Before Holmes could reply, a crowd of hotel guests flocked into the breakfast room. The tables around us buzzed with life. Teutonic voices filled the air. I questioned the waiter. He explained it was a fishing competition. More than thirty German anglers came down every year at this time to fish on the Franz Joseph Canal, a waterway famed for its variety and quantity of fish - bream, roach, rudd, Prussian carp, bighead carp, perch, pike, cat-fish.
One of the anglers at the next table heard my question. In excellent English he called over, ‘Gentlemen, we have rented thirty-two fishing spots but one of our members couldn’t come. One of you is welcome to join us.’
I looked eagerly at Holmes. He waved a hand graciously.
‘My dear Watson, who am I to stand in your way when it comes to fishing?’
My new host introduced himself as Dr. Herdlitzschke, a specialist in contagious diseases. He himself was resident in Novi-Sad. He would supply the spare seat, fish keeping net and fish bait.
‘Dr. Watson,’ I returned. ‘I too am a medical man. In London.’
It was 8am. The charabanc would leave in an hour.
My fishing companion settled me at a neighbouring peg on the canal bank. Dr. Herdlitzschke informed me he came from southern Germany.
‘From Bavarian Swabia. We have a joke about ourselves. We say “Wir können alles. Außer Hochdeutsch”. In English it means “We can do everything - except speak Standard German”.’
At this very spot, he told me, he had once caught 129 fishes with a float and one hook in a single day, mostly roach and rudd. He had heard of extraordinary catches on the Tisza - cat-fish weighing 90 kilogrammes, river char at more than 30 kilogrammes. In the lakes there were brown trout above 25 kilogrammes. He asked why I was in Novi-Sad. Was it in a professional capacity? His own hospital was staffed more by foreign doctors than Serbians. With the advent of summer he always had room for one more.
‘No,’ I replied, ‘something quite different. My colleague Sherlock Holmes and I are searching for someone. A woman.’
‘Sherlock Holmes!’ he exclaimed. ‘So you are the Dr. Watson!’
I nodded, flattered.
‘The name of the woman you seek?’
‘Lieserl,’ I replied, uncertain of the pronunciation. ‘L-i-e-s-e-r-l.’
‘Lieserl?’ he repeated. ‘Where I come from we have lots of Lieserls but none of them is a woman.’
I stared at him in astonishment.
‘Not a woman?’ I exclaimed.
‘Not exactly,’ he affirmed. ‘In Swabian, the ‘er’ in “Lieserl” describes definitely an infant. Like Büberl or Mäderl. Something very small. We would never use such a name for an adult woman.’
Holmes and I were settling into breakfast at the hotel when a boy in uniform brought an envelope to our table marked SECRET, PERSONAL, ADDRESSEES EYES ONLY. It was from Holmes’s brother Mycroft.
As from No. 10, Downing Street.
Dear Sherlock, His Majesty’s Ambassador in Vienna has arranged for you to inspect the records at the Novi-Sad Town Hall. Take with you the credentials contained in this letter. You may well encounter certain difficulties in pursuing your Balkan searches. I sympathise. You would not be the first to come away from those pocket handkerchief states heartsick and humbled. The Balkan States have endured centuries of misrule under Ottoman Absolutist regimes whose functionaries are a byword for injustice and malpractice. It is a constant stimulus for revolutionary activity. The Peninsular may be separated from the rest of Europe solely by the width of the Danube and the narrowness of the Straits of Otranto, but we know as little of it as we do of the industrious navigators digging the canals of Mars.
I suggest a meeting with a Miss Edith Durham could be helpful in your quest. She is an Englishwoman, font of much knowledge of the region. She is staying for a few days at the Vaskrsenja Hristova Monastery near Kać, ostensibly to study local traditions and to make drawings of amphibia. Miss Durham alone is at liberty to tell you the real reason for her presence. It is enough for me to say that England takes its holdings in and around the eastern Mediterranean very seriously.
I have asked Miss Durham to remain at the Monastery until you arrive.
I then revealed my discovery. ‘Holmes,’ I chided, ‘how is it you didn’t know Lieserl could only apply to a small child?’
‘My dear Watson,’ came the answer. ‘I’d have been quicker off the mark if my Cambridge tutor had been born in Stuttgart rather than in Hanover where they speak High German. Swabian was as alien to him as Broad Yorkshire with its roots in Old Norse is to you and me. He knew one word in the dialect, Präschtlingsgsälz,as unpronounceable to most Germans as Shakespeare’s honorificabilitudinitatibus is to us.’
‘And the Swabian word means?’ I enquired.
‘Strawberry jam.’
Armed with our new knowledge and the impressive document with its multiple seals we set off for the Town Hall, an imposing building on the north side of the central square. The next two days were spent browsing through municipal and census records under the eye of a watchful civil servant. Nowhere was the name ‘Liese’or ‘Lieserl’ mentioned in connection with the Marić family. The evening of the second day approached. The clerk had been assiduous in pulling out ledgers but we had discovered nothing. We showed our appreciation with a thaler and began to walk in despondent mood back to our lodgings. At some distance from the Town Hall we heard the footsteps of someone hurrying to catch up with us. It was the same clerk.
‘You will learn nothing about the Marić family from official records,’ he said. ‘Miloš Marić’s tentacles stretch into every corner. He knows everyone. He has been an official at district courts in Ruma and Vukovar and appointed to the High Court in Zagreb. He owns a great deal of property - three farms in Banja Luka and large homes in Titel, Novi-Sad and Kać. He is still an official in Novi-Sad’s Serbian Reading Room. No civil servant or cleric would spread gossip about Marić or his family for fear of their livelihood.’
‘What do you suggest?’ I asked.
In a near whisper he added, ‘There is someone who might help you with the information you seek. My cousin. Her name’s Jelena. Jelena’s mother-in-law is a friend but not a blood relative of the Marić family, not a porodica,’ he explained. ‘This puts her distant enough not to feel her lips completely sealed yet close enough to have heard any gossip. I can arrange for you to meet her.’
A message was delivered to our hotel later that evening. We were to rendezvous with Jelena at the Queen Elizabeth Café. We entered the café at the arranged hour. A woman with thick grey hair trimmed short beckoned us. She was seated at a tiny marble-topped table set among potted white lilacs. Slavonic grey eyes in an oval-shaped face watched us carefully as we approached. In accented English she acknowledged the Swiss chocolates we placed before her.
‘I heard about your search,’ she commenced.
She produced a tiny white fluted teacup and placed it on the table.
‘This teacup - it’s the one Albert always requests when he comes to my home for tea.’ She added, apropos of nothing, ‘It was Albert who designed the ulaz za mačku - a cat entrance for my Milica.’
My hopes rose. If we were to discover any link to the mysterious Lieserl, surely it would be from such an intimate source as the woman seated before us. ‘What can you tell us about Mileva?’ I asked.