The Schiele Slaughters: A Megan Crespi Mystery Series Novel

By Alessandra Comini

Retired art history professor Megan Crespi, an expert on the Expressionist artist Egon Schiele, is called to Vienna to help solve the brutal murder of a museum night watchman whose naked cadaver was propped up in the same pose as the nude self-portrait by Schiele above him. A series of attacks relating to Schiele occur, ranging from “censoring” of his nude figures’ private parts with spray paint to desecration of his burial site. Amid restitution lawsuits and murderous competing gallery owners, Megan’s investigations are endangered by the fanatical Grand Master of a secret sect dedicated to the obliteration of obscenity. Her own life in danger, the twisting Schiele trail leaves multiple corpses in its wake and leads Megan from conniving Vienna to remote Kaliningrad in Russia, to ancient Krumau in Bohemia, and bustling Milan in Italy as she hunts for a possible hidden trove of major Schiele paintings. What she discovers is undreamt of and leaves the Schiele world stunned and covetous.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sunstone Press
• Release date: May 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781611393200

Alessandra Comini

Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, Alessandra Comini was awarded Austria’s Grand Medal of Honor for her books on Viennese artists Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. Her Egon Schiele’s Portraits was nominated for the National Book Award and her The Changing Image of Beethoven is used in classrooms around the country. Both books in new editions are now available from Sunstone Press as well as The Fantastic Art of Vienna, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and Schiele in Prison. Comini’s travels, recorded in her memoir, In Passionate Pursuit, extend from Europe to Antarctica to China and are reflected in her Megan Crespi Mystery Series: Killing for Klimt, The Schiele Slaughters, The Kokoschka Capers, The Munch Murders, The Kollwitz Calamities, The Kandinsky Conundrum, and The Mahler Mayhem. All Comini’s scholarly books are available in new editions from Sunstone Press as is the entire Megan Crespi Mystery Series.

Book preview

1

The night watchman’s body had no hands or feet.

The naked cadaver had been propped up on one of the museum chairs in bizarre imitation of the writhing man in the self-portrait above. In the actual painting, the life-size nude figure was minus the prop of a chair, twisting pathetically without hands or feet in an existential void. Black duct tape had been applied to the private parts of his body. The stark image was a self-portrait by one Egon Schiele. Next to it on the floor by the guard’s mutilated body lay a black metal rose tipped in silver.

***

For those who knew the work of the Viennese artist Egon Schiele, this particular artwork was the culmination, in 1910, of the twenty-year-old artist’s public self-punishment for the crime of masturbation.

His womanizing father, Adolf Schiele, had contracted syphilis around the time of his marriage and had infected Egon’s mother Marie. She gave birth to three dead infants before Egon and his two sisters, Melanie and Gerti, were born.

All three children watched with horror as their father gradually slipped into a state of mindless, gentle insanity. A mere ghost of his former self, Adolf died when Egon was fourteen—a spectral vision that never left the artist.

Awareness of the venereal origin of his father’s deterioration was partly responsible for the obsessive preoccupation with sex characterizing much of the artist’s figural work throughout his short life. He died of influenza at twenty-eight, just days before the end of World War I.

In the Vienna of 1910, masturbation—a topic even Freud was uncomfortable discussing with his own sons—was an activity still believed to cause insanity. The solitary vice should be resisted, or at the very least punished.

***

In the contorted painting above the corpse, Schiele had publicly punished himself in a guilt-ridden, hand-amputating portrait that charged and changed his very physiognomy.

Not so with the night watchman. Anton Berg was instantly recognized by the three women guards who came on duty at Vienna’s new Leopold Museum early the next morning. As one of the guards called the police they also noticed that the security cameras were not working. The next call was to the museum director, Johannes Ohm. He arrived before the police and was greeted by the horrified guards.

After taking in the gruesome scene, Dr. Ohm discovered that the screens in the command panel of the control area behind the cloak room had been disconnected. And no alarm had been tripped. Whoever had committed this murder and desecration knew what he was doing. It was a very bold operation. And the only possible point of entry and exit would have had to be the museum roof, where some leaking skylights were currently under repair.

The police wondered whether there might be more than one individual implicated. Was it possible that some of the protestors who had been loudly demonstrating in front of the museum last week were involved?

The demonstrators were members of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien—the Israelite Community of Vienna known as the IKG. They accused the Leopold Museum of owning confiscated works of art that had originally been seized from Jewish owners and Jewish galleries during World War II and not restored to the legitimate heirs. The IKG posters carried by the demonstrators demanded restitution and the police had had to rope off the belligerent protestors to allow bewildered museum visitors entry and exit.

Although no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Leopold Museum had been established, several claims concerning a few of the museum’s iconic works had been filed by the IKG in the Austrian courts. These included works not only by the Expressionist Egon Schiele but also by his mentor, the Art Nouveau master Gustav Klimt.

One of the specific artworks in question had been Schiele’s Self-Portrait Nude Seated under which the murder victim had been posed. But this lawsuit had been resolved last year in favor of the museum. And no claims had been lodged against Klimt’s life-size Kissing Couple, in which two naked women knelt against a decorative background, locked in a sensuous kiss.

All attention had been focused on the corpse at the feet of Schiele’s Self-Portrait. No one had thought to search the upper floor of the building until one of the policemen asked the trio of lamenting guards if they had done so. They looked at each other in alarm. No! Immediately, with the policemen and the museum director in the lead, they swarmed up the stairs and fanned out onto the second floor.

"It’s the Klimt, it’s the Klimt!" screamed one of the women, alerting her colleagues, the director, and the policemen, all of whom rushed into the room from where the shouting had come.

This time there was no human victim. But a crime had been committed. Someone had used a knife, sliced out the central part of the Kissing Couple and taken it. Next to the frame on the floor was a black metal rose tipped in silver.

2

They’ll just have to call back! exclaimed retired history-of-art-professor Megan Crespi out loud to herself as she continued to lather conditioner through her hair in her London hotel-room shower. Staying, as she always did, in her favorite basement room of the Aster House at No. 3 Sumner Place, Megan was in no position to answer the room phone that was ringing loudly and incessantly. She had just finished exercising for some thirty minutes, waiting for the medium brown hair dye to do its job. It would take a good rinse now before she could gingerly step out of the shower, dry herself and blow-dry her hair. Reminding herself not to rush things at the age of seventy-seven even if she was physically very fit, she allowed the irritating phone to continue ringing. Finally it stopped.

Carefully rinsing out the conditioner, Megan wondered who could be calling her. Earlier, she had reported in to her best friend Claire Chandler, who once again had patiently agreed to babysit her beloved little Maltese dog, Button, back home in Dallas.

She did not expect any phone calls now since the secretary at the London Existential Psychotherapists office had checked with her just last night after she arrived at the hotel. The chairperson himself, Anthony Starling, had confirmed that her evening lecture, Unwilling Prisoners: Tchaikovsky and his Wife Antonina Miliukova, was all set for seven o’clock tomorrow evening. He would be picking her up for dinner beforehand at five.

And now it was tomorrow. After dressing for the day in her de rigueur outfit of black Merrell shoes, black slacks, black vest with a plethora of pockets, and bright red blouse, Megan decided to go through her PowerPoint presentation one more time before going up for breakfast in the cozy, multiwindowed sunroom of the hotel.

Lecturing with images is so darn easy nowadays, she thought to herself, marveling at the new technology—well at least new to her—and remembering with a grimace how for most of her teaching life she had carted around two bulky slide carousels for speeches she had given around America and Europe. Only rarely had her carryon not been opened and the mystifying carousels taken out for inspection.

Once, a security guard actually pulled several slides out of one of the carousels and held them up to the light. Unfortunately, they happened to be erotic works by Schiele and Klimt. The guard eyed Megan with ill-concealed surprise and disapproval before dramatically replacing the slides in the carousels and commanding her to pass on. He immediately whispered to the nearby security guards and in a few moments they were all laughing and pointing at her retreating figure.

Well perhaps it was odd that a woman, an older one at that, was lecturing on such artists. But Megan had discovered Egon Schiele back in her mid-twenties when she was in graduate school at Berkeley earning a Master’s degree in art history. Her eyes had opened wide with admiration for the artist’s frankness as she toured a small exhibition of his works assembled by her teacher, Professor Herschel Chipp.

Her new passion had taken her to Vienna, where both Schiele and Klimt had lived and worked. That was in 1963 and it was not her first trip to the splendid city. She had first seen and lived there at the end of 1956, the year of her graduation from Barnard College. Hugely enamored of her art history teacher there, a German professor named Julius Held, she persuaded her parents to let her continue studies at the institution Dr. Held had recommended, the University of Vienna.

But first, her father had insisted, she must visit her Italian grandparents in Milan. Proudly they took her to the Cimitero Monumentale where Toscanini was buried just a few steps from their own family mausoleum. Once inside, they dramatically pointed out to Megan a plaque already inscribed with her name and birth date, followed by a hyphen and a space. The names of her parents, her brother, Giangiorgio, and sister Tina were there as well, all with the frightening hyphen and space after their birth dates.

After two weeks of well-meaning but suffocating care, Megan had firmly bade the Nonno and Nonna farewell and elatedly boarded a train for Austria. She was headed for an adventure she could never have imagined.

The adventure was the Hungarian Revolution against Communist rule in the fall of 1956 when thousands of fleeing refugees filled the city of Vienna. Like other students she stopped going to class and pitched in to help at the different clothing distribution centers. Still today, she always thought of those difficult but bracing days whenever her business took her back to Vienna—her Wien.

Megan was yanked back to the present when the room phone began ringing again. This time she was in a position to pick it up and did so. An anxious voice questioned: Dr. Crespi? Megan? Instantly she recognized the voice of her cherished friend and colleague Johannes Ohm, director of Vienna’s Leopold Museum.

Hannes! she exclaimed excitedly. How have you found me all the way over here in London?

I didn’t have your cell phone number, Megan, so I called your university and they told me you were in London, staying at the Aster House. I tried your room just ten minutes ago but there was no answer.

Megan refrained from explaining that she had been in the midst of dyeing her hair and asked instead, What’s up? You don’t sound like yourself. Are you all right, Hannes?

"Ach, ja, I am all right but something terrible has happened at the museum!"

What? Has there been a fire?

"Thank goodness not that. But something even worse than that. The night watchman was murdered. But there is more! The hands and feet of his body had been severed..."

No! How horrible! Megan interrupted.

"But still more, Megan. The mutilated corpse was carefully propped up on a chair right in front of our Schiele’s nude Self-Portrait. The portrait itself had been mutilated with black duct tape over the genitals. And on the floor beneath it a black metal rose with silver tips had been left."

But why? What was that supposed to mean? asked Megan, feeling her skin tingle. Did they leave a note?

"No, nothing. No explanation. But there is still more to tell you. Upstairs we found that Klimt’s Kissing Couple had been sliced out of its frame! The painting is gone and on the floor in its place was another black metal rose."

But this is terrible, just terrible! And no note upstairs either?

"Nein. Nothing to indicate why these awful things were done. Or who did them. But we think we may have an idea as to the reason for the outrage."

What is that?

All last week the IKG was staging a protest against the Leopold. Things got pretty hot and there was a lot of shouting and pestering of the museum visitors. Finally the police had to rope off the protestors. That really made them mad.

So you think one or more of the IKG members may have broken into the museum and actually murdered the watchman and carved out the Klimt?

It’s a possibility. The IKG does have a lunatic fringe they cannot control, you know.

"But murder? Destruction of masterpieces?"

"I know. But there it is. This is what we have on our hands.

"And that is why I have called you. If you can possibly come, Megan, we want you here. With your expertise on Schiele and Klimt, we think that you might be able to shed some light on this double tragedy."

But there are fine Klimt and Schiele experts right there in Austria, Hannes. Why add me to the mix?

"Let’s say it’s your unique outlook and your special contacts that we value. After all, you were the stubborn American who just had to seek out the actual jail cell in which Schiele had been imprisoned. No Austrian had thought of doing so. Not even Schiele’s relatives. Fifty years had to pass before you appeared on the scene. And your success in finding, photographing, and writing about the cell was instrumental in its now being a museum. The tiny prison town of Neulengbach is now a tourist attraction, thanks to Schiele and to your persevering search.

So you see, Megan, we need your plucky American approach to things, urged Johannes Ohm. You won’t be caught up in the usual tangle of pride and prejudice that hampers the complex art history scene here. You’d be the unprejudiced outsider looking in, don’t you see?

You credit me with too much, Hannes, responded Megan, touched by her friend’s characterization of her and the lucky find she had made some fifty years ago.

Please do come, Megan. You’re already halfway here, after all.

Well, if I do, I couldn’t come until tomorrow, as I’m giving a lecture here this evening. But I will check the Internet and see if I can get a flight to Vienna that brings me in at a reasonable time.

"Wunderbar! I’ll reserve a room for you at your usual hotel, The Römischer Kaiser, isn’t it?"

Yes, that’s right, and would you please ask for a room in the back?

Consider it done, concluded a relieved Hannes.

After securing flight reservations on Austrian Airlines for early the next morning, Megan picked up her iPhone and called Claire with the news that she had agreed to continue on to Vienna after her London lecture and might she please keep little Button for a few more days? She explained what had happened.

Of course, responded Claire indulgently, not surprised that once again a Crespi trip abroad had been lengthened.

The breakfast buffet was such that Megan was able to assemble her own favorite ensemble of cereal, blueberries, strawberries, banana slices, yogurt, and milk. After leisurely going over the text for her presentation that evening, she made her plans for the day. She would go to Sotheby’s first and surprise her colleague there, Jillian Lloyd, head of sales. She wondered if Jillian had heard about the tragedy at the Leopold Museum.

Megan had to get her mind off the grisly events in Vienna. So perhaps after Sotheby’s she would visit Hampstead Heath which was always a delight. And the John Keats House, with its portrait bust of Keats by the American sculptor Anne Whitney was nearby. Whitney was one of several nineteenth-century American women sculptors who went to Rome, and Megan had written and lectured extensively about them. In fact she had been able to acquire two sculptures by them herself.

The first was a life-size medallion portrait by Margaret Foley that showed a striking older woman’s face in profile. M. Foley, Fecit Roma, 1884 was carved into the rim of the marble medallion. Megan liked to think that the subject could possibly be Clara Wieck Schumann, the wife of Robert, and one of the first pianists to memorize pieces and give concert performances without the notes in front of her.

The second work, formerly in Megan’s Dallas home, was also life size and a true treasure. It was Anne Whitney’s statue of Lady Godiva, her rippling ringlets falling down her back and her modest garment still pulled in at waist level as she unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt. The Lady who rode naked on her horse through the streets of Coventry, clothed only in chastity, was the heroine of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem on the historical figure, I waited for the train at Coventry....

For years the lovely Lady had graced Megan’s living room, but recently she had made a gift of the statue to the Dallas Museum of Art, pleased by the thought that so many more people could see and admire her there. In fact, the statue had become a focal point in the museum’s audio tour and a stopping station for the many classes of schoolchildren who visited the museum.

Well, she would see how the day worked out. Maybe she could work in visits to two museums: the John Keats House and Freud’s House. She could never get enough of the strange feeling of the great Viennese doctor’s presence there. Perhaps it was the smoke from his cigars, she joked to herself.

She remembered an incident that happened a few days after her mother—a heavy smoker—died. Megan was walking through her parents’ living room and had given her mother’s favorite upholstered chair an affectionate pat. Immediately a cloud of smoke had billowed up from the chair—a preternatural last greeting.

After downing her daily senior pills, Megan walked three blocks from the Aster House down Old Brompton Road to the South Kensington Station and took the underground to Sotheby’s on the always busy New Bond Street.

An unwelcome surprise greeted her there. In front of the establishment was a large group of protestors wearing what looked like police uniforms. They wore brimmed hats with the words, in German and in English, "Kunstraub/Art Theft. Occasionally lunging toward persons who had gathered to watch what looked like a movie promotion, the demonstrators handed out flyers. Megan made her way to the front of the crowd and before she could enter Sotheby’s one of the flyers was immediately thrust into her hand. Its message urged that art looted by the Nazis should not continue to be auctioned off. Don’t sell! Restitute!" the message read.

Jillian Lloyd, a slender woman in her forties with a droll sense of humor, was taken completely by surprise when a beaming Megan appeared at the door of her office. They hugged each other and Megan asked right away if she had heard about the murder and happenings at the Leopold Museum. Jillian had not heard about it, so Megan filled her in with what details she knew. Both women expressed their horror at what had happened. Who could have done such a thing? And why?

Having no answers, Megan asked why the demonstration outside? What had sold on auction to have triggered such a fervent response?

Oh, it’s a townscape by Schiele, was Jillian’s rueful answer. A restitution lawsuit was slapped against it, hours after it was sold and shipped to the rep of an anonymous buyer. Don’t think it will fly, however.

"I’ve heard that is becoming the fashion nowadays, filing restitution claims that may or may not hold water, but that cause delays and problems, or issues as everyone says nowadays. There simply are no longer problems in the world, only issues, have you noticed, Jillian?"

Jillian laughed in agreement. She hadn’t really thought about it before, but Megan was right. Everything was an issue nowadays.

By the way, Megan, we expected the Schiele to go for, highest, seventy million pounds, as it’s not one of his better ones really—he left it unfinished and unsigned. But two buyer reps had a bidding war and the painting went for over one hundred and ten million pounds. Unheard of!

Amazing. Do you have any idea as to who the two anonymous competitors were?

"We can’t identify them for sure; their reps were new to us. And none of the veteran Schiele collectors bid on the work. But our guess is that the bidding war was between two Russians. You know that with the new billionaire class in Russia there is tremendous interest now in acquiring works by Schiele and Klimt. The most enterprising, ravenous you could say, of these collectors are based in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

But these new buyers are inexperienced and have only superficial acquaintance with the artists’ works. That Schiele townscape, for example, which was as I’ve said certainly not one of his best, went for the price I told you. And that doesn’t include the percentage that Sotheby’s garners, so the price was actually more than one-hundred-and-ten thousand pounds.

Golly, that’s almost a hundred and eighty-five million dollars! exclaimed Megan, her mind adjusting to the new phenomenon of an elite class of avid Russian collectors of Western art. Are you sure you don’t have any specific leads, Jillian? pushed Megan.

Well, just between the two of us, I suspect that the painting was bought by Boris Ussachevsky, the billionaire grandson of the Russian Futurist artist and collector, Vladimir Ussachevsky. Boris inherited his grandfather’s collection—all Western European paintings, incidentally—and is known to have been working to enlarge his Schiele holdings, none of which, by the way, are to be seen in his very successful St. Petersburg gallery, Solovey.

Solovey? That’s a lovely name. Do you know what it means?

Yes, I was told it means nightingale. So perhaps it only has visitors at night? Just kidding, Megan. Seriously, the only other Russian buyer I can think of who might have sprung for the Schiele townscape would be Ussachevsky’s Moscow competitor, Alexandra Azarova, also a billionaire.

Yes, I know Alexandra as a matter of fact. Met her when she was in Texas for a convention. She’s very nice. And you might be amused by her gallery’s name. It’s the Gallery Rasputin; brings up cheery thoughts of assassination, doesn’t it?

Jillian snorted, then asked with interest: Where is it?

At the Smolenskaya Embankment on the ground floor of one of the street’s tallest buildings and near the metro.

Oh, not a bad section of town at all.

Well, said Megan, both Ussachevsky and Azarova certainly sound like possible buyers. I am intrigued by the idea of a Schiele townscape of the Moldau River being somewhere on the Volga River.

Well, Megan, enough of Russian intrigue. Let me show you something truly spectacular. We have a previously lost Schiele for our next auction! It’s undergoing restoration right now but we are doing it in-house, so I can take you down to see it. Sorry I couldn’t let you know about it before, but it’s all been very hush hush.

The two friends threaded their way through the basement corridors of Sotheby’s until they came to a large room at the back of the building. A restorer Megan knew from previous visits beamed at them. It was genial Rupert Wechseln from Mannheim.

I thought this Schiele painting might tweak your curiosity, Megan, he said in greeting. After pleasantries had been exchanged and wry remarks quipped about the protestors outside, Megan, Jillian, and Rupert bent over the Schiele under restoration, examining it with reverence.

It was one of three known large 1910 self-portraits by the artist showing himself nude and in different tortured positions. One of them—the seated one—had been known for decades and had gone through various private collections until it was recently acquired by the Leopold Museum. This was the painting in front of which the night watchman had been found murdered and mutilated.

The other two self-portraits, reproduced in black-and-white in both of Janette Killar’s oeuvre catalogues of Schiele’s works, had been thought to be lost. But now one of the two missing self-portraits had been offered to Sotheby’s by an anonymous owner through an intermediary.

It’s extraordinary! Megan cried, amazed at the sense of agony emanating from the lean body, standing off-center, and this time with at least one hand and one foot intact. Schiele faced the viewer, with upper rippling torso bending far to his right, hands defiantly on hips—the right hand not perceptible— legs set slightly apart in what looked like an imminent fall to the ground. And yet there was no ground to fall upon. Like the Leopold Museum self-portrait, Schiele’s naked body was posited in an empty continuum of unarticulated space. The figure seemed to be hurtling at the same time it was defying gravity. The expression on Schiele’s face was fraught with anguish. His challenging eyes were enormous under a furrowed brow.

Rupert was at work restoring the garish yellow with which Schiele had painted his body and face. At the moment the yellow, laden with the dust of decades, was more buttery in color. The artist’s bristling spikes of dark brown hair stood straight up from his head, as though electrified. Bright reds articulated the lips, nipples, and erect penis.

This ithyphallic self-portrait might be a difficult work to sell to any museum, Jillian said musingly.

Oh, I agree, responded Rupert immediately. It’s probably destined for a private collection rather than for a public, or should I say ‘pubic’ collection? Two groans greeted his very bad pun.

After another twenty minutes Megan took her leave, thanking both her friends for the special treat of looking at the incredible new Schiele find.

***

Passing with some difficulty through the throng of demonstrators, Megan stopped at one of the many Tutti-Frutti yogurt shops that dotted London and treated herself to a multi-fruit shake. She had a lot to think about. If one of the two lost Schiele self-portraits of 1910—the standing one—had been found, perhaps the other one was extant after all. She reminded herself of how Schiele had shown himself in this second work, which up to now was only known in black-and-white reproduction, but which by common assent also had the body articulated in shrieking yellow. Schiele had shown himself, as with the other two self-images, frontally and naked. But this time he was kneeling. His arms were bent at the elbows and his hands, fingers tensed and splayed outwards, were held up away from his body toward the beholder. Another variation on punishment of or temptation to masturbate.

What a trio of self-purging, Megan thought. And yes, the Leopold Museum had been most courageous in exhibiting the unblinkingly frank work. Of course there had been a few individual visitor complaints, but fortunately, in worldly Vienna, no real problem. At least not until the murder yesterday, and the linking of the hacked corpse with the amputated image above.

And now she had about three hours before she should return to her hotel for a half-hour’s lie-down—something that had recently become a ritual in her busy life. Luckily, after only thirty minutes or so, Megan always felt her energy revive and she was ready for whatever might come up. She did want to be especially rested for her lecture tonight.

A bit reluctantly Megan decided she had better visit only one of her two cheer up destinations: either the Freud House or the John Keats House. Choosing the latter, Megan took