He dropped the secateurs he was carrying and began running round the side of the farmhouse, built in a square around a central courtyard. He wanted to call out to Berthe, to warn her, but he could not find voice. The man in the linen suit was leaning down to one knee, actually beckoning to Frieda, who began giggling insanely as she tottered towards him.
In desperation Werthen leaped over a watering can, catapulted himself over the fence, and found himself face to face with Berthe, who was startled at his arrival.
‘What are you on about?’ she said as he stood panting in front of her, gesticulating towards Frieda.
‘Did you forget?’ she said. ‘Salten. He’s come to see you about a case.’
God! He had forgotten.
He looked at his daughter and now realized that she was not attracted to the man in white, the journalist Felix Salten, at all. Nor was Salten beckoning to Frieda. Both of them were trying to gain the attention of a long-haired dachshund that was happily chasing butterflies and cavorting among the red poppies, pale-blue liverwort and yellow sassafras in the fields.
Salten took three cubes of sugar in his tea, watching with a keen parental eye the antics of Mimi, his beloved dachshund, playing on the flagstones of the kitchen floor with Frieda.
‘I do appreciate you letting me meet you like this,’ the journalist said.
‘Not at all,’ Werthen said, though somewhat abstractedly. It was his habit to try to determine the nature of the commission that prospective clients were bringing him, and that was the mental exercise he set himself now.
Theater critic of the Wiener Allgemeinen Zeitung, Salten could have earned himself a number of enemies for the biting satire of his reviews. In fact, several years back he had got into a famous altercation with Karl Kraus at the Café Central that led to Salten giving the other journalist a cuff on the ear. A threatening letter, then?
Or was it a missing person? A lover, perhaps? Werthen, via Berthe, who kept up with such matters, knew Salten had a rather complicated love life. On the other hand, Salten might have come on behalf of his current mistress, the Burgtheater actress Ottilie Metzel.
‘Is it appropriate that I speak of business here?’ His eyes trailed to the frolicking pair on the floor.
‘Shall we finish our tea? Then we can retire to my office.’
Berthe cast her husband a reproachful glance.
‘Actually,’ Werthen quickly added, ‘there’s no reason we could not discuss matters here. My wife is part of the agency, you know.’
Salten, small and courtly-looking, sporting a rather jaunty, self-satisfied moustache, nodded at Berthe, who was rearranging glasses in the cupboards. They were still settling in for the summer months when the family would spend more time in the country.
‘I didn’t know. Quite an unconventional family.’
Werthen was unsure how to take this comment. Was it a compliment or an insult? A man like Salten — part of the Jung Wien group of writers and an up-and-coming literary man who had, the year before, published his first collection of stories — might very well expect Werthen to be a staid old bureaucrat; a wills and trusts lawyer despite his sideline in private inquiries.
‘I of course mean no slight with that description,’ Salten hastily added, as if sensing Werthen’s discomfort.
‘None taken,’ Werthen said, but he traded glances with his wife once again.
‘For me, unconventional is a word of respect. A high compliment, in fact.’
Werthen smiled at the comment.
‘I know your work,’ Salten said.
‘I have had some small successes, to be sure,’ Werthen said. ‘The Mahler case among others.’
‘No, no,’ the other interjected. ‘I mean your literary work. I edited one of your pieces for An der schönen blauen Donau. I rather liked your boulevardier. . What was his name?’
‘Maxim.’
‘Right,’ said Salten. ‘Rather a nice tip of the hat to our friend Schnitzler, I thought at the time.’
‘How so?’ Werthen asked, feeling suddenly protective of this short story he had written a number of years ago.
‘There is a certain resonance to the name,’ Salten said, obviously enjoying a discussion of the subject closest to his heart. ‘First there is the association with the establishment of that name in Paris. Maxim’s restaurant and cabaret caters to the rich and powerful of the world.’
‘I hadn’t really thought of that,’ Werthen said, thinking better now of his character, who was something of a silly skirt-chasing fop.
‘But how does Schnitzler come into it?’ Berthe inquired.
‘Well, there’s Schnitzler’s beloved Anatol, of course, the subject of his early plays. The constant playboy, forever in love and forever changing partners. You might recall that his best friend and sometimes advisor was named Max.’
Salten leaned back in his chair with a sigh. It was a physical gesture Werthen knew only too well from his years in the courtroom. The prosecution rests, your honor.
‘Those are indeed interesting associations, Herr Salten. And I am flattered that you, a well-known writer yourself, should remember the scribblings of an amateur.’
Salten made no immediate reply. He stirred his tea, blowing over the rim of the cup though the contents were long since cooled.
‘I am hardly the well-known figure you describe, Advokat Werthen. In my mind’s eye I am still poor little unhealthy Siegmund Salzmann from Budapest toiling away in my cousin’s insurance office. Those days are not so very far behind me.’
He looked wistfully at his dog and Werthen’s daughter. ‘It must be wonderful having a child.’
About to respond in the positive, Werthen was silenced by Salten’s next remark.
‘But enough of socializing. To the matter at hand. I come about murder, sir.’
The word resounded in the cosy kitchen like a blasphemy.
‘Whose murder, Herr Salten? A friend?’
‘I represent another in this inquiry.’
‘But surely the police-’
‘The victim is of too low a status to warrant their concern.’
‘And your client?’
‘Frau Josephine Mutzenbacher. I am currently engaged in writing her life story.’
‘A literary figure?’ Werthen asked, not recognizing the name.
Which comment brought a low chortle from Salten. ‘Hardly! In point of fact, the woman runs a brothel. Rather high-class, mind you, but a brothel all the same.’
‘A madam?’ Berthe said, now joining them at the table.
Salten pursed his lips in assent. ‘Frau Mutzenbacher is a rather amazing woman. Born in Ottakring, of course. Her father was a saddler. She herself was initiated into the world of Eros at a most tender age.’
He quickly cast his eyes Berthe’s way, not wanting to cause embarrassment. Seeing none, he proceeded.
‘They called her Pepi. She entered the brothels at the age of twelve, as a licensed prostitute. But by cunning, and sometimes sheer disarming honesty, she worked her way up in her chosen profession. Now, at the age of fifty, she operates one of the finest houses in the Empire. And what is most incredible about the woman is that she has not an ounce of bitterness about her hard life. On the contrary, she is quite humorous in the detailing of her various liaisons.’
‘And the victim is therefore one of the good lady’s working ménage, one assumes,’ said Werthen. ‘The person deemed of too low status by the police?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Does this have anything to do with that unfortunate girl found in the Prater on May Day?’ Berthe asked.
The death had made the headlines in an otherwise dull news climate, but had been just as quickly forgotten when supplanted by a much bigger news story: the death of Count Joachim von Ebersdorf several days later, victim of bad shellfish. An absurd way to die, Werthen thought. Eating oysters in land-locked Vienna.