‘Mitzi’s body was found on May Day,’ he said. ‘Which means she must have been. .’ He hesitated for a moment, not knowing how strong Frau Mutzenbacher was, despite her crusty façade.
‘Murdered,’ she said. ‘Say it, man. Damn it all, say the word.’
‘She must have been murdered the night before. What was she doing out that evening? Was it her day off? Did she have an appointment?’
‘That is a mystery to me. The first I knew she was gone was when Siegfried told me she had missed an appointment with a valued customer.’
‘Did she have regular days off?’
‘I don’t run a prison, Advokat. My girls are free to come and go as they like, in their time.’
‘And April 30 was not Mitzi’s day off?’
She shook her head. ‘Never missed a shift before that day. Always working, even if she felt sick. Her days off came close together every month. Same as for all my girls.’
It took Werthen a moment to register this. Of course. No work when the girls were menstruating.
‘I see,’ he said.
‘You find him, Advokat. Find the man who killed my Mitzi.’
Her voice broke on the girl’s name.
‘Now please leave.’
FOUR
Werthen took a list of names away with him, but did not expect much from it. As Frau Mutzenbacher herself had noted, it was highly unlikely Mitzi’s customers would use their real names. But a quick perusal of the list once he was outside on the street showed him he was wrong. One of the customers had actually scrawled his real name: Richard Engländer. A joke, perhaps? Few in Vienna knew him by that name.
Werthen had recognized him from the funeral photo and from Fanny’s description of the unusual customer who wore sandals and had flowing moustaches.
The impressionist coffee-house poet Engländer had, like Salten, eschewed his Jewish roots and taken a pseudonym, Peter Altenberg. He had also recently become a Catholic, if Werthen remembered rightly. Son of a prosperous Viennese businessman, the young Altenberg managed to avoid the family business when a psychiatrist declared the excitable youth medically unfit for employment.
Altenberg’s prose poems and vignettes — he called them extracts from life — caught the flavor of Vienna on the fly: faces at a coffee-house, a bear act at the Ronacher theater, a mouse on the loose in a hotel, and girls. He wrote reams of paeans to the female sex — usually the younger end of the spectrum. These works celebrated pubescent girls not yet affected by male lust; they spoke of shop girls, prostitutes, actresses, maids, nannies, even young frustrated middle-class wives with elderly husbands. A new work of his was out this very year — What the Day Brings Me, a collection of fifty-five such impressionistic concoctions.
Werthen was not one of Altenberg’s champions, though his friend Karl Kraus was. It was Kraus, in fact, who had first got Altenberg published with the premier German publisher, Fischer Verlag.
Werthen found Altenberg’s musings self-indulgent; he agreed with the grammar-school teacher who declared the youthful Altenberg a ‘genius without abilities’. Altenberg was a showman, Werthen thought. His strange clothing — sandals and flowing cloaks — and his generally bohemian lifestyle, living out of hotels, spending his days at the Café Central, drinking away the nights in the company of other writers and painters, was no substitute for writerly talent.
As Werthen turned away from the Danube Canal and followed Rotenturmstrasse back to the centre of the First District, he thought of some of the apocryphal tales surrounding Altenberg. One of his favorites — and what was said about Altenberg was always better than what Altenberg said himself — was the story of how he failed his Matura. Taking the all-important exam to graduate from the exclusive Akademisches Gymnasium, Altenberg had supplied a one-word response to an essay question on the importance of the New World. ‘Potatoes’ was Altenberg’s laconic reply.
The examiners were not amused.
Soon Werthen passed the Stephansplatz, with the cathedral to his left. He resisted the impulse to dash into the cool darkness for a moment of solitude in the pews. It was a pleasure he had too long neglected, but he knew Altenberg’s daily routine and wanted to talk with him before he left for the Café Central — his office and home away from home.
He and Altenberg were neighbors, of a sort. The hotel where the man lodged in Wallnerstrasse was only a couple of streets away from Werthen’s office in Habsburgergasse. Werthen stopped off at the office briefly to put away the Bible he had found in Mitzi’s room. Walking the streets of the city with it in his hand, he felt like a missionary doing the rounds; and by the quizzical look Fräulein Metzinger gave him as he entered, he obviously looked the part, as well.
‘Don’t ask,’ he said, briskly moving to his office and placing the book on his desk.
‘I may be out the rest of the day,’ he said as he returned through the outer office to the main door.
‘His work is done in mysterious ways,’ the assistant said to him deadpan as he departed. Glancing back from the door, he saw the hint of a smile on her face.
The Hotel London was not to be found in Baedeker, for it was more a brothel than a lodging house, the rooms — except for a few such as Altenberg’s — being rented by the hour.
Happily, there were no women outside the hotel at this hour. Going through the portal, with yellow paint peeling on the sign, Werthen was assaulted by the cloying fragrance of day lilies, the first of the year. They could be the last, for all Werthen cared; he hated the noxious objects, their six yellow stamens and dusty anthers curled like beckoning fingers.
It was destined to be one of those days, he decided. A day when he was poor company even for himself.
‘What brings you to this fine establishment, Advokat Werthen?’
He looked with a mixture of surprise and recognition from the vase of day lilies to the man standing behind the front desk. He saw a thin man, in shirtsleeves, with sunken eyes, gray complexion, and hair plastered to his abnormally large skull like wet paint. The man wore a celluloid collar that was at least one size too large and a chartreuse tie with a pearl stickpin; in his left hand he held the latest racing sheet for the Freudenau track, in his right a pencil.
‘Herr Fehrut! You’ve changed your place of employment.’
The man shrugged as if to say that was self-evident. ‘On your advice, Advokat.’
True. Last time Werthen had unsuccessfully defended Herr Fehrut against pandering charges, he advised the man to find a new occupation.
‘No more Zuhälter for me. I’m on the up and up now, a concierge.’ He visibly puffed up as he said this.
Werthen looked around at the shabby foyer — dusty potted palms and aging notices tacked to the walls — and stopped himself from reminding the man this was a Stundenhotel, after all, and that he was still in the procuring business one way or the other.
‘I see you like my flowers,’ Herr Fehrut said, nodding towards the vase. ‘Grow them myself. I’ve got a little plot of land in a garden settlement in Penzing. Spend the occasional day off there. Nothing like a bit of fresh air.’
‘Especially after the stale air of the Liesel,’ Werthen added.
‘They’re not getting me back in there, again. No more iron bars for Fehrut. I’m a reformed man.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Werthen said without enthusiasm. ‘And to return to your question, I wish to speak with one of your guests.’
‘Advokat, you surprise me!’ He made a tssking sound.
‘Not that kind of guest. Altenberg, is he still in?’
‘I think maybe you should visit one of the other rooms. That fellow’s strange.’
‘Is he in?’
‘Oh, he’s in alright — insane.’
‘Room number?’
‘Thirteen. And no, we didn’t have a room number thirteen before he came here. He paid us to change the number of room twelve.’