A Funeral In Blue

about nine o’clock, he thanked them and he and Ferdi excused themselves. Tomorrow, Monk must face Max Niemann.

Outside in the street, it was freezing. The pavements glistened with a film of ice in the pools of light from the street lamps. Monk glanced sideways at Ferdi and saw the emotion raw in him. In a few hours he had been hurled through a torrent of passion and loss beyond anything his life had prepared him for, and seen it in a people he had been taught to despise. It had been installed in him that they were different, in some indescribably way less. And he had been touched by their dignity and their pain more deeply than he could control. Even if he could not have put it into such simple words, he was inwardly aware that their culture was the fount of his own. It stirred a knowledge in him too fundamental to be ignored.

Monk wanted to comfort him, assure him. But more than that, he wanted Ferdi to remember what he felt this moment as they walked, heads down in the darkened street, feeling the ice of the wind on their faces. He wanted him never to deny it within himself, or bend or turn it to suit society. It would be yet another betrayal. He had not the excuse of ignorance anymore.

He remained silent because he did not know what to say.

By the time Monk was face-to-face with Max Niemann at last, he had decided exactly what he was going to ask him. He already knew a great deal about Niemann, his heroism during the uprising, his love for Elissa, and how generously he had reacted when she married Kristian instead. From his outward behavior it was not difficult to believe he had largely got over his own passion for her and it had resolved into a genuine friendship for both Elissa and Kristian. He had never married, but that could have been due to a number of reasons. It was not so long ago that Monk himself had been quite sure that he would never marry, or if he did it would be someone quite unlike Hester. He had been certain he wanted a gentle, feminine woman who would comfort him, yield to him, admire his strength and be blind to his weaknesses. That memory prompted in him a wry laughter now. How little he had known himself. How desperately lonely that would have made him, like a man staring into a looking glass, and seeing only his own reflection.

But then he did know himself little, only five years, and those were strands worked out by deduction and sharp, sometimes ugly, flashes of disconnected memory.

He followed Max Niemann from his work as he strolled along the Canovagasse towards the open stretch of the Karlsplatz. It was not an ideal place for the conversation he needed to have, but he could not afford to wait any longer. In London, the trial might already have started. It was that urgency which impelled him to approach Max Niemann in the cafe where he sat listening to the chatter, and the clink of glasses.

It was discourteous, at the least, to pull up a chair opposite a man who was obviously intent upon being alone, but there was no alternative.

“Excuse me,” he said in English. “I know you are Max Niemann, and I need to speak to you on a matter which cannot wait for a proper introduction.”

Niemann looked only momentarily startled, his face set in lines of mild irritation.

Before he could protest, Monk went on. “My name is William Monk. I saw you in London at the funeral of Elissa Beck, but you may not remember me. I am a friend of Kristian’s, and it is in his interest that I am here.”

He saw Niemann’s expression ease a little.

“Did you know that Kristian has been charged with the murder, and is due to stand—” He stopped. It was apparent from Niemann’s wide eyes and slack mouth that he had not known, and that the news distressed him profoundly. “I’m sorry to tell you so abruptly,” Monk apologized. “I don’t believe it can be true, but there seems to be no other explanation for which there is any evidence, and I hoped I might find something here. Perhaps an enemy from the days of the uprising.”

A look of irony and grief crossed Niemann’s face. “Who waited thirteen years?” he said incredulously. “Why?”

A waiter came by, and Monk asked Niemann’s permission, then ordered coffee with cream and chocolate in it, and Niemann ordered a second coffee with hot milk.

“Of course we had quarrels then, loves and hates like any other group of people. But they were all over in hours. There were far bigger issues to care about.” His eyes were bright, his brow furrowed a little. The noises of crockery and voices around him seemed far away. “It was passionate, life and death, but it was political. We were fighting for freedom from Hapsburg tyranny, laws that crushed people and prevented us from having any say in our own destiny. The petty things were forgotten. We didn’t wait to murder our enemies in London thirteen years later; we shot them openly at the time.” He smiled, and his eyes were bright. “If there was anything on earth Elissa hated it was a hypocrite, anyone, man or woman, who pretended to be what they were not. It was the whole charade of the court, the double standards, that drew her into the revolution in the first place.”

“Do you believe Kristian could have killed Elissa, even unintentionally, in a quarrel that got out of control?” Monk asked bluntly.

Niemann appeared to consider it. “No,” he said at length. “If you had asked me if he would have during the uprising, if she had betrayed us, I might have thought so, but he would not have lied, and he would not have killed the second woman, the artists’ model.” He looked directly at Monk without a shadow across his face. There was no guard in him, no withholding of the deeper, more terrible secret. He had used the word betrayed quite easily, because as far as he knew it had no meaning in connection with Elissa.

Monk hated the knowledge that he would have to tell him, and see the disbelief, the anger, the denial, and at last the acceptance.

“You know him well.” Monk made it half a statement, half a question.

Niemann looked up. “Yes, we fought side by side. But you know that.”

“People change sometimes, over years, or all at once because of some event—for example, the death of someone they are close to.” He watched Niemann’s face.

Niemann fiddled with his coffee cup, turning it around and around in his fingers. “Kristian changed after Hanna Jakob’s death,” he said at last. “I don’t know why. He never spoke about it. But he was quieter, much more . . . solitary, as if he needed to consider his beliefs more deeply. Something changed in his ability to lead. Decisions became more difficult for him. He grieved more over our losses. I don’t think after that he could have killed someone, even if he or she was a liability to the cause. He would have hesitated, looked for another way . . . possibly even lost the moment.”

“And you didn’t know why?” Monk said, compelled to press again to see if Niemann had any idea of the