William Monk 12 - Funeral in Blue

tougher than Niemann, and prepared to take the risks.”
    “Are you sure?” It did not sound like the man Monk had seen. Surely Ferdi had it the wrong way around. “Beck is a doctor.”
    “Well, he could have it wrong, I suppose, but he seemed absolutely sure.”
    Monk did not argue. His feet ached and he was exhausted. He felt cold through to the bone, and it was still more than a mile back to his room in the Josefstadt. Before he could even think of that he must make certain he found a carriage to take Ferdi safely home. This was the boy’s city, but Monk still felt responsible for him. “We’ll start again tomorrow,” he said decisively. “Speak to some more of the people on the list.”
    “Right!” Ferdi agreed. “We’re not finding anything very helpful . . . are we?” He looked anxiously at Monk.
    Monk had his own feelings. “Not yet. But we will. Perhaps tomorrow.”
     
     
    Ferdi was prompt in the morning, and with renewed zeal they planned where to continue their search. This time they found a charming woman who must have been in her twenties thirteen years ago, and now was comfortably plump and prosperous.
    “Of course I knew Kristian,” she said with a smile as she admitted them to her sitting room and offered them a choice of three kinds of coffee, and melting, delicious cake, even though it was barely half past ten in the morning. “And Max. What a lovely man!”
    “Kristian?” Monk asked quickly, by now catching from Ferdi a large part of the sense of the conversation. “Is she speaking of Kristian?”
    But apparently it was Max she considered lovely.
    “Not Kristian?” Monk persisted.
    Little by little, Ferdi drew from her a picture of Max as quieter than Kristian, with a wry sense of humor and an intense loyalty. Yes, of course he was in love with Elissa, anyone could see that! But she fell in love with Kristian, and that was the end of the matter.
    Was there jealousy? She shrugged her shoulders and smiled across at Monk with a little laugh, sad and rueful. Of course there was, but only a fool fights the inevitable. Kristian was the leader, the man with the courage of his dreams and the nerve to make the decisions and pay the price. But it was all a long time ago now. She was married with four children. Kristian and Elissa had gone to England. Max lived very well, somewhere in the Neubau District, she thought. Was Monk staying long in Vienna? Did he know that Herr Strauss the younger had been appointed Keppelmeister to the National Guard during the uprising? No? Well, he had. Mr. Monk could not visit Vienna and not listen to Herr Strauss. It would be like being a fish and not swimming. It was to deny nature and insult the good God who created happiness.
    Monk promised that he would, thanked her for her hospitality, and urged Ferdi to leave.
    They saw two more people on Kristian’s list, and they confirmed all that they had heard so far. According to them both, the revolutionaries had worked largely in groups, and the group of which Kristian Beck had been the leader consisted of seven or eight people. Max Niemann, Elissa, and Hanna Jakob had been in it from the beginning. Another half dozen or so had come and gone. Four had been killed, two at the barricades, one in prison, and Hanna Jakob tortured and shot in one of the back streets when she would not betray her fellows.
    Monk felt sick, forced to listen to a shocked and white-faced Ferdi recounting the story in the comfortable surroundings of Monk’s guest house, where they had returned, hands frozen from a hard wind out of a clear sky smelling like snow.
    They sat in front of the fire with the remains of cakes and beer on the table between them and the last of the fading sunlight high in the windows as the early evening closed in. He tried to imagine how Kristian had felt when he heard it sharp with the shock of immediacy thirteen years ago. Hanna had been one of them, alive only hours ago, her pain barely over, her life as precious and urgent as their own. Had he sat in a quiet room somewhere, about this time of year, with the wind cold outside, and thought of Hanna dying in an alley among enemies, silent to save the rest of them? What guilt did he feel simply because he was alive? What had they done to try to rescue her? Or had they known nothing about it until it was too late?
    “It seems Dr. Beck was a real firebrand,” Ferdi said, blinking hard and swallowing. “They respected him like mad, because he never told