Chapter 4

Act II (Part 2)

Rudolf Franz Karl Joseph (1858-1889)

In the morning I went to the Christmas Market. It was St. Lucy’s Day and quite crowded. I bought small gifts for Louise’s (my) children and several for my servants/servants’ children. I then walked past the Rathaus and across the Ring to Neustiftgasse and the shop of the Wiener Werkstaette. There were many, many beautiful things, ranging from rings to furniture.

I bought a small stainless steel box with a lid for my step-mother and a pair of earrings with pale blue stones for Louise. I felt tired, and sat down in a beautiful (but uncomfortable) chair by Hofmann. Not at all like the ones at Purkersdorf. But I saw a small carved table-top easel, about the right size for a Missal, and purchased it for Maria Josepha. But I had nothing for either Karl nor Max. I purchased a silver cigarette case for Karl – at 18, I presumed he smoked. Max was still a problem. He was but ten.

I paid and asked a clerk to have a taxi summoned. They loaded my acquisitions into it and I was deposited, fatigued, at the Augarten.

I dozed for an hour and then had some salad and cold chicken. I took to my bed early and slept quite soundly. I had no visitors, but I dreamt about Sisi.

I think Sisi really cared about her son. Her first reaction to hearing of his death was to turn on Larisch, her lady-in-waiting for the past few years. Larisch had had an illegitimate daughter, openly fathered by Rudolf. Rudolf paid her gambling debts (and other costs) for several years. She also served as madam to the lusts of (other) young nobles. Bratfisch said she had escorted Vetsera down the back stairs of the Palace to his coach on 29 January. When Sisi booted her, so did the rest of the court.

My aunt was devastated. She rarely reappeared in Vienna, spending her time traveling –Elisabeth spent little time in Vienna with her husband. Their correspondence increased during their last years, however, and their relationship became a warm friendship. On her imperial steamer, Miramar, Empress Elisabeth travelled through the Mediterranean as well as to Hungary, to her estate in Corfu, to France, to Switzerland.

It was while in Geneva in 1898 that she was stabbed by an Italian anarchist named Luigi Lucheni. The fool was waiting on the quay in front of the Hotel Beau-Rivage, always the Court’s favourite hotel. It was in the early afternoon, Lucheni approached and stabbed Elisabeth below her left breast with a wooden-handled, four-inch file, the kind used to file the eyes of industrial needles. Badly wounded, she staggered, but nevertheless continued walking, with the support of two other people, intending to board the departing lake steamer. Only after her Lady in Waiting, Countess Irma Sztáray, noticed that Sisi was bleeding, was the Empress carried back to the hotel on a makeshift stretcher. Two doctors pronounced her dead within an hour of the attack.

Typically, there’s also another version of this: I heard that after Lucheni struck her, the empress collapsed, a coach driver helped her to her feet and alerted the Austrian concierge of the Beau-Rivage, a man named Planner, who had been watching the empress’s progress toward the Genève. The two women walked roughly 100 yards (91 m) to the gangway and boarded, at which point Sztáray relaxed her hold on Elisabeth’s arm. The empress then lost consciousness and collapsed next to her. Sztáray called for a doctor, but only a former nurse, a fellow passenger, was available. The boat’s captain, Captain Roux, was ignorant of Elisabeth’s identity and since it was very hot on deck, advised the countess to disembark and take her companion back to her hotel. Meanwhile, the boat was already sailing out of the harbor. Three men carried Elisabeth to the top deck and laid her on a bench. Sztáray opened her dress, cut Elisabeth’s corset laces so she could breathe. Elisabeth revived somewhat and Sztáray asked her if she was in pain, and she replied, “No”. She then asked, “What has happened?” and lost consciousness again.

The simpler version has always seemed more likely to me. The second one seems like an attempt at publicizing the names, even the name of the lake steamer. Sztáray is said to be writing her memoirs, which will certainly be detailed and hagiographic.

My uncle was yet more depressed by his wife’s assassination than by his son’s death. The Baroness was his (and Sisi’s) true friend.

I felt poorly in the morning. But I wrote about Sisi in my journal and I took a brief walk in the park. It was cold and crisp. There was boiled fowl with carrots and dumplings for lunch. I remarked to Josef as to its aptness on a chilly day.

In the afternoon I tried reading a bit in English. Some new stories by Conan Doyle – The Return of Sherlock Holmes – which had arrived from London a month or two ago. But I only got a few sentences in before I dozed off.

It was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances. The public has already learned those particulars of the crime which came out in the police investigation, but a good deal was suppressed upon that occasion, since the case for the prosecution was so overwhelmingly strong that it was not necessary to bring forward all the facts. Only now, at the end of nearly ten years, am I allowed to supply those missing links which make up the whole of that remarkable chain. [“The Adventure of the Empty House”]

It was the spring of 1889 and I was still trying to come to grips with Rudolf’s death. It was quite cold south of Vienna. There was frost on the ground. Holmes would have cut through the various versions, as he had solved Gregson’s mystery in A Study in Scarlet, pointing out that “Rache” wasn’t part of a woman’s name, but “revenge” in German.

German.

The German hunters. Who were they? There was something nagging at me.

Wilhelm certainly hated Rudolf. And he detested Bismarck, whom he ousted in 1890. Was Rudolf an earlier, liberal obstacle? The Prussians hated the Slavs and the Hungarians. Rudolf encouraged the Bohemians, the Moravians, the Galacians, and – especially – the Hungarians.

The German hunters.

That’s where Loschek’s open window came from. The hunters approached the lodge silently, the snow’s crunch barely audible. A knife blade between the sash and the frame could lift the latch. The window remained closed while Rudolf dressed and went out. But when he returned, bolted the door and sat on the bed, the window was pulled out.

I visualized the pistol protruding into the room. A shot and Rudolf was dead. The bedclothes stiffed and the Prussian was startled to see Mary’s dark head. A second shot, unremarked because Loschek was hammering on the door. The pistol tossed onto the bed.

It was done. The hunters departed.

They could have walked to Alland in half an hour, spent an hour at breakfast at the inn and then taken the train – to St. Poelten perhaps, or to Innsbruck. The innkeeper would have heard them complain of not encountering a hart or boar.

Yes. It could have been done.

But Taaffe would have avoided that kind of thinking. Wilhelm was a grandson of Victoria. Bad enough to have yet more strife with Prussia, adding England to the mix would make things difficult. And Salisbury would have been far more interested in stability than truth or reality.