We are delighted today to feature an excerpt from mystery author Janet Hannah's third Alex Kertész mystery, Mystery Time (Outskirts Press, May 2012 trade paperback and ebook editions). The previous two titles in the series are The Wish to Kill (2002) and Murder with a French Accent (2009).
Alex Kertész is a multi-lingual microbiologist, a research scientist working at the University of Jerusalem. The present novel opens with him attending a conference in Prague.
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From Chapter One …
"Scheisse!" the blond lady exploded into the microphone. It was German and it meant "shit!" Embarrassed laughter rippled through the audience that filled the main hall of the convention center in Prague.
Professor Hildegard Kraus was chairperson for this plenary session on the first evening of the International Congress of Molecular Biology. The third speaker had just mounted to the stage, staggering comically on the last of the five steps. He had reached the lectern and Hildegard had stepped toward him to attach the tiny microphone to his lapel. Then he toppled over on her.
She was a tall, strong woman, but the heavy weight almost knocked her down. Reflexively throwing her arms around him, she felt a suspicious dampness in the middle of his back.
"Can someone — ?" she said hopefully in the direction of the audience.
Alex Kertész, scheduled to be the fifth speaker of the evening, was sitting in the second row near the aisle so it took him only a few seconds to reach the stage. As he relieved Hildegard of her burden he noted the dark stain on the back of the man's jacket.
There was a door on the right, toward the rear of the stage. With Hildegard's help he carried the man into a small store room. It was empty except for one old wooden chair so he laid the body on the floor, using his folded jacket as a pillow. The man who at this moment was lying on the dusty floor instead of presenting a scientific report was a burly middle aged American named Bernard Green.
Green moved his head fitfully from side to side. "Joe? Joe?" he murmured.
Alex leaned over him to hear better. "Joe Klein? Did he do this to you?"
He could barely hear the answer.
"Purple socks," Green whispered. Those were his last words.
Hildegard and Alex looked at each other blankly.
"Purple socks?" Hildegard repeated.
Alex envisioned remembering those words at odd moments for the rest of his life. There was no way he would ever be able to figure out what Bernie meant, and also no way he would ever be able to forget it.
Hildegard asked one of the local people who was sitting in the front row to call an ambulance, then went back to the microphone on the lectern to ask for any medical doctor to please present himself. A small, balding German with thick glasses came forward and she led him into the storeroom.
She and Alex waited in silence while the doctor examined the injured man. After a minute he stood up, dusting his trouser legs.
"He's dead", he confirmed to Hildegard in German. "Someone stuck a knife in his back, I would say."
The three of them waited for the ambulance, Hildegard sitting on the chair, Alex sitting on the floor with his back against a wall, and the doctor standing uncomfortably near the door.
In a room containing Hildegard Alex usually found his glance returning to her, even when there was more choice than at present. She sat very straight with her hands in her lap, shapely legs together, every golden hair in place. She was wearing a tailored white linen suit and a navy blue silk blouse. It didn't sound like anything special, but on her the whole was more than the sum of the parts. There was some silver mixed with the gold in her hair now, but at fifty-one she was still beautiful.
He knew her exact age because they had submitted three grant applications together in the six years since they first met. Two of the grants had come through, an impressive statistic. The curriculum vita she attached to these proposals said that she had been born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, that she had studied at the University of Frankfurt and received her doctoral degree at Heidelberg. She had done a post-doctoral fellowship at Oxford and was now back at Heidelberg as a full professor.
She had similar information about him. His résumé said that he had been born thirty-eight years ago in Budapest, Hungary. Actually it was still the Hungarian People's Republic when he was born there, but he never wrote it that way. He had studied at the Sorbonne and the University of Jerusalem and done post-doctoral research at Stanford, in the U.S.A. He was currently an associate professor in Jerusalem.
You might think that they must know each other very well after six years of working together, but you would be wrong. Most of their cooperation consisted of summaries of experiments e-mailed back and forth. Reports and grant applications were also prepared mostly over the internet, with an occasional phone call to settle some point. They generally met face to face only once a year, at a meeting where they would find some time to sit down with other members of their lab groups for a couple of hours to discuss work.
There had been only one occasion for a more personal sort of interaction, and that was during the conference in Athens when they met for the first time, when they spent a day sightseeing together.
That it was just the two of them was accidental, since Hildegard had invited Alex to join her student and herself on the outing so that the three of them could discuss his work, but the student had overindulged in ouzo at the Plaka tavernas the night before and never made it.
Alex had enjoyed both the sightseeing and Hildegard's company, and they had spent enough time talking shop to outline plans to work together. As it happened, he also learned that the regal German professor could be impulsive enough to drive her big Mercedes into an awkward spot. And Hildegard had an opportunity to note that if she found herself in such a spot, the easy-going young man with the interesting research had steady enough nerves to help her out of it.
Hildegard wasn't looking at anyone. She was staring at a point on the wall opposite her chair, and might be thinking of nothing. Alex knew that wasn't the case. As one of the organizers of the meeting, she would be working through the necessary steps to be taken as a result of this terrible event.
In fact, at that moment she was thinking that someone would have to notify Bernie's family. Was he married? Joe Klein would probably know. They had sometimes worked together before they became such bitter enemies. The friendship broke up when Joe told Bernie about a particular experiment he had done. He didn't think the results were interesting. But Bernie thought they were and pursued the line of research to make an important discovery. At least, that was Bernie's version. Joe claimed that Bernie stole the idea from a grant proposal of his that was sent to him for review.
Alex's eyes rested on Hildegard, but he too was thinking about Bernie, a clever and likable man. Poor fellow, to come all the way to Prague to be murdered. Did he even know anyone in this city? It would be an extreme case of bad luck, to be the random target of a homicidal local criminal after just one day in a strange city. The other possibility was that the murderer had arrived at the same time as Bernie, to attend this meeting.
By being murdered so far from home Bernie had made it almost too easy for the police – they could rule out jealous husbands, jilted lovers, or anyone who might profit from Bernie's death, unless they were also among the five hundred or so people who were attending the meeting. Of course, there might be a jealous husband or jilted lover among them, though it was hard to see how anyone here would profit from Bernie's death.
But why beat the bushes for theoretical candidates when they had Joe Klein, who had expressed the wish to kill Bernie with some regularity? The only problem - it was hard to believe that Joe was serious. The whole feud seemed more like an act, with Joe playing to the audience and Bernie pressed into the role of straight man. On the other hand, Bernie's next to last words were, "Joe, Joe". Then, unfortunately, he had said, "purple socks".
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Janet Hannah was born in Toronto and earned a doctorate in biochemistry from Rutgers University. She currently lives in Jerusalem. You can learn more about the author and her books by visiting her website, MurderWithAFrenchAccent.com.
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About Mystery Time:
In a para-psychological adventure that starts in Prague and ends in Heidelberg, Hungarian born Alex Kertész and his German colleague, Professor Hildegard Kraus, settle into their seats at a scientific congress one evening to listen to an American microbiologist begin his lecture. The man gets up on the stage, but instead of speaking, he drops dead.
While Alex and Hildegard are wondering if one of the other scientists assembled in the hall is the killer, Hildegard discovers her watch, a treasured family keepsake with an intriguing history, has been taken. They conjecture that the murderer is also the thief, and so begins their suspense filled attempt to solve this double mystery.
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