‘You’ll be the two investigators, I suppose.’
Werthen had heard more enthusiasm in the greeting from a condemned man to his executioner. Everything about Bielohlawek was gruff and rough-edged, even the sound of his voice. There was a strong hint of Czech heritage in his accent, though Bielohlawek had been born in Vienna. A man of about forty, the newly elected city council member was, according to some accounts, the chief clown in Lueger’s court, and to others, a shrewd political operative who used his street-thug facade to conceal his machinations. He was, at once, a man who could call the great Russian master Tolstoy an ‘old dope’ or ask for the deportation of all of Vienna’s Jews to Devil’s Island along with the Frenchman, Dreyfus, while at night studying French and Latin to better himself.
‘I doubt I can be of help regarding our friend, Steinwitz. But Karl, Burgermeister Lueger, that is, says our doors should always be open to our electorate. You vote, I assume?’
Werthen was about to make a polite response when Gross jumped in.
‘That is hardly your concern, my good man. As a Beamter you have only to know that citizens, who pay your salary, have a query for your office.’
Bielohlawek visibly stiffened when called a civil servant.
‘We appreciate you seeing us on such short notice,’ Werthen began, attempting to smooth things over, but Gross was having none of it.
‘Now, if we could get down to business. We are investigating the death of one Henricus Praetor.’
Bielohlawek scowled at the name. ‘Papers say he shot himself.’
‘Quite,’ Gross said. ‘One cannot, however, always believe what is reported in the press.’
‘What’s it to do with me?’ the city councilman said. ‘I’m a busy man. I thought you wanted to ask about Steinwitz.’
‘You see-’ Werthen began, but was once again cut off by Gross. He thereafter relinquished the interview to the criminologist, who appeared to have his own sense of how to handle the brusque Bielohlawek.
‘You were a friend of the deceased councilman’s?’ Gross inquired.
‘We knew one another. Colleagues more than friends. But what does all this have to do with that Schwuchtel?’
Werthen felt the hair bristle at the back of his head at this coarse usage of fairy for homosexual.
‘I assume you are referring to Herr Praetor?’ Gross calmly replied.
‘I repeat, I’m a busy man. And a simple one. Just tell me what you want and no fancy stuff.’
‘What we want is to know if Councilman Steinwitz had any friendships strong enough at City Hall that someone might want to seek redress for his victimization.’
Bielohlawek stared at Gross as if he had been speaking a foreign language.
‘You mean kill the scrawny journalist because he broke the scandal?’
‘Precisely.’
Bielohlawek broke into sudden laughter. ‘Oh, that’s a rich one. I thought you told the deskman you were investigators, not comedians out of a Hanswurst show.’
‘I fail to see the humor,’ Gross said.
Bielohlawek stopped his laughter as abruptly as he had begun. ‘This is the Rathaus, not some army corps with outdated ideas about honor. Verstehst? We’re all big boys here, with thick skins.’
Werthen could keep quiet no longer. ‘You mean to say that you doubt Steinwitz killed himself over the embezzlement scandal?’
‘Bravo. That is exactly what I mean.’
‘Then why kill himself?’ Werthen wondered out loud.
‘You’re the investigator,’ Bielohlawek chuckled. ‘You tell me. And something else you can tell me. Who hired you?’
But they left then, without mentioning their employer. Victor Adler, Werthen supposed, would not be looked upon favorably in the hallowed halls of the Rathaus.
On the way out of the office they ran, quite literally, into a massive man in a tight-fitting suit, his hair cut so short it bristled like a hedgehog.
‘Sorry,’ Werthen said, as the three of them made contact, for the large man was just coming into Bielohlawek’s office.
The beefy man said, in a surprisingly high voice, ‘Yes.’
Which made no sense, but Werthen, who recognized the man as one Adalbert Kulowski, bodyguard to the mayor, knew that the man seldom made any sense. With that much brawn, it was hardly his brains for which Lueger employed him. Kulowski had been a fixture at the Rathaus ever since some madman had attempted to stab the mayor during his first year in office.
‘A pompous ass,’ Gross muttered once they were on the portico of the Rathaus.
Gross, Werthen understood, did not mean the bodyguard.
‘Only one way to deal with that sort.’
‘You were rather abrupt with him.’
‘Civil servants.’ Gross sneered as he said the words. ‘A greater misnomer I have never heard. There is nothing civil about them, and as for being a good servant to the people? Bitte.’ Said with heavy irony.
‘Did you believe him?’ Werthen asked, lifting the collar on his overcoat against the cold.
‘I assume you mean the manner in which the councilman discounted our theory of revenge as a motive for Praetor’s death.’ A moment’s pause. ‘Yes. I do. You knew Steinwitz. Was he the thick-skinned sort?’
‘A veritable hippopotamus.’
‘Then again one ponders your earlier question. Why would the good councilman commit suicide?’
A chilling thought occurred to Werthen. ‘Perhaps Steinwitz did not kill himself.’
‘Well, the authorities were wrong about Praetor’s death,’ Gross allowed.
‘I think we need to pay the widow a visit,’ Werthen said.
‘After which I must prepare for dinner.’
‘I can visit the good lady on my own.’
‘Nonsense,’ Gross said. ‘You’d be lost without me.’
Werthen made no response to this; it was useless to do so with Gross.
He knew the Steinwitz address from the time the deceased councilman was his client. The widow lived in the Reichsratstrasse in the fashionable RathausViertel, or quarter, only minutes from where they were now standing. Steinwitz himself could never have afforded the location on his pay as a city councilman; his wife, the former Valerie Gutrum, came from an old family and old money. Werthen and Gross headed toward the house, midway between the City Hall and Parliament. It was a handsome street with its ground floor businesses elegantly concealed behind galleried arcades as in the Rue de Rivoli in the French capital.
Reaching the Steinwitz house, they took the master stairway up two floors to the so-called Nobelstock, the noble floor, above which were the less imposing apartments. A maid answered the door and, after delivering Werthen’s card to her mistress, she ushered them down a long hall filled with glass cases containing museum-quality family heirlooms and a collection of weapons large enough to remind Werthen that the woman’s father was Colonel Gutrum, a shibboleth of the Kaiserlich und Koniglich, Imperial and Royal army.
They were finally shown into a sitting room with windows looking out to the RathausPark and, far to the right, to the back of the Parliament.
Werthen was appreciating the view when a rustle of silk skirts caught his attention and made him turn. Frau Steinwitz was dressed in emerald green, her thick blonde hair piled atop her head attractively. A good-looking woman in her thirties, she did not have the appearance of a grieving widow, but rather of someone preparing perhaps for a ball later that evening. Werthen withheld judgment on that, however. He knew people reacted in all sorts of ways to the death of a loved one.
‘Advokat Werthen.’ She extended her hand to him and he held it a discreet few inches from his lips as he bent over it.
‘Kuss die Hand, gnadige Frau,’ he said in the timeworn greeting whose meaning was closer to ‘Your servant, madam,’ than to the literal ‘I kiss your hand, dear lady.’
‘How nice to see you again,’ she said, sounding as if she meant it. ‘And your colleague.’