Funeral in Blue - Anne Perry [100]
“Very good,” Ferdi said cheerfully. “I suppose you have some money?” he added as an afterthought. “I’m afraid I haven’t much.”
“Yes, I have plenty,” Monk said without relish. “I think it is perfectly fair that the least I do is offer you dinner.”
Ferdi duly found a small café, and with his mouth full of excellent steak, he asked Monk who, precisely, it was that he was looking for.
“A man named Max Niemann,” Monk replied, also with his mouth full. “But I need to learn as much as possible about him before he is aware that I am looking for him.” He had decided to trust Ferdi with a reasonable portion of the truth. He had very little to lose. “It is possible that it was he who killed the woman in London.” Then, seeing Ferdi’s face, he realized that he had no right whatever to endanger him, even slightly. Perhaps his parents would prefer that he did not even know about such subjects as murder. Although that consideration was rather late. “If you are to help me, you must do exactly what I say,” he said sternly. “If I allow any harm to come to you, I daresay the Viennese police will throw me in prison and I shall never find my way out.”
“That would be very unfortunate,” Ferdi agreed gravely. “I gather what we are about to do is a trifle dangerous.”
It was completely idiotic. Monk was foundering out of his depth and trying very hard not to let despair drown him.
Ferdi looked keen and attentive. “What would you like me to ask someone, sir? What is it you really need to know, other than who killed this poor lady?”
There was nothing to lose. “Say that I am an English novelist, writing a book about the uprising in ’48,” he began, the ideas forming in his head as he spoke. “Ask for as many firsthand stories as you can find. The names I am concerned with are Max Niemann, Kristian Beck and Elissa von Leibnitz.”
“Absolutely!” Ferdi said fervently, his eyes bright with admiration.
The rest of that day was largely a matter of asking people tentatively and being more or less dismissed. By the time Monk went to bed in his new lodgings, saying thank-you in some approximation of German, he felt lost and inadequate. He lay in the dark, acutely conscious that Hester was not beside him. She was in London, trusting that he would bring back weapons of truth to defend Kristian. And Kristian would be lying awake in a narrow prison cot. Was he also trusting Monk to find some element which would be a key to make sense of tragedy? Or did he know it already, and trusted with just as much passion that Monk would wander pointlessly around a strange city where all speech was a jumble of noise, everybody else was rushing about their business, or strolling in fashionable idleness, but belonging, understanding?
Damn them! He would seek out the past! He would find it, whether it meant anything or not. If nothing else, Max Niemann would be able to tell him about Kristian as he had been then. But before he approached him, he would hear the same stories from other people, so he could judge the truth of Niemann’s account. What he needed was another member of that group from sixteen years ago, from Kristian’s list.
He finally drifted off to sleep with a firmer plan in mind, and did not waken until it was broad daylight. He was extremely hungry.
With much nodding and smiling, his hostess gave him an excellent breakfast with rather more rich, sweet pastry than he cared for, but the best coffee he had ever tasted. Repeating Danke schön over and over, he smiled back, and then set out with a freshly scrubbed and very eager Ferdi, who had spent all evening and a good part of the night reading accounts of the ’48 rising. He was full of a jumble of facts and stories that had gathered the patina and exaggeration of legend already. He relayed them with great enthusiasm as they walked along the street side by side towards the magnificence of the Parliament and the gardens beyond, now winter bare.