He also had the unmistakable look of a watcher. Of course, train stations were full of those waiting and watching for passengers, anxious to greet friends or relatives or business associates. But this man was different, Berthe felt. He was, she fancied, not the sort to personally meet someone at a train station.
She had noticed him earlier but paid him no attention. Now she realized that trains had come and gone and still he waited. Could he be waiting for the delayed train from Krems?
She chuckled to herself, thinking that she had only been on the job half an hour and was already an expert at surveillance, if not counter-surveillance.
Her attention was brought back to the task at hand, hearing the hiss and thump of a train pulling into the station.
She watched as the 11:15 from Krems snaked into the station, and wheeled Frieda’s carriage to the front of the platform, steps ahead of the engine. She knew Baron von Suttner would be in the first coaches, the first class.
Sure enough, second off the coach immediately behind the engine was the Baron, looking expectant as he arrived in the capital. He turned back to offer his hand to a young lady descending from the coach, who seemed awfully pleased with herself in a frilly summer dress, a perfect shade of robin’s-egg blue to show off her blue eyes.
The young woman had, Berthe thought, exactly the sort of self-satisfied expression that needed slapping.
The Baron carried a walking stick, his niece a parasol. They could be father and daughter come up from the provinces for a day in the city.
Except that it was evident they were not. Not the way the young woman wrapped her arm through his, nor the way she kissed him as she joined him on the platform, lingering with a playful peck just by the ear. She whispered something that made him blush and then break into laughter. They passed by Berthe unmindful of her, laughing together like young lovers meeting behind their parents’ backs.
Berthe felt her stomach sink as they passed. It did not take a private inquiry agent to know those two were having an affair.
From a telegram Frau von Suttner had sent earlier, Berthe knew they were coming to Vienna ostensibly to visit the Reinthaler Collection of Flemish art and porcelain.
The only problem with that was that the small private museum was closed on Thursdays for cleaning.
And today was Thursday.
Erika Metzinger was making her way out of the exit, one step ahead of the love birds. The pair would doubtless take a fiaker to their destination — and Berthe, with Frieda in tow, would hardly be able to keep up with them. Outside, Herr Bachman, Karl’s prized driver, was waiting for Fräulein Metzinger to follow wherever they might go.
As Berthe watched Erika climb into Bachman’s fiaker and drive off after the one the Baron and his niece had taken, the man in the boater came running out of the station, squinting in the noontime sun after the darkness of the train station. He hailed the next fiaker in line and headed in the same direction as the others.
With Fräulein Metzinger on assignment with his wife, Karl Werthen was acting as his own secretary; so when Hermann Bahr knocked at the office door without appointment, it was Werthen himself who greeted the writer.
Bahr, one of the luminaries of the Jung Wien literary movement so much in fashion, was an intimate of Altenberg, Schnitzler and Salten. Werthen figured it was no coincidence that Bahr should appear at his office, but was prepared to allow the usual platitudes to issue forth before his visitor got down to what really mattered.
Not so Bahr. Once the outer office door was closed behind them and they were ensconced in Werthen’s office, Bahr said, ‘This Bower business is a farce.’
Bahr, a lapsed Catholic, had the beard of a Jewish elder. He squinted at Werthen as he spoke, as if he suffered from astigmatism.
‘How so, Herr Bahr?’
For a man so loquacious on the printed page — Bahr had already penned numerous plays, novels and volumes of theatre criticism — he was oddly terse in his spoken communication.
‘One prostitute more or less. .’
He spluttered it out like a caricature of a stolid conservative landowner from Styria. The implication was clear.
‘I visited the young girl’s parents, Herr Bahr. I can assure you her death was not inconsequential to them. And what business, if I may inquire, is this affair to you?’
‘Schnitzler’s being hard used.’
‘Some might say he used the girl rather hard.’
‘You’re a literary chap, I’m told.’
Werthen made no response to this seeming non sequitur.
But that did not bother Bahr, who seemed to have his lines memorized.
‘It’s all experience. We store it up and later transform it into art. For a higher purpose. Schnitzler is a man of genius. Surely you see that?’
‘No one is accusing him of murder. Indeed, he is one of my clients.’
Bahr, rather inelegantly, snorted at this.
‘And,’ Werthen added, ‘it was your friend Salten who commissioned the case to begin with.’
‘Salten is too involved with the woman’s memoirs. Hardly an appropriate subject matter for his talents.’
‘You did not answer my question, Herr Bahr. Why are you interested? Were you perhaps also one of Mitzi’s customers?’
‘I am a married man, Advokat.’
‘Many are.’
‘Altenberg said you are a perceptive sort.’ Bahr suddenly shot him a winning smile. ‘Jung Wien has its detractors.’
So that was it, Werthen thought.
‘Scandal? Is that what you are worried about? One would think a hint of scandal would be de rigueur for the literary set.’
‘I have worked long and hard to achieve the respect our movement justly deserves.’
‘I assure you, Herr Bahr, I do not wish to bring public disapprobation to Jung Wien.’
Bahr looked into his folded hands as he next spoke. ‘You are a friend of Karl Kraus’s, I understand.’
‘Yes. We have shared information from time to time.’
‘A villain if there ever was one.’
Things were crystallizing now for Werthen. Bahr and Kraus were no friends, for Kraus thought Jung Wien was precious and febrile and lacked gravitas. In fact such opinions put into print in Kraus’s journal, Die Fackel, had led to that infamous altercation at the Café Central which ended in an Ohrfeig, a slap in the face for Kraus, administered by Salten. The feud had continued into the courts, with Bahr suing Kraus for defamation. The case had just been settled, in Bahr’s favor, but Kraus vowed not to be silenced.
‘What might your point be here, Herr Bahr?’
‘Kraus is the sort that will go to extraordinary lengths to avenge himself. He would like nothing better than to see scandal attached to the members of Jung Wien.’
‘Extraordinary lengths, such as killing Mitzi?’
‘You said it, Herr Advokat, not I.’
‘You’re delusional.’
‘You know the man’s penchant. He is forever writing about prostitutes.’
‘In their favor,’ Werthen pointed out. ‘He wants to protect their rights, not oppress them.’
‘The man is a sexual cipher. A monk. Repressed sexuality will find an outlet.’
Werthen was not prepared to continue this discussion. He stood up abruptly.
‘I wish I could say it has been a pleasure, Herr Bahr.’
For a moment, Bahr did not budge.
‘I am merely trying to be helpful, Advokat.’
Then he nodded, as if in defeat, and hands on thighs pushed himself up and out of his chair.
As he prepared to leave, Bahr cast one more crow-like remark:
‘I fear our Viennese Svengali has bewitched you, Advokat Werthen. You might want to ascertain Herr Kraus’s whereabouts for the night of April 30.’