‘All that lovely mother’s milk does not come from eating crusts,’ Frau Blatschky intoned, as if Berthe had hitherto been subsisting on a convict’s diet.
Werthen’s mother, however, was worried lest her daughter-in-law lose her shapely figure. A mere week after the birth she said to Berthe with sweet insouciance, ‘You don’t want Karlchen to be harnessed to a dray horse, now do you, dear?’
Werthen hoped — he had long given up on praying — that his parents would finally pack their bags and go back to their estate in Upper Austria. Reconciliation be damned; he wanted his domestic peace once again.
‘Werthen? Are you quite all right?’
Klimt’s voice brought him out of his thoughts. ‘Sorry, Klimt. Forget I mentioned the parents. As you say, put it down to lack of sleep.’
Klimt rubbed a thick hand through his short, disheveled hair. ‘It’s a case of missing persons. Well, one missing person.’
Werthen, accustomed to the painter’s extreme egoism and narcissism, was not caught amiss by this seeming non sequitur.
‘That’s not really my line,’ he said.
‘Nonsense, Werthen,’ Klimt spluttered. ‘Anything is your line as long as it has to do with private inquiries. And this is very private, I assure you. My patron, Karl Wittgenstein-’
‘He’s gone missing?’
‘His oldest son and heir.’
Werthen nodded judiciously at this information. Karl Wittgenstein, the powerful industrialist, dubbed the Carnegie of Austria, was indeed a commission of worth. The man was one of the wealthiest in the empire if not in all of Europe, and had recently retired, turning his interests to art. Among his other projects, he had helped fund Klimt’s exhibition hall, the Secession.
‘I thought you might be interested,’ Klimt went on. ‘The young man’s name is Hans. Just turned twenty-three. He’s been missing for the better part of a week.’
‘What do the police say?’
Klimt leaned back in his chair. ‘I don’t suppose that wonderful young woman out there might find a cup of coffee for me?’
‘No, I don’t suppose she will. I can offer you a slivowitz, though.’
Klimt grinned like a fellow conspirator. ‘The cold, you know. One could do with a bit of lubrication.’
Werthen kept a bottle of ten-year-old plum brandy in a massive sideboard that took up one wall of his office. Moving to the sideboard, he secured the bottle and two glasses. To be polite, he poured himself one, too, though it was far too early for such indulgences.
‘Your good health,’ he said, handing one of the shot-size crystal glasses to Klimt, who did not bother with preliminary sniffs or appreciation. Remaining seated, he downed the fiery liquor in one swift gulp.
Klimt handed back the empty glass. ‘No police involved. Herr Wittgenstein is rather prickly about publicity, you see. He has had a bellyful of it lately regarding his monopolies in steel and iron. Besides, he tells me he believes the boy is simply off on a lark. It’s the wife, you see, who is worried.’
‘A week is a longish lark,’ Werthen said, resuming his seat. ‘I assume there has been no note, no communication asking for ransom.’
‘None.’
‘A family of such wealth, kidnapping cannot be ruled out.’
‘But a week and no note. .’
‘Yes, to be sure.’ Werthen did not mention other possibilities swirling in his mind. Not only were the Wittgensteins one of the wealthiest in the empire, but they were also the most prominent Jewish family, assimilated or not. Perhaps some anti-Semite had a hand in the disappearance. There was any number of possibilities. Interesting, however, that the father should think the son had simply run off for a final fling.
‘Has the son gone missing before?’
‘That, my friend,’ said Klimt as he rose from the chair, ‘is something you must ask Herr Wittgenstein. He has reserved a ten o’clock appointment for you. Meanwhile, I have a lady waiting for me at my studio.’
Werthen raised an eyebrow.
Klimt shook his head at this. ‘She’s fat and fifty, but the family is well endowed.’ Klimt laughed. ‘I shall make her look like a sylph. No one will recognize her. And please don’t be late. Herr Wittgenstein keeps the wurst on my table. The Alleegasse, just behind Karlskirche.’
Redundant information, as everyone in Vienna knew the location of the Palais Wittgenstein.
Three
Werthen let Fraulein Metzinger know he would be out most of the morning and perhaps the rest of the day. He had no scheduled appointments at the office today; Klimt’s timing could not have been more perfect.
The snow had let up now, but the world was muffled in its whiteness. Soon enough it would melt and be a filthy nuisance, but for now Vienna was transformed into a winter wonderland. A number of truant children were out in the Volksgarten, sledding along the pathways on discarded planks of wood to the great disapproval of older pedestrians. Werthen did not bother trying to find a Fiaker, but instead cut through the park on foot on his way around the Ringstrasse to the Alleegasse. As he walked, he tried to sort out his questions for Herr Wittgenstein. He knew the importance of confronting a man of such power with his own assured plan of attack.
Along with most other Viennese, Werthen was well aware of the importance of Karl Wittgenstein. Born in 1847, the industrialist was, like Werthen, just two generations removed from the land and from his Jewish roots. His father had run a successful dry goods business and converted to Protestantism. Instead of following the family route into business, Karl Wittgenstein became a draughtsman and an engineer and went to work for the Teplitz steel-rolling mill in Bohemia. By a mixture of hard work, overweening ambition, and a willingness to take huge risks, Wittgenstein built an empire from this humble beginning. Five years after starting work as a lowly draughtsman for the Teplitz Rolling Mill, Wittgenstein was running that business. He sold train rails to the Russians during the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, making a huge war profit for his company, and staged another coup by gaining sole European rights to a revolutionary steel manufacturing process. With these rights in hand, he leveraged other businesses, acquiring the Bohemian Mining Company and then the Prague Iron Company, creating a vertical monopoly in steel production in the Czech regions of the Austrian Empire. He repeated this success in the German regions with purchase of the Alpine Mining Company, and at the same time established the first rail cartel in Austria. It seemed to many that Wittgenstein had a finger in every economic pie in the empire, with seats on the boards of powerful corporations, including the Creditanstalt, the most powerful bank in the monarchy.
Then, in 1898, amid a firestorm of criticism over his shoddy treatment of workers, his monopolistic practices, and his attempts to artificially drive up the price of his steel stocks, Wittgenstein stepped down from the directorship. He became a patron of the arts, but knowledgeable observers knew that he still had a strong hand in the day-to-day operations of his far-flung industrial empire. His home at Alleegasse 16 had become one of the foremost salons in Vienna. Johannes Brahms premiered his late clarinet quintets here; Klimt and other members of the Secession first presented their work to the public in the immense rooms of that city palace. Through marriage, the Wittgensteins were connected with lawyers, doctors, industrialists, and ministers. Herr Wittgenstein could obtain a visa, an introduction to a general, medical advice, or an inside tip on investments with a simple telephone call.
At the same time, because of his cut-throat business practices, there were plenty of people who might want to harm Wittgenstein in some way. There were other businessmen whom he had driven into bankruptcy; angry shareholders of those competing businesses; workers seeking redress for long hours, low wages, and dangerous working conditions; socialist-anarchists who wanted to make an example of this ruthless American-style capitalist; consumers incensed at his monopoly pricing. All these in addition to a garden-variety kidnapper after money or a crazed anti-Semite. The list was long, Werthen knew.