Cafe Europa (11 page)

Harold brashly called after him. “Coffee, Mr. Markov, please. With whipped cream.”

“Mr. Gibbon, give the man air to breathe.”

Harold leaned into us. “There are so many rumors going around.”

“Like what?”

“Hooligans. Roving bands of bandits from the dark caves deep in the Buda hills. There's been stories of tourists assailed, robbed of cash. Pickpockets. Angry peasants with pitchforks. That sort of thing.” He whispered. “Gypsies slinking in the night.”

“Do you believe that?” Winifred asked.

“Not on your life. A rich American girl wanders the quay or the hotel garden at midnight, planning an assignation, alone, without her dreadful chaperone, and she just happens to encounter a passing band of thieves? Never!”

“But I gather her jewelry was taken,” I said.

“A masquerade.”

“Then what do
you
think happened?”

Harold bit his lower lip and hunched up his shoulders. “I think the count had second thoughts and had her killed. That's why he's conveniently in Vienna. It would be embarrassing to call off such an engagement. I know that advisors in the inner circles didn't like his mother's plotting—after all, he was a bachelor who liked being unencumbered. Murder is…convenient. American brides are expendable.”

I whispered back. “Stop this, Mr. Gibbon. Such talk is dangerous. Please watch what you say. You're impugning the integrity of a man of high station who…”

“Who is a militaristic, soulless creature.”

“Stop, Mr. Gibbon,” I pleaded.

He sat back, a smug look on his face. “Just an idea.”

Winifred was frowning at him. “Which you don't really believe, young man. Do you hear yourself? You just want to foment trouble, stir the fires, all of which you'll sensationalize and wire back to Hearst, that yellow journalistic hack.”

“He pays my salary, no?” He sucked in his cheeks.

Markov carried a tray to the table, apologizing. “The waiters they stay away today. No one comes to work. What am I to do?” He served coffee slowly, as if afraid he'd drop something. From the kitchen the boy György carried a pitcher of water, but Markov rolled his eyes, stammered. “György, this how you serve the people?”

Gyorgy wore his street clothes, a rumpled puffy white peasant shirt, open at the neck, and white pajama-like baggy trousers over worn boots. Markov pointed to his clothing. The boy sputtered, “I don't…” But stopped.

The lad looked sad, his eyes moist and swollen. Markov motioned for him to return to the kitchen, though György stood there, hangdog. “He drags along, the snail today. He says it is like an arrow to the heart, the beautiful girl gone.” Suddenly he reached out and gripped the boy's shoulder affectionately. “There is sadness in the world, yes?”

György stared back vacantly, uncomprehending. “Uncle,” he began, speaking in Hungarian, which Harold immediately translated for us. “Tell them about the door.”

Markov jerked back, surprised, letting out a tiny laugh. “György, such gossip.”

“You said…”

Harold sat up, boomed out, “What, György? Markov?”

“It is nothing,” Markov answered in English. He looked over his shoulder toward the lobby. “No one talks to me so I wonder…how important.”

“Tell us,” I demanded, irritated.

“When I close up the café late last night, I shut the French doors to the terrace and garden. Always. As I am told to do. I
lock
them. It is night. There are dangers, no? But I couldn't sleep, so I sit in the lobby and talk with the desk clerk, Attila, an old friend. I drift to sleep. Two in the morning I wake up, walk back into the café, and the door is wide open. One of the doors is. I
know
I locked it.”

I nodded. “Of course. I walked back in from the Corso at midnight—through that door. I gave it no thought.”

“Someone unlocked it.”

“Maybe Cassandra,” I said, “as she headed to the garden.”

“But she didn't walk by me as I sat in the lobby.”

“Are you sure?”

A thin smile. “No, of course not. We made coffee in the back room, Attila and me. No one was around. Even István Nagy joined us, which surprised us. He does not believe in having coffee with the workers.”

“Did you see Mrs. Pelham?”

A shake of his head. “No.”

György was nodding his head and began talking in German. “Tell the police, Uncle.”

Markov looked nervous. “I don't know…”

I raised my voice. “Of course you do. Maybe unimportant, but maybe not. Tell Inspector Horváth. He is the one…”

“I know the man,” Markov said. “He stops in for coffee and to hear the Gypsy music with his beautiful wife. A friendly man. But the other man scares us, pushing through the kitchen, yelling, pointing fingers. No questions…just…ordering everyone around. ‘Move! Move!' he yells.” He grinned stupidly. “He makes me long for my Russian village.”

“Did you hear anything last night?” I asked. “When you were closing up?”

He shook his head. “Silence. Darkness. When I saw the door was open, I closed it, locked it again. I thought I forgot, but I know I didn't. So I go home to my wife who is waiting up for me, and angry.” He smiled.

“Someone came into the hotel,” Harold concluded. “Someone walked in from the garden.”

“Or
left
the hotel,” I said. “Someone headed
for
the garden. It's impossible to know the answer.”

“Had you seen Miss Blaine earlier that evening?” Winifred asked.

Markov considered, speaking now in his labored English and glancing nervously toward the doorway. Sweat glistened on his brow. “Very early, I think. But she didn't stay. She walked in from the garden, through the café. Zsuzsa was drinking with that strange bearded American who scares everyone. I worry because of the…the scene with Zsuzsa and the American girl the day before. The slap in the face. So sad, that.” He leaned in, confided, “I don't want my café to be a place for brawls. But Miss Blaine walked over to say something, and I think they smiled at each other, but I didn't hear what they said.” He turned to György, who was holding the water pitcher at a suspect angle, a fact that Markov noted with a flick of his hand. In German. “You hear anything, boy?”

György had been staring toward the terrace, bored, leaning on one hip and then the other, at one point scratching a pimple on his cheek. Startled, he rolled his tongue into the corner of his mouth and shook his head. “I stayed away from her, Uncle.” A shake of his head, an aw-shucks smile. A speck of blood where he'd picked at the pimple. “I didn't want her crazy at me again.” He sighed and muttered something in Hungarian, his eyes gleaming.

“What?” I turned to Harold.

“He says beautiful girls should never be made angry.”

Winifred growled. “But that's the only fun some of us have.”

Frowning, Markov pushed György into the kitchen. “Shoo, shoo.” The corners of his mouth crinkled as he looked knowingly at Harold. “He is too young for Budapest.”

Harold appreciated the line, barking loudly, “And the rest of us are too old for this city.”

Markov looked puzzled. “What do you mean, sir?”

Harold didn't answer and turned away, which further confused poor Markov. He bowed and began inspecting the samovar on the counter. Harold spoke too loudly. “I'm guessing that poor Endre Molnár is somewhere in the hotel. He's gotta be a wreck of a man, haggard, tearful. I know that man—heart on his sleeve. But this martinet Meyerhold has sequestered him somewhere, probably grilling him, threatening, beating perhaps, covering him with his bratwurst breath, insulting his Hungarian blood so that Endre will show his hothead spirit. Meyerhold will get a confession out of him.”

“But Endre didn't kill poor Cassandra,” I announced.

That startled Winifred. “Edna, what? How in the world do you know?”

“In my bones, Winifred. In my soul.”

She snickered. “You can never believe a good-looking man capable of atrocities, Edna.”

“Not true. Daguerreotypes of John Wilkes Booth show a handsome man…if a little cruel in the eyes.”

“Let me qualify that. Unless the evidence is overwhelming.”

I smiled wistfully. “You don't know me, dear Winifred.”

“I know enough…”

Harold broke in. “What are you two ladies gabbing about? This is not the issue—the man's good looks. You know, the police have that note from Endre, found on Cassandra's body. It puts him
there
.” He actually pointed out to the terrace.

“No, it doesn't,” I insisted. “It suggests his intention to meet her there. There is no proof he actually
met
her or
talked
with her.”

“Tell that to the police, Miss Ferber. Hardly conclusive.”

A garbled rasp sounded from the entrance, a barely-stifled sob. Zsuzsa Kós floated in, a large black silk handkerchief gripped tightly and held against her cheek. She stumbled near our table, almost toppling, as Harold rose to help her, but she waved him away. She tucked herself into a chair at a table in the far corner, buried her head on her arms for a moment, and then leaned back, staring up toward the ceiling. She was dressed all in black, a matronly funereal gown that swept the floor, a black cape lined with black satin dramatically slung over her shoulders, and on her head a monstrous hat constructed of ruffled fabric, enormous black silk roses, and dyed black ostrich feathers. The first keener at the funeral, and the most demonstrative. An inappropriate laugh, immediately suppressed, escaped her throat, followed by a full-throated sob.

“They say she's going mad,” Harold told us.

“Shh.” From Winifred. “A sad woman, she is.”

“But slipping from reality.”

Winifred then quoted a line from Shakespeare, which touched me deeply. “Leave her to heaven,” she whispered.

Markov, approaching tentatively, offered coffee or wine but she held up her hand and mumbled something incoherent. Glancing at us, as though for help, he backed off.

To my horror, Harold bounced up, hesitated a moment, and then sailed over to her, pausing before her table. “My condolences,” he said. “I know you two were friends who…”

She screamed, “Go away.” In German. “You horrid little man.”

“I only…”

She shrieked and Harold backed away, bumping into a chair in his path. For some reason he wore a goofy smile, an expression owing more to nervousness than celebration—the pesky little boy, reprimanded.

Seated back at our table, Harold leaned in, motioning us forward. “I already got stacks of cables this morning. Hearst, of course. He wants banner headlines—fire in the gut. The news was wired out of Budapest early this morning. This is a big story—and it may get bigger. This is scandal, writ large. The American princess and the Habsburg count. Ill-fated marriage. Blighted love. The dashing, moody Hungarian porcelain magnate. Impassioned, inconsolable, perhaps the murderer. The supercilious count who was spotted last night dining at Sacher's with a duchess from Saxony. It'll be in all the afternoon papers. Murder in the midnight garden. Moonlight glowing on the Chain Bridge. Roses making you dizzy in the garden. Heads of state will react. Lines drawn. Anger. Tempers flaring. My byline, of course. I'm here in the thick of it. This is my new story. Hot off the presses. Let me tell you.”

“Harold…” I attempted to break in.

He ignored me. “The sinking of the
Maine
was nothing compared to what I'm going to say.”

Chapter Nine

The following afternoon, sheltered beneath towering walnut trees, Winifred and I strolled on the gravel walk through the Zoological Garden after a lunch of
paté de foie gras
sandwiches at an outdoor eatery. The city was famous for this delicacy. For a while we sat on benches in City Park, though the quiet was disturbed because Harold—was that imp everywhere?—called out to us. In German, for some reason.
Grusz Gott!
God's greeting. We tried to ignore him, but he tagged after us as we got up to leave. He was spouting some nonsense about international conspiracies, the Frankfort bankers, and the danger of Tsar Nicholas' unholy alliance with Serbia.

Turning a corner, we spotted Jonathan Wolf sitting at a table, dining by himself and reading a newspaper. Harold stopped, mid-sentence, just as Winifred was pooh-poohing his political science, and pointed at the elusive American in our path. Under his breath, Harold hummed, “Jonathan Wolf. Somehow he's in this story. I don't trust that man.”

“No, please.” I touched his sleeve, but Harold bustled toward Wolf, who looked up, surprised and unhappy, at the intrusion.

“I'd like to make your acquaintance,” Harold told him.

Jonathan Wolf ran his tongue over his lips, dabbed at them with a napkin, and put down his glass. He was debating what to do, but finally, measuring his words carefully, he nodded at the table. “Won't you all join me?” There was nothing friendly in his invitation.

Winifred protested, but to no avail. “Do we have to do this?”

Harold grinned. “Of course, we do. Miss Ferber's face tells me she would love an introduction.”

Admittedly, I was staring intently into Jonathan Wolf's upturned face, trying to size up the well-dressed man with the dark black beard, neatly trimmed. A tall man, broad in the shoulders, a wrestler's chest. A light tan Savile Row summer suit, expensive. A diamond stickpin in his lapel with a Phi Beta Kappa key beneath it. A straw boater rested on the seat next to him. Gray kid gloves lay on the table. A tall highball glass with brandy and soda, melting ice. A plate of mushrooms-on-toast. A cigarette stubbed out in an ashtray. Here was the comfortable man of leisure, on holiday.

Harold introduced himself, but that gesture was not necessary. The man cut him off. “I know who you are, sir.” A smile difficult to interpret. “A scurrilous newsmonger from the tabloid Hearst syndicates. A man who annoys everyone. A tick on the belly of mankind.” Harold bowed, smiling. “And these ladies are Edna Ferber and Winifred Moss, also guests at the dilapidated firetrap called the Hotel Árpád.” He stared into Harold's face. “You have been dying to talk to me for days now.”

“Well, of course,” Harold began. “Everywhere we go, you're
there
.”

Jonathan Wolf held up a hand.

“You grant no one privacy, Mr. Gibbon. That's clear from watching you strut around the café like a bantam rooster. No one can hide from you. No one can harbor secrets, even in so remote a place as Budapest.”

Harold was irritated. “Do you have secrets?”

“Everyone has secrets. But some are trivial and mundane. Worthless.”

“
Most
people's secrets,” Harold noted. “But…”

“But obviously not mine—if I am to judge your inquisitiveness. You think that I have something to tell you.”

“Do you?”

A sardonic smile. “I provide no answers unless you ask the right questions.”

“And those questions are…”

“That's your job, sir.”

This verbal skirmish ended as a waiter approached the table. “If we are to have this unpleasant conversation, let me offer you all some wine.” He spoke to the waiter in Hungarian. “Of course, we'll have Tokay, the legendary grape every tourist demands. And rightly so. A favorite of mine.”

Harold was impatient to get back to the conversation. “I'm by nature a curious man.”

Wolf eyed him, but looked at me and then at Winifred. “You ladies choose to wander these lovely, ancient streets with your family pet.”

That rankled Harold. “Hey, I'm a reporter.”

He eyed Harold over the rim of the brandy he now finished. He chomped on an ice cube as the waiter returned with wine and poured it. Wolf's voice was laced with sarcasm. “And I'm not a reporter—nor curious.” He sighed as he fingered his beard and then sipped the wine. “Ladies, please.” I sampled the wine: pungent, rich, smooth, aromatic. I smiled. “I told you you'd like it. Everyone does. Even if they
don'
t, they
say
they do.”

That bothered me. “I never lie, sir.” A charming smile. “At least about wine.” Then, watching his face, I told him, “Sir, I've had Tokay before.”

“Good for you then. A head start on excellence.”

“You come to Hungary often?”

My abrupt shift in conversation didn't faze him at all. He grinned. “Are you working for Mr. Gibbon?”

I bristled. “I work for no one but myself. I'm trying to make idle conversation with a rude man who invited us to sit with him. Perhaps you should choose a topic that you approve of, sir.”

That surprised the man, who tightened his lips into a frown. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled, sat back in his chair, relaxed his body. “Yes, I
am
being rude, Miss Ferber. My heartfelt apologies. I wasn't raised that way.” He glanced at Harold. “It's just that—well, some folks rattle my chains, as it were. I'm a private person.”

“I understand that exactly, sir,” I said.

“It's actually a pleasure to meet you two ladies.” He avoided looking at Harold. “I do know your enviable reputations.”

“Apology accepted,” I told him.

He took a sip of wine and seemed to be weighing his response to me. “But you are right. We are having a pleasant conversation—or trying to. To answer your question, yes, I visit Hungary often. I've often vacationed at Lake Balaton. A village. Almádi, in fact. A long, beautiful lake. Vineyards. Old peasant women sell poppy seed rolls in the park or carry green earthenware jugs filled with buffalo milk. Old men in faded hussar uniforms nodding on the benches. Delightful. I have good friends in Pécs.” He reached out across the table, offering his hand to Harold, who was pouting. “Friends, sir?” Harold shook his hand.

“Edna and I have traveled to Budapest to see the sights,” Winifred told him.

“My father was born in Hungary,” I blurted out.

That intrigued him. “Really? Ferber?”

“Yes, a nearby village. A shopkeeper's family, I gather. In some ways this is a sentimental visit for me. My father often spoke of Budapest, a city that dazzled him, a place where…” But I stopped talking. Jonathan Wolf wasn't listening—he was watching Harold, who was eavesdropping on a conversation at a table near us.

A moment of silence, then he shifted the subject abruptly. “I'm here on business, in fact. I work for a company in Massachusetts planning some major investment in Eastern Europe. Based in Boston. Since I knew Budapest…and Prague, in fact…even the Croatian Agram…I was asked to…scout out possibilities.” He was still staring at Harold.

Something was wrong. His words rang false, though I wasn't certain why I thought that. The breezy, casual speech had suddenly become staccato, rehearsed. A set piece delivered as a capsule biography to keep people away. Jonathan Wolf did, indeed, harbor a secret.

“And you chose the Hotel Árpád?” I asked.

He waited a bit. “For English-speaking contacts, of course. American businessmen. All Americans end up there—creatures of habit. I've been a guest a number of times, and each time I marvel at the decay—and danger. I ignore the intrusive image of Franz Josef staring at me as I wake in the morning.” He laughed, though no one joined him. “And a curious room service that has a mind of its own. A plate containing a piece of crispy apple strudel sailing to floors other than my own.” He shook his head back and forth. “But charming, no?”

Winifred was nodding her approval.

What I detected was a slight accent, barely suppressed under the rigorous Bostonian inflection. Jonathan Wolf, I concluded, most likely had been born in Europe.

“You were born in Boston?” I asked.

Amused, he was shaking his head. “Ah, more questions. A reporter, too?”

“Yes, indeed,” I answered, a little hotly. “A product of Sam Ryan's afternoon
Appleton Crescent
, circulation under one thousand, more when disaster struck.”

“And did it strike often?”

“Not often enough. I was fired after one year.”

He waited a second. “Yes, I was raised in Boston. Boston Latin, Harvard. The full sweep of Brahmin acceptability.”

“But you're not a Brahmin.”

He didn't answer.

Harold was watching me, delight in his eyes. Partners, his look conveyed, in solving the mystery of the bearded man. I was still haunted by my first glimpse of Wolf as he stood in the shadowy entrance, watching Cassandra, a look not curious but—harsh, menacing.

“A hotel that was the scene of a horrible murder,” I began, goading him. “That poor American girl. Cassandra Blaine. Had you met her?”

“Of course not.” Said too quickly, and glibly. He was looking down into his half-empty glass. When he glanced up, I saw wariness in the corners of his eyes.

“So close to her marriage,” I went on, driven. Winifred squinted at me: What? What? Really, Edna. I was used to her questioning looks—often withering—and her belief that I was too forward. Rebel though she might be in the war for suffrage, she still harbored conventions about proper conduct, which I didn't. After all, she was British. I…well, wasn't. The Atlantic Ocean had loosened some of the rusty bolts of respectability.

“What do you think happened?” Harold asked now.

A heartbeat. “I don't know. Gypsies, perhaps.”

“That's an easy conclusion,” I offered.

“From what I heard, it was a robbery gone bad.” He fiddled with his pocket watch, anxious, and stared toward the sidewalk.

“I don't believe it.” I locked eyes with him. “Cassandra was suddenly afraid of something. She
told
me so.”

That news shifted his interest, and he tilted his head toward me, eyes questioning. “Afraid of what?”

“I wish I knew.” I glanced at Winifred. “But it seems her presence in the Café Europa drew quite a bit of attention from folks. I recall seeing someone standing in the shadows of the doorway, his eyes riveted to her, and not too kindly.” A disingenuous smile. “A large man, bearded.”

I expected him to squirm, but he didn't. Debonair, slick, he smiled in recognition. “Ah, you have a wonderful eye, Miss Ferber. But perhaps a passing stranger might be fascinated by a noisy, frivolous girl who enjoys making scenes in public. As an American, I tend to dislike when my compatriots feel the need to behave childishly in foreign countries. Perhaps that stranger was simply looking at her with distaste. End of story.”

“And yet this woman was to be married to an Austrian count.”

He laughed out loud, and for too long. No one else did. Then, his tone sober, he said with marked annoyance, “Stupid, these transcontinental marriages. And with an impoverished count who thinks he has his finger on the pulse of modern Europe and its trouble spots. The age of feudalism looking up at the airplane in the sky with the wonder of a child discovering his big toe.”

“So you're saying the count is…clueless about modern life?”

Harold warmed to the subject. “Franz Josef himself is without a clue. Here is a man who refuses to ride in an automobile—after all, it is a modern trapping, a death machine. A man surprised by rebellion in the provinces, who expects the enslaved Slav to bow before him. A man who…” Harold stopped. Jonathan's face looked stony.

“I take it you don't care for the Habsburgs?” he asked.

“What do
you
think of Franz Josef?” Harold countered.

“I really have nothing to say on the subject.”

I smiled. “So you're not invited to the wedding that will never happen now?”

That surprised him. “I'm here on American business, Miss Ferber. I believe I already told you that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Edna,” Winifred began, “what are you getting at?”

“I believe Mr. Wolf is harboring secrets.”

“And so the conversation comes full circle,” he concluded.

No one laughed. Wolf glanced toward the street, his eye following a policeman standing by the underground stop. He pushed his plate away from him, drank the last of the wine, slapped some crowns on the table, and signaled to the waiter.

Harold hurriedly spoke up. “How long are you staying in Budapest, Mr. Wolf?”

A thin smile. “I guess the inquisition has another tiresome act.”

We waited. Harold fussed with a napkin, then waved his hand at Wolf, his fingers resting near the man's sparkling diamond pin. “You're very much the cosmopolite, sir.”

“A lovely word, but not really describing me. I'm a simple American businessman.”

“You've already established that,” Winifred said, her voice sharp, something that surprised me. Jonathan Wolf looked at her with an expression that suggested his only ally at a hostile table had drifted over to the opposing side, leaving him naked on the battlefield.

“Well, I was supposed to visit Sarajevo, but I've been warned against it. Too much trouble brewing there.”

Excited by the sudden introduction of politics, Harold rushed his words. “I may go there soon—if given an assignment. Archduke Franz Ferdinand is scheduled to visit there shortly. With his wife, Sophie.”

“A mistake, I would think.”

“But Bosnia is an Austrian territory now.”

“But it's filled with angry Serbians. Anarchists who resent the encroachment of the empire on their ancient lands.”