‘Ah, Detective Inspector Drechsler is in charge of the case?’ Gross asked.
‘And dragging his heels. Willing to list it as a suicide in spite of the lack of either weapon or note simply to avoid complications.’
‘And in light of this dismembered avian creature?’
Werthen sat silent at this question.
‘You haven’t told him, have you? And bravo. Nor should you. The man and his minions were too incompetent to discover it. Well, that is their problem.’
How like Gross, Werthen thought, to make this a competition.
‘I would very much like to help, if I may,’ Gross said after a moment more of silence. ‘There is much to do. Follow the leads to Steinwitz, other councilmen, the bereaved widow, et al. I assume your good wife is off to the offices of the Arbeiter Zeitung.’
He said the name of the socialist newspaper the way one might pronounce a distasteful disease.
‘Actually, Berthe is pursuing such leads from the comfort of our apartment, using our telephone. You must not have received my card.’
‘Which card, dear Werthen?’
‘Telling you of the birth of our daughter Frieda, on the nineteenth of January this year.’
There followed several moments of well-wishing from Gross, who apparently had not received the communication. He had left Czernowitz, where he held the chair in criminology, almost a month ago, during the long semester break. First he and his wife had gone to their home in Graz, and then finally to Vienna, and had not had their mail forwarded.
‘Marvelous news,’ Gross concluded. ‘Truly marvelous. Adele will be so happy to hear of it. All the more reason for me to help out in this investigation then. I suggest I follow the lead to Praetor’s father.’
‘But there is no lead to the father,’ Werthen protested.
‘Oh, I imagine we will find one. If the man knew his son as well as you say, then he surely knew if his son were in love, or at least entangled.’
Werthen nodded at this. From his long acquaintanceship with Gross, he knew there was no way of dissuading the criminologist from joining an investigation that piqued his interest.
‘I would take it as a personal favor,’ Gross suddenly added. ‘A respite from my Fasching requirements.’
‘Agreed,’ Werthen said. In fact, he rather relished joining forces with Gross once again.
‘And it is just as well that you did not shame Drechsler with the discovery of the bird. We need him for another small favor. As Herr Praetor was a journalist, I assume he used a typewriting machine.’
Werthen nodded at this.
‘Excellent,’ Gross said. ‘I have lately been making an investigation of deciphering the marks left on the platen of a typewriting machine as well as on the ink ribbons. Some of my students in Czernowitz have assisted me in my endeavors, setting up a separate mechanical decipherment department at the crime laboratory I instituted at the university. There I have begun to assemble a rather workable technology in recovering typed impressions. I would like to see what can be discovered from Herr Praetor’s typewriting machine.’
‘Excellent,’ Werthen said, and then came a brief rapping at his office door.
He called out for Fraulein Metzinger to enter, and she did so, her young friend, Huck, in tow, looking awfully well-appointed in a new gray suit from Loden Plankl, his thin legs encased in green knee socks and woolen knickers.
‘Sorry to interrupt, AdvokatWerthen. But I was thinking of sending Huck to the Bezirksamt.’
This was her usual duty, carrying wills to be registered at the local district office in Naglergasse. To send Huck in her stead was an elevation in duties from mere delivery boy to official representative of the firm, for Huck would sign the ledger at the district office. Werthen knew that Fraulein Metzinger had been working on Huck’s penmanship and clearly now thought that the youth was ready for this promotion. Huck stood up straight and proud in his new suit and Werthen did not have the heart to do other than consent.
‘I am sure Huck will carry out his duties successfully,’ Werthen said importantly, and was pleased to see the boy puff out his chest even more.
After Fraulein Metzinger and Huck left, Gross peered at Werthen, a slight smile on his lips.
‘Doing good works are we now, Werthen?’
‘I have no idea what you mean.’
‘You can clothe him like a gentleman, but it is painfully obvious that young boy was lately living rough on the streets.’
‘However can you know that?’ Werthen said, amazed.
‘The color of his skin, for one. Far too ruddy for this time of year when sensible people stay indoors. Then there is the matter of the gray under his eyes, which suggests not just lack of proper sleep, but also a poor diet, something that cannot be reversed overnight. Additionally there was the very manner in which he held his body, so proud of himself as if this were the first good suit of clothes he has possessed.’
‘That is quite impressive, Gross. From those scant clues you could conclude that he was once a street urchin?’
Gross waved off the compliment as if such deductions were nothing.
‘From that, and from the bits of conversation I overheard between your new assistant and the boy when I arrived and was taking off my coat waiting to be announced. It is quite surprising what people will say around one they think is too old or perhaps too proper to attempt to overhear them. Your young secretary was giving the boy tips on how to enter and leave a room with grace rather than the manner in which one might “pull a scamper in the sewers,” as I believe she put it in quite good street argot. Not something the young woman would know on her own. Ergo. .’
In the end, they decided to take lunch together. Gross and his wife were staying at the Hotel Imperial. Before, when on his own, Gross would be Werthen’s house guest, but that was now out of the question with the coming of Frieda and the fact that the criminologist was here with his wife. It spoke of the level of their intimacy that Werthen made no insincere invitations, nor did Gross expect one.
Thus, they walked to the nearby Imperial for lunch. Adele was indeed pleased to see him, for Werthen had been a constant guest in the Gross household during his years in Graz as a young criminal lawyer. And though he had already twice collaborated with Gross on criminal investigations since leaving Graz, Werthen had not seen Adele in the intervening years.
She was a short, thin woman, and, like many smaller women, she was full of a bubbling strength and confidence that made you forget her stature. Hearing of the birth of his first child, Adele leaned across the table to kiss him on the cheek. As she did so, she whispered, ‘Do not ruin your child.’
At least he thought she had said that. Implying that Gross had done his utmost to ruin their own child, Otto, a budding twenty-three-year-old psychologist by all accounts, but who, as a youth, had been at loggerheads with his authoritarian father.
Werthen merely smiled in return to Adele. It felt almost like a betrayal of Gross even to receive such advice. Still, Werthen would not have wanted to be the man’s son. Hard enough being the offspring of Emile von Werthen.
They spoke of food for a time once the carp was served, and then Gross regaled them for a full half-hour about the discoveries he had made yesterday at the Kunsthistorisches Museum viewing his beloved Bruegel paintings. In particular, he had been inspecting The Fight Between Carnival and Lent.
‘A most propitious painting for this time of year,’ Gross remarked.
Gross thought he had discovered the mystery behind the change in orthography for Bruegel’s name. Prior to 1559, the Flemish painter spelled his name with an ‘h’: Brueghel. However, thereafter for the final decade of his life, he spelled it without the ‘h,’ even though his offspring — both painters as well — kept the ‘h.’ Many art historians credited such a spelling change to the influence of humanism on the painter, wanting to Latinize his name. However, in The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, from 1559, Gross felt that he had uncovered the secret reason for this change. Amid the bewildering myriad of characters populating the canvas, Gross had discerned a recurring pattern: in each group there appeared to be a hunched crone plying some occult trade. According to Gross, the ‘h’ thus represented to Bruegel the word heks, the Flemish for witch or sorceress.