The train to Gloggnitz smelled of wet wool coats and stale tobacco—a scent Heinrich Brenner found thoroughly civilized. He sat by the window, his third cigarette in twenty minutes held between his fingers, watching as wintry Vienna slowly gave way to hills and pine forests. The Semmering. One did not simply go there. One let oneself be carried there, like a leaf that the wind eventually lets fall.

Valerie von Schrattenbach had called him three weeks ago. Valerie—whom he hadn’t seen in twenty years. Valerie—who had once possessed the most beautiful laugh in all of Vienna, and who now, apparently, lived alone in her grandmother’s villa, surrounded by stucco and silence.

"Heinrich," she had said, "you are the only person I still trust."

That should have been a warning. But Brenner had been curious—and perhaps a little lonely, too, though he would never have admitted as much to himself, nor to the "Golden Lamb".

The Villa Schrattenbach stood above the train station, set behind a long avenue of spruces that, in the snow, looked like a dark corridor. The house was Art Nouveau in style—once white, but now weathered by time into that particular shade of gray that only old villas and old aristocrats ever seem to acquire. Valerie was waiting for him on the front steps: smaller than he remembered her, her hair now white, yet her gaze still as sharp as it had been back then.

"You still smoke too much," she said by way of greeting.

"You still look too good," he replied.

She smiled—and for a fleeting moment, it truly was that same laugh from Vienna.

The evening passed quietly. Valerie prepared beef consommé with "Frittaten", served alongside a Pinot Gris; and in the course of the meal, Brenner learned what he had sensed was coming: She was not truly alone. Her nephew Felix had been living with her for six months—Felix Schrattenbach, thirty-two, the family’s "black swan," as Valerie called him, without further explanation.

Felix appeared just in time for dessert. He was tall and dark, possessing the restless charm of a man with too many things on his mind at once. He shook Brenner’s hand with a firm grip—too firm, Brenner felt—the kind of grip used to demonstrate a strength one does not actually possess.

"The famous Inspector," said Felix. "Aunt Valerie’s personal Sherlock Holmes."

"Ex-Inspector," Brenner corrected him.

"The prefix changes little of the substance, does it?"

Brenner observed Felix throughout the evening. The young man drank too much and spoke too little. Twice he left the table under a pretext; the second time, he was gone for a quarter of an hour. When he returned, his tie was loosened, and his eyes held the look of someone who had just received very unpleasant news.

Brenner slept poorly.

At seven o'clock the next morning, Rosa, the housekeeper, discovered the body.

It lay at the foot of the side outdoor staircase that led directly from the west wing into the snow-covered garden. It was a man wearing Felix Schrattenbach’s winter coat, his face turned toward the ground, his arms twisted at strange angles. The snow had half-buried him. Rosa screamed. Valerie called the police. And three minutes later, Brenner stood beside the body—an unlit cigarette between his lips—examining the deceased with the quiet concentration of a man who has suddenly snapped wide awake.

The inspector from Mürzzuschlag—a young, conscientious man named Hofer—arrived an hour later. His first glance fell upon the icy staircase; his second, upon the open window on the first floor; his third, upon the deceased.

"A fall," he said. "The stairs are treacherous in freezing weather. Mr. Schrattenbach evidently went outside during the night—perhaps for a cigarette—and lost his footing."

"Possible," said Brenner.

"You have doubts?"

"I observe," said Brenner. "That is something else entirely."

There was no trace of Felix Schrattenbach. His room was empty, his wardrobe half-cleared out, his bed untouched. The police interpreted this as shock and flight. Brenner remained silent on the matter.

He stayed through the morning. Valerie sat in the library, speaking very little; her hands, Brenner noted, did not tremble—trembling only occurs when one lies, or when one knows the truth and is afraid. Valerie did not know the truth. That was the only thing of which he was certain.

Brenner went back out into the garden.

The body had been removed, but the imprint in the snow remained—a silent stencil preserving the shape of a human being. Brenner knelt down. He examined the spot where the feet had rested. Then he stood up, walked over to the stairs, and visually gauged the distance between the bottom landing and the point of impact.

Too far. In a simple fall, the body would not have flown that far. It would have rolled, tumbled, lost momentum. This body had been thrown—or it had already been lying there when the snow began to fall.

Brenner lit a cigarette and thought.

Then he went back inside the house and asked Rosa to show him Felix's room. Rosa was a practical woman; she asked no questions. In the room, Brenner found little: a few books, an empty suitcase, a box of letters he did not open. But under the bed—half-pushed behind a roof tile—lay a single shoe.

Size 42.

Brenner thought of the dead man in the garden. Of his hands. Of the way his fingers lay.

He pulled out his notebook and wrote down a single number: 44.

Inspector Hofer listened to him with the patient skepticism of young officers who have not yet learned that the strangest explanation is sometimes the right one.

"The dead man wears size 44," said Brenner. "Felix Schrattenbach wears size 42. The shoe under the bed belongs to Felix. Whoever is lying down there—it is not Felix Schrattenbach."

"That is..."

"Verifiable," said Brenner. "Fingerprints, dental records, DNA. It will take time, but you’ll find that the deceased was reported missing several weeks ago. Probably a man with no fixed ties. Someone no one would go looking for right away."

Hofer fell silent for a moment. "And Felix Schrattenbach?"

"He didn't fall. He staged his own death. He needed a body, a coat, a plausible story, and a window that was easy to open from the inside. Whatever he needed, he got."

Hofer leaned back. "Why?"

Brenner thought of the handshake that was too firm, the loosened tie, the eyes of a man bearing bad news. "That," he said calmly, "is your job to find out. I suspect debt. Or blackmail. Or both. People don't disappear for fun—they disappear when staying has become impossible."

He stood up and buttoned his coat.

"Look for the missing man first. Then for the blackmailer. You’ll find Felix—sooner or later, they all turn up again. The Alps are vast, but the world is small."

Brenner took the train back to Vienna that afternoon.

On the train, he ordered a "Schwarzer"—a black coffee—from the conductor; as was to be expected, it was disappointing. But the view from the window was good: the mountains drifted past, then the hills, then the first gray fringes of the city. Vienna—which never truly sleeps and never truly wakes—took him back in as it always did: with the casual indifference of a city that has seen too much.

Valerie had seen him off at the door, without many words. She had known that Felix wouldn't be coming back—not anytime soon, perhaps never. Grief and relief lay so close together that Brenner would have considered it tactless to point out the difference. "He took his own life," she had said—and by that, she did not mean what the police had initially thought.

"He took another life," Brenner had replied. "That’s a difference."

She had looked at him for a long moment. Then she had nodded.

There was still a light on at the "Golden Lamb" when he arrived at eight-thirty. Mizzi brought him a beer without a word and a plate of "Tafelspitz" without any fuss; Brenner sat at the regulars' table, thinking about a shoe of the wrong size—that tiny, inconspicuous oversight that had nearly cost a man his carefully planned new life.

Almost, he thought. But not quite.

He finished his beer and ordered a second.

S.

Inspector Brenner will return.

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