'No,' she said, sheepishly. 'Normally I bolt the door when I go to bed. But I must have had something else on my mind tonight.'
I bolted the door. 'I can see I'm going to have to teach you a lesson about crime prevention,' I said, leading her back into the bedroom.
THIRTY-ONE
Following a thinly attended service at Karlskirche on Karlsplatz, the funeral cortege attending Elizabeth Gruen's casket drove slowly along Simmeringer Hauptstrasse, to Vienna's Central Cemetery. I traveled to and from the baroque church, with its landmark green copper dome, in a Cadillac Fleetwood driven by an off-duty American soldier who was running a chauffeur business on the side out of a PX garage in Roetzergasse. Everyone in Vienna had something on the side. Except perhaps the dead. All the same, if you are dead, then Vienna is probably the best place in the world to be. The Central Cemetery, in the Eleventh District, is, at five hundred acres and with two million residents, like a city within a city, a necropolis of trees and flowers, elegant avenues, handsome statuary, and distinguished architecture. Provided that you have the money and you are dead, of course, you may spend eternity here inhabiting the sort of monumental grandeur normally afforded only to self-aggrandizing emperors, dynastic monarchs, and tyrannous satraps.
The Gruen family vault comprised a bunker of black marble about the size of a gun turret on the Bismarck. Carved into the main body of the mausoleum, in modest gold letters, were the words 'Familie Gruen' and, near the base of the edifice, the names of several individual Gruens who were interred inside it, including Eric's father, Friedrich. The stepped facade featured a bronze of a somewhat scantily clad female figure who was supposed to be prostrate with grief, only, somehow, she managed to look more like a chocolady who had enjoyed a hard night of it at the Oriental Club. The temptation to find her a warm coat and a cup of strong, black coffee was almost overwhelming.
The vault was modest by the standard of an Egyptian pharaoh. But with its four matching sphinxes--one on each corner--I was sure a whole litter of Ptolemies would have felt perfectly at home in its three-for-the-price-of- one interior. And when I emerged from inside, having paid my formal respects to Eric's mother, I half expected the sexton to frisk me for gold scarabs and shards of lapis lazuli. As it was, I had so many strange looks and suspicious, even hostile stares you would have thought I was Mozart looking for his unmarked grave. Even the priest conducting the burial service--who, in his purple cape, resembled a French cake in Demel's window--gave me the evil eye.
I had hoped that by remaining at a distance from the other mourners and wearing a pair of dark glasses--it was a very cold but bright sunny day--I would remain relatively anonymous. Dr. Bekemeier knew who he thought I was and, in the circumstances, this was all that really mattered. But I hadn't bargained on a hostile reception from one of Elizabeth Gruen's servants, who let me know what she thought of Eric Gruen being there at all.
She was a red-faced, bony, ill-dressed creature, like a rib of beef in a sack, and when she spoke her plate shifted on her upper jaw as if the result of a small earthquake in her head. 'You've got a nerve, showing your face here like this,' said the crone, with evident distaste. 'After all these years. After what you did. Your mother was ashamed of you, that's what she was. Ashamed and disgusted that a Gruen should behave in such a way. Disgrace. That's what you brought to your family name. Disgrace. Your father would have horsewhipped you.'
I murmured some bromide about this all being a very long time ago and then walked swiftly back to the main gate where I had left the American with the car. Despite the icy weather, the cemetery was busy. Other funerals were in progress and there were several people heading the same way as me. I paid them little or no regard. Not even to the IP Jeep that was parked a short way away from the Cadillac. I jumped in and the American driver took off at speed, like a wanted criminal.
'What the hell's going on?' I shouted once I had picked myself off the floor. 'I've been attending a funeral not robbing a bank.'
The driver, who wasn't much more than a kid, with hedgehog hair and ears like two trophy handles, nodded at his rearview mirror. 'International Patrol,' he said, in reasonable German.
I turned to look through the rear window. Sure enough the Jeep was on our tail. 'What do they want?' I yelled as, gunning the engine loudly, he veered the car off Simmeringer and down a narrow side street.
'Either they're after you for something, buddy,' he said, 'or they're after me.'
'You? What have you done?'
'The gasoline in this car is PX,' shouted my driver. 'Occupation personnel only. So is the car. And so are the cigarettes and booze and nylons in the trunk.'
'Great,' I said. 'Thanks a lot. I really want to be in trouble with the police on the day of my mother's funeral.' It was just something to say to make him feel bad.
'Don't worry,' he said, with a big, well-brushed grin. 'They gotta catch us first. And this car has the edge on a Jeep with four elephants in it. So long as they don't radio in for an intercept car we'll probably lose them. Besides, an American has to drive that IPV. That's the rule. Our vehicle, our driver. And American drivers aren't usually crazy. Now, if it was the Ivan driving, we might have a problem. Those Ivans are the craziest drivers you ever saw.'
Having been driven before by a Russian, I knew he wasn't exaggerating.
We hurtled through the eastern approaches to the city center. The Jeep kept us in sight as far as the railway line before we lost them.
'Here,' I said, tossing some banknotes onto the backseat as we skidded around Modena Park. 'Let me out on the corner. I'll walk the rest of the way. My nerves can't stand it.'
I jumped out, slammed the door shut, and watched the Cadillac sprint away with a loud squeal of tires along Zaunergasse. I walked after it, onto Stalin Platz, and then down Gusshausstrasse, back to my hotel. It felt like it had been quite a morning. But my day had hardly started.
I had a light lunch and then went back up to my room for a rest before going to meet Vera Messmann at the bank. I hadn't been lying on my bed for long when there was a light knock at the door, and thinking it was the maid, I got up and opened it. I recognized the man standing there from the funeral. For a moment I thought I was going to receive another earful of abuse about how I had brought disgrace on the Gruen family name. Instead the man snatched off his hat respectfully and stood holding the brim tightly in front of him like the reins on a small pony and cart.
'Yes?' I said. 'What do you want?'
'Sir, I was your mother's butler, sir,' he said, in what I suppose was a Hungarian accent. 'Tibor, sir. Tibor Medgyessy, sir. May I speak with you a moment, please, sir?' He glanced nervously along the hotel corridor. 'In private, sir? Just a few minutes, sir. If you'd be so kind.'
He was tall and well-built for a man his age, which I estimated was around sixty-five. Possibly older. He had a full head of white, curly hair that looked as if it had been shorn from the back of a sheep. His teeth looked like they were made of wood. He wore thick, metal-framed glasses, and a dark suit and tie. His bearing was almost military and I guessed the Gruens preferred it that way.
'All right, come in.' I watched him limp into my room. It was a limp that made you think there was something wrong with his hip rather than his knee or his ankle. I closed the door. 'Well? What is it? What do you want?'
Medgyessy glanced around the suite with obvious appreciation. 'Very nice, sir,' he said. 'Very nice, indeed. I don't blame you for staying here rather than your mother's house, sir. Especially not after what happened at the funeral this morning. Most regrettable that was. And quite uncalled for. I've reprimanded her already, sir. Fifteen years I was your mother's butler, sir, and that was the first time I ever heard Klara speak out of turn.'
'Klara, was it, you say?'
'Yes, sir. My wife.'
I shrugged. 'Look, forget about it,' I said. 'Less said the better, eh? I appreciate you coming here like this, to apologize, but really it doesn't matter.'
'Oh, I didn't come here to apologize, sir,' he said.
'You didn't?' I shook my head. 'Then why did you come here?' The butler smiled a curious little smile. It was like looking at a heavily weathered picket fence. 'It's like this, sir,' he said. 'Your mother left us some money in her will. But she made it quite a while ago, and I daresay the sum she left for us would have done us very nicely if recently we hadn't had that change in the value of the Austrian schilling. Of course, she meant to change it, but her
