Cafe Europa Read online

  “Good night.” I spoke too loudly. In one of the lounge chairs by the reception desk someone stirred. Vladimir Markov was slumped in a side chair, legs stretched out, fast asleep, a newspaper covering his chest. I noticed the scarlet cravat was untied, and the careful vest unbuttoned. Snoring softly, he scratched his head, opened one eye tentatively, unfocused, and sank back into sleep. I walked by him.

  Another man was sitting by the elevator. István Nagy, the fussy poet. His face was buried in a book, eyes too close to the pages and he refused to look up as I passed. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw his head flick sideways, lips pursed, his body curled in. He swore softly in Hungarian, but swearing sounds the same in any language. You don’t need a devil’s lexicon for that.

  Behind me the desk clerk wished me good night in Hungarian. “Jó éjszakát.”

  I waved back at him.

  ***

  Winifred rapped on my door the following morning. I was scheduled to meet her downstairs for breakfast at nine, so her knock was unexpected. “What?” I asked. “Is everything all right?”

  She was shaking her head slowly. “Edna, you sleep through chaos. Something has happened. I don’t know what, but my floor is swarming with people. Everyone is yelling in Hungarian and no one paid me any mind. I had to push through swarms of officious men, dozens, chests emblazoned with ribbons, all bumping into one another. A man dressed in scarlet and blue and gold—a Matisse painting, really—ordered me away.”

  “What’s going on?” My heart pounded.

  “Early this morning I woke to yelling in the hallway but ignored it. When it didn’t stop, I cracked my door. Mrs. Pelham was stamping her foot on the floor, as though having a tantrum. She was poking a man with that infernal parasol she carries. He seemed scared of her.”

  “Can you blame him? She is a terror.”

  Winifred’s words were whispered. “Cassandra Blaine, doubtless.”

  “Cassandra Blaine,” I echoed.

  The young girl in the midnight garden. An assignation? For a moment I felt a tick of excitement—had she found the spunk to slip away from Mrs. Pelham’s awful authority—and flee?

  “Endre?” Winifred wondered.

  “Perhaps they’ve run away.” I shivered, thrilled.

  Winifred was nodding. “If so, she’s turned the world here upside down. Crowds of men bumping into one another like wild dogs…”

  “They don’t like disobedience.”

  “A girl with gumption?” Winifred said, eyebrows raised. “I wouldn’t have thought so.”

  But a flash of fear suddenly hit me. “Winifred, last night I saw the strangest…”

  I got no further. Heavy footsteps thumped at the end of my hallway, as bands of frantic men rushed down a staircase. Behind them, walking with reluctance, was Mrs. Pelham. She dragged her feet, and the man with her kept nudging her, muttering at her.

  “What in the world?” I looked at Winifred.

  “Madness, this hotel.”

  I waited a second. “Let’s find Harold.”

  Winifred made a face. “You’re assuming he knows what’s going on.”

  I nodded. “I’ll bet he does.” A heartbeat. “If he’s not the one responsible for this nonsense.”

  Harold spotted us coming down the stairs. He was leaning against the reception desk, a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. The tip of his beak nose was bright crimson, and his hair looked uncombed. The noise in the lobby was deafening, a roar that alarmed me. Harold maneuvered his skinny body though the blustery men, all talking at once.

  “Follow me.” He didn’t wait for an answer but walked out into the sunlight. A line of police vehicles was backed up to the entrance. We followed Harold down the quay where he pointed to a bench. “Sit.”

  “For God’s sake, Mr. Gibbon, such drama,” Winifred said. “Just tell us.”

  I gazed across the Danube. In the morning it was shadowy with gentle ripples, flecks of gold punctuating the yellow waters. Two young boys oared rowboats beneath us, calling out to each other, playfully teasing each other. I couldn’t look at Harold.

  His words were laced with sadness. “Cassandra Blaine.” A sigh. “Dead.”

  Winifred watched me closely. “Cassandra Blaine.” Her voice broke. “Lord, I had hoped…”

  I closed my eyes and understood that wave of fear I’d experienced. In a raspy voice, “I hoped, too.”

  Somehow I had known something was wrong during the long, sleepless night as I lay awake listening to the old hotel walls groaning and creaking. “Tell me.”

  “Early this morning a gardener arrived to begin work in the beds. There she was—Cassandra lying on her back in a clump of bushes, just outside the terrace.”

  “How?”

  “Stabbed in the heart.”

  I shuddered. “How horrible.”

  “Who?” From Winifred, sucking in her breath.

  Harold shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know if anybody knows anything. I did my best to eavesdrop but the authorities are closemouthed. This is serious business. The daughter of huge American money and welcome investment in Hungary. An heiress engaged to Count Frederic von Erhlich, whose connections stretch from England to Russia. The aristocracy. Another crack in the almighty empire. We’re talking trouble here.”

  “What was she doing in the garden late at night?” Winifred wondered.

  “Meeting someone.” My voice was flat, metallic.

  Winifred started. “How do you know that?”

  I was silent, but Harold watched me closely.

  He went on. “They think it was a robbery—they hope that. According to Mrs. Pelham, the diamond necklace she wore is gone. Her rings. The diamond ring from the count, in fact. Some nighttime bandits.”

  “No,” I announced.

  Both looked at me. “Really, Edna,” said Winifred.

  “No.”

  Harold squinted. “They found a note in the pocket of her dress. From what I could piece together, it was from Endre Molnár. Three words only. ‘Midnight. Yes. Endre.’ That’s why she was there, sneaking out on the good count, safely blubbering in Vienna as we speak.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Edna,” said Winifred.

  “Such a beautiful young girl,” Harold lamented.

  “She warned me,” I said.

  Winifred frowned. “Edna, you mean that silly babble in Gerbeaud’s. I don’t think…”

  “She never got to talk to me.”

  Winifred looked at me, concerned. “Edna dear, I’m so sorry. I know you…”

  I held up my hand. “I was in the garden at midnight.” I shivered as fear gripped me.

  Chapter Eight

  “You were in the garden?” Inspector Horváth scratched his head, baffled.

  Late in the afternoon I was sitting in a small, windowless room behind the reception desk, sipping a cup of tea provided by the kitchen, being interviewed by a small, compact man who identified himself as Inspector Ivan Horváth of the Royal Hungarian Police. Clean-shaven, with small twinkling brown eyes and thinning hair, Inspector Horváth had bowed and kissed my hand. I let him—after all, he was the police. There are stops on my contrariness, even though there was too much bowing and scraping, too much begging-my-leave and pardon-the-intrusion-on-your-holiday…I trusted none of it. Yet I immediately liked the earnest thirtyish man because he was so respectful. He kept apologizing. I liked that in a man.

  “Yes,” I said slowly, approximating his own rhythm of stilted English, “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “You were looking for Cassandra Blaine?”

  I paused. “I suppose so.”

  “But why? And so late?”

  Carefully, methodically, I told him about my limited exposure to the temperamental young girl, what little I knew of her impending marriage t
o the count, and—I hesitated at that point, nervous—my fleeting eye contact with her in the café, that knowing—if difficult to explain—glance that suggested something was amiss. That look had been followed by the hasty, awful conversation at Gerbeaud’s where she said she knew something. Or maybe not. She didn’t understand something, but something bothered her. She wanted to talk to me.

  “I sent her a note, asking to meet her as soon as possible. But I never heard back from her.”

  “So you went looking for her at midnight?” A slight smile as he stressed the last word, the midnight.

  “I walked out on the quay, then back to the hotel through the garden.”

  “But you talked to her?”

  “No, no. But I thought I saw her walking, running maybe, but I’m not sure…out on the quay…I heard laughter, maybe hers…lights from Castle Hill…I saw Mrs. Pelham in the hallway…” I stopped abruptly.

  Endre Molnár, out there on the banks of the Danube. Midnight. Pacing back and forth. Waiting. Of course, I knew the Inspector had been told about the note found on Cassandra’s body. From Endre, agreeing to meet at midnight. Three words. A clandestine rendezvous, forbidden. I didn’t want to mention Endre’s name, but of course I had to. Yet I hesitated. Endre killing Cassandra with a knife to the chest? It was impossible. Of course it was. Endre couldn’t…what? I scarcely knew the man, though I was taken with him. That was dangerous.

  Inspector Horváth leaned back, reached for his pipe and took a long time lighting his tobacco. He never took his eyes off me. He was unhappy being there, I realized, and perhaps didn’t know how to proceed. Murder at the Café Europa? At the venerable Hotel Árpád, where old men quarreled over chess and American women insisted the cold sour-cherry soup be heated. A hideous murder? A beautiful young girl? An American? Wealth and position? A situation fraught with trouble.

  He smiled at me, a halo of wispy smoke circling his head. “Just tell me what you know. Begin when you came downstairs and left the hotel.” A heartbeat. “I don’t wish to disturb you longer than necessary. You are…the bystander.”

  “I am that.”

  But the moment I began my narrative, the door flew open, and we both jumped. A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped into the doorway, his ferocious gaze darting from me to Inspector Horváth. With close-cropped white hair, a small salt-and-pepper cavalry moustache, a Van Dyke goatee over a stern mouth, the man clicked his heels and pointed at Inspector Horváth, who was immediately on his feet.

  “Baron Meyerhold,” the man announced, looking at no one. He moved into the room, adjusted his jacket, some military garb, I assumed, given the gaudy display of ribbons over his chest and the fringed red epaulettes gracing his shoulders. Burnished gold buttons gleamed, though none as shiny as his polished boots. He struck me as a buffoon from an Offenbach operetta. “Baron Meyerhold,” he repeated, though I didn’t know why. Neither Inspector Horváth nor I had spoken. I sat there, marveling.

  Inspector Horváth bowed. “Sir.” An exaggerated bow.

  He was ignored by Baron Meyerhold. Horváth’s neck was crimson now, beads of sweat on his brow.

  “Ah, Miss…” He hesitated, uncertain of my name but not bothering to ask. “Miss…”

  “Ferber.” As chilly as I could muster.

  Baron Meyerhold thundered his words, as if marshaling his troops. “I have just arrived from Vienna on orders from the Military Chancery. It is assigned to me the responsibility to conduct an investigation into this…unfortunate event. The dead American girl.” He glanced at Inspector Horváth. “The involvement of Count Frederic von Erhlich, however distant, demands our attention. This matter cannot be left in the hands”—again he turned around to eye the embarrassed young officer—“of the local authorities. An American girl was betrothed to a member of the Habsburg family.”

  He licked his lower lip. Spittle formed at the corners of his mouth.

  Inspector Horváth stepped away, uncertain of his next move, but the Baron pointed to a side chair and the policeman sank into it, looking crestfallen.

  “Please sit,” he said to me. But, of course, I was already sitting, so I wondered at his command of English. He spoke with a clipped British accent, stressing the wrong syllables. He must have realized his error because he offered me a sliver of a smile. I shuddered. He sat down in the chair opposite me. “The young officer will assist me.” He nodded at Horváth, who did not look happy.

  “Baron,” I began.

  He held up his hand. “Miss…”

  “Ferber.”

  “Yes. How long did you know the dead woman?”

  “I didn’t know her.”

  “I am told you followed her into the garden.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “You were there.”

  “Yes, I was but…”

  “At midnight?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You argued with her?” He swallowed. “Yes?”

  “No.” I breathed in. “Sir, if you let me say my story, I can clear up…”

  “From what my aides have informed me on the train, there was anger earlier in the café. Something happened.” He paused. “An excitable young woman.”

  I sighed. “I knew Cassandra Blaine, sir, but briefly. She impressed me as a young woman who was indulged, allowed a fiery temperament, but from our brief conversation I believed that she was troubled about something. She was afraid…”

  He cut me off. “She was the intended of Count Frederic von Erhlich.”

  “And, frankly, sir, I don’t believe she wanted that mandated marriage. It strikes me as medieval when marriage is predicated on an exchange of money and…”

  He half rose from his seat. “Your comment is out of line, madam.” He pointed a finger at me. I glanced at Inspector Horváth and detected a hint of a smile, which quickly disappeared.

  “It is not your position to question an alliance that…”

  “That to my American eye is preposterous.”

  His face got cloudy. “If you didn’t kill Cassandra Blaine, who did?”

  Wildly, my mind swept through thoughts of Endre in that dark garden, waiting, waiting.

  “I have no idea, but of course I am not your murderer. I’m not one to attack people with knives. I’m a writer, sir—my knives are otherwise.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  I shook my head. “I did not kill Cassandra Blaine.”

  “You were seen socializing with Endre Molnár.” He waited, a cruel grin on his face.

  “Yes.”

  “You know of the failed romance—and the note he sent her?”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “Did he talk to you about that note?”

  “Of course not.” I took a breath. “Sir, you seem to believe I have some larger role in this tragedy. But I assume your battery of investigators, disembarking from the night train from Vienna, will find the culprit.”

  “Who, I insist, is someone who visits the Café Europa.” His eyes glanced toward the doorway, as if expecting such a culprit to sail in, confession spilling from his vile lips.

  I waited a heartbeat. “Then you should have a simple job of it.”

  Flustered, he glanced toward Inspector Horváth who was suddenly fascinated with a loose thread on his lapel. His head cocked to the side, that same suggestion of an unavoidable smile. Baron Meyerhold glowered at him, as though blaming him for my errant behavior. He seemed deep in thought, began a question he didn’t finish, then stood and bowed. “We shall talk further.”

  “I’m looking forward to it, sir.”

  He waited until I stood up and then waved me out of the room.

  ***

  “I’m a suspect in a murder,” I told Winifred when we met in the lobby.

  “Impossible,” she answered, dismissing the idea. “Have you seen Harold,
by the way? He’s wandering around the hotel, searching for answers. And he was looking for you.” She cocked her head. “He’s acting like a junior-grade detective. Sherlock Holmes with a Midwestern twang.”

  “It’s not funny, Winifred. Cassandra is dead. That poor, poor girl.”

  She nodded. “Of course, I know that. But really, Edna, the idea that someone is accusing you of her murder is farcical.”

  I summarized Baron Meyerhold’s bizarre interrogation, Inspector Horváth’s respectful questioning, and my abrupt dismissal. We were sitting in oversized wing chairs in a corner of the lobby, sheltered from the reception desk by towering plants and an oriental screen, but Harold’s booming voice disturbed us. For a tiny man he managed a loud roar. Excited, stammering, he asked the desk clerk where I was. The clerk glanced in my direction. Bustling, bumping into someone walking by, he found us. All a-titter, buzzing and nervous, he gripped his pad tightly in one hand, a pencil in the other.

  “News, news, news,” he bellowed.

  “Mr. Gibbon, please. A little quiet,” I begged.

  He dragged a chair near us, though he turned to face me. “What in the world is going on? I’ve been hearing the strangest rumors, which I assume are true. I heard they’re arresting you. What a headline! ‘Edna Ferber, American short-story author, dragged off to jail.’ You know, it has a certain ring to it. This fuddy-duddy Baron Meyerhold—I mean, I’ve met him before. In Vienna, a top-level scandal when one of the senior counselors was discovered selling secrets to the Russians and this Meyerhold confronted him, told the man he had best kill himself. A matter of honor. A gun placed on the man’s dresser. It was…”

  “Mr. Gibbon, no one is arresting me. And I’m not going to kill myself because of a nuisance like this…this pesky Baron Meyerhold.”

  “All right, then. Spill the beans, Miss Ferber. Tell me what happened. Everything, A to Z.” He leaned in, his face close to mine. So I did, tersely, without embellishment, the stark facts. Harold demanded more juice, more sensation, hack tabloid reporter that he was, his eye on a bold headline in America, but I wanted my participation in this tragedy diminished.

  Winifred tapped him on the wrist. “What have you found out, Mr. Gibbon? I’m assuming you know everything the authorities know.”