Voices from down the street caught the man’s attention. Other strollers were approaching and now the hulking man snarled at him in a thick Ottakring worker’s accent:
‘You keep your nose in your own business if you know what’s good for you.’
The man glared at him for a moment, and Werthen noticed that the bridge of his nose had a large lump, as if it had been broken and poorly mended. Then the man ran off with surprising speed for one his size. Werthen knew he would never be able to catch him, not with his bad knee.
The pedestrians, a man and what appeared to be his young son, spied Werthen and his unkempt appearance, took him for a drunk, and crossed the street away from him.
‘I repeat, it is not a profession for a gentleman. Fisticuffs in the street!’
Herr von Werthen had not touched his Fritattensuppe, a light broth with thinly cut pieces of crepe in it. Werthen’s mother, seated next to her husband at the Biedermeier dining table, cast her son a commiserating look as she had when he was a child with a bruised knee.
‘I really think you should report it,’ Berthe said.
Werthen’s account of the attack had not put her off her appetite, he noted. She left not one bit of crepe in her soup bowl. Frau Blatschky brought in the main course, Wiener Reisfleisch, a savory concoction of veal, bacon and onion pan fried and blended into cooked rice with a light tomato and paprika sauce. Truth be told, Werthen’s mouth started watering at the aroma of it as Frau Blatschky set it in the middle of the table. Nothing like a bit of a tussle to get the appetite up. Werthen felt as if he could eat the whole bowl of it.
‘Just some drunk looking for trouble,’ he said. There had been no way to conceal the welt on his cheek nor the rent in his coat, otherwise he would not have worried his family with a tale of physical attack on the streets of the capital. Nor did he really believe it was a random outrage.
Berthe helped him to a large serving of the Reisfleisch.
‘Not good for the family name,’ his father continued to bluster. ‘One would think Doktor Gross would have better sense.’
Werthen had informed them of Gross’s appearance today and of his offer to help in his investigation.
‘Doktor Gross was not there at the time of the attack,’ Berthe reminded her father-in-law. ‘And I think there are more serious consequences to worry about,’ she added sharply. ‘Karl could have been badly injured.’
Herr von Werthen reddened at this rebuke, and Werthen had to jump in quickly to avoid another family ruckus.
‘I am sure no one recognized me,’ he said with irony.
‘Thank the Lord for small favors,’ said Frau von Werthen.
Which remark made Berthe shake her head in despair of ever understanding her in-laws.
In bed later that night, Berthe put her fingertips to the bruise on his cheek.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘It’s nothing, really.’
‘Don’t be so stoic. And please do not insult me in the privacy of our bedroom with that story about a drunk. What really happened?’
‘It seems that Gross and I may have stirred a hornet’s nest this afternoon.’
He quickly explained his earlier activities: the visit to Kraus and then to City Hall, and finally the revelations of Frau Steinwitz.
‘Well, a hornet’s nest it is,’ she agreed. ‘The only question is who at the Rathaus commissioned that ruffian to dissuade you from further investigations.’
‘So sure it was City Hall?’ But he needed no convincing, he just wanted confirmation of his own suspicions.
‘A matter of timing, darling. Your mind is still reeling or you would see that for yourself. It could hardly be Frau Steinwitz, as you had just left her. There was no time — not to mention no reason — for her to set a mastiff on you. No, it had to come from the Rathaus. The only question is, from how high up?’
Eleven
He and Adele had a late night at the Hausmanns’, and Gross had taken one too many snifters of Pierre Ferrand ’65. This morning — a brutal and blustery day — he was nonetheless in a buoyant mood as he made his way to the Ninth District, the Alsergrund, for his meeting with Doktor Siegismund Praetor, father of the murdered journalist.
As far as Adele knew, he was busy in the hallowed halls of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, working on another monograph to be published under his nom de plume, Marcellus Weintraub. He had, to be sure, already published one such article, dealing with stylistic irregularities in the early career of Bruegel, or as the painter called himself then, Brueghel. Gross would probably have to write something about the missing ‘h,’ if only to keep the deception alive with Adele.
Such a thought brought a wry smile to his lips.
He enjoyed this morning’s brisk walk along the Ring, turning off the broad boulevard at Universitatsstrasse and then making his way to Schwarzspanierstrasse, where the elder Praetor had his office. As it turned out, the office was in a building just next to the one — so a bronze plaque at number thirteen told him — where Ludwig van Beethoven had died on Monday, March 26, 1827. Looking at that building with its gabled roofs and crumbling facade, Gross wondered how long before it was torn down to make room for a new block of flats. And good riddance. Gross’s musical tastes had their upward limits with Haydn and Mozart; the excesses of Beethoven rang in his ears like the cacophony of a metal works.
On the other side of this Beethoven death house was a Protestant church which Gross, Catholic that he was, ruefully thought might also be torn down with no great loss.
Prejudices in order, Gross entered the door of house number fifteen, itself a baroque structure, but one kept in much better condition than its neighboring buildings. An odd place to have one’s office, he thought, even if it were just consulting rooms. For surgeries, Doktor Praetor would employ the nearby General Hospital with its three thousand beds.
The doctor’s rooms were on the top floor of the three-story edifice, and Gross climbed the circular stairs with ease. A highly polished brass plaque on a white-lacquered door identified the consulting rooms and told visitors to show themselves in. Gross did so, and the door opened on to a ballroom-sized waiting room filled with the fragrance of a bouquet of yellow and brick-red hothouse chrysanthemums atop a large, oval rosewood table in the middle of the room. Comfortable armchairs ringed the room, but none of them were occupied, for — as he had told Gross earlier on the telephone — Praetor did not have office hours today.
A small door at the far end of the room opened as Gross entered the waiting area, and out stepped a small, neatly dressed man with the reddest cheeks Gross had ever seen.
‘Doktor Gross?’ the man asked.
‘Doktor Praetor,’ Gross responded. ‘Good of you to make time for me.’
The doctor merely nodded by way of reply, and then turned leading the way for Gross to the inner rooms.
Gross was surprised at the extent of Doktor Praetor’s suite of rooms in the old baroque house. There had been some clever partitioning of space under the rafters. Praetor’s office was in one corner of the building; paned windows gave off on to a quiet inner Hof with a large, though bare, linden tree spreading its branches almost to the height of the panes. It would afford, Gross decided, a pleasant green view in the spring, reminiscent of his own office in Czernowitz.
‘Again, it was good of you to see me, Herr Doktor,’ Gross said, taking an offered chair. They did not sit at Praetor’s desk, but instead at an informal Biedermeier grouping nearer the window. Another display of yellow mums adorned the small table between them.
‘Nonsense. It is I who thank you for taking interest in this. The police surely are not.’