Mortal Mischief (33 page)

'It's all right, Eusebius – you can answer.'

'No, sir. I only know that it is a speculum.'

The professor laughed.

'Make a little circle with your thumb and forefinger – like so.' The professor demonstrated and the young man followed suit.

'When I wish to examine a growth in a patient's rectum, I slide this instrument into the anus.' Spiegler pushed the closed bills through the small hole created by the assistant's thumb and forefinger. 'And I prise it open.' He squeezed the handles and the metal bills drew apart, widening the simulated sphincter.

The assistant swallowed.

'Does it hurt, sir?'

'Of course it hurts!' said the professor, laughing amiably.

Bruckmüller joined in with a hearty guffaw and slapped the junior assistant hard on the shoulder. But his good humour was immediately moderated by the sudden appearance of a policeman looking through the shop's front window. Bruckmüller recognised him immediately. The young man had been at Fräulein Löwenstein's apartment.

'Excuse me, Herr Professor,' said Bruckmüller. He marched across the shop floor and opened the door. There was a blast of noise. The street outside was full of afternoon traffic. A tram rolled by, its bell clanging loudly.

'Yes?' Bruckmüller was almost shouting.

'Herr Bruckmüller,' replied Haussmann. 'I wonder if you could spare a few minutes?'

'Again?'

50

C
OUNT
Z
ÁBORSZKY PRESSED
the needle through the parchment-like skin of his arm and depressed the plunger of the syringe. He closed his eyes and waited for the morphine to take effect.

The police had found him taking his lunch at the Csarda restaurant. They had insisted that he accompany them to the Schottenring station where he had been questioned all afternoon. During one of the rest periods he had been allowed outside to smoke a cigarette. He had strolled towards the Danube canal. On his return, he had seen a carriage pull up outside the station. A young man had been frogmarched into the building. It looked like Otto Braun.

The police had wanted to know why he had been to see Herr Uberhorst the previous evening.

'I have enemies,' he had said, pointing at his bruised eye. 'I wanted to consult Herr Uberhorst on a matter of security.'

'You wanted him to supply a lock?'

'Yes. A good one for my front door.' The Inspector had looked at him sceptically. 'I lost some money at cards . . . to a gentleman. It is my understanding that he is anxious to get it.'

'Why did you not come to the police for protection?'

'The gentleman in question is from my homeland. We have our own way of doing things.'

And so the questions had continued – a relentless inquisition.

That irritating, fat Inspector!

As the morphine took effect a gentle warmth spread through Záborszky's body. His eyelids became heavy and a blurred impression of the world flickered for a few moments before giving way to shadow. The day faded and magical colours began to coalesce out of the infinite darkness. He saw a great house sitting on a wall of rock and heard the sound of a foaming river, rushing through a deep valley.

'Zoltan.' The voice was female and sounded distant. 'Zoltan?'

Was it his mother? One of his sisters?

He tried to open his eyes but found it difficult to do so.

'Here, let me take that.'

Slowly, his lids lifted and he saw the vague shape of a woman kneeling beside him.

His hand was still holding the depressed syringe and the needle was still in his arm. She carefully placed her thumb and forefinger on the glass body of the syringe and tugged it from his weak grip. Záborszky watched a bead of blood well up from the dermal puncture. It grew, and finally trickled along the crease of his elbow joint. He was fascinated by its brilliance – a bright scarlet.

The woman's feet appeared in his field of vision.

She was wearing a pair of small leather boots with high heels – the laces crossing between two columns of silver-edged holes. He could not see the hem of a dress or any evidence of an undergarment. She was wearing black cotton stockings, and as he raised his eyes he noticed that her legs were slim and shapely.

It wasn't his mother.

The woman's stocking tops were heavily embroidered with a complicated floral pattern, and were supported by green garters that bit into thighs of luminous white flesh.

In order to continue his examination Záborszky had to raise his head – a task that seemed to require an extraordinary amount of effort.

Struts of whalebone fanned out from a tiny waist, supporting sails of shiny red silk. Záborszky became engrossed by every detail – the dangling ribbons, the threads of green and gold, the hook-and-eye arrangement that kept the corset tightly closed. The woman's statuesque breasts were pressed together, and were powdered. For the first time Záborszky became aware of her perfume – which reminded him of night-scented stock.

With one final Herculean effort, Záborszky tilted his head back and looked up at her face.

'Well.' Her lips were moving, but there seemed to be no correspondence between the motions of her mouth and the sounds that she produced. 'Do you want some
kätzchen
?'

She opened her legs and sat on his lap – straddling him as though he was a horse. She pulled his face on to her breasts, and without thought he began to kiss them. The flesh was firm and remarkably cool.

Her hands were in Záborszky's hair. She pulled her fingers together and jerked his head back.

There was something about her face that made him feel uneasy. She was curiously familiar.

'What's the matter?' Her words had a shifting, liquid quality. 'You look scared.'

Those green eyes . . . those spirals of blonde hair.

'You mustn't be scared.'

How could this be?

'I've got something for you.'

'Lotte,' he whispered. 'Lotte?'

Szépasszony. Fair one. Demonic seductresss.

His hands slid up the woman's bare arms, over her smooth shoulders and settled in the hollows beneath her lower jaw.

The witch had said:
She will get you
.

'What are you doing?'

Záborszky's fingers closed around the woman's neck.

Those green eyes. Storms and showers of hail.

The woman tried to move but discovered that the Count's grip was resolute. His expression betrayed the kindling of a strange passion.

'Please . . . let me go,' she said.

Squeezed through the passage of a constricted windpipe, her voice was suddenly very thin.

51

C
OSIMA VON
R
ATH
seemed entirely out of place in Rheinhardt's office: too large and too colourful for such a functional space. She shifted her weight on the hard wooden chair, her capacious haunches spreading and bulging over its edges. Rheinhardt would have found her presence less disconcerting had she been held aloft in a palanquin, supported on the shoulders of eight Nubian slaves.

Waving a fan in front of her round face, she continued her account: 'Herr Uberhorst did behave strangely. He wanted to ask the spirit a question, and he was quite adamant that he should receive a definitive answer – a yes or a no: I recall that quite clearly.'

Rheinhardt twisted the tip of his moustache between thumb and forefinger: 'And the question he wanted to ask was?'

'Should I tell . . .
them
.'

' "Them" being who?'

'I have no idea, Inspector – he wouldn't say. We assured him that he was among friends and had nothing to fear, but nothing would induce Herr Uberhorst to provide us with an explanation. He said that it was a private matter.'

'Did he say anything else?'

'No.'

'Please, Fräulein, think harder – it might be important.'

Cosima stopped fanning herself and paused. Rheinhardt could see that his request had been taken seriously. Her brow became corrugated with deep lines as her lips puckered.

'Well,' she said finally. 'He said it was a private matter . . . but he also mentioned honour. Yes, that's right – he couldn't explain himself because it was a matter of honour.'

'And what do you make of that?'

Cosima closed her fan and tapped it against her protrusive lips.

'I imagine he supposed that if we learned who he intended to communicate with then it would reflect badly on Fräulein Löwenstein. I suppose he was trying to protect her reputation. Which suggests that he was in some way implicated in her scheme.'

'Scheme?'

'To subjugate a higher power. Given Herr Uberhorst's fate, I am now even more convinced that this was the case.'

'So, you think that Herr Uberhorst too was killed by a supernatural entity?'

Cosima dropped her fan and clutched the ankh that hung around her neck.

'Yes, I do.'

'Would that be Seth – again?'

Cosima's eyes widened and her knuckles paled as she clutched the talisman.

'He is a great god, and a mischievous god . . . Yes, it is possible.'

Rheinhardt made some notes. As his pen scratched across the paper he said: 'I owe you an apology, Fräulein von Rath. I am sorry I did not respond more promptly to your letter. Unfortunately, I have been rather busy.'

'I feared that you would dismiss my discovery,' said Cosima.

'No, not at all,' said Rheinhardt. 'In actual fact, I was in the process of planning a similar investigation myself.'

Cosima opened her fan again and fluttered it close to her neck.

'A seance?'

Rheinhardt placed his pen on the table.

'Fräulein, have you heard of Madame de Rougemont?'

'No,' said Cosima, her voice dropping in pitch. 'I don't think I have.'

'She is a French medium employed by the
Sûreté
in Paris. She is reputed to possess an extraordinary gift. It is my understanding that she has solved numerous crimes and mysteries.'

'Really?' Cosima's eyes glinted with interest. 'I've never heard of her.'

'Few people know of Madame de Rougemont's existence,' said Rheinhardt. 'The
Sûreté
guard her jealously.'

'Fascinating,' said Cosima, shifting her bulk forward.

'I had already telegraphed Inspector Laurent in Paris, requesting Madame de Rougemont's assistance, when I received your letter.'

'And?'

'The request was granted.'

'She has agreed to visit Vienna?'

'Madame de Rougemont will be here on Wednesday.'

Cosima seemed agitated with excitement, her wide mealy face becoming speckled with little red blotches.

'It may be that Madame de Rougemont will confirm your findings,' continued Rheinhardt. 'She may also help us to solve the mystery of Herr Uberhorst's tragic demise. To this end, she has proposed that we arrange another seance – to be attended by all the members of Fräulein Löwenstein's circle. I was wondering, would you be willing to assist with the arrangements?'

'Of course . . .' Cosima looked flushed and breathless.

Rheinhardt scribbled something in his notebook.

'Madame de Rougemont will be staying at this address,' he tore the sheet out. 'It's near the Peterskirche. I would like everyone to be there at eight o'clock on Thursday.'

Cosima took the sheet of paper. Her hand was shaking with excitement.

'I will send invitations immediately – to everyone – except for Herr Braun, of course.'

'No, include Herr Braun too.'

'You've found him?'

'He returned to Vienna last week. He had been called to the bedside of an ailing aunt in Salzburg – apparently.'

Rheinhardt's delivery was as dry as tinder.

52

'W
HEN
S
IGNOR
Locatelli was taken to the mortuary he was horrified to discover that his wife's legs had been badly burned. This of course confirmed what she had already written – that Professor Gruner had been subjecting her to an over-zealous regimen of electrotherapy. Locatelli spoke to some of his friends in the parliament building and a few days later a government inspector arrived. There's obviously some sort of inquiry under way – we're all going to be interviewed.'