The Gruen family vault comprised a bunker of black marble about the size of a gun turret on the Bismarck. Carved into the main body of the mausoleum, in modest gold letters, were the words “Familie Gruen” and, near the base of the edifice, the names of several individual Gruens who were interred inside it, including Eric’s father, Friedrich. The stepped façade featured a bronze of a somewhat scantily clad female figure who was supposed to be prostrate with grief, only, somehow, she managed to look more like a chocolady who had enjoyed a hard night of it at the Oriental Club. The temptation to find her a warm coat and a cup of strong, black coffee was almost overwhelming.
The vault was modest by the standard of an Egyptian pharaoh. But with its four matching sphinxes—one on each corner—I was sure a whole litter of Ptolemies would have felt perfectly at home in its three-for-the-price-of-one interior. And when I emerged from inside, having paid my formal respects to Eric’s mother, I half expected the sexton to frisk me for gold scarabs and shards of lapis lazuli. As it was, I had so many strange looks and suspicious, even hostile stares you would have thought I was Mozart looking for his unmarked grave. Even the priest conducting the burial service—who, in his purple cape, resembled a French cake in Demel’s window—gave me the evil eye.
I had hoped that by remaining at a distance from the other mourners and wearing a pair of dark glasses—it was a very cold but bright sunny day—I would remain relatively anonymous. Dr. Bekemeier knew who he thought I was and, in the circumstances, this was all that really mattered. But I hadn’t bargained on a hostile reception from one of Elizabeth Gruen’s servants, who let me know what she thought of Eric Gruen being there at all.
She was a red-faced, bony, ill-dressed creature, like a rib of beef in a sack, and when she spoke her plate shifted on her upper jaw as if the result of a small earthquake in her head. “You’ve got a nerve, showing your face here like this,” said the crone, with evident distaste. “After all these years. After what you did. Your mother was ashamed of you, that’s what she was. Ashamed and disgusted that a Gruen should behave in such a way. Disgrace. That’s what you brought to your family name. Disgrace. Your father would have horsewhipped you.”
I murmured some bromide about this all being a very long time ago and then walked swiftly back to the main gate where I had left the American with the car. Despite the icy weather, the cemetery was busy. Other funerals were in progress and there were several people heading the same way as me. I paid them little or no regard. Not even to the IP Jeep that was parked a short way away from the Cadillac. I jumped in and the American driver took off at speed, like a wanted criminal.
“What the hell’s going on?” I shouted once I had picked myself off the floor. “I’ve been attending a funeral not robbing a bank.”
The driver, who wasn’t much more than a kid, with hedgehog hair and ears like two trophy handles, nodded at his rearview mirror. “International Patrol,” he said, in reasonable German.
I turned to look through the rear window. Sure enough the Jeep was on our tail. “What do they want?” I yelled as, gunning the engine loudly, he veered the car off Simmeringer and down a narrow side street.
“Either they’re after you for something, buddy,” he said, “or they’re after me.”
“You? What have you done?”
“The gasoline in this car is PX,” shouted my driver. “Occupation personnel only. So is the car. And so are the cigarettes and booze and nylons in the trunk.”
“Great,” I said. “Thanks a lot. I really want to be in trouble with the police on the day of my mother’s funeral.” It was just something to say to make him feel bad.
“Don’t worry,” he said, with a big, well-brushed grin. “They gotta catch us first. And this car has the edge on a Jeep with four elephants in it. So long as they don’t radio in for an intercept car we’ll probably lose them. Besides, an American has to drive that IPV. That’s the rule. Our vehicle, our driver. And American drivers aren’t usually crazy. Now, if it was the Ivan driving, we might have a problem. Those Ivans are the craziest drivers you ever saw.”
Having been driven before by a Russian, I knew he wasn’t exaggerating.
We hurtled through the eastern approaches to the city center. The Jeep kept us in sight as far as the railway line before we lost them.
“Here,” I said, tossing some banknotes onto the backseat as we skidded around Modena Park. “Let me out on the corner. I’ll walk the rest of the way. My nerves can’t stand it.”
I jumped out, slammed the door shut, and watched the Cadillac sprint away with a loud squeal of tires along Zaunergasse. I walked after it, onto Stalin Platz, and then down Gusshausstrasse, back to my hotel. It felt like it had been quite a morning. But my day had hardly started.
I had a light lunch and then went back up to my room for a rest before going to meet Vera Messmann at the bank. I hadn’t been lying on my bed for long when there was a light knock at the door, and thinking it was the maid, I got up and opened it. I recognized the man standing there from the funeral. For a moment I thought I was going to receive another earful of abuse about how I had brought disgrace on the Gruen family name. Instead the man snatched off his hat respectfully and stood holding the brim tightly in front of him like the reins on a small pony and cart.
“Yes?” I said. “What do you want?”
“Sir, I was your mother’s butler, sir,” he said, in what I suppose was a Hungarian accent. “Tibor, sir. Tibor Medgyessy, sir. May I speak with you a moment, please, sir?” He glanced nervously along the hotel corridor. “In private, sir? Just a few minutes, sir. If you’d be so kind.”
He was tall and well-built for a man his age, which I estimated was around sixty-five. Possibly older. He had a full head of white, curly hair that looked as if it had been shorn from the back of a sheep. His teeth looked like they were made of wood. He wore thick, metal-framed glasses, and a dark suit and tie. His bearing was almost military and I guessed the Gruens preferred it that way.
“All right, come in.” I watched him limp into my room. It was a limp that made you think there was something wrong with his hip rather than his knee or his ankle. I closed the door. “Well? What is it? What do you want?”
Medgyessy glanced around the suite with obvious appreciation. “Very nice, sir,” he said. “Very nice, indeed. I don’t blame you for staying here rather than your mother’s house, sir. Especially not after what happened at the funeral this morning. Most regrettable that was. And quite uncalled for. I’ve reprimanded her already, sir. Fifteen years I was your mother’s butler, sir, and that was the first time I ever heard Klara speak out of turn.”
“Klara, was it, you say?”
“Yes, sir. My wife.”
I shrugged. “Look, forget about it,” I said. “Less said the better, eh? I appreciate you coming here like this, to apologize, but really it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, I didn’t come here to apologize, sir,” he said.
“You didn’t?” I shook my head. “Then why did you come here?” The butler smiled a curious little smile. It was like looking at a heavily weathered picket fence. “It’s like this, sir,” he said. “Your mother left us some money in her will. But she made it quite a while ago, and I daresay the sum she left for us would have done us very nicely if recently we hadn’t had that change in the value of the Austrian schilling. Of course, she meant to change it, but her dying so suddenly, well, she didn’t have time to do it. So we’re a bit stuck, now, the wife and I. What she left us isn’t enough to retire on, and at our time of life, we’re too old to look for another position. We were wondering if you’d care to help us, sir. You being a wealthy man, now. We’re not greedy people. We wouldn’t ask at all, if your mother hadn’t meant to change her will. You can ask Dr. Bekemeier, if you don’t believe me, sir.”
“I see,” I said. “If you don’t mind me saying so, Herr Medgyessy, your wife, Klara, didn’t sound like she wanted my help. Anything but.”
The butler shifted on his legs and came to the at-ease position.
“She was just a bit shook up, that’s all, sir. On account of the suddenness of your mother’s death in the hospital, sir. And also because, since she died, the International Patrol have been there, asking questions about you, sir. Wanting to know if you were coming back to Vienna for the funeral. That kind of thing.”
“Now, why would the Allied police be at all interested in me?” Even as I spoke I was recalling my getaway drive from the Central Cemetery. It was beginning to look as if my American driver might have made an error. As if it had been Eric Gruen the International Patrol had been pursuing, not a black marketer.
Medgyessy smiled his sylvan smile. “There’s no need for that, sir,” he said. “We’re not stupid people, the wife and I. Just because we never talk about it, doesn’t mean we don’t know about it.”
It was clear there was more here than just a girl left with a bump in her road. A lot more.
“So please don’t speak to me like I’m an idiot, sir. That won’t help either of us. All we’re asking is that we continue to serve your family, sir. In the only way we can now, since I can’t imagine you’ll be staying on in Vienna, sir. Not officially, anyway.”
“How exactly do you think you can serve me?” I asked him, patiently.
“With our silence, sir. I knew most of your mother’s affairs. Very trusting, she was. And very careless, too, if you know what I mean.”
“You’re trying to blackmail me, aren’t you?” I said. “So why don’t you just tell me how much?”
Medgyessy shook his head, irritably. “No, sir. It’s not blackmail. I wish you wouldn’t look at it that way. All we want is to serve the Gruen family, sir. That’s all. A proper reward for loyalty. That’s what this is all about. Maybe what you did was right, sir. That’s hardly for me to say. But it’s only fair that you should recognize your debt to us, sir. For not telling the police where you live, for instance. Garmisch, is it? Very nice. I’ve not been there myself, but I’ve heard it’s very beautiful.”
“How much?”
“Twenty-five thousand schillings, sir. That’s not much, considering. Not when you think about it, sir.”
I hardly knew what to say. It was now obvious that Eric Gruen had not been honest with me, and that there was something in his past that made his being in Vienna of interest to the Allies. Or had he been honest after all? Could it have been the execution of those prisoners of war, in France, that Engelbertina had mentioned? Why not? After all, the Allies already had dozens of SS men imprisoned in Landsberg for the Malmedy massacre. Why not another massacre involving Eric Gruen? Whatever the reason, one thing was clear: I needed to stall Medgyessy long enough to speak to Gruen himself. I had little choice but to go along with the butler’s blackmail, for now. With all the documentation I possessed being in the name of Eric Gruen, I could hardly go back to being Bernie Gunther.
“All right,” I said. “But I’ll need some time to get the money together. The will hasn’t yet been proved.”
His face grew harder. “Don’t play me for a fool, sir,” he said. “
I’d
never betray you. But the wife is a very different story. As you probably gathered at the funeral. Shall we say twenty-four hours? This time tomorrow.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “Two o’clock. That’ll give you plenty of time to get to Spaengler’s and make all the necessary arrangements.”
“Very well,” I said. “Until two o’clock tomorrow.” I opened the door for him and he limped out, like a man waltzing by himself. I had to hand it to him. He and his wife had handled it very nicely. Good cop, bad cop. And all of that guff about loyalty. It was an effective pitch. Especially the way he had dropped the name of Spaengler’s Bank and Garmisch.
I closed the door, picked up the phone, and asked the hotel operator to connect me with Henkell’s house in Sonnenbichl. After a few minutes the operator called me back and said there was no reply, so I put on my coat and hat and took a taxi to Dorotheengasse.
Most of the buildings in this narrow, cobbled street had been repaired. At one end was a yellow stucco church with a spire like a V-2 rocket, and at the other end, an ornate fountain with a lady who had picked the wrong day for going topless in Vienna. In its massive baroque portal, the green door of Spaengler’s Bank looked like Hitler’s train stuck in a railway tunnel. I approached the top-hatted doorman, informed him of the name of the person I had come to see, and was directed into what could have passed for the Hall of the Mountain King. And with footsteps echoing against the ceiling like the tintinnabulation of a broken bell, I walked up a staircase as wide as an autobahn.
The Gruen family’s bank manager, Herr Trenner, was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. He was younger than me but looked as if he had been born with gray hair and wearing glasses and a morning coat. He was as obsequious as a Japanese ivy plant. Wringing his hands as if he hoped to squeeze the milk of human kindness from his fingernails, he showed me to an upstairs room furnished with a table and two chairs. On top of the table was twenty-five thousand schillings and, as arranged, a smaller pile of cash, to cover my immediate expenses. On the floor beside the table was a plain leather holdall in which to carry the money. Trenner handed me a key to the door of the room, informed me that he would be at my service so long as I remained in the building, bowed gravely, and then left me alone. I pocketed the smaller pile of cash, locked the door, and went back downstairs to wait by the front door for Vera Messmann. It was ten minutes to three.
THIRTY-TWO
I waited until almost half past three, by which time I had concluded that Vera Messmann had had second thoughts about accepting Gruen’s money and wasn’t coming. So I went back upstairs, transferred the money to the holdall, and set off to find her.
It was a twenty-minute walk through the city center to Liechtensteinstrasse. I rang Vera’s doorbell and knocked at the door. I even shouted through the letterbox, but there was no one at home. Of course there’s no one at home, I told myself. It’s only four o’clock. She’s at her shop. Around the corner, on Wasagasse. She was at home yesterday afternoon only because it was early closing. But today is a normal working day. You’re some detective, Bernie Gunther.