Chapters (50)
- Praise
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Teaser chapter
“Don’t mention it.” I went back into the hallway with the intention of examining the lock on the door. It was an Evva. An excellent lock. But there would have been no need to have picked, raked, or forced it. It was immediately clear to me how the intruder had gained entry to her apartment. The front door key was hanging on a length of cord, below the letterbox. “He didn’t break in,” I announced. “He didn’t need to. Look.”
She stepped into the corridor and watched me tug away the cord from her door. “Not exactly the most sensible thing to do with your key when you’re a woman living on her own,” I said.
“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
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 façade 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.