Requiem in Vienna by J. Sydney Jones Page A

time.
    What little other light there was came from two gas lamps on the sitting room wall. The chandelier was a gesture, merely. Nonfunctioning. Werthen marveled that it could actually hold theweight of the dead violinist, though Gunther was a slight man. He went to the only window in the sitting room; it let out onto a light shaft. Gunther’s address was noble enough, the Herrengasse. However, the cramped apartment was at the back of the building, which had once been a city palace for the Lobkowitz family. Perhaps then it housed domestics, but with the conversion of the old
palais
in the last decade, it had become a freestanding apartment.
    Musicians earned little enough, Werthen knew. The job was a sinecure—at least it had been before Mahler’s reign of terror at the Court Opera and Philharmonic—but such security came at a high price. Herr Gunther clearly had made barely enough for a single man to subside on; whether by design or necessity, his violin had also become his wife. A sad sort of life, Werthen thought. Devoted to art, yes. But then to come home from the lofty world of music to such a depressing environment. Once again, Werthen marveled that a sense of beauty was not something that was generalized to all aspects of one’s life. That is, he was amazed that a man such as Gunther who, one assumed, had been filled with the beauty inherent in music, could still live in such unaesthetic surroundings. Or, like much of Vienna, perhaps Herr Gunther had spent his free time in his favorite coffeehouse and not in the restricted confines of his unwelcoming apartment.
    Werthen’s ruminations were cut short by a snort from Gross.
    “Suicide. Utter nonsense.”
    Drechsler also perked up at this comment.
    “Well, I admit that the lack of any suicide note looks suspicious. But what makes you say so without even examining the body?”
    To which comment Gross simply righted the dining chair, placing it under the dangling feet of Gunther. The tips of the dead man’s boots were suspended two inches above the chair seat.
    “I’ll be damned,” Drechsler said. “Cut him down.” He motioned to the constables who now finished the work they had earlier begun.
    They laid the body gently onto the floor, and Gross leaned down to make a quick examination. Drechsler, his hawklike face marred by a rather unattractive overbite, squatted next to him.
    The inspector assumed control now, slipping a forefinger under the front of the noose. The skin underneath was neither bruised nor rope-burned. He worked around to the back of the man’s head, feeling for broken vertebrae with his eyes closed. He shook his head.
    “Amateur,” Gross spluttered, as if it was the worst offense he could imagine. “As if he didn’t care enough to even try to deceive us.”
    Werthen assumed Gross was not referring to the dead man but rather to some unknown assailant.
    “Perhaps he had no idea
you
would be investigating, Dr. Gross.” Drechsler said this, so Werthen thought, with no little degree of irony.
    “Had your constables had their way,” Gross replied with equanimity, “this may very well have passed muster as a suicide. Or perhaps he was relying on the elevated suicide rate of Vienna to cover the true crime.”
    “
He
?” Werthen said. Of course he knew what Gross meant. But it was as if he was denied the power of deduction when the master criminalist was in attendance.
    “Find me the woman who could have hoisted Herr Gunther up there and I shall be happy to arrest her.”
    “Arresting, I believe, still comes under my purview,” Drechsler said, suddenly taking offense.
    “A manner of speaking only,” Gross allowed.
    This seemed to mollify Drechsler, who continued his examination. “The absence of ligature marks on the neck is also consistent with the obvious interpretation,” Drechsler added.
    The words were out before Werthen could stop them: “What interpretation?” Which comment allowed Gross and Drechsler to share commiserating