex-convict. He has no rights. And there must be some sort of incriminating evidence there. These have been bloody crimes. There must surely be traces of blood residue on his clothing or shoes.’

Lechner was half right, Gross knew. There may well be traces of blood to be found. And the use of blood samples in forensics had taken giant steps in recent years. Only recently had Dr Paul Uhlenhuth, a German biologist, developed a test to distinguish blood from other substances and also to differentiate animal blood from human blood. This year Karl Landsteiner, a researcher at the Pathological-Anatomical Institute of the University of Vienna, had discovered that there were three blood groups. It was only a matter of time before there would be tests to determine the blood type of stains. However, Gross did not have time. For now, all that blood stains might prove was whether the blood were human or animal, and if human there was no way of disproving that it was Klapper’s own. Gross was not willing to risk warning Klapper of their interest in him over the possibility of such meager winnings.

So, here they were crouched in the cold evening air in hopes of a miracle. There was one solace, however: Werthen’s telephone message for him late this afternoon at the Hotel Daniel let him know that Frieda was out of danger.

There was a faint rustling in the brush behind them. Inspector Thielman finally joined them, sporting a small backpack; Gross had begun to worry about him.

‘Any sign of him yet?’ the inspector asked.

Suddenly the front door of the cottage opened and there stood Klapper in his loden jacket and lederhosen, a shotgun slung over his shoulder. He shut the door behind him and moved off at a brisk pace down a forest path. The two gendarme officers, skilled trackers, took the lead, allowing Klapper a judicious head start. Gross quickly saw how difficult it could be to follow someone in the woods as compared to on a city street. Here there were no fellow pedestrians to join in for cover, no shop windows into which one could gaze if the target suddenly turned around, no alternate routes or possibility for secondary followers across the street. Here it was just one narrow path through the woods with not another person in sight. That meant they had to stay well behind Klapper, hugging the edge of the narrow path: if he turned around they would have a chance to quickly move off the path out of sight.

But Klapper was not turning around. Instead he was plunging on into the gloaming like a man on a mission.

They continued to follow Klapper for the next ten minutes, and now the nighttime sky instead of darkening was getting lighter. There was a pulsing yellow light ahead that Gross found strange. True, they were getting nearer the village of Hitzendorf, but that small grouping of houses could hardly account for such brightness. As they moved on, Gross could now hear numerous voices raised. There had to be a fire, Gross thought. It must involve several houses judging by the amount of light given off.

He looked to Thielman, but the inspector shook his head. They did not want to speak and Gross had no idea what the shaking of his head meant, so that by the time they reached the source of the illumination, Gross was not at all prepared for what he was witnessing.

Gathered in a field near the village was a group of at least thirty people, most dressed in black, though some few were attired in wild men clothing with fearsome masks with horns and protruding teeth, their bodies covered in animal hides. These wild men danced around an enormous pile of branches and hay that was burning quite fiercely. Gross could feel the heat of it twenty yards away.

Of course, he thought. The All Hallow’s Eve celebration. And there was the stuffed witch dangling high above the flames. Suddenly one floating spark reached her homespun garments and the mannequin burst into flames to the cheering and howling of the crowd gathered around the bonfire.

Gross was amazed at how much he had lost touch with the customs of his native province that he would forget this late autumn ritual.

Meanwhile, Klapper merged into the crowd and was, for a moment, lost to sight. Gross, Thielman, and the two officers hurried toward the fire, less concerned now about not being seen than about losing Klapper. The fire seemed to be giving off a great deal of smoke, but then Gross realized this was not smoke at all, but fog rolling in like a curtain unfurled.

‘Do you see him?’ Gross shouted to one of the officers who shook his head. ‘We can’t lose him,’ he said helplessly. ‘He must have kept on going past the fire.’

But on the other side of the fire, the path split in two. They could see nothing ahead on either path.

‘I’ll go with you, Gross,’ Thielman offered. ‘You officers take the other path. Find him.’

Gross and Thielman plunged ahead into the foggy darkness. All the while Gross was chastising himself for not remembering the celebrations of All Hallow’s Eve. There would be ample possible victims about for Klapper tonight.

Moving along the dark path, Gross stumbled over a root and Thielman helped him to his feet. They tried to move as quickly and quietly as possible, but Klapper, familiar with the environs, had the advantage over them. Gross carried one of the new battery-powered electric lights with him, but could not risk using it lest Klapper spot them.

They moved on deeper into the darkness until they heard what sounded like a muffled human cry, a sound of surprise.

They pushed on and soon, ahead on the pathway, they could see an object which turned into a kneeling man as they approached it in the fog and gloom.

The kneeling man, who was indeed Klapper, heard their footfalls and looked up at Gross and then at Thielman.

Gross’s eyes went from Klapper to another object spread out on the pathway. It appeared to be a body.

‘You’re under arrest, Klapper,’ Thielman shouted. ‘Put your gun down.’

It was as if Klapper only remembered the shotgun when Thielman mentioned it. He made to take it off his shoulder, but with a rapidity that showed he had no intention of laying it down.

‘You bastard,’ Klapper shouted as he pulled the butt of the gun to his right shoulder.

Gross was about to dive to the ground when two shots tore through the night; Klapper spun around and toppled over the body already on the path.

Gross looked at Thielman. Smoke snaked out of the barrel of his handgun; his eyes were wide, his entire body shaking.

‘Him or us,’ he said. ‘I tried to shoot for the legs.’

But Gross did not wait for explanations. He ran to Klapper and rolled him over onto his back. Even in the dark, he could see the wetness at the man’s chest. He put a finger to his carotid artery; he was dead. He turned on the electric torch he was carrying. In the unsteady light of the beam, he saw that Klapper had taken a bullet to the heart.

A mess, he thought. A real mess. He did not want to look at the other body, but flicking the light in that direction gave him a shock. The victim was wearing heavy boots and lederhosen, just like Klapper. Not a woman, then. This provided him with a deal of relief. But still, another death that he could not prevent.

Thielman was behind him. ‘Looks like we were too late. Another victim.’

Gross was nodding. This second body looked familiar, dressed in hunting clothes not dissimilar to Klapper’s. Then he realized where he had seen the young man: this morning in the breakfast room of the Hotel Daniel. His throat was cut, like the other victims, but they had obviously come upon Klapper before he had an opportunity to perform any mutilations.

Going through this young man’s pocket, Gross found a wallet with an identity card in the name of Theo Krensky.