The Melancholy Countess (Short Story) by Frank Tallis Read Free Book Online Page B

gave me a job. I started off as a bellboy, and when Bodor’s last assistant was taken ill, I took his place.”
    Rheinhardt made some notes. When he looked up again, Danko was staring at him with moist, luminous eyes. “The poison. It was identified by … a pathologist?”
    “Yes,” Rheinhardt replied.
    “Herr Farkas told me that wasn’t possible.”
    “Well, he was mistaken.”

17
    Liebermann lowered his hands onto the keyboard and began the final song of the evening. It was the Schubert setting of Friedrich von Matthisson’s “Voice of Love.” Rheinhardt’s lyric baritone was euphonious, tender, and achingly expressive:
    Clouds of dusk floating fast
    Along the purple skies
    Hesperus looks with loving glances
    Through the flourishing grove of limes.
    The melody was sweet and innocent. How easy it was, thought Liebermann, for this emotion—universally celebrated in poetry by affectionate glances, nightingales, and starry skies—to become something dark and dangerous. He remembered his patient, the woman who believed herself to be a
varcolac
. Obsessive love was a comparable madness.
    When the final chord had faded, Liebermann closed the lid of the Bösendorfer, and the two men retired to the smoking room. They sat in their customary places, Liebermann on the left, Rheinhardt on the right. Brandy was decanted and cigars lit with ceremonial efficiency. A fire had already been prepared by Liebermann’s serving man.
    Rheinhardt leaned toward his friend. “The question I’ve been asking myself is this: How much did Farkas really know about the effects of strychnine?”
    “He knew everything,” Liebermann replied.
    “In which case, if the dinner plates had not been exchanged, and Farkas had succeeded in poisoning Hauke …”
    “The investigation would have progressed quite differently.”
    “Indeed. Farkas could never have got away with it!”
    “I very much doubt that evading detection was ever his priority. He was beyond caring and did not fear punishment. He had become a monomaniac and wanted one thing and one thing only. A horrible death for Hauke.”
    “And he was even prepared to sacrifice Robi Danko?”
    “For a man in whose heart the fires of first love still burned fiercely, for a man who had waited more than a decade to exact retribution, Danko’s ultimate fate was of little consequence.”
    Rheinhardt nodded and sipped his brandy. “It’s looking more and more likely that Hauke did murder his first wife. We’ve been following up some of the leads given to us by Frau Albert. I am inclined to believe—without compelling evidence, I grant you—that Hauke also murdered his second wife and would have, in the fullness of time, murdered the third.”
    “Poor Danko.”
    “Yes, I agree. It isn’t a very satisfactory outcome. I know that he was the one who actually did the poisoning, but he is also a simple and vulnerable boy who was clearly manipulated.” Rheinhardt sighed. “Now, if I hadn’t let you interview Hauke, we would never have found out about the exchanged dinner plates. Hauke would have been tried and very likely hanged. I don’t think he would have won much sympathy in court. In a way, one could argue that that would have been a more just result.”
    “Well, yes. But …”
    “I know. Civilization requires that we have due process rather than revenge. Still, I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor fellow. Danko isn’t evil. He’s just stupid and loyal. Whereas Hauke …”
    Liebermann lifted his glass and rotated it to create a lattice of rainbows. “We are imperfect animals, Oskar. We cannot hope, given such unpromising and primitive material, to expect human affairs to resolve in an aesthetically pleasing manner. For that, I’m afraid, you must turn to fiction.”
    They both fell silent and stared at the glowing embers, deep in thought.

About the Author
    FRANK TALLIS is a clinical psychologist and writer. He is the author of
A Death in Vienna, Vienna Blood, Fatal