Heidrich’s father looked as grizzled as he had the first time Werthen met him. His face, however, did not have any of the robust quality he had seen in it before. The eyes were red-rimmed; his mouth was sullen.
‘They’ve gone and killed my only son.’
‘It’s all right, Herr Beer.’ Fraulein Metzinger came up behind the grieving man. Her own eyes showed no sign of tears. She took the man’s arm to lead him back to her sitting room. ‘Please, come in,’ she said to Werthen and Frau Mayreder.
They took off their coats and hats and followed her into a sitting room furnished in nothing but huge overstuffed pillows on the parquet. She settled Beer on to one of the pillows covered in Turkish carpet and motioned for her other guests to do likewise. Werthen had a certain amount of trouble doing so, his right leg refusing to bend properly. But finally he seated himself, his leg sticking straight in front of him.
‘I thank you for coming,’ Fraulein Metzinger said to them, ‘but Herr Beer has already informed me of the tragedy.’
At this word the man let out a small sniffle. Werthen eyed him with real disdain. It was possible Beer felt honest sadness for the death of his son, but it was even more possible that he was trying to somehow turn this to his advantage.
‘How did you know of the accident?’ Werthen asked.
Herr Beer shrugged, lounging back on the pillow now, and his patched trousers rucked up to reveal glaringly white shins. ‘I have my informants. We stick together on the streets. News came to me fast. The boy was coming to meet me.’
Now he broke down completely, and Fraulein Metzinger put a consoling arm around him.
Equally amazing as the presence of Herr Beer was his assistant’s seeming lack of emotion. Not a tear in her eye, no hysterics. Obviously, she had been too busy taking care of the father to mourn the son.
‘You were planning to see your son?’ Werthen said.
Beer looked out warily between gnarled fingers covering his weeping eyes.
‘I know what you told me, Advokat. But he is my flesh and blood. I needed to see him, to give him a fatherly embrace.’
Fraulein Metzinger looked alarmed at this statement. ‘You have met before?’ She looked from Beer to Werthen.
‘We have, to be sure,’ Beer said before Werthen could respond. ‘Told me to stay away from my own flesh and blood.’ He cast a cringing smile Werthen’s way.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
But Frau Mayreder had no difficulty in assessing the situation.
‘A pecuniary motive, one suspects.’
‘What’s so peculiar? He’s my own son. I have a right to see him.’
But Fraulein Metzinger was not about to have the blinders taken from her eyes.
‘He is. . was the boy’s father, after all,’ she said. Fixing Werthen with a steely look, she asked, ‘Did you actually tell him to stay away from Huck?’
‘I am not sure this is the proper time to be going into all this,’ Werthen said. Then, seeing the determined look on Fraulein Metzinger’s face, he decided otherwise.
‘Well, Herr Beer and I did make our acquaintance. He was waiting for me at my favorite coffeehouse.’ Then to Beer, ‘Another example of information from your friends?’ But Beer was not responding. ‘At any rate, there was a discussion of recompense for his son. I believe, at first, he assumed that we had spirited young Heidl off for purposes-’
‘All right, all right,’ Herr Beer suddenly interjected. ‘I admit it. I thought there might be a little something in it for me. And why not? I raised the boy. Taught him all he knew. But I did love the little tyke. I assure you of that. Loved him as much as life itself.’
And indeed the man looked so miserable that even Werthen’s heart was tugged by his words.
‘Please, Herr Beer,’ Fraulein Metzinger said, holding his shoulders even more tightly. ‘No one doubts your love. I was not trying to take him away from you. I simply wanted to give him a home.’
Now, at long last, she broke down. Tears flooded down her cheeks, and the two clasped to each other on the huge pillow like tempest-tossed survivors of a shipwreck.
Finally Beer looked again at Werthen and Mayreder. ‘I’ll do the person who killed my son. I swear. I’ll track him down and do him the same he did to Heidrich.’
‘It was an accident, Herr Beer,’ Werthen said. ‘There’s no one to blame. No one at fault.’ Yet now, for the first time, Werthen began to wonder at that simple description of Huck’s death. Was it a mere matter of coincidence that one close to him, close to his firm, should die in the midst of this investigation? Werthen ran a hand through his hair as if to clear his mind. Death happens, he reminded himself. Sometimes it simply means nothing. It really is an accident. Yet someone at the station must have seen something.
Beer’s reaction, however, refocused Werthen’s attention. The man shook his head slowly. ‘Took Heidrich away from me and the young lady here. Snuffed him out like a bedbug. I’ll see that person gets what he deserves.’
In the end, Werthen left Frau Mayreder at the apartment. There was nothing more he could do there, and Rosa Mayreder seemed genuinely interested in, if not intrigued by, Beer.
‘The perfect example of a sort of cunning intelligence,’ she said to Werthen as he retrieved hat and coat in the foyer. ‘One cannot really tell if he loved his son or not. If not, then we have just witnessed acting of a quality much better than one sees at the Burg.’
Meaning the Burgtheater, stage of the best actors and actresses in the empire. Werthen felt no such fascination with the man; to him Beer was simply a conniving rotter. However, it was not his job to persuade otherwise.
Outside the snow was still falling, but less frenetically now, and he decided to walk home to clear his head. He cut through Stadtpark and stopped for a time at the ice pond to watch the skaters. They were out in force today, spinning and circling in eddies and flows. Many of the women were dressed a la Esquimaux, wearing cap, coat, tight-fitting breeches, and leggings all made of fur, their hands tucked into muffs as they sailed over the ice. It was a fashion made popular after the near disastrous Austrian Arctic expedition of 1874, when sailors aboard the sailing ship Tegetthoff discovered and claimed the two hundred ice-covered islands of Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic Ocean. Later their ship became icebound attempting to break through polar icebergs. The trapped ship served as a virtual prison for two years for the crew of twenty-four. Finally the men had to abandon their ship and head southward on foot. Ninety days they journeyed through blizzards and with dwindling supplies until Russian fishing boats saved them. News of their safe return spread around the world by telegraph; in Vienna their exploits were celebrated by this fashion statement, still popular after a quarter of a century.
Werthen watched the skaters for a few more moments, smiling inwardly at this display of a simple pleasure. It took his mind — for the moment — off more tragic and pressing matters at hand.
Seventeen
Werthen was met by Meier the next morning at the glass doors to the entrance hall of the Palais Wittgenstein.
‘I cannot say as you will be welcome,’ the servant said as he led the way up the sweep of marble steps.
‘How do you mean?’
But Meier had said all he intended to. Reaching the second floor, he rapped gently on the door to his master’s study. He entered, bidding Werthen wait on the landing, and returned a moment later.
‘Herr Wittgenstein is otherwise disposed.’
‘Tell him I’ve had a communication from his son, Hans.’
Meier hesitated, obviously not wanting to displease his employer.
‘Vital information,’ Werthen added. ‘I am sure Herr Wittgenstein would want to hear of it.’
With a long-suffering sigh the liveried servant rapped again on the door to the office. This time when he came out, he nodded at Werthen to enter, holding the door for him.