‘There’s Gross,’ Berthe said, drawing his attention away from the shops. Gross stood at the entrance to Habsburgergasse 4, an expectant look on his face.
He began speaking as they approached.
‘Well whatever it is that makes you command my presence first thing in the morning, I hope it is important. I did not even have time to finish my coffee.’
‘Good morning to you, too, Gross,’ Werthen said. ‘But you were the one to command our presence.’
His smile was cut short at the booming sound of an explosion overhead. Shards of glass sprayed the sidewalk. Luckily, they were all wearing hats and the glass fell around them. One splinter lodged in Werthen’s hand, which bled steadily, but he was initially too stunned to pay it any attention. Automatically, he reached pro-tectively for Berthe and held her to him. Her breath came in quick bursts. Gross stood unharmed but with mouth wide open as if in mid-scream.
The street was suddenly filled with people gaping at the smoke pouring out of the windows two floors up at Habsburgergasse 4.
Looking up, Berthe cried out, ‘Karl, it’s from your office!’
Werthen was still partly in shock. He calmly picked the splinter of glass out of his hand and wrapped his handkerchief around the hand to staunch the bleeding. ‘Gas leak?’ he said hopefully, and then dashed up the stairs, the others behind him. The smell of cordite was heavy in the air as he got closer to his floor.
Not a gas leak, then.
The outer door to the office had been blown off its hinges. Smoke filled the room, his inner office was a blackened ruin. He rushed to Fräulein Metzinger’s desk, his heart pounding, fearing what he might find. But there she was, cowering on the floor on hands and knees, her hair blown wild as if in a storm.
She looked up at him, like a frightened child. ‘I dropped a paper-clip,’ she said. ‘Just as Oskar was delivering the paper, earlier than usual. Dropped the clip and then bent down to retrieve it and the world exploded.’
She passed out in his arms.
At the door Frau Ignatz stood bewildered, searching the ruins. ‘Oskar, my little brother Oskar. Where are you?’
‘There are fragments of electric wire by the door to the inner office,’ Inspector Drechsler said. ‘As well as the remains of what Doktor Gross here informs us is a dry-cell battery.’
‘In short,’ Gross interrupted, ‘someone set a primitive bomb to go off when your inner-office door was opened. It would function rather like a burglar alarm, in that opening the door would close the circuit, sending electric current from the dry-cell battery to this.’
Gross held a small piece of charred metal in his hand; and Werthen, from his experience in a case involving the composer Gustav Mahler, quickly made the connection.
‘Part of a detonator.’
‘Exactly,’ Gross confirmed. ‘Which triggered a small explosion, setting off the dynamite it was nestled in.’
‘Poor Oskar,’ said Berthe.
Gross did not respond to this, holding emotion at bay as long as he could. ‘Fortunately, the charge must have been small. A couple of sticks at most. Otherwise, Fräulein Metzinger would be suffering from more than tinnitus.’
The secretary had, despite her objections, been taken to the hospital for observation. They were gathered around her desk in the damaged outer office. The inner office had been destroyed. Police were still scouring the building, looking for suspects. Frau Ignatz had been taken back to her rooms, under the care of a hospital matron.
Suddenly, as the shock began to wear off, Werthen felt the impact of Oskar’s death. His fault, in a way, for having the poor man deliver the paper every morning. He vowed he would find whoever had done this.
‘All the hallmarks of the Black Hand,’ Drechsler said.
‘Nonsense,’ Gross spluttered. ‘What have we to do with the Serbs?’
‘I’m only rehearsing what Meindl is sure to say. A bombing means anarchists at work, or the Black Hand. That’s how his mind works. You have a better explanation?’
They had not taken Drechsler into their confidence regarding the new information concerning the Bower killings — that similar types of crime had been recorded in several European cities.
‘There is the von Ebersdorf matter,’ Werthen extemporized. ‘Perhaps we were getting too close to the truth there-’
‘That case is, need I repeat myself, closed. Unless you have, in spite of my direct request to the opposite, reopened it on your own.’
‘But this one is very clearly open,’ Gross thundered. ‘There is a man dead here. Frau Ignatz’s brother. Bits of his body are still to be found in there.’ He pointed a condemning forefinger at Werthen’s office. ‘I picked through his remains retrieving evidence of the bomb. This is homicide, Drechsler, not a warning shot fired across our bows.’
Drechlser sat quietly through Gross’s tirade.
‘Finished, are we?’
Gross turned his back on the inspector.
‘I am not saying I won’t investigate this barbaric act. It shakes me as much as it does you, this act of terror. To set off a blast like this in the heart of our city, it is unthinkable. And I will pursue whoever did it with all the powers at my command. I simply wanted to let you know what I will be up against at the Praesidium. Now if you gentlemen have any further information you are holding back from me. .’
‘Men,’ Berthe suddenly spat out. ‘I don’t know what you are playing at. You treat this like some schoolyard competition.’
Werthen put out a hand to her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.
‘We’re all on the same side here,’ she said. ‘Tell him, Karl, or I will.’
‘Frau Meisner-’ Gross began.
But she cut him off. ‘Doktor Gross! Somebody tell the inspector!’
‘She’s right,’ Werthen said.
And so they told Drechsler about the renewed investigation.
Frau Ignatz was busily sweeping out the foyer as they descended the stairs. The hospital matron simply raised her eyes at them as if to say she could not stop the woman.
Werthen could understand the need to stay busy, delay the realization of her brother’s death. Compassion was not an emotion he had experienced regarding Frau Ignatz in the past, but that was what was welling up in his chest now. He wanted to reach out to her.
But Gross beat him to it, though in his own peculiar manner
‘Frau Ignatz,’ the criminologist said. ‘You will want to help, of course. There is no good time for such questions, but the sooner we have answers the sooner we will be able to track down the monster who perpetrated this outrage.’
She looked up at him from her sweeping, suddenly a frail old woman. She peered at him as if he were speaking a foreign tongue.
‘Did you see anyone peculiar in the vicinity this morning or perhaps last night? Anything untoward about building security?’
Frau Ignatz continued to stare at him, as if he were a zoo exhibit.
Berthe finally put her arm around the woman’s bony shoulders.
‘Let’s go and have a cup of chamomile tea, shall we?’
The Portier made no protest as Berthe moved her away to her quarters nearby. Gross and Werthen were about to follow, but Berthe gave a curt shake of her head to ward them off.
Gross sighed as Berthe, Frau Ignatz and the hospital matron removed to the ground-floor Portier apartment.
‘Your wife certainly is taking charge lately.’
‘And we should both be thankful for it,’ Werthen added.
‘Yes, of course. No criticism intended. As I have said before-’
‘You like a woman with spirit. Not too much of it, however.’
Gross was silent a moment. ‘You should have that hand looked after.’
Werthen glanced at the bloodied handkerchief wrapped around his left hand. He shook his head.
‘Like a bad dream.’
‘It’s the shock,’ Gross said. ‘Still affecting all of us. We need to concentrate. To think clearly. There was nothing random about this attack. It was planned to kill me, you and your wife. Neatly arranged with matching telegrams to bring us together. Which means that whoever did it has knowledge of our domiciles; has been following us, in fact. And this person also has basic knowledge of bomb construction. Which indicates a military background perhaps.’