It took some hunting and scurrying, but before too many moments had passed everyone had some kind of container with either ale or wine in their hand.
“Everyone got one?” Dieter asked, looking around. “Good. Here’s my toast: To Gustav Adolph, the Once and Future King!”
A roar went up in response, glasses/bottles/cups/etc. were clinked together, contents were drunk, and a rousing cheer echoed in the rafters.
The ensuing party, although not the earliest to celebrate the emperor’s restoration, was certainly one of the rowdiest. But what could you expect from a bunch of musicians and actors—and one very rowdy Italian singer?
* * *
“Do you carry that sword stick with you all the time?” Gotthilf Hoch asked Friedrich von Logau when they caught up with him at Walcha’s Coffee House for their interview.
“Oh, no,” Friedrich replied. “That is my evening walking stick. My morning walking stick,” he lifted the tool in question, “is merely solid oak. At night, you see, one sometimes needs a bit more than to thump someone to discourage them.”
Byron snorted. “So do you know how to really use that blade, or were you just lucky?”
Friedrich smiled. “I am rather good with it, in fact. Years with Viennese and Italian fencing masters. Boring, really, but it has come in handy on occasion.”
“Such as a certain night in a certain opera hall basement,” Gotthilf said.
“Indeed.”
Chapter 71
Karl Honister and Mayor Gericke entered the building that housed Georg Schmidt’s offices, to be confronted with what appeared to be a miniature mob. A number of men were gathered around the door leading to Schmidt’s office, all of them talking excitedly.
Honister tried to shout over them, but quickly had to give that up as an exercise in futility. It took a blast on his patrolman’s whistle to bring silence.
“What’s going on?” he demanded, as soon as he removed the whistle from his lips. A babel of voices responded, and he blew the whistle again.
In the resulting silence Karl held up his badge wallet, flipped open to display the snarling lion mask. “Sergeant Karl Honister, Magdeburg Polizei.” He stowed the badge in a pocket and pointed to one man.
“You—what’s your name and why are you here?”
“Samuel Bauer. I work at the ledgers for Master Schmidt.”
“Right. Now what’s going on?”
A couple of the other men tried to speak, but Karl held up his hand. Samuel said, “Someone said the master has killed himself, and we all came to see if it was true.”
“What?” Karl and the mayor spoke in unison, in identical tones of mingled disbelief and astonishment.
“And it is true,” Samuel averred, with nodding heads all around to back him up.
“All right,” Karl said, snapping into detective mode. “You, Samuel, did you see it happen?” Negative headshake. “Right; then you run and find a patrolman, tell him I’m here, and I want a police photographer and a crime scene team here yesterday. Got that?”
Samuel nodded his head quickly.
“Good. Run.”
Samuel did as he was commanded.
Karl looked around.
“The rest of you, back up. Get out of the way. Line up against the hallway wall.”
Once the crush of bodies was untangled, it proved to be seven more men.
“Did any of you see what happened?”
Headshakes all around.
“Right. You stay right here, then. Don’t leave, but don’t come in the room, either.”
Karl turned toward the office doorway. He said over his shoulder, “I assume you’re coming with me, Mayor?”
“You assumed right,” was the response.
* * *
“He did what?”
Byron sounded stunned. Gotthilf didn’t blame him. He was shocked himself.
“According to the report, Schmidt blew his brains out with a pistol right before the mayor and Honister arrived for their meeting.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, I wish I were. Karl sent for the photographer and for some help.”
Byron picked up his hat.
“Come on. We’ll go chip in.”
* * *
Karl Honister watched from the door as the photographer took pictures of everything in the office.
“I want close-ups of the head and body,” he called out. The photographer waved a hand in acknowledgment and murmured something to his assistant.
There was no question that Master Schmidt was dead. Bullet holes in the temple were usually a good indication that life was gone. Schmidt’s head had lolled back against the back of his chair, so that his vacant eyes stared toward the ceiling. His right arm hung over the side of the chair, with what looked to be a .32 revolver, similar to the one that Karl carried, lying on the floor below his fingers.