‘Or more likely wanted more money,’ Werthen interrupted.
‘Quite,’ Gross said without enthusiasm, ‘or that she planned to run off with von Ebersdorf. We may never know the exact reason. And Fräulein Fanny perhaps knew of the arrangement and, following the death of Mitzi, wanted a gratuity to forget it. Again, a possible trail to Forstl is dealt with in the harshest manner. I understand why Schnitzel had to be silenced: he was potentially an embarrassment for an officer, a career ender, in fact. But the Bower operation? One imagines that was sanctioned by the Bureau, a chance to get one up on their rivals at the Foreign Office. So I ask myself, what trail was being covered up with the deaths of those two young women?’
‘Perhaps it was not a sanctioned operation,’ Werthen said.
‘Ah, yes, Werthen. It is good to see you in fine fettle once again. See what a brisk walk can do for that piece of muscle between your ears? Not sanctioned, then. And what else about Forstl is not sanctioned?’
‘You mean. .’
‘He was a double agent? Yes, that possibility comes to mind. Our Captain Forstl may be in the pay of a foreign power.’
‘In which case the killer, the assassin, could be controlling Forstl, not simply working for him. He was able to hold the man’s homosexuality over him, force him to work for a foreign government.’ Werthen was growing excited at the implications.
‘My God!’ He suddenly remembered their last meeting with the Archduke and the troubling rumor about a possible Russian double agent at work in the Bureau.
Gross was smiling at Werthen’s realization. ‘Yes, Werthen, I assume you recall our conversation with Franz Ferdinand.’
‘We have to stop him.’
‘My dear friend, all we have so far is conjecture. Highly competent and intelligent conjecture, but merely a theory nonetheless. What we need is an experiment to test our theory.’
Neither Werthen nor Gross knew that Berthe and her friends were at that very moment undertaking such an experiment.
They had left Frau Ignatz with the Portier who looked after the building while they broke into Captain Forstl’s apartment.
The scheme had been hatched quite spontaneously, the result of a casual comment and the conjoining of forces as if in a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of planets. First had come the visit of Frau Ignatz, whom Erika Metzinger had brought with her that morning. With the law office in ruins, Erika was working in Werthen’s study until they could find new quarters. Erika, forever protecting strays of one sort or another, had now taken Frau Ignatz under her wing, for the poor woman was still grieving for her brother so cruelly killed in the bomb blast intended for Werthen, Berthe and Gross.
No sooner had Frau Ignatz been offered a cup of tea and was ensconced in a comfortable chair than Frau Blatschky announced another visitor. Berthe was pleased to see Frau von Suttner ushered into the sitting room. It turned out that the peace advocate had come to town to talk with her publisher about a new edition of Lay Down Your Arms, but in the event he had suddenly been taken ill and her trip was for naught.
‘And then I thought, why not pay Frau Meisner a call and thank her once again for a job so well done. I must apologize for barging in like this unannounced. You must think me an awful bore.’ She smiled in Frau Ignatz’s direction.
‘Not at all,’ Berthe said with real sincerity. ‘You are always welcome here, Frau von Suttner.’
They sat chatting for several minutes, reviewing the latest Viennese gossip and news. Frau Ignatz was not saying a peep, but taking it all in like a schoolgirl on an outing. At one point Berthe thought she actually caught an impish gleam in her eye when Frau von Suttner railed at that ‘idiot Schönerer’ and his ‘Away from Rome’ movement.
She was referring to Georg Ritter von Schönerer, the anti-Semitic, pan-German and anti-Catholic member of parliament who advocated that true Germans leave the Catholic church and convert to Protestantism. Twenty-one members of his nationalistic far-right party had recently gained seats in Parliament, and he and his political ideas were enjoying a resurgence in the newspapers.
‘His poor sister,’ Frau von Suttner added.
Berthe nodded. She too knew Alexandrine von Schönerer, the politician’s younger sister and since 1889 director of the Theater an der Wien, one of the grand old theaters of the city.
Alexandrine was embarrassed by her brother’s primitive political ideas and took every opportunity to distance herself from his anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism.
Erika came into the sitting room, a brief in hand. ‘Do you know where your husband has put the Wildganz file?’ she asked and then noticed Frau von Suttner. ‘I am sorry. I thought you were alone.’
Greetings were made, and the conversation ultimately got round to the reason for Erika working out of the Werthen flat.
‘You mean the explosion that was written about in all the papers was at your office?’ Frau von Suttner exclaimed once the full story had been divulged.
At the mention of the bomb, Frau Ignatz uttered a high keening sound that reminded Berthe of the pitiful noise she had once heard a baby elephant make at the Schönbrunn Zoo after its mother had died.
Berthe did not want to be so cruel as to explain to Frau von Suttner in front of Frau Ignatz about her brother Oskar. She glanced at Erika for assistance, but did not require it, for Frau Ignatz herself made the matter clear.
‘My brother was killed in the blast,’ she said. ‘And if I ever get the killer in my hands, I will rip his eyes out.’
The matter of fact manner in which she uttered this threat sent a frisson through Berthe, but she knew she would feel the same if someone harmed Karl or Frieda.
‘That day may not be so very far away,’ Berthe said. And then to the barrage of questions this statement elicited, Berthe explained the course their investigation was taking and how one man’s name kept cropping up — even as the person responsible for Baron von Suttner’s attempted entrapment.
They had still not received a photograph that Inspector Drechsler had promised to send them to confirm Captain Forstl’s identity; and Berthe was anxious to show it to Frau Ignatz as soon as it arrived to ascertain whether he was the man the Portier had seen in the stairwell at Habsburgergasse the night before the blast. But whether directly or indirectly responsible for the bombing, Captain Forstl was responsible for a host of evil deeds. Of this, Berthe was sure.
‘I would like to put him under the lens the way he has done to others,’ she almost casually remarked.
This comment brought a moment of silence to the room as the women looked from one to the other. Erika was the first to react.
‘So why don’t we?’
They began discussing ways in which they might follow the captain, discover his secrets. But it was Frau Ignatz who took it to another level.
‘We’re not trained agents. He would surely spot us. I say we break into his apartment and go through the drawers.’
Berthe was amazed and almost shocked at the suggestion. Not that she opposed the idea, but she had had no idea Frau Ignatz possessed such sang froid. She could be a harridan when it came to her duties as a Portier, but what on earth would make her come up with such an idea?
‘I read a story like that in an illustrated magazine once,’ Frau Ignatz added.
‘But do we even know where he lives?’ Frau von Suttner asked, and by doing so tacitly joined in the conspiracy.
‘Perhaps we will be lucky,’ Berthe said, getting up and going into the foyer to the telephone table. A quick perusal of the directory showed her that luck was, indeed, with them. The man’s flat was only a few streets away, in the Florianigasse.