‘So it was murder,’ she said with a shiver. ‘You’ve got to be careful. Both you and Doktor Gross. These men. .’
‘There is one other possibility,’ he said, trying to steer her away from these fears. ‘The architect Otto Wagner was the first to discover the body. We do not think he entered the room, but Gross wants to interview him to make absolutely sure.’
Which reminded him that he wanted Berthe to contact her friend Rosa Mayreder and see if she could arrange a meeting for Werthen with her brother-in-law, Councilman Rudolf Mayreder. He might be able to provide further inside knowledge from the Rathaus.
‘I am sure she would be happy to help out,’ Berthe said when asked, and then yawned.
‘Are you a tired mother?’
She nodded. But before sleep, she also had information to impart: her contacts at the Arbeiter Zeitung had come up with nothing more than what Adler himself had stated the other night at dinner: that Praetor was supposedly involved with the 1873 Vienna Woods preservation act.
‘Nothing there, then,’ Werthen said. Or was there? Was it mere coincidence that their own plans about the Vienna Woods had been thwarted? He and Gross suspected that whatever Steinwitz and Praetor were working together to expose got them killed. Did it, in fact, have something to do with the Vienna Woods?
Thirteen
Werthen’s late-night ruminations were vindicated the next morning. He was reading the Neue Freie Presse at his desk at the law office when he noticed the leather-bound diary Ludwig Wittgenstein had delivered. Werthen had left it on top of the desk amid what was becoming a hillock of documents. It was most unlike him to allow such a mess on his desk; he put it down to his attention being focused on this troublesome case that seemed to grow daily in complexity.
He should store the diary away with the report on the missing Hans, he figured. Idly flipping through it as he pulled out the file drawer for inquiry cases, he stopped cold at the sight of a familiar name: Steinwitz.
He read the entry from January 17 of this year:
Ricus tells me of the secret meetings he is having with Councilman Steinwitz. Personally, I have warned him against such collaboration. The man is in Lueger’s back pocket. Can he be trusted? Ricus insists that Steinwitz is one of the old boys. But to me shared attendance at the Theresianum is hardly grounds for trust. Those were miserable times for me and for Ricus. How quickly he forgets. Outsiders then, outsiders always. According to Ricus, though, Steinwitz has this same sense of being an outsider. He was after all a middle-class scholar, the first from that class to attend the Theresianum. But then so was Lueger, I reminded Ricus. Might just as well trust Handsome Karl, too. Ricus made no comment to that.
Then another entry from January 22:
Ricus has finally confided the nature of his investigations. They are planning on secretly selling off great swaths of the Vienna Woods. By ‘they’ he means Lueger and his crew at the Rathaus. To subvert the 1873 act protecting the Woods. Ricus says that he will publish and stop them, but I warn that this can be a dangerous game. Lueger does not take kindly to being confronted. Ricus assures me that he cannot publish immediately anyway. He needs more documentation from Steinwitz, and now the councilman is beginning to have second thoughts. Where will this all end? I do fear for Ricus.
The final entry was made on January 30:
All is lost. Best to leave, go right away from here and this pernicious influence.
The very next day Councilman Steinwitz was — as Gross had now partially proved — murdered in his Rathaus office.
Werthen could feel the excitement building in him. Was that what was behind all of this: a secret plan to sell off much of the Vienna Woods? But why? For what gain? And, what lengths would Lueger or his henchmen like Bielohlawek go to in order to stop publication of this intended sale? And what did Hans’s final cryptic message mean? What was lost? It could not refer to the death of Steinwitz, for that happened the next day, January 31. Or did Hans learn something about the murder beforehand? Is that what sent him off to America? And then a further thought: Could this scheme to sell off the Vienna Woods also be associated with the incidents in Laab im Walde yesterday?
Unfortunately, there was no way to ask these questions of Hans Wittgenstein, for he had given his family no return address when contacting them from New York.
Still, this truly was explosive information. If Hans Wittgenstein were accurate in the reporting in his journal, two deaths might very well be laid at the door of Mayor Lueger.
Herr Pokorny, it turned out, was almost a neighbor of Werthen’s in the Habsburgergasse. He ran a small pharmacy, was thick in the waist and small in the head, and nicely outraged at Werthen’s visit.
‘I cannot assist you. I do not know why Grundman gave you my name.’
‘You are on the deed. You are the one who listed the property. You are the one who countered my offer. Those are just a few of the reasons.’
Werthen had to resort to threats of a lawsuit claiming professional incompetence against Grundman to get the name out of him.
Pokorny lifted from the counter a large ceramic jar with Kamillentee, chamomile tea, written in blue glaze against a cream background. This he placed on a shelf about shoulder height behind the counter. The interior of the pharmacy was traditional in design, with elegantly tiled floor, an abundance of mahogany and brass, and overall the smell of respectability and Protektion, the connections with which businesses such as Pokorny’s Lowenherz pharmacy needed to open and stay in business. The issuance of new operating licenses was strictly controlled by the pharmacists’ guild and the city in order to control competition. Pokorny, oddly enough, did not look the sort to have such connections, nor did he, despite the white laboratory coat he wore, seem to have any scientific or professional inclinations.
He listened coolly to Werthen’s list of reasons for visiting him. ‘That proves nothing,’ he maintained.
Werthen lost what little patience he had with the man.
‘Understand this. My wife and child, along with my parents and close family friend, were threatened and abused on your property yesterday.’
‘That’s no matter for me. What were they doing there anyway?’
‘You know perfectly well what they were doing. Inspecting the property we were proposing to buy.’
‘That property is no longer on the market.’
‘It is still yours and you can be held responsible. In a court of law.’
This last statement got his attention. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph. That farm’s been a cross ever since my wife’s parents died and left it to her. A burden and a headache. Money to repair this, money to repair that. Money for taxes, money for land rehabilitation. I just want to be rid of it.’
‘You need to give me an explanation.’ Werthen looked at the man steadily.
‘They said not to mention it.’
‘Who?’
‘The fellows who came around yesterday. Doing a survey they were for the city, so they said. And they suddenly find that my wife’s property is sitting smack in the middle of other open and protected land in the woods. Well, what’s that to me?’
‘What was it to you?’
‘They made it clear, these men, that my property was no longer for sale. I would be hearing from important people who would give me a price for it. But I should take it off the market or else.’
‘Herr Pokorny, you are making no sense. Or else what?’
‘They take my business license away from me. That would be an end to it all. No license. How could we survive?’