Werthen had difficulty accepting this biography, remembering only the shifty eyes of the priest when confronted with his misdeeds regarding his niece.
‘What happened to him, then?’ Werthen said. ‘To make him forget his vows and take advantage of a young woman, his own niece?’
‘He tells me, and I believe him, that it was the young woman who made advances. Who actually came to his room one night, crawled under the covers, and began fondling him. He awoke in an excited state, but when he realized what was happening, he stopped her, made her go back to her room, and threatened to send her home in disgrace. She disappeared soon after, leaving behind a letter threatening to expose him, to lie about their so-called affair if he so much as contacted her parents. To his lasting regret, in this event Hieronymus was weak. Faced with such threats, he acquiesced.’
Werthen felt the ground slipping from under him, a vertigo of unrealized aspects gripping him. He managed to grab hold of one bit of flotsam.
‘I don’t suppose you have that letter?’
‘Once I heard my friend’s story and that you were the one interviewing him, I knew it was God’s way of giving me a second chance for having let my other friend down. For not standing up to the world and being honest. Such a coincidence could not be other than divinely inspired.’ When he met Father Mickelsburg previously, the priest had initially been less than forthcoming about his special relationship with a young journalist who was murdered. He had come to Werthen later to supply valuable information, but had obviously felt a great sense of guilt at attempting to keep this homosexual relationship secret.
Now Father Mickelsburg reached inside his cassock. took out a letter, and placed it on the desktop in front of Werthen.
Later, after the priest had departed and he was left alone with his own thoughts, Werthen remembered something the driver he hired in the Weinviertel, the man called Pratt, had said regarding the Moos girclass="underline" that she was the wild one, the one about whom stories were told in the village. He had dismissed this at the time as a product of rural conservatism and jealousies at play. But perhaps there was something in it.
Still, what did it matter? So the girl had a lusty nature. It changed nothing. Someone had brutally killed her.
Then Werthen began to wonder about other stories he had been told about Fräulein Mitzi — by Frau Mutzenbacher and Siegfried, by Salten, Altenberg and her one-time lover, Schnitzler. Were they depicting her as she really was, or were they hiding something? Something that could lead Werthen to her killer.
‘And you believe Father Mickelsburg?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Werthen answered.
‘In spite of the fact,’ Berthe persisted, ‘that he lied to you before?’
‘It’s different this time.’
‘It often is,’ Gross added.
They had gone out for dinner at Berthe’s favorite restaurant. It was her birthday, and Werthen had been so preoccupied that he had forgotten it until Frau Blatschky reminded him that afternoon. The Frau had stayed on to serve as babysitter while he, Berthe and Gross dined at the Black Swan, an eatery resembling a French bistro, despite its name, which sounded more like a British public house than a Left Bank restaurant. The Black Swan had been a favorite of theirs for several years, but only lately had it been discovered by that class of Viennese who dined out in order that others could see them doing so.
In fact, Inspector Meindl, the diminutive chief of the Vienna Police Praesidium, had just left with his wife, who was a good seven or eight centimetres taller and fourteen or fifteen kilos heavier than him, but from a very well-placed family.
Meindl’s presence had cast a pall over their celebrations, for he had given them the feeling that he knew exactly what they were discussing. Discovering it was Berthe’s birthday, he had the waiter bring over a bottle of Schlumberger Sekt, and they had duly toasted his generosity. Meindl smiled back at them. He was the only man Werthen knew who could make a smile look threatening.
Thus, instead of being able to talk about the state of their various investigations during dinner, they had to wait for his departure. Meindl was no friend to private inquiry agents, fearing that they might outdo the investigative efforts of his own detectives. Werthen, Berthe, and Gross had proved this fear to be valid on more than one occasion.
Despite the fact that Gross had been the man’s mentor as a young constable in Graz, Meindl had attempted to derail their investigations in the past and, Werthen assumed, would continue to do so. Meindl’s career to date had been marked by the single-minded pursuit not of justice but of personal advancement.
Once the police chief was gone, they set aside their barely touched glasses of Sekt, ordered a bottle of French champagne instead, and toasted Berthe’s health.
‘I still think Father Mickelsburg’s words should be taken with some degree of mistrust,’ she said.
Werthen did not want to reassess his vision of Fräulein Mitzi as the badly wronged country girl, any more than Berthe did; however, there was some compelling evidence.
‘I did a thorough hand-writing analysis this afternoon,’ Werthen announced. ‘We have the letter from Mitzi I discovered at the Bower, and the ones I was able to secure from her parents.’ He turned his gaze to Gross. ‘I followed your ten-point matching system, Gross, comparing them with the letter Father Mickelsburg turned over to me today.’
He paused.
‘And?’ Berthe said.
‘It was a ten-point match.’
There followed a moment of silence. Then Werthen added, ‘Which reminds me. We should get the letters from the parents translated. Do you think Baroness von Suttner would help out in this regard once more?’
‘No doubt,’ Berthe said.
‘I’ll have Fräulein Metzinger type a copy to send her. We need to keep the original in our files.’
‘Have you told Inspector Drechsler of this development?’ Gross suddenly asked, looking very pleased with himself.
‘Actually, no,’ Werthen said. ‘I wanted to try to verify-’
‘Yes, I am sure you do,’ Gross interrupted. ‘And what if it is impossible to verify this new information about Fräulein Mitzi with absolute certainty?’
Werthen visibly reddened.
‘The police don’t know about Father Hieronymus, do they?’
‘Well, I haven’t quite got around to delivering the file.’
‘You mean the one in which we are keeping the original of Fräulein Mitzi’s letter?’ asked Berthe, now understanding Gross’s line of questioning.
‘When were you thinking of delivering the file, Karl?’ she asked.
‘Alright. You both know how I feel about this case.’
‘The white knight,’ Berthe said.
‘Something along those lines.’
‘And now there may be other sides to Fräulein Mitzi you intend to do so?’
‘That may not be advisable, as they could pertain to another ongoing investigation,’ Gross said, leaning back in his chair and placing both hands over his stomach. He eyed Werthen with his mentor’s expression.
‘What? Why are you smiling like that? You haven’t shared your information from today, is that it? Out with it, Gross.’
‘You recall I requested a list of extra kitchen helpers and sous-chefs laid on specially for the von Ebersdorf banquet? After all, the fact that he was the only one to suffer from tainted shellfish is an Alp too high to believe in. The autopsy shows he was the deliberate target of poisoning.’
‘What else?’ Berthe insisted.
‘I’ve received a list of the temporary help. One name might interest you.’
He reached into his waistcoat pocket, withdrew a folded square of paper, spread it out on the table, and pushed it across to Werthen and Berthe.
Mid-list a name was circled: Mutzenbacher, Siegfried.
NINETEEN