Free Requiem in Vienna by J. Sydney Jones Page B

Kaspar, as well,” Werthen said, an edge to his voice.
    Anna von Mildenburg pulled herself out of her melodramatic swoon, and fixed him with a fish-cold stare.
    “Tragic, of course. But merely an unfortunate by-product.”
    “By-product?” Werthen said.
    “Of the attempt on Mahler’s life. That is why you are here, no? You surely cannot think that Kaspar was the intended victim.Who would care enough about the mousy little creature to send a fire curtain hurtling down on her?”
    “She was a promising talent, is that not so?” Gross said.
    “Promising, but not yet actualized. Besides, she was no threat to other singers. Mitzi had already left the company.”
    “That would be Mitzi Brauner?” Werthen said.
    She smiled appreciatively. “I see we have an opera fan present.”
    Werthen ignored this remark, staring instead directly into the singer’s face, herding her like a sheepdog back onto the track she perpetually desired to stray from.
    “Yes, Mitzi Brauner,” von Mildenburg continued. “She left for Aachen. Not a great house, but then her time was
vorbei
, past. She no longer had the looks to carry the soubrette roles. So the Kaspar girl had a clear field.”
    “And what about Fräulein Kaspar’s affair with Mahler?” Werthen asked. “Were there—”
    “Angry, jealous, and spurned lovers ready to scratch her eyes out?” she finished for him. Then she let out a low laugh. “Hardly. Though he has been here less than two years, Mahler has, I understand, made several conquests. But there were no bad feelings afterward with them, just as there are none with Mahler and me. You cannot put light in a bottle. We fellow artists recognize that.”
    “Nothing so base as jealousy afoot then.” Werthen said.
    “Be skeptical if it suits you,” she said, suddenly bristling.
    Now we are getting somewhere, Werthen thought.
    “Are artists above normal human emotions?” he pressed on.
    “How can I begin to explain to someone not involved in the arts?”
    “Oh, please, madam,” Gross interjected. “Werthen here is a published writer, in point of fact. His short stories have been highly lauded.”
    Werthen cut his eyes at Gross, but the criminologist was having too much fun to pay him any attention.
    “I had no idea,” she said, looking at Werthen.
    “Part of the reason Herr Mahler hired him. Because he understands the artistic temperament. He is one of you.”
    As usual, Gross liked to pile it on thick, but it amused Werthen to see how von Mildenburg changed her attitude.
    “You
will
understand then,” she said, shifting in her chair, and leaning toward Werthen as if to impart a secret. “You see there could not possibly be that sort of jealousy. I mean Mahler, he wants to possess a woman, but not in the physical way. He wants her soul, not her body. His conquests were of the spirit, not the flesh.”
    “You mean, you and he . . .”
    “Exactly. As if a sword were placed between us in the bed. There were thus no spurned lovers. There were no lovers at all.”

FIVE
    D eath forged a truce between Werthen and Gross.
    Detective Inspector Bernhard Drechsler, a razor-thin man, directed the foot traffic inside the small First District flat. Three beefy constables stood at ease by the door, waiting while Werthen and Gross got about their business. The largest of the three, a man with a nose so veined and scarlet as to suggest he had poured most of the annual wine harvest of Burgenland into his body, wore a bemused expression. His thick arms were folded across his chest like a challenge.
    Werthen was unsure what they were looking for, but Gross insisted they should investigate, and they had arrived at the scene just in time to forestall any initial police examination. A personal favor from Drechsler, whom Werthen had never before met. Sent to Czernowitz for a crash course in the spring, the Viennese inspector and Gross had formed a collegial relationship. Far from friendship, their connection was professional